Marquis De Sade: His Life and Work, by Dr. Iwan Bloch

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French Royalty in the Eighteenth Century

Louis XV ruled in the youth of Marquis de Sade; Louis XVI at his maturity. In 1774 when de Sade was thirty-four years old the most corrupt monarch that ever ruled France, Louis XV, died. We pass over the following facts as too well known: the political misgovernment of the French rulers in the eighteenth century, the great scandal involving John Law, and the loss of the most important colonies under Louis XV, the revolution under Louis XVI and the marked patronage of the nobility and clergy. The search for pleasure and the sexual debauchery of the monarchy were especially stigmatized by de Sade. Here, too, he had his prototypes in reality. "When a prince of the blood walks the way of vice he is accompanied by the entire society." The example given by the French rulers must have had the most corrupt effects on the out-and-out materialistically minded society of the ancien régime. The time of the Regency created the name and type of roué, which became a characteristic phenomenon of the whole century. The roué par excellence was King Louis XV, famous for the number of his mistresses and for his Deer Park. His life, as Moreau says, was a "steadfast prostitution." Hence, his mistresses, in spite of their great number and frequent exchange, could not keep him satisfied. In his famous Deer Park he had built the original of private bordellos, which played an important rôle in the works of Marquis de Sade. Imagine! A king maintaining a whole bordello for his private use! The Deer Park was built in 1750 in the hermitage at Versailles in the quarter called Parc-aux-Cerfs, by the Marquise de Pompadour who, in order to retain the reins of government, created this new sort of enjoyment for the king. The administrator of the bordello was a certain Bertrand; the purveyor of the young girls was called Lebel. In the beginning there were only two or three inmates in the house. After the death of Pompadour it became very crowded (très peuplée). According to another version (Mouffle D'Angerville), "the Marquise de Pompadour, since she was superintendent of his (the king's) pleasures, had incessantly to levy new and fresh beauties, in order to stock the seraglio, wherein she was sovereign; therefrom developed the so-called Deer Park (Parc-aux-Cerfs), that grave of innocence and virtue, swallower of masses of victims, who, when returned to human society, brought with them depravity, debauchery and all those vices, which they must have been infested with by the infamous keepers of that pleasure resort.

"Apart from the evil which this dreadful place did to the morals of society, it is horrible when one reckons the immense amount of money that it cost the state. And who can reckon the costs of this legion of master and minor pimps and pimpesses who were constantly on the go even to the farthest bounds of the empire to track out the objects of their investigations; the costs of conveying the girls to their destination; the necessary polish, dress, perfume and all the other means in the world for making them alluring? To this must be added the gratuities presented to those who were not successful in arousing the complete passions of the sultan, but had nevertheless to be paid for their submission, for their discretion, and still more for their being eventually despised. There were also the rewards for those nymphs who were more fortunate and received the monarch for a time in their arms and caused the fire of passion to burn in his veins. Finally there were the sacred undertakings to those girls who bore in their womb the precious fruit of their fecundity."

It was deduced that each girl cost the public treasury a million Livres. "If only two a week came (little enough), this mounts up in ten years to a thousand and the result is thus ten thousand million Livres. And even then the great number of children born in the Deer Park is not figured, a matter of no little account." It is accordingly viewed by many historians that the initial cost and upkeep of the Deer Park was the main cause of the financial ruin of Louis XV. Many rumors flitted about concerning the organized orgies in the Deer Park, which in any case have not been unduly exaggerated.

"The Saturnalia of the Romans at the time of the Caesars, the horrible Lupercalia of Tiberius, Caligula, Nero or of Agrippina, Messalina, Locusta and other human monsters were but pale copies of the scenes that took place in the Deer Park. Intoxication was here multiple; induced by play, spices, wine and other beverages, perfumes, scenes from magic lanterns, music and every conceivable kind of animal pleasure." Moreau, from authentic sources on the connection between religion and debauchery, wrote: "Every time Louis XV wanted to spend a night in the Deer Park he not only fulfilled his religious duties with fervor, but also could not bear the young priestesses of another cult to fail in the application of their Christian belief. As soon as he was closeted with one of his odalisques he commanded her to undress behind a curtain, while he did the same.

"Then clad in Adam's costume they genuflected on the carpet and said the daily prayer, while they wet their forehead with holy water, which was contained in a crystal flask at the head of the bed. After they had prayed and crossed themselves, the king stroked the naked bosom of his co-worshipper with his pious finger. Then they arose, stepped in bed, drew the drapes together, and the names of the Father, Son, Holy Ghost and the Virgin Mary were whispered again and again until the rites of love brought forth another vocabulary."

Louis XV also had his own official for the arrangement of his orgies in the person of La Ferte, Intendant de Menus-Plaisirs (the Minister of Dainty Pleasures). This cabinet-member was abolished by Louis XVI. On Thursday, May 19, 1774, when Louis XVI, nine days after the death of his predecessor, was strolling with his queen and child in the Bois de Boulogne, La Ferte presented himself. The king looked at him from top to bottom and asked: "Who are you?" "Sire, I am La Ferte." "What do you want of me?" "Sire, I am here to take the orders of your Majesty." "But why?" "Since—since I am the Intendant—of the Menus—” "What is that?" "Sire, it is the Menus-Plaisirs of your Majesty.” "My Menus-Plaisirs consist in walking in the park. I do not need you." Thereupon the king turned his back on him and left.

Louis XVI and his consort, Marie Antoinette, are personally absolved from the reproaches of immorality. Still, under their rule the same sensual life at court continued and his brother, Prince d'Artois, was indeed a noted libertine. It was impossible for the private life of the king and especially of the queen, who as an Austrian princess enjoyed small sympathy, to be free from suspicion. The well known necklace story was strongly taken advantage of, much to the queen's dismay. Indeed five years after Louis XVI's coronation there appeared an obscene poem, The Loves of Charlot and Toinette, later reprinted in numberless editions. The poem treated of the alleged love between Marie Antoinette and her cousin D’Artois (later King Charles X). The queen was here described in the most obscene verses as a true Messalina, whom the impotent king could not satisfy!

"Charlot," the Prince d’Artois, was indeed a chief participant in the orgies of the court nobility in the Residence, as was the Duke of Orleans, Philippe Egalité. At the famous nightly promenades in the Palais Royal the appearance of Prince d'Artois was a daily occurrence. In the Nights of Paris Restif de Ia Bretonne tells of a bordello in Saint Antoine, which the Duke of Orleans, the Prince d'Artois and others, frequently visited. "There took place all the infamies and bestialities which were later described by de Sade in his horrible novel Justine or the Misfortunes of Virtue."

De Sade called (Juliette IV, 16) Marie Antoinette "la première putain de France" (the first public prostitute of France) and allowed no opportunity to go by without insulting her (Juliette V, 235, 252, etc.). In general he cherished an overwhelming hatred against the House of Austria. He indeed wanted to wipe out all the kings of the earth and found a "république universelle" (Juliette V, 119).

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Nobility and Clergy

The nobility and clergy play the main rôles in the novels of Marquis de Sade. Princes, dukes, counts, marquis, and chevaliers accompany popes, cardinals, archbishops, bishops, monks of all orders, abbesses and nuns as erotic and atheistic monsters. All the corruption of the ancien régime passes before our eyes in his works. The nobility and clergy formed indeed only one class in France for the clergy were mostly recruited from the nobility. The oldest son of the nobleman became an officer, the second son a priest or monk, the daughters, who for lack of dowry could not be married, nuns. The parsonage of the nobility by the state reached unheard of dimensions in the eighteenth century. All state officers, judgeships and military positions were usually given to the nobility. At eighteen to twenty the young noblemen, without having the slightest idea of military tactics, were given regiments. They passed their youth in luxury and debauchery with women.

A noted intermediary between clergy and nobility was the institution of abbés, that degenerate mixed breed which one found everywhere without any fixed official duties. Mercier declared that Paris was full of abbés, priests with tonsure, serving neither the church nor the state, passing their time in utmost sloth but playing no unimportant role as "friends of the house," pedagogues, writers, etc. They were at home in all bordellos, although at an early period every courtesan who could prove the visit of an abbé received 50 francs. But that ceased under Louis XVI. An excellent description of the abbé of the eighteenth century was given by that celebrated gastronomist, Brillat Savarin: "If a family of the nobility had many sons, one of them was set aside for the church. He first received simple prebends which sufficed for the costs of his education; he later became a canon, abbot or bishop according to his talent for the spiritual calling. That was the true type of abbé. But there were also many false ones, and many well-to-do youngsters appeared in Paris as abbés. Nothing was simpler and so convenient: by a slight change of attire the appearance of a benefice was simulated. One had friends, lovers and hosts, for every house had its abbé. They were small, fat, round, well-dressed, bland, obliging, curious connoisseurs, lively and insinuating." De Sade has drawn this type in Abbé Chabert, the friend of Juliette and teacher of her daughter (Juliette 111, 280). The abbés also figure in the police reports of Manuel on the vice of the clergy in Paris which we shall quote in a later section.

A second characteristic phenomenon of the eighteenth century was the "knight," the chevalier. He also has found a loving commentator in Brillat Savarin: "Many knights had found it advantageous to present the fraternal kiss to each other. They were mostly pretty men. They carried their swords vertically, their heads high, their noses up, their bodies stiff; they were gamblers, seducers, squabblers and really belonged to the train of a lady of fashion. At the beginning of the Revolution most of the knights entered the army, others left the country and the rest lost themselves in the crowd. The few survivors can be recognized by their features. For now they are skinny and walk laboriously. They have the gout."

The champions of the cloth were, in de Sade's novels, the perpetrators of the most abominable outrages. With a special preference de Sade described the vices, hypocrisy, and the ungodliness of the clergy of every rank. He overwhelmed the cloth with the most vulgar insults. And he had excellent justification.

