We were once more alone. I had left with Violette the preceding evening, a copy of a letter for M. Beruchet. She had written it and forwarded it; there was nothing further to be done in that quarter, and we might rest in peace. No unpleasant enquiries or researches would now be made on account of Violette's sudden disappearance.

She had been too busy thinking to feel dull. All I had told her made an impression on her mind, and she had been pondering on the mysteries I had disclosed. Then, her curiosity being awakened, she had divested herself of all her garments, lighted the candles, and minutely examined her person. But as she had never seen any other woman naked she could not judge the degree of perfection or imperfection of the different parts of her form. Getting tired of this examination, she had set herself to read, but as chance would have it, the book she had taken up was just the sort of book that would set her mind to working. She was in an utter state of perplexity, for the work she was perusing was, Mademoiselle de Maupin by Theophile Gautier.

Now Mademoiselle de Maupin, in the garb of a dashing cavalier, made love to a young lady, and the intrigue wound up by one of those enigmatical scenes of which only a perfect knowledge of the ways of ancient civilization could furnish any clue.

This was the very scene that made poor Violette wonder so. I explained that, in the same way that among molluscs and plants hermaphrodites are to be found (or beings possessing either sex) there were in the animal kingdom, on woman especially, instances of bisexual organs, in appearance at least, on account of the large proportions of the clitoris. I told her that the Greeks, great worshippers, or rather fanatics, of physical beauty, with the view of creating beauteous forms not existing in nature, supposed that the son of Mercury and Venus had been seen bathing in the waters of a fountain, by the nymph Salamacis, who begged the gods to unite her body to that of her lover. The gods granted her prayer, and from the adjunction of female beauty to male beauty there sprang a creature with both sexes, experiencing the same amorous desires for man or woman, and able to satisfy them in both ways.