Maupassant is a man of mitigating circumstances, the lawyer who can bring the jurors around by demonstrating that they too could have committed such a crime. We are all murderers.

However, in fetishism the desired object is displaced; and in this context (“The Apparition” by Guy De Maupassant) it is the desiring object, so to speak. In other words, have we ever seen a boot in love with a fetishist?

A perversion must be baptized and patronized (the Marquis De Sade and Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch were on to something).

Repress the natural and it comes back even stronger: not everyone can be a fetishist