Page:Edward Prime-Stevenson - The Intersexes.djvu/264

 The sporadic courage of a-woman-duellist, with rapier, broadsword and pistol, is essentially of the military kind. The French Communal struggles in 1870-71, developed many amazingly courageous women-soldiers, who defended barricades and fought like tigresses. But such amazons were of doubtful moral courage; often killing and burning for the mere frantic nervous pleasure of such a debauch of blood. Many of these unsexed women were similisexual—sapphistic prostitutes, or similar, in instincts and habits. On the other hand, many were entirely normal sexually.

In fact, the woman-soldier whose type and history night be taken as presupposing her being an Uraniad, but whose similisexualism should not be affirmed without conclusive knowledge, is of constant recurrence. Captain Rosa Castellanos, a heroine of the recent Spanish-American War in Cuba, was a conspicuous example of the woman-warrior. One of the recently-deceased pensionnaires of the Hôtel des Invalides in Paris, Madame D—, had fought with great distinction in the Napoleonic campaigns, had received formal right to wear male clothing (of course including her uniform) and died at a great age, in the national institution named. Very recently came to newspaper notice quite as striking a military woman. One of the magistrates presiding in the chief criminal court of Toulon summoned as witness in a robbery-affair Madame I—, mentioned as a widow, employed at La Verriere. The justice was rather surprised when a gentleman presented "himself," correctly attired as such, in frock-coat and overcoat, and so on. But Madame I—, for she it was, explained that during thirty-seven years she had worn only male clothing, by special permission from the French Government, because of her notable service in the Franco-Prussian War, in which she had taken part with honour and danger, as a spy and in the ranks. Madame I— gave no other than a masculine impression of herself; she smoked and drank moderately. She declared