Where can you and Luise have been hiding, to know so little of the ways of the world? I should have thought it was quite impossible to spend any time at all at any court without getting quite a good idea of it. If one were to detest every man who is fond of young fellows, it would be impossible to find even six people to like, or at least not to dislike. Some of them hate women and only love me, others like both men and women, some only like children of ten or eleven, others young men between seventeen and twenty-five. Most are in this category. Other debauchees, who love neither men nor women, amuse themselves all alone, but there are only a few of those. And then there are those who don't mind what they have, human or animal; they take whatever comes along. I know someone here who brags that he has had relations with everything under the sun except toads.
--Letter from Liselotte von der Pfalz, German sister-in-law of Louis XIV, Versailles, 3 December 1705. From , translated by Maria Kroll
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