The Government Attorney has said:  “This young girl has constantly been presented in a lascivious light.”  No! she is represented as born in the country, born on a farm, where she is occupied with all her father’s labor, and where no kind of lasciviousness can find a way to her mind or heart.  Then she is represented, in the place of following the destiny which would be hers naturally, instead of being brought up for the farm or in some analogous place in which she ought to live, she is represented as under the short-sighted authority of a father who thinks he must have his daughter educated in a convent, this girl born on a farm, who should marry a farmer, or a man of the country.  She is then taken to a convent, outside her sphere.  As there is nothing that does not have weight in the Public Attorney’s speech, we must leave nothing without a response.  Ah! you spoke of her little sins, and in quoting from the first number, you said: 

“When she went to confession, she invented little sins, in order that she might stay there longer, kneeling in the shadow ... beneath the whisperings of the priest.”  You have gravely deceived yourself in regard to my client’s meaning.  He has not committed the fault with which you reproach him; the error is wholly on your side, in the first place upon the age of the girl.  As she entered the convent at thirteen, it is evident that she must have been fourteen when she went to confession.  She was not then a child of ten years, as it has pleased you to say, and you were materially deceived on that point.  But I am not so sure of the unlikelihood of a child of ten years liking to remain at the confessional “under the whisperings of the priest.”

All that I desire is that you read the lines which precede, and that is not easy, I agree.  And here appears the inconvenience of not having a pamphlet memoir at hand; with such an aid, we should not have to search through six volumes!

I have called your attention to this passage in order to recall it to Madame Bovary and her true character.  Will you permit me to say, what seems to me very important, that M. Flaubert has fully comprehended this point and put it in bold relief.  There is a kind of religion which is generally spoken of to young girls, which is the worst of all religion.  There may be in this regard a difference of opinion.  As for me, I declare clearly that I know nothing more beautiful, or useful, or necessary to sustain, not only women in the ways of life but men themselves, who sometimes have the most difficult trials to overcome, I know nothing so useful, so necessary, as the religious sentiment, but a serious religious sentiment, and permit me to add, severe.