In the discussion of the wickedness of the French clergy we will present authentic historic documents. The discoveries of the police speak of and justify de Sade, whose works were placed on the Index Expurgatorius as much for their anti-clerical contents as for their obscenity. Thus Juliette called the pope an "old ape" (Juliette IV, 285); and the other prelates, monks, etc., did not fare much better. The tribade Clairwil cried (Juliette II, 336): "Who are the only true destroyers of society? The priests! Who daily seduce and rape our women and children? The priests! Who are the greatest enemy of every reign? The priests! Who continually deceive us with lies and frauds? Steal our last penny? Work most for the destruction of the human race? Defame themselves most with crimes and infamies? Who are the most dangerous and horrible persons?… And yet we hesitate to put an end to these pestilent worms of the earth? Then we really deserve all these evils."

All the troubles of France were the work of the Jesuits (Juliette III, 169). Numberless were the orgies and debaucheries, which the priests arranged in de Sade’s novels. Therein appeared all the pathologic sexual types. The pederast, the pathicus, the lécheur, the sanguinaire, etc., etc. We here call attention only to the dreadful orgies of the Carmelites (Juliette III, 143), the Archbishop of Lyons (Juliette I, 234); the orgies in the catacombs of the Panthémont monastery between monks and nuns (Juliette I, 96); of Pope Pius VI and the Cardinals Albani and Bernis in Rome (Juliette IV, 100 ff.). All these clergymen were atheists and blasphemers. De Sade repeated—unique in his works—two obscene and blasphemous poems of Cardinal Bernis in Juliette.

We shall next present contemporary reports as proofs that de Sade was not unjust when he exposed the clergy in such an abusive manner in his works.

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Paris Police Reports on the Immorality of the Clergy

Pierre Manuel has left us in his famous work The Parisian Police Exposed (Paris, 1794), a photographically true picture of the moral conditions of Paris before the outbreak of the great Revolution. Adolf Schmidt, one of the best savants of the history of France in the eighteenth century and who, like Manuel, collected similar reports, in his Tableaux of the French Revolution, called Manuel's book one of the most reliable sources for the Eighteenth Century.

Manuel, in his famous work, had a chapter "Police, Priests and Prostitutes." He repeated in bitterly satiric words the vow of chastity of the priests and said: "I will reveal the lascivious actions of these missionaries of heaven, who themselves damn to Hades the passions of noble and sensitive persons. Naming these failings is not doing away with them. For the pure man is he who sleeps with his wife."

The following laconic records refer to the reports of the police inspectors and commissioners, to the confessions of the culprits and their accomplices. We give verbatim same of the striking reports.

Franciscans:

February 12, 1760. Brother François Lortal, House of Toulouse. He reversed the maxim of Virgil in practice: nudus ara, sere nudus! Commissioner Thierion, Inspector Marais.

July 2, 1766. George le Payen, vicar in Cerny, lover on lover in the garden. Commissioner Grimperil, Inspector Marais.

Bernardines:

March 30, 1764. J. Ignace Xavier Dreux, licentiate, Professor of Theology, at Agathe, under the bed. Commissioner Mutel, etc.

Carmelites:

February 8, 1763. Jacques Brebi, from Maubert Place. He was under the name Jacques Mazure with the guards; he thought it was a church. Report of Prior Martin, etc.

Dominicans:

Pierre Simon, 46 years in the cloth. He described his pleasures with trembling hands. Commissioner Mutel, etc.

Capucines:

December 14, 1762. Laurent Dilly, mendicant friar from Rue St. Honoré, at the Boyerie, where he sang: tirez-moi par mon cordon! Report of the Father Guardian Grégoire, etc.

November 9, 1765. Joseph Biache, called Brother Constant, and Joseph Etienne, called Brother Constantine, from the monastery at Crépy; both in the inn, The Mounting Deer, where they asked for a bed for three, although they only had the image of the Virgin Mary with them. Commissioner Mutel, etc.

Recollects (strictest branch of Franciscans):

June 30, 1763. Noel-Clément Berthe, called Brother Paul, whipped at Leblanc. Com. Fontaine, etc.

March 1, 1765. Gabriel Anheisser, called Father Gabriel, in his nightshirt under the bed of Agnes Viard. He lived together with this former sutler for seven or eight years. Com. de Ruisseau, etc.

February 19, 1767. Father Constance between Victoire and Emilie, like the ass of Buridon. Com. cle Ruisseau, etc.

Minima (Paulines):

January 17, 1760. André Carron, while writing on the wall of the room of Zaire: "I am always ready for whipping." Com. Sirebeau, etc.

Feuillantines:

December 30, 1762. Dom Claude Jousse, 63 years old, at Marie la Neuve, where he was not abashed with the maidens. Report of Prior Jean Baptiste of St. Marie-Magdalene. Com. de Ruisseau.

Augustines:

November 5, 1763. Bernard-Nicolas, from Palais-Royal House, in the Avenue de Vincennes, with them Franciscans and Rosalie, who was a match for a dozen of them. Com. Mutel, etc.

October 26, 1765: "I, the undersigned, Honoré Regnard, 53 years old, canon of the holy Augustine order, procurator, House of St. Catherine, confirm that Inspector Marais found me at the St. Louis, rue do Figuier, to which I went yesterday of my own desire, in order to satisfy myself with Félix. I had her undress and caressed her with my hand concealed under the cloak. And today I played with Félix and her friend Julie, who took off my vestment and dressed and painted me as a woman. The inspector surprised me in this condition. I declare that I have had this desire for many years but which I have never been able to satisfy until today. As proof of authenticity I sign the following declaration, which contains the whole truth and nothing but the truth, with my name Honoré Regnard." Com. Mutel, etc.

July 18, 1768. Simon Boucel, with the Prévilles, Louise and Sophy.

Praemonstratenes:

March 17, 1760. François de Maugre, from rue Haute-Feuille, between Desirée and Zaire, all three happy. Com. Sirebeau, etc.

Penitents of Nazareth:

May 2, 1766. Brother Nicephorus, with Laville, who showed him every part of the body, including some internal ones. Com. Mutel, etc.

Celestines:

December 3, 1760. J. D. Tordoir, Prior of Nanites, at Mausy, in the garb of the prophet who awaked the son of the Sunamites.

Brothers of Mercy:

October 19, 1762. Jacques François Boulard, former overseer of novices and priors, at Lagarde, with Victoire and Julie, trying to take in as much as possible. Com. de Ruisseau, etc.

Order of St. Genevieve:

May 8, 1761. Jean Pierre Bedosse with Zephire, per ipsam, cum ipsa et in ipsa. Com. Sirebeau, etc.

August 2, 1752. Father Bernard, famous preacher. He chose two or three prostitutes at Lasolle. This cost him the wealth of a duchess. He gave six and a half Louisdors. And the surgeon, as a result, charged him forty Thalers and three Livres. for the visit.

Eremites:

August 5, 1773. Brother Camille, from the monastery at Hayet, at Therese's where he described himself as “The Porter of Chartreux.” Com. Mutel, etc.

Christian School:

September 14, 1763. Brother Firmin at Royer’s, who compared him with those bad readers who begin a book and don’t finish it. Com. Mutel, etc.

Order of St. Antoine:

September 28, 1765. François Vanova, at Lamourette’s, in flagrante delicto by Commissioner Mutel and Inspector Marais.

Jesuits:

November 5, 1764. François Terrasse-Desbillon, 52 years old, at Mouton's, where he was enjoying himself in reversed rôles. Com. Mutel, etc.

Deans, Dignitaries and Canons:

April 3, 1764. Blaise Messier, Canon of Beauvais, at Blampié’s. He appeared to have the same views as Rubens, liking his beauties around the 200 pound class. Com. Rochebrune, etc.

August 14, 1761. Marc-Antoine Manuel, of the holy church, at Provençale's, working away. Com. de Ruisseau, etc.

July 8, 1760. Marie Mocet, Bishop of Tours, 60 years old. Gasping away. His hands doing the work of four men.

June 20, 1765. Jean Pierre Pelletier, curé, at Lambert’s, devouring the work of God. Com. Mutel, etc.

August 22, 1760. Pierre Louis Thorin. Zaire in a three-quarter turn. Com. Sirebeau,, etc.

Abbés:

October 27, 1763. Charles Marie Thibault was sent to St. Lazarre, having been found at Aurora's for the third time. A poem was found in his pocket praising what Hebe showed the goddesses.

Doctors of the Sorbonne:

May 9, 1765. J. Baptiste R. who lay inert with his useless firepiece at Guerin’s.

May 23, 1763. Fel. Auguste Tomalle turning over the pages at Denoyer's. His third thesis.

Teachers:

February 24, 1761. P., Teacher of the children of Marquis de P. at Pearl’s. Looking for gems at the altar of Venus. Corn. Sirebeau, etc.

These are some out of a long, long list. A commentary would be superfluous. Facta loquuntur. These facts from authentic documents afford a satisfying proof and justification for the description in de Sade's novels of the orgies of the clergy; and also for the hatred which the priests were looked on not alone by de Sade. Manuel remarked at the end of his tale that no Bishop was named therein. He explained it from the fact that one may not even speak of the illnesses of a Bishop, let alone his sexual adventures.

Besides these reports of Manuel there exists a very great work on the immorality of the French clergy. After the storming of the Bastille in 1789 there were found in that prison two volumes on The Chastity of the Clergy Exposed. Louis XV had the reports of the visits of the clergy in bordellos sent to him every morning. These bulletins were called the Paris Nights. The two volumes contained 189 reports from April 10, 1755 to June 7, 1766. They appeared more to have served "the revival of the dead libido of the king" than the interests of morals and the honor of the king.

