caprices of the third person of the
trinity) I cannot see why pleasure should be regulated, or why a woman
who has surveyed all the charms of a young girl of eighteen years should
give herself up to the rude embraces of a man. What comparisons can be
made between those red lips, that mouth which breathes pleasure for the
first time, those snowy and purplous cheeks whose velvet smoothness is
like the Venus flower, half in bloom, that new-born flesh which
palpitates softly with desire and voluptuousness, that hand which you
press so delicately, those round thighs, those plastic buttocks, that
voice sweet and touching,--what comparison can be made between all this
and pronounced features, rough beard, hard breast, hairy body, and the
strong disagreeable voice of man? Juvenal has wonderfully expended all
his bile in depicting, as hideous scenes, these mysteries of the Bona
Dea, where the young and beautiful Roman women, far from the eyes of men,
give themselves up to mutual caresses. Juvenal has painted the eyes of
the Graces with colors which are proper to the Furies; his tableau,
moreover, revolts one instead of doing good.

The only work of Sappho's which remains to us is an ode written to one of
her loved ones and from it we may judge whether the poetess merited her
reputation. It has been translated into all languages; Catullus put it
into Latin and Boileau into French. Here follows an imitation of that of
Catullus:

Peer of a God meseemeth he,
Nay passing Gods (and that can be!)
Who all the while sits facing thee
Sees thee and hears
Thy low sweet laughs which (ah me!) daze
Mine every sense, and as I gaze
Upon thee (Lesbia!) o'er me strays

My tongue is dulled, limbs adown
Flows subtle flame; with sound its own
Rings either ear, and o'er are strown
Mine eyes with night.

(LI. Burton, tr.)

After that we should never again exhort the ministers and moralists to
inveigh against love of women for women; never was the interest of men
found to be so fully in accord with the precepts of divine law.

Here I should like to speak of the brides of the Lord; but I remember
"The Nun" of Diderot, and my pen falls from my hand. Oh, who would dare
to touch a subject handled by Diderot?

V.

Giton venait