The affirmation is grave on account of the personality that makes it:
and, permit me to say to you that M. Gustave Flaubert is not to me an
unknown man who has instructions to give me, and who has need of
recommendations from me--I speak not only of his morality but of his
position. I come here, into this precinct, fulfilling a duty of
conscience after reading the book, after feeling myself exalted, by this
reading, in all that is honest and profoundly religious. But, at the
same time that I come fulfilling a duty of conscience, I come to fulfill
a duty of friendship. I remember, and I can never forget, that his
father was an old friend of mine. His father, by whose friendship I was
long honoured, to the last day of his life, his father,--permit me to
say his illustrious father,--was for thirty years surgeon-in-chief at
the hospital at Rouen. He was in charge of the Dupuytren dissecting
room, and in giving to science great instruction, he has endowed it with
some great names; I will mention but one, that of Cloquet. He has not
only left for himself a good name in science, he has left a grand
memento in his immense service to humanity. And at the same time I am
recalling my bond of friendship with him, I wish to tell you that his
son, who has been dragged into Court for an outrage against morals and
religion, this son is the friend of my children, as I was the friend of
his father. I know his thought, I know his intentions, and the
counsellor has the right here of placing himself as a personal guaranty
of his client.

Gentlemen, a great name and great memories have obligations. Children
were not wanting to M. Flaubert. There were three of them, two sons, and
a daughter who died at twenty-one. The eldest has been judged worthy to
succeed his father; and he is to-day, as he has been for many years,
carrying on the mission which his father conducted for thirty years. The
younger son is here; he is at your bar. In leaving them a considerable