I always thought "Le petit mort" was French for "orgasm". (By the way: shouldn't that be "La petite mort" as "mort" is feminine?) If so, I would have thought orgasms were fairly common during sex. Or have I mistranslated the French? Disobligingly, neither of my French dictionaries is any help.
(Erudite note alert.) In Elizabethan England "dying" and "death" often referred to a sexual climax. So there are any number of double meanings on this theme in Shakespeare, and elsewhere.
"Dear, let me die in this fair breast", from a famous lute song, is a good example. End of erudite, and boring, note.