"Pardon me, Monsieur," replied Monsieur Blaizot, gently, "it is a frontispiece of Léonard Gautier's who, in his day, was considered a very able draughtsman."
"It matters little to me," replied the elder, "that the draughtsman was clever. All that I take into consideration is that he represented nudities. This figure has nothing on but its hair, and I am grievously surprised, Monsieur, that a man of age and prudence, such as you appear, should expose it to the gaze of the young men who frequent the Rue St. Jacques. You would do well to burn it, following the example of Father Garasse, who expended his means in acquiring, in order to burn them, a number of books opposed to public decency and to the Society of Jesus. At least, it would be more decent in you to hide it in the most secret recess of your shop, which conceals, I fear, many a book calculated to excite minds to vice, not only by their text, but by their plates."
Monsieur Blaizot replied, reddening, that such a suspicion was unjust, and it grieved him coming from a worthy man.
"I must tell you who I am," said the elder. "You see before you Monsieur Nicodème, the President of the Purity League. The end that I pursue is to outdo in niceness in the matter of modesty the regulations of the Lieutenant de Police. I busy myself, with the help of a dozen Parliamentary councillors, and two hundred churchwardens from the principal parishes, in clearing away nudities exposed in public places, such as squares, boulevards, streets, alleys, quays, courts, and gardens. And, not content with establishing modesty in the public way, I exert myself to spread its dominion even into the salon, the study, and the bedroom, whence it is but too often banished. Know, Monsieur, that the Society that I have founded has trousseaux made for young married people, containing long and ample night-garments which permit these young spouses chastely to go about the execution of God's commandment relative to increase and multiplication. And, to mingle charm, if I may say so, with austerity, these garments are trimmed with pleasing embroidery. I plume myself on having thus invented garments of an intimate nature so well designed to make another Sarah and Tobias of all our young couples, and to cleanse the sacrament of marriage from the impurities which unfortunately have clung to it."
My good master, who, his nose in Cassiodorus, had been listening to their discourse, replied with the utmost gravity from the top of his ladder, that he thought the invention admirable, and praiseworthy, but that he had a still more excellent one of the kind.
"I would that our young spouses," said he, "were rubbed from head to foot with blacking before they met, making their skin like boot-leather, which would greatly damp the criminal ardours of the flesh, and be a grievous obstacle to the caresses, kisses, and endearments that lovers practise too generally between the sheets."
Monsieur Nicodème, lifting his head at these words, saw my good master on the ladder, and saw also from his demeanour that he was laughing at him.
"Monsieur l'Abbé," said he, with sadness and indignation, "I would forgive you did you merely laugh at me. But you ridicule at the same time, decency and public morals, and there you are much to blame. In spite of wicked jokes, the Society that I have founded has already done good and useful work. Crack your jokes, sir! We have fixed six hundred vine or fig-leaves on the statues in the king's gardens."
"Admirable indeed, sir," responded my good master, adjusting his spectacles, "and at that rate every statue will soon have its leaf. But (seeing that objects have no meaning for us save by association of ideas) in placing vine-leaves and fig-leaves on statues, you transfer the quality of indecency to the leaves; so that one can no longer see vine or fig-tree on the countryside without conceiving them as sheltering some indecency; and it is no small sin, my good sir, to fix immodesty on these innocent plants. Allow me to tell you further that it is a dangerous thing to make a study, as you do, of everything that may cause disquietude and uneasiness to the flesh, without reflecting that if a given shape be such as to scandalise souls, each of us who bears the original of that shape will scandalise himself, except he be less than a man—a thing one does not like to contemplate."
"Monsieur," responded the aged Nicodème, rather heatedly, "I gather from the language you hold that you are a libertine and a debauchee."