yes, they say that the red breeches get over the women, but the black gown
bewitches them. Explain that if you can. They want to know what is
underneath that wicked cassock. Something strange, mysterious, monstrous
attracts them. Women love enormities, and besides it must be said,
especially and above all, forbidden fruit.

The Captain had mounted his favourite hobby, I could only let him go on.

--They are vice incarnate, and know how to employ every means to seduce.
Religion, the confessional, the bible, the Mass, Vespers, the New
Testament, all the holy business is an auxiliary for them. For instance,
conceive anything more disgusting than that pardon promised beforehand to
guilty women. Play the whore all your life, deceive your husband, have
fifty lovers, provided that at the end you lament your faults, God will
have only tenderness for you, and will receive you with open arms. I should
like to know if by chance their Jesus had taken a wife, what would have
been his opinion then of the woman taken in adultery; but he remained
single and consequently incompetent to decide upon that delicate matter.
All that, you see, is an encouragement to debauchery and a stimulant to
lewdness. A devout woman, when she is young and pretty, is on a slope which
leads quite straight to Monsieur le Curé's bed.




XVIII.


THE VISIT.