g all the humility of our position, and those moments where the
heart, born for more solid pleasures, leaves us with our own idols and
finds its punishment in its own disgust and inconstancy. Profane world!
if there is in you that felicity that is so much vaunted, favor your
adorers with it nor punish them for the faith they have added so lightly
to your promises."

Let me say to you here: when a man in the silence of the night,
meditates upon the causes of enticement for woman, when he finds them in
her education and, putting aside personal observation, for the sake of
expressing his thoughts, matures them at the sources I have indicated,
not allowing himself to use his pen except from inspiration of Bossuet
and Massillon, permit me to ask you if there is a word to express my
surprise, my grief, on seeing this man dragged into Court--on account of
some passages in his book, and precisely for the truest and most
elevated ideas that he was able to bring together! And I pray you not to
forget this in relation to the charge of outrage against religious
morals! And then, if you will permit me, I will put in opposition to all
this, under your very eyes, what I myself call attacking the moral, that
is to say, satisfaction of the senses without bitterness, without those
large drops of cold sweat which fall from the brow of those who give
themselves over to it; and I will not quote to you from licentious books
in which the authors have sought to arouse the senses; I will quote from
only one book--which is given as a prize in colleges, but whose author's
name I ask leave to withhold until after I have read you a passage from
it. Here is the passage: I will ask you to pass the volume. It is a copy
that was given to a college student as a prize. I prefer you to take
this copy rather than M. Flaubert's:

"The next day I was received into her apartment. There I felt all that
voluptuousness carries with it. The room was filled with the most
agreeable perfumes. She lay upon a bed which was enclosed in garlands
of flowers. She appeared to be lying there languishingly. She extended
her hand to me and made me sit beside her. In all, even in the veil
which covered her face, there was a charm. I could see the form of her
beautiful body. A simple cloth which moved as she moved allowed me at
one time to see, and at another to lose sight of, her ravishing beauty."

A simple cloth when it was extended over a dead body appeared to you a
lasci