In the same category was the affair of the Vicar of Bagnolet with Mademoiselle Mimi. In the autograph collection of Lucas Montigny there is a letter from the Archbishop of Paris to Police Superintendent Le Noir: "I have been informed that the Vicar of Bagnolet when in Paris visits a prostitute, Mimi, who lives in the me Pierre Poissons. If you can verify this, I would be extremely grateful, for I am very interested in discovering the truth."

The letter had the following notation by Le Noir: "Get Quidor to verify the fact immediately and send me his report."

Further interesting details on the conduct of the Parisian clergy are found in the Confessions of a Young Girl. We are introduced to the bordello of Madame Richard. Sapho, (for so the young girl is called), looks through the peephole at the tête-à-tête of the madame with a priest. The madame takes out a cuirass of doubled horse-hair, bordered by a mass of blunted iron nails, enfolds the breast and back of the priest with it, ties him tightly on all sides with heavy cord, fastens an iron chain around his belly, which supports some kind of suspensory around his groin. This suspensory is also braided with strong coarse hair, in a way not preventing the use of the hands on the sources of pleasure. Similar "bracelets" are placed on the wrists. Tumescence then follows. Now the madame begins the flagellation and the other incitations of love.

Sapho tells further how she becomes the mistress of a bishop, whose vicarage follows him in his mode of life and presents a lively picture of the immoral conduct of the clergy in this diocese. She has an adventure with four priests, one of whom is a pederast, having a motto: tout est connus dans une femme.

The sexual dissoluteness of the clergy is also found in poems and pictures. The following verse is to the point:

One has chosen five bishops,
All marked by syphilis,
To reform the gay monks.
Can one whiten ebony with black ink?

This poem refers to a Board of Morals composed of the Archbishops of Rheims, Arles, Narbonne, Bourges and Toulouse. This Board of Censorship was indeed a mark of the age! But how they were judged by public opinion these verses best show.

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The Jesuits

In Persian Letters Montesquieu had Rica visit a monastery library where a monk described the contents of the works. Under the theologians were named especially the casuists, who bring the secrets of night into the daylight; who create in their fantasies all the monsters that the demon of love can produce, collect, compare and form as eternal objects of their thoughts. Yet fortunate if the heart is not enmeshed and does not become the plaything of the many delusions which are so naively described and so nakedly painted!

In this field of "sexual casuistry" we find the Jesuits masters in the eighteenth century. No order understood so well how to legitimize pleasure by religion and how to clothe their own immoral actions with a cover of mysticism and piousness. It was not necessary for the Jesuits to find their pleasures in bordellos (Manuel found only one Jesuit in these resorts, explained also by the fact that they were too clever to be caught in such traps). In his dual rôle as father confessor and teacher it was easy for him to satisfy his, by no means weak, sexual feelings which were protected from police inspection as "divine inspiration." Early in the seventeenth century Cornelius Jansen inveighed against the Jesuit father confessors, “who regulated the gallant sins of the household and permitted the nuns to be fingered lewdly on their bosoms and thighs by their comforters." For the Jesuit Benzi taught expressly: to pinch checks, bosoms, and to shamelessly handle the genitals. As a result of these precepts, de la Chaise, father confessor of Louis XIV, violated the ladies of the court and had mistresses sent to the King of England. Young ladies in Holland let themselves be whipped by the Jesuits for their pleasure. Similarly the ladies in the court in Lisbon under Nunez. The Jesuit Herreau in 1642 taught that it was permissible to use abortive medicines. In the sixteenth century in Lyons the Jesuits influenced the ladies to wear open chemises; this practice was copied in 1789.

The notorious "Theology of Murder" of the Jesuits, in no way inferior to the apology of murder by de Sade, may be originally blamed to the treatise of their founder, J. de Mariana (1599), as well as the famous work of Blaise Pascal, Provincial Letters (1657), describing the entire immorality of the Jesuits. In the eighteenth century the commanders of the order allowed the father confessors obscene tracts, insofar as it was favorable to the order. Thus the last commander of the order before the Revolution, Lorenzo Ricci, wrote on how the young Jesuits ought to act to the young—and rich—widows. They took every possible care to keep them from a second marriage, pointing out indefatigably the inconveniences of such a state, the danger to the soul, etc., etc. "But when in spite of all this the young widows have a great yearning for a second marriage, when they find themselves in the state: it is better to marry than to burn, then a clever and discreet father may offer his services against the seductions of the flesh."

World famous was the scandal of the relation between the Jesuit, Jean Baptiste Girard, and his penitent, Catherine Cadière, which started at Toulon in May, 1782. The affair occasioned an immense literature and served as a model for many pornographic novels. The case was fully documented in The Girard Case (1791). A folio volume of etchings portrayed the most piquant situations; its collection has been variously ascribed to Marquis d'Argens, Count Caylus and Mirabeau. It has also been asserted that Marquis de Sade was moved to write Justine by the above work.

The Jesuit Girard, as rector of the seminary and as naval chaplain at Toulon, had started a private penitential school for women, in which Catherine Cadière, the pretty and pious daughter of a merchant, entered. Girard, by the application of the most cunning sexual mysticism, succeeded in seducing the innocent maiden and utilized fully her visions and dreams for his lustful desires. Carnal flogging, indecent embraces, and the horrible mental prostitution soon lead to acute hysteria and in the course of time she became pregnant, but by reason of Jesuit precepts abortive drugs stopped the process. Finally action was brought against him, but, to the wrath of the public, he was freed.

Voltaire, under a picture of Girard and Cadière, wrote the following verse:

The beauty saw God, Girard saw the beauty:
Ah! But Girard is happier than she.

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The Black Mass

The height of religious sexual mysticism was reached in the cult of the so-called "Satan’s Church." Satan here became the "Personification of the Physical Mysterium of Copulation" as a protest against the exclusive mastery of the "Metaphysical Mysticism of Idolization." The history of this remarkable sect has been written for all time by Stanislaw Przybyszewski in his The Cult of Satan's Church. Satan-Satyr, Satan-Pan, and Satan-Phallus was the ancient "God of instincts and corporeal passions, equally honored by the highest and lowest in spirit, the inexhaustible source of joy in life, enthusiasm and intoxication.

"He taught women the art of seduction, men to satisfy their feelings in their double sexual desires, he ran rim in color, discovered the flute and set the muscles in rhythmical movement, until the divine mania embraced the heart and the divine Phallus with its opulence sowed the fruitful womb."

That was the age of the pagan mysteries of motherhood. Then came the Judeo-Grecan Christianity and preached the supernatural, ascetic mysticism of fatherhood. The church tore man forcefully from nature. "She destroyed the unconscious selection of nature, which expressed itself externally in beauty, power and splendor; she protected everything that nature would uproot: din, ugliness, sickness, cripples and eunuchs." But nature did not allow itself to be rejected. And so the church had to give in and amalgamate the pagan creed with its own. "The bacchanalias at the feasts of Ceres Libera were celebrated with greater freedom than ever before on Lady-day, and until the thirteenth century the people celebrated in common with the priests, lascivious and orgiastic festivals, the feast of the Ass, the feast of the Idiots.

While they were voraciously dispatching everything in sight they started to deliberate about our punishment and their revenge. As usual in such an unruly crowd there was lively disagreement. One wanted the girl to be burned alive, another said she should be thrown to the beasts, a third thought she should be crucified, and a fourth was all for torturing her to death; the one point on which they were unanimous was that die she must. Then, when the hubbub had died down, one quietly took up the running. 'It is repugnant,' he said, 'both to our principles as professionals and our humanity as individuals, not to mention my own ideas of moderation, to allow you to punish this crime more savagely than it merits. Rather than invoking the beasts or the cross or fire or torture, or even giving her a quick death, if you will be guided by me you will grant the girl her life -- but in the form that she deserves. You won't, I'm sure, have forgotten what you've already decided to do with that bone-idle ass that does nothing but eat; deceitful too, shamming lame and aiding and abetting the girl's escape. My proposal therefore is that tomorrow we slaughter him, remove his insides, and sew the girl up in his belly naked -- since he prefers her company to ours -- with just her head showing and the rest of her hugged tight in his bestial embrace. Then we'll leave this dainty dish of stuffed donkey on some rocky crag to cook in the heat of the sun. In that way both of them will undergo all the punishments to which you have so justly sentenced them. The ass will die as he richly deserves; the girl will be torn by beasts when the worms gnaw her, she will be roasted when the blazing sun scorches the ass's belly, and she will be gibbeted when the dogs and vultures drag out her entrails. And think of all her other sufferings and torments: to dwell alive in the belly of a dead animal, to suffocate in an intolerable stench, to waste away and die of prolonged fasting, and not even to have her hands free to compass her own death.'

***

In the hall of my house I shall dedicate a picture of this flight of ours. People will come to see it, and the artless story of 'The Princess who escaped from Captivity on the back of an Ass' will be told around the world and immortalized in the pages of the learned. You too will join the catalogue of the Wonders of Old, and your true example will lead us to believe that Phrixus really did make his crossing on the ram, that Arion rode the dolphin, and that Europa perched on the bull.

