‘Why, if a scientist today diagnoses hysteria from the same symptoms that for Bodin [Attorney to Henri III and author of _Démonomanie des Sorciers_, 1580] proved demonic possession, should not current neuroses be, under other names, simply the old spells used by sorcerers? If divine grace is present in the bread and wine [of the sacrament], why not diabolic malice in opium, hashish, morphine? He who takes alcohol imbibes Satan. An emetic is an exorcist.’[28] This could be sailing close to a biochemical explanation of psychopathology, or, employed by Mendès who was at least a nominal Catholic, it could indicate a half-serious suspicion of supernatural influence. At another point he distinguishes between relatively harmless and “serious” homosexual activity. ‘Rejected lovers, deceived wives, may console one another and forget to mention it to their confessors. Brilliant young belles dizzy with champagne and dancing may fall into each others’ arms as they undress at dawn. Prostitutes may seek the tender love they have never known, or consolation for men’s brutality. Only the conscious, cool, deliberate players of man’s role are courting damnation.’[29] There is no indication of heredity bearing the burden here. Indeed, Mendès seems to absolve his heroine from responsibility for her actions up to the time of her desertion by Emmaline and her escape to Paris; that is, so long as she is physically innocent and motivated by love. But from that point on, each step in her downward course results from a deliberate refusal of motherhood, the final one involving repudiation of even her early love for Emmaline. Interesting to a modern analyst would be her obsession with Emmaline’s breast, which had a parallel in Mlle Tantale’s reaction to her friend Camilla. Josephin Peladan, author of _La Gynandre_ (1891) states differently the same thesis: there is no such thing as lesbian Love, it is simply one of the sexual vices. This novel is one in a long series designed to expose all these vices under the heading _La Décadence Latine_, which unless checked, he says, forebodes the end of French civilization. (He also proclaims the volume to be in part a satire on current lesbian fiction.) The hero of the tale, a young intellectual known merely as Tammuz, is, like his author, both Catholic and Rosicrucian, his mission the conversion of Lesbos to a constructive worship of Eros. The only other male protagonist is a novelist, Nergal. These names are derived from Assyrian-Babylonian mythology and represent sun gods and the generative principle, in opposition to all the female lunar divinities.