beaten by their husbands, and
regard such treatment as proof of love. (See, e.g., C.F. von
Schlichtegroll, _Sacher-Masoch und der Masochismus_, p. 69.)
Krafft-Ebing believes that this is true at the present day, and
adds that it is the same in Hungary, a Hungarian official having
informed him that the peasant women of the Somogyer Comitate do
not think they are loved by their husbands until they have
received the first box on the ear. (Krafft-Ebing, _Psychopathia
Sexualis_, English translation of the tenth edition, p. 188.) I
may add that a Russian proverb says "Love your wife like your
soul and beat her like your _shuba_" (overcoat); and, according
to another Russian proverb, "a dear one's blows hurt not long."
At the same time it has been remarked that the domination of men
by women is peculiarly frequent among the Slav peoples. (V.
Schlichtegroll, op. cit., p. 23.) Cellini, in an interesting
passage in his _Life_ (book ii, chapters xxxiv-xxxv), describes
his own brutal treatment of his model Caterina, who was also his
mistress, and the pleasure which, to his surprise, she took in
it. Dr. Simon Forman, also, the astrologist, tells in his
_Autobiography_ (p. 7) how, as a young and puny apprentice to a
hosier, he was beaten, scolded, and badly treated by the servant
girl, but after some years of this treatment he turned on her,
beat her black and blue, and ever after "Mary would do for him
all that she could."

That it is a sign of love for a man to beat his sweetheart, and a
sign much appreciated by women, is illustrated by the episode of
Cariharta and Repolido, in "Rinconete and Cortadillo," one of
Cervantes's _Exemplary Novels_. The Indian women of South
America feel in the same way, and Mantegazza when traveling in
Bolivia found that they complained when they were not beaten by
their husbands, and that a girl was proud when she could say "He
loves me greatly, for he often beats me." (_Fisiologia della
Donna_, chapter xiii.) The same feeling evidently existed in
classic antiquity, for we find Lucian, in his "Dialogues of
Courtesans," makes a woman say: "He who has not rained blows on
his mistress and torn her hair and her garments is not yet in
love," while Ovid advises lovers sometimes to be angry with their
sweethearts and to tear their dresses.

Among the Itali