Pinard again! The same old goat who wanted to take the milky hide off of Mme. Bovary’s backside–and very nearly succeeded. Only the intercession of Princess Mathilde, an intimate of Flaubert’s, kept the lash from hashing his eternal pages. I have no such advocate, no such angel, at the Royal Court to ease my pungent bouquet past that Argus-eyed prude, Pinhead Pinard. Perhaps if he were informed (on the sly, quietly, mayhaps in a daydream while my advocate takes the reins before the sour judge) that my Fleurs du Mal were to decorate my own funeral barge, he would leave my lovelies unmolested.
The prude, at heart, is always the most prurient, the most truly depraved of men. His inner evil informs him of the deviant in all men, and to him there is no justice without punishment, for guilt is universal and no one is innocent. What then is the point of court? To shame mankind in its own ugly eyes. If every man could stand naked before the tribuneral, the prurient prude would demand that each and every man be damned–without exception! My heart agrees with the judgment, but not the punishment; that is the domain of domestic relations. It is a woman’s fate to excoriate her males.
Unconcerned with style or art, the constitutional prude must spend all his effort on maintaining a veneer of virtue. If only he knew the useful tools an honest art could bring to his task! Instead, in ignorant silence he delves the depths of depravity with his nose held high–a swimmer in human sewage. I could almost admire the conviction such perversity requires–if only it were persued with some flavorful flair!
My regrets are many, not least my pursuit of Aupick in the winter of ’48. If I had shot him, blown his head or his heart into the ditch, I could rest satisfied. Instead, I merely dabbled in rebellion. If only I had not been in the bragging vanguard when I attacked the Empire’s tin men, I would at least have some defenders in the press, and perhaps a Princess too. Today, I have no political convictions. Forced to cast a ballot, I would vote only for myself–and that ironically.
* * * * *
As the case proceeded, prosecutor Pinard recited the infamous rhetoric of the conservative Poignard Press like a psalm, snapping the paper pre-emptorialy and closing its fluttered pages with a most solemn and prayerful gesture when his service was concluded. The judge looked on wisely, his spectacles perched like Dame Justice’s scales on the end of his sloping nose. This holy recitation from the public scandal sheets was the soul, sum, and sense of Pinard’s prosecution. He was not persecuting me or Art, he was simply seconding the condemnation already visited upon me by the wisdom of ‘public opinion.’ In the service of public morality, what greater gauge was there than public opinion? Pinard’s hands were clean, ‘the people’ had spoken. Had the hack at Poignard Press not done his thinking for him, Pinard would have had no more darts in his quiver than the prude’s habitual disapproving scowl Nature provides.
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