"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, naïve 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 Léon 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 of that, Mr. Attorney, and were simply frightened to find such words as corset, clothing which falls off, etc.; and you attach yourself to these three or four words, such as corset and falling clothing. Do you wish me to show you that corsets can appear in a classic book, a very classic book? I shall give myself the pleasure of so doing, presently.
"She undressed herself …" [ah! Mr. Government Attorney, how badly you have understood this passage!] "she undressed hastily [poor thing], tearing off the thin laces of her corset that nestled around her hips like a gliding snake; then pale, serious, and without speaking, with one movement she threw herself upon his breast with a long shudder…. There was upon that brow covered with cold drops … in the strain of those arms something vague and dreary…."
We must ask here where the lascivious colour is? and where is the severe colour? and ask if the senses of the young girl into whose hands this book might fall, could be aroused, excited—as she might by reading a classic of classics, which I shall cite presently, and which has been reprinted a thousand times without any prosecution, public or royal, following it. Is there anything analogous in what I am going to read you? Is there not, on the contrary, a horror of vice that this "something dreary glides in between them to separate them?" Let us continue, I pray:
"He did not dare to question her; but, seeing her so skilled, she must have passed, he thought, through every experience of suffering and of pleasure. What had once charmed now frightened him a little. Besides, he rebelled against his absorption, daily more marked by her personality. He begrudged Emma this constant victory. He even strove not to love her; then, when he heard the creaking of her boots, he turned coward, like drunkards at the sight of strong drinks."
What is lascivious there?