Note 58 — UNS AL-WUJUD AND THE WAZIR’S DAUGHTER AL-WARD FI’L-AKMAM OR ROSE-IN-HOOD.[30]

The eunuch tells him that he is not a “Sandalí” = one whose penis and testes are removed; and consequently the highest valued. There are many ways of making the castrato; in some (as here) only the penis is removed, in others the testes are bruised or cut off; but in all cases the animal passion remains, for in man, unlike other animals, the fons veneris is the brain. The story of Abelard proves this. Juvenal derided the idea of married eunuchs and yet almost all these neutrals have wives with whom they practise the manifold plaisirs de la petite oie (masturbation, tribadism, irrumation, tête-bêche, feuille-de-rose, etc.), till they induce the venereal orgasm. Such was the account once given to me by a eunuch’s wife; and I need hardly say that she, like her confrerie was to be pitied. At the critical moment she held up a little pillow for her husband to bite who otherwise would have torn her cheeks or breasts.