transcriber's note: anonymous, _the power of mesmerism_ (1891), 1891 edition. a classic victorian erotic novel] the power of mesmerism a highly erotic narrative of voluptuous facts and fancies. printed for the nihislists. moscow 1891 brackley hall was a fine old place in the lovely country of devon and had been in the possession of the etheridges for centuries. the park was beautifully wooded, and stretched down on one side to the coast, commanding in all directions the most enchanting views. mr. etheridge was a man of some forty years of age, of singularly handsome appearance, and bore evident traces of the italian blood which flowed in his veins. he had the appearance of a man having strong amorous passions, but his manners were as gentle as those of a woman, and he was universally popular throughout the whole county. his wife was a woman of unusual beauty. descended from an old spanish family, she had married when but sixteen years of age; mr. etheridge having met her at the house of some friends, and as they mutually fell in love with each other, their united entreaties overcame the objection raised on account of her youth, and in fact the warm blood that flowed in her veins had ripened her beauty to an extent almost unusual in those of more phlegmatic races. she was now in her thirty-fifth year, and in the full zenith of her charms. an exquisitely shaped head graced a neck and shoulders white as alabaster, large liquid eyes, and long drooping lashes, a nose of perfect form, and two ruby pouting lips that seemed made to be kissed. her form was magnificent, of commanding height, widely spreading hips, and a bosom of massive proportions, the firmness of which rendered stays entirely unnecessary; a fact that was evident on watching the rise and fall of those two lovely globes, their form being perfectly defined even to the nipples, beneath her well-fitting dress. her glance was electric, and it was impossible to meet her look unmoved, she exhaled an atmosphere of voluptuousness of the most maddening force. her daughter ethel, who had left school in paris but a few months, was the very counterpart of her lovely mother in her leading features. she had just completed her seventeenth year, and was of tall, graceful stature, with a perfect figure. the smallness of her waist contrasted perfectly with the ravishing fullness of bosom and wideness of hips. she had the liquid eyes of her mother, but they were suffused with a humidity that was perfectly maddening, and the expression of every feature of her lovely face and palpitating form spoke of a warmth of temperament and lascivious abandon that would have tempted an anchorite. on a bright summer afternoon, in the year 18--, father, mother, and daughter were waiting at the railway station, anxiously expecting the arrival of the remaining member of the family, frank, who, a year older than ethel, had been finishing his education in germany, and was now returning to take up his residence at brackley. at last the train arrived, and they hardly recognised the handsome, tall, and fine-looking young fellow who leaped out to greet them. a few hours after reaching the house the parents noted a peculiar change that had taken place in their son. a dreamy languor seemed to have taken possession of him, in place of the exuberant flow of animal spirits that characterised him as a boy. he had a strange habit of looking as though he were endeavouring to read the very thoughts of those with whom he came in contact. mrs. etheridge noticed this particularly, but thinking he was fatigued by his long journey, made no remark. but the most remarkable effect was produced on ethel; her brother seemed utterly unable to remove his eyes from her. her singular beauty, and the nameless charm that pervaded her, seemed to have an irresistible attraction for him. every time that his eye rested on her she trembled violently, and seemed labouring under some mysterious and powerful influence. her lovely breasts heaved, and the humidity of her eyes increased, and she still seemed unusually excited after her brother had left the room in order to dress for dinner. some friends had been invited to dine, and frank found himself placed between his mother and sister. he glanced alternately at the two lovely bosoms, well exposed by the low dresses each of them wore; and his face flushed, and he seemed for the moment about to faint, but almost immediately recovering himself, he proceeded with his dinner and joined in the conversation. in the course of the meal he ventured again to glance at his sister, and as she was leaning forward he saw the lovely valley between those hills of snow. he accidentally pressed his knee against hers, she immediately looked at him fondly, and her breasts rose and fell tumultuously as she mechanically pressed closer to him. nothing further happened on this occasion, but they had a most charming evening in the drawing room, and ethel and frank seemed to have formed a more than usually close friendship. they had not seen each other for four years, and their reunion seemed a source of the greatest delight to both of them. mrs. etheridge also inspired her son with the most intense affection. before retiring for the night frank proposed an early walk on the grounds, as he was anxious to renew his acquaintance with all the spots so attractive to him when a boy, and ethel joyously assented. six o'clock was agreed to, which would leave them two good hours until breakfast time. when ethel retired to rest she was in a state of wild excitement and could not banish her darling brother's image from her thoughts. at length she fell into a troubled sleep, and after tossing wildly about, awoke suddenly and found that she was spending, her nightdress and chemise were saturated, and her lovely cunt was throbbing with the extasy. she was no stranger to this sensation (as the reader will subsequently learn), as she habitually produced the result with her fingers; but this emission seemed more madly exciting than any she had ever felt before, and was produced without the usual means. at length she fell asleep again, but dreamt continually of her brother. he, for his part, was mentally exercising a power he had acquired in germany (the peculiar circumstance of the manner in which he gained this knowledge will be duly explained later on), and this was sufficient to account for his sister's condition. punctually at six o'clock on the following morning, brother and sister met in the hall. she threw herself into his arms and embraced him with great affection. "you darling brother," said she, "how glad i am to have you back with us; it seems like a new world to me." "my dearest sister," replied he, "it is i who am the happy one, i cannot express to you the delight and happiness i feel in your society, after so long an absence." after embracing again they started on their ramble; ethel pointed out all her pet flowers and every spot that she liked, until they found themselves, at length, in a charming little grove overhanging the beach. "frank, darling," said she, "i have a headache; shall we sit down here and rest a short time until it goes away?" "certainly, my darling, and i think i can relieve that headache by a simple expedient i learned in germany." he then sat down opposite to her, and taking her two thumbs held them in the palm of his left hand, while with the right he made passes from her head to her feet, at the same time gazing into her eyes with a literally devouring look. as he proceeded the humidity in her lovely eyes increased until the eyelids at last closed, and her head sank on her bosom. after continuing the passes for a short time longer, her brother, still keeping his eyes fixed on her, gradually allowed her hands to slip away from his, and fall on her lap. he appeared intensely excited, his nostrils were dilated, he breathed hard, and his eyes seemed to burn in their sockets. he gently laid ethel down on her back, and after waiting to satisfy himself that she was in a fast mesmeric sleep, he placed one throbbing hand on her hip, and gradually raising it till he found the lovely prominence of one charming bosom, then his other hand sought its companion, and he pressed those heaving hills of snow which he felt perfectly under her thin muslin dress. he next knelt down by her side, and brought her breasts fully to view; they were indeed lovely, the two little pink nipples were stiffly erected, and seemed wooing to be kissed. she wore no stays, and his hand wandered over her lovely velvety skin down to her enchanting belly. then rising, he leant forwards and gradually raised her dress in front. first, her lovely ankles were seen, then her swelling calves, beautifully shaped knees, and glorious thighs. frank felt faint and sick, and was compelled to desist from further exploration till he had somewhat recovered. in a few moments he gently separated those divine thighs, and his eyes were riveted on his sister's darling little cunt, which now lay fully exposed to view. two lovely coral lips, which were slightly parted, moist and throbbing, first met his gaze. he separated them yet further with his finger and saw the exquisite clitoris perfectly visible. utterly unable to resist the temptation, he glued his lips to the lovely spot, and titillated the clitoris with his tongue. almost immediately she began to writhe and twist about, and he felt her balmy emission flow into his mouth as she spent with low moans. he then desisted, and releasing his bursting prick commenced slowly to frig himself, while gazing on the exquisite beauties exhibited to his view. with spasmodic jerks the semen flew from him while he moaned with pleasure. now fearing discovery, he carefully wiped his sister's cunt with his handkerchief, which he madly kissed afterwards, and adjusted her dress, removed all traces of his own spending, and proceeded to awaken his sister. placing her in a sitting position against a tree, he recommenced his passes, this time in a contrary direction, and she soon after opened her eyes. after looking at him vaguely for a moment, she flung her arms round his neck, and kissed him. "oh," she said, "i have been asleep, and had such a delicious dream." "has your headache gone?" said he. "oh," she replied, "i did have a headache, but not a symptom of it remains." she was evidently utterly unconscious of all that had taken place, and her brother suggested they should resume their walk. at breakfast mrs. etheridge said, "you have had a walk betimes this morning, my children, and you are both looking quite rosy." so they were, but she little knew the cause. after breakfast mr. etheridge addressed himself to his son, "your mamma and myself are obliged to go to lynton this afternoon on family business, and i fear we shall not be able to return until late, but i have no doubt you will be able to amuse yourself; ethel will, i am sure, do her best to keep you from getting dull on your first arrival at home, after so long an absence." when they had started, frank accompanied ethel into her sitting room, and begged her to sing and play for him, in order that he might hear what progress she had made. she at once complied with his request, and he sat by her side watching with glaring eye the rise and fall of her lovely bosom as she sang him a charming little song, full of simple natural tenderness. he was, in fact, lusting madly for his own sister, and why not? in the earliest history of our own race incest was no sin; why should we now consider it as such? on the other hand what can be more intensely exciting than the knowledge that one is indulging every feeling of lasciviousness conjointly with one united so nearly by ties of blood and kindred. when she had finished he burned to enjoy her, but dared not, and with an effort he left the room, saying that he had some letters to write. he went to his bedroom, but on his way thither he saw the adjoining door open and recognized a dress his sister had worn on the previous evening hanging against the wall. her bed was still unmade, her nightdress was lying on it, and by the side of the bed a pair of drawers that she left there on changing her underlinen. he rushed to the bed, kissed the nightdress, and literally glued his lips to that portion of her drawers which had covered her darling little cunt. he was so excited that he could scarcely forbear from spending on the spot. hearing approaching footsteps he immediately made his way to his own room, and bolting the door, he tore off his trousers. doubling up the pillow, he inserted his erect prick between the folds, and straining it tightly between his thighs, threw himself forward on the bed, and thinking of his darling sister, with a few heaves backwards and forwards, spent deliciously. he then lay down and pondered over the best means of attaining his desires, for he resolved that he would enjoy his sister in every conceivable manner, let the consequences be what they might. his meditations were interrupted by the luncheon bell. he descended to the dining room, and the sight of his sister aroused his desires with redoubled force; he devoured her with his eyes, and she again exhibited the same restless and uncomfortable symptoms that possessed her in the morning; her colour rose, her bosom rose and fell tumultuously, she squeezed her thighs together, sighed deeply, and seemed altogether unlike herself. seeing this he averted his gaze, and commenced talking on indifferent subjects. when the servants had left the room, he suggested another stroll on the grounds, as it was such a lovely afternoon. she consented with delight, and they set forth. after rambling some distance from the house, she said, "frank, my darling, there is such a lovely summer house in this thicket where i often come and read, shall we go in and rest?" frank was delighted at the idea. it was a charming little retreat, completely hidden by trees, and furnished most luxuriously--a velvet couch, an easy chair, and a lounge occupying the whole of one side invited to repose. they sat down, and frank's arm wound round his sister's enticing waist, and he could not resist kissing those lovely pouting lips. she trembled like an aspen, and as he gazed into her moist and humid eyes, the strange symptoms reappeared. frank could no longer resist, but holding her thumbs he commenced the magnetic passes, and she speedily fell into his arms, apparently in a deep slumber. he now sought to see if he was entirely successful in his attempt to produce the effect he desired, and therefore taking her in his arms and laying her on the couch, he said, "ethel, do you know where you are?" "with my darling brother," she replied. "do you love him?" "madly," was the reply. "what would you like to do to prove that love?" "anything he desires." "stand up." she did so. "unfasten your dress; take it off." she complied immediately. "loosen your petticoats and take them off; now your slippers and your stockings." the dear girl did exactly as requested, still in the same dreamy, languid manner. she now stood in her chemise and drawers only, and frank felt as if he would faint. this splendid girl standing before him; lovely ankles, calves, and bare feet and those enchanting breasts peeping over her embroidered chemise, constituted a most voluptuous sight. "now, my darling," said he, "remove your drawers." she did so, and he snatched them up and covered them with kisses. "now the chemise." that also was taken off with alacrity, and she was before him perfectly naked. heavens! what a sight! the whiteness of her skin, which shone like alabaster, the exquisite contour of her limbs, and the tremulous motion which pervaded every muscle, formed a combination of lustful excitement that utterly baffles description. he then ordered her to lie down on her back, raise her knees, and place her heels against her buttocks, then insert her finger in that divine cunt and frig herself. she did so. "how do you feel, darling? are you going to spend? i will that you spend at once." her whole body stiffened. "keep your thighs widely extended," he said, "so that i can see every throb that convulses your cunt, when the lovely liquor of love oozes forth." she obeyed, and with a deep sigh he saw it gush forth and cover her caressing hand. he rushed forward and gamahuched her furiously, and then sitting in an easy chair, said, "ethel, get up." she obeyed, and following his commands, knelt in front of him, unfastened the front of his trousers, inserted her hand, and drew forth his prick; she then sucked it until with a positive howl of delight he inundated her mouth with his spendings. he then desired her to rise and kneel on the couch, then coming behind her he gently pulled apart the cheeks of her divine bottom, and disclosed the little orifice that lay nestling between them. this he sucked till he spent again, clasping her hips as he spent with spasmodic force. he burned to fuck her, but dared not venture, and after a short time he ordered her to resume her clothes, and then repeated the passes in a contrary direction until she recovered her senses, and to his great delight, she evidently knew nothing of what had taken place. mr. and mrs. etheridge had not returned when they reached the house, and they found a note stating that they were detained and could not be home till the following day. on reading this frank immediately remembered the proximity of his sister's bedroom and determined, at any risk, to gratify his intense desire with respect to her, this very night. before retiring he embraced her warmly, pressing her breasts against his chest and pushing his belly against hers; to his intense delight he felt her whole frame vibrate from the intensity of her emotion as her head fell on his shoulder. he bade her good night and departed to his room. as soon as he was convinced the house was quiet he gently opened his door and stole on tiptoe to his sister's room. to his intense delight it was unfastened. he entered and saw his sister lying on her snowy bed, which was illumined by the rays of the moon. she slept; he watched for some moments the rise and fall of her bosom, and the exquisite beauty of her face, and then commenced to mesmerize her again. she moaned faintly, and appeared restless. "sleep," said he, and she immediately became quiet. "ethel," he continued, "do you know who is speaking to you?" "yes, my darling brother." he next pulled down the bed-clothes, and gently placed himself by her side, naked as he was. "my darling," said he, "take off your night dress and chemise." she raised herself in the bed and did so, and then lay down again. he clasped her in his arms, utterly intoxicated with his anticipated bliss. the contact of her skin with his own, the knowledge that she was unconscious of what he was doing, and that it was his own sister, almost maddened him. he was literally consumed with lust, and embraced her in every direction. passing his arms between her thighs, he nestled his head on her divine belly. he next shifted it to her bosom, then he placed his prick between those firm and pouting breasts, then between her thighs. he next placed his finger inside the lips of her cunt, and found to his surprise that it entered easily. "thank god," he muttered, "she has been frigged, possibly fucked, and i shall not hurt her." he willed her to take his prick and insert it in that divine recess, and to his intense joy he succeeded in burying himself in her with scarcely any difficulty. he then lay powerless, and the spasm overtook him and ebbed forth into the inmost recesses of his sister's cunt. he lay for a few moments in a profound lethargy, when he suddenly found his sister's cunt contracting and throbbing around his prick, which was still soaking within her. this fired him anew, and placing both hands beneath her buttocks, he pressed her cunt towards him with the utmost force, while driving in and out of her with deep and body-killing thrusts. they both spent simultaneously, and after a short pause he arose and contemplated her, then willing her to resume her night dress and chemise, he returned to his own room, fearing that he might fall asleep and be discovered in the morning. as he lay down he noticed a ray of light in a dark corner of his room, and on examining the panelling, found that a crevice existed through which he could see perfectly into his sister's room. there she still lay slumbering peacefully, and it suddenly struck him that he had forgotten to awaken her from the magnetic sleep which evidently still overpowered her. he immediately commenced the necessary process and, to his delight, found that it had the same effect, notwithstanding the wall which intervened. she rose in the bed, and altering her position, lay calmly and naturally. he retired to bed again, but was restless and excited and could not sleep; his prick was still stiff, and every nerve throbbed. he lay tossing about in this way for an hour or so, when he suddenly heard a sound of whispering in the next room, and on peeping through the crevice into his sister's apartment, beheld a sight that rendered him spellbound and breathless. he saw on her bed a figure perfectly naked, and of the most exquisite form, rivalling that of ethel herself. she was kneeling and in the act of pulling the clothes from his sister, and raising her night dress, gazed ardently at her cunt. "how wet and sticky it is to-night, miss. you must have had such a wet dream." the lovely stranger placed her fingers within it and rubbed them about in the moisture, and then substituted her tongue, sucking luxuriously the lips and clitoris, and thrusting in the velvet tip as far as it would go into the vagina, until ethel murmured, "it is coming again, mabel. oh! oh! suck harder, my dear." he now recognised the stranger as a housemaid who had attracted his attention on more than one occasion during the short time he had been in the house. his sister now sought mabel's cunt, and inserting a finger, commenced pushing it backwards and forwards as she embraced her lovely buttocks with her disengaged arm, burying her tongue within the rosy bottom-hole. they writhed like two serpents, their bodies arched, and then they fell prone on each other, every muscle vibrating as they spent in all the agonies of lasciviousness. frank seized his prick and frigged himself in unison with their movements, spouting out a torrent of sperm at the same moment as the two lovely tribades lost consciousness in their blissful convulsions. when he looked again ethel had taken the housemaid across her knees, and was rubbing her belly and sucking her nipples, ever and anon allowing her hand to wander between her thighs. she then turned her with her belly downwards, so that their cunts were in contact, and again passing her hand between mabel's thighs, she rubbed the profuse spendings with which their cunts overflowed into her exposed bottom-hole, and then inserting her finger, pushed it in and out its entire length, whilst mabel struggled to release herself. at length she succeeded, and the housemaid lay flat on her back with ethel reversed above her, and the sound of their mutual sucking, as their heads were between each other's thighs, drove frank almost to the verge of distraction. they swayed to and fro, and pressed each other with their utmost strength, until it was evident they were spending again. still the gamahuching continued, until they seemed utterly exhausted; and mabel, kissing ethel madly, left the room, evidently to return to her own before the other servants were stirring, as the day was already breaking. frank was utterly bewildered, but now determined that he would use his knowledge and ravish his darling sister without the aid of mesmerism before many days had passed. mr. and mrs. etheridge returned about midday, and frank was again struck by his mother's rare beauty and the fullness of her magnificent bosom. he looked at her fixedly, and, strange to say, she seemed affected by his gaze much in the same manner as his sister had been at first. frank felt a thrill of delight as the bare possibility occurred to him of revelling in his mother's charms, but he felt that if he ever did succeed the utmost caution would be necessary. in the afternoon he took another stroll with his sister, and they soon found themselves in the summer house. they sat side by side on the couch, and frank warmly embraced her, pressing her to him with voluptuous energy. she looked into his eyes and breathed heavily. his hand roved down and pressed one cheek of her buttocks, which he felt undulate beneath her bottom. "you must not do that," she murmured, "it makes me feel sick and ill." "does it when mabel does the same?" asked frank. she became white with terror. "do not fear, my darling," continued frank. "i know all, have seen your embraces last night, but alluded to it to assure you your secret is safe. but will you not now allow me some little privileges?" "oh, my darling, you are my brother!" "so much greater the exquisite enjoyment," pleaded frank. her head fell on his shoulder, and he ventured to insinuate his fingers within the bosom of her dress and gently rubbed her nipples with his thumb and finger. she shivered with delight. he next proceeded to place her hand upon his trousers, so that she could feel his bursting prick beneath. she clutched it wildly. he now gently pushed her backwards and placed one hand beneath her clothes, gently pressing her legs and thighs apart, until he at length succeeded in reaching her cunt, which was in a moist and spending condition. she tore open his trousers, saying, "oh! darling, forgive me, i cannot help it," and pushed the skin of his prick backwards and forwards. frank commenced to frig her, at first gently, gradually increasing the rapidity and depth of his insertion, till, with a shriek of rapture, she spent profusely. he resisted the impulse to follow her example, and seating himself in a chair, drew her towards him, placed his knees between her thighs, and allowed her gradually to sit down, while his prick penetrated her. they embraced madly, thrusting their tongues into each other's mouths, and even biting each other in the fury of their transports, until another emission relieved their feverish lubricity. they then resumed their position on the couch, and ethel burst into a flood of tears. "oh! my brother," sobbed she, "what have we done, and what will be the consequence?" frank strove to console her, and after a time succeeded, and she became calm, so that they could resume their walk and return to the house. it is now time that some explanation should be offered as to the cause of the mesmeric power and voluptuous development so strikingly manifested in frank. when he first reached school in germany he was perfectly innocent, but was speedily initiated into all the mysteries of frigging and prick sucking by his school-fellows, who also used to fuck each other between the thighs, while a third behind received the point of his prick in his mouth each time it was pressed forward and sucked out every drop of spend that he could obtain. one day when passing one of the master's rooms, he peeped in and saw him making mysterious motions in front of a pale, sickly boy, who was celebrated amongst his companions for the enormous size of his prick and balls. he watched with curiosity, and saw the boy fall apparently asleep. the master then proceeded to divest him of his trousers, handling with evident delight the boy's private parts. he then tucked up his shirt under his waistcoat, leaving the whole of his belly, bottom, thighs, and his lovely prick exposed. the master gazed with rapture, and frank saw by the lump that suddenly appeared in his trousers that his cock was evidently standing erect and hard. he then said. "kneel on that sofa, and lean your arms on the head of it, i will it!" frank was intensely surprised to see the boy obey as though he were walking in his sleep. the master took from an adjacent cupboard a birch and went to the head of the sofa, then leaning over the prostrate form of the boy commenced to flog him with it on his bottom and the inside of his thighs, but not severely. he next unbuttoned his own trousers, and out sprang his prick in a state of glorious development, skinned and hard. frank could scarcely resist the inclination to rush in and beg to be allowed to suck it, but he refrained from fear and also lest his curiosity as to what was about to take place should be baulked. the master spoke to the boy, "raise your head, and take my prick in your mouth, and suck it till i spend." the victim complied in the same mechanical manner. the birching was now resumed, and as the master's excitement increased the blows fell heavier, the boy's bottom becoming red and inflamed. he also commenced fucking the boy in the mouth, pushing himself backwards and forwards, when suddenly he dropped the birch, and seizing the boy's head forced his prick within his mouth as far as he could ram it, spent, saying with spasmodic gasps, "swallow it all--my--spunk--shall--go down--your throat--if it--kills you." when he withdrew his reeking cock, the spend was glistening in and around the boy's lips, but he had most undoubtedly swallowed nearly all but a few drops. the master now came to the side of the sofa, and passing his hand beneath the boy's belly, felt his lovely prick, but it was not stiff. he separated the thighs a little, and tickled his testicles, still it would not stiffen. he then skinned it, and stooping took the head between his lips. this had no better effect. he again commenced to birch him, stopping for a moment to rub his testicles and prick with eau de cologne. the master's prick was again furiously erect, so throwing the birch down again he took a small pot of cold cream and produced an implement somewhat resembling an artificial prick (it was in fact a dildo), which he plentifully rubbed with the ointment, then taking more on his finger, approached the boy, and pressing apart the cheeks of his bottom, began to anoint the tight, wrinkled bumhole with it, gradually inserting his finger further and further inside. he then took the dildo, and applying it to the orifice, pushed it steadily in, until its entire length was buried in his anus; leaving it there he again examined the boy's prick, and was evidently delighted to find that at last it stood as stiffly as his own. he then withdrew the dildo, and after rubbing his own prick with cold cream, knelt on the sofa behind the boy, and pointing the head of his cock at the well moistened orifice, pulling apart the buttocks with both hands, he eventually succeeded in penetrating the boy thoroughly. he next proceeded with both hands, which he passed in front of the boy's belly, and seized his glorious prick and balls, and while fucking him in the bottom, frigged him also, now stopping, and then again proceeding with rapidity, until at last the boy spent profusely, at the same moment that the master deposited within him his exhilarating emission. frank now passed on, fearing discovery, as the master had evidently finished for the present. he was puzzled at the mysterious manner in which the boy seemed to have been rendered insensible, and the fact of a great prick perforating a bottom-hole also filled him with astonishment. he resolved to make the attempt to achieve this latter result with this very boy, who slept in his dormitory, and try what it was like. and it may be added that he successfully carried his project into effect the same evening, to the great surprise and extreme delight of the boy, who had knowingly been operated on in a similar manner, probably on many occasions. shortly after this he spoke of the extraordinary power one being seemed to possess over another, making them unconscious, and then compelling them to obey their orders. this was to a young student at a neighbouring college, with whom he had become intimate, even to the extent of frigging each other. this friend explained the theory and practice of mesmerism, and frank soon found that he could also experimentalize successfully. this young student was also an ardent voluptuary of the most pronounced type, and proposed that frank should try if he could mesmerize his sister, a charming girl of about fifteen, who was staying with him for a few days, awaiting the arrival of her father. frank's friend proposed they should go to a certain house, where he was in the habit of going, to try the experiment. it was, in fact, kept by a lady who allowed the strangest scenes of unbridled lust to be enacted there, the contemplation of which caused her the most exquisite delight. they started at once, in company with his friend's sister, and on their arrival the lady ushered them into her drawing room (fully understanding that their visit was to afford her some of the usual voluptuous treats, which she always enjoyed so much), and frank at once commenced to try his experiment on the frã¤ulein. for some time no visible effect was produced, but at last her eyes appeared to dilate, then the eyelids drooped, and she seemed to sleep. "now, frank," said his friend, "speak to her." he did so, and to his delight he found that he had succeeded perfectly. the student now told frank that he must see him fuck her. he started in amazement. "why she has never been touched! and i have never seen her cunt!" "so much the better sport," replied his friend, "for i am determined you shall defile her in my presence here. "now, frank," continued he, placing his hand on his prick and commencing to fondle it, "no one but ourselves can ever know anything about it. i am so anxious to see her naked body, and this darling prick penetrating it. i see you will," said he as he felt the cock rising under his caressing hand. frank was ready for anything. he approached her, unfastened her dress, discovered her rosy nipples tipping the snowy hills of her bosom. he fingered them in rapture, and they seemed to get so impudently hard that he could not resist the temptation of sucking the delicious little strawberries of love. but, his friend getting impatient, he proceeded to raise her dress in front, exhibiting a lovely little pink cunt, with scarcely a hair on it. "i will assist you to undress her," said the brother, and lifting her on the couch she was soon naked in their hands. frank examined that deliciously tight little cunt; it was impossible to get even the point of his finger in. "how can i fuck this?" said he. "nonsense!" said the brother. "suck it and moisten it." frank did so, and from the writhing of the naked body of the beautiful girl, she was evidently enjoying it. her brother then took his place and endeavored to force his tongue within. at last he arose, and said, "frank, i fear you must place your prick between her thighs and spend there, she is so small and tight, and i will suck the head of your prick from the other side." this was carried into effect, and after commanding her to dress, frank succeeded in recovering her again, and they left the house. this little incident had created in frank's mind a mad desire to force his way into a virgin cunt, he revelling in the agony of his victim by anticipation, and on mentioning his desire to his friend, he said, "i will speak to a lady that i know very well." this was the proprietress of the house they had visited with his sister. she had a girl of eighteen of french parentage who had been turned out of her home by brutal parents and was, in fact, utterly friendless. madame g---had taken her in with delight, seeing that she would be able to do anything with her that her lewd fancies might devise, without fear or risk. this was the victim fated to be tortured by frank, the only condition being that madame g---should be present to see the whole proceeding, and thus have her share of the voluptuous feast. on the following day frank obtained permission to be absent until evening, and he accompanied his friend to the house in question. they were ushered into a charming boudoir, where they found madame g--- awaiting them. she was a pretty, plump woman, every feature betraying an intensely lascivious temperament. she was completely enveloped in a dressing gown of black velvet, which heightened the dazzling whiteness of her skin; her rosy little feet were encased in tiny little slippers, and her legs were evidently bare. a soft warm air pervaded the room, and a fragrant and exciting perfume shed its influence around. the floor was covered with a thick velvet pile carpet; the chairs and a capacious couch were also covered with velvet and furnished with luxurious springs. in the centre of the room was a peculiar article of furniture, which bore the appearance of a st. andrew's cross, placed horizontally and supported by a massive pedestal, which at one end was cut away so as to correspond with the form of the cross at its lower extremity. she rose and greeted them, embracing both most affectionately, and squeezed frank so ardently against her that his prick stood immediately. finding this to be the case she took his hand and placed it beneath her dressing gown; he shuddered on discovering that it was the only article that concealed her nakedness. he pressed her belly amorously, and placing his hand at the junction of her thighs, discovered a most exquisite cunt and a clitoris erect and hard. she would not allow him to proceed further, as she only wished to see if he was sufficiently excited for the work he was intended to perform. all sitting down, they partook of some burgundy and literally devoured a collection of books, photographs, and pictures she placed before them. they were of the most fearfully exciting character, representing lust and cruelty in every phase; the principal works being the marquis de sade's _justine_ and _juliette_, in ten volumes, with their one hundred steel plates, also his _philosophie dans le boudoir_ and other french works, besides english erotic books, such as _fanny hill_, _the romance of lust_, _letters from paris_, _curiosities of flagellation_, _phoebe kissagen_, _the new epicurean_, and others too numerous to be mentioned. when she saw they were both half frantic, she rose and rang the bell. in a few moments the door opened, and a remarkably beautiful girl entered. "sit down," said madame g----, "i wish to speak to you." she obeyed, evidently frightened at the sight of two strange young gentlemen. madame then locked the door, and placing the key on the mantelpiece, turned to their victim. "marie," said she, addressing the girl, "these two handsome young fellows are going to fuck you. do you know what that means?" the poor girl began to sob, and trembled from head to foot. "oh! madame," said she, "have mercy! i am so terrified--pray let me go!" "no," thundered her tormentor, "i will not. your screams cannot be heard beyond this room, and i intend to gloat over your agonies, while you are tortured by all here. seize her," she added, addressing frank and his friend, who were evidently influenced by the same feelings of ungovernable lust. they sprang up and held her fast. "undress her." this they endeavored to do, but her struggles were such that they could not succeed. madame g---now approached, and seizing her arms, held them as in a vise, and directed frank's friend to hold her legs. frank then tore open her dress, and throwing her on the floor, they succeeded by their joint endeavours in tearing it completely off. she was forcibly divested of her stays, petticoats, drawers, stockings, everything in fact, till at last she lay on the floor struggling and screaming in a perfectly nude condition. "lift her on the cross table," said madame. and with some difficulty they succeeded in extending their victim on her back, with her legs and arms stretched out on the four branches of the cross, and securely fixed in that position by concealed springs. there lay her lovely naked form, every muscle convulsed by fear and outraged modesty. madame g---then proceeded to suck her breasts and rub her belly and the inside of her thighs, directing frank to fondle her cunt. this he obeyed delightedly, and then proceeded to suck it, causing her to struggle more and more, as in spite of all her fear and the shock to her modesty she was becoming excited, and in a few moments gave down a most copious spend. this was the signal madame was waiting for. "now," she exclaimed, "your maidenhead shall be broken through--lost and destroyed!" frank and his friend stripped themselves to the buff, madame also throwing off her only garment. acting on her instructions, frank approached the lower end of the cross table, and placing himself between the victim's legs, placed the point of his prick just within the lips of her spending cunt, his friend taking up his station at the other end of the table with his rampant fiery cock just above the horrified face. madame, for her part, knelt on a prie-dieu, from the back of which protruded a dildo, which immediately entered her ready cunt to the very hilt, and leaning forward she recommended sucking and biting the tender nipples of her victim. frank now gave a brutal lunge, and excited to madness by the shrieks of agony and helpless struggles of the poor girl, was buried in her in a moment, his ruthless prick breaking or tearing through every maiden obstacle, till the virgin blood trickled over his testicles and down the crack of her bottom. his friend now commenced to frig himself, and madame g---was also pushing furiously backwards and forwards on the dildo, as frank now fucked the girl with deep and agonizing insertions of his prick. the victim fainted from excess of pain and emotion, seeing which, madame violently bit her bosom, and she recovered consciousness with a shriek of anguish, just as frank spent within her lacerated body, and his friend inundated her face with the spunk that poured from his spending prick. at the same time madame covered her dildo also with a prolific emission. this only increased the frenzy of her tormentors, and springing to their feet they eagerly agreed to madame's suggestion to flog her. having reversed their victim so that she now lay on her belly, with a concealed dildo of immense size forcing itself up her cunt, they proceeded with three immense birch rods to carry this into effect, lashing her bottom, loins, inside her thighs, and even the lips of her cunt, tightly distended around the huge dildo, till the hue of her skin was a burning scarlet. then desisting, madame g---took another dildo, and pulling wider apart the cheeks of that smarting bottom, thrust it into her convulsed and agonized bottom-hole with hellish force. the victim's tortures were almost too great for human endurance. "now," madame exclaimed, with the wild glare of a demoniac, "i will sit astraddle her waist, and frank must do so also, facing me." this was immediately carried into effect, frank's prick entered the cunt in front of him with the greatest ease. their violent up and down motions caused the dildo buried in the cunt of the almost crushed victim to fuck her. "faster, faster," shrieked madame g-----. "i'm coming--i'm coming--i'm spending!" their movements were fast and furious, and just as their spunk flowed with convulsive throbs, frank's friend thrust two pins into the quivering buttocks of the victim, causing the most exquisite torture. she moaned piteously, but this only excited her tormentors' devilish lusts to a greater extent, and joining each other on the couch, they enacted every device of lasciviousness, goaded by the spectacle of the suffering girl. they sucked and frigged, spending over each other in every direction. then getting up, frank withdrew the dildo from the bottom-hole of the suffering girl, substituted his prick, which was slippery with spendings, and commenced to fuck her there, whilst his friend inserted his under one of her extended arms, so that the point rubbed against one of the nipples of her bosom. madame g----, not to be behind hand, again seated herself astraddle the victim's waist, and rubbing her opened cunt in the spendings that still remained on her back from the previous fucking that had taken place there, frigged herself thus, as frank increased her excitement and pleasure by working his moistened finger in the wrinkled bum-hole she presented to his view, to her intense enjoyment. they all spent at the same time, even the victim, who could not resist the effect of the dildo still within her cunt. she was now literally inundated with spunk, and utterly exhausted, as the others resumed their clothes. it can easily be imagined that this extraordinary adventure corrupted frank etheridge's mind, and his madly lascivious temperament is no longer a matter of surprise to the reader. to return to our story. a few days after frank and ethel had knowingly fucked, mr. and mrs. etheridge were obliged to visit london, and the brother and sister resolved to utilise the occasion. frank, during the interim, had succeeded in gamahuching and fucking the housemaid who had visited his sister in her room on that memorable night. he had prevailed on his sister to have her as a bedfellow, and enact every species of exciting lust and tribadism they could devise. this was carried into effect, and frank, from his post of observation at the crevice, saw them perfectly naked, lying on the outside of the bed, the housemaid being reversed above her mistress, while they were literally devouring each other's cunts. he then descended, and softly entering the room, naked as he was, made a sign to his sister. she instantly clutched the body of the housemaid above her, so that she could not extricate herself from the position she was in. frank now approached; and having previously applied oil plentifully to his prick, he knelt over his sister's face, and with a sudden thrust forward, buried it within the bottom-hole of the astonished housemaid. she screamed in alarm, but ethel, raising her thighs, literally buried the girl's head between them and effectually stifled her cries. frank proceeded to push his prick in and out, as he revelled in this charming aperture, while his sister, abandoning for a moment the delicious cunt she was sucking, took his slippery balls in her mouth and rolled her tongue around them in such an exciting manner that he spent immediately, his spunk oozing out and flowing over the face of his delighted sister. mabel also emitted at the same moment, so that ethel was almost choked. mabel was now ready enough to join in whatever they wished, and every species of ingenuity conceivable was brought into requisition, in order to minister to their mutual gratification. at last frank retired to his own room, sleeping soundly till late in the morning, when he awoke with such an awful cockstand and such a feeling of insatiable lust that he could scarcely put his prick out of sight in his trousers and make a decent appearance at the breakfast table. he easily persuaded his sister to join him in a warm bath, which mabel was ordered to prepare at once, and then when they had entered it she was to lock herself in ethel's bedroom so that the other servants might not by any accident discover what was taking place. entering the bath, they lay down side by side, and an exquisite feeling of languor overtook them. ethel's hand wandered over her brother's naked form beneath the water, and his was not idle. then rising, they stood facing each other, and slightly extending her thighs, her brother speedily placed his erect and throbbing prick within her. they commenced to fuck gently, fondling each other as they did so. the convulsive spasms, however, speedily approached, and at the moment they mutually commenced to spend they sank down in the warm water. the beautiful warmth of the aromatic bath produced most delicious sensations flowing up their bottom-holes, as busy fingers worked excitedly to increase their lascivious abandon, while its action around their still more sensitive organs of generation caused them heavenly rapture. the day before the return of their parents, frank and ethel were seated in the summer house mutually fondling each other's private parts, when frank said that the desire he had long felt to see his mother's glorious nakedness, and if possible to fuck and gamahuche her, grew stronger every day, and he was resolved to try