We are in 1857, during the Second French Empire, first Flaubert by Madame Bovary, and then Baudelaire, by The Flowers of Evil, are accused of offenses against public and religious morals. Also accused by the same prosecutor, the fearsome imperial lawyer Ernest Pinard. However, the first is acquitted, and the second convicted. And in that contrast the diverse rhetorical strategies of defense lawyers are played, but above all, the different author position between Flaubert and Baudelaire: while in the latter there is still a lyrical self that resembles the person of the author, in Flaubert already there is a distancing between the narrator and the narrative that leaves the author's figure unscathed.