-- The Golden Ass, or Metamorphoses, by Apuleius, translated by E.J. Kinney

The remainder of the Phallus cult stole away to the church; the columns and pillars swarmed with obscene figures, a favorite theme for the reliefs in the church was Noah sleeping with his daughters." But the real cult of "Satan’s Church" was founded by the Manichees in southern France. "From here began the monstrous triumphal procession of Satan through all Europe." The secret societies of "Perfect Beings" formed everywhere, serving exclusively the most obscene sexual vices. "They insulted and stoned the priests, violated the holy objects with their obscene purposes and parodied the Catholic services in their rites." In spite of the persecution of the church the sect and its motto persevered: Nemo potest peccare ab umbilico et inferius [Google translate: No one can not sin, from the navel and the lower]; it found command support from "unsatisfied" priests. Sins slay sins! That was the great principle of their sexual orgies. The priest sanctifies all women who sin with him. The nuns are "consecrated," i.e. they become the mistresses of the priests. The black death in the fourteenth century, flagellation, dance-mania, famine, all heightened immeasurably the sexual hysteria. Now the sect of devil worshippers enjoyed their triumphs. Since then, in spite of persecution, they remained in the self-same position and further celebrate their public masses. Even in modern times they have appeared in various forms. The "Adamites" or "Nicolites," "Picards," who congregate nude and enjoy wives in common, were founded by John Ziska on an island in the Luschnitz River. They appeared again in 1848 in five villages as "Moroccanes." The name was chosen due to their expectation of the extirpation of all Catholics by an enemy coming from Morocco. Similarly the name "Oneida" or the older name of "Perfecti," later "Perfectionists" in New York State (since 1831). Even today the Satan cult is carried on in Paris, as is described by J. K. Huysmans, in Là Bas:

The sacrifice ceased. The priest descended the steps backward, knelt on the last one, and in a sharp, tripidant voice cried:

"Master of Slanders, Dispenser of the benefits of crime, Administrator of sumptuous sins and great vices, Satan, thee we adore, reasonable God, just God!

"Superadmirable legate of false trances, thou receivest our beseeching tears; thou savest the honor of families by aborting wombs impregnated in the forgetfulness of the good orgasm; thou dost suggest to the mother the hastening of untimely birth, and thine obstetrics spares the still-born children the anguish of maturity, the contamination of original sin.

"Mainstay of the despairing Poor, Cordial of the Vanquished, it is thou who endowst them with hypocrisy, ingratitude, and stiff-neckedness, that they may defend themselves against the children of God, the Rich.

"Suzerain of Resentment, Accountant of Humiliations, Treasurer of old Hatreds, thou alone dost fertilize the brain of man whom injustice has crashed; thou breathest into him the idea of meditated vengeance, sure misdeeds; thou incitest him to murder; thou givest him the abundant joy of accomplished reprisals and permittest him to taste the intoxicating draught of the tears of which he is the cause.

"Hope of Virility, Anguish of the Empty Womb, thou dost not demand the bootless offering of chaste lions, thou dost not sing the praises of Lenten follies; thou alone receivest the carnal supplications and petitions of poor and avaricious families. Thou determinest the mother to sell her daughter, to give her son; thou aidest sterile and reprobate loves; Guardian of strident Neuroses, Leaden Tower of Hysteria, bloody Vase of Rape!

"Master, thy faithful servants, on their knees, implore thee and supplicate thee to satisfy them when they wish the torture of all those who love them and aid them; they supplicate thee, to assure them the joy of delectable misdeeds unknown to justice, spells whose unknown origin baffles the reason of man; they ask, finally, glory, riches, power, of thee, King of the Disinherited, Son who art to overthrow the inexorable Father!"

Then Docre rose, and erect, with arms outstretched, vociferated in a ringing voice of hate:

"And thou, thou whom, in my quality of priest, I force, whether thou wilt or no, to descend into this host, to incarnate thyself in this bread, Jesus, Artisan of Hoaxes, Bandit of Homage, Robber of Affection, hear! Since the day when thou didst issue from the complaisant bowels of a Virgin, thou hast failed all thine engagements, belied all thy promises. Centuries have wept, awaiting thee, fugitive God, mute God! Thou wast to redeem man and thou hast not, thou wast to appear in thy glory, and thou sleepest. Go, lie, say to the wretch who appeals to thee, 'Hope, be patient, suffer; the hospital of souls will receive thee; the angels will assist thee; Heaven opens to thee.' Imposter! thou knowest well that the angels, disgusted at thine inertness, abandon thee! Thou wast to be the Interpreter of our plaints, the Chamberlain of our tears; thou wast to convey them to the Father and thou hast not done so, for this intercession would disturb thine eternal sleep of happy satiety.

“Thou hast forgotten the poverty thou didst preach, enamoured vassal of Banks! Thou hast seen the weak crushed beneath the press of profit; thou hast heard the death rattle of the timid, paralyzed by famine, of women disembowelled for a bit of bread, and thou hast caused the Chancery of thy Simoniacs, thy commercial representatives, thy Popes, to answer by dilatory excuses and evasive promises, sacristy Shyster, huckster God!

"Master, whose inconceivable ferocity engenders life and inflicts it on the innocent whom thou darest damn—in the name of what original sin?—whom thou darest punish—by the virtue of what covenants?—we would have thee confess thine impudent cheats, thine inexpiable crimes! We would drive deeper the nails into thy hands, press down the crown of thorns upon thy brow, bring blood and water from the dry wounds of thy sides.

"And that we can and will do by violating the quietude of thy body, Profaner of ample vices, Abstractor of stupid purities, cursed Nazarene, do-nothing King, coward God!"

"Amen!" trilled the soprano voices of the choir boys.

Durtal listened in amazement to this torrent of blasphemies and insults. The foulness of the priest stupefied him. A silence succeeded the litany. The chapel was foggy with the smoke of the censers. The women, hitherto taciturn, flustered now, as, remounting the altar, the canon turned toward them and blessed them with his left hand in a sweeping gesture. And suddenly the choir boys tinkled the prayer bells.

It was a signal. The women fell to the carpet and writhed. One of them seemed to be worked by a spring. She threw herself prone and waved her legs in the air. Another, suddenly struck by a hideous strabism, clucked, then becoming tongue-tied stood with her mouth open, the tongue turned back, the tip cleaving to the palate. Another, inflated, livid, her pupils dilated, lolled her head back over her shoulders, then jerked it brusquely erect and belabored herself, tearing her breast with her nails. Another, sprawling on her back, undid her skirts, drew forth a rag, enormous, meteorized; then her face twisted into a horrible grimace, and her tongue, which she could not control, stuck out, bitten at the edges, harrowed by red teeth, from a bloody mouth.

Suddenly Durtal rose, and now he heard and saw Docre distinctly.

Docre contemplated the Christ surmounting the tabernacle, and with arms spread wide apart he spewed forth frightful insults, and, at the end of his forces, muttered the billingsgate of a drunken cabman. One of the choir boys knelt before him with his back toward the altar. A shudder ran around the priest's spine. In a solemn but jerky voice he said, "Hoc est enim corpus meum," [Google translate: This is my body] then, instead of kneeling, after the consecration, before the precious Body, he faced the congregation, and appeared tumefied, haggard, dripping with sweat. He staggered between the two choir boys, who, raising the chasuble, displayed his naked belly. Docre made a few passes and the host sailed, tainted and wiled, over the steps.

Durtal felt himself shudder. A whirlwind of hysteria shook the room.

While the choir boys sprinkled holy water on the pontiff's nakedness, women rushed upon the Eucharist and, groveling in front of the altar, clawed from the bread humid particles and drank and ate divine ordure.

Another woman, curled up over a crucifix, emitted a rending laugh, then cried to Docre, "Father, father!" A crone tore her hair, leapt, whirled around and around as on a pivot and fell over beside a young girl who, huddled to the wall, was writhing in convulsions, frothing at the mouth, weeping, and spitting out frightful blasphemies. And Durtal, terrified, saw through the fog the red horns of Docre, who seated now, frothing with rage, was chewing up sacramental wafers, taking them out of his mouth, wiping himself with them, and distributing them to the women, who ground them underfoot, howling, or fell over each other struggling to get hold of them and violate them.

The place was simply a madhouse, a monstrous pandemonium of prostitutes and maniacs. Now, while the choir boys gave themselves to the men, and while the woman who owned the chapel, mounted the altar, caught hold of the phallus of the Christ with one hand and with the other held a chalice between "His" naked legs, a little girl, who hitherto had not budged, suddenly bent over forward and howled, howled like a dog. Overcome with disgust, nearly asphyxiated, Durtal wanted to flee. He looked for Hyacinthe. She was no longer at his side. He finally caught sight of her close to the canon, and, stepping over the writhing bodies on the floor, he went to her. With quivering nostrils she was inhaling the effluvia of the perfumes and of the couples.

"The sabbatic odor!" she said to him between clenched teeth, in a strangled voice.

The Marquis de Sade gave evidence in his novels of being a fanatic Satanist. Many black masses appeared in Justine and Juliette. A mass in a monastery was fully described in Justine (II, 239). A Maiden, as the Holy Virgin, with arms raised to heaven, was bound in a niche in the church. Later she was laid naked on a great table, candles were lit, a crucifix decorated her buttocks, and "they celebrated on her buttocks the most absurd mysteries of Christianity." Then a mass was read on the same place. As soon as there was a Host of God, she seized the monk Ambrose and held fast to his member, whereby the believers in the Host were derided with the maddest expressions.

Two black masses were read in the privates of two tribades, (Juliette III, 147), then the Host was placed in the dung, after which the main altar became the place of the wildest orgies.

Pope Pius VI, himself, read a black mass in St. Peter's church, the Host being placed in the anus of a young girl.

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Convents

So many comments have already been made on the life of nuns in the eighteenth century that we can be content with a short description. The Panthémont Convent in Paris described by de Sade (Juliette I, 1 if.) actually existed! "The great convent of the eighteenth century, after the convent at Fontevrault, is Panthémont, the royal convent where the princesses were educated and where the greatest nobles sent their daughters." Panthémont was the most expensive of all convents.

