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_ This is what _Dix ans de la vie d'une femme_ was like. Adèle Évrard has married M. Darcey, a rich landowner, a worthy and excellent man, full of concern for, attention towards and kindnesses to his wife--a sort of Danville of the _École des vieillards,_ with this difference, that Darcey is only forty. Adèle, Madame Darcey, has the same Christian name as Madame d'Hervey; but, instead of being like the heroine of _Antony,_ ready to struggle to the point of preferring death to shame, Adèle of _Dix ans de la vie d'une femme_ was born possessed of every evil tendency that could be fostered by bad influences. Now such bad influences were not wanting in her case. Adèle, daughter of an honest merchant, wife of an honest man, had made the acquaintance--(where, the narrative does not say, but it ought to have done: these things, even on the stage, ought to be explained)--Adèle, we repeat, had made the acquaintance of two disreputable women named Madame Laferrier and Sophie Marini. At the raising of the curtain, Adèle is chatting with her sister; of what? Of a subject young wives and girls are eternally talking about--Love. Clarisse loves a fascinating young man named Valdeja, who holds a position of attaché to the Embassy at Saint Petersburg, far away from her. There is but one disquieting element in that love--the character of the recipient is inclined to melancholy.