You will tell me that everything is contradictory in this world; that it was forbidden by the Jewish law to marry two sisters, which was deemed a very indecent act, and yet Jacob married Rachel during the life of her elder sister Leah; and that this Rachel is evidently a type of the Roman Catholic and apostolic church. You are doubtless right, but that prevents not an individual who sleeps with two sisters in Europe from being grievously censured. As to powerful and dignified princes, they may take the sisters of their wives for the good of their states, and even their own sisters by the same father and mother, if they think proper. It is a far worse affair to have a commerce with a gossip or godmother, which was deemed an unpardonable offence by the capitularies of Charlemagne, being called a spiritual incest. One Andovere, who is called queen of France, because she was the wife of a certain Chilperic, who reigned over Soissons, was stigmatized by ecclesiastical justice, censured, degraded, and divorced, for having borne her own child to the baptismal font. It was a mortal sin, a sacrilege, a spiritual incest; and she thereby forfeited her marriage-bed and crown. This apparently contradicts what I have just observed, that everything in the way of love is permitted to the great, but then I spoke of present times, and not of those of Andovere. As to carnal incest, read the advocate Voglan, who would absolutely have any two cousins burned who fall into a weakness of this kind. The advocate Voglan is rigorous--the unmerciful Celt. INCUBUS. Have there ever been incubi and succubi? Our learned juriconsults and demonologists admit both the one and the other. It is pretended that Satan, always on the alert, inspires young ladies and gentlemen with heated dreams, and by a sort of double process produces extraordinary consequences, which in point of fact led to the birth of so many heroes and demigods in ancient times. The devil took a great deal of superfluous trouble: he had only to leave the young people alone, and the world will be sufficiently supplied with heroes without any assistance from him. An idea may be formed of incubi by the explanation of the great Delrio, of Boguets, and other writers learned in sorcery; but they fail in their account of succubi. A female might pretend to believe that she had communicated with and was pregnant by a god, the explication of Delrio being very favorable to the assumption. The devil in this case acts the part of an incubus, but his performances as a succubus are more inconceivable. The gods and goddesses of antiquity acted much more nobly and decorously; Jupiter in person, was the incubus of Alcmena and Semele; Thetis in person, the succubus of Peleus, and Venus of Anchises, without having recourse to the various contrivances of our extraordinary demonism.