[380]. Properly speaking “Medicus” is the third or ring-finger, as shown by the old Chiromantist verses,
Est pollex Veneris; sed Jupiter indice gaudet,
Saturnus medium; Sol medicumque tenet.
[381]. So Seneca uses digito scalpit caput. The modern Italian does the same by inserting the thumb-tip between the index and medius to suggest the clitoris.
[382]. What can be wittier than the now trite Tale of the Ephesian Matron, whose dry humour is worthy of The Nights? No wonder that it has made the grand tour of the world. It is found in the neo-Phædrus, the tales of Musæus and in the Septem Sapientes as the “Widow which was comforted.” As the “Fabliau de la Femme qui se fist putain sur la fosse de son Mari,” it tempted Brantôme and La Fontaine; and Abel Rémusat shows in his Contes Chinois that it is well known to the Middle Kingdom. Mr. Walter K. Kelly remarks, that the most singular place for such a tale is the “Rule and Exercise of Holy Dying” by Jeremy Taylor, who introduces it into his chapt. v.—“Of the Contingencies of Death and Treating our Dead.” But in those days divines were not mealy-mouthed.
[383]. Glossarium eroticum linguæ Latinæ, sive theogoniæ, legum et morum nuptialium apud Romanos explanatio nova, auctore P. P. (Parisiis, Dondey-Dupré, 1826, in 8vo). P. P. is supposed to be Chevalier Pierre Pierrugues, an engineer who made a plan of Bordeaux and who annotated the Erotica Biblion. Gay writes, “On s’est servi pour cet ouvrage des travaux inédits de M. le Baron de Schonen, etc. Quant au Chevalier Pierre Pierrugues, qu’on désignait comme l’auteur de ce savant volume, son existence n’est pas bien avérée, et quelques bibliographes persistent à penser que ce nom cache la collaboration du Baron de Schonen et d’Éloi Johanneau. Other glossicists as Blondeau and Forberg have been printed by Liseux, Paris.
[384]. This magnificent country which the petty jealousies of Europe condemn, like the glorious regions about Constantinople, to mere barbarism, is tenanted by three Moslem races. The Berbers, who call themselves Tamazight (plur. of Amazigh), are the Gætulian indigenes speaking an Africo-Semitic tongue (see Essai de Grammaire Kabyle, etc. par A. Hanoteau, Paris, Benjamin Duprat). The Arabs, descended from the conquerors in our eighth century, are mostly nomades and camel-breeders. Third and last are the Moors proper, the race dwelling in towns, a mixed breed originally Arabian but modified by six centuries of Spanish residence and showing by thickness of feature and a parchment-coloured skin, resembling the American Octaroon’s, a negro innervation of old date. The latter are well described in “Morocco and the Moors,” etc. (Sampson Low and Co., 1876), by my late friend Dr. Arthur Leared, whose work I should like to see reprinted.
[385]. Thus somewhat agreeing with one of the multitudinous modern theories that the Pentapolis was destroyed by discharges of meteoric stones during a tremendous thunderstorm. Possible, but where are the stones?
[386]. To this Iranian domination I attribute the use of many Persic words which are not yet obsolete in Egypt. “Bakhshísh,” for instance, is not intelligble in the Moslem regions west of the Nile-Valley and for a present the Moors say Hadíyah, regalo or favor.
[387]. Arnobius and Tertullian, with the arrogance of their caste and its miserable ignorance of that symbolism which often concealed from vulgar eyes the most precious mysteries, used to taunt the heathen for praying to deities whose sex they ignored: “Consuistis in precibus ‘Seu tu Deus seu tu Dea,’ dicere!” These men would know everything; they made God the merest work of man’s brains and armed him with a despotism of omnipotence which rendered their creation truly dreadful.