Passant, serre les fesses et passe vite!
[342]. Arab. "Kiblah" = the fronting-place of prayer, Meccah for Moslems, Jerusalem for Jews and early Christians. See Pilgrimage (ii. 321) for the Moslem change from Jerusalem to Meccah and ibid. ii. 213 for the way in which the direction was shown.
[343]. The Koran says (chapt. ii.): "Your wives are your tillage: go in therefore unto your tillage in what manner so ever ye will." Usually this is understood as meaning in any posture, standing or sitting, lying, backwards or forwards. Yet there is a popular saying about the man whom the woman rides (vulg. St. George, in France, le Postillon); "Cursed he who maketh woman Heaven and himself earth!" Some hold the Koranic passage to have been revealed in confutation of the Jews, who pretended that if a man lay with his wife backwards, he would beget a cleverer child. Others again understand it of preposterous venery, which is absurd: every ancient lawgiver framed his code to increase the true wealth of the people—population—and severely punished all processes, like onanism, which impeded it. The Persians utilise the hatred of women for such misuse when they would force a wife to demand a divorce and thus forfeit her claim to Mahr (dowry); they convert them into catamites till, after a month or so, they lose all patience and leave the house.
[344]. Koran li. 9: "He will be turned aside from the Faith (or Truth) who shall be turned aside by the Divine decree;" alluding, in the text, to the preposterous venery her lover demands.
[345]. Arab. "Futúh" meaning openings, and also victories, benefits. The lover congratulates her on her mortifying self in order to please him.
[346]. "And the righteous work will be exalt": (Koran xxxv. 11) applied ironically.
[347]. A prolepsis of Tommy Moore:—
Your mother says, my little Venus,
There's something not quite right between us,
And you're in fault as much as I,