The Prosecuting Attorney, summing up his opinion of _Madame Bovary_, has
said:

"The second title of this work might be: _The Story of the Adulteries of
a Provincial Woman_."

I protest vigorously against this title. This alone, had I not listened
to your speech from beginning to end, would prove to me the prejudice in
which you are firmly bound. No! the second title of this work is not:
_The Story of the Adulteries of a Provincial Woman_; it is, if it is
absolutely necessary to have a second title: the story of the education
too often met with in the provinces; the story of the perils to which
such an education leads; the story of degradation, of dishonesty, of
suicide, considered as a consequence of a first fault, and a fault led
up to through wrong-doing, by which a young woman is often carried
away. It is the story of an education, and the deplorable life of which
such an education is often the preface. This is what M. Flaubert
desired to paint, and not the adulteries of a woman of the provinces.
You will see this at once on reading the incriminated book.

Now, the prosecuting attorney perceives in all this, and through it all,
a lascivious colour. If it were possible to take the number of lines of
the book which he has cut out, and put parallel to them other lines that
he has left, we should have a total proportion of about one to five
hundred; and you would see that this proportion of one to five hundred
was in no way of a lascivious colour; it exists only under the
conditions of being cut out and commented upon.

Now, what has M. Flaubert desired to paint? First, education given to a
woman which is above the conditions to which she was born--something