In one of his latest novels, _Les Rencontres de M. de Breot_,
Henri de Regnier, one of the most notable of recent French
novelists, narrates an episode bearing on the matter before us. A
personage of the story is sitting for a moment in a dark grotto
during a night fete in a nobleman's park, when two ladies enter
and laughingly proceed to raise their garments and accomplish a
natural necessity. The man in the background, suddenly overcome
by a sexual impulse, starts forward; one lady runs away, the
other, whom he detains, offers little resistance to his advances.
To M. de Breot, whom he shortly after encounters, he exclaims,
abashed at his own actions: "Why did I not flee? But could I
imagine that the spectacle of so disgusting a function would have
any other effect than to give me a humble opinion of human
nature?" M. de Breot, however, in proceeding to reproach his
interlocutor for his inconsiderate temerity, observes: "What you
tell me, sir, does not entirely surprise me. Nature has placed
very various instincts within us, and the impulse that led you to
what you have just now done is not so peculiar as you think. One
may be a very estimable man and yet love women even in what is
lowliest in their bodies.
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