Henry Vizetelly, a man of letters and the
publisher of Zola's novels. With the exception of Mr. Robert Buchanan
and myself not a single man of letters could be found to speak in Mr.
Vizetelly's defense. Everybody urged some excuse, his wife was ill,
his children were at the seaside and he had to go down to see them, or
that he had never cared much about naturalistic literature; whereas,
if the prosecution had been directed against something romantic,
etc.--Stranger still is the fact that it was almost impossible to find
a counsel willing to defend Mr. Vizetelly. One man threw up the case,
giving as his reason that he would have to read the books, another
said that it would be impossible to adequately defend Mr. Vizetelly's
case because no one could say what one had a right to put into a book.
This remark seemed to me at the time contemptible, but there was more
in it than I thought, for will it be believed that when the case came
into court the judge ruled that the fact that standard writers had
availed themselves of a great deal of license could not be taken as a
proof that such license was permissible? Two wrongs do not make a
right he said. In these circumstances perhaps counsel was wise to tell
Mr. Vizetelly to plead guilty to having published an indecent libel;
but the advice seemed so cruel that, justly or unjustly, I suspect the
lawyer of a wish to escape the odium that would have attached to him
if he had defended a book accused of immorality.
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