(Here the author wanted to insert a page of dots. "That would be in bad taste," said the editor, "and in a piece of writing as frivolous as this, bad taste is death."

"Politics," replied the author, "are a millstone around the neck of literature and will sink it in less than six months. Politics in the midst of imaginary concerns is like a pistol shot in the middle of a concert. The noise is ear-splitting without being energetic. It does not harmonize with the sound of any instrument. The politics here will mortally offend one half of the readers and bore the other, who will have found them far more convincing and energetic in the morning paper."

"If your characters don't talk politics," the editor rejoined, "they are not Frenchmen of 1830, and your book is not the mirror you claim it to be. . ."

Julien's minutes were twenty-six pages long; here is a pale extract of them; for it was necessary, as usual, to delete the absurdities, the excess of which would have seemed odious or unrealistic to the reader (e.g., The Police Gazette).