ruitless union; in a word, let our wanton Tribads
reign unchecked, and let our women's chambers be disgraced by
hermaphrodites. Far better that a woman, in the madness of her lust,
should usurp the nature of a man, than that man's noble nature should be
so degraded as to play the woman!"

IV.

Embasicetas fut bientot au comble de ses voeux.
The Catamite soon reached the height of his passion.

The theologians class this species of lascivious feeling with pollution
which is complete when it produces a result. The Holy Scripture tells us
of Onan, son of Judas, grandson of Jacob, and husband of Thamar, who was
slain by the Lord because he spilled his semen, "he poured his semen upon
the ground." We may be reproached, perhaps, for citing the Holy Bible
too frequently, but that book contains the knowledge of salvation, and
those who wish to be saved should not fail to study it with assiduity.
That this study has occupied a good part of our life, we admit, and we
have always found that study profitable. To vigorous minds that
admission may seem ridiculous, but we are writing only for pious souls,
and they will willingly applaud this courageous profession of our piety.

The theologians have also classified onanism and pollution among the sins
against the Holy Ghost, and this being the case, there is no being in the
world who has been sinned against so often. A medium indulgence in this
sin furnished the pleasure of a queen, the severity of one Lucretia does
not repel a thousand Tarquins. Men with vivid imaginations create for
themselves a paradise peopled with the most beautiful houris, more
seductive than those of Mahomet; Lycoris had a beautiful body but it was
unfeeling; the imagination of her lover pictured her as falling before
his caresses, he led her by the hand over pressed flowers, through a
thick grove and along limpid streams; in that sweet reverie his life
slipped by.

Here icy cold fountains, here flower covered meadows, Lycoris;
Here shady groves; life itself here would I dream out with thee.

Virgil Bucol. Ecl. X, 41.

In the minds of the theologians pollution is synonymous with all
pleasures with persons of the opposite or the same sex, which result in a
waste of the elixir of life. In this sense, love between woman and woman
is pollution and Sappho is a sinner against the Holy Ghost.

(Notwithstanding), however (these