"If you choose to read this book, lock yourself securely into your own room; do not leave it lying on the table. If your wife and your daughter should open it, they would be lost.--This is a dangerous book, it advises vicious habits. It would have made a great success, perhaps, in the time of Crébillon, in the houses of kept mistresses, at a duchess's select supper-parties; but now that morals are purified, now that the hand of the people has razed the rotten edifice of aristocracy, and that,--etc., etc.--there must be in every work an idea--an idea--yes, a moral and religious idea which--an exalted and profound aim, answering to the needs of humanity; for it is a deplorable thing that young writers should sacrifice the most sacred things to success, and should expend their talent--a notable talent by the way--in lewd descriptions that would make a captain of dragoons blush."--(The virginity of the captain of dragoons is, after the discovery of America, the most delightful discovery that has been made for a long while.)--"The novel we are considering recalls Justine, the philosophic Thérèse, Félicia, Compère Matthieu, the Contes de Grécourt, the Priapées of the Marquis de Sade." The virtuous journalist is immensely erudite in the matter of filthy novels;--I am very curious to know why. It may be obtained at Eugène Renduel's, Rue des Grands-Augustins, No. 22. A handsome volume in 8vo. with vignette. Price 7 francs 50 centimes. _Eccò_,--_ecce_,--see it. It is frightful to think that, through the fault of the newspapers, there are many honest manufacturers who have only these two recipes to live upon, they and the numerous families they employ. Apparently I am the most monumentally immoral personage to be found in Europe or elsewhere; for I can see nothing more licentious in the novels and plays of the present day than in the novels and plays of an earlier time, and I find it difficult to understand why the ears of the gentlemen of the journals have suddenly become so Jansenically ticklish. I do not believe that the most innocent newspaper man will dare to say that Pigault-Lebrun, Crébillon Fils, Louvet, Voisenon, Marmontel, and all other writers of novels and tales do not surpass in immorality, since there is such a thing as immorality, the most dissolute and licentious productions of Messieurs Such-an-one and So-and-so, whom I do not name out of regard for their modesty. One must be most notoriously false to his convictions not to agree to that. Let not the objection be made that I have cited names little known or unfavorably known. If I have not mentioned the brilliant, imperishable names, it is not because they will not support my assertion with the weight of their great authority.