“Ah, now I understand you!” “—I mean that, through the duties of their religious faith, their way of living has been given over to an assiduous and an empirical study of all the charms peculiar to a woman, the more particularly as these charms are employed—” “Let us say, in the exercise of their religion,” Gerald suggested, “for I wholly understand you, sir.” “It has followed that the taste of these ladies has become more delicate. It has followed that, by force of considering their own feminine loveliness, always unveiled and in lively employment, and by comparing it so intimately and so jealously with the loveliness of their female rivals in the service of the wrinkled goddess, they have become connoisseurs of the beauties peculiar to their sex. They have acquired a refinement of taste—” “To be refined in one’s taste is eminently praiseworthy. Ah, my dear fellow, if you but knew what shocking examples of bad taste we kings are continually encountering among our sycophants! And that reminds me, you said something about a princess—” “—They have learned to despise the hasty and boisterous and, between ourselves, the very often disappointing ways of men—” “Ah, yes, no doubt!” said Gerald. “Men are a bad lot. But we were speaking of a princess—” “—And they have lovingly contrived more finespun and more rococo diversions without the crude assistance of any man. Then also they delight in playing with many well-trained pets,—with goats and large dogs and asses and, they tell me, with rams and with bulls also. The surprising and mysterious joys which blaze up among these flute-players are, thus, very violent and delicious.” Gerald said then that kindness to dumb animals was generally reckoned a most estimable trait in the United States of America. Whereas, in all quarters of that enlightened and hospitable republic, Gerald estimated, a princess— “Yet,” Horvendile went on, “these learned women do not forget, in mere pleasure-seeking, their religious duty of permitting no man to pass by unpleased. Go to them, therefore, you will be welcome. Yonder at this instant a religious festival is preparing. Yonder sweet-voiced Leucosia, who hereabouts is called Evadne, waits for you—” “But I have not the honor of knowing this Evadne—” “She is easily known, by her violet hair and her sharp teeth. Moreover, Gerald, her wise sisters—Telês, and Parthenopê, and Radnê, and Ligeia, and Molpê,—all these will greet you with ardor. They will deny to you no secret of their pious rites; they will share with you esoteric joys religiously. They will incite you to perform among their choir, in the most secret shrine of Koleos Koleros—” “But, really now, my dear fellow! I have no talent whatever for music. I would be quite out of place in any choir.”