it by the aid of mesmerism. ethel, blushing deeply, was evidently much excited by the idea, and confessed that the same feeling with respect to her father had possessed her for some time. "then, my darling," continued her brother, "we will do it." mabel now entered, and stopped further conversation by frigging herself before them, while they also performed the same act for each other, after which they all returned to the house. mr. and mrs. etheridge arrived the next day about one o'clock. they embraced their children with great warmth, but little imagined the libidinous feelings their endearments produced on their children. it will be well, before relating what subsequently took place, to glance at ethel's school experiences, in order to understand her lustful desires and warm temperament. the school in paris at which she was placed was conducted by a lady of tall stature, juno-like form, and a manner which, outwardly mild, concealed beneath it the fire of raging lust, which she gratified in a peculiar manner. she received ethel most kindly, and kissing her affectionately, consigned her to the care of a young lady some three or four years older, who would be her special companion and share her bed. she was afterwards introduced to the other young ladies, and at once felt thoroughly at home. when they retired for the night, ethel's companion, minette, insisted on helping her to undress, and although from a natural feeling of shyness ethel did not like it much, she did not wish to appear ill-natured or ungrateful, so she permitted it. minette managed in this operation, apparently by accident, to bring her hands in contact with ethel's naked body as much as possible, which caused blushes to mantle her face, as she felt the contact of the soft, pulpy hand. ethel now got into bed, having first rendered similar assistance to minette, who did not possess the shyness of her younger friend, but before putting on her nightdress completely bared her whole body before the eyes of ethel, who was somewhat surprised to see such large prominent breasts and a profusion of hair covering her cunt. she immediately embraced ethel on getting into bed and endeavored to interlace their legs, which somewhat surprised the new pupil, and made her keep them close together, not knowing the meaning of such proceedings. before sleeping they lay apart, and ethel, tired out as she was, speedily sank into a refreshing slumber. she dreamt that every portion of her body was pervaded by the most delicious sensations, but could not conceive the cause, and when she awoke in the morning was surprised to find one of minette's hands between her thighs, whilst another rested on her little breasts. her companion was asleep, or pretended to be so, and was entirely uncovered, the bed-clothes having slipped off. she was lying on her back, her legs widely extended, and her cunt moist, slightly open and occasionally twitching with a spasmodic throb, whilst she sighed gently and smiled in her sleep. ethel was possessed by a nameless sensation, and actuated by curiosity, ventured to look closer at the full-blown cunt, which seemed to rivet her gaze, and saw a little fleshy lump protruding from between the luscious-looking vermillion lips. struck with amazement, as she herself had nothing of the kind, she touched it gently with her fingers. it throbbed, and minette sighed slightly, and said, in a kind of subdued whisper, "oh, do go on, rub your finger about, my darling clara, it is so exquisite!" she was evidently asleep, and imagined someone else was with her. ethel, hardly knowing what she was about, commenced to rub the little lump, and was surprised still more to find that minette moved uneasily, opening and shutting her legs, till at last she heard a profound sigh, and minette lay motionless. ethel felt a strange throbbing, and her finger was immediately wetted with a warm gush of thick creamy glutinous something which was emitted from the cunt of her bedfellow. this so affected her that she withdrew her finger, and lay apart from her companion again. presently the sleeper awoke, and they dressed, minette again insisting on various squeezings and fondlings, which now produced on ethel a most strange effect, perfectly incomprehensible to her, whilst minette seemed also intensely excited. however, they descended to breakfast without any further adventure, except that another pupil, mademoiselle rosalie, a frolicsome blonde, handed ethel on the sly a piece of poetry in english, which she pretended she could not read herself but which might perhaps interest "la belle anglaise." ethel put the printed slip away in her bosom, and afterwards read at her leisure as follows, a very comical parody: pity the sorrows (parody on pratt's "pity the sorrows of a poor old man," annual register 1770, page 222) pity the sorrows of a fat young wife, whose youth and vigour make her pine the more! whose bounding pulse with hot desire is rife, o give relief, and heaven shall bless your store! these rosy cheeks, my bursting youth bespeak, these beaming eyes proclaim my ardent quim, but o! my husband is so cold and weak, i might be dead, and buried too, for him! my widow'd sister mary pines like me, but while he liv'd, her husband was a man! my married sister lucy smiles to see, how oft i'm baffled since my hopes began! i will not, cannot tell, for very shame, all that is wanting to the married state, to be a wife in nothing but the name, is a most wretched, miserable fate! though chaste in heart, and willing to be chaste, what virtue can withstand the waltz's whirl? tom, jack, or harry's arm about my waist, belly to belly throbbing, boy with girl! to sup on partridges and to drink champagne, stirs my hot blood to fever's ardent glow, and then the waltzing round and round again, drives me quite mad! o what, what can i do? i'd willingly be wise and chaste, god knows! but o, it drives me wild with amorous pain, to feel the embracing arms of waltzing beaux, to meet the piercing glance of charming men! o, tell me, have i err'd? impart the truth! my inmost heart is open to conviction, deeper, o deeper still, dear vigorous youth, o, give me every inch of thine erection! pity the sorrows of a fat young wife, all, all my sins are lying at your door, bestow on me the biggest joys in life, oh, give relief, and heav'n shall bless your store! our school-girl was more perplexed than ever by this effusion: what was that something always required by blooming young wives or widows so mysteriously hinted at in the lines as she read them over and over again to herself? at the close of their morning studies madame cul addressed her pupils and stated that mademoiselle rosalie had not completed her french exercises to her satisfaction, and as she could not allow idleness and carelessness to exist in her establishment, she would be birched in the presence of the whole school after luncheon. ethel stared in amazement, but minette lovingly placed her arm round her waist and whispered, "it is the custom here, but you will soon get used to it, and even enjoy the sight." according, before the commencement of afternoon studies, madame cul entered the schoolroom, followed by two well-formed but muscular and strong housemaids, and when all were assembled, said, "mademoiselle rosalie, come here and take off everything except your chemise, shoes and stockings. the maids will assist you to do so." the poor girl advanced tremblingly, for she had not long entered the establishment, and this was but her second birching. when she was divested of her dress madame cul directed one of the housemaids to assist her in getting on the other one's back, where she was securely held by the hands, the servant acting as horse, having her firmly gripped by each wrist, whilst the other strong young woman was directed to hold the victim's legs well apart. ethel gazed as if fascinated by the pretty and luscious sight presented to her view; it was so exciting to see rosalie, who was about sixteen, with an exquisitely fair complexion, her face flushed with shame, with deep blue eyes brimful of tears, just ready to run down the crimson cheeks, as madame cul raised first her skirts, which brought to view the poor girl's pretty legs, dressed in most interesting boots, white silk stockings, and delicately trimmed drawers. the poor girl seemed to quiver all over with emotion, as she first sobbed and then cried for mercy in a most piteous broken voice, "oh, madame, do pray punish me in private as you did at first. ah, no, no! i can't bear the shame of their all seeing my poor naked bottom." "silly girl, hold that whimpering noise, you deserve all this disgrace, did i not tell you how i would punish you before the whole school next time?" said madame, evidently with some excitement, as she opened the girl's drawers behind, and pinned up the tail of her chemise with all the rest of the impedimenta round the victim's waist, till at last they had a very fair view of rosalie's lovely little pink-lipped cunt, upon which the incipient growth of soft down was only just beginning to be perceptible, and another delightful item displayed to view was her tight wrinkled little bum-hole, set in a frame of soft-tinted delicate brown, beautifully in contrast with the snowy whiteness of the well-developed buttocks. madame now raised the birch with which she was provided, and commenced to lash the bottom so invitingly exhibited, increasing the severity of her cuts as she went on. then resting a little she seemed to watch with much satisfaction the wriggling of the fair penitent, the cheeks of whose bottom were a fiery red. when she recommenced, the birching was directed to the inside of the victim's thighs, and even on the lips of that delicately pink little cunt, with light smart touches, evidently intended to inflame the parts rather than cut them up. rosalie, her dark eyes now full of sensuous humidity, her face burning scarlet, alternately sobbed and cried as she commenced afresh to struggle wildly, so that the servants with all their strength could scarcely hold the plunging victim. madame cul stopped the punishment, and to ethel's intense surprise, she saw rosalie's bottom-hole open and shut, whilst the throbbing lips of her cunt emitted a thick, whitish-looking liquid, which oozed forth in spasmodic gushes. "enough! she spends, the lewd girl; it only shows the prurient ideas girls must have when my birching affects them in such a sensual manner. fie for shame, mademoiselle rosalie, what have you done?" exclaimed madame, as she sank into a chair and seemed ready to faint herself, whilst the humidity of her eyes seemed the very counterpart to that sensuous look in her victim. recovering herself in a few moments, she directed them to release rosalie, and then left the room. during this extraordinary scene minette had placed her hand behind ethel and squeezed the cheeks of her bottom, also endeavoring to force it between her thighs as well as she could, considering how the intervening dress hindered this operation. nevertheless our innocent novice could not help opening her legs a little, and felt a strange indescribable sensation of pleasure. the other girls were moving restlessly on their seats and, in fact, were using dildoes concealed under their drapery. when minette and ethel retired for the night, the former complained of the heat, and suggested that they should sleep without any covering or night dresses, and by way of example got into bed in a state of perfect nudity. ethel, not wishing to be thought prudish or ill-natured, first extinguished the light, and then threw off her chemise. joining her companion bedfellow also quite naked, they embraced each other warmly and minette, placing her hand on ethel's bottom, forced their cunts together. she trembled from head to foot, but when minette asked her to squeeze her in a similar manner, she did so at once, and did not resist the insertion of one of her fair thighs between her own. minette now kissed her furiously, thrusting her tongue into ethel's mouth, causing her to feel the most extraordinary sensations. "ethel, my darling," she said, "what did you think of rosalie's birching, has she not got an exquisite bottom and pussy? was it not awfully exciting when it throbbed?" at the same time she gently placed her hand on ethel's cunt, and commenced to suck one of her nipples, whilst one finger was titillating her companion's incipient clitoris, which, although so small as to be scarcely visible, was tremendously sensitive to these tender and lascivious touches by such an experienced tribade. "oh, oh, pray don't, you make me feel so sick--so odd--i tremble all over--i can't say how i feel--and yet--yet--," said ethel in a whisper, hardly knowing what to do as she struggled to get away a little from her rude bedfellow. this only excited minette the more, as she held the young girl firmly in her embrace, redoubling her ardent caresses, which seemed to send such a thrill of exquisite warmth through ethel's entire frame that she was powerless to resist such seducing endearments. minette was not slow to take advantage of her conquest. reversing her position all of a sudden, she forced her head between ethel's thighs and commenced to suck her cunt, plunging her amorous velvety-tipped tongue in as far as it would go, or biting the little clitoris in such a way that her companion was almost mad with a feeling she could not yet fully understand. she again struggled to release herself, but it was in reality only a semblance of resistance--the last faint protest of her modest nature before thoroughly surrendering herself to all the voluptuous games of minette. at last her head fell back, her throbbing cunt was raised to meet those warm, loving kisses, and then for the first time in her life, she really spent--and fainted. when she recovered she threw herself into minette's arms, saying, "oh, i have indeed been in heaven. what did you do to make me feel so?" her bedfellow hastened to fondle her again, and before another hour had passed they were mutually frigging, gamahuching, and spending amid cries of delight. in fact, ethel was thoroughly taught every pleasure possible to tribadism. the following day another girl was birched in school, and at night minette proposed to ethel that they should go into the next dormitory, after the lights were extinguished, and see what was going on, as the birched girl slept there. they did so, and ethel stood spellbound. twelve girls, of ages varying from ten to sixteen, were all lying in a confused heap on two of the beds that had been placed close together, and they were sucking, frigging, and fucking each other with dildoes. minette rushed to the bed and speedily mingled with the spending mass of girlhood, whilst ethel, utterly unable to resist the impulse, ran forward also to the birched girl and was soon sucking her cunt, whilst other girls sucked her nipples or excited her almost to madness by working their fingers in her sensitive bottom-hole. after exhausting themselves with every kind of lubricity, they returned to their own room. the next morning ethel felt so fatigued she could not complete the task assigned her in school. as she was leaving for recreation madame cul called her to one side, and said: "you have incurred punishment by your neglect, but as you are evidently in a rather nervous state, i will inflict it in my bedroom. come to me immediately after afternoon studies." at the appointed time ethel tremblingly sought madame cul's bedroom. the schoolmistress, after locking the door, proceeded to assist her in removing all her clothes. when this was accomplished she directed her to lie on a velvet couch that was covered with cushions. this she did, and madame cul adjusted her in such a manner that while lying on her belly one of the velvet cushions lay between her extended thighs. she now commenced to birch her with light stinging cuts that, although not apparently heavy enough to break or lacerate her delicate skin, had such a smarting effect that ethel felt she must scream to relieve the pain. this was presently succeeded by a warm voluptuous glow that sent a tremor through her whole frame. she felt as though she wanted to pee, and yet that did not seem the reason of her strange sensations. as the birching proceeded, madame occasionally placed her hand on the bottom of the penitent, which tended so to increase ethel's excitement that, wildly squeezing the cushion between her thighs, she spent copiously. madame, delighted to see what had happened, lifted her own skirts and with a few insertions of her finger produced the same result on herself. when she had recovered she ordered ethel to rise, then pretending to notice the moisture on the pillow, asked her what she had been doing. poor ethel blushed scarlet, and looked awfully distressed. "come here, my darling," madame said, "let me see what has been the matter with you," and she took her across her knees, extending her on her back. she examined her cunt, pressed and rubbed her belly, squeezed her nipples between her fingers till they grew quite impudently erect, inserted her finger in ethel's cunt, and commenced to frig the agitated girl luxuriously, making her toss about in such extasy that, when spending again, madame could scarcely hold her, so violent were her contortions. (madame's finger entered easily, but she made no remark, for she knew full well that the entrance had been forced by minette's finger--which was, in fact, the case.) after this ethel was initiated into every means of procuring sensual pleasure that sapphism could teach, but it was not until her return home, and the subsequent meeting with her brother, that she actually felt the real delight of a prick inside her (which no substitutes can ever equal), although she knew all that man could do unto her. it will be seen, therefore, that by reason of her school experiences she was well prepared for any species of lechery which her brother might venture to propose. in the course of a few days mr. etheridge was compelled again to visit the neighbouring town where he would be detained till the next day. thus the opportunity came at last for which frank had been waiting. at dinner he plied his mother with burgundy (of which she was very fond) to the greatest possible extent, without raising her suspicions, whilst he literally devoured her with his gaze. later in the evening, she sat in a large easy chair and seemed to be getting drowsy. frank said, "as we shall scarcely require anything else to-night, may the servants go to bed, mamma?" she assented, and after the order had been given, frank, looking triumphantly towards his sister, seriously commenced his attempt to mesmerize his own mother. at first she involuntarily resisted his efforts, but at length she succumbed, and as her head fell on her shoulder he openly made the necessary passes, and she speedily became entirely at his mercy. "now, ethel," said he, "i will gratify my passion." he approached his mother. she was in evening dress and her lovely bubbies were half visible, and from the semirecumbent position in which she lay every outline of her form could be clearly seen. her son first carefully raised those deliciously firm bubbies completely above her dress, then sucking one motioned to his sister to do the same with the other. mrs. etheridge sighed slightly and slid further down in her chair. frank then knelt in front of her, and his sister helping him, they gradually raised their mamma's dress in front, till they had a full view of the splendid legs and thighs of their maternal parent--the former cased in pink silk stockings, with the swelling thighs filling out her drawers and making them look deliciously tight. placing his hand within the slit in front he pulled aside the chemise, and gently extending her legs to their widest, he placed her feet on two chairs, and they now had a full view of that glorious cunt from which they both had come. it was beautifully shaded with hair, not too large, and between the moist lips he saw her divine clitoris, hard and erect. after gazing for a moment, he rubbed it gently with his finger. mamma again sighed, and slid still further forwards. now taking from his pocket a dildo (which he had previously charged), he gradually inserted it in his mother and pushed it gently backwards and forwards. the lips clung lovingly to it, his mother's breathing became hurried, her bubbles heaved under the caressing fingers of her daughter, and with a tremendous spasm that convulsed every muscle of her body, she spent, just as frank pressed the spring and injected the contents of the dildo into her. immediately removing the instrument and substituting his tongue, he drained every drop of spend that she emitted. while he was thus occupied ethel had stretched herself on the floor, and having released his bursting cock, was receiving within her mouth the spendings of her brother. after gloating for some time over the sight of his mother's relaxed cunt, he suddenly placed her legs over his shoulders and raised her body in such a manner that his prick was opposite her bottom-hole. he, after his sister had rubbed some of the spunk within its wrinkled orifice, prepared for an enculade. ethel meanwhile was gamahuching her mother's delicious cunt and being frigged by her brother. gradually frank pushed his way within his mamma's delightful fundament, which contracted and throbbed upon his tremendously excited prick, so that he at once spent in an agony of lust. his sister, equally maddened by the thoughts of her brother's incest and the voluptuous workings of his fingers on the lips of her cunt and clitoris, also emitted at the same time with a scream of rapture. then not to be outdone by her brother she made him withdraw his prick, which remained enormously stiff, and literally devoured it with her lips, sucking every drop of spend, etc., which still oozed from the fiery-looking head of his affair, and then pointing it to that divine maternal cunt she made him plunge in there and fuck mamma properly and thoroughly, whilst she was sucking and tickling his balls in order to increase his enjoyment. "mamma, dear," said frank, withdrawing his prick after another ecstatic spend, "do you know what you are doing?" she answered immediately, "yes, my darling children, your delicious fucking and gamahuching have made me feel all the delights of heaven itself." yet her eyes were closed, and there was no doubt of her being still under the mesmeric influence. "is there anything else you would like, dear mother?" asked frank. "i should like to suck my dear boy's prick, whilst ethel frigs me again," she murmured. frank at once presented his half-stiffened cock to his mother's lips, whilst ethel, kneeling down between the maternal thighs, rolled her lascivious tongue in delight round that splendid clitoris and within the serrated nymphae which guarded the entrance to the temple of love, whilst her nose revelled amongst the beautiful chevelure of a most glorious mons veneris, and inhaled all the sweet odours of that cytherian region, which always has maddening effects on the votaries of gamahuching. she was too occupied with her tongue to frig her mother's cunt, but postilioned her luxuriously with two fingers in her bottom-hole; mamma all the while was sucking the prick and caressing the balls of her son, as he fucked her in the mouth. at last they were too exhausted to carry their ideas any further for the time, and having wiped their mother and removed every trace of her defilement--and allowed a little time for the blood to cool in their veins--she was placed in her former position in her chair, her dress readjusted, and then frank, with a few passes, brought her back to consciousness, after which they all soon retired to rest. the following day at lunch time mr. etheridge returned home; but mrs. etheridge did not appear, having a severe headache, doubtless (although she knew it not) the result of the operations of her children on her body the previous evening. it was a lovely afternoon, and mr. etheridge proposed a walk, to which his children readily assented. after strolling about for upwards of an hour they directed their steps to the summer house, of which mention has been before made. both frank and ethel had been more than usually affectionate in their manner to their father this particular afternoon, and the latter had more than once brushed accidentally with the back of her head against the front of her father's trousers, and on the last occasion distinctly felt his prick, which was evidently in a slightly turgid state, and his trousers also slightly projected in the most interesting place. ethel's breath shortened and her voice was slightly thick and husky with a strange tremulousness in its tone, as she felt a curious and unnatural sensation stealing over her that she could not define even in her own thoughts. frank also seemed strangely excited, and occasionally pressed his sister's bubbies behind his parent's back. he also took every opportunity of pressing against his father. when they sat down to rest ethel noticed that her father appeared drowsy, and he lay down on the couch. presently his eyes closed, and he seemed in a deep sleep. on looking towards her brother she saw he was making the mesmeric passes with his hands. in a few moments he rose, and approaching his sister, said, "my darling, papa is now entirely unconscious of what he does, and entirely under my control; we will secure the door, and then you shall suck the author of your being till his noble prick spends in your mouth." he appeared almost mad, and ethel remained for the moment almost spellbound--her feelings were too much for her. "now, ethel," continued her brother, "you can do what you wish, do not lose time!" aroused by his words, she approached her father and knelt down by the side of the couch. he was lying on his back, with his thighs slightly separated. taking hold of his legs she gently extended them still further, and his prick could be seen reposing on his left thigh. ethel tremblingly unfastened the buttons from waist to fork; then, gently removing his shirt, she saw before her her father's lovely prick. it was an exquisite object, purely white, streaked with delicate blue veins, the loose skin almost covering the head of it. his balls were hanging gracefully beneath, and fine silky hair surrounded the whole of his privates. she touched the prick, and even ventured to place her fingers round it; and as she did so its substance increased. she gently pushed the skin up and down, it throbbed and grew harder and stiffer every moment, till at last it was proudly erect, standing against his spotless belly, as white as ivory and as hard as a bar of iron. she lay her cheek lovingly on his thigh and kissed the point of it, and then took it between her lips, while with her fingers she tickled his balls, which were now hard and tight in their receptacle. frank now knelt behind his sister, and having raised her clothes, he separated her legs and soon ascertained that her cunt was delightfully moist and hot. bringing his prick to the mark, he slowly inserted it, and then pushed gently backwards and forwards. his sister took more of the paternal priapus in her mouth, and pushing her head to and fro, frigged it deliciously by the double action of her lips and tongue. she grew more and more excited in her gamahuching as the motions of frank's prick stirred all the lubricity of her nature, till suddenly mr. etheridge's lips parted with a deep-drawn sigh, the muscles of his belly hardened, and he spent in the mouth of his daughter, who also simultaneously received her brother's balmy emission in her cunt. as the spending prick left the mouth of the gamahucher, frank, withdrawing, took his sister in his arms, and thrusting his tongue into her mouth, they greedily enjoyed their father's spendings with which it was filled, as their hands mutually groped each other's prick and cunt. papa still lay on his back, his prick moist and glistening. frank now seized the limp affair of his parent, and bringing his person close to his father, rubbed the head of the parental prick against that of his own. this immediately stiffened him again, and frank directed ethel to stand on the couch with her legs straddled over her father. she gradually stooped till the point of the great and glorious prick was at the entrance to her cunt, then with frank's assistance it was guided into the lustful gap, she stooping lower and lower, till it penetrated her to the quick. her brother placed his hands under the cheeks of her bottom and jumped her up and down, till he saw by the contraction of his father's balls, and the immense increase of stiffness in the shaft of his prick, that he was about to spend again. then he placed his head between his sister's thighs behind and with his tongue licked his father's balls and the lips of his sister's cunt, frigging himself at the same time. when father and daughter spent, their joint spendings oozed out over his face and drove him frantic with enjoyment; then lifting his sister down, he made her suck his prick, which had just emitted, till it was stiff again, and then placing her on the floor he fucked her savagely, to her great delight in the excited state she then was, while he also frigged his father's cock till it came again in a copious spend. they now removed all traces of what had happened; frank then willed his father to awake, which he did. and looking round vacantly, he said, "dear children, i fear i have been to sleep, the fresh air does tire me so," as he little thought of the real reason of his peculiar feelings of fatigue. frank, now perfectly sure that father, mother, and sister were entirely amenable to his influence, was determined to gratify his lusts to the full, and with the aid of ethel he counted on carrying out his intentions. in addition to gratifying their licentious appetites in the manner already related, they also sought new excitements by utilizing certain animals on the farm. ethel would frig a bull or a goat, and when milking a favorite cow, would suddenly persuade frank to lift her in his arms, where she would lay extended on her back, and raising her clothes, would frig herself with the cow's teats, the milk from which would flow into her ravenous cunt to be afterwards sucked out by her brother. frank would also stealthily approach a goat and raise the animal's hind legs; ethel would put cold cream on its cunt for him and insert her brother's prick, who would then, utterly regardless of the cruelty he inflicted, force his cock in and spend there. at last another idea occurred to them. they were sitting after dinner when frank quietly mesmerized both father and mother and then asked ethel to dismiss the servants for the night. they amused themselves by playing with their parents' private parts for awhile, and then frank willed them to go to their bedroom. this they immediately did. brother and sister left them for a short time, retiring to their own rooms, and returned quite naked. their parents now mechanically divested themselves of every article of clothing, in obedience to the will of their son, whilst frank also willed the housemaid maud to come into the room naked. this girl, under his influence, first approached mrs. etheridge and sucked her bubbles, then her cunt till she spent, after which she did the same with the prick of her master, while frank and ethel gamahuched her bottom-hole and cunt to stimulate her lasciviousness; then she was sent back to her room. mr. and mrs. etheridge began to fondle, and after struggling a little together on the bed, mamma was pulled onto her husband, and they commenced a most luscious st. george. heavens! what a sight for their incestuous son and daughter! with greedy eyes and bated breath, they watched that lovely prick appear and disappear within the loving cunt above it. now the paroxysm of spending approached, and their voluptuous furor increased--it was simply maddening. frank and ethel rushed forwards and with their hands assisted their beloved parents to experience the utmost possible enjoyment attainable, which they undoubtedly did, literally screaming with pleasure, as the spunk came forth in prolific streams. frank now determined to run a great risk in allowing his parents to know what was going on. first directing his sister to lie on her back on the bed, with extended thighs, he willed his father to lie on her and himself placed his prick within her cunt. then his mother (under his influence) lay on her back, on the bed by ethel's side, and frank, excitedly mounting upon her, buried his prick within the moist and juicy folds of the delicious cunt that gave him birth. as they were all four approaching the divine climax, frank dissolved the mesmeric charm and allowed both father and mother to realise the situation at a moment when it would be impossible for them to resist the impulses of their carnal nature. mr. etheridge gave a cry of horror, and mamma screamed with fright, but ethel held her father in a convulsive embrace, her erotic fury making her at the moment as strong as a lioness, whilst frank for his part thrust so vigorously at his mother that, in spite of their horror at the incestuous situation, they all spent simultaneously. it would be impossible to describe the sense of shame that overcame the poor parents; they seemed to think they were still under the influence of some horrible dream, an idea which their children did their best to foster, whilst they were delighted by the sight of their father's fine prick stiffening again of itself, from the mere thought of having enjoyed his daughter. presently ethel and her brother glided noiselessly from the room, but remained just outside the door to peep and listen. in a moment or two mr. etheridge threw himself upon his wife in a perfect transport of lust, exclaiming, "what a dream to fancy i've been fucking ethel, and what joys she gave me! i feel, dear, as randy as if i had been away from you for six months!" "how curious," sighed mrs. etheridge, "that i am also excited by having been dreaming the same thing about dear frank! ah, how fine, stiff, and hot your love of a prick is, my dear, and as moist as if you had really had the girl. put it into me quick, love, and i'll fancy you really are frank. i'm excited enough to do the real thing at this moment!" "for shame, wife," responded mr. etheridge, "it's an awful sin even to think about, and yet they do say the great napoleon used to fuck his own sisters and aunts, and considered he had a right to enjoy himself as he pleased." "besides," continued mrs. etheridge, "there's the case of lot and his daughters, and no doubt they were thought quite as respectable as ever by their acquaintances afterwards. in fact, they must have told about it for moses to have known how to write the tale, and he could not have been very horrified at the incest, as he makes no mention of its being discontinued by lot when he found it out. and then, you know, the ancient kings of egypt always preferred to marry their mothers or sisters." further remarks were stopped by the necessities of their amorous combat, so brother and sister retired, fully satisfied that their parents would soon be as easy as themselves with regard to incestuous intercourse with their children. next day mr. and mrs. etheridge appeared greatly distressed and hardly able to look frank and ethel in the face, but in the course of a few days this all wore off. their equanimity returned, and whether owing to the mysterious influence of mesmerism or otherwise, they afterwards willingly enacted every species of licentiousness with their own children. one day frank and ethel related to their parents their experiences at college and school. mr. etheridge was so inflamed at the tale of the professor sodomizing the boy with the big prick that he declared he should never rest until frank had procured him the same pleasure. "let me see," he said, "if i can think of a handsome, finely developed youth, who we can invite here some day for you to experimentalize upon. yes, there's young harry mortimer. he has got a fine looking lump in his trousers--a perfect adonis--i've often longed to handle his cock." "you old sinner," laughed his wife, "i always thought you a strictly moral man. and to think your ideas ever ran in such a beastly course. i, too, must confess, now frank's mesmerism has made us all free with one another, how hard it has often been for me to retain my reputation as a chaste wife. why there's dr. stroker, our rector, who has tried me dozens of times, and once actually showed me his fine tool when we were alone in the drawing room. what a beauty it was! i almost fainted with desire." "ah," said ethel, "that's nothing to what he did with me, when i had to go to the rectory to prepare for confirmation. i was always alone with him. he used to laugh and tell me that religion was all humbug, he himself only followed and preached it as his trade, to get a good living. he would draw me on his lap, put his hands up my clothes, and tell me my cunny would soon have a crop of beautiful soft hair on it. and one day he threw me back and kissed my cunt till i fainted, and when i came round my clothes were up to my waist, and he was standing between my legs as they hung over the side of the sofa and frigging himself so as to spend all over my belly, and after all would not let me go home till i had kissed and handled his cock. that was just before you sent me off to madame cul's school and no doubt all helped to make minette's touches so awfully exciting when she began to seduce me with her wanton games." "we'll have a game with him, frank, my boy!" exclaimed mr. etheridge. "my idea now is that we may all do what we like to enjoy ourselves, only damn all jealousy. i'm a regular communist now! well, when i ride out to-morrow i will call and ask harry to spend an early day with you." "have you found anything worth reading to us yet, frank?" asked his mamma. "yes, a little bit about the quarrels of the goddesses in heaven. it is an old volume of the writings of the 'london spy.' here it is," said frank, taking up a book: poem a health jove began to the best end of juno, by which they had often been "junctus in uno," the bowl went about with much simp'ring and winking, each god lick'd his lips, at the health he was drinking; whilst venus and pallas look'd ready to rave, that her goddesship's scut should such preference have; the bowl being large, hoping the rather their amiable rumps might have swam altogether. thus both being vex'd, venus swore by her power, the nectar had something in't, made it drink sowre: which pallas confirm'd by her shield and her sword, and vow'd 'twas as musty besides as a t----d but juno perceiving 'twas out of ill-nature, that venus and pallas abus'd the good creature, because to her peacock, precedence was given, as the best and finest fledg'd bird in the heaven; insinuating under a wink and a snicker, as if the good health had corrupted the liquor: and finding they'd cast this reflection upon her, in juno 'twas justice to stand by her honour: who raising her bum from her seat in a passion, to venus and pallas she made this oration: "pray goddesses! what do you mean, i beseech it, to basely reflect on my tippet-de-wichet? i know by your smiles, leering looks, and your winks, and your items and jeers, you'd insinuate it stinks: dispraising the nectar, well knowing you meant, that a health to my tw----t gave the juice an ill scent. nay, laugh if you please, for i know i'm extreamly to blame, thus to blurt out a word so unseemly. but all know the proverb, wherein it is said, that a what is a what, and a spade is a spade; and now i'm provok'd, for a truth i may tell it, tho' as red as a fox, yet it smells like a vi'let. by jove i'll be judge, if i am not as sweet, i may say, as a primrose, from head to my feet. and he, you may swear, who's my husband and lover, has kist me, and felt me, and smelt me all over, and if he can say an ill scent does arise, from my ears, or my armpits, my c----t, or my thighs, like rotten old cheshire, low vervane or ling, and altho' i'm goddess, i'll hang in a string. your self, lady fair, that arose from the sea, sure will not presume to be fragrant as me: the spark that has laid at your feet all his trophies, has smelt you sometimes strong as pickl'd anchovies: but what if he has, were you ranker and older, you'd be e'en good enough for a smith or a soldier." these words put the goddess of love in a fire, and make her look redder than mars that was by her. "my beauty," said venus, "obtain'd the gold apple." "mine a----s kiss," says juno, "you shall have a couple. i'd have you to know, queen of sluts, i defie you, and all you can say, or the bully that's by you. and as for that tomboy that boasts she can wield, in quarrels and brangles, her lance and her shield, that never yet tasted the heavenly blessing, but always lov'd fighting, much better than kissing: i know she'd be glad to be ravish'd by force, by some lusty god, that's as strong as a horse. but who'd be so forward, unless he was tipsie, to choose for a miss, such a masculine gipsie? a termagant dowdy, a nasty old maid; who flights copulation, as if she was spay'd: which makes me believe, that under her bodice, she wants the dear gem, that's the pride of a goddess." now pallas, enrag'd at so high a reflection, cry'd out, "i thank jove, i am made in perfection, and ev'ry thing have, from a hole to a hair, becoming the goddess of wisdom and war; as paris well knew, when he took a survey, of those parts where a goddess's excellence lay; who strok'd it and smil'd, when my legs he had parted, and peep'd till i thought his poor eyes would have started. then licking his lips, did aver to be true, i was each way as full well accomplish'd as you. indeed, madam juno, i'll therefore be plain, if ever i hear these reflections again: i vow as a goddess, and no mortal sinner, i shall have no patience, but handle your pinner." with that the great jupiter rose up in hot anger, and looking on pallas, was ready to bang her. "pox take ye," says he, "is your scolding a lecture, that ought to be preach'd o'er a bowl of good nectar? to drink we came hither, to sing and be civil; as gods, to be merry, and not play the devil. why, mortals on earth, that live crowded in allies, as laundresses, porters, poor strumpets and bullies; when got o'er a gallon of belch, or a sneaker of punch, could not wrangle more over their liquor. and you that are goddesses, thus to be squabbling, as if you were bred up to scow'ring and dabbling! and all for a fig, or a fart, or a feather, or some silly thing that's as trivial as either! for shame, my fair goddesses, bridle your passions, and make not in heaven such filthy orations about your bumfiddles; a very fine jest! when the heavens all know, they but stink at the best. tho' ye think you much mend with your washes the matter, and help the ill-scent with your orange flower water; but when you've done all, 'tis but playing the fool, and like stifling a t----d, in a cedar close stool: besides, gods of judgment have often confest that the natural scent without art is the best." the goddesses all, at these sayings, took snuff, and rose from their seats in a damnable huff: their frowns and their blushes, they mingled together, and went off in a passion, i do not know hither. "here's another fine burlesque poem i'll read, if you don't mind," continued frank, "it's called 'vulcan and venus.'" vulcan and venus says vulcan to venus, "pray where have you been?" "abroad," cries the goddess, "to see and be seen." "i fear," says the blacksmith, "you lead an ill life, tho' a goddess, i doubt you're a bitch of a wife." "why, how now," cries venus, "altho' you're my spouse, if you bitch me, you brute, have a care of your brows; why sure you don't think, i, the goddess of beauty, by dint of ill language, will prove the more true t'ye; be civil, you'd best, or i vow by my placket, i'll make the god mars bastinado your jacket!" "are you there with your bears?" smung replies to his hussey. "does mars still refresh your old furbilo, does he; i feel by my forehead a coat that is scarlet, of all kinds of baits, is the best for a harlot; for beauty, i find, as 'tis commonly said, will nibble like fish at a rag that is red; but hussey, tell me any more of your mars, and i'll run a hot bar in your goddesship's arse; i fear not your threats, there's a fart for your bully, no whore in the heavens shall make me her cully!" "you run a hot bar in my bum," quoth the dame, "its a sign you've a mighty respect for the same; if your love be so little as to abuse it, i'll keep it for those who know better to use it; i'm certain no goddess that values her honour, would bear the indignities you put upon her, and not from that minute resolve out of spite, to improve your old horns till they hang in your light." "you're an impudent slut," cries the smung at his bellows, "and i the unhappiest of all marry'd fellows: i know you have made me a ram, i have seen it, i catch'd you, you whore, in the critical minute, fast lock'd in the arms of your lecherous god, whilst his brawny posteriors went niddity nod; and you, like a slut, lay as pleased and contented, as if every joint of your body consented; altho' when you found you were spy'd by your buck, then you struggl'd and strove like a pig that is stuck, and dismounting your god, would have made your escape, but i saw by your actions it could be no rape; tho' when you first heard, by my patting-shoe tread, my approach to your whoreship's adulterous bed, i know you'd have flown with your coats and your bodice, and afterwards vow'd 'twas some other lewd goddess; but my net was too strong, it prevented your flying, and so put a stop to your swearing and lying. besides, that the gods might behold what a slut of a beautiful queen they amongst them had got, i call'd 'em about, that their honours might stand, and be pimps to your goddesship's bus'ness in hand, that in case you the truth shou'd hereafter deny, i might call the whole heavens to witness you lie." "and what did you get?" cries the amorous dame, "for the pains that you took, but a cuckoldy name; 'tis true you're confirmed you've a whore for your wife, pray is that any comfort or ease to your life; and have made it appear to the gods as a jest, that your wife's reputation is none of the best; does that make your labour more easy or sweet, or give you more gust to your drink or your meat? 