"_Be it known_, that the same observations can justly be applied to other passages not defined by the ordinance of dismissal, and which, in the first place seem to present an exposition of theories which would at least be contrary to the good customs and institutions which are the basis of our society, as well as to a respect for the most august ceremonies of divine worship; "_Be it known_, that, from these diverse titles, the work brought before the Court merits severe blame, since the mission of literature should be to ornament and recreate the mind by raising the intelligence and purifying manners, rather than by showing the disgust of vice in offering a picture of disorder which may exist in our society; "_Be it known_, that the defendants, and particularly Gustave Flaubert, energetically denied the charge brought against them, setting forth that the romance submitted to the judgment of the Court had an eminently moral aim; that the author had principally in view the exposing of dangers which result from an education not appropriate to the sphere in which one lives, and that, pursuant to this idea, he has shown the woman, the principal personage in the romance, aspiring towards the world and a society for which she was not made, unhappy in her modest condition where she was placed by fate, forgetting first her duties as a mother, afterward lacking in her duties as a wife, introducing successively into her house adultery and ruin, and ending miserably by suicide, after passing through all degrees of the most complete degradation, having even descended to theft; "_Be it known_, that this data, moral without doubt in principle, must be completed in its development by a certain severity of language and by a reserve directed especially towards that which touches the exposition of the pictures and situations which the author has employed in placing it before the eyes of the public; "_Be it known_, that it is not allowed, under pretext of painting character or local colour, to reproduce the facts, words, and gestures of the digressions of the personages which a writer gives himself the mission to paint; that a like system, applied to works of the mind as well as to productions of the fine arts, would lead to a realism which would be the reverse of the beautiful and the good, and which, bringing forth works equally offensive to the eye and to the mind, would commit a continual outrage against public morals and good manners; "_Be it known_, that there are limits which literature, even the lightest, should not pass, and of which Gustave Flaubert and the co-indicted have not taken sufficient account;