In the eighteenth century the convents were becoming more and more secularized. "The motto of the convent of the Nouvelles Catholiques, vincit mundum fides nostra, had for a long time been a dead letter. The world had stepped into the convent." Of course, the secular students lived separately from the nuns. But nevertheless intercourse between them easily sprung up and the nuns were informed as to the events of the outside world by the lay-sisters. Gossip and scandal were never far from the convent; then, too, the intercourse with the father confessors and the intimate companionship of so many young and old women did not allow the sexual aberrations of the previous centuries to cease in the convents. The brothers de Goncourt wonder how a book like Mademoiselle d'Albert's Escapades of a Jolly Girl could have ever been written at the Panthémont convent. We rather wonder how the de Goncourts in their expressed preference for the eighteenth century, for "the good old times," failed to recognize the immorality in the spiritual convents. It is true we haven't many reliable reports on the French convents. We can find, for example, only a few scandalous stories about the Panthémont convent. But what does that show? The entire spiritual corruption was open as day. From the beginning of the century till the French Revolution clear-seeing minds condemned it with grave reproaches. One reads, for example, the account of this situation, derived from reliable reports, in Buckle's History Of Civilization in England. Or the other citations, the dissolution of the Jesuit order, the historically confirmed intercourse of the confessors with the nuns. Tocqueville says: "The clergy preach of morals but they are compromising by their actions." Buckle calls special attention to this state of affairs in his authoritative work.

What the de Goncourts have further overlooked is the decisive proof: the affairs in the convents became objects of public ridicule in contemporary drama, represented in Lanjon's Nunnery, Papers Johanna, The Dragoon, The Convent Girls, etc. That is shown further by the enormous spread of tribadism in France in the eighteenth century, which we shall later investigate, and which found its favorite center in convents. It is proven finally by the famous novel of Diderot, The Nun, and the many pictures of the corruption in the convents, as well as the erotic writings of the eighteenth century.

So we can well believe de Sade when he said (Juliette, I, 1): "The prettiest and most immoral girls in Paris are those that come from the Panthémont convent" and also when he had the tribade, Zanetti, say (Juliette VI, 156); "The churches serve as bordellos," and when he described an instrument of pleasure, much used by women, as the "jewel of the 'sisters' ".

At any rate, immorality in the convents of neighboring Italy had reached a very high degree. Gorani, whose reliability is well known, reported wild orgies in the Neapolitan convents. The discovery of sexual debaucheries of the nuns at Prato (near Florence) brought to light one of the most noted spiritual scandals of the eighteenth century. Reumont related: In Prato as well as in Pistoia there were firmly entrenched in the Dominican convents disorders of the worst kind, a mixture of pietism and physical aberrations that bordered madness, and which had been no secret to the spiritual leaders for a long time. Some sort of order was established in Pistoia, but in Prato, where most of the compromised nuns were sent, there was an outbreak at Easter in 1781. The Grand Duke led an investigation by the police commissioner, the two principal culprits were locked up at Prato, then sent to Florence for trial. The Dominicans were forced to break all connections with the convent and were threatened with expulsion in case of disobedience. The entire affair made a grand sensation because of the vice and the fact that the nuns who were incriminated came of highly respected parents. A detailed description may be found in the biography of the Bishop of Prato, Scipione de' Ricci, by Potter.

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Woman

The eighteenth century is, at least in France, the century of women. Georg Brandes rightly believes that the de Goncourts, those refined worshippers of women, felt drawn to the history of the eighteenth century, since "the influence of women was highest at that time." Woman in the Eighteenth Century by the de Goncourts is one of the most pleasant historical works, dealing with the highlights instead of the sidelights of its subject.

There is an unequalled description of the powerful influence of women in the chapter The Mastery and Intelligence of Women of the above work. "The soul of this age, the center of this world, the point from which everything radiates, the mount from which everything descends, the pattern that forms everything else, is the Woman." From the beginning to the end of the century woman ruled: Mesdames de Prie, de Mailly, de Châteauroux, de Pompadour, du Barry, de Polignac. Woman ruled in state, politics, and in society; her influence was felt in every field of life. War and peace were decided by the caprice of a woman, and not by the welfare of France. And in the famous salons of Do Deffand, Necker, Lespinasse, Geoffrin, Grandval, women set the fashion in the discussions of questions of the day and scientific affairs. Here was formed the modern "cultured society."

The age also showed that where the influence of women became predominant, the family broke up, love took on immoral forms, and was accompanied by a contempt for the feminine sex. Love in this age was thoroughly sensual. It had become debauchery. Passion was recruited from the curious; the husband taught his wife all the tricks of love of a mistress. Philosophy aided in justifying debauchery and in apologizing for its shame. "At a supper in the house of a famous actress, at the table of a Quinault, among the obscene talk of a Duclos and Saint-Lambert, one heard women in all stages of sweet drunkenness speak of modesty: Pretty virtue! It should be fastened with pins." Convenient sophisms confused all moral conceptions of the woman. The purely physical love, which was proclaimed as the ideal by naturalism and materialism, finally appeared in woman "in all its brutality."

The sexual relations followed wholly sensual purposes, and those which tried to beautify love were confined to making more pleasant and lasting the coarsest curiosities by light hindrances and by a mixture of such embellishments, which had more appeal to the mind than to the heart. The word "gallantry" received an entirely new meaning. It signified immoral manners and conduct which only differed from the wantonness of common whores by such forms as would increase the pleasure and serve as preservation of the appearance of esteem before the public. Bernhard's famous imitation of Ovid's Art of Love preached conventional behavior in the greatest lewdness. Not much better were the "platonic loves," the "liaisons of society," the "private affairs" of that time. The Abbé Baliani says; "The women did not then love with the heart but with the head." Love was "complete freedom in the making." One realized in it the dirtiest dreams of a decadent artist, the temptations of spiritual corruption, the strangest fancies of an insatiable lechery. Love became an exciting play in which all the refinements of spiritual prostitution were essayed in order to increase the pleasure.

They prepared themselves for these pleasures by indulging in the most obscene conversations. Repeatedly de Sade mentioned in his novels how the pleasures of love were increased by conversations employing the dirtiest words and topics. This experience was taken directly from reality. Mercier tells that the great number of public whores had incited the youths to a very free speech which they used in addressing the most honorable women. The conversation with the most respected women was seldom delicate but reveled in dirty jokes, puns and scandals.

Therefrom resulted an unheard of immodesty in women. At thirty, woman lost the last particle of feeling of shame. There remained but "elegancy in vice," grace in debauchery. The woman took all the counterparts of a male libertine; her great pleasure was "to enjoy fully the shame of her calling." So also the women in de Sade's novels rejoiced and exulted that they were prostitutes, that they belonged to the whole world and could bear the honored name of "whore." Even so pious a soul and so tender a heart as Madame Roland knew no feeling of modesty and reserve. She described herself and her body in all details in her Autobiography; she told of her breasts, hips, legs, etc., so cold-bloodedly that it would avail for a criticism of a statue. Shall we wonder then that de Sade had Juliette describe her own charms with a boundless cynicism (Juliette IV, 103)?

Gated women carried their immodesty so far as to rent petites maisons, just like male roués. Indeed even women from the aristocracy went so far as to seek their pleasure in bordellos. Rétif de la Bretonne recognized Princess d’Egmont as a prostitute in a bordello. Conversely, it was no rarity for a prostitute to marry into polite society. In his Contemporaries, de Ia Bretonne says further: "I have indeed seen something far worse than this: a daughter of a hunchback, after she had passed through the hands of the madames, had a child, lived in the St. Honoré as a public prostitute, etc., etc.; she then married a rich man, had children by him and moved in polite society." Yet another example: Do Barry! Daughter of a low tax-collector, first a model in Paris, then a prostitute in the house of Madame Gourdan, of whom we shall speak more later. Here in the bordello he met Count Jean du Barry, to whose brother she was later married on her advancement to the position of the mistress of Louis XV. No wonder that the aristocracy eagerly copied such an example and inaugurated a true hunt of the beautés populaires. Thence arose a new fashion-word s'encanailler.

Thus the nearer one approaches the time of the Revolution the more moral corruption lay hold of the women of the country. It was prepared and nourished by the famous "convulsions," that remarkable, hysterical epidemic of convulsions lasting from 1727 to 1762 and attacking mainly the lower classes. Its center was the courtyard of the St. Medardus church. "From all quarters of the city the crowds turned to St. Medardus in order to participate in the trances, fits, amps, convulsions and similar ecstasies. The entire courtyard and even the neighboring streets were packed tight with girls, women, invalids of all ages, etc., who strove to outdo one another in convulsions." Women, lying stretched out, begged the spectators to beat their bellies and were not satisfied until the weight of ten or twelve men were piled high on them with full force. Passionate dances, like the famous "saut de carpe" of Abbé Bécherand, soon gave an erotic color to these "convulsions." Dulaure told what final rôle lust played in this notable form of hysteria and how these convulsions assisted in spreading sexual licentiousness. One can recognize the erotism in these convulsions in that the young maidens in their "fits" "never called to women for aid, but always to men, and to young, strong men at that." Hence they dressed very indecently, always showed an inclination for adamite nudeness, assumed lascivious postures, threw longing looks at the young men running to help them. Indeed, some cried out loudly: Da liberos, alioquin moriar! Thus vice and debauchery did not wait in abeyance; when the women in their orgasms invited the men "to use as a promenade their belly, bosom, thighs, etc., to fight with them," there was, of course, the natural result from the absolvement of morals by the convulsions.

Hysteria (Vapeurs) was prevalent with the French women throughout the century. Sauvages rightly holds that the origin of this hysteria was the crass egoism (amour excessif de soi-même), the weak, vicious life of the women of that time. The hysteria libidinosa then also brought to a head notable eccentricities.

