What may be called a middle-class allusion appears in the memoirs of the Comte de Tilly (1800) when he tells of being drawn in as second in a duel by two young men in an inn at Chartres who wished to settle a quarrel at once. The matter involves a girl whom both had known intimately and one had promised by signed agreement to marry within the year, come what might. The prospective bridegroom learned that “the treacherous Julie was acquainted with a lady of this town who was suspected of having habits once much in vogue in Lesbos and which to the shame of our time have made alarming progress even in the provinces,” and accused the other man of having known this when he foisted Julie off on him. Without denying the charge, the accused says to de Tilly: “I confess this sort of rivalry gives me no ill humor, on the contrary it amuses me, and I am so lacking in morals as to laugh at it.”[19] Several other examples of lesbian activity, some of them involving nuns, are to be found _passim_ in Casanova’s memoirs. * * * * * From the viewpoint of mere numerical count the richest field for the gleaner of variant incident would be that literature—not quite reputable from the English reader’s viewpoint—which is farthest removed from the romantic. In romance, sexual attraction is an experience so personal and subjective that true lovers can be satisfied only with one another, and separation or an extraneous attraction on the part of either constitutes tragedy. Woman’s role often transcends that of man because any lapse on her part entrains personal and social consequences of extreme gravity. That is, the romantic viewpoint is relatively feminine. In the other type of narrative, sometimes erroneously classed with realism, the sexual act is all-important, enjoyable with any adequate partner since sensual pleasure eclipses all subjective factors. Here a woman may be an enthusiastic and carefree playmate, a coy jade to be taken by trickery, or an aggressive, even sadistic, snarer of the hapless male. Her one requisite is a sexual appetite to equal her partner’s, and she is apparently immune to physical, and indifferent to social, consequences. In short, the outlook here is masculine. If the percentage of women authors is low in all areas of literature, in this one it reaches the vanishing point. Not even Margaret of Navarre nor Aphra Behn, famed as they are for a free approach, go all the way with their brother writers.