'tis true, you are fam'd for the net you have made, pray what did you catch in't but horns for your head; you know that your rival don't value a trap, or a net, any more than a child or a clap; a soldier is never asham'd of his vices, but rather is proud of a goddess's kisses; and thinks it adds more to a hero's renown, to subdue a fair lady than conquer a town; your spite must be therefore intended alone, against me, and that my little faults might be known; since 'tis as it is, i am very well pleas'd, your head shall be loaded, my tail shall be eas'd; for since you have publish'd my shame and disgrace, and have made me a jest to the heavenly race; i'll be impudent now, and whenever i meet, my dear favourite mars, tho' it be in the street; if a bulk be but near, i will never more dally, he shall, if it pleases him, ay marry shall he; thus all you shall get by your open detection, of one silly error in female affection, is a wife that will cuckold you worse out of spite, now she's catch'd, than before she e're did for delight; to punish thy head and heart, that very vice, which i us'd but in private whilst honour was nice; i'll publickly now practice over and o'er, till thou'rt fain'd for a cuckold and i for a whore." cries vulcan, "could ever man think that a goddess, admir'd for her charms by such numbers of noddies, should ever be curst with so rampant a tail, that will wallow more love-sap, than i can do ale; a pox on your rump, for i plainly see 'tis as salt as your parents, oceanus and tethys. but had i first known you had sprung from salt water, the devil for me, should have marry'd the daughter; besides, you are grown both so lustful and bold, and for all your sweet looks, have a billingsgate tongue, that is fifty times worse than a fishwoman's hung. if these be the plagues of a beautiful wife, o ease me, great jove, of so cursed a life; if la pies divine, who inhabit the heavens, will whore on like mortals, at sixes and sevens; rave, rattle, and taunt at their horrify'd spouses, and ramble abitching thro' all the twelve houses; for all your fine features i'll e'en give you over, the charms of a whore are but plagues to a lover. get you gone and be pox'd, to your old bully mars, let a god be a slave to your goddesship's a----s; whilst i'm contempt of your infamous rump, on my anvil will knock, with a thump, a thump-thump!" the second day after frank had read these curious old bits to his parents and sister, they were all delighted by the arrival of young harry mortimer to spend a day with his old school-mate. to judge by appearances mr. etheridge had every cause for the curious desires he had confessed to, two days before. harry was a really handsome youth of seventeen, with golden coloured hair, the bloom of the peach on his cheeks, and a most loveable pair of deep blue eyes which seemed full of the humid fire of love. he had also a finely developed form, which his close-fitting garments set off to the best advantage, and, above all, what had the most charm for the eyes of his friends as they so heartily welcomed him to their house was the evident precocity of his organs of love, which in their quiescent state showed a most prominent lump in his trousers. mrs. etheridge: "why harry, what a fine fellow you have grown since i saw you a year ago. no doubt you are too bashful to kiss ethel now, but you will surely embrace an old friend like me, who used to nurse you in my arms as a baby," giving him such an amorous hug and smack upon his cheeks that the young fellow blushed up to his eyes. after luncheon frank took harry for a walk, and asking him if he would like to look at their horses, they bent their steps to the stables where the groom thomas, a fine handsome young fellow of about twenty, was polishing the coats of his charges, at the same time as he emitted that curious hissing which all stablemen so mysteriously accustom themselves to when busy over their work. he did not see the two young gentlemen till they had been watching his operations for a few seconds, but as soon as he did so, respectfully touched his cap and asked them to look at his horses. walking into the stable, thomas, cap in hand, respectfully pointed out all the perfections of his pets and the neatness of all the appointments. then he conducted them into the harness room, which was at the top of a short flight of stairs. thomas was about to close an interior door, which half open gave a view into his own private quarters, when, a sudden idea striking him, frank said, "you won't mind, thomas, if we take a peep into your sanctum--unless you have got a young lady you would rather we did not see. i only want to let mr. mortimer see how cosy your room is, besides, you know, i have often had a sly smoke with you there on wet days when i was home for the holidays before, and i know you have always got some nice clean glasses in your cupboard, if not anything better than water to offer us. but i have taken care of that and brought a good flask of finest brandy. i got the housekeeper to give me some of papa's real _vieux cognac_. it's ever so old and goes down like milk. just the thing, thomas, to keep you up to your work when you have a nice girl. but i forget you never do anything of the sort, eh! how about little lucy, the under-housemaid, who i hear had to go home with a big belly not long ago?" "lord, sir!" said thomas, quite enjoying frank's joke, "that'll be another of old stroker's kids when it's born. he did it when she went up to be taught her confirmation lesson. i'm told he confirmed seven girls in fucking, this examination. he's a regular ram of a parson, and will soon be the father of all the young'uns in the parish. i wonder master let miss ethel go to him at all. i always suspected the old fellow after the way he treated me." they entered the snug little bedroom, where everything was a clean as a new pin, and seated themselves on the only two chairs that were there, whilst the groom brought out the glasses and fetched a jug of bright sweet spring water from the pump outside. frank, mixing a rather stiffish drop, said, "now, thomas, drink the rev. mr. stroker's health, and then tell us all about his tricks with you." himself and harry also took a little of the brandy. and thomas, pressed to begin, cleared his throat and commenced: "well, mr. frank and mr. mortimer, i don't mind letting you into the secret, but the fact is every time i think of the old rascal's indecency it makes my cock stand, but you must not tell a soul what i now tell you." "all right, go on, old fellow, just a drop more brandy to encourage your bashfulness, eh!" laughed frank. thomas, wiping his mouth after a good swig at the brandy and water: "well, sirs, that righteous old sinner, as an irishman would say, began by asking me questions about who made me. if i knew there was a god and a devil. then about the world and the flesh, and so on, a lot of rubbish out of the church prayerbook. 'you know, thomas, my boy,' he said, 'that the "flesh" means having to do with girls and other dirty indecent things which come into the heads of rude boys. now tell me if you ever did anything of that kind with other boys or girls?' "this was rather a poser for me. i didn't like to tell a downright lie and knew i had been a party to one or two little games of that sort, such as we used to do in the hayfield, throwing the girls down, turning up their clothes, and showing them our cocks, which no doubt the old rascal knew. i could feel my face was turning quite red with confusion. 'ha, i see what it is, thomas! i must thoroughly examine you and tell by the look of your penis' (that is the word i think he used, but you know he meant my cock), as he ordered me to unbutton and show him my privates, and he would soon tell if i had been up to any of the devil's wickedness. "as soon as i was exposed to him he told me to draw the skin of my cock back, which i did. "'do it again, my boy, there now, again--two or three times mind.' "then i expect he saw slight signs of a rise, saying, 'do it quicker--quicker, boy' till i had the horn quite stiff. "'my gracious! you're finely grown for your age, thomas. now did you never show that to a gal?' "'well, sir,' i said, rather shamefaced at what he was making me do, 'i did once, but only once, sir, and polly jones felt it with her hand, and let me feel what her cock was like, too.' "'fine goings on in my parish, 'pon my word, thomas, but what sort a thing had she got? because you know gals have nothing like this,' he said, taking hold of my standing prick. "'she'd--she'd only a little crack, sir,' i replied. 'pray let me go now, sir, i don't like it.' he was regularly frigging me. "'silly boy, here's a half-crown to keep quiet, if you let me handle it a bit, and you shall have another every time you come to me,' he said, giving me the money, and soon frigged me to a spend and then let me go. i didn't think much harm in it, and was very glad to get the parson's half-crowns, so went twice a week for examination. he wasn't satisfied with just frigging me, but sometimes went down on his knees and sucked my cock till i spent in his mouth, which i liked better, but when he wanted me to do the same for him, and even offered me a sovereign, i wouldn't do it, only let him rub his great cock against my belly and balls, and then he would spend, holding the head of my prick against his own and so drawing his own foreskin over it. then i had the sovereign never to open my lips about it, and at last was confirmed." frank now gave thomas a drop more brandy and asked him if he would like to be mesmerized, adding, "if you are game to let me, you will then have to answer truthfully any questions i ask and do everything i tell you." thomas: "now, mr. frank, you are trying to get at me--as if i would believe that. i ain't afraid. you may try." frank: "then look me steadily in the face, and let me hold you by your two thumbs." thomas: "all right, sir, but i be sure you can't make me do as you say." for a little while he resisted the effects of frank's mesmeric art, but in less than five minutes his eyes had a quite vacant look, and in obedience to his young master he seated himself on the side of the bed. "now, harry, let me do you as well, as i have an idea i want to carry out." "you may take hold of my thumbs as you did with thomas, but i defy you to mesmerize me," said harry, laughing. "that's too bad," replied frank with a smile, "but there's no harm in trying what i can do, old fellow, eh?" it was a hard task to fix the gaze of his youthful companion, but by patience and perseverance frank succeeded at last in putting him also into a perfect state of mesmeric sleep. "now, my fine fellows, i shall be well rewarded for my trouble before i bring you round again, and it's my turn before i fetch papa on the scene, i think." he stripped himself, and ordered his two subjects to do the same, put a small box of cold cream under the pillow of the bed so as to be at hand, then contemplated and handled the young groom and his friend. thomas was furnished with a lovely tosser, which swelled rapidly under his touches as he uncovered the ruby head and gently pulled the foreskin backward and forward. "now, thomas, keep yourself stiff by gentle frigging, but mind not to spend till i order you," he said; then he turned to the beautiful harry mortimer, who came to his side as soon as ordered. he was indeed an adonis--splendidly shaped in every limb, delightfully plump and firm white flesh, rosy cheeks, sparkling blue eyes--but frank was so engrossed with his jewel of a prick, which was a perfect gem of the first water, nearly eight inches long when erect, as white and hard as ivory, yet of velvety softness to the touch, and set in a bed of soft, curly, golden-brown hair, which ornamented the roots and shaded the full bag of tricks in their receptacle below. how frank handled, caressed, and kissed this treasure of love, as he ejaculated, "oh, papa, oh mamma, what a thrill the sight of this will give you both. but i must enjoy it first!" placing himself on the bed, sitting up with his back supported by a pillow, he ordered thomas to straddle his lap. taking up the box of cream, he first anointed the head of his own impatient priapus, then did the same to thomas' fundament, working his two fingers well in it, which made the groom's prick throb and stiffen enormously. then frank adjusted his tool to the wrinkled orifice; in obedience to his mysterious influence thomas slowly impaled himself upon it, till his buttocks embraced its whole length and frank had his man's cock deliciously chafing and rubbing between their naked bellies at every movement. passing his hands under thomas' armpits, harry was made to come forwards behind the groom and present his glorious prick over the left shoulder so that frank could take that lovely ruby head in his mouth, whilst his hands drew back the foreskin and tickled and played with its appendages, the mere touch of which filled frank with maddening lust. never had he experienced such ecstasy and erotic fury as this conjunction with his groom and friend now caused him to feel, he thrilled from head to toe with voluptuous excitement as his spendings seemed to shoot from him again and again, with a very few seconds between each emission, whilst harry on his part deluged his mouth and lips with the balmy juice of his virginity and thomas also flooded his belly with convulsive jets of spunk, all of them being so young and vigorous they seemed almost inexhaustible. at last frank began to feel it was too much and sank back, overcome by such an acme of enjoyment, as his prick dropped gradually out of the groom's fundus. presently recovering himself a little, he took a sip of neat brandy, hastily dressed himself, and willing his subjects to lie quietly on the bed till he came back, he ran with bated breath, and flushed as he was with delight, to call his father and mother to the scene. they all came back together after the lapse of a few minutes. papa and mamma, on entering the little bedroom over the stable, were struck at once by the entrancing sight which met their eyes, of these two beautiful young fellows lying naked on the bed; but in a minute or two both of them threw off all their clothing, in order to thoroughly avail themselves of the treat provided by their dutiful son. frank, by his influence, now willed harry to kneel up on the bed on his hands and knees, whilst thomas was to lie flat on his back. mr. etheridge, who had brought a fine dildo with him, now put cold cream on it and also on harry's bum-hole, then inserting the instrument slowly it gradually won its way in, and he watched its effects with delight as young mortimer's cock began to stand again in all its previous glory. he mounted on the couch behind him, and withdrawing the dildo, put his own rampant prick in its place, having first lubricated it with cold cream, then clasping his arms around the dear youth, he frigged that fine prick, exactly as frank had seen the professor do with the boy at college. mrs. etheridge waited a few moments watching her spouse's operation till her blood was so fired with amorous excitement that she at once seized upon thomas' cock, which was lying rather limp between his fine thighs, then forcing his legs a little further apart, she gamahuched him and licked his splendid balls till he was as stiff as ever; then mounting upon her man she slowly impaled herself upon his luscious battering ram as she lowered her body till her lips met his in a fiery voluptuousness, to which, under frank's mysterious influence, the groom responded with all the ardour of his nature. for a few moments mrs. etheridge continued to kiss and thrust her tongue into thomas' mouth, whilst she kept her buttocks steady and revelled in the sense of possession which that fine prick afforded her, as her cunt felt thoroughly gorged by the delicious morsel. frank, who had intended to enjoy the scene as a passive spectator, was again fired by the sight of such a voluptuous group, his prick beginning to stiffen again, notwithstanding his previous exhaustion, so mounting on the bed he faced his papa, and letting down his trousers presented his half erect cock to harry mortimer's lips, as he willed him to take it in his mouth and suck it lusciously. the youth's lips opened mechanically, the very first touch of them sending a thrill of pleasure through frank's frame so that he stiffened up immediately, and fucked the boy's mouth gently, so as not to come again too soon. mr. and mrs. etheridge both spent quickly, being each of them so excited by the idea of what they were doing, but keeping their places they all went on without stopping, papa frigging his dear boy harry, and making his prick spend copiously, receiving the love juice in his hand and rubbing it deliciously over the balls and shaft of the cock he was caressing. they kept it up deliberately and slowly for some time, so as to enjoy the two fine young fellows to the utmost, then all come together with screams and cries of extasy--frank seeming to control the whole party by his mesmeric influence in such a way that their very souls vibrated in accordance with his wishes, the enjoyment of father, mother, and son being simply inexpressible. "ah, frank, my dear boy," sighed mr. etheridge, "you have afforded us a heavenly treat, but it must now come to an end or we may some of us actually expire under such excessive emotions." after dressing and willing the two subjects also to assume their clothes, papa and mamma went away. frank recalled thomas and harry to consciousness and bantered them about the games he had made them go through at his command. "would you believe it? you did anything i ordered--sucking each other's pricks, and frigging each other, and doing exactly what i liked to order." neither of them would believe it, saying they had only been off for a very short time and that he had tumbled the bed to make believe what he said of them was true. at the same time both admitted having had very confused though pleasing dreams. a few days after what has just been related, harry mortimer paid them another visit, which the family council had resolved should be a regular "mesmeric seance." besides their young friend they had invited the rector of the parish, dr. stroker, and his two nieces, blanche and ada manners, very pretty brunettes of sixteen and fifteen. the day passed delightfully on the grounds where they played croquet, or retired to the summer house for refreshment. during the course of the afternoon mamma and the parson took a walk by themselves. mrs. etheridge, with assumed unconsciousness, pointing out the beauties of the flowers, or calling his attention to the occasional glimpses of the sea, which they obtained through openings of the landscape, till they neared a rustic seat, where she declared she was so very fatigued she must rest awhile if the doctor did not object. seating herself with a slight sigh of relief, she remarked, "how tiring the game of croquet always seemed," adding, "do you not think it is quite absurd for us old people to join with the young ones in such games?" "my dear madame," replied the doctor, "we are always children as long as we live. we enjoy the games of youth with zest, even if we have not the same powers, and it is the same with love, which so enthralls us that i verily believe the older we get the more enthusiastic we become in its pursuit. now confess, my dear mrs. etheridge, is it not so with you?" "fie, doctor, pray don't take advantage of our secluded position to press that hopeless, wicked suit of yours. besides, sir," she added with a laugh, "this is, you know, saturday afternoon, and such thoughts can only be prompted by the devil to drive out of your mind all your ideas for to-morrow's sermon." the parson now ventured to put his arm round that voluptuous waist, as he drew closer still to his lovely companion, saying, "no fear of that, my dear madame. can you guess what my text is to be to-morrow?" "how could i, you silly man?" said mrs. etheridge with a very encouraging smile. "is it anything out of the common?" "well, hem--i think it so, madame, and one that will bring your sins of omission to your conscience," answered he. "don't keep me in suspense, but tell me at once, you foolish fellow, you know i can't guess." "can't guess--can't guess even! how you do dissimulate, mrs. etheridge, when i know you're always thinking of it, my dear lady. well then, it's--it's prick--no, i mean the first commandment--you know what that is surely, look at this fine specimen of the creator's work, and say if you can despise his command, 'to be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth,'" he said, placing in her hand his great big standing priapus which he had let out of his trousers. the touch was electric, a shiver of desire ran through her whole frame, as her fingers seemed to grasp the lovely jewel without knowing what she was about; her eyes closed and she sank back apparently shocked and helpless on the seat. "dear lady," the doctor went on, "the devil can never prevent me preaching from that text. i could speak extempore upon it for hours, it was the very first command both to adam and also to noah when he came out of the ark. dear mrs. etheridge, let me touch that divine cunt of yours. i can't make out what your husband has been about since the charming ethel was born that you have had no more children, you surely have not obeyed that commandment!" his hands were already under her dress, feeling those splendid thighs, and gradually working their way up to the seat of bliss. mrs. etheridge's whole form heaved with emotion, he could feel her quiver under his touches, and mistook it for the modesty of her nature rebelling at the libidinous thoughts which his rude proceeding aroused within her, whereas, in reality, it arose from the unbounded lubricity of her nature, now fired by the intensity of her desires. the reverend dr. stroker was no timid gallant, he proceeded with rapidity from one liberty to another, throwing the lady into still greater confusion. pressing his lips to hers, he seemed ready to devour her with his fiery kisses, while mrs. etheridge also was utterly bereft of power to resist his advances, so pulling up her clothes he forced his legs between her yielding thighs, and soon brought the nose of mr. peaslin to the mark. as it just touched the lips of that seraphic cunt the effect was irresistible on the slightly struggling lady, who suddenly opened her legs as widely as possible to meet his charge, and throwing her arms around his neck, returned his kisses with equal ardour as she sighed, "oh, i am undone, give it me now, dear doctor, but oh! oh!! oh!!! how shall we take the holy communion to-morrow?" as he thrust so vigorously that she was almost beside herself with delight. "this is the real communion, to-morrow's ceremony is only a farce. do you think that anyone is ever really fit according to the rubric? away with such silly nonsense, there is nothing in heaven or earth to compare with the delights of coition!" and his movements went on, each stroke of that fine cock filling her vagina to repletion, and arousing every muscle and membrane of her body to the acme of felicity. at last both spent together, and they were lying in the state of lethargic enjoyment when the sound of laughter at a distance soon aroused them to a sense of their exposed position, and they had barely time to set things straight before mr. etheridge. frank, harry, and the three girls came upon the scene. no particular remarks were made at the time, but significant glances from mrs. etheridge informed her husband and children of the pleasure she had just tasted. they returned to the house for dinner, and afterwards having adjourned to the drawing room, mrs. etheridge ordered the servants to have coffee and refreshments ready in the ante-room, but upon no account to disturb their party, as the doctor was going to give a scientific lecture. as soon as the servants were gone the parson expressed his surprise at mrs. etheridge's announcement, being, as he said, utterly unprepared to give lectures at a minute's warning. to which the hostess replied with a slightly ironical tone in her voice, "but, doctor, you told me this afternoon you could lecture upon and illustrate the first commandment at any time. however, if you do not feel equal to lecturing for our amusement, my frank shall show some of his mesmeric tricks which he acquired in germany, and you shall be his first subject." "not the slightest objection in the world to that, if it will amuse you, my dear mrs. etheridge," replied the rector, "but don't tell me afterwards that i have been confessing to all sorts of scandalous things, because i know these mesmeric lecturers can make their subjects say anything." during this dialogue frank had, unobserved by the others, quietly put miss blanche into a state of unconsciousness, then turning to harry told him that if he would submit to be again operated upon, he could make him and the doctor's niece dance and sing to his orders to amuse the company. harry mortimer was too good-natured to refuse, and after him frank also put the parson and ada manners into the same state, then as he looked around upon his parents and sisters he asked them, with a look of triumph, what the programme was to be. ethel: "you left me out of the little party over the stable the other afternoon, so now it is my turn to be considered." papa: "by all means, my darling, only say what you wish for." ethel: "then we will all strip, and as i wish particularly to feel that great and reverend prick, i will kneel on the couch and have the doctor dog fashion, so we can see all what is going on. first make the two girls frig each other, then they shall be made to do the same to harry and frank, who will afterwards take their virginities, whilst you and mamma will be delighted to gamahuche and help the operation, and after that we will be guided by our fancies." this pleased everyone. the subjects were made to strip off everything except the ladies' boots and stockings, presenting a most luscious sight to the free-loving family. then to make up a tableau frank willed that the doctor, naked as he was, should take and seat his two nieces on his knees, and under his influence each of the two sisters at once extended a hand to grasp his glorious prick, which at the same time rose in all its pride of strength, so that their delicate hands, one above the other on its shaft, still left the purple head towering above the uppermost by two or three inches at least. harry also took his place by the side of ada, who caressed his stiffened cock with her disengaged hand, whilst blanche did the same to frank, who had stripped and stood by her side to complete the group. beautiful as was this scene, ethel lost very little time before she placed herself on the couch on all fours, and as frank ordered his subjects, the two nieces fairly dragged their uncle by his prick, till they got him up behind ethel, and planted the head of his fiery steed just within the lips of her longing cunt. mr. and mrs. etheridge now produced their birch rods, and began to stimulate the parson with a shower of stinging cuts, the tips of the birch often also touching up ethel's bum or thighs and adding very materially to her erotic enjoyment, as the doctor fucked in a perfect fury of lust under the effects of the birching, which fairly scored his firm, hard flesh, breaking the skin and drawing little drops of blood. meanwhile frank had conducted harry mortimer and the rector's nieces to another part of the room, and willed the two girls to frig each other. they were perfectly amenable to his every wish, blanche stretching herself at full length on a fine rug made of the skin of wild cats (which are said to have such exciting effects on those who recline upon them). ada was made to reverse herself upon her elder sister, and each opening their legs with the utmost freedom, frigged and gamahuched each other's cunts in such a luscious manner as left little doubt in frank's mind that the two young girls had often before had rehearsals of the same game in private. the mesmerizer and his young friend knelt down also on the rug on either side of the tribades, and facing each other, embraced with the most apparent ardour across the bodies of the writhing and excitable girls. each of them put an arm round the other's neck, their lips meeting in the most wanton manner possible as they sucked each other's tongues, whilst their disengaged hands were applied to their respective pricks, till the spending moment came upon the group simultaneously--the two girls almost fainting from excess of pleasure as they emitted their virgin love juice, whilst the young fellows above them also spent as they held the noses of their pricks together, letting the overflow of sperm sprinkle all over blanche and ada below. the other group had had an equally extatic finish, ethel pushing back her bottom upon the parson's prick at the critical moment with all the energy of her maddening lust, and receiving within the inmost recess of her insatiable womb a perfect torrent of bliss, making her fairly scream with delight as she sank down on the couch from the voluptuous exhaustion of the moment, the folds of her cunt tightening and throbbing upon his delighted prick in such a way that it retained its stiffness, and soon recommenced another thrilling course with ethel lying flat under him face downwards. it was a delicious situation--she held him so tightly, although his prick did not go so far in, that he screamed out, "holy moses, what a fuck! her cunt's as tight as a boy's arsehole!" as he clung to her and ground his teeth in the height of his excitement. mr. etheridge was behind him now, and using some cold cream on the doctor's rough-looking, brown, wrinkled bottom-hole, presented his cock to the mark, and clinging tightly round his waist soon gained admission by the reverend back door. how tight and warm it was to his excited priapus, which answered by a thrust to every heave of the parson's bottom as he fucked the dear girl beneath him. mamma also, not to be left out of the game, mounted on the long couch, and lying on her back in front of her daughter, opened her thighs so as to embrace ethel's face and present her longing cunt for her to suck. then reclining her head and shoulders on a large cushion, she called for frank and harry to leave the two girls, and come on either side of her so that they could both present the heads of their pricks to her lips, whilst she handled their balls and frigged them till they shot into her mouth a double flow of the nectar of love which she so loved to drain to the very last drop. papa revelled in his rear attack as his hand fondled with delight the doctor's prick and balls at every withdrawal from ethel's cunt, the lips of which he could also feel as they tenaciously clung round the shaft of that fine instrument, which was giving such pleasure at every thrust. at this juncture frank willed the parson to awake from the mesmeric trance. his eyes resumed their wanton intelligence, and as he at once realised the situation, his usual sanctified demeanour caused him to give vent to an assumed exclamation of horror, "how awful, what have they been doing to me!" then, "oh, it must be a dream of my old college days, by jove, how we fucked and buggered at oxford!" "that's right, doctor," laughed frank, "now you are beginning to fairly comprehend how we are punishing you for taking advantage of mamma this afternoon, only it's pleasure instead of pain, old boy. but we thought anyone with such a glorious prick as yours ought not to be too hardly treated." the spasm of pleasure prevented further speech at the moment, fairly carrying away the whole group by the intensity of the sensations which such erratic voluptuousness could not fail to produce upon natures which, after all, were only sustained by the ordinary powers of humanity, in fact it was too exhaustive to allow of further indulgence in venery upon the present occasion. but after recovering a little, the doctor, who now thoroughly relished the idea, proposed that harry, blanche, and ada should be still kept in their entranced state to afford them amusement, as he said it would be a fine treat to make them tell all the little games they had been up to. the three subjects were not allowed to dress, but all the others now resumed their clothes, then the parson proceeded to catechise them. q.--blanche, did you ever hear how babies are made? a.--a girl at school told me the men shove their cocks into the girls, and shoot their spunk into them, which makes the babies. q.--do the girls like to have that done to them? a.--yes, it's awfully funny and nice, makes our cunts what they call spend with pleasure. q.--have you ever felt anything of it yourself? do the girls play at fathers and mothers at school? a.--nearly every night we used to change bedfellows for the purpose of having a fresh bit of cock, as we used to call their fingers. q.--go on, tell us all about it. a.--some of the girls used a candle or the finger of a glove stuffed out to make a little prick, a well greased carrot was fine i can tell you. once they nearly drove me mad with delight by fucking me with a carrot, whilst another girl used a tallow candle in my bumhole till nothing but the wick was left. but i felt awfully bad next day, and you can fancy i passed tallow when i went to the closet. q.--well, and how did ada get on? a.--she did not sleep in our room, she was with the french governess. q.--now, ada, you must also tell us all you know. a.--the french governess was so hairy and rude, she began by tickling my fanny till i didn't know what i was doing, then she laid me back on the bed, and forced her face between my thighs, and sucked my cunny. q.--well, go on, out with everything. a.---after a while she would lay over me, and make me kiss her great hairy slit. oh, you should have seen what a lot of hair she had on her belly, as black as jet right up to her navel. and then she used to wriggle about, and wet all my lips and face, which she called spending. a favorite game of hers was to make me frig her by forcing as much as i could of one of my titties into her cunt, which seemed to drive her almost wild; she would kiss my legs, feet, and any part she could reach in a frantic way whilst i was doing it. q.--did she never do the same thing to you? a.--yes, it was awfully fine to feel her titty and nipple rubbing just inside the lips of my little cunny, i believe she made me spend--at least, i fainted and found myself all wet afterwards. q.---what other rude games have you been up to, by yourself or with your sister? a.--when we were home for the holidays we used to frig each other with our fingers or titties, the latter was quite a new idea to blanche. then we got a little dog to suck our cunnies. ah, that was another fine game, his tongue seemed to go everywhere, and drive us wild with delight. one day we took it in turns to suck his little prick whilst he was licking one of us--it was beautiful, but drove the little beast almost mad. at last we had to tie a stone round his neck and drown the poor thing, because he was always getting under our clothes. q.--now, harry, when did you first touch a girl's thing? a.--i suppose i was about twelve when that happened. my aunt clara, a very beautiful young widow of twenty-three, who had just lost my uncle (her husband) in the terrible clayton tunnel accident, and i may here add that what hurt her sensitive feelings almost more than his loss was the fact that the gay young fellow had taken a girl on the sly with him to brighton for the day, and you know it was on the return journey that the collision occurred. well, her grief and thoughts of his conduct, she said, made her so nervous and low spirited that she begged my mamma to allow little harry, as she called me, to go and stay with her for a time as companion. every morning she would come into my bedroom to awaken me with a loving kiss, pulling off the bed-clothes, and playing me all sorts of tricks to make me get up. on one occasion, feeling unusually tired, i begged she would let me lay only a few minutes longer, as i drew her beautiful face down to my lips and smothered her with kisses. i was almost uncovered at the moment, it was a bright may morning, and the glorious sun was flooding the apartment with his beams of light and warmth. "my darling boy," she said softly, "i have a slight headache, and will rest on the bed by your side a little while," throwing her arms around me, and nestling her soft cheeks against mine. i soon felt her hands wandering over every part of my body, but it was so nice that when i felt her touch my naked thigh, i felt a curious kind of alloverishness, and my little prick stood as stiff as a poker. at last she touched even that. my eyes were apparently closed, pretending to be in a doze, but i could see the blush that came into her cheeks, and felt her give a kind of shudder all over. she caressed my little cocky for a moment or two, which gave me a kind of longing for her to go on. i could see she was greatly agitated, but my own sense of pleasure prevented me thinking much about that. my heart seemed to go out to her in a gush of love, as i suddenly opened my eyes, and throwing my arms around her neck once more, kissed her again and again. how her eyes sparkled, and she seemed to blush deeper than ever, but her soft hand never let go of the little treasure she had secured. "harry, my dear boy, is your little affair often like this? it is quite unnaturally hard," she asked me in a low, husky kind of whisper. "perhaps you are ill, my dear, let me see," saying which she threw back the bed-clothes, and examined my privates, handling my stiff pintle very tenderly, as if she really thought there might be something the matter with me, and finished by kissing my cock and taking the poor thing in her mouth as she said it must be quite painful to bear. you may guess that the only effect of her endearments was to make my affair swell up bigger than i had ever known it, as well as putting me in a kind of flutter all over, in fact i can't describe how she made me feel. the next night i had been asleep about a couple of hours when i was suddenly awakened by someone bringing a light into my room; it was auntie clara in her nightdress. "harry," she said, "i feel so nervous, pray do come and sleep with me, i don't like to ask the servants, and you can slip back into your room in the morning." i was too pleased to say no, and soon found myself in her bed nestling close to her, with my face between her soft bubbles. she at once asked me if my affair was stiff, and seemed astonished to find it again hard when she caressed it, as i told her it had been quite limp all day. she kissed me again and again, telling me it proved i was getting to be a man. "but, harry darling, you must never say a word about it. would you like to be my little husband and always sleep with me?" "oh, auntie, that would be delightful, would you marry me if i was a man?" i asked in reply. "yes, darling, and i will wait till you grow up, if you promise now to be my husband, and keep secret everything between us." how we played together after i gave her my solemn promise. she let me feel her all over, got out of bed, lighted three or four candles, and stripped herself quite naked for me to see what she was like. she made me kiss her lovely cunt, all covered and shaded by dark chestnut hair as it was, and assured me i should soon also have hair round the roots of my cock, then she showed me how to be a husband to her, and made me work my little cock in her till she almost drowned it in her spendings. so you see i have been engaged to be married ever since then, and every time we have a chance aunt clara accords me all the rights of a husband. she says we have only to wait a year or two now, as she has a handsome income, enough for us both if my parents object. this was the end of the sã©ance, the subjects were all put in order and restored to consciousness, and the doctor quietly whispered to mr. and mrs. etheridge that he should like to bring his two nieces after the sunday evening service, to be mesmerized again and have their maidenheads taken, it would be such a treat to see it done. it is not necessary to weary the reader by full details of how frank and harry did this for them, to complete the satisfaction of their reverend uncle, who again enjoyed the delights of being sandwiched between his host and hostess, and helped them to realise every erotic imagination of their hearts. by way of conclusion it will perhaps be interesting to relate the experiences of a young lady (none other than minette) who paid a visit to this charming family in later days. the account is taken from a letter sent to a gentleman friend, to whom she was much attached at the time. one day we were all taken into what i imagined to be the drawing room, but afterwards ascertained it was a place strictly confined to the private use of the family and that but one confidential servant was ever allowed to enter it, for the purpose of cleaning, dusting, and keeping it in order. the walls were hung with pictures of the most exciting character, and in the centre of the room was a huge bed, covered with crimson velvet and stuffed with down, but without any of the ordinary bed-clothing, instead there were a quantity of cushions variously shaped and also covered with velvet. some of these were fitted with concealed dildoes, so that when pressed between the thighs the most delightful frigging could be produced. some were fitted with artificial cunts for the use of gentlemen, if they felt so inclined. there were flogging machines of every description, and various articles of furniture for supporting the body in peculiar positions which might be required while being fucked, sucked, or buggered. the door was no sooner closed than i was seized by frank and his mother and tumbled on the bed, where they rummaged every part of my body, bottom-hole, cunt, and bubbies, and at last forced one of the dildo-cushions between my thighs and compelled me to frig myself upon it, while they pulled up my clothes and slapped my poor arse for some minutes without mercy, laughing and enjoying my screams as my tender rump plunged up and down in exquisite pain. ethel was helping them by sitting on my shoulders so that i was quite powerless, but when they presently desisted from that cruel slapping and i felt tongue, finger, or prick alternately forced up my bottom, it was delicious--the heat of the previous infliction making me feel so lecherous that the spunk actually spurted from my quim as i wriggled myself up and down on the dildo. ethel i found also (as soon as the paroxysm of spending had allayed my feelings a little, and i was allowed to look around) was sucking her father's prick, whilst he was frigging her. next, the servant maud entered the room and was immediately stripped to the skin and bound to a flogging machine, where they birched her deliciously (at least it looked so to me, although she screamed and writhed about in pain, and begged for mercy as the tears streamed down her face), till she was on the verge of spending. she was then left to suffer the agonies of unsatisfied desire, while we enacted all the most lascivious things we could think of in her sight. i took mr. etheridge's prick and frigged it between my bubbies, whilst he sucked the prick of his son. we then tickled the girl's inflamed cunt with stinging nettles, which increased her excitement till she seemed mad with erotic delirium, and mr. etheridge, to my horror, proposed that we should injure her as a finish to our orgy for that evening. mr. etheridge drove his tremendously inflamed prick into her bottom-hole, the position in which she was suspended making the operation awfully painful. frank fucked the poor girl in the cunt. mrs. etheridge and ethel, with savage pleasure, each sucked and bit the victim's nipples, causing her to writhe and scream in agony. the two fuckers were at the same time frigging mother and daughter, whilst they passed the sensation on to me by also manipulating my cunt and bottom. suddenly i heard a yell of agony, and found that frank, just in the moment of spending, had stabbed the girl with a small dagger which he had concealed in his hand. we all spent together with mingled cries of lust and delight, the convulsive movements of the suffering girl adding immensely to the intensity of this voluptuous emission. however, our victim was not seriously hurt. she was convalescent in a week's time, but was ultimately murdered, while in the act of spending, by a voluptuary with whom she afterwards lived. before my visit terminated there was another orgy, in which harry mortimer introduced his aunt clara to this amiable family circle. mesmerism was now quite unnecessary, harry being as willing a votary to the worship of priapus as could possibly be desired by his erotic friends. the principal scene of the evening was a group in which the beautiful aunt clara rode a st. george upon mr. etheridge, had harry in her bottom-hole, frank's prick in her mouth, her two hands frigging mrs. etheridge and ethel as they stood by the side of the couch, whilst your _chã¨re amie_, not to be left out of the game, was behind harry, my left hand passed round his loins, caressing his fine prick and balls as it worked in and out of her beautiful brown bumhole, whilst my right forefinger postilioned him behind. you must imagine the excitement of this group so voluptuously arranged; it requires to be engaged in such a scene to fully appreciate all its heavenly delights--description is simply impossible! [transcriber's note: anonymous, _laura middleton; her brother and her lover_ (1890) a classic victorian erotic novel] laura middleton; her brother and her lover. st. kitt's. 1890. the remarks which emily had made regarding the share laura middleton had had in opening up her ideas on the subject of the mysteries in which she had now been fully initiated had not escaped my observation. it so happened that at that very time i was under an engagement to pay a visit to the middletons, who were very distant relations of my mother. it of course occurred to me that it was possible i might be able to turn the information i had thus acquired to some account. laura and i were old friends. she was about two years older than i, a very handsome, fine-looking girl but, as i had then fancied, upon rather a larger scale than quite suited my taste. we had always been on very good terms as children, but she had a sort of haughty, imperious air which, joined to the difference in our ages, had operated in a manner that would have prevented me from thinking of taking any liberties with her; and she was about the last person in the world i should have been disposed to imagine addicted to the amusements in which emily had participated with her. when i again met her on arriving at their country seat, i found that a considerable change had taken place in her person, but probably this was merely the natural result that the preceding two years, during which i had not seen her, had worked upon a girl at her time of life, by fully developing the proportions and fining down the parts of the figure which at an earlier period might have appeared too prominent. i too had grown considerably during this period, more so in proportion than she had, and now her height by no means appeared to me to be too great; and, altogether, i could not help acknowledging to myself that i had rarely seen a handsomer or finer-looking woman. she still retained somewhat of her haughty air, though softened down, and i could hardly fancy, when looking at her, that emily's account of her behaviour in the hours when she gave herself up to enjoyment could be true. i soon, however, became aware of circumstances that tended to corroborate the tale, and which put me in the way of making advances to her, which i hastened to do. when it came to be time to dress for dinner, lady middleton said to me that she had presumed on our relationship to put me into the family wing of the house, as the arrival of some unexpected visitors had made her change the destination of the room she had previously intended for me. she said she had no doubt i would find the one set apart for me quite comfortable, for the only objection to it, and which prevented her from being able to put a stranger into it, was that it opened into another room which would have to be occupied by her son frank, who was expected home from school in a short time. this last room, in consequence of some alterations made in building an addition to the house, had no separate entrance, but opened into the two rooms on each side, and as the one on the other side was occupied by his sister and aunt, frank would have to enter through mine. she said i must keep him in order and make him behave himself, and if i had any trouble with him to let her know. i had not seen my young namesake for about two years, but i recollected him as a fine, high-spirited, very handsome boy about twelve or thirteen years of age, always getting into some scrape or other and always getting out of them somehow in such a fearless, good-humoured manner that it was impossible for anyone to be angry with him. so i said i should be delighted to renew my acquaintance with my young friend, and that i had not the least doubt but that we should get on very pleasantly. on going to my room to dress for dinner, i found a servant-girl engaged in making some of the arrangements which the change of apartments had necessitated. on my entrance she was going to leave the room, but seeing that she was a very nice-looking young girl, i said she need not run away in such a hurry, that surely she was not afraid of me. she gave me an arch look as if taking the measure of my capacities, and replied with a smile that