Woman in the eighteenth century created what a later age designated as "sadism," and which we shall later define in a significantly broader meaning. The méchanceté, the evil, and the noirceurs, the malicious tricks, became fashionable in love; the sinful sentiment (scélératesse) became a necessary ingredient of sexual pleasure. "Debauchery became an art of cruelty, perfidy, treachery and tyranny. Machiavelli was the master of love." Shortly before the Revolution, after the petits maîtres of love there appeared the grands maîtres of perversity, the heartless advocates of theoretical and practical immorality. With some women debauchery even reached satanism. They tormented respectable women, whose virtue was offensive to them; they also dastardly and with evil joy had the objects of their hate and also their love removed. They embodied the lustful pleasure in evil, the "libertinage des passions méchantes."

Real people gave the stamp to this society; their existence was confirmed by numerous personalities. The de Goncourts named the Duke of Choiseul, the Marquis de Louvois, Count de Frise, etc., as such lustful devils. And a respectable Dame of Grenoble, the Marquise L.T.D.P.M. was the feminine counterpart of these heroes, perhaps the pattern for de Sade’s Juliette. The age of terror for love had broken out long before the reign of terror of the great Revolution, even before de Sade, intoxicated by the flowing blood from the guillotine, depicted in the most notable literary documents: The Terror of Love! And as in the age of terror under Chaumette’s leadership the "theosophical orgies of lust" were celebrated, as the "goddesses of reason” were honored by a Maillard, a Moncore, an Aubry, in their bestial fashion, there suddenly appeared the "tricoteuses de Robespierre," the "flagelleuses" and the horrible "furies de guillotine."

The four greatest thinkers of France in the eighteenth century: Montesquieu, Rousseau, Voltaire and Diderot all taught contempt for women. One has only to think of Voltaire's bitterly sarcastic expressions on his true friend Madame Du Chatelet. Woman, according to Rousseau, was created only for man's enjoyment. For Montesquieu man has power and reason, woman only gracefulness. Diderot saw in woman only an object of passion. "So a woman to Diderot is a courtesan, to Montesquieu a graceful child, to Rousseau an object of pleasure, to Voltaire—naught." In the Revolution Condorcet and Sieyès appeared for the family and political emancipation, but their protests were quickly stifled by the “mighty voices of the three great continuers (continuateurs) of the eighteenth century, through Mirabeau, Danton and Robespierre." The reason for this contempt is clear. Marriage, as Westermarck has shown in his classical work, is that institution to which humanity owes its moral perfecting; it is the absolute moral institution. In marriage the woman is of equal rank with the man, since she completes him. Outside of the marriage the woman cannot compensate him and consequently appears inferior.

We close with an almost unbelievable example of the contempt of women. The reference will be found in Buckle's History of Civilization in England, Pact I, Chapter XII: "In the middle of the eighteenth century, there was an actress on the French stage by the name of Chantilly. She, though beloved by Maurice de Saxe, preferred a more honorable attachment, and married Favert, the well-known writer of songs and of comic operas. Maurice, amazed at her boldness, applied for aid to the French crown. That he should have made such an application is sufficiently strange; but the result of it is hardly to be paralleled except in some eastern despotism. The government of France, on hearing the circumstance, had the inconceivable baseness to issue an order directing Favert to abandon his wife, and entrust her to the charge of Maurice, to whose embraces she was compelled to submit (Grimm, Corresp. Lit., Vol. viii, pp. 231-233)."

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The Erotic Literature

The French literature of the eighteenth century is brand-marked pornography! At no other time in the history of the world, even under the Caesars, had literature been made a tool of vice in such a systematic fashion as in the ancien régime. Of course, the representation of sexual passion was an old story in French literature, and was even present in the numerous fabliaux of the middle ages; but it was not until the eighteenth century that the healthily coarse naturalism and naiveness of these older forms of erotic stories were replaced with pictures of sensuality, whose studied premeditation served as a malignant stimulus to an enervated society. The eighteenth century produced the greater part of the pornographic literature existing today; and in the number of individual erotic works more than all the other centuries combined. The lion's share in the production of pornography falls in the period from 1770 to 1800 when only eroticism could move the public. These books made the worship of flesh their main theme. They recognized nothing but lascivious experiences and all the forms of sexual pleasure. The bordello was a paradise, the prostitute far nobler than the most faithful wife. "What age has so dirtied itself with obscene books as this great century?" asked Janin, "that even men like Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot, Montesquieu and Mirabeau fashioned their works accenting to the taste of the time." Shortly before and during the Revolution machlosophy appears to have suppressed all nobler motives. The bookstores were literally pornographic libraries. Mercier declared in 1796: "Only obscene books are displayed, especially those whose title-page and frontispiece mock and jeer at modesty and good taste. Everywhere these monstrosities are sold in baskets and pushcarts near the bridges, the doors of the theatres and the open streets. The poison is not expensive: ten sous a book." The principal market was the notorious Palais Royal, of which we shall later speak. This center of all vice was also the principal market for the obscene writings that flooded Paris. One found these works even in the toilette rooms of Parisian ladies. Bernard has an interesting tale about this which also serves to show the enormous spread of the writings of Marquis de Sade: "A respectable lady both in age and position had written out a list of books she intended to take to the country for herself and children and asked me to procure them for her. On the list was Justine or The Misfortunes of Virtue, which she thought was a pedagogical work!" That such writings were plentiful in bordellos was not strange and, indeed, such is the case today. Napoleon I ordered all such books found in the possession of prostitutes to be seized and destroyed; only one example of each to be saved for the National Library where they were still preserved in a special corner of the building.

De Sade forever talked of obscene books. Juliette and Clairwil ransacked the dwelling of a Carmelite monk, Claude, and found a select library of pornography. Juliette said: "You have no idea what obscene books and pictures we found there!" First they note the Porter of Chartreux, "more a comic than a dirty book, which the author, nevertheless, is supposed to have written on his death bed." Second, the Academy of Ladies, well conceived but poorly carried out. Third, the Education of Laura, a wretched work which had too little vice, murders and gouts crûels for Juliette. Finally, The Philosopher Therese, the enchanting book of Marquis d'Argens with pictures by Caylus, the only one of the four books that combined vice and atheism. And the monk had, of course, a number of the "wretched brochures that we found in all the cafés and bordellos."

The Marquis de Sade, indeed, intended his works to serve as models for all later obscene works.

We present as an orientation a short survey of the most important French erotica of the eighteenth century. For a complete list the student is referred to Gay's Bibliography of Erotica (six volumes).

The Ovid of the Eighteenth Century was Pierre Joseph Bernard (1708-1775). In 1761 appeared his l'Art d’aimer, a verse imitation of Ovid's Art at Love. Nevertheless it caused great excitement and was present in the toilette table of every respectable lady. The verses were bound together with rose-bands and were appropriately about billing and cooing. But these latter were very passionate and the plainness of speech compared with Ovid. Bernard enfolded in his poem a whole course of refined sexual life, in which he recommended strongly the reading of piquant works.

The younger Crébillon (Claude Prosper Jolyot de Crébillon, 1707-1777) can be called the real creator of lascivious writings in the eighteenth century. His writings were characterized by an "elegant cynicism and graceful vice." The most famous was The Sofa, a Moral Tale, whose title indicates the content of the work. Of a similar kind were The Loves of Zeo Kinizal, King of Cofirons (1746), which described the love adventures of Louis XV; The Night and The Moment (1755), Oh! What a Story! (1751), The Sins of the Heart and the Spirit (1796), etc. In Crébillon's novels the tendency is apparent: to prettify and justify the commonest sensuality with a philosophic cover.

Jean François Marmontel (1723-1799) created the type of anti-clerical novel in The Incas, and had unmistakable influence on the representation of the clergy in later erotic novels.

Sidelights on the History of M. Dirrag and Mlle. Eràdicée, in addition to the case of Girard (Dirrag) and Cadière (Eràdicée), portrayed the sexual debaucheries of the Jesuits. De Sade, as we have seen, ascribed this work to Marquis d'Argens and the pictures to Count Caylus.

André Robert Andréa de Nerciat (1739-1800) was for two years librarian in Cassel and was later confidant of Queen Charlotte at Naples. He wrote the notorious Félicia and a sequel Monrose or a Libertine by Fate.

That pornography at that time was fashionable and in good taste was shown most strikingly by the circumstance that the greatest figures of the age did not disdain the earning of this cheap fame. We have already mentioned that savant of the classical times, Caylus. But such men as Mirabeau and Diderot did not shrink from sullying their literary work by the production of obscene stories. Mirabeau especially was often quoted by de Sade and there is no doubt that Mirabeau’s Education of Laura served as the model for Philosophy in the Boudoir. In My Conversion Mirabeau described the experiences of a male prostitute, who had respectable ladies, nuns, etc., pay for his services. A third obscene book of Mirabeau’s was Erotica Biblion (1783).

In Denis Diderot's Jacques the Fatalist were presented obscene stories that put him below Crébillon's class. His famous The Sister which, "when first published, was thought to have been written by a nun, dealt with the torture to which a nun was put by the perverse lubricity of her abbess, for whom, it was said, Diderot found a model in the Abbess of Chelles, a daughter of the Regent, and thus a member of a family which for several generations showed a marked tendency to inversion." (Havelock Ellis in Sexual Inversion.) His Indiscreet Joys was also erotic and contained a number of paradoxical assertions and paronomasias in the sexual field; this feature probably gave occasion to de Sade's preference for Diderot.

Choderlos de Laclos was the Petronius of "a less literary and more degenerate epoch than that of the real Petronius." His much quoted Dangerous Liaisons described the corruption of the aristocracy, of which the author, the friend of the notorious Philippe Egalité, has first-hand knowledge.

