Now, I do not wish to say it is not your opinion that you have expressed, since you have expressed it, but you have yielded to a prejudice. No, it cannot be you, the husband, the father of a family, the man who is there, it is not you, that is not possible; without the prejudice of the speech of the prosecution and a preconceived idea, you would never say that M. Flaubert was the author of a bad book! Surely, left to your inspirations, your appreciation would be the same as mine. I do not speak from a literary point of view; but from a moral and religious standard, as you understand it and I understand it, you and I could not differ.
They have said, furthermore, that we have brought upon the scene a materialistic curate. We took the curate as we took the husband. He is not an eminent ecclesiastic, but an ordinary priest, a country curate. And as we have insulted no one, expressed no thought or sentiment that could be injurious to a husband, so we have insulted no ecclesiastic. I have only a word to say beyond this. Do you wish to read books in which ecclesiastics play a deplorable rôle? Take Gil Blas, The Canon (of Balzac), Nôtre-Dame de Paris of Victor Hugo. If you wish to read of priests who are the shame of the clergy, seek them elsewhere, for you will not find them in Madame Bovary. What have we shown? A country curate, who in his function of country curate is, like M. Bovary, an ordinary man. Have I represented him as a gourmand, a libertine, or a drunkard? I have not said a word of that kind. I have represented him fulfilling his ministry, not with elevated intelligence, but as his nature allowed him to fulfill it. I have put in contact with him, and in an almost continual state of discussion, a type which lives—as the creatures of M. Prudhomme live—as all other creations of our time will live who are taken from truth and which it is not possible for one to forget, and that is the country pharmacist, the Voltairean, the sceptic, the incredulous man, who is in a perpetual quarrel with the curate. But in these quarrels, who is it that is beaten, buffeted, and ridiculed? It is Homais; to him is the most comic rôle given, because he is the most true, because he best paints our sceptical epoch, a fury whom we call a priest-hater. Permit me still to read to you page 206. It is the good woman of the inn who offers something to her curate:
"'What can I do for you, Monsieur le Curé?' asked the landlady, as she reached down from the chimney one of the copper candlesticks placed with their candles in a row. 'Will you take something? A thimbleful of cassis? A glass of wine?'
"The priest declined very politely. He had come for his umbrella, that he had forgotten the other day at the Ernemont convent, and after asking Madame Lefrançois to have it sent to him at the presbytery in the evening, he left for the church, from which the Angelus was ringing.
"When the chemist no longer heard the noise of his boots along the square, he thought the priest's behavior just now very unbecoming. This refusal to take any refreshment seemed to him the most odious hypocrisy; all priests tippled on the sly, and were trying to bring back the days of the tithe.
"The landlady took up the defense of her curé.
"'Besides, he could double up four men like you over his knee. Last year he helped our people to bring in the straw; he carried as many as six trusses at once, he is so strong.'
"'Bravo!' said the chemist. 'Now just send your daughters to confess to fellows with such a temperament! I, if I were the Government, I'd have the priests bled once a month. Yes, Madame Lefrançois, every month—a good phlebotomy, in the interests of the police and morals.'
"'Be quiet, Monsieur Homais. You are an infidel; you've no religion.'
"The chemist answered: 'I have a religion, my religion, and I even have more than all these others with their mummeries and their juggling. I adore God, on the contrary. I believe in the Supreme Being, in a Creator, whatever he may be. I care little who has placed us here below to fulfill our duties as citizens and fathers of families; but I don't need to go to church to kiss silver plates, and fatten, out of my pocket, a lot of good-for-nothings who live better than we do. For one can know him as well in a wood, in a field, or even contemplating the eternal vault like the ancients. My God! mine is the God of Socrates, of Franklin, of Voltaire, and Béranger! I am for the profession of faith of the 'Savoyard Vicar,' and the immortal principles of '89! And I can't admit of an old boy of a God who takes walks in his garden with a cane in his hand, who lodges his friends in the belly of whales, dies uttering a cry, and rises again at the end of three days; things absurd in themselves, and completely opposed, moreover, to all physical laws, Which proves to us, by the way, that priests have always wallowed in torpid ignorance, in which they would fain engulf the people with them.'