ll 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