Trials (Obscenity) -- France -- History -- 19th century
"A metallic clang droned through the air, and four strokes were heard
from the convent-clock. Four o'clock! And it seemed to her that she had
been there on that form an eternity. But an infinity of passions may be
contained in a minute, like a crowd in a small space."
It is not necessary to look at the end of the book to find what is in it
from one end to the other. I have read the incriminated passage without
adding a word, to defend a work which defends itself through itself. Let
us continue leading from this same incriminated passage, looking at it
from a moral point of view:
"Madame was in her room, which no one entered. She stayed there all day
long, torpid, half dressed, and from time to time burning Turkish
pastilles which she had bought at Rouen in an Algerian's shop. In order
not to have at night this sleeping man stretched at her side, by dint of
manoeuvering, she at least succeeded in banishing him to the second
floor, while she read till morning extravagant books, full of pictures
of orgies and thrilling situations. Often, seized with fear, she cried
out, and Charles hurried to her.
"'Oh, go away!' she would say.
"Or at other times, consumed more ardently than ever by that inner flame
to which adultery added fuel, panting, tremulous, all desire, she threw
open her window, breathed in the cold air, shook loose in the wind her
masses of hair, too heavy, and gazing upon the stars, longed for some
princely love. She thought of him, of Léon. She would then have given
anything for a single one of those meetings that surfeited her.
"Those were her gala days. She wished them to be sumptuous, and when he
alone could not pay the expenses, she made up the deficit liberally,
which happened almost every time. He tried to make her understand that
they would be quite as comfortable somewhere else, in a smaller hotel,
but she always found some objection."
You see all this is very simple when one reads the whole; but in
cuttings like those of the Government Attorney, the smallest word
becomes a mountain.
THE GOVERNMENT ATTORNEY:
I did not quote any of those phrases last mentioned; but since you wish
to quote what I have not incriminated, it would be well not to pass over
the foot of the page adjoining page 50.
M. SENARD:
I pass over nothing, but I insist upon citing the incriminated passages
in the quotations. We are quoting from pages 77 and 78.
THE GOVERNMENT ATTORNEY:
I refer to the quotations made to the audience, and thought you imputed
me with having cited the lines you are about to read.
M. SENARD:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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