ics. Now, it is highly probable that their exaltations into the
extra-terrestrial of Evil coincide with the rages of their frenzied
senses, for lechery is the wet nurse of Demonism. Medicine classes,
rightly or wrongly, the hunger for ordure in the unknown categories of
neurosis, and well it may, for nobody knows anything about neuroses
except that everybody has them. It is quite certain that in this, more
than in any previous century, the nerves quiver at the least shock. For
instance, recall the newspaper accounts of executions of criminals. We
learn that the executioner goes about his work timidly, that he is on
the point of fainting, that he has nervous prostration when he
decapitates a man. Then compare this nervous wreck with the invincible
torturers of the olden time. They would thrust your arm into a sleeve of
moistened parchment which when set on fire would draw up and in a
leisurely fashion reduce your flesh to dust. Or they would drive wedges
into your thighs and split the bones. They would crush your thumbs in
the thumbscrew. Or they would singe all the hair off your epidermis with
a poker, or roll up the skin from your abdomen and leave you with a kind
of apron. They would drag you at the cart's tail, give you the
strappado, roast you, drench you with ignited alcohol, and through it
all preserve an impassive countenance and tranquil nerves not to be
shaken by any cry or plaint. Only, as these exercises were somewhat
fatiguing, the torturers, after the operation, were ravenously hungry
and required a deal of drink. They were sanguinaries of a mental
stability not to be shaken, while now! But to return to your companions
in sacrilege. This evening, if they are not maniacs, you will find
them--doubt it not--repulsive lechers. Observe them closely. I am sure
that to them the invocation of Beelzebub is a prelibation of carnality.
Don't be afraid, because, Lord! in this group there won't be any to make
you imitate the martyr of whom Jacques de Voragine speaks in his history
of Saint Paul the Eremite. You know that legend?"

"No."

"Well, to refresh your soul I will tell you. This martyr, who was very
young, was stretched out, his hands and feet bound, on a bed, then a
superb specimen of femininity was brought in, who tried to force him. As
he was burning and was about to sin, he bit off his tongue and spat it
in the face of the woman, "and thus pain drove out temptation," says the
good de Voragine."

"My heroi