Page:Teleny, or The Reverse of the Medal, t. I.djvu/110

 yes! but people have long since taken French leave of the cowl, hoodwinking the whole affair by hooding their falcon with a "French letter."

"Yes, but are we not born with a leaden cowl—namely, this Mosaic religion of ours, improved upon by Christ's mystic precepts, and rendered impossibly perfect by Protestant hypocrisy; for if a man commit adultery with a woman every time he looks at her, did I not commit sodomy with Teleny every time I saw him or even thought of him?

"There were moments however when, nature being stronger than prejudice, I should right willingly have given up my soul to perdition—nay, yielded my body to suffer in eternal hell-fire—if in the meanwhile I could have fled somewhere on the confines of this earth, on some lonely island, where in perfect nakedness I could have lived for some years in deadly sin with him, feasting upon his fascinating beauty.

"Still I resolved to keep aloof from him, to be his motive power, his guiding spirit, to make of him a great, a famous, artist. As for the fire of lewdness burning within me—well, if I could