Page:Teleny, or The Reverse of the Medal, t. II.djvu/76

 I began to feel their carnal stings long before I could understand what conclusion they imported. When I had tried to bridle my lust, was it my fault if the scale of reason was far too light to balance that of sensuality? Was I to blame if I could not argue down my raging motion? Fate, Iago-like, had clearly shewed me that if I would damn myself, I could do so in a more delicate way than drowning. I yielded to my destiny, and encompassed my joy.

"Withal, I never said with Iago,—'Virtue, a fig!' No, virtue is the sweet flavour of the peach: vice, the tiny droplet of prussic-acid—its delicious savour. Life, without either, would be sapidless."

"Still, not having, like most of us, been inured to sodomy from your school-days, I should have thought that you would have been loath to have yielded your body to another man's pleasure."

"Loath? Ask the virgin if she regrets having given up her maidenhood to the lover she dotes on, and who fully returns her love? She has lost a treasure that all the wealth of Golconda cannot