she did not think she need be afraid of such a nice-looking young gentleman. this i thought was a fair challenge, and it induced me to take a better look at her. i found she was a very well made country girl of about nineteen, with some very promising points about her. i therefore kept her in conversation for a short time, while i went on with my washing operation. finding she was in no hurry to leave me, i went up to her as she was engaged in putting the bed in order and snatched a few kisses. i then commenced playing with her bubbles and taking some further liberties with her. as my proceedings met with very little resistance, beyond a few exclamations of "oh for shame, i did not expect such conduct from you," i proceeded with my researches and without much difficulty i succeeded in raising her petticoats and getting possession of her stronghold. on insinuating my finger within it, i found it to be tighter and even more inviting than i had anticipated. she soon became excited with my caresses and the titillation which my finger kept up without her fortress, and i succeeded in laying her upon the bed and throwing up her clothes so as to disclose it fairly to my view. i found a fine, fresh, white belly and a pair of plump, handsome thighs with a very pretty little opening tolerably well shaded with light brown hair. altogether it was a very desirable prospect, and i thought that failing anything better i might manage to find a good deal of enjoyment in her charms. slipping off my trousers, therefore, i jumped up beside her on the bed, and throwing my arms round her, i got upon her and attempted to introduce myself into the fortress. but here i found greater resistance than i had anticipated from her previous conduct. i had observed, however, the effect my caresses had produced on her senses. i thought the best plan would be to endeavour to excite them still more. so, insinuating the finger of one hand again into the critical spot, and with the other drawing my shirt over my head so as to leave myself entirely naked, i raised myself on my knees beside her, exhibiting my standard fully erected, flaming fiercely before her eyes. while continuing to excite her by the movements of my finger, i said i was sure she would not be cruel enough to refuse me, but would take pity upon the little suppliant that was begging so hard for admittance. taking hold of her hand i placed it upon the stiff object and made her grasp it as it throbbed and beat with the excitement under which i was labouring. her eyes were fixed upon the lovely object thus exposed to her gaze, and i could easily see from the flushing of her face and the sparkling of her eyes what a powerful impression i had made upon her. all she said was, "oh, but if john should know of it." i immediately replied, "but why should john know anything about it? you don't suppose i am such a mean wretch as to tell anybody of what we may do, and if you only keep your own secrets no one need ever know anything about it. "but perhaps," i continued, "you think this little gentleman," and i shoved the furious member backwards and forwards two or three times in her hand as she still continued to grasp it, "is not so big as john's and won't give you so much pleasure, but only let me try and i shall do all i can to pleasure you." "oh no, it is not that," said she hastily, squeezing the little object convulsively in her grasp, and as i bent down to kiss her, she whispered, "i can't resist you any longer, but you must bolt the door, and if anybody comes i can get away through miss laura's room. she won't tell anything; i can easily make her keep quiet." this speech not a little astonished me, for from what i knew of laura i thought she was the last person in the world to make a confidante of her waiting-maid. but i was aware that this was not the moment to expect any explanation, so i jumped out of bed, bolted the door, and speedily returned to the charge, when i found that the opposing party had given up all idea of defence and was quite ready to meet my advances. stretching herself out in the most favourable position, she allowed me again to mount upon her and, taking hold of the instrument of love, she herself guided it to the proper quarter. to my surprise, however, the entrance was much more difficult than i had expected and i soon found that i had overrated master john's capacities and that the fortress, though not a maiden one, had not previously been entered by so large a besieging force. with some little exertion on my part, aided by every means in her power, though she winced a good deal at the pain i put her to, i at length succeeded in effecting my object and penetrated to a depth which from her exclamation of delight when she found me fairly imbedded within her, and from certain other symptoms, i felt certain had never been reached previously. once fairly established within my new quarter we mutually exerted our utmost endeavours to gratify each other as well as ourselves, and the result of our efforts soon led, much to the satisfaction of both parties, in the temporary subjugation of both the contending forces. gratified by finding that the issue had been much more satisfactory than i had expected, and not having had an opportunity for some time previously of indulging myself so agreeably, i, much to her surprise and joy, retained possession of the stronghold with my forces so slightly weakened by their late defeat as to give immediate promise of a renewed attack. telling her to be still for a few minutes and that we should shortly enjoy ourselves again, i began to question her regarding the matters in which i felt interested. i thought it better at first not to allude to laura, so i commenced by inquiring about john, and i soon found that the one subject led to the other. it appeared that john was the under-groom whose duty it was to attend upon miss laura when she rode out. john had courted betsy for some time previously and had been admitted to all the privileges of a husband on condition that he should marry her as soon as he could obtain a situation which would enable him to support her. betsy, it seems, was rather jealous, and john, to teaze her, had pretended that he was on terms of intimacy with his young mistress, a statement for which there was not the slightest foundation. betsy's suspicions, however, being once roused, were not easily set at rest, and this led her to pay more attention than previously to her young mistress's proceedings. she had sometimes wondered what induced laura to go out by herself almost every morning before breakfast, and now fancying that it might be for the purpose of meeting john, she resolved to watch her and ascertain if her suspicions were correct. she accordingly followed her, and found that she invariably made her way to a small summer house at a little distance from the house. here john never made his appearance, but curious to know what laura was about, betsy continued her spying until she one day ascertained that, instead of amusing herself with john's article, miss laura resorted to the place for the purpose of consoling herself with a very insufficient substitute for what betsy had suspected to be the offending member. as laura slept in the same room with her aunt she had no opportunity of thus indulging herself. i drew all this gradually from her, leading her on by degrees, and trying to make it appear that i had no particular interest in the subject. her story, however, had such an effect upon a certain part of my body, which was still imbedded within her, that she could not help feeling as she proceeded with her tale the impression it made upon me. indeed when she came to relate the discovery she had made, i was obliged to stop her and proceed to a repetition of our enjoyment in order to allay the fire which had been so fiercely lighted up within me. when i had brought the second engagement to a still more satisfactory conclusion than the first, i found it was time for me to get on with my dressing so as not to be too late for dinner, and betsy volunteered her services to assist as valet. the lewd little monkey, however, was too intent upon examining the course from which she had derived so much pleasure to do anything except fondle and caress it, and seeing the pleasure it evidently gave her, i allowed her to do as she liked. while she amused herself with tickling and squeezing the accessories, handling the principal object, kissing it, inserting it in her mouth and sucking it, and doing everything in her power to restore it to the imposing attitude which had pleased her so much, i endeavoured with as much apparent unconcern as i could assume to ascertain every particular as to laura. betsy however was too quick not to discover what i was after, and said to me, "come, come, i see quite well how it is with you--you would like this pretty little gentleman i am playing with to take the place of its substitute between miss laura's thighs. oh! you need not try to deceive me--i felt how it swelled up within me whenever i mentioned her name, and how firm and stiff it grew when i told you what i had seen. well, it would be almost a pity not to let you take compassion upon her; it is very hard she should be reduced to such a miserable contrivance when she might have such a delicious charmer as this to amuse herself with. but i am afraid you would have some difficulty in getting it in, more than you had with me, why her little plaything is not much bigger than my finger; even john's, though it is not near so big as this, is better than it. but as for this wicked fellow i can hardly grasp it in my hand, and i don't see how you will ever be able to make it enter into such a little chink as she has. however, i dare say you will be able to manage it somehow. come, i shall make a bargain with you: if you will take john as your groom, so as to let us be married before my belly gets big, as i am afraid it will do after this naughty fellow has been into it, i shall do all i can to enable you to enjoy miss laura, and i have no doubt we shall soon find means to accomplish it. what do you say?" i replied that i was afraid such an arrangement would hardly answer. in the first place, i could not turn away my present servant, and secondly, i was afraid that if john were in my service he might perhaps be apt to be jealous of his master. she laughed and said that would never do. she, however, soon came to an agreement that i should exert myself to find a better situation for john, and i promised her that if i succeeded with laura, she should make her a present of fifty pounds as a wedding gift on condition that she acted in all respects as i desired and exerted herself to promote my object and conceal our proceedings from everyone. she stipulated that she was sometimes to have the enjoyment of the charming article which she still continued to fondle, and this i willingly promised, but i warned her that she must be very careful that her mistress should not suspect our intercourse in the least, as i was quite sure from what i knew of her proud disposition it would ruin all my hopes, as she would never consent to be the rival of her waiting-maid. i easily satisfied her that even for her own sake the utmost caution was absolutely necessary, and having now obtained all the information she could give me and the dinner bell ringing, i hastened to the drawing room. if i had perceived an alteration in laura's appearance, she had evidently been no less struck with the change that had taken place in my person, and she expressed her surprise at my having grown so much. i fancied i could perceive that there was some curiosity to ascertain what was the extent of the change which had taken place in a certain quarter, and i caught her eyes more than once glancing in a direction where she must have perceived symptoms of a growth at least corresponding to that of the other parts of my body. i was induced to think that she was by no means displeased with the discovery from her manner towards me, which instead of being as formerly haughty and condescending was now frank and friendly. on entering the drawing room i found that sir hugh had not yet made his appearance, and that it would still be a few minutes before we went to dinner. i was conscious that the fingering which betsy had kept up during the whole time i was dressing had again raised a flame in me which i had not had time to quench, and i turned into the music room to take advantage of the few minutes to calm myself down, that i might not make an exhibition before the rest of the party. laura had observed me, and thinking that the movement arose from shyness at meeting a party of comparative strangers, she came to me and entered into conversation. the charms of her person, more especially after all that had just passed with betsy regarding her, again raised the flame to an even greater height than before, and the effect was plainly visible through a pair of thin trousers. i soon saw by her heightened colour that the consequences were not unobserved by her. i was afraid at first that she might be annoyed by so open a demonstration of the effects of her charms, but to my great delight she showed no symptom of being offended, but continued to converse with me, and, i thought, rather enjoyed the confusion which the rampantness of the offending member at first occasioned me. finding this to be the case, i soon recovered my self-possession, and being desirous to make as great an impression on her senses as possible, i placed myself so that i could not be observed by any of the party in the drawing room, and instead of attempting to conceal it, i allowed the protuberance in front to become even more prominent, indeed so much so, as to enable her to form a pretty accurate idea of its size and shape. she took no notice of this, but i knew it could not escape her observation. when a general move was made to the dining room, she took my arm and said that, as i was a stranger, i must allow her to take charge of me, until i became a little better acquainted with the company. i willingly assented, and for the rest of the evening i attached myself to her. without attempting to take any liberties with her, i omitted no opportunity of letting her see the full effect of her beauty and charms upon my senses. the next morning i was up early and on the lookout. from betsy's description i had not been able exactly to understand how i could manage to surprise laura during her amusement, and i determined to watch and follow her and be guided by circumstances. sometime before the breakfast hour i saw her leave the house by a side door and proceed through a part of the park which was a good deal shaded with trees. i took advantage of the shelter thus afforded me to trace her steps, unperceived, until i came in sight of the summer house, but to my dismay, i found that it was impossible to follow her any further without being discovered. the building was circular, consisting of woodwork to the height of about four feet and above that glass all round. it was situated in the centre of a flower plot of considerable extent in which the bushes were kept down and not allowed to attain any size. it was therefore admirably adapted for the purpose to which it had been applied, as no one approaching it could well see what passed within, while the party in the interior could command an uninterrupted view all round and discover any intruder at some distance. i was quite aware that it was most important to avoid giving her any alarm or making her suspect i had any idea of her proceedings, and i resolved not to attempt to approach her that morning. so, selecting a tree which was situated in such a manner as to command a complete view of the summer house, i swung myself up into it and soon gained a position from which, with the assistance of a small telescope i had taken with me, i could obtain a good view of her proceedings. i very soon discovered that betsy's story was perfectly correct. she had apparently no time to spare, for, taking out the little instrument from its place of concealment, she seated herself on a couch from which she could command a view of the approach from the house. then, extending her thighs, she drew up her petticoats and, inserting the counterfeit article in the appropriate place, began her career of mock pleasure. i watched all her proceedings with the greatest enjoyment, and such was the effect produced upon me that i could not help following her example. i drew forth my excited member and, as she thrust the little bijou in and out of the delicious cavity in which i so longed to replace it with a better substitute, i responded to every movement of her hand by an up-and-down friction upon the ivory pillar, with such effect that, when she sunk back upon the couch after having procured for herself as much pleasure as such a makeshift could afford, i felt the corresponding efforts produce a similar effect upon my own excited reality, which, throbbing and beating furiously, sent forth a delicious shower of liquid bliss. i allowed her to get up and return to the house without her perceiving me, and when we met at breakfast she was not even aware i had been out. the day passed very pleasantly. she was evidently flattered with the devotion i showed her and seemed noways indisposed to try to what length her encouragement might carry me, probably thinking that she could at any time check my advances should they become too forward. in the course of the day i again visited the summer house and ascertained that i had no chance of surprising her there without making some alteration in it, which it would take a little time to effect, but which i resolved to have made if i found i could not succeed otherwise. in the meantime, i resolved to try the effect of a bold stroke. getting up early the next morning i proceeded directly to the summer house and waited there till she made her appearance. having made certain that she was alone, i stretched myself on the couch as nearly as possible in the attitude she had assumed the previous morning. i then unbuttoned my trousers and drew them down below my knees and at the same time turned up my shirt above my waist thus exhibiting the whole forepart of my person entirely naked. then grasping my stiffly erected weapon in my hand, i exhibited myself performing the same operation which i had witnessed her engaged in the previous morning. she came in without the least suspicion and, on entering the place, had at once a full view of my nearly naked figure extended at full length on the couch and engaged in performing an operation the nature of which she could not possibly misunderstand. she seemed struck with astonishment--so much that she remained motionless for more than a minute, during which i watched her with intense curiosity. her face and neck, so far as visible, flushed till they were almost of a purple hue, and her eyes were fixed upon the stiffly erected column up and down which my hand was gently moving. i was in great hopes that the sight had produced the effect i desired. but no. suddenly recovering herself, she exclaimed, "for shame, sir," and turning away hastily left the place before i had time to rise and interrupt her. i would fain have followed her and tried to induce her to return, but i would not allow my passions to carry me so far as to do what might injure her irreparably in the event of anyone being about the grounds and seeing me in the condition in which i then was. before i could replace my dress so as to be able to venture out, she had gone so far that she had reached the house ere i could make up to her. when we met at breakfast she took no notice of what had passed; nor could i discover any difference in her manner to me, beyond her heightened colour when we exchanged the morning greeting as if we had not met before. but she carefully avoided any opportunity of our being left alone, though i could sometimes detect her eyes glancing towards me when she thought she was not observed, and more particularly in the direction of the part of which she had obtained a first glance that morning. having gone so far with her, i was determined to try at least whether i could not get a little farther. so in the evening when a dance was got up i asked her to waltz with me in such an open manner that she could not easily make any excuse for not doing so. as soon as i got an opportunity of saying a few words unheard, i whispered to her, "come, come, laura, this is too bad of you to be offended at me for doing the very same thing i saw you doing in the same place yesterday morning." in an instant her face turned perfectly scarlet and then as pale as death, and i am certain she would have fallen to the ground had i not supported her. in a few seconds she recovered herself a little and in a suppressed but earnest tone she whispered, "hush, hush for god's sake." i led her out of the room into the conservatory and pressed her to sit down on a bench. she objected to this, saying, "not here; not here," pointing at the same time to the door at the opposite side leading into a rosary which was not overlooked from the drawing room. i there placed her on a seat and sat down beside her and waited for a few minutes, till her emotion should subside. finding that she was still quite overcome and remained silent, trembling, and evidently greatly agitated by the discovery that her secret was known to me, i said to her, "laura, dearest, you need not be in the least alarmed, your secret is quite safe with me, and nothing shall ever induce me to say a word to anyone regarding it, nor need you fear, my own darling, that i shall take advantage of it to make you do anything you don't like." she made no reply but at the same time she offered no resistance to the caresses i ventured to bestow upon her, and i even fancied that the warm kiss i imprinted on her lips was faintly returned. i went on to say, "i cannot tell you what bliss it would give me if you would only allow this little charmer to take his proper place, instead of the wretched substitute i so much envied yesterday. i am quite sure it would give you as much pleasure as it would me." and at the same time, while i supported her with one arm round her waist, i placed her hand upon the object to which i drew her attention, and which, throbbing fiercely, lay extended along my thigh. emboldened by her allowing her hand to remain upon it, i unbuttoned a few buttons and removed my shirt, when out it started stiff and erect as a piece of ivory. when i again placed her hand upon it, i felt it grasped with convulsive eagerness. excited beyond measure by this, i slipped my hand under her dress, bringing it up along her thighs until it reached the object of my adoration, and gently insinuated a finger within its moist lips. the touch of my finger, however, within such a sensitive spot seemed to rouse her at once, for she started up, saying, "not now, frank, not now, dearest. you must let me go. i must have time to think over this. i know you won't refuse me when i tell you i cannot remain with you at present. there, that is a good boy, go back to the drawing room, and i shall follow you immediately." at the same time she gave a fond pressure on the sensitive plant she still held in her grasp, imprinted a warm kiss on my lips, and then tore herself from my arms. i felt that the place was not such as to enable me to attempt to carry the matter farther at present, and delaying for a minute or two in the conservatory that i might calm down my excitement a little, i slipped quietly back to the drawing room. to cover the agitation i still felt, i again joined in the waltz with the first partner i could find. in a few minutes laura returned to the room, nor could anyone have possibly discovered from her manner that she had so recently undergone such violent emotion. i could hardly believe it possible that the seemingly proud and haughty girl was the same panting, trembling creature who had so recently been in my arms. i soon, however, found reason to regret i had not chosen a more fitting reason for my denouement, in which case i might perhaps have turned it to greater profit than i appeared likely to do. with the morning, she had recovered all her coolness and self-possession, and had evidently determined on the course she was to pursue. she did not leave her room till breakfast time, and afterwards evaded all my stratagems to obtain a private interview with her. after luncheon the horses were brought to the door, and a large party started out for a ride. when we had gone a short distance, she contrived to let the others get ahead of us, so as to leave us alone together, for i had got her to dispense with master john's attendance when i accompanied her. she then turned up a quiet lane which led to a common where there was little chance of our meeting anyone, and where the many bushes, scattered in large clumps over it, were high enough to conceal us from observation. then, without any hesitation, she entered at once on the subject which engrossed all my thoughts. she said she could not imagine how i could possibly have discovered her secret, but that as it was clear i had done so, it was no use for her now to attempt to deny it, and that she was quite sure i would not make any use of it that could be injurious to her. "but don't suppose," said she, "that i am offended at the manner you took of showing me you had found out my propensity. it was a very good idea, and i shall be delighted to become better acquainted with my new friend," at the same time placing her hand upon him. "he is a very handsome little fellow, but i must tell you frankly that though i shall be happy to contribute as far as i safely can to afford him amusement, you must not expect that i can allow him to do what might get me into most serious difficulties. perhaps after a time even this may be managed, but at present it is out of the question, so he must be contented for the present with the pleasures i can safely afford him." as she spoke, she continued to unbutton my trousers and remove my shirt, until she had fairly uncovered her new acquaintance, which started out under the pressure of her soft fingers showing his head proudly erect. she loaded it with caresses, at the same time expressing in the warmest terms her admiration of its size and beauty. i saw at once from her manner that she had made her mind up on the subject and that there was no chance of complete success on that occasion at least. so i resolved to make the best of the opportunity and humour her inclination, and do all in my power to gratify her in her own way, trusting that on some more propitious occasion i might obtain my wishes in their fullest extent. ascertaining, therefore, that there was no one in sight and that we were in such a position as to be able to command a view all round of some considerable distance so that no one could approach us without being observed, i said that all i desired was to contribute to her happiness, and that i only wanted to know in what manner that could be best done, and that i was quite ready to use every exertion in my power to effect it; that if she had any curiosity about her new acquaintance, i was quite prepared to do anything i could to gratify her. she said she was curious about it, and would be delighted to have a better view of it and see what it could do. i immediately unbuttoned my braces and let down my trousers and tucked up my shirt under my waistcoat, then, bringing my leg over the horse so as to sit on one side in her own fashion, exposed everything to her view. she seemed perfectly enchanted as she took hold of and played with the ivory column and uncovered its ruby head and explored the secrets of the pendant receptacles of the liquid of life. she seemed to be fully aware of the effect of her soft hand moving up and down upon the object of her worship, and she watched with eagerness the consequences her operation produced. i did not attempt to conceal my emotions from her in the least, and gave myself up to the voluptuous sensations which her proceedings could not fail to occasion, till they attained such a height that a full overflow of the precious liquid, spouting from the overexcited tube, fairly attested the effect produced upon me. she gazed upon the charming sight with evident delight, and dwelt upon every excited motion i made, endeavouring by every means in her power to heighten and increase my enjoyment. when i had in some measure recovered from the pleasure-trance, i threw my arms around her and thanked her for all the pleasure she had afforded me and said it was not fair that i should enjoy all the delight, and i trusted she would allow me to repeat upon her the lesson she had thus practised on me. she said at once that she would not get off the horse, but that if it would afford me any pleasure she was quite willing that i should do anything i liked with her in that position. i saw it was no use to attempt more, so i resolved to make the most of my situation. dismounting from my horse, i removed her leg from the horn of the saddle, and raising up her clothes discovered her most exquisite thighs and the enchanting object between them almost completely hidden under a cluster of dark-auburn curly hair. after kissing and caressing it for some minutes, parting the moist lips, and tickling the surrounding moss, i tried to introduce my finger. the tightness of the aperture and the difficulty i had in getting it in beyond an inch or two soon satisfied me that either the pain or the fear of doing mischief had prevented her from using the substitute to such an extent as to deprive the first living entrant of the glory and pleasure of a victory over her virgin charms, and this discovery increased tenfold the desire i felt to be the conqueror in such a splendid field of battle. i did the best i could in the situation in which i was placed, and partly with my finger and partly with my tongue i succeeded in creating such a degree of titillation upon her sensitive clitoris and the adjacent parts that, sided as it was by the excitement of the scene that had previously been enacted, it produced such an effect upon her as she had never previously experienced. when her convulsive motions ceased, and the stream flowed over my fingers down her thighs, she bent down her head and fondly kissed me, acknowledging that i had contrived to afford her more pleasure than she had believed it possible she could enjoy. i seized the opportunity to point out to her the effect which her wanton hand had upon my champion, for she had now bent down to grasp it and play with it again and it still held up its proud head as erect as ever. i endeavoured to persuade her that what she had experienced was nothing in comparison with the bliss he could bestow upon her. but she remained firm, and would not allow me to give her a practical illustration of my theory, though she was so delighted with her little friend that she continued to caress and fondle him whenever she could, almost all the way till we reached home. two or three scenes of this nature followed in the course of the few following days, and still i could not contrive to get further with her. i therefore resolved to try the effect of a stratagem that had occurred to me. though she had resisted all my entreaties to meet me at the summer house, i had told her the day after our explanation that i would not act so cruelly to her as she did to me, and that i was desirous to contribute to her amusement in any manner she liked best, and, therefore, as she seemed determined that her visits to the summer house should be solitary ones, i would put some books and pictures in the hiding-place which i was sure would divert her and add to her enjoyment whenever she would take a fancy to repair thither. i kept a watch upon her, but never could catch her there, though i soon became aware from the change in the position of the books that she occasionally visited the place when she knew i was away and could not surprise her. i selected a day on which a party was made up to visit some objects of curiosity in the neighbourhood, and when she had announced her intention to stay at home, having already been often at the place, and to allow another lady of the party to ride her horse. in the morning i arranged with my groom that he should file off the heads of the nails of one of my horse's shoes, so that the shoe should come off easily, and i appointed him to meet me a short distance from the house on the road we were to take. after i had proceeded with the party for a few miles, i pretended to think that my horse was going lame, and dismounting, i exhibited one foot with the shoe nearly off. as the horse was a valuable one, the excuse was readily accepted that i could not proceed farther, but must walk him back quietly. as soon, however, as the party had got out of sight, by the aid of a hammer and a few nails i had taken in my pocket, i fastened the shoe, and started back at full speed. meeting my groom at the place i had appointed, i told him to get the horse properly shod and then take him to a small inn in a retired place a few miles off, so as not to have my return known at the hall. i then hastened to make my way across the fields to the summer house, having a strong hope that laura would take advantage of the opportunity for visiting it, as my absence would render it safe for her to do so and would at the same time preclude the chance of her being able to have any gratification in my company and reduce her to her solitary amusement. on making a more minute inspection of the summer house, i had discovered a circumstance which was not apparent at first sight and which had inspired me with the idea of my present operation. the ceiling was formed of small branches, split and nailed together in the form of panels. one of these, i discovered, was moveable and gave access to a small apartment above, part of which was floored over and occasionally used by the gardener to dry seeds. to this apartment the only access was by means of a ladder. the ceiling however was low enough to admit of my catching hold of the sides of the opening when standing on a stool, and thus swinging myself up into the interior. i had contrived, by means of oiling the hinges well and attaching a weight with a pulley, to make the entrance open easily and without the least noise, and i had also made some small apertures in the roof from which i could keep a lookout. i immediately took possession of my hiding place and closed the entrance, resolved to take the chance of laura's coming if i had to wait there the whole day, for i knew the precaution i had taken would prevent anything being known of my being in the neighbourhood until the return of the party, who had made the necessary arrangements for taking refreshments with them, and were not to be back till the evening. i waited with patience all the forenoon, comforted with the idea that in all probability laura would find herself at leisure after luncheon, at which time some of the elder part of the company who had not joined the expedition usually drove out. it happened as i had anticipated, and very soon after the ordinary luncheon hour i was rejoiced to see laura approaching. i was very certain, from the manner in which she looked about her as she drew near, what her object was, and i made my arrangements before she arrived so as to be able to keep perfectly still till the proper time came. after taking a walk round the place apparently to make certain that no one was in the neighbourhood, she came in, and taking out one of the books, sat down to peruse it. convinced that my only chance of success was to catch her in the critical moment when she would be too much overwhelmed by her voluptuous sensations to offer any resistance, and afraid that any precipitate movement on my part might enable her to retain that self-command of which she possessed so large a share, i waited quietly for the effect of the seductive entertainment i had provided for her. nor was it long before it began to produce the expected result. her colour heightened, she moved backwards and forwards upon the couch apparently unconsciously, and at last her fingers stole under her petticoats and reached the part which was the principal scene of her excitement and which i could see from the motions of her arm she was attempting to allay. in a few minutes she appeared to be unable longer to withstand the temptation which the opportunity offered, and rising up, she went to the hiding-place and took from it some lascivious pictures and the little object with which she intended to solace herself. after heightening her desires by an attentive examination of the seductive plates, she raised her dress and stretched herself on the couch, much in the same attitude in which i had previously seen her, and after a little toying with her finger she separated the ruby lips and introduced the mock representation of that part of me which i was so eager to enable her to judge how much more pleasure the reality would afford her. even then i had the patience to wait until she had made use of it for some little time and until i could discern from sundry sighs that the pleasure it was giving her was approaching a climax. then gently raising the trap door and catching hold of the sides, i quietly let myself drop into the apartment below. a slight rustling noise i made attracted her attention, and looking up from her book, she beheld my almost naked body with the most prominent object of it standing fiercely erect, for i had let down my trousers and turned up my shirt so as to afford her a complete view of my person. at this sight, so suddenly and unexpectedly presented to her, without her at first being able to discover who it was that thus presented himself in such a guise, she was so struck with surprise and astonishment that she was in the utmost consternation and completely lost her presence of mind, remaining motionless even after i had fully appeared before her and approached her so that she must have recognised me. aware that, if i was to profit by the opportunity, i must not lose a moment in explanation, i at once got between her thighs which were stretched out widely extended, and withdrawing the wretched mock article from its darling retreat, i threw myself upon her and instantly without the least hesitation replaced it with the reality. i was quite aware i should find some difficulty in getting admission, but most fortunately her situation was so extremely favourable that i was enabled so far to effect my object as to get the head of my weapon fairly inserted within the delicious lips of her charmer before she had recovered from her surprise sufficiently to offer any opposition. then, indeed, she attempted to rise up, exclaiming, "oh! frank, frank, this will never do." by this time, however, i had got my arms fairly round her waist and held her locked in a close embrace, and while i endeavoured to stifle her remonstrances with burning kisses on her fair lips, i exerted my utmost efforts to improve my position. my thrusts and heaves, driven with the greatest vigour my burning passion could inspire me with, evidently hurt her severely, but this i had expected and was fully prepared for, as i was aware from my previous inspections of the charming spot that it never had been stretched to such an extent as to enable me to attain free admission, and consequently i was not disposed to relax in my efforts on that account, trusting that the overwhelming pleasure that would ensue would fully make up for all suffering, and that i should obtain full possession, as soon as she should be enabled to join in my transports. her very struggles, caused partly by pain and partly by apprehension, as she endeavoured to rise up, only aided me in effecting my purpose, and after a short contest, i had the satisfaction and delight of feeling the resistance which her virgin obstacles had offered to my progress entirely give way, and my victorious champion had penetrated her inmost secret recesses in such an effectual manner as to produce the most delicious conjunction of the most sensitive parts of our bodies that can possibly be conceived. the effect upon her, however, was not so immediately delightful as it was upon me. the pain occasioned by the last few thrusts by which i had completed the achievement had been so severe as to make her abandon her resistance, and when it suddenly ceased, on my weapon obtaining complete entrance, she sank back on the couch as if exhausted. i followed her example and sank down upon her, pressing her more closely in my arms, and being now relieved from the necessity of using force, i regulated the movements of my victorious champion so as to try to avoid as far as possible giving her any further pain, and endeavoured to replace it with more delightful sensations. but with the removal of the pain her apprehensions revived, and she again entreated me to let her rise. her request, however, now came too late--even had i been disposed to comply with it, which i certainly was not, the excited state into which she had worked herself previous to my appearing on the scene had produced such an effect upon her frame that very few up-and-down movements of my pleasure-giver within the now thoroughly opened up premises were quite sufficient to remove all traces of the pain and to produce the consummation he was labouring to effect and was so eager to join in. before she had time to repeat her request and even before i was quite prepared to respond to the tide of joy, her head again sank back and she exclaimed, "oh! oh! delicious, oh! dearest, oh! i can bear it no longer." her ecstatic movements, while in the act of enjoyment, were all that was required to make me join in her delight, and pouring forth a torrent of bliss i sank motionless on her breast enjoying a happiness that may be conceived but cannot possibly be described. when i had recovered a little from my transports, still retaining my place, i thought it was time to endeavour to appease her indignation which i feared might have been aroused at the trap i had evidently laid for her. but i soon found i had no occasion to be alarmed on this subject. she had no hesitation in admitting that, though she had so long resisted my entrance, it had only been from the fear of the consequences and she had all along been as anxious as i was for the crowning pleasure from the first moment when she had viewed the potent charms of my pleasure-giver, and she had been as much disappointed and annoyed at the unsatisfactory manner in which our intercourse had hitherto been conducted; and she even went on to say that whatever the consequences might be to her, she was rejoiced i had had the courage to make her break through the restraint she had imposed on herself. accordingly, when i asked her whether her new acquaintance had not justified, by the result he had produced, all that i had predicted as the consequences of his being admitted into his present delicious quarter, she frankly confessed that though she at first had suffered dreadfully from the tearing open of her interior, the final close had much more than gratified all her expectation and had fully made up for all she had endured. and she added that she never would have forgiven me, if i had yielded to her entreaties and left the performance unfinished. "but now," said she, "that this little darling has done his duty so well, do get up and take a look about, in case anyone should stray in this direction. i don't want to part with you so soon, but it would never do for anyone to come in and catch us in this situation." "no, no, dearest," i replied, "you only half enjoyed yourself the last time, and i am afraid if i were to withdraw this little gentleman i might have to give you more pain in replacing him, and as i want you thoroughly to enter into all the blissful sensations of this occasion, you must let him remain where he is." "what," said she, "do you mean to say he can do it again? oh! that would be delicious! but i am so frightened for anyone coming." "well, dearest, just keep your arms round me, and i shall raise you up till we can take a look about us." and clasping her round the waist so as to keep us still firmly united by the pleasantest of all links, i raised her up to a position from which we could command a view all round us, and thus satisfy ourselves that all was safe. then gently laying her down, i again commenced operations; at first thrusting my weapon cautiously and gradually in and out of the charming orifice so as to avoid the risk of hurting her. but i soon found there was no danger of this. the elements of pleasure were so fiercely aroused within her that my exertions occasioned very different sensations from those which had accompanied my first entrance into her delicious quarters, and in a few minutes her efforts to promote our mutual bliss vied with, if they did not exceed, my own. for the first time in her life she thoroughly enjoyed the most exquisite of all sensations a woman can be blessed with, that of having her most sensitive region fully gorged with the masterpiece which first works her up to the most amorous frenzy and then subdues her by making her die away with itself in melting bliss. there was not a moment from the time when i half withdrew and again inserted the delicious morsel, the possession of which she so much enjoyed, till the overwhelming bliss of mutual emission took away our senses, that she did not evince both by her gestures and her words the most excessive and frantic delight, and i need hardly say that my enjoyment equalled hers. when our second course was finished, i withdrew my still unexhausted weapon, which notwithstanding its double victory still held up its head bravely, but i was somewhat horrified at the mingled tide which now poured out its crimson stream down her thighs. she was in great distress less it might betray her, but i managed to prevent any of it getting upon her dress and persuaded her to accompany me to a small fountain a little way off where, dipping my handkerchief in the water, i first removed all marks of the conflict, and then continued to bathe the swollen and tender lips which still bore traces of the fierce nature of the combat. finding the cooling sensation was grateful to her, i continued the application until the sight of her charms, thus freely exposed, made the author of the mischief so wild at the contemplation of the effects of his own deeds that i was obliged to show the state he was in, and tell her that it would require another defeat before he could be quieted. she hesitated a little from the fear of the pain accompanying his re-entrance in the present tender state of her interior. but seeing that he also bore bloody marks of the fray, she insisted on reciprocating the good offices i had bestowed upon her, and taking the handkerchief, she proceeded to remove them by tenderly bathing the little gentleman. pretty well aware what would be the consequence of this proceeding, i allowed her to take her own way. and as even the application of the cold water failed to quench his ardour, she at length admitted that there was nothing for it but to renew the combat and we accordingly returned to the summer house. notwithstanding all my care, the pain i occasioned her while getting fairly established within her was very severe; but she persevered in her efforts to introduce him to his old quarters until she had effectually accomplished it to our mutual satisfaction. as soon as i had fairly reached the bottom, i desisted from the attack, and allowed her to remain quiet till all her suffering had entirely subsided and she was again in a condition to be able to enjoy the perfect pleasure. the first hot eagerness of novelty being now over, we both felt disposed on this occasion to prolong our enjoyment as much as possible and we accordingly proceeded with the operation more leisurely, watching the effects to our mutual efforts to produce the greatest enjoyment, and telling each other when to quicken or retard our movements, so as to keep the delicious sensations at their highest pitch, and at the same time delay the final crisis as long as possible. sometimes it was i who would urge the fierce intruder backwards