Nearby, in Vitry-le-François, he was regaled with stories about seven or eight girls in the area who had ‘plotted together’ to dress and live as men. One married a woman and lived with her for several months – ‘to her satisfaction, so they say’ – until someone reported the case to the authorities and she was hanged. Another story in the same region concerned a man named Germain who had been a girl until the age of twenty-two, when a set of ‘virile instruments’ popped out one day as he leaped over an obstacle. A folk song arose in the town, warning girls not to open their legs too wide when
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