r several passages from
the Countess D'Aulnoy's account of the Madrid Court in the
seventeenth century and from other sources, showing how careful
Spanish ladies were as regards their feet, and how jealous
Spanish husbands were in this matter. At this time, when Spanish
influence was considerable, the fashion of Spain seems to have
spread to other countries. One may note that in Vandyck's
pictures of English beauties the feet are not visible, though in
the more characteristically English painters of a somewhat later
age it became usual to display them conspicuously, while the
French custom in this matter is the farthest removed from the
Spanish. At the present day a well-bred Spanish woman shows as
little as possible of her feet in walking, and even in some of
the most characteristic Spanish dances there is little or no
kicking, and the feet may even be invisible throughout. It is
noteworthy that in numerous figures of Spanish women (probably
artists' models) reproduced in Ploss's _Das Weib_ the stockings
are worn, although the women are otherwise, in most cases, quite
naked. Max Dessoir mentions ("Psychologie der Vita Sexualis,"
_Zeitschrift fuer Psychiatrie_, 1894, p. 954) that in Spanish
pornographic photographs women always have their shoes on, and he
considers this an indication of perversity. I have seen the
statement (attributed to Gautier's _Voyage en Espagne_, where,
however, it does not occur) that Spanish prostitutes uncover
their feet in sign of assent, and Madame d'Aulnoy stated that in
her time to show her lover her feet was a Spanish woman's final
favor.

The tendency, which we thus find to be normal at some earlier periods of
civilization, to insist on the sexual symbolism of the feminine foot or
its coverings, and to regard them as a special sexual fascination, is not
without significance for the interpretation of the sporadic manifestations
of foot-fetichism among ourselves. Eccentric as foot-fetichism may appear
to us, it is simply the re-emergence, by a pseudo-atavism or arrest of
development, of a mental or emotional impulse which was probably
experienced by our forefathers, and is often traceable among young
children to-day.[19] The occasional reappearance of this bygone impulse
and the stability which it may acquire are thus conditioned by the
sensitive reaction of an abnormally nervous and usu