and forwards in his career of pleasure; and sometimes, making me remain still, it was she who, with up-and-down heaves of her delicious buttocks, would make the lips and sides of her charming, tight-fitting sheath move over my entranced weapon, creating within it the most voluptuous sensations it is possible to conceive. but at length we could restrain ourselves no longer, and then again commenced a furious struggle of mutual heaves and thrusts intermingled with burning kisses and fond caresses, which soon resulted in drawing from us a pleasing stream of such enchanting extasy that laura declared it was even more delicious than the previous one, which she had believed could not have been surpassed. by this time she began to be afraid that her absence might be noticed and insisted that it was time for her to return to the hall. before she left me i easily persuaded her to resume her morning visits to the summer house, and to allow me to meet her there. i satisfied her that there was no risk in this, as in the event of anyone coming to the place by chance, i could easily take refuge in my hiding-place so that no suspicion could arise if she were found there alone. for several mornings we continued to indulge ourselves with a repetition of our amorous pranks and every meeting only added to the zest with which we gave ourselves up to every mode of enjoyment we could devise. the sole drawback to our pleasures was the impossibility in such an exposed situation of enjoying the sight and the touch at once of the whole of each other's charms, and i anxiously watched for any opportunity when we might be able to accomplish this. one forenoon lady middleton had accompanied the rest of the party on a visit to some friends in the neighbourhood from which they were not to return till night, leaving at home only sir hugh, miss middleton, laura, and myself. i had made some excuse for not accompanying the party, but my real reason was the wish to have an opportunity of meeting laura, as she had been unable to keep her appointment with me that morning, though i little expected that i was to be thereby enabled to arrange for the full accomplishment of our most anxious wishes. i was sitting with the two ladies when a servant brought in a note for miss middleton saying that the messenger waited for an answer. she read it and said to laura, "this is very provoking, it is a note from mr. percival asking me to come over and meet the savilles at dinner. i should like so much to go, as all our party are away to-day, and i shall not have another opportunity of meeting my old friends; but i am afraid there is no conveyance to take me. if the pony were able to go, i should drive over in the pony-chaise, but i fear he is not sufficiently recovered from his accident." laura's eyes and mine met, and all the advantage of getting her aunt away for the night flashed upon us. i gave her a look to urge her aunt to go. she reflected for a minute, and then said she did not think the pony was fit for work yet, but that her aunt might send for a carriage from the town, which was some miles distant, and that she would arrange with her mother to come for her the next morning. to this, however, miss middleton objected, saying that before a messenger could go on foot and bring the carriage it would be too late, even if he succeeded in getting it, which was doubtful. i now thought i might venture to interfere, and addressing miss middleton i said, "i did not think you would have treated me with so much ceremony. you know there are two horses of mine standing idle in the stable which are quite at your service; if you wish to send a messenger into town, my servant shall go directly, but i think the best plan will be for you to allow me to drive you over in my dogcart, and as you may not like coming home in the dark, i shall come back for you to-morrow at any hour you may fix." she appeared to hesitate, but laura had little difficulty in persuading her to accept my offer. she accordingly went to prepare, while i ordered the dogcart to be got ready. before setting out i arranged with laura that as it might appear strange were i to insist on returning to dinner when she was alone at home with her father, i should, if invited, remain at the percivals till evening. she agreed to go to bed at her usual hour and to leave the door connecting her room and mine unlocked and to tie a white ribbon to the door-handle, if all was safe for me to come to her. i started with miss middleton, and as i had expected was urged to remain till next day. i at once agreed to stay for dinner, but refused all their pressing to remain all night on the plea that i had made no preparations for so doing. i remained till pretty late and then started for the hall, promising to return the next forenoon for miss middleton. by the time i arrived everyone had gone to bed, and i hastened to follow their example. my first impulse was to examine laura's door, and i was rejoiced to find the agreed-on signal. i hastily stripped off my clothes, and opening the door softly, found her still awake, awaiting my arrival. throwing down the bed clothes i was about to jump into her arms, when it occurred to me that the operations we contemplated might perhaps leave some traces behind, which might lead to suspicion if discovered in her bed. i therefore said to her that it would be safer for her to repair with me to mine. ascertaining that her door was locked so as to prevent all intrusion, i took her round the waist and led her to my room. as soon as we reached the bedside i threw off my shirt and said, "now, dearest, since we have at last obtained the long desired opportunity we must endeavour to avail ourselves of it to the best of our abilities. i shall try to contribute as much as i can to your happiness and i am sure you will not hesitate to do anything in your power to add to mine. now, the first thing to be done is to get rid of all these obstacles to my fully seeing and enjoying all your charms." she made no objection to my removing the envious veil which covered her person. indeed i think she was quite as anxious as i was to enjoy the delight which the contemplation of each other's beauties was sure to produce upon us. however, at last we were both too eager to enjoy the _summum bonum_ of earthly felicity to give up much time to the preliminaries. after a cursory inspection of each other's persons, i stretched her at full length upon the bed and getting upon her i made her herself insert my stiffly distended champion into her delicious pleasure-sheath, and enabled her for the first time to enjoy the delicious sensation occasioned by the complete contact in every quarter of our naked bodies. making her clasp her arms around me, and twist her thighs and legs about my hips, i drove my rammer into her as far as it would go and then commenced a more voluptuous encounter than any we had yet sustained. fired by the sight she had enjoyed of my naked person and animated by the delicious sensations which our close contact was sure to occasion, she responded at once to all my movements and there ensued a fierce combat between us, each of us striving by every artifice and exertion in our power to prove the victor, and while conquering, to add to the enjoyment of the vanquished. she proved the conqueror by forcing me to be the first to yield up my tribute; but not wishing to be outdone in the capacity of conferring pleasure, i continued my vigorous heaves and thrusts in the delicious receptacle in which i was engulphed, while i felt the warm life-drops bursting from me in a torrent of bliss, until i was sensible that she also had yielded to the potent spell and shared my enjoyment by mingling her contribution with the tide which flowed from me. then with a warm kiss we ceased our efforts and lay for a while locked in each other's arms, still joined together by the tender tie that bound us in a perfect heaven of luxurious delight. if we could have reckoned upon a similar enjoyment every night, we would both have remained thus closely embracing for the whole night without desiring greater pleasure. but the slight view of her splendid charms i had already enjoyed had only heightened my desire for a more minute inspection of them, and i could not afford to lose the opportunity thus fortunately presented to me. getting up, therefore, and lighting some additional candles i had prepared for the purpose, i stretched her out all naked as she was on the bed and commenced a thorough examination of all those beauties which i had so eagerly longed to inspect, and which as yet i had only been able partially and cursorily to investigate. no part of her escaped my ardent gaze and eager touch. she willingly yielded to my wishes, nay, she even seemed gratified by my eagerness, and placed herself in every position in which she fancied i should be able to detect a new beauty. every portion of her body, both before and behind, was in succession the object of my adoration and was covered with the most passionate and thrilling kisses and caresses. the effect of this may easily be imagined, and it was not long before the imposing majesty of my overjoyed pleasure-giver showed to her, and equally convinced me, of the necessity we were under of cooling our ardour by a repetition of the same delightful process which we had already undergone. after this was happily concluded, she insisted on having in her turn the same privilege i had enjoyed, and she made me undergo the same minute investigation to which she had been subjected. her curiosity was excessive; every object underwent the most searching examination and of course all those parts in which there was a difference between us were more particularly and vigorously explored and discussed. it was impossible for me to remain insensible to her lascivious caresses which again roused the fire within me. my staff of love started up proud and erect as if eager to exhibit its full proportions to her ardent gaze. upon me the effect was most delicious. to find myself lying there stark naked before a lovely girl and undergoing the delightful touches with which she covered every part of my person as she explored my most secret charms, and at the same time to gaze on all her splendid beauties which were as freely exposed before me, was bliss indeed which roused me to the highest pitch of excitement, and again i repaid her in the most delicious manner for all the pleasing sensations her charming researches had excited in me. after this we lay for some time in each other's arms luxuriating in the blissful feelings caused by our complete conjunction, till morning beginning to appear, i suggested that she should endeavour to obtain a little repose to prevent the fatigues of the night exhibiting their traces upon her too obviously the next day. not yet satisfied, however, she laid her hand on the weapon of love, as if to ascertain whether it was yet capable of again conferring upon her the bliss she desired. quite understanding and appreciating her object, i soon satisfied her in the most practical manner that his powers were by no means wholly exhausted, and having achieved another victory over our raging desires, we at length fell asleep locked in each other's arms. when i awoke, the sun was shining brightly into the room. during her sleep laura had somewhat changed her position, and instead of fronting me, had turned upon her left side, presenting her splendid posteriors to me, between which my champion was nestling himself. judging by his imposing appearance, his powers did not seem in any way impaired by the exertions of the previous night. turning down the bed-clothes, i for some time quietly revelled in the sight of her charms, and then getting excited beyond endurance, though unwilling to disturb her peaceful slumber, i thought i might perhaps be able without awakening her to take up a more satisfactory position than the one i enjoyed. so gently raising her right leg and creeping as close behind her as i could, i placed my right leg between her thighs in such a manner that my champion shoved himself between her legs, stretching up almost to her navel, in this position i lay for some little time till some half muttered words and certain movements of her body made me suspect that laura in her sleep was acting over again the scenes of the previous night. convinced that she would have no more objection than myself to the illusion being converted into the reality, i gently separated the lips of the seat of pleasure and inserted the tip of the appropriate organ. his sweet touch in such a sensitive spot at once broke her slumber. she opened her eyes, and glancing downward got a full view of my stiffly distended weapon with its ruby head quite uncovered just entering within the charming precincts of her lovely retreat, and she said smiling that it was just what she had been dreaming of. she was then going to turn herself round towards me, but i told her to remain as she was and that i thought we should be able to accomplish our wishes in that position. i pointed out to her that although we could not so well enjoy the pleasure of kissing each other, we could at least better watch and observe each other's operations while my weapon was perforating her, as the reflexion of our figures in a large mirror, which i had purposely placed so as to produce the best effect, would add greatly to our enjoyment. looking towards it, she blushed deeply at beholding exposed to her full view her own lovely face, exquisite swelling breasts, snow-white belly and ivory thighs, with the upper part of the mount of pleasure beautifully shaded with its appropriate fringe and the lips swollen and distended with the shaft of love, while my leg, holding her thighs apart, exposed to view between them the pleasure-yielding receptacles of its liquid treasures, and at every heave i gave exhibited at full length the staff of my weapon as i alternately penetrated and then partly withdrew it from its delicious sheath. this exquisite site delighted us so much that we determined to prolong it as much as possible, and regulating each other's movements so as to keep up the enjoyment to the uttermost and at the same time hold back the crisis, we lay in the most extatic bliss for upwards of an hour, enjoying the thrilling delight which this perfect combination of the most exquisite sensations of touch and sight can confer. at length, in spite of our endeavours, we could no longer restrain the tide of passion, a few furious heaves of my maddened and thrusting pleasure-giver completed our bliss, and the genial shower sprinkled the field of pleasure and calmed our overexcited senses. one other soul-stirring enjoyment was all we had time to accomplish before the approach of the hour at which laura was usually called warned us that we must separate, and with the most poignant regret that we might not have another opportunity of again enjoying ourselves in such a delightful manner, we parted. in the forenoon i drove out for miss middleton. as her friends wished her to remain, i of course endeavoured to persuade her to do so and offered to come back for her on any day she might fix, but she insisted on returning home that day. i had, however, the satisfaction of finding that she had made an arrangement with the friends whom she had gone to meet to pay them a visit for some weeks as soon as they returned to their own abode, which they were to do in about a week. one circumstance, however, occurred the same day which rather counterbalanced the pleasure with which i received this intelligence. young master frank on leaving school had gone to pay a visit to a school-fellow, but a letter had arrived from him that morning to say that he would be home the next day. now his arrival and consequent occupation of the room between laura's and mine threatened to prevent the constant agreeable intercourse which i had expected to be able to keep up with her during her aunt's absence. i felt very much annoyed at the idea, and urged her, if possible, to get some arrangement made by which he might occupy some other apartment. she said, however, that she was afraid to make any such proposal to her mother for fear of exciting suspicions as to her object, or of occasioning my removal to another room, which would be equally destructive for our projects. on the whole she took the matter so quietly and coolly that i was rather astonished, considering the enjoyment she evidently had in our intercourse. a little annoyed at this, i made up my mind that if my young friend retained any portion of the youthful beauty i remembered him to possess, i would endeavour if possible to make up in his arms for the enjoyment he would deprive me of by keeping me out of his sister's. his first appearance at once decided me to follow out the idea that had occurred to me. some years younger than his sister and just of that delightful age when the passions of manhood have begun to exert their influence on the senses but before they have taken away the attractive and charming bloom and graces of youth, he was, if possible, more captivating than his sister. indeed, when upon one occasion i dressed him up as a girl, it was almost impossible to distinguish between them and he might easily have passed for her even among her intimate acquaintances. we became good friends at once. when the ladies left the table after dinner, i made a sign to him to come over beside me, and he was very soon communicating to me all his secrets. i easily led him to talk of his school-fellows and their amusements, and when the party rose to join the ladies he was in the midst of the details of the history of one of the elder boys to whom a married lady had taken a fancy at a house where he had been visiting, and who had conferred a favour on him of which it was very evident my young friend was somewhat envious. when we went to the drawing room, he wanted to continue the history, but i said to him that it would be better not to do so there, but that as he slept in the next room to mine, he might come to me after we had retired for the night, when we would have a better opportunity for discussing the subject. he said he would, but that i was not to expect him till everyone had gone to bed, in case his mother or sister should come into his room. although a little surprised at this allusion to the latter, i was quite satisfied from what he said that all was right, as, unless he somewhat comprehended my object, he would not have thought it necessary to make any mystery or take any precaution on the subject. i went to bed, and taking a book, remained awake reading until i heard my door open, and my young friend entered with only his nightshirt on. when he came to the bedside i at once threw down the bed-clothes and made room for him beside me. he jumped in instantly, and clasping him in my arms i pressed him to my bosom. he warmly returned my embrace, and the idea i had formed as to his appreciating my intentions was immediately confirmed by my finding something hard and stiff pressing against my belly, and i soon managed to ascertain that his instrument was in a state of fierce erection. after a few kisses and caresses, i led to the subject of his young friend and the lady, asking how old he was, and then laying my hand upon his organ of pleasure, asked him whether his friend's plaything was bigger than this. he said at once it was, and then taking hold of mine, which as may be supposed was standing stiff enough, he added that it was not so big as mine. continuing to caress his little charmer, i said i was afraid it was a very naughty little gentleman, and asked whether he had ever had a lady to teach him how to behave himself properly. he said, "oh! no! i have not been so fortunate, but i do wish i could get someone to do it with me. i can think of nothing else night or day, and i shall go wild unless i can manage it before long." the manner in which my caresses affected him showed plainly how excitable he was. he pressed me to him, and as i grasped his instrument he twisted himself backwards and forwards endeavouring to make my hand serve as a substitute for what he so eagerly desired, while he begged of me to tell him whether i could not put him in the way of obtaining the fulfilment of his wishes. i at once promised that if he would get permission to pay me a visit at the hall, i would arrange that he should have as much of it as he liked, if he would only allow me to witness and participate with him in his pleasures. in his delight and gratitude he at once said that he would do anything i liked, that i had only to tell what i wanted and he would be as eager as i could be to do whatever was in his power that would contribute to my enjoyment. during this conversation i had been playing with his pretty little instrument as he had been with mine, and i had occasionally introduced it between my thighs squeezing them together so as to compress it between them and meeting and returning the thrusts which he could not help giving on finding his little charmer so agreeably tickled by my soft flesh. this drew from him exclamations of delight. "why, my dear boy," said i, "if this gives you pleasure, as i imagine it does, i think i could manage to make you do it in a manner that will be more agreeable still." turning round to him i presented to him my posteriors, and retaining hold of his instrument i inserted it between my hips, and squeezing and pressing it in the same manner as formerly, i enabled him to enjoy the pleasing friction over a larger portion of the surface of his now inflamed weapon. this seemed to gratify him extremely, and he repeatedly thanked me for the nice way in which he said i made him do it, and protested that he had never enjoyed it so much before. i told him i thought i could make it even pleasanter still. i had still retained my fingers round the root of his sensitive plant, and i now drew it back a little, and raising the point, directed it to the orifice between the cheeks of my posteriors. opening the lips so as to permit the head to penetrate a short way, i made the cheeks of my bottom close round the head of the intruder so as to produce a most delicious compression upon it, which drew from him the exclamation, "oh! this is splendid!" i then asked him whether he had ever put it in here before. he seemed a little surprised at the question, and said, "no," and then putting down his hand and ascertaining the little charmer's head was actually within the lips of the orifice, he immediately asked, "will it go in?" "just try, my dear boy," was my answer. he did not wait for any pressing, but immediately pressed forwards, and as i favoured the insertion as much as i could, a very few thrusts sufficed to lodge the charming intruder fairly within me, evidently as much to his delight as it was to mine. as soon as it was driven completely home, and his thighs and belly came in close contact with my buttocks, he ceased his movements and lay still for some minutes, apparently in the greatest extasy. the complete constriction which was thus established on every part of his stiff-standing instrument--so tightly fitting and pressing upon it and yet so deliciously tender and soft--was so different from anything he had ever previously felt, when his own or a school-fellow's hand had procured for him an emission, it seemed quite to overpower him. after fully enjoying himself for a little time, he withdrew the inflamed morsel which i felt burning hot within me, bringing it out nearly to its full extent and then replacing it. he then said, "tell me, my dear fellow, may i do this, it is so delicious, but i am afraid of hurting you." "hurting me?" i replied. "you need not be very afraid of that. does that feel as if you were hurting me," taking his hand and placing it upon my inflamed member of which in his excitement he had lost his hold, and which throbbing and burning stood up fiercely erected along my belly, excited to the utmost by the charming pressure which his member exerted upon its sensitive root. "no, no, the little charmer is not quite big enough yet to do any harm, he is just the size to give me as much pleasure as he will give you. so don't be afraid to do anything you like, and i shall do my best to help you!" encouraged by this, he commenced operations which i seconded with all my might. at first he pushed backwards and forwards, gently and regularly, and i had no difficulty in keeping time with him, but after a little he became so excited and thrust followed thrust with such velocity and so irregularly that i found it quite impossible to keep in unison with him, and could only aid his frantic efforts by the compression of the muscles upon his raging champion, which i exerted whenever he gave me an opportunity by making a more prolonged thrust than usual within me. in the meantime his panting sobs and sighs bore testimony to the excess of his enjoyment and the near approach of the voluptuous crisis, which was speedily announced by an exclamation, "oh, goodness, oh!" i felt my delightful invader pressed into me with all his force, as if he wished his whole body could follow. i endeavoured to add to his delight by a few movements on my part, for he was now so overcome with pleasure as to be almost incapable of motion, and contracting the mouth of the orifice as much as i could, i pressed upon his swollen and throbbing column and strove to prolong his pleasure by delaying as long as possible the passage of the precious liquid through it, which was now bursting from him in furious jets. i succeeded in this so well that he has often told me since that in all the amorous encounters he has subsequently been engaged in, and they are not a few, he has never enjoyed such delicious sensations as he did on this occasion when he first felt the ravishing delight of his pleasure-giving member being completely engulphed within, and compressed by, the magical circle of living flesh. after he had lain quiet for a little while, i felt his somewhat attenuated weapon slip out of me. he then turned himself round, presenting his buttocks to me and, still keeping his hold on my member which he had maintained during all his raptures, he gently drew me round also, nothing unwilling, and presenting his captive at the entrance to its destined prison, he opened the lips of his orifice as much as he could, and tried to get him in. i was amused and delighted with his eagerness about it, but fearful of hurting him, i did not attempt to force my way in, until he asked me why i did not assist him in getting it farther in. i said simply because i was afraid that, as he had not tried it before, i might hurt him the first time, but that if he would allow me to try, i would endeavour to do it with as little suffering to him as possible. he at once told me to do anything i liked, that he could not expect me to allow him to enjoy himself within me again unless he reciprocated the pleasure and that he would willingly suffer any amount of pain to be permitted again to taste the delight he had already felt. i was in no way averse to take him at his word and accordingly set to work. as he gave me every facility, i was enabled with the aid of a little cold cream to make my way in with less difficulty than i had expected. my first penetration no doubt hurt him a little, but he bore it manfully and urged me to proceed till, to my infinite delight, i was fairly lodged within him up to the hilt. the avenue was as tight and delightful as possible, but it was of that charming elasticity which yielded sufficiently to admit the invader, and at the same time pressed upon him with that degree of force which occasioned the most consummate voluptuous gratifications. as soon as i was fairly in, all annoyance seemed fairly at an end and, judging from the rise of his thermometer which i held in my hand, there succeeded an increase of the pleasure heat which i had hardly anticipated. the result was that eagerly availing himself of the lessons i had given him, he set to work so deliciously and exerted himself so much to promote my pleasure that in spite of my efforts to prolong the enjoyment, he drew down from me in a very few minutes the first flow that had saturated his virgin premises. after some little fondling of each other he again wished to repeat the operation. i told him i was afraid of his exerting himself too much, and proposed that we should put it off till morning, but he would not be satisfied with this, and urged me to comply by appealing to an argument the strength and beauty of which i could not withstand. again this fascinating charmer was plunged into my interior with the same lascivious results and again i was rewarded for my compliance by the full enjoyment of his delicious charms, and after we had each thus attained again to the height of felicity we fell asleep locked in a close embrace. i awoke early in the morning before he did, and i delighted myself with a view of all his naked charms while he still slumbered. i was unwilling to awaken him even to satisfy my own raging desires inflamed by the sight of such beauty, for i saw that his lovely champion was already raising his head proudly aloft, as fiercely as if he had not undergone any fatigue on the previous night, and i was convinced that if he once awoke, nothing would prevent him from at once commencing and continuing the delightful game till it was time to appear at breakfast. i therefore resolved to keep quiet as long as possible, and creeping gently as close to him as i could, i placed my throbbing weapon in the hollow between his buttocks, and in that delicious position remained quiet until he awoke. when he did open his eyes, he turned his head round, and finding how he was situated and that i had been awake for some time, he scolded me for wasting so much valuable time, and while he took hold of and insinuated my pleasure-giver into the appropriate niche with which it was in such close contact, he vowed that he was much disposed to punish me by not allowing him to enter. the joys of the previous evening were repeated. he in his turn penetrated into my interior, and revelled in the same lascivious enjoyment. after we had each thus allayed our fires a little by a copious discharge, we proceeded to a minute examination of our respective persons, while i was highly delighted with the unrestrained exhibition of such charms as have seldom fallen under my notice. i found that he was no less struck and pleased with what i in return placed at his disposal. anything of the kind he had previously seen had been of boys of his own age, and this merely by stealth when he had no opportunity of making minute observations. my somewhat more mature proportions, occasioned by the difference of a few years in our ages, were therefore fully appreciated and drew from him the warmest encomiums and the most luxurious caresses. while frank and i were thus agreeably occupied in a minute investigation of each other's charms, i reverted to what had fallen from him the previous evening, and asked if he really meant to say that his sister was in the habit of visiting him after he had gone to bed. "not now," he replied, "i only wish she did, and i would soon repay her the lessons she used to give me. do you know it was she who first taught me how to do anything in this way?" i expressed my surprise and curiosity to know what had occurred between them, and he at once proceeded to enlighten me, saying that from the kindness i had shown him he was sure he need have no reserve with me. "it was," he said, "about eighteen months ago, when she had returned from school, that our first amusement began. we then slept in the same rooms we now occupy, and as some of my younger brothers were in the room where you are, i used often to lock the door at night to prevent them from coming in and tormenting me. laura used generally to come to bed before her aunt. she somehow ascertained that i shut myself up in my room and probably imagined that i was better informed on certain subjects than i really was. "one evening on which there were some old people at dinner who were likely to occupy our aunt's attention and keep her up late, laura said to me that she was tired of the party in the drawing room, but that she was not inclined to sleep, and that if i left the door open between our rooms she would come and sit with me for a while. i sat up for some time, expecting to hear her come to her room, but at length i grew tired of waiting, undressed, and went to bed. i suspected she must have crept softly to her own room and waited there without my being aware of it till this took place, for i had hardly got into bed and put out the candle when i heard her come in. she came to the bedside and inquired in a low voice if i was awake. on my answering her, she said we had better not talk loud in case of disturbing the young people in the next room. she sat down by the bedside and leaned over me, putting an arm round my neck and kissing me warmly. then, putting her hand under the bed-clothes, she began to caress my naked bosom. this seemed a little strange to me, but very pleasant. and it was still more agreeable when, putting my arm round her neck, i found that she also was undressed and had nothing but her nightshift and a dressing gown which was quite open at the front. this she accounted for by saying she must be ready to slip into bed if she heard her aunt coming. "the touch of her naked breasts, which were then just beginning to acquire their full, round form, quite delighted me, and it was while playing with them that the first voluptuous sensations were awakened within me. i had previously been sometimes surprised, especially on awakening in the morning, to find a certain little gentleman quite hard and stiff, and had been at a loss to ascertain what was the cause. and i was now still more surprised that as i played with her soft, yielding globes, the same effect occurred, but although the sensation was most agreeable, i was too ignorant regarding such matters to be able to connect the cause with the effect. laura continued to kiss and play with me for some time, and at last i became aware that while with one hand she caressed me, the other was employed in some movement about her own person, the object of which i did not understand and did not think of investigating. the effect, however, seemed to be pleasant to her, for her kisses and caresses increased in ardour till at last with a heavy sigh they ceased at once; and she remained for a few minutes perfectly still. then after another kiss she said she was afraid her aunt might come and find her away. so making me promise to say nothing of her visit she left me. "our interview had been so agreeable to me that i pressed her to renew it on the succeeding night, which she willingly agreed to do, and somewhat of the same procedure occurred on that and several subsequent occasions. i gradually began to discover that as her caresses increased and as her hand came to wander lower down on my person the effect which was produced upon a certain part came to increase in force and to be accompanied with more pleasant sensations. this aroused a suspicion in my mind that there must be some connection between them. so one night, when my little plaything was particularly stiff, and she was very much excited, i took her hand which had never before strayed below my navel and, certainly by no means unwillingly on her part, drew it down and placed it on the throbbing object that had raised my curiosity. she made not the least objection to my making her grasp it, and after handling it for a little, she asked me what was the meaning of it and what i wanted her to do with it. i said i did not know, but that i suspected she knew better than i did, as it was only when she played with me that it became in its present state. she laughed and asked me if it gave me any pleasure for her to play with it. i told her it did, and begged of her to continue to fondle it. she complied very willingly, and then began to question me how long it was since it had commenced to get into this state and whether i had every played with it myself, or done anything to procure myself pleasure with it. i told her that it was only of late that it had often been in the way of getting stiff, and explained how much it had been affected by her caresses. she then said she thought she might perhaps be able to procure for me still greater pleasure with it, but that it would take a little time to do so, and as she could not remain long enough that night she would come back and try what she could do on the first favourable opportunity. "the next evening she complained of a headache and retired to bed earlier than usual. as soon as she came into my room, she lighted my candle, stripped down the bed-clothes, made me take off my nightshirt, and at once began to amuse herself with my little plaything. it swelled out and increased in size under her playful fondling to an extent that surprised me. after she had satisfied her curiosity respecting it and its appendages by a strict examination of every part, she took it in her hand and began to rub it up and down. she then put out the candle, so that i did not see what was probably the case--while endeavouring to procure me pleasure, she was at the same time operating upon herself for the same agreeable purpose. i certainly very much enjoyed her performance upon my sensitive article, but still i felt as if something was wanting, and i was greatly disappointed when as usual she sunk almost fainting on my bosom and ceased her efforts. "after a little she recovered herself and said she was afraid i was still too young to be able to enjoy the full pleasure of what she had been doing, but that she would try again the following night. still two or three nights passed without anything occurring to heighten my enjoyment. "by this time i had begun to express some curiosity with regard to her person and to wish to be allowed to extend my researches over it as freely as her hands roved over mine. with some little difficulty i prevailed on her to remove her dressing gown and nightshift and stretch herself naked on the bed beside me. i had been aware from what i had seen of some little girls that there was a considerable difference in our formation, but i was astonished at first on finding her centre-part so thickly shaded with hair. i quite delighted with its beauty, was soon tempted to get my fingers between the moist ruby lips of the charming little slit which i discovered within the curly forest, and to begin to explore its recesses. the sensitive little organ i found within so closely resembling, though on a smaller scale, my own organ of pleasure, did not escape my observation, as wakened up by my lascivious touches it darted its little head out from its hiding-place. it was not long before i discovered that this invasion of her inmost recesses occasioned laura the greatest delight. she seemed at first to hesitate a little, but summing up courage she took hold of my hand and, inserting my fingers within the warmly moist cavity, made me move it up and down within her. at the same time she grasped my weapon and rubbed it backwards and forwards more rapidly and more forcibly than she had ever done before. i felt greatly excited and continued the titillating movements of my finger within her with the greatest zest, until i saw her stretch her legs out and sink backwards on the bed sobbing violently, while with quick hurried movements of her buttocks she responded to every thrust i made in her inflamed interior. these violent motions only lasted a few seconds, and then i felt something wet apparently issue from her, trickle over my fingers and down her thighs. she still retained her grasp of my machine, which i felt throbbing and burning more fiercely than ever and giving me more pleasure than i had ever previously experience, though in her crisis of delight she had ceased to operate upon it. i now begged of her not to stop, but to continue her employment which afforded me so much delight. suspecting what was indeed the case, that the sight of her charms and of the enjoyment she had undergone had stirred me up to an unwonted pitch of desire which might perhaps be attended with a happy result, she good-naturedly resumed her efforts, and every succeeding movement of her hand upon the throbbing and inflamed member evidently added intensely to the flame that consumed me. she persevered until she had produced the desired result, and i saw a drop or two of white liquid burst from the inflamed point, while at the same time a most delicious sensation pushed through the part affected and from thence seemed to thrill through my whole frame, as overcome with the exquisite delight. i fell back upon the bed, she kissing me tenderly and congratulating me on having at length attained the powers of a man; then she left me to my repose. "after this we omitted no opportunity that was afforded us of amusing ourselves together in the same way. my ignorance on the subject, however, prevented me from thinking of carrying our enjoyment farther, and though doubtless she knew better, she allowed me to return to school without enlightening me any farther. she made me promise two things, first that i was not to indulge myself in any repetition of our pastimes until we met again, and secondly not to say anything to my school-fellows regarding such subjects. i cannot say that i kept my promise on either point. i tried as well as i could to do so with regard to the first, but i could not help occasionally breaking through. but my curiosity was too much excited by our late proceedings not to endeavour to ascertain how some of my elder companions felt regarding such subjects. on sounding them cautiously i discovered that some of them were better informed on such affairs than i was, and from their revelations i became aware of the amount of pleasure i had lost through my want of knowledge to avail myself of it. it so happened that during the following year whenever i was at home laura was absent, and when we did at length occasionally meet and i endeavoured to prevail on her to afford me an opportunity of repeating our old amusements, she always put me off, laughing and saying that i was grown too old for her to allow me to play these tricks now, so that i never have been able to show her what a change had taken place in the size of her old acquaintance or to prove to her how much pleasure i am sure it could now give her." this detail produced such an exciting effect upon both of our organs of pleasure that we were obliged again to quench our raging fires in each other's interiors. in the course of the mutual operation i questioned him as to whether, if he had an opportunity, he would like to repeat his former amusements with laura and even carry them further. he said at once it would be most delightful to do so, and nothing would give him greater pleasure. then referring to her close neighbourhood to us and to her aunt's approaching departure, he said that there would be such a capital opportunity for our all enjoying ourselves together, if she could only be persuaded to agree to it, that he was determined to try whether he could not persuade her to renew their meetings, and he even showed me a key to the door leading into her room which he had got made on purpose to enable him to have access to her. his story had somewhat enlightened me as to laura's ideas, and i could now understand to some degree her not feeling so much annoyed as i had been at frank's arrival. i strongly suspected that rather than be deprived of her favourite amusement, she would not object to his again being a participator in it. i thought it better, however, not to say anything to him at present regarding my intimacy with her until i had ascertained what her intentions really were. after mutually agreeing that we were both to endeavour to prevail on her to join in our sports, and that if one succeeded he was to do all he could for the benefit of the other, we went down to breakfast. i had an opportunity sooner than i expected of coming to an explanation with laura. she had told me that she could not meet me that morning at the summer house, but in the course of the forenoon she found she could get away for an hour, and she gave me the usual signal for me to repair there. when, as she was accustomed to do, she opened my trousers and uncovered her little darling and proceeded to give him his usual caress before introducing him into his nest, her quick eye at once discovered that he was not in his ordinary trim to satisfy her desires. with a flushed cheek, she looked me full in the face, and asked what was the reason of this and what i had been about to occasion such a state of things. i was very well pleased to have such a good opportunity of coming to the point, and i at once answered that, having been deprived of the pleasure of seeing her in the morning and despairing of being able to accomplish a meeting with her that day, i had been reduced to the necessity of seeking consolation in the embraces of one whose charms put me so much in mind of her that i had almost believed it was her in reality and had been tempted to exceed the limits i had intended to have placed upon myself. she inquired with some heat and astonishment what i meant. but she blushed scarlet when i replied that frank and i had been rehearsing some of her lessons. she was at first rather annoyed at what i told her; but when i explained to her that i had not made frank aware of what had passed between us until i was sure of her approbation and that his reason for confiding in me was the hope of my being of use in enabling him to obtain the bliss he so much coveted--of again regaling himself in her charms--she was quite appeased. i had little difficulty in discerning that she was highly delighted with the glowing description i gave of his youthful charms and especially of the size and prowess of her old acquaintance. i dwelt on this and on the necessity there was of taking him into our confidence, and even making him a partner in our amusements, unless we were to give them up entirely, for there could be no doubt if we went on that he would soon discover the footing we were on. although i could not get her to say that she would consent to this, i was tolerably well satisfied she would make no great opposition. i therefore ceased to urge the point, telling her that she must leave it to me to arrange matters with frank, if i found it was necessary, and that i would take care not to commit her more than was absolutely requisite. we had continued to caress each other during this conversation and her charms producing their usual effect upon me i was soon able to point out to her the flourishing condition of her favorite. i exerted myself notwithstanding my previous night's work to show her that it had not quite exhausted me; and at length she left me quite reconciled by the result of three vigorous encounters. when frank came to me that night he was somewhat surprised at the state of my rather enervated champion, which he with great glee contrasted with the vigorous condition of his own. but he was still more surprised when i frankly confessed that i could not attempt to cope with him on that occasion, and explained the cause from which the deficiency arose. he was greatly delighted to learn the footing on which i stood with laura, and at once concluded that she would not be able to resist the temptation of adding to her enjoyment by making him participate in it. i quite agreed with him, but at the same time i told him the objection she had made and that it would probably be necessary to devise some plan by which at least the appearance of her not voluntarily complying with his desires might be kept up. after some deliberation on this subject, occasionally interrupted by a renewal of our previous evening's amusements, in which, however, i generally allowed my young friend to take the more active share, we arranged our plan which was carried into effect in this manner. laura was now afraid to venture to the summer house every morning, so we had few opportunities of meeting. but ascertaining that her mother and her aunt were going two days afterwards to pay a visit at a distance, which would occupy them the