the early Christians, to-day
give each other kisses of peace on leaving the assembly, calling each
other "my brother, my sister"; it is what, twenty years ago, a very
pretty and very human Pietist lady avowed to me. The ancient custom was
to kiss on the mouth; the Pietists have carefully preserved it.

There was no other manner of greeting dames in France, Germany, Italy,
England; it was the right of cardinals to kiss queens on the mouth, and
in Spain even. What is singular is that they had not the same
prerogative in France, where ladies always had more liberty than
anywhere else, but "every country has its ceremonies," and there is no
usage so general that chance and custom have not provided exceptions. It
would have been an incivility, an affront, for an honourable woman, when
she received a lord's first visit, not to have kissed him, despite his
moustaches. "It is a displeasing custom," says Montaigne (Book III.,
chap. v.), "and offensive to ladies, to have to lend their lips to
whoever has three serving-men in his suite, disagreeable though he be."
This custom was, nevertheless, the oldest in the world.

If it is disagreeable for a young and pretty mouth to stick itself out
of courtesy to an old and ugly mouth, there was a great danger between
fresh, red mouths of twenty to twenty-five years old; and that is what
finally brought about the abolition of the ceremony of kissing in the
mysteries and the agapae. It is what caused women to be confined among
the Orientals, so that they might kiss only their fathers and their
brothers; custom long since introduced into Spain by the Arabs.

Behold the danger: there is one nerve of the fifth pair which goes from
the mouth to the heart, and thence lower down, with such delicate
industry has nature prepared everything! The little glands of the lips,
their spongy tissue, their velvety paps, the fine skin, ticklish, gives
them an exquisite and voluptuous sensation, which is not without analogy
with a still more hidden and still more sensitive part. Modesty may
suffer from a lengthily savoured kiss between two Pietists of eighteen.

It is to be remarked that the human species, the turtledoves and the
pigeons alone are acquainted with kisses; thence came among the Latins
the word _columbatim_, which our language has not been able to render.
There is nothing of which abuse has not been made. The kiss, designed by
nature for the mouth, has often been prostituted to membranes whic