Police raided a noted French publishing house Wednesday in their investigation of an 83-year-old writer who celebrated pedophilia in his work as court proceedings opened in another case against him.

Investigators raided the offices of French publishing house Gallimard in connection with a preliminary investigation as to whether Gabriel Matzneff raped a minor decades ago, a judicial official said. The official, who wasn't authorized to speak publicly, provided the information on condition of not being named.

The investigators were looking for unpublished passages from Matzneff's writings, according to press reports.

The raid came as lawyers met in a Paris courtroom on another legal front, one concerning Matzneff's recent pieces for news publications in which he defended his relationship with a young girl decades ago as "the exceptional love that we lived together.”

He was 50 at the time, and the girl to whom he referred, Vanessa Springora, was 14. The publication last month of a tell-all book by Springora, "Consent," brought a writer long-forgotten on the literary circuit back into the public eye.

The Blue Angel Association, a French pedophilia prevention group in France, is behind the court case. The group's lawyer, Mehana Mouhou, said he expects to call five to 10 witnesses.