whole forenoon, i arranged with her that if she were left alone, she should come to my room where i would be waiting for her. i then arranged with frank that at breakfast he should say he was going to take a ride to call upon a companion in the neighbourhood, but that instead of doing so he should conceal himself in a closet in my room and upon my giving a certain signal he should make a noise which would lead to his discovery without it appearing that i knew he was there. everything happened as i anticipated. as soon as the carriage drove off with her mother, laura came to my room, where i was awaiting her. saying that it seemed an age since i had had the opportunity of fully enjoying the sight and touch of all her charms, i at once stripped myself quite naked and proceeded to perform the same operation upon her. as she enjoyed this as much as i did, she made no objection whatever, and even assisted in getting rid of her clothes as fast as possible. i placed her in several different postures, in order to allow the delighted boy to enjoy the voluptuous sensations i was sure her charms would produce upon him, and then proceeded to the final enjoyment. when this had been completed to our mutual satisfaction, i again displayed all her attractions, and when by kisses and caresses and lascivious touches i had again roused her desires for a repetition of the encounter, i made the agreed-on signal to frank. he immediately responded by pushing down some article of furniture. laura started up, exclaiming, "good heavens, what is that? can anyone be there?" i jumped out of the bed and seized a pistol which was lying on the dressing table and opened the door saying i would take good care to silence any intruder so that he should never be able to tell upon us. on opening the door and disclosing frank, i exclaimed, "so it is you, master peeping tom. well, it is lucky it is only you, for anyone else would have had a good chance of having a bullet through his head. but i shall deal somewhat differently with you. don't suppose, however, you are to get off unpunished for thus stealing in upon us. i see there is a good rod here, and you shall have a sound flogging for your impertinence and curiosity. so strip instantly and remember the longer you are about it the more severe your punishment will be." frank appeared nothing loth to submit to the proposed infliction and with my assistance was soon as naked as we were. all this time i watched laura closely to observe how she was affected by our proceedings. at first she had been dreadfully alarmed, but on finding it was only frank she was quite aware she was perfectly safe. as i proceeded to strip him, and disclosed his exquisite figure and symmetrical proportions, she evidently became much interested, and when at last i drew his shirt over his head and revealed the full contour of his body with his delicious charmer standing fully erect and exhibiting its rosy head completely developed, i could see a flash of pleasure and delight steal over her lovely features and impart still greater animation to her sparkling eyes. convinced that i might now proceed to any extremities i said, "now, laura, you must assist me to punish this young rogue properly." i then gave her the rod, and sitting down on the side of the bed, i placed him across my knees and turned up his beautiful posteriors to her. she instantly entered into the sport and gave him two or three cuts with the birch which, though not very severe, were quite sufficient to give him an excuse for tossing his legs about and exhibiting all his charms in the most voluptuous manner possible, in which i gave him every assistance in my power. after this playful enjoyment had been continued for some time, i said to laura that she was too gentle with him and did not punish him half so severely as he deserved, and proposed that she should change places with me and let me take the rod. she laughingly assented and asked me in what position she was to hold him for me. i told her the best plan would be to do as they flogged the boys at school, and i would show her how it was done. making her lean forward upon the bed, i placed him behind her, and putting his arms over her shoulders, i made her catch hold of his hands, telling her to hold them fast. she did as i directed, while i applied a few lashes to his plump, handsome posteriors which, as i expected, made him cling closely to laura, bringing his instrument into direct contact with her buttocks, against which it beat furiously, as if eager to effect an entrance somewhere. i said, "ah, i see you have got a very unruly little gentleman there, i must try if we can't hold him fast also." and at the same time i inserted it between her thighs and again inflicted a few blows. the near approach of his furious weapon to the seat of pleasure caused him to make fierce efforts to endeavour to penetrate it, and i could no longer resist the imploring glances he cast upon me, expressive of his urgent desire that i should enable him to complete his enjoyment. so making laura rest her belly on the bed and stretch her legs as far asunder as possible so as to afford him a fair entrance from behind, i loosened her hold of his arms so far as to enable him to stoop down sufficiently low, and then taking hold of his flaming weapon i guided it into the heaven which i felt was burning with desire and eager to receive it. laura at once accommodated herself to all his proceedings and finding that her hold of his hands rather obstructed his progress, she loosened it, and they were soon transferred to her splendid swelling globes, and then, as he became more and more excited in the hot struggle, were firmly clasped round her waist so as to bring their bodies into the closest possible contact. animated by the delicious scene before my eyes the fiery impatience of my excited organ of pleasure could no longer be restrained. i threw myself on the lovely boy and almost at the first thrust was plunged up to the hilt in the delicious buttocks which he thus so temptingly exposed to my eager assault. once engulphed i had nothing to do but to keep my place and leave to the energetic struggles of the other two combatants the task of bringing the warfare to a successful termination. after a hard fight, during which the utmost endeavours of both parties seemed to be to try which should be vanquished soonest, it terminated in a drawn battle. and as i contributed at the same time my share of the spoil, poor frank's beautiful little balls of delight were quite inundated both before and behind with the stream which flowed from himself and me and which mingled with the first tribute his manly prowess had drawn down from woman and poured in torrents along his thighs. the dear boy was so overcome with the delight that i thought at first he must have fainted, but i soon discovered it was only the swoon of pleasure. raising him up in my arms, as soon as i could disengage my unruly member from the pleasant quarters it still clung too, i laid him on the bed by the side of laura who was not in much better condition and stood equally in need of my assistance. it is wonderful, however, how soon one recovers from such exhaustion, and in a few minutes they were both as lively as ever and were actively engaged in the mutual contemplation of each other's exquisite charms. this pleasant proceeding was enlivened by an animated discussion regarding the alteration and improvement which each of them discovered the other's beauties had undergone since they had last been submitted to their mutual inspection, and it cannot be doubted that laura was greatly delighted to witness the change in size of the pretty little champion to which she had given the first lesson. all this, of course, produced the usual effect upon us, and frank seeing that i was quite ready to renew the combat proposed to resign laura to me. i fancied, however, that they would like a repetition of their previous engagement, and he was evidently perfectly able to renew it, for, indeed, the wanton boy had been so wound up by the preliminary scene that his former encounter had produced hardly any relaxing effect upon his lovely weapon. i therefore drew him upon the not unwilling laura, and again guiding the fiery courser into the lists of pleasure, had the satisfaction of seeing them once more commence the amorous encounter, which proceeded to the ordinary happy result, evidently to the great delight of both parties. frank, revelling in the blissful conjunction of every part of their naked bodies, clasped laura round the neck and imprinted burning kisses upon her lovely lips, while his rampant steed plunged violently backwards and forwards in the abyss of pleasure and his charming buttocks bounded and quivered with the excess of wanton delight. greatly interested in watching the delightful encounter, i endeavoured to promote their enjoyment by tickling and playing with them in the most sensitive places, till their excitement reached its height and they both sunk down in the swoon of pleasure. laura had no sooner recovered a little from the effects of this engagement, than frank insisted on seeing me perform the same pleasant operation in which he had just been engaged. nothing loth, i immediately humoured his fancy, getting upon laura, who was still lying on her back in the bed. the lascivious and not yet exhausted boy had no sooner got us fairly placed and my weapon inserted in laura's sheath and set to work, than i felt him separate our legs so as to enable him to kneel down between them behind us. having established his position satisfactorily, he instantly plunged his still rampant champion into my rear, producing in me the most rapturous sensations, which soon caused me in conjunction with laura to die away in bliss before he was ready to join our sacrifice. finding that he was determined to complete his third pleasing operation, i proposed that he should change his position and take up my place in laura's palace of pleasure and allow me again to stimulate him in the rear, and assist him to attain his object. he highly approved of this proposal, and immediately took up his position in laura's arms, while, getting behind him and inserting my weapon in his delicious sheath, i proceeded to render him the same agreeable service he had just done me. this speedily had the desired effect, and a delicious emission from all the three parties brought our undertaking to a most successful and satisfactory conclusion. by this time, laura for once had had enough to satisfy her, and we separated, sadly grudging the loss of the two days which were still to pass before the departure of her aunt would admit of a renewal of our joys in security. we faithfully proposed on our part that we should be abstinent in the meantime with the view of being the better able to enjoy ourselves thoroughly when the happy time for our all again meeting together should arrive. upon the whole, with the assistance of an occasional solace from her in the summer house, when an opportunity afforded, we kept our promise tolerably well, though as frank would insist on coming to my bed, and we could neither of us refrain from indulging in a sight of each other's charms, it was sometimes a hard struggle to restrain our desires. at length miss middleton's departure enabled us to give free course to all our wanton inclinations, and night after night my room was the scene of a repetition of the most exquisite and voluptuous enjoyments it is possible to conceive. when our exhausted frames could no longer furnish us with the means of indulging in the performance of our soul-stirring rites, we were never tired of gazing on and caressing the delicious forms which were constantly exhibited without reserve for the delectation and amusement of one another, for we all seemed to feel that our own delight was heightened by aiding to promote the happiness of the others. we had no secrets from laura; in fact, she had witnessed with delight the pleasures which frank and i mutually conferred upon each other. on one occasion when she was disqualified from joining in our amusements, she watched frank and me stripping and enjoying by ourselves the pleasures she was unable to participate in. the evident delight they afforded us affected her so greatly that she declared she must try the effect of the same operation upon herself. accordingly, the next night she insisted upon us both operating on her at the same time. frank offered to me the choice of routes. but as i was aware that he had often contemplated with great pleasure the idea of opening up the new way, which he thought would be peculiarly well suited to his yet somewhat undeveloped proportions, i at once gave him the precedence. i told him that, as i had already had one victory over a maiden citadel, it was only fair that he should enjoy the next and that it was better he should do so, as in all probability he would obtain it with less suffering to the conquered fair one than if my larger battering ram were at first introduced. laura quite approved of this arrangement. having all stripped quite naked, i laid myself down in the bed at full length and then drew her upon me, making her place herself so as to bring her cavity just over the stiff pole which was standing up ready to enter it. she herself inserted and adjusted it in the most satisfactory manner. when she was quite impaled upon me and firmly fastened by the wedge being fairly driven home in her, frank got between her legs on his knees, and with lance in hand, proceeded to insert it in her hinder cavity. being, however, his first attempt at storming a maiden fortress, he was not very expert at it, and the coveted way proving very narrow and confined, it was not without some difficulty he effected his object. the obstacles, however, only increased the ardour of his desires and, with the assistance of a little cold cream, they were at length happily surmounted, and his weapon forced its way into the interior of the citadel. during this time i endeavoured to keep as quiet as possible, and as frank's efforts occasioned her some pain, laura also remained nearly motionless, only exerting herself a little occasionally to humour his movements and assist him in effecting an entrance. as soon, however, as i found from his exclamation of delight that his weapon had overcome all resistance and was as fully imbedded in the lascivious, fleshy sheath as mine was, i began at first gently and quietly, and then more rapidly and vigorously, to join in the combat, heaving my buttocks up and down and urging the lusty pole backwards and forwards in its delicious quarters, only pausing now and then to receive and return the burning kisses which laura, now rendered quite frantic with the double enjoyment stimulating her both before and behind, showered upon me. i soon found that any further efforts on my part were quite unnecessary. maddened by the novel excitement, laura heaved and thrust alternately, displacing and replacing the sturdy instruments above and below, and declaring she really knew not which of them afforded her the greatest delight. i, therefore, confined myself to favouring her movements so as to give them the greatest possible effect, till at last with her eyes flashing fire and her whole body panting and heaving with the excess of her emotion, she almost shouted out, "oh, heavens, this is too much!" her grasp round me slackened, and she sunk entranced on my bosom, while frank and i responded to her call, and a few frantic heaves on both our parts served to cause our rivers of delight to flow into her where, mingling with her own flood, they somewhat served to calm our overexcited senses. it was some time before laura came to herself, but when she did she was delighted to find that we still retained our respective positions within her. on my inquiring whether they felt disposed for a renewal of the combat in a similar manner, they both declared with the most impassioned caresses that nothing would give them greater delight. telling frank that as the entrance to both fortresses was now well lubricated, we might venture to carry on the warfare more boldly without the risk of doing any damage. i desired him to keep time with me and thrust his weapon as far in and out as he could at each heave, first alternately with me and then on a given signal both together. at the same time i advised laura to remain quiet and try what would be the effect of our efforts. the result far surpassed her expectations. when, after heaving alternately for some little time, i gave frank the signal and we made a simultaneous thrust together, burying both our weapons as far as they would go within the soft yielding flesh, she exclaimed, "oh, this is exquisite, it could not possibly be more heavenly." we continued this mode of action for some time, alternately changing from one variety to another, while she responded merely by twisting and wriggling her buttocks, and in turn compressing and squeezing the darling object before or behind, which for the moment affected her senses the more powerfully. gradually, however, she became too much animated to adhere to any settled plan, and she could not refrain from meeting and returning our lusty efforts to promote her enjoyment. this only animated us to fresh exertions in which we were so successful that we were soon rewarded by as overpowering an overflow of bliss as before. as soon as it was over, she insisted on laying us both out at full length on the bed quite naked, bringing our organs of pleasure so close together that she could caress them at the same time, and placing herself upon us so that her mouth came in contact with them. in this position she remained for a long time--kissing, caressing, and sucking the instruments of delight and thanking us in the warmest manner for the excessive joy we had given her until her luscious caresses, exciting us almost to madness, forced us again to allay the irritation produced on our burning weapons by again bringing them into her delightful sheaths. in such exquisite amusements a few weeks passed rapidly away without any interruption to our joys, when we were startled by learning from laura that there was a derangement of the usual symptoms which she feared indicated pregnancy. this greatly alarmed us, for trusting to our youth we had had no fear on this subject. i lost no time in consulting an eminent london surgeon, but his reply was that the symptoms were usual in cases of pregnancy, but that they were not infallible signs of it, as they sometimes occurred from other causes. it was, however, obvious that some arrangement must be made to provide for the occurrence of the possible event. i, of course, told laura that if it should turn out as she feared, we must make up our minds to run off together and, getting up a story of her having been previously privately married, keep out of the way until the noise of the affair blew over. this plan, however, did not meet her approbation. she said that whatever might really have been the case, everyone would at once say from the difference in our ages that she must have seduced me and that she would never be able to show her face again in society, and that moreover she could not think of inflicting such a penalty on me as to saddle me for life with a wife older than myself, when she had been as much to blame in the matter as i had. after a great deal of consideration i ventured to hint whether her best plan would not be to accept sir charles tracy, marry him at once, and get the ceremony over without delay, so that if a child did come, there might be at least the lapse of six months to admit of the possibility of his being the father. i must here explain that sir charles had been an almost constant resident at the hall ever since my arrival, and was evidently looked upon by the family as a suitor. he was a young man of about twenty-seven, of large fortune, tall, handsome, and well made, not particularly clever, but almost the best-tempered and most good-natured person i ever met. his object in remaining so long was quite obvious. although she would never admit it, i had all along fancied that laura liked him; but since i had become so intimate with her, she certainly had shown more coldness towards him than she did on my first arrival. at first, laura said this plan would never do. but, as we could devise nothing else, on my pressing her a little on the subject she admitted that before i came she had made up her mind to accept him if he proposed, but that she was afraid to do so now for two reasons: first, she feared he might discover on his first attack that someone had had access before him to the sanctuary of love, and secondly, from the dread that in the event of a child coming before the usual time he might denounce her and turn her adrift. i considered a little, and then asked her whether if these difficulties could be got over she would still be disposed to marry him. she said it was no use thinking of it, but that if it were not for the objections she had mentioned, she certainly would, as she thought she could live happily with him. i then told her that as to the first objection she might set her mind perfectly at ease, for from what i had already seen of sir charles, his instrument i knew was so much larger than anything that had found its way into her and he would find so much difficulty in getting it in for the first time that he would never suspect any intruder had been before him, and that if, as she easily might, she insisted in the operation being performed in the dark, i could supply her with a contrivance by which a little red liquid might be applied so as to produce the natural appearance of an effusion of blood. then as to the second objection, i told her i thought there would be little fear of his making any complaint at least in public on the subject, if she had the power to hold out to him that she could bring forward a matter which it would be equally unpleasant for him to have disclosed. she said that in such a case the matter might perhaps be arranged, but she could not imagine how she was to obtain such a hold over him. i told her i thought she might leave that to me. i then explained to her that sir charles had taken a fancy to me on my arrival, and had shown me every kindness and attention, evidently wishing to be on an intimate footing with me. the poor fellow no doubt was in an awkward predicament. inflamed by the constant sight of the charms of laura, of whom he was greatly enamoured, he was afraid to console himself in the arms of any of the women in the neighbourhood for fear his infidelity might come to her knowledge, and unable wholly to restrain his desire to give vent in some manner to his pent-up passions, he had made some overtures to me of which i clearly understood the meaning, though with laura, betsy, and frank on my hands, i had quite enough to do in that way, and consequently i had pretended not to understand his intentions. i now suggested to laura that by complying with his wishes i might get him to come to my room where she and frank would have an opportunity of seeing us enjoy each other, so that if at any future period he should accuse her of infidelity prior to her marriage, she might retort upon him. laura was quite satisfied that, if this could be accomplished, she would be perfectly safe; as with his good temper she said she had little doubt, even in case of the worst we dreaded occurring, she would be able to persuade him that it would be for the interests of both that he should keep quiet, seeing she had such a hold over him. she now admitted that she really was fond of him, though her curiosity and my boldness had lately enabled me to gain the advantage over him, and i easily drew from her that she did not like him the less for the report i had made of his evident ability to perform satisfactorily in the battles of venus. i therefore told her that, though i was afraid that the performance of the instrument that would probably afford the greatest pleasure to her might prove to be martyrdom to me, i was prepared to undergo it for her sake, and we signed and sealed the agreements in our usual happy way. as i have always found that where a thing is once determined on it is better to lose no time in carrying it into execution, i set to work immediately. i dressed for dinner that day sooner than usual, and about half an hour before the ordinary dinner hour, i made my way to sir charles' room, taking with me an amorous work he had lent me and making a pretext of wishing to borrow another. when he found who it was that knocked at the door he asked me to come in, saying that he wanted to see me as he had that day received a packet from town with some things he had ordered down for me. he then told his servant to lay out some things for him, and that he would not be required further. as soon as the servant had left the room, he took from a drawer a large parcel, and selecting a packet of drawings, told me to sit down and amuse myself with them while he finished dressing. this was coming to the point even sooner than i had anticipated, but as it was just the opening i wanted, i sat down and began to examine the drawings which consisted of a most beautifully executed series of voluptuous designs. when he had dressed himself, all except his coat and waistcoat (and he was a very few minutes about it), he came and leaned over me, looking at the drawings and making observations upon them. after we had gone over them, he said there were some more which he liked still better and he hoped i would be equally well pleased with them. he went to the drawer for them, while i rose up to lay aside those we had been looking at. he selected two packets, and then coming back to the easy chair in which i had been sitting, he sat down, and wished to draw me on his knee. this, however, i did not allow, but i sat down on the arm of the chair allowing him to put his arm round my waist. he exhibited some more illustrations of luscious scenes, many of which were new to me, and i did not attempt to conceal the effect which was produced upon me, while i told him, which was the case, that i had never seen anything of the kind more beautifully designed and executed. i could see that he was watching the impression made not only on my face but also on another part of my person, which had now become somewhat prominent. he seemed satisfied with this, and then opened the other packet, which was a series of drawings executed by a first-rate artist in the most admirable style delineating the seduction of a beautiful young boy of about fifteen by another handsome youth a few years older. every scene in the progress was illustrated by an appropriate and admirably drawn portrait of the two characters, commencing with taking him on his knee and impressing the first amorous kiss; the laying of his hand upon the organ of pleasure; the maiden bashfulness of first feeling the naked weapon grasped by a strange hand; the first starting out of the beautiful object on the trousers being unloosened; the full development of all its beauties on their being removed; the drawing his bridle over the fiery little head of the charger; the playing with the beautiful little appendices; the opening the thighs to get a glimpse of the seat of pleasure behind; the turning him round to obtain a full view of the exquisite hindquarters; the first exposure to his gaze of the second actor in the scene of pleasure; the making him caress and play with it; the complete exposure of all their naked charms as their shirts are drawn over their heads; the close embrace as they strain each other in their arms; the turning him round to present the altar for the sacrifice; the entrance; the combat; the extasy; the offering the recompensing pleasure; the introducing the virgin weapon for the first time; the ardour of the first enjoyment; the first tribute and the mutual embrace of thanks as they kissed and caressed each other's organs of pleasure after the work happily was accomplished. all these were depicted with a beauty and a truth to nature that forcibly reminded me of my own sweet experience of similar enjoyment on my first initiation in the secrets of pleasure. as i gazed with admiration upon them, he could not help observing how much i was interested, and was no doubt encouraged to think, as i intended he should be, that there would be little objection on my part to his proceeding to enact a similar scene. his hand gradually slipped down over my stiffly distended weapon. i made a little faint resistance, but gradually allowed him, without much difficulty, to handle and feel it, to unloosen my trousers and make it appear on the stage. he had no sooner got possession of it, than he loaded it with kisses and caresses, declaring that he had never seen anything to surpass it in beauty. he had not much more difficulty in loosening my braces and completely removing my trousers so as to give him a full opportunity of seeing and handling my naked person. i affected to be so much engrossed with the pictures as not to observe that he had not only done this, but had also drawn down his own trousers and raised up his shirt displaying his magnificent weapon, until taking my hand he tried to make me grasp--for my fingers could not meet round it--by far the most splendid and largest champion i had ever met with, one which, indeed, i have never seen surpassed. he seemed much amused by my surprised exclamation, "oh, goodness, what a monster," and, laughing, asked if i had never seen one so large before. but on my expressing my wonder that he should ever get it into a woman at all he seemed to be a little apprehensive that i might be too much frightened to allow it to enter where he wished it should go, and he tried to persuade me that after all there was not so very great a difference between it and mine. in truth i had begun to be somewhat terrified on the subject and to wish at least to delay the operation, if it must be undergone, until it could be effected in a place where the object desired could be secured. i knew that in a few minutes the dinner bell would ring, and i therefore determined to temporize as long as possible and escape on the present occasion by holding out hopes of his attaining his object on a more favourable opportunity. but i found that it was easier to make the resolution than to keep it. his evident passion for me and the means he adopted to excite me to an ardour equal to his own--keeping up a titillatory friction over the most sensitive points of my body--soon produced their effect, and in spite of my resolution, i could not make any effort to oppose him. having drawn me on his knees, he raised me up, and opening my buttocks and holding apart the lips of the orifice, he presented the enormous head of his charger and tried to gain admittance. he seemed to be aware that there must be considerable difficulty, and he not only anointed the parts with cold-cream, but he also refrained from attempting to force it in by any violent exertion on his part, apparently wishing that the junction should be brought about in a manner that would run less risk of occasioning me pain by my pressing gently down upon it myself. this he urgently begged me to do, and i could not withhold feeling sensible of this attention to my feelings on his part. i thought it would be hardly fair of me not to show that i was so by at least endeavouring, as far as i could, to aid in accomplishing his wishes. i therefore pressed down upon the impaling stroke with as much force as i could venture to exert, and with great difficulty and some pain did get the head fairly within the entrance. having attained this, i desisted from my efforts for a moment and was pleased to find that the pain ceased entirely. as for him, he was perfectly enchanted and loaded me with kisses and caresses. just then the bell announced that dinner would be on the table in five minutes. although i had previously been anxiously expecting this announcement, i must confess i felt sorry when it did come, for i had now got so interested and excited in our proceedings that i would willingly have contributed by every means in my power, even at any sacrifice of pain, to bring the enterprise to a successful termination. but there seemed no help for it, and i turned my head round to him and said that i was afraid we must go downstairs. he caught me round the neck, pressed my lips passionately to his, and entreated me to have patience with him for a few moments; he said he would not attempt to do anything that would give me more pain, but that he was then enjoying the most transcendent pleasure from the kind assistance i had already afforded him in getting his instrument so far imbedded in the abode of bliss, and if i would only allow him to remain where he was for a few seconds longer, he would be overwhelmed with the excess of his joy and would never cease to be grateful to me for having thus contributed to it. i could not resist his appeal, seeing clearly from his excited and flashing eyes that the tempest was nearly at its height, and on the eve of bursting forth with all the fury of a torrent. he did not attempt to force his way further in, but supporting me with his arms he wriggled and twisted his buttocks making his weapon move about within me in the most surprising and delicious manner. wishing to gratify and assist him as far as i could, i put one hand behind and grasping as well as i could the lower part of the splendid pillar, i rubbed and squeezed it, endeavouring to increase the excitement and promote his object; then passing the other hand between my thighs, i tickled and played with the massy round globes i found just beneath my own and which instead of hanging down, pendant as at first, were now closely drawn up in their wondrous purse. he kissed me again fervently and was in the act of thanking me for my kindness in thus increasing his pleasure, when he suddenly stopped short with a passionate exclamation of a single "oh!" my hand, which grasped his splendid weapon, was sensible of the instant rush of the fiery liquid through it, and the next moment, i felt the warm gush driven into my entrails as if it had been forced up by a pump. i continued the motion of my hand gently upon his instrument until the fit of pleasure was entirely over. then, with some difficulty disengaging myself from the link that bound us together, i wiped the ruby head of the still rampant champion, and stooping down, first kissed it and then his lips as he still lay reclining in the chair and then proceeded to arrange my dress. he soon recovered himself and earnestly begged that i would come to his room that night that he might have an opportunity of thanking me and of endeavouring to repay, as far as he possibly could, the delicious treat i had afforded him. this, however, i would not promise to do, saying i was too much afraid of being seen when i could have no excuse for being in his room, but i allowed him to understand that i would try to devise some plan for another meeting. i contrived to give laura a hint before dinner that all was right and that she would get the details at night. she was so delighted with this that the distance and hauteur with which she had lately treated sir charles were greatly removed, and he on his part, animated by the scene which had just taken place and his victory, as he thought, over my virgin charms, was more lively and bolder than usual. so that by the end of the evening they were on a better and more familiar footing than they had even been before. when the ladies retired to bed, sir charles again urged me to go to his room. i still refused, but at last i suggested that perhaps he might come to me early the next morning, as this would be less liable to suspicion, for if anyone saw him we might go out immediately together, when it would be supposed he had only come for the purpose of calling me, while if he was not observed, he might remain for a time with me. of course, that night i explained to laura and frank all that had passed, and we contrived to make two apertures in the partition wall of the closet between frank's room and mine, from which they would have an uninterrupted view of the scene of operations. the next morning i heard sir charles open my door, but i lay quiet as if still asleep. i was conscious that he fastened the door and then came round to the side of the bed where i was lying. he removed the bed-clothes, raised up my nightshirt, and remained for some minutes contemplating me. of course, the principal object of his worship was my virile member which, as was usual at that period of my life, always held up its head proudly erect when i awoke in the morning. i heard him undress himself and get into bed, and then kneeling down by my side, after kissing and caressing my organ of pleasure, he took the point of it into his mouth and commenced sucking it and moving it backwards and forwards between his lips. i opened my eyes, as if just awakened, and beheld him kneeling beside me perfectly naked with his tremendous member standing stiff and erect. he immediately made me take off my shirt, and employed himself for a time in examining me all over and caressing all my charms. during this time i also made a more minute inspection of my acquaintance of the preceding evening, and i was even more than ever astonished at its proportions, and at how i had managed ever to get it within my narrow aperture as far as it had been. after some little time had elapsed in these preliminaries, he said that it was his turn now to contribute to my enjoyment, and taking hold of my weapon, he was going to turn himself away from where laura and frank were placed. as they had both been greatly interested by the account i had given them of sir charles' tremendous weapon, i wished that they should have an opportunity of seeing as much as possible of its proceedings. so i got him to change his position and to place himself where they were and where they could have the gratification of observing every motion he made in the approaching encounter. he immediately placed himself as i wished, and i then, at his request, took up my position behind him, and he proceeded to introduce my weapon into the sheath of pleasure. but if i had been surprised at the largeness of one of his proportions, i was no less so at the smallness of the other, as in fact i had almost as much difficulty in getting into him as he had had with me. at length, with his assistance, i succeeded and gradually penetrated within the delightful cavity, till i was completely imbedded within it. of course, the opposition i met with and the extreme tightness of the place, when it was once fairly overcome, only increased the pleasurable sensations i experienced after i had fairly accomplished my entrance. when he found i was completely buried within him and was beginning to proceed with the work of pleasure, he took my hand and placed it on his majestic champion, saying that if i would be good enough to operate upon it at the same time it would not only give him exquisite pleasure by being combined with the performance going on behind, but would also, by depriving it of a little of its vehement fury, make our after-proceedings more easy and agreeable to me, when, as he hoped i would allow him to do, he should again try to introduce it into the delicious aperture that had given him so much delight the previous day. i immediately acquiesced, and grasping as much of the pillar as i could manage to do with one hand, i commenced a series of movements upon it, gently rubbing it up and down and titillating the shaft as much as possible, which drew from him the warmest encomiums. in this manner, combining the movements of my hand in front with those of my excited weapon in the rear, i managed to pour my tribute into him at the same time that he sent a shower of love's balsam spouting beyond the bed far into the room. this scene acted so powerfully on laura that unable to restrain herself, as frank afterwards told me, she seized hold of his hand, conveyed it to her pleasure-spot, and made him cool her raging fever in a similar manner where she stood. sir charles then asked if i would allow him to endeavour to accomplish the undertaking which it had given him so much delight partially to accomplish the preceding day. i could not well make any objection, after having availed myself of his complaisance, to his now proceeding to carry out his wishes to their entire fulfilment. i therefore disposed myself so as to endeavour to stand the attacks in as favourable a position as i could, and at the same time afford my friends as good a view of the proceedings as was possible. i placed all the pillows and cushions i could find on a heap in the centre of the bed and lay down with my belly resting on them so as to raise up my posteriors and present them to him in an attitude that would be propitious to his purpose. he thanked me, and told me to let him know if i found that he hurt me too much and he would at once stop, as he would be sorry to enjoy even such a gratification if it were to be at the expense of occasioning me any suffering. he had provided some ointment with which he lubricated the whole of his weapon, and then with his finger inserted some of it in my aperture. he then applied the point of the dart to the mark, and endeavoured to insert it. for some time it baffled his endeavours, the head slipping upwards and downwards, away from the entrance, whenever he attempted to thrust which he did very gently and carefully. i saw he was too much afraid of hurting me to be able to succeed, and getting excited myself by this time, put my hand between my thighs and taking hold of his splendid weapon i kept its head at the mouth of the aperture, and desired him to thrust a little more boldly. at the same time, trying to push back and stretch the aperture as much as possible, i met his advancing thrusts with all the firmness i could muster. this brought about the junction i desired, and again to his great delight the head of his weapon got lodged between the extended lips of the aperture. the pain, however, of this proceeding was so great that i was obliged to ask him to pause till it should abate a little, which it very soon did. then summoning up courage, i told him to thrust again gently. this he hastened to do in the most delicate manner possible. the first few thrusts, till the upper part of the pillar got fairly inserted within the cheeks, were even worse than before. but as soon as this was accomplished, and the hollow part at the junction of the pillar with the head had passed the rubicon, all feeling of uneasiness vanished and was succeeded by the most delicious sensations, as inch by inch he gradually fought his way into my interior, the intense pleasure increasing at every thrust he gave, until the whole of the monster was fairly established within me, and i could feel the hair on his thighs and belly in close contact with my buttocks, and his delightful soft bullets beating against mine at every motion he made. as soon as he was fully lodged to the utmost extent within the citadel, he stopped and inquired how i felt and expressed the greatest satisfaction at finding my sufferings had now been converted into pleasure. after enjoying the voluptuous sensations of the elastic constriction the nerves of the sheath in which it was plunged exerted upon his throbbing weapon for some minutes, during which his hands roved over my body in nervous agitation, he resumed his delightful exercise, and thrust after thrust of his delicious weapon was driven into me with the most intense enjoyment to both parties. at length, his lusty efforts were rewarded with success, and, from the warm gush within me, i felt that a torrent of bliss must have issued from him, while his nervous frame shook and quivered with blissful agitation and enjoyment as the extasy of delight came over him. he lay for a few minutes bathed in enjoyment, and then raising his head, thanked me most fervently for all the bliss i had conferred on him and expressed his hope that it had been accomplished without much suffering on my part. in answer i gently turned both him and myself on one side, too much delighted with its presence to allow his sword to escape from my scabbard, and made him look at the pillow on which my weapon had rested, and where a plenteous effusion of the balmy liquid plainly attested that i too had shared in the delights of his enjoyment. he expressed his great gratification at this, as he said the sole drawback to his enjoyment had been the fear that it had been attained at my expense. but he said that what he now saw emboldened him to make a new request, and as the difficulty had now been overcome, to ask whether i might be persuaded to allow him still to retain his present quarter and enjoy another victory. i readily agreed. i told him that the sensations produced upon me by the insertion of his weapon in so sensitive a place was so agreeable--that it was so was, indeed, very evident from the powerful manner in which it still affected mine--that he must allow it to remain quietly where it was for a time and let me enjoy the agreeable sensation of its presence there. he said he could desire nothing better, and we lay for a considerable period thus pleasantly conjoined. during this time i purposely turned the conversation upon laura and frank. i began by joking him about what laura would say if she saw us in such a situation defrauding her of her just rights. he replied that he did not know what she would say, but that he knew what she ought to say, or at least what he would say if he were to find her in a similar situation, and that was that as she could not assist in contributing to his happiness at present, she was very glad to find that he had been able to get somebody else who could. "then," said i, "you would not be offended, if she were to follow your example." "no, certainly not," was his reply. "i don't mean to say that i would not rather prefer that i should have her entirely to myself, but i am so fond of her that if i found it would contribute to her happiness to enjoy herself with another, i should not make the slightest objection, provided she would only allow me to contribute to her enjoyment as much as i could." he went on to say that he was sadly afraid she would never allow him that pleasure, that he did once hope she might have been induced to accept him, but for the last few weeks, with the exception of the previous night, she had been colder than ever, and he was afraid to press her on the subject for fear of being at once rejected. i ventured cautiously to express my opinion that he was too distrustful of his own merits, and that he stood higher in laura's favour than he seemed to imagine. he eagerly caught at my words, and asked on what grounds i thought so. he said he saw that from my old acquaintance with her as a boy, i was on more intimate terms with her than anyone else and more likely to understand her sentiments, and that he had often thought of speaking to me on the subject. indeed, he said he would almost have been jealous of my influence with her had i been a few years older and had it not been that, instead of appearing to be annoyed at his attentions to her, i had rather given him every opportunity to pursue them. as i felt he was watching me, i endeavoured to keep my countenance as well as i could, but i was aware that the blood mounting in my cheeks must to some extent betray the secret interest i took in the subject. i though the best plan was to acknowledge that from our early intimacy, and the kindness she had always shown me, i did take a great interest in her, and that it was perhaps only my being sensible that she could neither look up to nor respect one so much younger than herself that prevented this feeling from ripening into a warmer attachment, but that i was old enough to be able to wish to promote her happiness even if i could not myself be the means of doing so, and that from what i had seen of her feelings towards him, i had always thought they might be happy together, and consequently had wished him success. he pressed me very much regarding what she thought, or might have said of him. i told him that of course it was not a subject on