Page:The Perfumed Garden - Burton - 1886.djvu/248

 232 us to admit the existence of two works, one elementary, the other learned? And might it not be by reason of a little remnant of bashfulness, that the author has reserved for the twenty-first chapter without any previous allusion, the remarkable subjects which we do not find hinted at in any other place?

To put the question in this fashion is at the same time to solve it, and to solve it in the affirmative. That interminable chapter would not be a product of interpolations. It is too long and too serious a work to admit of such a supposition. The little that we have seen of it seems to bear the stamp of well-pronounced originality, and to be composed with too much method, not to be the work—and entirely the work—of the master.

One may be surprised that this text is so rare, but the answer is very simple. As the translator judiciously observes in his notice, the matters treated in the twenty-first chapter are of a nature to startle many people. See! an Arab, who practises in secret paederasty, affects in public rigid an austere manners, while he discusses without constraint in his conversation everything that concerns the natural coitus. Thus you will easily understand that he would not wish to be suspected of reading such a book, by which his reputation would be compromised in the eyes of his co-religionists while he would, without hesitation exhibit a book which treated of the coitus only. Another consideration, moreover, suffices to completely explain the rarity of the work; its compass makes it very expensive, and the manuscript is not attainable by everybody on account of the high price it reaches.

However it may be regards the origin of the text, having the three documents in our possession we have given