the linen barrier, brought out to view a white shaft, middle sized, and
scarce fledged, when after handling and playing with it a little, with
other dalliance, all received by the boy without other opposition than
certain wayward coyness, ten times-more alluring than repulsive, he got
him so turned round, with his face from him, to a chair that stood hard
by; when knowing, I suppose, his office, the Ganymede now obsequiously
leaned his head against the back of it, and projecting his body, made a
fair mark, still covered with his shirt. As he thus stood in a side view
to me, but fronting his companion, who, presently unmasking his battery,
produced an engine that certainly deserved to be put to a better use,
and very fit to confirm me in my disbelief of the possibility of
things; being pushed to odious extremities, which I had built on the
disproportion of parts; but this disbelief I was now cured of, as by my
consent all young men should likewise be, that their innocence may not
be betrayed into such snares, for want of knowing the extent of their
danger: for nothing is more certain than that ignorance of advice is by
no means a guard against it.

Slipping, then, aside the young lad's shirt, and tucking it up under
his clothes behind, he shewed to the open air those globular fleshy
eminences that compose the Mount Peasants of Rome, and which now, with
all the narrow vale that intersects them, stood displayed and exposed
to his attack; nor could I without a shudder behold the dispositions he
made for it. First, then, moistening well with spittle his instrument,
obviously to make it glib, he pointed, he introduced it, as I could
plainly discern, not only from its direction and my losing sight of it,
but by the writhing, twisting and soft murmured complaints of the young
sufferer; but at length, the first straits of entrance being pretty well
go through, every thing seemed to move and go pretty currently on, as on
a carpet road, without much rub or resistance; and now, passing one hand
round his minions' hips, he got hold of his red-topped ivory toy,
that stood perfectly stiff, and shewed, that if he was like his mother
behind, he was like his father before; this he diverted himself with,
whilst, with the other he wantoned with his hair, and leaning forward
over his back, drew his face, from which the boy shook the loose curls
that fell over it, in the posture he stood him in, and brought him
towards his, so as to receive