which i could have ventured to speak to her seriously, that sometimes a looker-on saw more of the game than the players, and that i thought she did like him and was only restrained from showing it more by his not urging his suit so much as he perhaps might have done. we had some further conversation on the subject, and i added that i knew she was of a reserved disposition as regarded her own feelings and did not like to have them noticed and commented on by strangers and that perhaps the idea of all the parade and show which he might think necessary at the celebration of his marriage and the discussion of the matter for months previously might annoy her, while she would probably have been more easily induced to consent had he been a person of less rank and consequence, when all this exhibition would have been avoided. he said that if she had any difficulty on this ground, nothing could be easier than to obviate it, for as far as he was concerned it would give him the greatest satisfaction to dispense with all formalities, except necessary settlements which he would take care should not occupy much time, and they might be quietly married at their own church in the neighbourhood without making any fuss about it; that with the exception of his mother and sister he had no relations he cared anything about or whom he would wish to be present, so that laura could have everything her own way. without attempting to urge too much, i gave him to understand that i thought he had better come to an explanation with her as soon as possible and make her aware of his ideas on these points. and i promised to endeavor to ascertain her wishes as far as i could, and make him acquainted with them. i had long felt by the unruliness of his member, which was deeply imbedded within me, how powerful an impression the discussions of this subject produced upon him. he very soon disregarded my injunctions to keep quiet--the delightful intruder would keep wandering up and down in the path of pleasure--and before our conversation was concluded, i felt the warm injection twice spouted into me. after this, he said he would not venture to trespass upon my kindness any further for the present, and urged me to take his place, which, excited as i was by his performances, i was very well disposed to do. he made every arrangement for my entering him in the most agreeable manner, inserting the weapon himself and tickling and playing with the appendages. when fairly entered and enjoying myself to the utmost, i laughingly said that if he was going to run away with laura i could not hope for any long continuance of our present agreeable amusement and i must try if i could persuade frank to allow me to enjoy with him some of the pleasant pastimes he had been teaching me. he eagerly caught at the idea and urged me to do so, offering to leave with me all his books and pictures to show to him, and telling me to let him have any of them he liked, and at the same time begging me, if i succeeded, to allow him to join in our amusements, as the possession of one resembling laura so much would be the next thing to enjoying herself. this was exactly what i wanted, for i felt satisfied that after having enjoyed the brother he could never complain of anything the sister might do. having then brought my enterprise to a satisfactory termination, i made him leave me, and joined laura and frank. although they had been able to see everything, they had not heard all that passed. coming to my bed, they proceeded to satisfy the burning desires which the scene they had just witnessed had lighted up in them. while thus agreeably employed, i joked laura about the martyrdom i had undergone for her sake and what she was to look forward to suffer when she attempted to take in the stupendous instrument whose performances she had just seen. she did not appear to be much afraid of it, and said that judging from the manner in which i had apparently enjoyed its presence within me there was not much reason for apprehension. but she eagerly asked what we had been talking about, as she had heard only so far as to make out that she was the subject of our discourse. she was quite delighted to find that the result had been so satisfactory, and it was at once resolved that, when sir charles pressed the matter, she would consent and that i should contrive to impress upon him the propriety of his urging the completion of the marriage with as little delay and ceremony as possible. frank and i made up a party to ride with them that forenoon, and we took care to let them have an opportunity for an explanation. laura was in a gracious mood. sir charles acted on my advice, pressed his suit, was accepted, explained his own wish to have the marriage concluded as soon as possible, but at the same time saying that on that point as on every other he should wish to consult her feelings in every respect, and was given to understand that her sentiments coincided with his. having obtained her consent, he spoke to her father as soon as we returned from our ride, and as the settlements he proposed were most satisfactory, it was at once arranged. and it was settled that the marriage should take place within a month. when sir charles came to me the next morning, he was in extasies at the successful termination of his suit, which he asserted was in a great measure due to my good advice, and he urged me to attend him on the happy occasion. as this afforded a good excuse for my remaining at the hall, and being on a good footing with laura, i readily agreed. laura having expressed a wish that they should be quiet during the few weeks she was to remain at home, it was arranged that the visits of some friends who were expected should be postponed. her aunt, immediately on hearing of the marriage, returned to the hall, but i made laura give her mother a hint that, though she did not like to say so to her aunt herself, she would prefer being allowed to enjoy the privacy of an apartment by herself. her mother thought this was quite reasonable, and another room was prepared for miss middleton. frank was allowed to remain at home till after the marriage, and we thus secured another month of our delightful pastime to which we gave ourselves up without scruple or reserve. sir charles, though unwilling to tear himself away from the pleasure he was enjoying and anticipating, was obliged to go to town to make the necessary arrangements. i was desirous before he went to take a photographic view of him in the act of enjoying me, as i thought that in the event of laura being obliged to have recourse to any compulsion upon him, her object would be better attained by making him aware she was in possession of such a picture than by any reference to me or explanation as to how she came to know anything on the subject. it was necessary for this purpose to bring frank on the scene. as he was quite willing to join in the sport, having been greatly taken with what he had witnessed of sir charles' operations, i told the latter that by means of his pictures i had come to a good understanding with him and that he had agreed to comply with our wishes. giving him to believe that there was a double maidenhead to be taken, i proposed that they should both be disposed of at the same time, and offered him his choice which he would prefer. he said that if it was left to him to decide he would prefer to make the attack in the rear, and we settled that he should come to me the next morning when i could get frank to meet us. frank was in bed with me when sir charles arrived. i at once turned down the bed-clothes, stripped off his shirt and exhibited him quite naked, his fiery little dart, standing erect and un-hooded, exhibiting its proportions in the most splendid manner, and i asked if he had ever seen anything more beautiful. he threw himself on the charming boy and covered every part of him with kisses, while i undressed him and reduced him to a similar state of nakedness as ourselves. as soon as this was done, i prepared frank for the sacrifice. i was apprehensive that there would be as much difficulty in introducing the magnificent weapon into his lovely, but narrow aperture as there had been in my own case, and i endeavoured to provide against the worst as satisfactorily as i could. i knelt down on the bed and made him place himself kneeling also so as to rest his belly on my back. sir charles then placed himself behind him and grasped him firmly round the loins, making his splendid weapon appear between his thighs, where i saw it rubbing fiercely against frank's less mature organ. taking hold of it and making it move back a little, i introduced my hand between frank's thighs, and separating the lips of the delicious aperture between his lovely buttocks, i directed the point of the throbbing monster to the proper spot. holding it firmly in the requisite position, i told sir charles to press it gently forwards. this he immediately did and to my great astonishment i felt it gradually advancing and slipping into the gulph of pleasure without difficulty, till i was obliged to withdraw the grasp my hand held on it. i had hardly done so when i saw the enormous pillar entirely swallowed up, and on turning my eyes to frank's face, i could not discover on his countenance the slightest trace of pain or suffering. satisfied that i need have no further apprehension on his account, i turned myself a little round, so as to take my part in the play, and placing myself directly before him, so as to bring my buttocks in contact with his warm soft belly, i insinuated frank's charming little darling into my rear. while holding me fast with one arm round the middle, he grasped my stiffly erected standard with the other hand. thinking that the power and weight of metal of sir charles' performer in the rear would prevent frank from exerting himself much in the combat, i resolved to render any great exertion on his part unnecessary. for keeping time with sir charles' motions, i commenced a series of heaves by which, whenever sir charles' weapon was fully driven up to the hilt in his hinder quarter, his own was as fully and as pleasantly introduced within me. this delightful operation very soon produced such a state of extatic delirium that he could not refrain from giving vent to the most enthusiastic praises of our performances in such a loud tone that i was obliged to beg him to be quiet to prevent suspicion being aroused. the delight was too excessive to endure long, and before sir charles was ready to perform his part in the final scene, i felt the dear boy's discharge poured into me, as his head sank upon my back and his convulsive grasp of my throbbing instrument relaxed. i retained him in this position for a few seconds longer, while the fierce heaves of sir charles, driving his steed to and fro in the delicious field of battle, testified to the soul-stirring effect that had been produced upon him and soon relieved his high mettled charger of a portion of his superabundant fluid. then withdrawing from frank, he laid him down on the bed, and again renewed his caresses which very soon reanimated the slightly drooping head of his darling charmer. we agreed, however, that it would be better to allow frank to be passive in the next encounter, and accordingly i took the centre position, and entering frank's delicious rear, i exposed my own to be breached by the enormous battering ram of sir charles. the assault, however, was not nearly so terrible, and with a little care i now contrived to take it all in, and speedily enjoyed the felicity of feeling its throbbing pulsation beating within me over the whole extent of the cavity which it so completely filled up. frank's charming receptacle for my own heaving instrument was of that pleasing elasticity that i should not have discovered it had ever once been invaded by a larger weapon than my own, and the voluptuous sensations it produced upon my burning member as, excited to the highest pitch and swollen to the utmost extension, the fiery dart was plunged in and out of the burning furnace, were most exquisite. i felt, too, the full effect which frank had already experienced of the greatly increased pleasure during the amorous encounter which resulted from the pressure in the interior of so large an instrument as that of sir charles'. and much as i had enjoyed my former encounters with them both separately, most assuredly this one, in which they both combined their utmost efforts to produce the most lascivious sensations it is possible to conceive, far surpassed everything that had taken place previously. another scene of delicious toying succeeded. the darling objects which had already given us so much delight were again investigated and admired, and each new proof of the bliss they were capable of conferring upon us only made us more eager to offer up our worship to them. another delicious combat succeeded. sir charles this time took the combat-position, and i again received his member within me. but my concern being now well saturated with the blissful libations that had been already poured into it, the monster slipped into me this time with very little difficulty. frank, on the other hand, was delighted as well as surprised to discover that he had no easy task to force his way into the agreeable fortress he was about to storm in sir charles' rear. but the difficulty only enhanced the pleasure when the breach was fairly made, and the invader revelled in full and undisputed possession of the interior works. and if i might judge from the exclamations of delight, they both enjoyed themselves to their hearts' content when they had once gained admission to their respective destinations. so much so that after they had run one course they gave no signs of wishing to change their positions. i put my hand behind to ascertain the state of matters, and found both the heroes still in such an excited condition that i said if they were disposed to break another lance in the same lists i was quite willing to keep my place, provided sir charles would take my charger in hand and lead him on to participate in the pleasing conflict. this proposal was highly approved of and at once carried into effect, to the entire satisfaction of all parties. after this i made sir charles leave us, not wishing that we should be entirely worked out as i was quite aware poor laura would be in a sad state if she found that we were unable to do anything in the way of appeasing her longings after the excitement she must have undergone while witnessing our voluptuous proceedings. as soon as he was gone, laura made her appearance and scolded us heartily for having wasted so much of our precious strength and enjoyed ourselves so completely without her. but as we each contrived to give her pretty satisfactory proof that we had not spent all our treasures, we soon put her in a good humour again; especially as sir charles was to leave on the next day, when she would have us all to herself again. in the course of the day, i easily persuaded sir charles to allow me to take likenesses of us all three in the various attitudes of enjoying each other, one of which i took care should be sealed up and deposited where laura would have it at command in the event of her finding it necessary to have recourse to it, even if i should not be at hand at the time. as sir charles was obliged after this to be almost constantly absent, we gave up to him the few nights he occasionally spent at the hall, and the remainder were passed with laura in a constant series of repetitions of delightful sports which, however agreeable to the actors, would involve a tiresome repetition were i to detail them. the only variety was frank's adventure with betsy. having been once accustomed to indulge his passions, he regretted sadly that the enjoyment would continue only for so short a period, as laura and her charles were to go abroad immediately on their marriage, and he began to look about him for some object to console him in her absence. he soon fixed upon betsy, but he found it more difficult to obtain her consent than he had expected. when i joked her on the subject, she admitted that she liked the boy, but said she was afraid he was too young to give her much pleasure, while there was a great risk that he might talk of it and get her into a scrape. finding that frank was very desirous to have her, i agreed to promote his wishes. i had endeavoured to conceal as much as possible from betsy my intercourse with laura, but she was too quick not to have discovered that there existed a good understanding between us, though i still pretended that although we were sometimes in the habit of amusing ourselves together after her old fashion she had not yet granted me the last favour. i now told her that laura had discovered my intercourse with her, and that previous to her own marriage she wished to see us perform the conjugal rites that she might know how to conduct herself when it came to be her turn, and that i had therefore arranged, as frank was to be out early the next morning, laura was to come to my room where i had promised that betsy and i should comply with her wishes. frank got one of his sister's caps which concealed his hair, and a nightshirt which closed in front over his breast, and it was hardly possible for anyone to tell that it was not laura herself. indeed, the disguise was so complete that the next time sir charles came to enjoy himself with us, i made frank dress up in the same manner and pretend to be asleep in bed with me, and it was only when i could not restrain a burst of laughter at his consternation that sir charles discovered the trick we had played him. nor do i think he was perfectly satisfied until the removal of frank's shirt showed standing proof that it did not cover a woman's form. betsy's discovery was made in a different manner. when she came, frank kept under the bedclothes until i had stripped her, and getting into bed with her performed the hymenial rites in due order. when we had finished, i slipped off her on the other side of the bed from frank, leaving her lying on her back all exposed to his observation. he commenced a survey of every part of her, joking her on the beauties he discovered and on the manner in which she had enjoyed the operation that had just been performed, and wondering whether it would give her as much satisfaction. gradually he began to embrace her, and at last got upon her, asking me if that was the way sir charles would do it to her. "yes that is it," said i, as he got between her thighs and placed himself in the position in which i had lately been, "only he would not have this stupid night dress about him, and he will have something stiff between his legs to put into that pretty little hole you see before you, now try what you can do to imitate him." while frank clasped her in his arms and pressed his mouth to hers, i raised his shirt, and pointing his weapon at the mark, he thrust himself forward, and it slipped into her in an instant. betsy's consternation was extreme as she felt the warm flesh within her. she had on many occasions tried the effect of laura's substitute, but her experience of the real article had been quite enough to satisfy her that this was something of a different description, and she exclaimed, "goodness gracious miss laura, what is the meaning of this?" frank replied, tearing off his cap and exhibiting his short curls instead of laura's flowing ringlets, "well, i am glad i have got something to prove i am not a girl, for i was beginning to be afraid that the change of dress had effected a complete transformation." it was too late for any objection now. nor did betsy appear at all disposed to make any. on the contrary, the lascivious boy's motions were so lively and so well directed and his capacity for conferring pleasure so much greater than she had expected that she at once yielded herself up to the enjoyment, and joined in his amorous transports with hearty good will. and when he had given and drawn from her the first proof of their mutual satisfaction with each other and the young rogue still retained his position and proceeded to give her a second dose of his prolific balm, she was quite transported with delight and exerted herself with so much vigor and set to second his endeavours that they very soon sank exhausted in each other's arms enjoying to the utmost the second proof of the completion of their mutual overwhelming bliss. but these hours of happiness were too delightful to last long. the day appointed for the marriage came upon us before we could believe it possible. though sorely against my will i thought it right to suggest to laura whether it would not be prudent that she should pass the last night of her presumed virgin state without having her inmost recesses explored for fear of any traces being left. but though she at first agreed that this precaution would be advisable, she could not make up her mind to put it in practice. to our surprise and joy she came to us as usual as soon as she was left alone for the night. unwilling to run the risk of her appearing fatigued and exhausted in the morning, we resolved to concentrate our forces upon her and take our farewell that night. time after time we kept up the amorous combat, sometimes in succession and sometimes combining our forces for a joint attack both in front and rear, almost without intermission until we were fairly exhausted; and it was only when after repeated engagements even her fond caresses failed to revive our enervated champions that, taking an affectionate farewell, she retired to her own apartment. the exercise so far from injuring seemed to have a beneficial effect on her charms, and never had she looked more lovely than she appeared the next morning when she was transferred to the arms of the enraptured sir charles. most fortunately everything turned out eventually even more agreeably than we had ventured to hope. a few days afterwards i had the gratification of hearing from laura that she had satisfactorily put in operation the device i had suggested, which, combined with the difficulty sir charles experienced from his great size in obtaining an entrance and the pain she pretended to experienced when he forced his way within her supposed virgin sanctuary, completely prevented any suspicion on his part. and loving her as i did, i was pleased with her frank avowal that not only his general conduct and kindness left her nothing to wish for, but that in her nuptial intercourse with him she derived if possible even greater pleasure than she enjoyed with us. the symptoms which had alarmed us passed off without producing the dreaded consequence, and it was not till some weeks after the usual time had elapsed that she presented the delighted sir charles with a son who was soon followed by numerous successors. frank before long joined the army, and in the arms of others soon found consolation, though he never forgot the charms of his first instructress. when laura and i met again, we could not refrain from renewing our old delights and comparing the changes which had taken place in each other's charms, but with the exception of one single occasion, i believe i am the only one she ever allowed to participate with her husband in the pleasures she was so well calculated to confer. after the marriage i got alarmed about betsy, and regretted that i had allowed her to know so much as she did. the only remedy i could devise was to persuade her to go to a distant country where she would have no temptation to speak on the subject. on sounding her, i found that, trusting to the influence she thought she had obtained over frank and me, she was not disposed to be removed from us. i therefore had recourse to john and found him not only much more intelligent but also more sensible than his mistress. i had not much difficulty in convincing him that if he had the means of settling in australia he was much more likely to prosper there than by continuing in service in this country. as a further inducement, and a reason why i took an interest in them, i told him i had discovered that frank had taken a fancy for betsy and that, though there was no reason to suppose anything had occurred, it would be better they should be separated. he was quite of the same opinion, and as the consequences of the operations of some one of us upon betsy threatened in a short time to become apparent, he made it a condition of their marriage that she should emigrate with him. as i had a strong suspicion that i had at least dug out the foundation, if not laid the cornerstone, of the structure which betsy was about to rear, i took care they should have the means to settle comfortably, and from his knowledge in horse breeding, john soon prospered there. very soon after their arrival in the colony and precisely at the expiration of the usual period from my first entrance within her, she presented her husband with a son. she never had another child. finis charles aldarondo, charles franks and the online distributed proofreading team. venus in furs of this book, intended for private circulation, only 1225 copies have been printed, and type afterward distributed. venus in furs by leopold von sacher-masoch translated from the german by fernanda savage introduction leopold von sacher-masoch was born in lemberg, austrian galicia, on january 27, 1836. he studied jurisprudence at prague and graz, and in 1857 became a teacher at the latter university. he published several historical works, but soon gave up his academic career to devote himself wholly to literature. for a number of years he edited the international review, _auf der hohe_, at leipzig, but later removed to paris, for he was always strongly francophile. his last years he spent at lindheim in hesse, germany, where he died on march 9, 1895. in 1873 he married aurora von rumelin, who wrote a number of novels under the pseudonym of wanda von dunajew, which it is interesting to note is the name of the heroine of _venus in furs_. her sensational memoirs which have been the cause of considerable controversy were published in 1906. during his career as writer an endless number of works poured from sacher-masoch's pen. many of these were works of ephemeral journalism, and some of them unfortunately pure sensationalism, for economic necessity forced him to turn his pen to unworthy ends. there is, however, a residue among his works which has a distinct literary and even greater psychological value. his principal literary ambition was never completely fulfilled. it was a somewhat programmatic plan to give a picture of contemporary life in all its various aspects and interrelations under the general title of the _heritage of cain_. this idea was probably derived from balzac's _comedie humaine_. the whole was to be divided into six subdivisions with the general titles _love, property, money, the state, war,_ and _death_. each of these divisions in its turn consisted of six novels, of which the last was intended to summarize the author's conclusions and to present his solution for the problems set in the others. this extensive plan remained unachieved, and only the first two parts, _love_ and _property_, were completed. of the other sections only fragments remain. the present novel, _venus in furs_, forms the fifth in the series, _love_. the best of sacher-masoch's work is characterized by a swift narration and a graphic representation of character and scene and a rich humor. the latter has made many of his shorter stories dealing with his native galicia little masterpieces of local color. there is, however, another element in his work which has caused his name to become as eponym for an entire series of phenomena at one end of the psycho-sexual scale. this gives his productions a peculiar psychological value, though it cannot be denied also a morbid tinge that makes them often repellent. however, it is well to remember that nature is neither good nor bad, neither altruistic nor egoistic, and that it operates through the human psyche as well as through crystals and plants and animals with the same inexorable laws. sacher-masoch was the poet of the anomaly now generally known as _masochism_. by this is meant the desire on the part of the individual affected of desiring himself completely and unconditionally subject to the will of a person of the opposite sex, and being treated by this person as by a master, to be humiliated, abused, and tormented, even to the verge of death. this motive is treated in all its innumerable variations. as a creative artist sacher-masoch was, of course, on the quest for the absolute, and sometimes, when impulses in the human being assume an abnormal or exaggerated form, there is just for a moment a flash that gives a glimpse of the thing in itself. if any defense were needed for the publication of work like sacher-masoch's it is well to remember that artists are the historians of the human soul and one might recall the wise and tolerant montaigne's essay _on the duty of historians_ where he says, "one may cover over secret actions, but to be silent on what all the world knows, and things which have had effects which are public and of so much consequence is an inexcusable defect." and the curious interrelation between cruelty and sex, again and again, creeps into literature. sacher-masoch has not created anything new in this. he has simply taken an ancient motive and developed it frankly and consciously, until, it seems, there is nothing further to say on the subject. to the violent attacks which his books met he replied in a polemical work, _über den wert der kritik_. it would be interesting to trace the masochistic tendency as it occurs throughout literature, but no more can be done than just to allude to a few instances. the theme recurs continually in the _confessions_ of jean jacques rousseau; it explains the character of the chevalier in prévost's _manon l'escault_. scenes of this nature are found in zola's _nana_, in thomas otway's _venice preserved_, in albert juhelle's _les pecheurs d'hommes_, in dostojevski. in disguised and unrecognized form it constitutes the undercurrent of much of the sentimental literature of the present day, though in most cases the authors as well as the readers are unaware of the pathological elements out of which their characters are built. in all these strange and troubled waters of the human spirit one might wish for something of the serene and simple attitude of the ancient world. laurent tailhade has an admirable passage in his _platres et marbres_, which is well worth reproducing in this connection: "toutefois, les hellènes, dans, leurs cités de lumière, de douceur et d'harmonie, avaient une indulgence qu'on peut nommer scientifique pour les troubles amoureux de l'esprit. s'ils ne regardaient pas l'aliéné comme en proie a la visitation d'un dieu (idée orientale et fataliste), du moins ils savaient que l'amour est une sorte d'envoûtement, une folie où se manifeste l'animosité des puissances cosmiques. plus tard, le christianisme enveloppa les âmes de ténèbres. ce fut la grande nuit. l'église condamna tout ce qui lui parût neuf ou menaçant pour les dogmes implaçable qui reduisaient le monde en esclavage." among sacher-masoch's works, _venus in furs_ is one of the most typical and outstanding. in spite of melodramatic elements and other literary faults, it is unquestionably a sincere work, written without any idea of titillating morbid fancies. one feels that in the hero many subjective elements have been incorporated, which are a disadvantage to the work from the point of view of literature, but on the other hand raise the book beyond the sphere of art, pure and simple, and make it one of those appalling human documents which belong, part to science and part to psychology. it is the confession of a deeply unhappy man who could not master his personal tragedy of existence, and so sought to unburden his soul in writing down the things he felt and experienced. the reader who will approach the book from this angle and who will honestly put aside moral prejudices and prepossessions will come away from the perusal of this book with a deeper understanding of this poor miserable soul of ours and a light will be cast into dark places that lie latent in all of us. sacher-masoch's works have held an established position in european letters for something like half a century, and the author himself was made a chevalier of the legion of honor by the french government in 1883, on the occasion of his literary jubilee. when several years ago cheap reprints were brought out on the continent and attempts were made by various guardians of morality--they exist in all countries --to have them suppressed, the judicial decisions were invariably against the plaintiff and in favor of the publisher. are americans children that they must be protected from books which any european school-boy can purchase whenever he wishes? however, such seems to be the case, and this translation, which has long been in preparation, consequently appears in a limited edition printed for subscribers only. in another connection herbert spencer once used these words: "the ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly, is to fill the world with fools." they have a very pointed application in the case of a work like _venus in furs_. f. s. atlantic city april, 1921 venus in furs _"but the almighty lord hath struck him, and hath delivered him into the hands of a woman."_ --the vulgate, judith, xvi. 7. my company was charming. opposite me by the massive renaissance fireplace sat venus; she was not a casual woman of the half-world, who under this pseudonym wages war against the enemy sex, like mademoiselle cleopatra, but the real, true goddess of love. she sat in an armchair and had kindled a crackling fire, whose reflection ran in red flames over her pale face with its white eyes, and from time to time over her feet when she sought to warm them. her head was wonderful in spite of the dead stony eyes; it was all i could see of her. she had wrapped her marble-like body in a huge fur, and rolled herself up trembling like a cat. "i don't understand it," i exclaimed, "it isn't really cold any longer. for two weeks past we have had perfect spring weather. you must be nervous." "much obliged for your spring," she replied with a low stony voice, and immediately afterwards sneezed divinely, twice in succession. "i really can't stand it here much longer, and i am beginning to understand--" "what, dear lady?" "i am beginning to believe the unbelievable and to understand the un-understandable. all of a sudden i understand the germanic virtue of woman, and german philosophy, and i am no longer surprised that you of the north do not know how to love, haven't even an idea of what love is." "but, madame," i replied flaring up, "i surely haven't given you any reason." "oh, you--" the divinity sneezed for the third time, and shrugged her shoulders with inimitable grace. "that's why i have always been nice to you, and even come to see you now and then, although i catch a cold every time, in spite of all my furs. do you remember the first time we met?" "how could i forget it," i said. "you wore your abundant hair in brown curls, and you had brown eyes and a red mouth, but i recognized you immediately by the outline of your face and its marble-like pallor--you always wore a violet-blue velvet jacket edged with squirrel-skin." "you were really in love with the costume, and awfully docile." "you have taught me what love is. your serene form of worship let me forget two thousand years." "and my faithfulness to you was without equal!" "well, as far as faithfulness goes--" "ungrateful!" "i will not reproach you with anything. you are a divine woman, but nevertheless a woman, and like every woman cruel in love." "what you call cruel," the goddess of love replied eagerly, "is simply the element of passion and of natural love, which is woman's nature and makes her give herself where she loves, and makes her love everything, that pleases her." "can there be any greater cruelty for a lover than the unfaithfulness of the woman he loves?" "indeed!" she replied. "we are faithful as long as we love, but you demand faithfulness of a woman without love, and the giving of herself without enjoyment. who is cruel there--woman or man? you of the north in general take love too soberly and seriously. you talk of duties where there should be only a question of pleasure." "that is why our emotions are honorable and virtuous, and our relations permanent." "and yet a restless, always unsatisfied craving for the nudity of paganism," she interrupted, "but that love, which is the highest joy, which is divine simplicity itself, is not for you moderns, you children of reflection. it works only evil in you. _as soon as you wish to be natural, you become common._ to you nature seems something hostile; you have made devils out of the smiling gods of greece, and out of me a demon. you can only exorcise and curse me, or slay yourselves in bacchantic madness before my altar. and if ever one of you has had the courage to kiss my red mouth, he makes a barefoot pilgrimage to rome in penitential robes and expects flowers to grow from his withered staff, while under my feet roses, violets, and myrtles spring up every hour, but their fragrance does not agree with you. stay among your northern fogs and christian incense; let us pagans remain under the debris, beneath the lava; do not disinter us. pompeii was not built for you, nor our villas, our baths, our temples. you do not require gods. we are chilled in your world." the beautiful marble woman coughed, and drew the dark sables still closer about her shoulders. "much obliged for the classical lesson," i replied, "but you cannot deny, that man and woman are mortal enemies, in your serene sunlit world as well as in our foggy one. in love there is union into a single being for a short time only, capable of only one thought, one sensation, one will, in order to be then further disunited. and you know this better than i; whichever of the two fails to subjugate will soon feel the feet of the other on his neck--" "and as a rule the man that of the woman," cried madame venus with proud mockery, "which you know better than i." "of course, and that is why i don't have any illusions." "you mean you are now my slave without illusions, and for that reason you shall feel the weight of my foot without mercy." "madame!" "don't you know me yet? yes, i am _cruel_--since you take so much delight in that word-and am i not entitled to be so? man is the one who desires, woman the one who is desired. this is woman's entire but decisive advantage. through his passion nature has given man into woman's hands, and the woman who does not know how to make him her subject, her slave, her toy, and how to betray him with a smile in the end is not wise." "exactly your principles," i interrupted angrily. "they are based on the experience of thousands of years," she replied ironically, while her white fingers played over the dark fur. "the more devoted a woman shows herself, the sooner the man sobers down and becomes domineering. the more cruelly she treats him and the more faithless she is, the worse she uses him, the more wantonly she plays with him, the less pity she shows him, by so much the more will she increase his desire, be loved, worshipped by him. so it has always been, since the time of helen and delilah, down to catherine the second and lola montez." "i cannot deny," i said, "that nothing will attract a man more than the picture of a beautiful, passionate, cruel, and despotic woman who wantonly changes her favorites without scruple in accordance with her whim--" "and in addition wears furs," exclaimed the divinity. "what do you mean by that?" "i know your predilection." "do you know," i interrupted, "that, since we last saw each other, you have grown very coquettish." "in what way, may i ask?" "in that there is no way of accentuating your white body to greater advantage than by these dark furs, and that--" the divinity laughed. "you are dreaming," she cried, "wake up!" and she clasped my arm with her marble-white hand. "do wake up," she repeated raucously with the low register of her voice. i opened my eyes with difficulty. i saw the hand which shook me, and suddenly it was brown as bronze; the voice was the thick alcoholic voice of my cossack servant who stood before me at his full height of nearly six feet. "do get up," continued the good fellow, "it is really disgraceful." "what is disgraceful?" "to fall asleep in your clothes and with a book besides." he snuffed the candles which had burned down, and picked up the volume which had fallen from my hand, "with a book by"--he looked at the title page-"by hegel. besides it is high time you were starting for mr. severin's who is expecting us for tea." "a curious dream," said severin when i had finished. he supported his arms on his knees, resting his face in his delicate, finely veined hands, and fell to pondering. i knew that he wouldn't move for a long time, hardly even breathe. this actually happened, but i didn't consider his behavior as in any way remarkable. i had been on terms of close friendship with him for nearly three years, and gotten used to his peculiarities. for it cannot be denied that he was peculiar, although he wasn't quite the dangerous madman that the neighborhood, or indeed the entire district of kolomea, considered him to be. i found his personality not only interesting--and that is why many also regarded me a bit mad--but to a degree sympathetic. for a galician nobleman and land-owner, and considering his age--he was hardly over thirty--he displayed surprising sobriety, a certain seriousness, even pedantry. he lived according to a minutely elaborated, half-philosophical, half-practical system, like clock-work; not this alone, but also by the thermometer, barometer, aerometer, hydrometer, hippocrates, hufeland, plato, kant, knigge, and lord chesterfield. but at times he had violent attacks of sudden passion, and gave the impression of being about to run with his head right through a wall. at such times every one preferred to get out of his way. while he remained silent, the fire sang in the chimney and the large venerable samovar sang; and the ancient chair in which i sat rocking to and fro smoking my cigar, and the cricket in the old walls sang too. i let my eyes glide over the curious apparatus, skeletons of animals, stuffed birds, globes, plaster-casts, with which his room was heaped full, until by chance my glance remained fixed on a picture which i had seen often enough before. but to-day, under the reflected red glow of the fire, it made an indescribable impression on me. it was a large oil painting, done in the robust full-bodied manner of the belgian school. its subject was strange enough. a beautiful woman with a radiant smile upon her face, with abundant hair tied into a classical knot, on which white powder lay like a soft hoarfrost, was resting on an ottoman, supported on her left arm. she was nude in her dark furs. her right hand played with a lash, while her bare foot rested carelessly on a man, lying before her like a slave, like a dog. in the sharply outlined, but well-formed linaments of this man lay brooding melancholy and passionate devotion; he looked up to her with the ecstatic burning eye of a martyr. this man, the footstool for her feet, was severin, but beardless, and, it seemed, some ten years younger. "_venus in furs_," i cried, pointing to the picture. "that is the way i saw her in my dream." "i, too," said severin, "only i dreamed my dream with open eyes." "indeed?" "it is a tiresome story." "your picture apparently suggested my dream," i continued. "but do tell me what it means. i can imagine that it played a role in your life, and perhaps a very decisive one. but the details i can only get from you." "look at its counterpart," replied my strange friend, without heeding my question. the counterpart was an excellent copy of titian's well-known "venus with the mirror" in the dresden gallery. "and what is the significance?" severin rose and pointed with his finger at the fur with which titian garbed his goddess of love. "it, too, is a 'venus in furs,'" he said with a slight smile. "i don't believe that the old venetian had any secondary intention. he simply painted the portrait of some aristocratic mesalina, and was tactful enough to let cupid hold the mirror in which she tests her majestic allure with cold satisfaction. he looks as though his task were becoming burdensome enough. the picture is painted flattery. later an 'expert' in the rococo period baptized the lady with the name of venus. the furs of the despot in which titian's fair model wrapped herself, probably more for fear of a cold than out of modesty, have become a symbol of the tyranny and cruelty that constitute woman's essence and her beauty. "but enough of that. the picture, as it now exists, is a bitter satire on our love. venus in this abstract north, in this icy christian world, has to creep into huge black furs so as not to catch cold--" severin laughed, and lighted a fresh cigarette. just then the door opened and an attractive, stoutish, blonde girl entered. she had wise, kindly eyes, was dressed in black silk, and brought us cold meat and eggs with our tea. severin took one of the latter, and decapitated it with his knife. "didn't i tell you that i want them soft-boiled?" he cried with a violence that made the young woman tremble. "but my dear sevtchu--" she said timidly. "sevtchu, nothing," he yelled, "you are to obey, obey, do you understand?" and he tore the _kantchuk_ [footnote: a long whip with a short handle.] which was hanging beside the weapons from its hook. the woman fled from the chamber quickly and timidly like a doe. "just wait, i'll get you yet," he called after her. "but severin," i said placing my hand on his arm, "how can you treat a pretty young woman thus?" "look at the woman," he replied, blinking humorously with his eyes. "had i flattered her, she would have cast the noose around my neck, but now, when i bring her up with the _kantchuk_, she adores me." "nonsense!" "nonsense, nothing, that is the way you have to break in women." "well, if you like it, live like a pasha in your harem, but don't lay down theories for me--" "why not," he said animatedly. "goethe's 'you must be hammer or anvil' is absolutely appropriate to the relation between man and woman. didn't lady venus in your dream prove that to you? woman's power lies in man's passion, and she knows how to use it, if man doesn't understand himself. he has only one choice: to be the _tyrant_ over or the _slave_ of woman. as soon as he gives in, his neck is under the yoke, and the lash will soon fall upon him." "strange maxims!" "not maxims, but experiences," he replied, nodding his head, "_i have actually felt the lash_. i am cured. do you care to know how?" he rose, and got a small manuscript from his massive desk, and put it in front of me. "you have already asked about the picture. i have long owed you an explanation. here--read!" severin sat down by the chimney with his back toward me, and seemed to dream with open eyes. silence had fallen again, and again the fire sang in the chimney, and the samovar and the cricket in the old walls. i opened the manuscript and read: confessions of a supersensual man. the margin of the manuscript bore as motto a variation of the well-known lines from _faust_: "thou supersensual sensual wooer a woman leads you by the nose." --mephistopheles. i turned the title-page and read: "what follows has been compiled from my diary of that period, because it is impossible ever frankly to write of one's past, but in this way everything retains its fresh colors, the colors of the present." gogol, the russian moliere, says--where? well, somewhere--"the real comic muse is the one under whose laughing mask tears roll down." a wonderful saying. so i have a very curious feeling as i am writing all this down. the atmosphere seems filled with a stimulating fragrance of flowers, which overcomes me and gives me a headache. the smoke of the fireplace curls and condenses into figures, small gray-bearded kokolds that mockingly point their finger at me. chubby-cheeked cupids ride on the arms of my chair and on my knees. i have to smile involuntarily, even laugh aloud, as i am writing down my adventures. yet i am not writing with ordinary ink, but with red blood that drips from my heart. all its wounds long scarred over have opened and it throbs and hurts, and now and then a tear falls on the paper. the days creep along sluggishly in the little carpathian health-resort. you see no one, and no one sees you. it is boring enough to write idyls. i would have leisure here to supply a whole gallery of paintings, furnish a theater with new pieces for an entire season, a dozen virtuosos with concertos, trios, and duos, but--what am i saying--the upshot of it all is that i don't do much more than to stretch the canvas, smooth the bow, line the scores. for i am--no false modesty, friend severin; you can lie to others, but you don't quite succeed any longer in lying to yourself--i am nothing but a dilettante, a dilettante in painting, in poetry, in music, and several other of the so-called unprofitable arts, which, however, at present secure for their masters the income of a cabinet minister, or even that of a minor potentate. above all else i am a dilettante in life. up to the present i have lived as i have painted and written poetry. i never got far beyond the preparation, the plan, the first act, the first stanza. there are people like that who begin everything, and never finish anything. i am such a one. but what am i saying? to the business in hand. i lie in my window, and the miserable little town, which fills me with despondency, really seems infinitely full of poetry. how wonderful the outlook upon the blue wall of high mountains interwoven with golden sunlight; mountain-torrents weave through them like ribbons of silver! how clear and blue the heavens into which snowcapped crags project; how green and fresh the forested slopes; the meadows on which small herds graze, down to the yellow billows of grain where reapers stand and bend over and rise up again. the house in which i live stands in a sort of park, or forest, or wilderness, whatever one wants to call it, and is very solitary. its sole inhabitants are myself, a widow from lemberg, and madame tartakovska, who runs the house, a little old woman, who grows older and smaller each day. there are also an old dog that limps on one leg, and a young cat that continually plays with a ball of yarn. this ball of yarn, i believe, belongs to the widow. she is said to be really beautiful, this widow, still very young, twenty-four at the most, and very rich. she dwells in the first story, and i on the ground floor. she always keeps the green blinds drawn, and has a balcony entirely overgrown with green climbing-plants. i for my part down below have a comfortable, intimate arbor of honeysuckle, in which i read and write and paint and sing like a bird among the twigs. i can look up on the balcony. sometimes i actually do so, and then from time to time a white gown gleams between the dense green network. really the beautiful woman up there doesn't interest me very much, for i am in love with someone else, and terribly unhappy at that; far more unhappy than the knight of toggenburg or the chevalier in manon l'escault, because the object of my adoration is of stone. in the garden, in the tiny wilderness, there is a graceful little meadow on which a couple of deer graze peacefully. on this meadow is a stone statue of venus, the original of which, i believe, is in florence. this venus is the most beautiful woman i have ever seen in all my life. that, however, does not signify much, for i have seen few beautiful women, or rather few women at all. in love too, i am a dilettante who never got beyond the preparation, the first act. but why talk in superlatives, as if something that is beautiful could be surpassed? it is sufficient to say that this venus is beautiful. i love her passionately with a morbid intensity; madly as one can only love a woman who never responds to our love with anything but an eternally uniform, eternally calm, stony smile. i literally adore her. i often lie reading under the leafy covering of a young birch when the sun broods over the forest. often i visit that cold, cruel mistress of mine by night and lie on my knees before her, with the face pressed against the cold pedestal on which her feet rest, and my prayers go up to her. the rising moon, which just now is waning, produces an indescribable effect. it seems to hover among the trees and submerges the meadow in its gleam of silver. the goddess stands as if transfigured, and seems to bathe in the soft moonlight. once when i was returning from my devotions by one of the walks leading to the house, i suddenly saw a woman's figure, white as stone, under the illumination of the moon and separated from me merely by a screen of trees. it seemed as if the beautiful woman of marble had taken pity on me, become alive, and followed me. i was seized by a nameless fear, my heart threatened to burst, and instead-well, i am a dilettante. as always, i broke down at the second stanza; rather, on the contrary, i did not break down, but ran away as fast as my legs would carry me. * * * * * what an accident! through a jew, dealing in photographs i secured a picture of my ideal. it is a small reproduction of titian's "venus with the mirror." what a woman! i want to write a poem, but instead, i take the reproduction, and write on it: _venus in furs_. you are cold, while you yourself fan flames. by all means wrap yourself in your despotic furs, there is no one to whom they are more appropriate, cruel goddess of love and of beauty!