"O vièrge, quand pourrai-je te posséder pour ma compagne cherie? Combien de temps faut-il encore que tes vœux soient accomplis? Dis-moi le jour qui doit devancer la belle nuit où tous deux, Alimenterons le feu qui nous fit naitre et que nous devons perpetuer."[147-1] There is a bright as well as a dark side even to such a worship. In Mexico, Peru, and Yucatan, the women who watched the flames must be undoubted virgins; they were usually of noble blood, and must vow eternal chastity, or at least were free to none but the ruler of the realm. As long as they were consecrated to the fire, so long any carnal ardor was degrading to their lofty duties. The sentiment of shame, one of the first we find developed, led to the belief that to forego fleshly pleasures was a meritorious sacrifice in the eyes of the gods. In this persuasion certain of the Aztec priests practised complete abscission or entire discerption of the virile parts, and a mutilation of females was not unknown similar to that immemorially a custom in Egypt.[147-2] Such enforced celibacy was, however, neither common nor popular. Circumcision, if it can be proven to have existed among the red race--and though there are plenty of assertions to that effect, they are not satisfactory to an anatomist--was probably a symbolic renunciation of the lusts of the flesh. The same cannot be said of the very common custom with the Aztec race of anointing their idols with blood drawn from the genitals, the tongue, and the ears. This was simply a form of those voluntary scarifications, universally employed to mark contrition or grief by savage tribes, and nowhere more in vogue than with the red race.