husband's kisses are monotonous and wearisome, if you have found only
platitudes--this word has been especially brought to our notice--the
platitudes of marriage--if you seem to see pollution in a union where
love does not preside, take care, for your dreams are an illusion, and
you will one day be cruelly deceived. But this man, gentlemen, who knows
how to speak strongly, makes use of the word pollution to express what
we would have called disillusion, and he has used the true word,
although vague to him who can bring to it no intelligence. I would have
liked better his not speaking so strongly, his not pronouncing the word
_pollution_, but rather averting the woman from deception, from
disillusion, and saying to her: Where you believe you will find love,
you will find only libertinism; where you think you will find happiness,
there is only bitterness. A husband who goes tranquilly about his
affairs, who kisses you, puts on his house cap and eats his soup with
you, is a prosaic husband revolting to you; you aspire to a man who will
love you, idolize you; poor child! that man will be a libertine who will
have taken you for a minute for the sake of playing with you. There will
be some illusion about it the first time, perhaps the second; you may
come back home joyous, singing the song of adultery. "I have a lover!"
but the third time you will not wish to go to him, for the disillusion
will have come. The man you have dreamed of will have lost all his
prestige; you will have found again in love the platitudes of marriage,
and this time with scorn, disdain, disgust and poignant remorse.

This, gentlemen, is what M. Flaubert has said, what he has painted, what
is in each line of his book; and this is what distinguishes his work
from all other works of the kind. Under his hand, the great
irregularities of society figure on each page, and adultery walks abroad
full of disgust and shame. He has brought into the common relations of
life the most powerful teaching that can be given to a young woman. And