Additional, though less marked, evidence of her bias appears in Rachilde’s second novel, _Madame Adonis_, which came out in Paris in 1886 without serious moralistic repercussions. From a literary viewpoint it shows some advance in maturity, being fairly free of florid description, vague philosophy, and erotic purple patches. There is even a touch of satire in the delineation of a miserly provincial woman lumber-dealer and her despotic persecution of her son and his Parisian wife, as well as in the Dickensian portrait of the girl’s alcoholic father. But although comparative realism makes it more convincing, the plot is hardly less bizarre than that of _Monsieur Vénus_. It details the havoc wrought upon the young couple by a picturesque individual who first in the guise of a romantic artist woos the wife, and later as a _galante_ and domineering woman captivates the man. Continuing to pose alternately as twin brother or sister, this person convinces each of the young people that the other is unfaithful, and so manages to consummate affairs with both. Only when, goaded too far, the jealous husband surprises and kills his wife’s lover, do they learn that only one person is involved—a woman. She has deceived the wife as to her sex by artificial means. No etiology is suggested for the woman’s sexual dualism beyond her rebellion, like that of Raoule de Vénérande, against a feminine role. Light is shed upon the author by the tingling vitality of her descriptions of the central figure in the male role as compared with her parallel pictures of the same character as a woman, and also by the love scenes between the woman and the young wife. These are more convincing than the conquest of the man which is motivated largely by vindictive arrogance. Seasoned readers of biography will not be surprised to learn that beyond her marriage in 1899 to Alfred Vallette, then editor of the _Mercure de France_, few facts about Rachilde’s own emotional life are available. André David compares her personality to that of the Chevalier d’Eon, famous diplomat and transvestist of the eighteenth century, whose sex was an enigma to all Europe not finally solved until his death; Ernest Boyd refers to her assumption of men’s clothing in her teens when she came to Paris and was befriended by Sarah Bernhardt;[11] but neither alludes to homosexuality. David does mention, however, her long and close friendship with Verlaine, whose homosexual connection with Arthur Rimbaud was a scandal in the late nineteenth century.