is for some women at once
the chastisement and atonement of adultery."

M. Flaubert calls my attention to the fact that the Public Attorney
condemned this last clause.

THE GOVERNMENT ATTORNEY:

No, I have pointed it out.

M. SENARD:

It is certain that if he had made a reproach it would have fallen before
these words: "at once the chastisement and atonement of adultery."
Furthermore, that could be made a matter of reproach with as much
foundation as the other quotations, for in all that you have condemned
there is no point that can be seriously held.

Now, gentlemen, this kind of fantastic journey having displeased the
editors of the _Revue_, it was suppressed. This was certainly excess of
reserve on the part of the _Revue_; and it is very certain that it is
not an excess of reserve which could furnish material for a lawsuit. You
shall see now what has furnished the material. What is not seen, what
has been suppressed, comes thus to appear a very strange thing. People
imagine many things, and often those which do not exist, as you have
seen from the reading of the original passage. Heavens! Do you know what
they imagined? Probably that there was in the suppressed passage
something analogous to that which you will have the goodness to read in
one of the most marvellous romances from the pen of an honorable member
of the French Academy, M. Merimee.

M. Merimee, in a romance entitled _The Double Mistake_, describes a
scene which took place in a postchaise. It is not the locality where the
carriage is that is of importance, it is, as here, in the detail of what
is done in the interior. I do not wish to abuse the audience, and will
pass the book to the Public Attorney and to the court. If we had
written a half, or a quarter part of what M. Merimee wrote, I should
find some embarrassment in the task that has been given me, or rather I
should have to modify it; in place of saying what I have said, and what
I affirm, that M. Flaubert has written a good book, an honest book,
useful and moral, I should say: literature has its rights; M. Merimee
has made a very remarkable literary work, and it is not necessary to
show ourselves too particular about details when the whole is
irreproachable. I take my stand there; I should acquit, and you will
acquit. Great Heavens! It is not by omission that an author can sin in
a matter of this kind. And besides, you will have the detail of that
which took place in the cab. But a