is immaterial beauty, this
thing so winged and so aerial that one knows well enough it is soon
going to fly away from one, has never moved me to any great degree. I
love the Venus Anadyomene better, better a thousand times. These
old-world eyes, slightly raised at the corners! these lips so pure and
so firmly chiselled, so amorous, and so fit for kissing! this low,
broad brow! these tresses with the curves in them of the sea water, and
bound behind her head in a knot, negligently! these firm and shining
shoulders! this back, with its thousand alluring contours! all these
fair and rounded outlines, this air of superhuman vigour in a body so
divinely feminine--all this enraptures and enchants me in a way of which
you can have no idea--you the Christian and the philosopher._

'_Mary, despite the humble air affected by her, is a deal too haughty
for me. It is as much as her foot does, swathed in its white coverings,
if it just touches the earth, now purpling where the old serpent
writhes. Her eyes are the loveliest eyes in the world; but they are
always turned heavenwards, or else they are cast down. They never look
you straight in the face. They have never served as the mirror of a
human form.... Venus comes, from the sea to take possession of the
world, as a goddess who loves men should--quite naked and quite alone.
Earth is more to her liking than is Olympus, and amongst her lovers she
has more men than gods. She drapes herself in no faint veils of mystery.
She stands straight upright, her dolphin behind her, and her foot upon
her opal-coloured shell. The sun strikes full upon her smooth limbs, and
her white hand holds in air the waves of her fair locks, which old
father Ocean has sprinkled with his most perfect pearls. One can see
her. She hides nothing; for modesty was only made for those who have no
beauty. It is an invention of the modern world; the child of the
Christian contempt for form and matter._

'_Oh ancient world! all that you held in reverence is held in scorn by
us. Thine idols are overthrown in the dust; fleshless anchorites clad in
rags and tatters, martyrs with the blood fresh on them, and their
shoulders torn by the tigers of thy circuses, have perched themselves on
the pedestals of thy fair desirable gods. The Christ has enveloped the
whole world in his winding-sheet.... Oh purity, plant of bitterness,
born on a blood-soaked soil, and whose degenerate and sickly blossom
expands with difficulty in the