Very certainly I could not allow such details, but where have I allowed them?  Where are they?  I now arrive at the passages most condemned.  I will say no more of the adventure in the cab.  This Court has heard enough with regard to that; I come to the passages that you have pointed out as contrary to public morals and which form a certain number of pages in the December number.  And, in order to pull away all the scaffolding of your accusation, there is only one thing to be done:  to restore what precedes and what follows your quotations, in a word, to substitute the text complete as opposed to your cutting.

At the bottom of page 72, Leon, after making an agreement with Homais, the chemist, goes to the Hotel de Boulogne; the chemist goes there to find him.

“Emma was no longer there.  She had just gone in a fit of anger.  She detested him now.  This failing to keep their rendezvous seemed to her an insult.

“Then, growing calmer, she at length discovered that she had no doubt calumniated him.  But the disparaging of those we love always alienates us from them to some extent.  We must not touch our idols; the gilt sticks to our fingers.”

Great heavens!  And it is for such lines as I have been reading to you that we are dragged before you.  Listen now: 

“They gradually came to talking more frequently of matters outside their love, and in the letters that Emma wrote him she spoke of flowers, verses, the moon and the stars, naive resources of a waning passion striving to keep itself alive by all external aids.  She was constantly promising herself a profound felicity on her next journey.  Then she confessed to herself that she felt nothing extraordinary.  This disappointment quickly gave way to a new hope, and Emma returned to him more inflamed, more eager than ever.  She undressed brutally, tearing off the thin laces of her corset that nestled around her hips like a gliding snake.  She went on tip-toe, barefooted, to see once more that the door was closed; then, pale, serious, and without speaking, with one movement she threw herself upon his breast with a long shudder.”  You have stopped here, Mr. Attorney; permit me to continue: 

“Yet there was upon that brow covered with cold drops, on those quivering lips, in those wild eyes, in the strain of those arms, something vague and dreary that seemed to Leon to glide between them subtly as if to separate them.”

You call this lascivious colour, you say that this gives a taste for adultery, you say that these pages excite and arouse the senses,—­that they are lascivious pages!  But death is in these pages!  You did not think of that, Mr. Attorney, and were simply frightened to find such words as corset, clothing which falls off, etc.; and you attach yourself to these three or four words, such as corset and falling clothing.  Do you wish me to show you that corsets can appear in a classic book, a very classic book?  I shall give myself the pleasure of so doing, presently.