though not satiated. We parted with tears, and swore to love each other
as brother and sister ever after.

I went home, bathed, slept an hour, rose, dressed, and dined pleasantly
with the family. In the evening I took the Mengs family for a drive in my
landau, and we then went to the theatre, where the castrato who played
the prima donna was a great attraction. He was the favourite pathic of
Cardinal Borghese, and supped every evening with his eminence.

This castrato had a fine voice, but his chief attraction was his beauty.
I had seen him in man's clothes in the street, but though a fine-looking
fellow, he had not made any impression on me, for one could see at once
that he was only half a man, but on the stage in woman's dress the
illusion was complete; he was ravishing.

He was enclosed in a carefully-made corset and looked like a nymph; and
incredible though it may seem, his breast was as beautiful as any
woman's; it was the monster's chiefest charm. However well one knew the
fellow's neutral sex, as soon as one looked at his breast one felt all
aglow and quite madly amorous of him. To feel nothing one would have to
be as cold and impassive as a German. As he walked the boards, waiting
for the refrain of the air he was singing, there was something grandly
voluptuous about him; and as he glanced towards the boxes, his black
eyes, at once tender and modest, ravished the heart. He evidently wished
to fan the flame of those who loved him as a man, and probably would not
have cared for him if he had been a woman.

Rome the holy, which thus strives to make all men pederasts, denies the
fact, and will not believe in the effects of the glamour of her own
devising.

I made these reflections aloud, and an ecclesiastic, wishing to blind me
to the truth, spoke as follows:--

"You are quite right. Why should this castrato be allowed to shew his
breast, of which the fairest Roman lady might be proud, and yet wish
everyone to consider him as a man and not a woman? If the stage is
forbidden to the fair sex lest they excite desires, why do they seek out
men-monsters made in the form of women, who excite much more criminal
desires? They keep on preaching that pederasty is comparatively unknown
and entraps only a few, but many clever men endeavour to be entrapped,
and end by thinking it so pleasant that they prefer these monsters to the
most beautiful women."

"The Pope would be sure of heaven if he put a stop to this scandal