Mr. Attorney, I have quoted all the passages by whose aid you have attempted to constitute a misdemeanor—­which accusation is now shattered.  You developed before the audience what seemed to you convincing, and have had a fair opportunity.  Happily we had the book and the defense knew the book; if he had not known it, his position, allow me to tell you, would have been very awkward.  I am called upon to explain such and such passages to myself and to add others for the benefit of the audience.  If I had not possessed the book, as I do, the defense had been difficult.  Now, I can show you, through a faithful analysis of the romance, that far from being considered a lascivious work, it should be considered, on the contrary, eminently moral.  After doing this, I took the passages that have been the motive for police correction, and after I followed the cuttings with what preceded and what succeeded, the accusation became so weak that you are in revolt the moment I have finished reading them!  These same passages that you stamped as recriminating, I have used an equal right to quote myself, for the purpose of showing you the folly of the accusation.

I continue my quotation where I stopped at the bottom of page 78.

“He was bored now when Emma suddenly began to sob on his breast, and his heart, like the people who can only stand a certain amount of music, dozed to the sound of a love whose delicacies he no longer noted.

“They knew one another too well for any of those surprises of possession, that increase its joys a hundredfold.  She was as sick of him as he was weary of her.  Emma found again in adultery all the platitudes of marriage.”

Platitudes of marriage!  He who did the cutting here has said:  Now, here is a man who says that in marriage there are only platitudes!  It is an attack on marriage, it is an outrage to morals!  You will agree, Mr. Attorney, that with cuttings artistically made, one can go far in the way of incriminating.  What is it that the author called the platitudes of marriage?  That monotony which Emma had dreaded, which she had wished to escape from but had found continually in adultery, which was precisely the disillusion.  You now see clearly that when, in the place of cutting off the members of certain phrases and cutting out some words, we read what precedes and what follows, nothing remains for incrimination; and you can well comprehend that my client, who knew what he wished to say, must be a little in revolt at seeing it thus travestied.  Let us continue: 

“She was as sick of him as he was weary of her.  Emma found again in adultery all the platitudes of marriage.

“But how to get rid of him?  Then, though she might feel humiliated at the baseness of such enjoyment, she clung to it from habit or from corruption, and each day she hungered after them the more, exhausting all felicity in wishing for too much of it.  She accused Leon of her baffled hopes, as if he had betrayed her; and she even longed for some catastrophe that would bring about their separation, since she had not the courage to make up her mind to it herself.