Less cynical in his description of the debaucheries of the nobility was J. B. Louvet de Couvray who drew the type of the "chevalier" in his Loves of Chevalier de Faublas. In Faublas' rich love-adventures the hero (borrowed from the artificial effeminization of the real Chevalier d’Eon) played a rôle also found at the end of Juliette where Noirceuil, dressed as a woman, married a man.

Next to the Marquis de Sade the most famous erotic writer of the Revolutionary period was the productive Restif (Rétif) de la Bretonne. We shall later evaluate Rétif de la Bretonne as one of the first critics of de Sade. We are at present interested in him only as a contemporary of de Sade and in his influence upon him. It was plainly Rétif, whom de Sade referred to unfavorably in his novels: "R… floods the public and needs a printing press next to his bed. By good fortune they groan alone under his frightful products; a dull decrepit style, nauseous adventures in the worst society; no other merit but a great verbosity for which only the store-keepers will be thankful." May not professional jealousy have played a part in his judgment? We will later see that Rétif did not think much better of de Sade. It may also be that the highborn Marquis thought himself far removed from the lowborn Rétif.

Indeed Rétif de la Bretonne (1734-1806) mainly occupied himself with the representation of the moral corruption in the lower classes, thus supplementing the work of Marquis de Sade, with whom he had otherwise much in common. Eulenburg declares: "An infinitely closer figure to de Sade than Rousseau is that Rousseau du ruisseau Rétif de la Bretonne. He was lashed by a powerful sensuality and driven into a kind of exhibitionism by the idolatry of the ego. Therefore he was unequalled in understanding how to analyze the origin, essence and power of sexual life and to devote the ego to a greatly refined worship." There we have the germs of a literary de Sade but far weaker, more passive and less passionate. Were Rétif more active and impulsive, of a less contemplative nature, and were the means and milieu of the célébré Marquis given to the poor peasant's son from youth onward, then perhaps a second de Sade would have resulted, who would have been literally equal in power and in sensitiveness of description. Not aimlessly does Rétif praise above all this unusual sensitiveness, this "sensibility, sometimes delicate, sometimes horrible, cruel and wicked." We add to the characteristics of this remarkable writer that he was a passionate connoisseur of women and, unsatisfied with his very numerous mistresses, would run after every pretty girl he met on the street, and would not rest until he had made her acquaintance. He was personally of the greatest uncleanliness. He writes in the Contemporaries: "Since 1773 till today, December 6, 1796, I have brought no new clothes. I have no underwear. An old blue coat is my daily garment." Rétif hence loved cleanliness—in women. He continually spoke thereof, gave detailed information in this connection in his Pornography, and approved the spread of this virtue among the Parisian prostitutes.

Despite his own patient observations he did not hesitate to avail himself of the adventures of others. Count Alexander of Tilly told in his Memoirs that Rétif de la Bretonne came to him with the request that he tell him his erotic adventures so that he could put them in a book. Very important was the relation of Rétif to Mathieu François Pidanzat de Mairobert (1727- 1797), the famous author of The English Spy and the editor of Secret Memoirs of Bachaumont. The latter not only had his works printed at the secret press of Rétif but also collaborated with him in many works. One valuable treatise that appeared from there was Rétif's Pornography on the sixteen classes of prostitutes and panders. Also the Contemporaries, the Owl and the Paternal Malediction were enriched by Pidanzat de Mairobert.

The greatest work of Rétif was undoubtedly Nights of Paris, an inexhaustible thesaurus for the moral life in the Revolutionary period, the only representation of its kind of the moral physiognomy of Paris at the end of the eighteenth century, the true Nocturnal Tableaux of Paris, whose content rendered necessary a twenty years' work. "Every morning," said Rétif, "I wrote down what I had seen in the night." The result was eight voluminous volumes from which unfortunately space does not permit us to quote.

In Monsieur Nicolas (Paris, 1794-1797, 16 vols.) Rétif de la Bretonne told the story of his life more truthfully than the authors of such similar works as Faublas, Clarissa and Heloise. Of especial interest is the thirteenth volume, My Calendar, in which Rétif, day by day, wrote down all the women, whose acquaintance he had made and whom he had seduced and made pregnant.

His Contemporaries is a collection of tales that are founded on actual experiences. The heroes of these adventures were supposed to have authorized the author to use their real names. They are essentially tales of the moral life of the people.

The Farmer and the Perverted Farmer's Wife or the Dangers of the City are the liaisons dangereuses of the lower classes, which preach the sad truth that virtue through constant intercourse with vice necessarily is destroyed.

Fanchette's Feet is the story of a young modist from the Rue Saint-Denis, whose small foot enchanted Rétif, for he was an outspoken foot-fetichist. He had a fanatic passion for pretty women's feet and shoes. Franchette's feet are indeed the heroes of the story.

"Her foot, her small foot, that turns so many heads was shod with a pink pump, so beautifully made and as worthy of enclosing such a beautiful foot that my eyes once fixed on that charming foot could not turn themselves away. Beautiful foot! I said very softly, you don't walk on Persian or Turkish carpets, a beautiful carriage does not guarantee you the fatigue of carrying that superb body, that masterpiece of the graces, but you have an eternal throne in my heart."

He really did see "Franchette" one day in the Rue Saint-Denis, and her feet, "her wonderfully small feet," inspired him to write the story.

The work of Rétif that sounded most like those of the Marquis de Sade was Innocent Saxancour or the Divorced Woman, supposedly the story of his unhappily married daughter, Agnes. Rétif in this work "crossed the boundaries of the boldest cynicism" and the author himself said that one will find in the work "all things that are called atrocities.” The unfortunate wife after the marriage had to submit to all the moods of a degenerate roué from her husband; she suffered the most unbelievable infamies and horrors of her passionate tyrant.

We will refer to some other works of his in a later, more pertinent section. In conclusion to our short survey, which stresses only the characteristic works, we wish to remark on two very well known obscene poems of the eighteenth century. The first is Fourtromania, a Lascivious Poem far Connoisseurs. It contained six stanzas, each of 600 verses. The "foutroamania" is the good luck of the gods, that drives away the boredom. But it also makes men happy. The author led the dance of these fortunates with Mlle. Dubois, an actress of the Comédie Française. Then follow the ladies Aroux and Clarion. At the end of the first stanza appear the duchesses and ladies of the court, who satisfy themselves with their lackies. Finally the inexhaustible libido of old Polignac de Paulien is described.

The second stanza starts with the description of the charms of a young girl, who succumbs to the passions of a young roué. Inserted is a poem Father Chrysostome against sexual debaucheries in the convents. Later a man suffering from satyriasis breaks into the convent. Then follows an attack on tribadism and pederasty. The old Due d'Elboeuf was one of the first who introduced the sect of pederasts to France. The conclusion is an excursion on syphilis.

The third stanza is almost entirely devoted to the rôle of syphilis in love. First the high perfection in the healing of this grave ailment is praised; then the "syphilitic heroes of love" are extolled. Archbishop of Lyons, Sire de Montazet, etc., are named together with the Duchesse de Mazarin. After highly indecent expressions on the Duke of Orleans and Madame de Montesson the liaison between the Duchess of Orleans and de I'Aigle as well as de MeIfort is disclosed, the last two receiving syphilis from the duchess. Finally, high praise for Aretino, the discoverer of the “plastic positions."

The fourth stanza is devoted to the praise of the bordellos. The famous procuresses and madames are presented: Paris, Cardier, Rockingston, Montigny, d’Hericourt and Gourdan. Description of the orgies in these infamous resorts. "Bed and Board" must then follow, hence German women are more susceptible to "foutromania." The author curses Italy where he lost health and wealth.

In the fifth stanza the syphilophobias are encouraged. Not all women have syphilis. Montesquieu had been in the fire as had been Rousseau and Marmontel. Great praise for Dorat, the poète foutromane. The Hollanders who love only money. Description of the immoral cardinals. Spinola sleeps at Palestrina's, Albani at Altieri's, Bernis at Saint-Croix, Borghese is… It's too bad that the "Dames de France," the aunts of Louis XVI, live in celibacy.

Agyroni, the author of a popular work on the therapy of syphilis, is the hero of the sixth stanza. This charlatan had indeed cured the author of his complaint. Numerous medical details as in Robé’s poem on syphilis. For a conclusion, “foutromania” is again praised as the soul of the universe.

The second poem, Parapilla, is a translation of the Italian original Il Cazzo (Phallus), the favorite word of Pope Benedict XIV. When a courtier pointed to the obscenity of the word, he replied: "Cazzo, cazzo! I will repeat it until it no longer sounds dirty." The French poem consists of five stanzas whose content, in short, is: Rodric receives from Heaven a certain instrument that makes all women happy. Firstly in Florence, the famous Donna Capponi. Then it thrives in a nunnery in the hands of Lucrezia, the daughter of Alexander VI. The debaucheries of this pope in Rome are then described and the poem closes with an obscene conversation between him and his daughter.

We could only touch on the most important erotic works of the French literature of the eighteenth century. Their influence on morals was tremendous and the Marquis de Sade was sensible of this influence. In his Ideas on the Novel he showed that he had recognized the significance of pornography. He said: "The epicureanism of Ninon de Lenclos, Marion de Lorme, Marquise de Sévigné and de Lafare, Chaulieu, St. Evremond, this entire society, tired of mere cytheric love, turned to Buffon, held that only bodily passions were worthwhile in love, and soon changed the style in novels. The writers found it simpler to amuse and corrupt these women than to serve and glorify them. They created incidents, descriptions and conversations more in the spirit of the time and developed its cynicism and immorality in a pleasant, easy and at times philosophic style."

