Something like eighteen years later, we were discussing, at the Council of State, before the commission formed to prepare the law connected with theatres the question of dramatic censorship and theatrical liberty, and, on this head, I heard Scribe attack immoral literature more violently than was usual with him. He demanded a censorship which should be a salutary check to keep talent from the excesses of all kinds to which it was too apt to surrender itself. I allowed myself to interrupt the austere orator, and addressed this question laughingly so that it could be heard all over the room.
"Come, tell us, Scribe, does the drama entitled Dix ans de la vie d'une femme come under the head of moral literature?"
"What?"
I repeated the question.
Scribe replied in the same laughing spirit in which he had been attacked. Read the work again and you will see it would have been difficult for him to reply otherwise. You shall judge for yourselves. We have so often seen our works and those of the Romantic school taxed with immorality by people who uphold M. Scribe as a moral author, that it must really be permitted us to repeat the accusation here and to show, play in hand, how far they pushed the scandal at times in the opposite camp. The wide point of view which the outline of these Memoirs embraces makes us hope that such an exposition may not be looked upon as a digression. At all events, those of our readers who think it irrelevant are quite at liberty to pass over the following chapter.
[CHAPTER II]
Dix ans de la vie d'une femme