Concerning another great modern writer--Paul Verlaine, the first of modern French poets--it seems possible to speak with less hesitation. A man who possessed in fullest measure the irresponsible impressionability of genius, Verlaine--as his work shows and as he himself admitted--all his life oscillated between normal and homosexual love, at one period attracted to women, at another to men. He was without doubt, it seems to me, bisexual. An early connection with another young poet, Arthur Rimbaud, terminated in a violent quarrel with his friend, and led to Verlaine's imprisonment at Mons. In after-years he gave expression to the exalted passion of this relationship--_mon grand péché radieux_--in _Læti et Errabundi_, published in the volume entitled _Parallèlement_; and in later poems he has told of less passionate and less sensual relationships which yet were more than friendship, for instance, in the poem, "_Mon ami, ma plus belle amitié, ma Meilleure_" in _Bonheur_.[100] In this brief glance at some of the ethnographical, historical, religious, and literary aspects of homosexual passion there is one other phenomenon which may be mentioned. This is the alleged fact that, while the phenomena exist to some extent everywhere, we seem to find a special proclivity to homosexuality (whether or not involving a greater frequency of congenital inversion is not usually clear) among certain races and in certain regions.[101] In Europe this would be best illustrated by the case of southern Italy, which in this respect is held to be distinct from northern Italy, although Italians generally are franker than men of northern race in admitting their sexual practices.[102] How far the supposed greater homosexuality of southern Italy may be due to Greek influence and Greek blood it is not very easy to say.