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Art

The French art of the eighteenth century was also a true mirror of the time. Architecture, painting, theatre and dance all served in excitation of the senses. The famous "rococo" was nothing less than a picture of harmony. Rococoism followed the inspirations of the artistically excited senses in the preference for detailed ornamentation, in intricate interlaced lines, in the representation of passionate scenes and delicately conceived "nudités." A splendid description of the graphic arts and especially of architecture was given by Georg Brandes: "What was sought after in architecture under Louis XIV was the impressive. Heavily interlaced and cumbersome details were the general style. The petites maisons of the time were a prerequisite of the man of the world. Every part of the room was designed to excite the mind. Indeed all the rooms smelled of passionate perfume…”

The eighteenth century was expressed even more clearly in its painting than in its architecture. The desire for something new "to delight the blasé appetites" gave the artists a cunning talent for inventiveness. Fragonard, Lancret, the painter of fêtes galantes, disdained the simple naive nudity of the goddesses of Lebrun and Nicholas Mignard. Their baigneuses and bergères are no longer mythological figures but Parisian prostitutes who are displayed in voluptuous positions in bath or bed. These pleasant naiads and coquettish shepherdesses with bare breasts and more or less revealing dress were women of the time, ladies, "very much in vogue at the little parties at Trianon and Lucrinnes."

If books worked so much for the glorification of sexual passions, then their graphic representation must have been a thousand times more effective. "The realism of the painter shows itself in actions and in words, in books and in songs; it is bound to exert a bold influence on the youth by overexciting the sexual senses." And the Marquis de Sade, who told in his novels all the possible means of increasing sexual pleasure, had Saint Fond cry out after a wild orgy: "Oh! A painter should be here now so that he might hand down to posterity this passionate and divine picture!"

Hence it could not fail but happen that after the piquant Nudités of Fragonard and Lancret all sorts of obscene pictures would spread enormously. It was not unusual for mistresses to have painted for their lovers pictures or casts of themselves in the nude. Well known is the story of O'Morphi, mistress of Louis XV, inmate of the Deer Park, and for whom Louis XV had to thank the famous adventurer Casanova in this wise. Casanova, in one of his many love-adventures in Paris, had made the acquaintance of a Flemish actress, O'Morphi, who had a young sister of surpassing beauty, whose charms Casanova enthusiastically described. He had a painting made of this splendid body in the "divine manner" for six louisdors. The posture in which she was painted was "entrancing." "She lay on her belly, resting her arm and bosom on a cushion and held her head turned about as if lying three-fourths on her back. The artist has painted her bottom part with such great talent and truth that it is impossible to imagine anything more beautiful." A friend of Casanova was very eager to procure a copy of this painting. The painter exhibited in Versailles this copy which Saint-Quentin found so beautiful that be rushed off with it to the king. "His most Christian majesty, a great connoisseur in this field, wanted to convince himself with his own eyes whether the painter had made a true copy, and whether the original was as beautiful as the copy." Thus Casanova lost his mistress to Louis XV, who, after a payment of one thousand louisdors to her sister, had her brought to his Deer Park, where after a year she came down with child. The infant was immediately spirited away lest the queen be disturbed.

Casanova later showed this famous picture to a French nun in Aix, with whom he had an affair. The nun, too, had herself painted for Casanova, in the same obscene posture.

Especially before the Revolution the most immoral pictures were distributed in and about the bordellos without hindrance from the police. From 1790 to 1793 the most shameful caricatures of Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette, etc., were distributed to the customers in the bordellos. One can truly say that these places contributed greatly to the political breakdown of France. In the Reign of Terror such pictures were to be found not alone in the bordellos but in public shops and galleries where the boldest pictures imaginable of the most strange and obscene pictures hung in open display.

That erotica were richly illustrated with obscene pictures is understood. The novels of Marquis de Sade were no exception to the rule. We shall return later to this subject.

La Chronique Scandaleuse reported a remarkable hiding place for obscene pictures, "a new kind of obscenity, an epoch-making discovery." This was the vestes de petits-soupers. According to the fashion of that time coats or jackets were buttoned to the neck; hence the vests or waistcoats could not be seen. But during the orgies the gay young bloods would unbutton their jackets and show their vests decorated with paintings and stickers, which showed with true fidelity the very orgies themselves!

There was still another kind of obscene pictures we must discuss. For de Sade defecation was also an object of pleasure and passion. The faeces were delicious and were swallowed by men and women as a great delicacy. One can hardly believe it! Even the act of defecation was presented before the eyes of the Parisians. Reichart tells that poems, essays and pictures, all describing, praising and extolling this act were offered on every corner to passersby. Even respectable persons bought these pamphlets and treated the whole matter as a rich joke.

Sculpture also tried to extol the purely sensual in its limited fashion. Virgin nudity was profaned by the expression of sensual love. The women were almost always represented as petites filles, lascivious courtesans, wanton shop-girls, etc.

André Grétry, the chief representative of French music of the eighteenth century, who loved "filles et fillettes" all the time, showed in his musical works no noble passion but only lust.

That Marquis de Sade was a true product of the age was shown by the fact that he also was bitten by the mania of the age; "thespian madness, mimomania." He not only wrote many plays but also directed some amateur productions. The passion for the theater, the "mimomania," ruled in France during the entire century with a force scarcely comprehensible to us today. Throughout the entire country amateur societies sprung up.

There was a theatre in every castle, in every noble house. "It is an unbelievable mania," said Bachaumont, "even every pimp wants to have a stage and troupe in his home!" Theatrical madness also ran in the circle of the clergy. Louis XV, of course, by Pompadour's influence, had the plays presented in the Court.

The drama, especially in the last decade before the Revolution, had taken on an ever freer character. We have already mentioned Lanyon's convent plays. Shortly before and during the Revolution there came a real flood of obscene comedies against the king and church. The number of these so-called Pièces révolutionnaires is very great. The most extreme are by Guigoud Pigale (The Triumph of Public Reason), Léonard Bourdon (The Grave of Imposters of the Temple of the Revolutionary Truth, dedicated to the Pope), Sylvain Maréchal (The Last Judgments of the King), Desbarreaux (The Potentates Crushed by the Mountain and the Reason or the Deportation of the Kings of Europe). In the last-named play the princes of Europe quarrel about a piece of land. The Empress Catherine says to the Pope; "Have you swallowed your piece, Holy Father?" He answers: "Don't worry, you'll have the first try." Thereupon he boxes the ears of the King of Prussia who retaliates by stepping on his corns, and so the merry conversation proceeds with familiarities and obscenities.

The Marquis de Sade had a further model in the notorious Théâre gaillard for his obscene comedies which he had his fellow-prisoners play in Bicêtre and in Charenton. The obscenity went further than mere words. In April, 1791, there existed in the Palais Royal a public theatre where a so-called savage and his mate, both nude, before the eyes of a crowded audience of both sexes, went through the act of coition. Coitus as a play! That must have pleased the numerous voyeurs of the city, who appear in de Sade's novels. La Mettrie had already said: "The pleasure that other people's pleasure afford us" in his Art of Joy. The magistrate finally had both actors summoned before him. It was discovered that the Savage was a rascal from the suburb St. Antoine and that the female was a common whore who earned her money in this wise from the curious spectators.

The actresses, opera singers, chorus and ballet girls formed a very desirable number of the prostitutes, whom we shall treat of later. The foyers of the theatres were the "favorite hunting grounds for paramour, pander and prostitute."

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Fashion

Clothing! That can make women seem more desirable by showing just slight hints of charms and arousing the passions of both sexes. That is the rôle which Marquis de Sade had Minister Saint Fond impart to fashion. Saint Fond also recommended to Juliette that she should show herself half naked in the streets to the public if she wanted to remove her last vestige of modesty.

Here, too, de Sade let reality speak. The advice of Saint Fond was actually followed. "On a quiet day of the year V of the Revolution two women paraded up and down the Champs-Elysées, completely nude and covered only with a thin gauze. Many women also showed themselves with wholly base bosoms. The sight was not unusual."

The blaséness was shown in remarkable conceits. Young men and women tried to better nature and borrowed the white hair of age. The de Goncourts excellently describe the incessant changes in fashion in their bizarre fancies, their delicate concealment and unveilment, the gigantic friseurs of the women, their "make-up," beauty spots and patches, etc. Fashion paid homage to the age.

The nearer one comes to the time of the Revolution the more does nudity appear in fashion. The style of gauze, the preference for gossamer becomes more apparent. The clothing of the "Goddesses of Reason" becomes ever more transparent. Clothing retreated to the center to show its opposite semicircles, bosom and legs. Ankle bracelets and golden rings on the toes were the fashion. Terpsichore, in the Greek fashion, reigned in the public gardens. A journalist who attended the opening of the Parisian Tivoli, declared that the goddesses appeared in such light and transparent dress that nothing was left to the imagination. "The women in the audience are dressed as outrageously as possible. The indecency of their behavior is impossible to describe. In the last great ball in the opera house Madame Tallien appeared garbed only with jewels in the necessary place." These costumes, whose wearers were called merveilleuses, had been introduced in Paris by Therese Cabarries, the mistress of Tallien, after she thus publicly showed herself in the Reign of Terror in Bordeaux. The male merveilleuses were called incroyables and clothed themselves according to the ideal of offensiveness. For during the Revolution the highest ideal was not beauty but power and strength of muscles. Don Juan was changed to Hercules.

The perverse sexual impulses also found expression in fashion. The wide spread paedicatio, also practiced between man and woman, brought the notable fashion of the so-called "Cul de Paris." It spread to such an extent that even the prostitutes delighted in this form of passion, since it was the "style." Under Louis XVI the seat in women's dress was so extended that they resembled "Venus Hottentote."

On the other hand, tribadism was a cause of rather strange costumes. The tribades with male inclinations had remarkably increased during the Reign of Terror. The virago on the streets was a daily incident. Her costume differed little from the man's. Since her hair was cut close and her voice was strident, it took a good look to make sure of the sex.