“As you say. Now, there is one verse in Juvenal that no one has been able to translate, and if anyone has understood its true meaning, he hasn’t dared publish it: the reader would have found it too absurd. This is the verse:

‘. . . Tamen ultima cellam

Clausit, adhuc ardens RIGIDAE tentigine vulvae.’

“There follows,” said the doctor:

“ ‘Et lassata viris nee dum satiata recessit.’ ”

“We know,” said Marcueil, “but modern criticism has proved that this verse, like all well-known verses, is an interpolation. Famous verses are like proverbs. . .”

“The wisdom of nations,” said the general.

“You have guessed very subtly, general. And you will not disagree that nations arise from the gathering together in very great numbers of anyone who happens to come along. . .”

“Now really!” began the general.

“Listen though, general,” said Bathybius; “this is becoming interesting. You were saying, Marcueil. . . ?”

“That Messalina, leaving the arms of her twenty-five, or many more, lovers, is – and I am translating. literally: ‘still ardent’ (I understand here: kept ardent by). . . the words here become a bit coarse in French, even among men, and the rest of the Latin is self-explanatory.”

“Yes, I understand the last word in the verse,” said the general, ordering more stout.

“That isn’t the important one,” said Marcueil “but its adjective: rigidae.”

“I see no way to refute your interpretation,” said Bathybius, “but. . . Messalina was just a nymphomaniac, that’s all. This. . . hysterical example proves nothing at all.”

“The only real women are Messalinas,” murmured Marcueil inaudibly.

He went on:

“The organs of both sexes are made up of the same elements, are they not, doctor, with some differentiation?”

“Pretty well,” replied the doctor. “And what are you getting at now?”

“At this, which is logical,” said Marcueil: “that there is no reason why there should not be produced in men, once a certain figure is reached, the very same physiological phenomena as in a Messalina.”

“You mean, rigidi tentigo veretri? But that’s absurd, madly absurd,” exclaimed the doctor. “It is the very absence of this indispensable phenomenon that will always prevent man from exceeding numerically what is in fact human capacity.”

“Excuse me, doctor; it follows from my line of thought that this manifestation becomes permanent, and even more pronounced, as one moves beyond the limits of human strength toward numerical infinity; and that it is consequently advantageous to pass beyond as rapidly as is possible, or, if you prefer, as is conceivable.”

Bathybius did not deign to answer. As for the general, he had lost interest in the conversation.

“Another question, doctor,” Marcueil persisted. “Don’t you agree that a man who, out of a million opportunities, seizes only one, is a moderate man? In sexual matters a continent man?”

The doctor looked at him.

“And doctor, I need not tell you that the number of opportunities afforded by nature for the act of reproduction, the number of ova within every woman, is. . .”

“Yes, eighteen million,” said Bathybius dryly.