took them off to put on green slippers with rose heels and
borders which he thought equally exciting. As soon as she had
left the room, he continues, "carried away by the most impetuous
passion and idolizing Colette, I seemed to see her and touch her
in handling what she had just worn; my lips pressed one of these
jewels, while the other, deceiving the sacred end of nature, from
excess of exaltation replaced the object of sex (I cannot express
myself more clearly). The warmth which she had communicated to
the insensible object which had touched her still remained and
gave a soul to it; a voluptuous cloud covered my eyes." He adds
that he would kiss with rage and transport whatever had come in
close contact with the woman he adored, and on one occasion
eagerly pressed his lips to her cast-off underlinen, _vela
secretiora penetralium_.

At this period Restif's foot-fetichism reached its highest point
of development. It was the aberration of a highly sensitive and
very precocious boy. While the preoccupation with feet and shoes
persisted throughout life, it never became a complete perversion
and never replaced the normal end of sexual desire. His love for
Madam Parangon, one of the deepest emotions in his whole life,
was also the climax of his shoe-fetichism. She represented his
ideal woman, an ethereal sylph with wasp-waist and a child's
feet; it was always his highest praise for a woman that she
resembled Madame Parangon, and he desired that her slipper should
be buried with him. (Restif de la Bretonne, _Monsieur Nicolas_,
vols. i-iv, vol. xiii, p. 5; id., _Mes Inscriptions_, pp. ci-cv.)

Shoe-fetichism, more especially if we include under this term all
the cases of real or pseudo-masochism in which an attraction to