Adstupet ipse sibi.
That unexperienced Nuns should be led, by their disciplines, into faults of a similar kind, are therefore very natural apprehensions. Being thoroughly engaged in the contemplation of those beauties which they expose to light, it is no wonder that all their thoughts of a religious kind should vanish: and they even may very well in the issue, inchanted as they are by what they are beholding, intirely forget and neglect those pious exercises which they have purposely retired to their cell to perform.
[123] Quid turpius excogitari potest, sivè viro sivè fœminæ, quàm, lumbis & femoribus ad radios Solis apertis, seipsum diverberare?... Quis in edito & aperto loco, plenis comitiis, in conspectu hominum, lumbos natesque virgis cædere non pertimescat?
This exhibition of nakedness to the rays of the Sun, the Poet Lafontaine observes, is only fit for the New World. He expresses this opinion in that Tale which has been above quoted, The Pair of Spectacles, when he attempts to express the objects which the Nuns exhibited to the sight of each other, and of the Abbess: “Niggardly and proud charms, which the Sun is allowed to see only in the New World, for this does not shew them to him.”
—— chiches & fiers appas
Que le Soleil ne voit qu’au nouveau monde,
Car celui-ci ne les lui montre pas.
However, notwithstanding the opinion of the Poet Lafontaine, it seems that an exhibition of charms and attractions, even superior to what takes place in the New World, is common in Russia; which is certainly a part of our Old World: the Reader may see in the accounts given by Travellers, that individuals of both Sexes, after some stay in the hot-baths and stoves in use in that Country, will rush out promiscuously together, stark-naked, playing, and delightfully rolling themselves in the snow. If Russia had been more visited by Travellers in the times of Cardinals Damian and Pullus, these two great Promoters of nakedness would have been supplied with facts much to the advantage of their doctrine.
Bartholinus too, from the accounts of the same Travellers would have been supplied with excellent materials for composing his abovementioned Treatise, On the physical use of Flagellations. The Abbé Dauteroche, one of the latest Travellers who have published an account of Russia, where he went to observe the transit of Venus, gives a somewhat accurate description of the baths and stoves we mention. The heat is commonly carried in them to so high a degree as the fiftieth of Reaumur’s scale (which answer to the 130th of Fahrenheit’s; the greatest summer heat in England seldom surpasses, or even reaches, 80) a suffocating steam is raised by throwing plenty of water upon stones kept constantly red hot; and, in order to carry the agitation of the blood still farther, flagellations are applied to: a bundle of birchen twigs, with the leaves on, which being dry are soon stripped off, is as constant a part of the bathing implements and furniture, as a handkerchief or a towel. All these different operations being fulfilled, the bathers, as is above said, rush out into the external air, sometimes ten, or even twenty degrees colder than it was in this Country in the year 1740, and roll themselves in the snow, or jump into water through holes made in the ice. These are certainly surprising instances of what the human body may be brought to bear; much more remarkable than those that have been before mentioned; and the boxes of Buckhorse, the Chinese bastinadoes, and the flagellations of the Italian and Spanish disciplinants, are nothing in comparison to it. But, for a farther account of the Russian stoves, and of the trial the Abbé Dauteroche had the curiosity to make of them, as well as of the unexpected and unwelcome entertainment he received, I must refer the Reader to the Work itself he has published.