--after a while i add a few verses from goethe, which i recently found in his paralipomena to _faust_. to amor "the pair of wings a fiction are, the arrows, they are naught but claws, the wreath conceals the little horns, for without any doubt he is like all the gods of ancient greece only a devil in disguise." then i put the picture before me on my table, supporting it with a book, and looked at it. i was enraptured and at the same time filled with a strange fear by the cold coquetry with which this magnificent woman draped her charms in her furs of dark sable; by the severity and hardness which lay in this cold marble-like face. again i took my pen in hand, and wrote the following words: "to love, to be loved, what happiness! and yet how the glamour of this pales in comparison with the tormenting bliss of worshipping a woman who makes a plaything out of us, of being the slave of a beautiful tyrant who treads us pitilessly underfoot. even samson, the hero, the giant, again put himself into the hands of delilah, even after she had betrayed him, and again she betrayed him, and the philistines bound him and put out his eyes which until the very end he kept fixed, drunken with rage and love, upon the beautiful betrayer." i was breakfasting in my honey-suckle arbor, and reading in the book of judith. i envied the hero holofernes because of the regal woman who cut off his head with a sword, and because of his beautiful sanguinary end. "the almighty lord hath struck him, and hath delivered him into the hands of a woman." this sentence strangely impressed me. how ungallant these jews are, i thought. and their god might choose more becoming expressions when he speaks of the fair sex. "the almighty lord hath struck him, and hath delivered him into the hands of a woman," i repeated to myself. what shall i do, so that he may punish me? heaven preserve us! here comes the housekeeper, who has again diminished somewhat in size overnight. and up there among the green twinings and garlandings the white gown gleams again. is it venus, or the widow? this time it happens to be the widow, for madame tartakovska makes a courtesy, and asks me in her name for something to read. i run to my room, and gather together a couple of volumes. later i remember that my picture of venus is in one of them, and now it and my effusions are in the hands of the white woman up there together. what will she say? i hear her laugh. is she laughing at me? it is full moon. it is already peering over the tops of the low hemlocks that fringe the park. a silvery exhalation fills the terrace, the groups of trees, all the landscape, as far as the eye can reach; in the distance it gradually fades away, like trembling waters. i cannot resist. i feel a strange urge and call within me. i put on my clothes again and go out into the garden. some power draws me toward the meadow, toward her, who is my divinity and my beloved. the night is cool. i feel a slight chill. the atmosphere is heavy with the odor of flowers and of the forest. it intoxicates. what solemnity! what music round about! a nightingale sobs. the stars quiver very faintly in the pale-blue glamour. the meadow seems smooth, like a mirror, like a covering of ice on a pond. the statue of venus stands out august and luminous. but--what has happened? from the marble shoulders of the goddess a large dark fur flows down to her heels. i stand dumbfounded and stare at her in amazement; again an indescribable fear seizes hold of me and i take flight. i hasten my steps, and notice that i have missed the main path. as i am about to turn aside into one of the green walks i see venus sitting before me on a stone bench, not the beautiful woman of marble, but the goddess of love herself with warm blood and throbbing pulses. she has actually come to life for me, like the statue that began to breathe for her creator. indeed, the miracle is only half completed. her white hair seems still to be of stone, and her white gown shimmers like moonlight, or is it satin? from her shoulders the dark fur flows. but her lips are already reddening and her cheeks begin to take color. two diabolical green rays out of her eyes fall upon me, and now she laughs. her laughter is very mysterious, very--i don't know. it cannot be described, it takes my breath away. i flee further, and after every few steps i have to pause to take breath. the mocking laughter pursues me through the dark leafy paths, across light open spaces, through the thicket where only single moonbeams can pierce. i can no longer find my way, i wander about utterly confused, with cold drops of perspiration on the forehead. finally i stand still, and engage in a short monologue. it runs--well--one is either very polite to one's self or very rude. i say to myself: "donkey!" this word exercises a remarkable effect, like a magic formula, which sets me free and makes me master of myself. i am perfectly quiet in a moment. with considerable pleasure i repeat: "donkey!" now everything is perfectly clear and distinct before my eyes again. there is the fountain, there the alley of box-wood, there the house which i am slowly approaching. yet--suddenly the appearance is here again. behind the green screen through which the moonlight gleams so that it seems embroidered with silver, i again see the white figure, the woman of stone whom i adore, whom i fear and flee. with a couple of leaps i am within the house and catch my breath and reflect. what am i really, a little dilettante or a great big donkey? a sultry morning, the atmosphere is dead, heavily laden with odors, yet stimulating. again i am sitting in my honey-suckle arbor, reading in the odyssey about the beautiful witch who transformed her admirers into beasts. a wonderful picture of antique love. there is a soft rustling in the twigs and blades and the pages of my book rustle and on the terrace likewise there is a rustling. a woman's dress-she is there--venus--but without furs--no, this time it is merely the widow--and yet--venus-oh, what a woman! as she stands there in her light white morning gown, looking at me, her slight figure seems full of poetry and grace. she is neither large, nor small; her head is alluring, piquant--in the sense of the period of the french marquises--rather than formally beautiful. what enchantment and softness, what roguish charm play about her none too small mouth! her skin is so infinitely delicate, that the blue veins show through everywhere; even through the muslin covering her arms and bosom. how abundant her red hair-it is red, not blonde or golden-yellow--how diabolically and yet tenderly it plays around her neck! now her eyes meet mine like green lightnings--they are green, these eyes of hers, whose power is so indescribable--green, but as are precious stones, or deep unfathomable mountain lakes. she observes my confusion, which has even made me discourteous, for i have remained seated and still have my cap on my head. she smiles roguishly. finally i rise and bow to her. she comes closer, and bursts out into a loud, almost childlike laughter. i stammer, as only a little dilettante or great big donkey can do on such an occasion. thus our acquaintance began. the divinity asks for my name, and mentions her own. her name is wanda von dunajew. and she is actually my venus. "but madame, what put the idea into your head?" "the little picture in one of your books--" "i had forgotten about it." "the curious notes on its back--" "why curious?" she looked at me. "i have always wanted to know a real dreamer some time--for the sake of the change--and you seem one of the maddest of the tribe." "dear lady--in fact--" again i fell victim to an odious, asinine stammering, and in addition blushed in a way that might have been appropriate for a youngster of sixteen, but not for me, who was almost a full ten years older-"you were afraid of me last night." "really--of course--but won't you sit down?" she sat down, and enjoyed my embarrassment--for actually i was even more afraid of her now in the full light of day. a delightful expression of contempt hovered about her upper lip. "you look at love, and especially woman," she began, "as something hostile, something against which you put up a defense, even if unsuccessfully. you feel that their power over you gives you a sensation of pleasurable torture, of pungent cruelty. this is a genuinely modern point of view." "you don't share it?" "i do not share it," she said quickly and decisively, shaking her head, so that her curls flew up like red flames. "the ideal which i strive to realize in my life is the serene sensuousness of the greeks--pleasure without pain. i do not believe in the kind of love which is preached by christianity, by the moderns, by the knights of the spirit. yes, look at me, i am worse than a heretic, i am a pagan. 'doest thou imagine long the goddess of love took counsel when in ida's grove she was pleased with the hero achilles?' "these lines from goethe's _roman elegy_ have always delighted me. "in nature there is only the love of the heroic age, 'when gods and goddesses loved.' at that time 'desire followed the glance, enjoyment desire.' all else is factitious, affected, a lie. christianity, whose cruel emblem, the cross, has always had for me an element of the monstrous, brought something alien and hostile into nature and its innocent instincts. "the battle of the spirit with the senses is the gospel of modern man. i do not care to have a share in it." "yes, mount olympus would be the place for you, madame," i replied, "but we moderns can no longer support the antique serenity, least of all in love. the idea of sharing a woman, even if it were an aspasia, with another revolts us. we are jealous as is our god. for example, we have made a term abuse out of the name of the glorious phryne. "we prefer one of holbein's meagre, pallid virgins, which is wholly ours to an antique venus, no matter how divinely beautiful she is, but who loves anchises to-day, paris to-morrow, adonis the day after. and if nature triumphs in us so that we give our whole glowing, passionate devotion to such a woman, her serene joy of life appears to us as something demonic and cruel, and we read into our happiness a sin which we must expiate." "so you too are one of those who rave about modern women, those miserable hysterical feminine creatures who don't appreciate a real man in their somnambulistic search for some dream-man and masculine ideal. amid tears and convulsions they daily outrage their christian duties; they cheat and are cheated; they always seek again and choose and reject; they are never happy, and never give happiness. they accuse fate instead of calmly confessing that they want to love and live as helen and aspasia lived. nature admits of no permanence in the relation between man and woman." "but, my dear lady--" "let me finish. it is only man's egoism which wants to keep woman like some buried treasure. all endeavors to introduce permanence in love, the most changeable thing in this changeable human existence, have gone shipwreck in spite of religious ceremonies, vows, and legalities. can you deny that our christian world has given itself over to corruption?" "but--" "but you are about to say, the individual who rebels against the arrangements of society is ostracized, branded, stoned. so be it. i am willing to take the risk; my principles are very pagan. i will live my own life as it pleases me. i am willing to do without your hypocritical respect; i prefer to be happy. the inventors of the christian marriage have done well, simultaneously to invent immortality. i, however, have no wish to live eternally. when with my last breath everything as far as wanda von dunajew is concerned comes to an end here below, what does it profit me whether my pure spirit joins the choirs of angels, or whether my dust goes into the formation of new beings? shall i belong to one man whom i don't love, merely because i have once loved him? no, i do not renounce; i love everyone who pleases me, and give happiness to everyone who loves me. is that ugly? no, it is more beautiful by far, than if cruelly i enjoy the tortures, which my beauty excites, and virtuously reject the poor fellow who is pining away for me. i am young, rich, and beautiful, and i live serenely for the sake of pleasure and enjoyment." while she was speaking her eyes sparkled roguishly, and i had taken hold of her hands without exactly knowing what to do with them, but being a genuine dilettante i hastily let go of them again. "your frankness," i said, "delights me, and not it alone--" my confounded dilettantism again throttled me as though there were a rope around my neck. "you were about to say--" "i was about to say--i was--i am sorry--i interrupted you." "how, so?" a long pause. she is doubtless engaging in a monologue, which translated into my language would be comprised in the single word, "donkey." "if i may ask," i finally began, "how did you arrive at these--these conclusions?" "quite simply, my father was an intelligent man. from my cradle onward i was surrounded by replicas of ancient art; at ten years of age i read _gil blas_, at twelve _la pucelle_. where others had hop-o'-my-thumb, bluebeard, cinderella, as childhood friends, mine were venus and apollo, hercules and lackoon. my husband's personality was filled with serenity and sunlight. not even the incurable illness which fell upon him soon after our marriage could long cloud his brow. on the very night of his death he took me in his arms, and during the many months when he lay dying in his wheel chair, he often said jokingly to me: 'well, have you already picked out a lover?' i blushed with shame. 'don't deceive me,' he added on one occasion, 'that would seem ugly to me, but pick out an attractive lover, or preferably several. you are a splendid woman, but still half a child, and you need toys.' "i suppose, i hardly need tell you that during his life time i had no lover; but it was through him that i have become what i am, a woman of greece." "a goddess," i interrupted. "which one," she smiled. "venus." she threatened me with her finger and knitted her brows. "perhaps, even a 'venus in furs.' watch out, i have a large, very large fur, with which i could cover you up entirely, and i have a mind to catch you in it as in a net." "do you believe," i said quickly, for an idea which seemed good, in spite of its conventionality and triteness, flashed into my head, "do you believe that your theories could be carried into execution at the present time, that venus would be permitted to stray with impunity among our railroads and telegraphs in all her undraped beauty and serenity?" "_undraped_, of course not, but in furs," she replied smiling, "would you care to see mine?" "and then--" "what then?" "beautiful, free, serene, and happy human beings, such as the greeks were, are only possible when it is permitted to have _slaves_ who will perform the prosaic tasks of every day for them and above all else labor for them." "of course," she replied playfully, "an olympian divinity, such as i am, requires a whole army of slaves. beware of me!" "why?" i myself was frightened at the hardiness with which i uttered this "why"; it did not startle her in the least. she drew back her lips a little so that her small white teeth became visible, and then said lightly, as if she were discussing some trifling matter, "do you want to be my slave?" "there is no equality in love," i replied solemnly. "whenever it is a matter of choice for me of ruling or being ruled, it seems much more satisfactory to me to be the slave of a beautiful woman. but where shall i find the woman who knows how to rule, calmly, full of self-confidence, even harshly, and not seek to gain her power by means of petty nagging?" "oh, that might not be so difficult." "you think--" "i--for instance--" she laughed and leaned far back--"i have a real talent for despotism--i also have the necessary furs--but last night you were really seriously afraid of me!" "quite seriously." "and now?" "now, i am more afraid of you than ever!" we are together every day, i and--venus; we are together a great deal. we breakfast in my honey-suckle arbor, and have tea in her little sitting-room. i have an opportunity to unfold all my small, very small talents. of what use would have been my study of all the various sciences, my playing at all the arts, if i were unable in the case of a pretty, little woman-but this woman is by no means little; in fact she impresses me tremendously. i made a drawing of her to-day, and felt particularly clearly, how inappropriate the modern way of dressing is for a cameo-head like hers. the configuration of her face has little of the roman, but much of the greek. sometimes i should like to paint her as psyche, and then again as astarte. it depends upon the expression in her eyes, whether it is vaguely dreamy, or half-consuming, filled with tired desire. she, however, insists that it be a portrait-likeness. i shall make her a present of furs. how could i have any doubts? if not for her, for whom would princely furs be suitable? * * * * * i was with her yesterday evening, reading the _roman elegies_ to her. then i laid the book aside, and improvised something for her. she seemed pleased; rather more than that, she actually hung upon my words, and her bosom heaved. or was i mistaken? the rain beat in melancholy fashion on the window-panes, the fire crackled in the fireplace in wintery comfort. i felt quite at home with her, and for a moment lost all my fear of this beautiful woman; i kissed her hand, and she permitted it. then i sat down at her feet and read a short poem i had written for her. venus in furs. "place thy foot upon thy slave, oh thou, half of hell, half of dreams; among the shadows, dark and grave, thy extended body softly gleams." and--so on. this time i really got beyond the first stanza. at her request i gave her the poem in the evening, keeping no copy. and now as i am writing this down in my diary i can only remember the first stanza. i am filled with a very curious sensation. i don't believe that i am in love with wanda; i am sure that at our first meeting, i felt nothing of the lightning-like flashes of passion. but i feel how her extraordinary, really divine beauty is gradually winding magic snares about me. it isn't any spiritual sympathy which is growing in me; it is a physical subjection, coming on slowly, but for that reason more absolutely. i suffer under it more and more each day, and she--she merely smiles. * * * * * without any provocation she suddenly said to me to-day: "you interest me. most men are very commonplace, without verve or poetry. in you there is a certain depth and capacity for enthusiasm and a deep seriousness, which delight me. i might learn to love you." after a short but severe shower we went out together to the meadow and the statue of venus. all about us the earth steamed; mists rose up toward heaven like clouds of incense; a shattered rainbow still hovered in the air. the trees were still shedding drops, but sparrows and finches were already hopping from twig to twig. they are twittering gaily, as if very much pleased at something. everything is filled with a fresh fragrance. we cannot cross the meadow for it is still wet. in the sunlight it looks like a small pool, and the goddess of love seems to rise from the undulations of its mirror-like surface. about her head a swarm of gnats is dancing, which, illuminated by the sun, seem to hover above her like an aureole. wanda is enjoying the lovely scene. as all the benches along the walk are still wet, she supports herself on my arm to rest a while. a soft weariness permeates her whole being, her eyes are half closed; i feel the touch of her breath on my cheek. how i managed to get up courage enough i really don't know, but i took hold of her hand, asking, "could you love me?" "why not," she replied, letting her calm, clear look rest upon me, but not for long. a moment later i am kneeling before her, pressing my burning face against the fragrant muslin of her gown. "but severin--this isn't right," she cried. but i take hold of her little foot, and press my lips upon it. "you are getting worse and worse!" she cried. she tore herself free, and fled rapidly toward the house, the while her adorable slipper remained in my hand. is it an omen? * * * * * all day long i didn't dare to go near her. toward evening as i was sitting in my arbor her gay red head peered suddenly through the greenery of her balcony. "why don't you come up?" he called down impatiently. i ran upstairs, and at the top lost courage again. i knocked very lightly. she didn't say come-in, but opened the door herself, and stood on the threshold. "where is my slipper?" "it is--i have--i want," i stammered. "get it, and then we will have tea together, and chat." when i returned, she was engaged in making tea. i ceremoniously placed the slipper on the table, and stood in the corner like a child awaiting punishment. i noticed that her brows were slightly contracted, and there was an expression of hardness and dominance about her lips which delighted me. all of a sudden she broke out laughing. "so--you are really in love--with me?" "yes, and i suffer more from it than you can imagine?" "you suffer?" she laughed again. i was revolted, mortified, annihilated, but all this was quite useless. "why?" she continued, "i like you, with all my heart." she gave me her hand, and looked at me in the friendliest fashion. "and will you be my wife?" wanda looked at me--how did she look at me? i think first of all with surprise, and then with a tinge of irony. "what has given you so much courage, all at once?" "courage?" "yes courage, to ask anyone to be your wife, and me in particular?" she lifted up the slipper. "was it through a sudden friendship with this? but joking aside. do you really wish to marry me?" "yes." "well, severin, that is a serious matter. i believe, you love me, and i care for you too, and what is more important each of us finds the other interesting. there is no danger that we would soon get bored, but, you know, i am a fickle person, and just for that reason i take marriage seriously. if i assume obligations, i want to be able to meet them. but i am afraid--no--it would hurt you." "please be perfectly frank with me," i replied. "well then honestly, i don't believe i could love a man longer than--" she inclined her head gracefully to one side and mused. "a year." "what do you imagine--a month perhaps." "not even me?" "oh you--perhaps two." "two months!" i exclaimed. "two months is very long." "you go beyond antiquity, madame." "you see, you cannot stand the truth." wanda walked across the room and leaned back against the fireplace, watching me and resting one of her arms on the mantelpiece. "what shall i do with you?" she began anew. "whatever you wish," i replied with resignation, "whatever will give you pleasure." "how illogical!" she cried, "first you want to make me your wife, and then you offer yourself to me as something to toy with." "wanda--i love you." "now we are back to the place where we started. you love me, and want to make me your wife, but i don't want to enter into a new marriage, because i doubt the permanence of both my and your feelings." "but if i am willing to take the risk with you?" i replied. "but it also depends on whether i am willing to risk it with you," she said quietly. "i can easily imagine belonging to one man for my entire life, but he would have to be a whole man, a man who would dominate me, who would subjugate me by his inate strength, do you understand? and every man--i know this very well--as soon as he falls in love becomes weak, pliable, ridiculous. he puts himself into the woman's hands, kneels down before her. the only man whom i could love permanently would be he before whom i should have to kneel. i've gotten to like you so much, however, that i'll try it with you." i fell down at her feet. "for heaven's sake, here you are kneeling already," she said mockingly. "you are making a good beginning." when i had risen again she continued, "i will give you a year's time to win me, to convince me that we are suited to each other, that we might live together. if you succeed, i will become your wife, and a wife, severin, who will conscientiously and strictly perform all her duties. during this year we will live as though we were married--" my blood rose to my head. in her eyes too there was a sudden flame-"we will live together," she continued, "share our daily life, so that we may find out whether we are really fitted for each other. _i grant you all the rights of a husband, of a lover, of a friend._ are you satisfied?" "i suppose, i'll have to be?" "you don't have to." "well then, i want to--" "splendid. that is how a man speaks. here is my hand." * * * * * for ten days i have been with her every hour, except at night. all the time i was allowed to look into her eyes, hold her hands, listen to what she said, accompany her wherever she went. my love seems to me like a deep, bottomless abyss, into which i subside deeper and deeper. there is nothing now which could save me from it. this afternoon we were resting on the meadow at the foot of the venus-statue. i plucked flowers and tossed them into her lap; she wound them into wreaths with which we adorned our goddess. suddenly wanda looked at me so strangely that my senses became confused and passion swept over my head like a conflagration. losing command over myself, i threw my arms about her and clung to her lips, and she--she drew me close to her heaving breast. "are you angry?" i then asked her. "i am never angry at anything that is natural--" she replied, "but _i_ am afraid you suffer." "oh, i am suffering frightfully." "poor friend!" she brushed my disordered hair back from my fore-head. "i hope it isn't through any fault of mine." "no--" i replied,--"and yet my love for you has become a sort of madness. the thought that i might lose you, perhaps actually lose you, torments me day and night." "but you don't yet possess me," said wanda, and again she looked at me with that vibrant, consuming expression, which had already once before carried me away. then she rose, and with her small transparent hands placed a wreath of blue anemones upon the ringletted white head of venus. half against my will i threw my arm around her body. "i can no longer live without you, oh wonderful woman," i said. "believe me, believe only this once, that this time it is not a phrase, not a thing of dreams. i feel deep down in my innermost soul, that my life belongs inseparably with yours. if you leave me, i shall perish, go to pieces." "that will hardly be necessary, for i love you," she took hold of my chin, "you foolish man!" "but you will be mine only under conditions, while i belong to you unconditionally--" "that isn't wise, severin," she replied almost with a start. "don't you know me yet, do you absolutely refuse to know me? i am good when i am treated seriously and reasonably, but when you abandon yourself too absolutely to me, i grow arrogant--" "so be it, be arrogant, be despotic," i cried in the fulness of exaltation, "only be mine, mine forever." i lay at her feet, embracing her knees. "things will end badly, my friend," she said soberly, without moving. "it shall never end," i cried excitedly, almost violently. "only death shall part us. if you cannot be mine, all mine and for always, then _i want to be your slave_, serve you, suffer everything from you, if only you won't drive me away." "calm yourself," she said, bending down and kissing my forehead, "i am really very fond of you, but your way is not the way to win and hold me." "i want to do everything, absolutely everything, that you want, only not to lose you," i cried, "only not that, i cannot bear the thought." "do get up." i obeyed. "you are a strange person," continued wanda. "you wish to possess me at any price?" "yes, at any price." "but of what value, for instance, would that be?"--she pondered; a lurking uncanny expression entered her eyes--"if i no longer loved you, if i belonged to another." a shudder ran through me. i looked at her she stood firmly and confident before me, and her eyes disclosed a cold gleam. "you see," she continued, "the very thought frightens you." a beautiful smile suddenly illuminated her face. "i feel a perfect horror, when i imagine, that the woman i love and who has responded to my love could give herself to another regardless of me. but have i still a choice? if i love such a woman, even unto madness, shall i turn my back to her and lose everything for the sake of a bit of boastful strength; shall i send a bullet through my brains? i have two ideals of woman. if i cannot obtain the one that is noble and simple, the woman who will faithfully and truly share my life, well then i don't want anything half-way or lukewarm. then i would rather be subject to a woman without virtue, fidelity, or pity. such a woman in her magnificent selfishness is likewise an ideal. if i am not permitted to enjoy the happiness of love, fully and wholly, i want to taste its pains and torments to the very dregs; i want to be maltreated and betrayed by the woman i love, and the more cruelly the better. this too is a luxury." "have you lost your senses," cried wanda. "i love you with all my soul," i continued, "with all my senses, and your presence and personality are absolutely essential to me, if i am to go on living. choose between my ideals. do with me what you will, make of me your husband or your slave." "very well," said wanda, contracting her small but strongly arched brows, "it seems to me it would be rather entertaining to have a man, who interests me and loves me, completely in my power; at least i shall not lack pastime. you were imprudent enough to leave the choice to me. therefore i choose; i want you to be my slave, i shall make a plaything for myself out of you!" "oh, please do," i cried half-shuddering, half-enraptured. "if the foundation of marriage depends on equality and agreement, it is likewise true that the greatest passions rise out of opposites. we are such opposites, almost enemies. that is why my love is part hate, part fear. in such a relation only one can be hammer and the other anvil. i wish to be the anvil. i cannot be happy when i look down upon the woman i love. i want to adore a woman, and this i can only do when she is cruel towards me." "but, severin," replied wanda, almost angrily, "do you believe me capable of maltreating a man who loves me as you do, and whom i love?" "why not, if i adore you the more on this account? _it is possible to love really only that which stands above us,_ a woman, who through her beauty, temperament, intelligence, and strength of will subjugates us and becomes a despot over us." "then that which repels others, attracts you." "yes. that is the strange part of me." "perhaps, after all, there isn't anything so very unique or strange in all your passions, for who doesn't love beautiful furs? and everyone knows and feels how closely sexual love and cruelty are related." "but in my case all these elements are raised to their highest degree," i replied. "in other words, reason has little power over you, and you are by nature, soft, sensual, yielding." "were the martyrs also soft and sensual by nature?" "the martyrs?" "on the contrary, they were _supersensual men,_ who found enjoyment in suffering. they sought out the most frightful tortures, even death itself, as others seek joy, and as they were, so am i--_supersensual."_ "have a care that in being such, you do not become a martyr to love, the _martyr of a woman_." we are sitting on wanda's little balcony in the mellow fragrant summer night. a twofold roof is above us, first the green ceiling of climbing-plants, and then the vault of heaven sown with innumerable stars. the low wailing love-call of a cat rises from the park. i am sitting on footstool at the feet of my divinity, and am telling her of my childhood. "and even then all these strange tendencies were distinctly marked in you?" asked wanda. "of course, i can't remember a time when i didn't have them. even in my cradle, so mother has told me, i was _supersensual._ i scorned the healthy breast of my nurse, and had to be brought up on goats' milk. as a little boy i was mysteriously shy before women, which really was only an expression of an inordinate interest in them. i was oppressed by the gray arches and half-darknesses of the church, and actually afraid of the glittering altars and images of the saints. secretly, however, i sneaked as to a secret joy to a plaster-venus which stood in my father's little library. i kneeled down before her, and to her i said the prayers i had been taught--the paternoster, the ave maria, and the credo. "once at night i left my bed to visit her. the sickle of the moon was my light and showed me the goddess in a pale-blue cold light. i prostrated myself before her and kissed her cold feet, as i had seen our peasants do when they kissed the feet of the dead savior. "an irresistible yearning seized me. "i got up and embraced the beautiful cold body and kissed the cold lips. a deep shudder fell upon me and i fled, and later in a dream, it seemed to me, as if the goddess stood beside my bed, threatening me with up-raised arm. "i was sent to school early and soon reached the gymnasium. i passionately grasped at everything which promised to make the world of antiquity accessible to me. soon i was more familiar with the gods of greece than with the religion of jesus. i was with paris when he gave the fateful apple to venus, i saw troy burn, and followed ulysses on his wanderings. the prototypes of all that is beautiful sank deep into my soul, and consequently at the time when other boys are coarse and obscene, i displayed an insurmountable aversion to everything base, vulgar, unbeautiful. "to me, the maturing youth, love for women seemed something especially base and unbeautiful, for it showed itself to me first in all its commonness. i avoided all contact with the fair sex; in short, i was supersensual to madness. "when i was about fourteen my mother had a charming chamber-maid, young, attractive, with a figure just budding into womanhood. i was sitting one day studying my tacitus and growing enthusiastic over the virtues of the ancient teutons, while she was sweeping my room. suddenly she stopped, bent down over me, in the meantime holding fast to the broom, and a pair of fresh, full, adorable lips touched mine. the kiss of the enamoured little cat ran through me like a shudder, but i raised up my _germania_, like a shield against the temptress, and indignantly left the room." wanda broke out in loud laughter. "it would, indeed, be hard to find another man like you, but continue." "there is another unforgetable incident belonging to that period," i continued my story. "countess sobol, a distant aunt of mine, was visiting my parents. she was a beautiful majestic woman with an attractive smile. i, however, hated her, for she was regarded by the family as a sort of messalina. my behavior toward her was as rude, malicious, and awkward as possible. "one day my parents drove to the capital of the district. my aunt determined to take advantage of their absence, and to exercise judgment over me. she entered unexpectedly in her fur-lined _kazabaika,_ [footnote: a woman's jacket.] followed by the cook, kitchen-maid, and the cat of a chamber-maid whom i had scorned. without asking any questions, they seized me and bound me hand and foot, in spite of my violent resistance. then my aunt, with an evil smile, rolled up her sleeve and began to whip me with a stout switch. she whipped so hard that the blood flowed, and that, at last, notwithstanding my heroic spirit, i cried and wept and begged for mercy. she then had me untied, but i had to get down on my knees and thank her for the punishment and kiss her hand. "now you understand the supersensual fool! under the lash of a beautiful woman my senses first realized the meaning of woman. in her fur-jacket she seemed to me like a wrathful queen, and from then on my aunt became the most desirable woman on god's earth. "my cato-like austerity, my shyness before woman, was nothing but an excessive feeling for beauty. in my imagination sensuality became a sort of cult. i took an oath to myself that i would not squander its holy wealth upon any ordinary person, but i would reserve it for an ideal woman, if possible for the goddess of love herself. "i went to the university at a very early age. it was in the capital where my aunt lived. my room looked at that time like doctor faustus's. everything in it was in a wild confusion. there were huge closets stuffed full of books, which i bought for a song from a jewish dealer on the servanica; [footnote: the street of the jews in lemberg.] there were globes, atlases, flasks, charts of the heavens, skeletons of animals, skulls, the busts of eminent men. it looked as though mephistopheles might have stepped out from behind the huge green store as a wandering scholiast at any moment. "i studied everything in a jumble without system, without selection: chemistry, alchemy, history, astronomy, philosophy, law, anatomy, and literature; i read homer, virgil, ossian, schiller, goethe, shakespeare, cervantes, voltaire, moliere, the koran, the kosmos, casanova's memoirs. i grew more confused each day, more fantastical, more supersensual. all the time a beautiful ideal woman hovered in my imagination. every so and so often she appeared before me like a vision among my leather-bound books and dead bones, lying on a bed of roses, surrounded by cupids. sometimes she appeared gowned like the olympians with the stern white face of the plaster venus; sometimes in braids of a rich brown, blue-eyes, in my aunt's red velvet _kazabaika,_ trimmed with ermine. "one morning when she had again risen out of the golden mist of my imagination in all her smiling beauty, i went to see countess sobol, who received me in a friendly, even cordial manner. she gave me a kiss of welcome, which put all my senses in a turmoil. she was probably about forty years old, but like most well-preserved women of the world, still very attractive. she wore as always her fur-edged jacket. this time it was one of green velvet with brown marten. but nothing of the sternness which had so delighted me the other time was now discernable. "on the contrary, there was so little of cruelty in her that without any more ado she let me adore her. "only too soon did she discover my supersensual folly and innocence, and it pleased her to make me happy. as for myself--i was as happy as a young god. what rapture for me to be allowed to lie before her on my knees, and to kiss her hands, those with which she had scourged me! what marvellous hands they were, of beautiful form, delicate, rounded, and white, with adorable dimples! i really was in love with her hands only. i played with them, let them submerge and emerge in the dark fur, held them against the light, and was unable to satiate my eyes with them." wanda involuntarily looked at her hand; i noticed it, and had to smile. "from the way in which the supersensual predominated in me in those days you can see that i was in love only with the cruel lashes i received from my aunt; and about two years later when i paid court to a young actress only in the roles she played. still later i became the admirer of a respectable woman. she acted the part of irreproachable virtue, only in the end to betray me with a rich jew. you see, it is because i was betrayed, sold, by a woman who feigned the strictest principles and the highest ideals, that i hate that sort of poetical, sentimental virtue so intensely. give me rather a woman who is honest enough to say to me: i am a pompadour, a lucretia borgia, and i am ready to adore her." wanda rose and opened the window. "you have a curious way of arousing one's imagination, stimulating all one's nerves, and making one's pulses beat faster. you put an aureole on vice, provided only if it is honest. your ideal is a daring courtesan of genius. oh, you are the kind of man who will corrupt a woman to her very last fiber." * * * * * in the middle of the night there was a knock at my window; i got up, opened it, and was startled. without stood "venus in furs," just as she had appeared to me the first time. "you have disturbed me with your stories; i have been tossing about in bed, and can't go to sleep," she said. "now come and stay with me." "in a moment." as i entered wanda was crouching by the fireplace where she had kindled a small fire. "autumn is coming," she began, "the nights are really quite cold already. i am afraid you may not like it, but i can't put off my furs until the room is sufficiently warm." "not like it--you are joking--you know--" i threw my arm around her, and kissed her. "of course, i know, but why this great fondness for furs?" "i was born with it," i replied. "i already had it as a child. furthermore furs have a stimulating effect on all highly organized natures. this is due both to general and natural laws. it is a physical stimulus which sets you tingling, and no one can wholly escape it. science has recently shown a certain relationship between electricity and warmth; at any rate, their effects upon the human organism are related. the torrid zone produces more passionate characters, a heated atmosphere stimulation. likewise with electricity. this is the reason why the presence of cats exercises such a magic influence upon highly-organized men of intellect. this is why these long-tailed graces of the animal kingdom, these adorable, scintillating electric batteries have been the favorite animal of a mahommed, cardinal richelieu, crebillon, rousseau, wieland." "a woman wearing furs, then," cried wanda, "is nothing else than a large cat, an augmented electric battery?" "certainly," i replied. "that is my explanation of the symbolic meaning which fur has acquired as the attribute of power and beauty. monarchs and the dominant higher nobility in former times used it in this sense for their costume, exclusively; great painters used it only for queenly beauty. the most beautiful frame, which raphael could find for the divine forms of fornarina and titian for the roseate body of his beloved, was dark furs." "thanks for the learned discourse on love," said wanda, "but you haven't told me everything. you associate something entirely individual with furs." "certainly," i cried. "i have repeatedly told you that suffering has a peculiar attraction for me. nothing can intensify my passion more than tyranny, cruelty, and especially the faithlessness of a beautiful woman. and i cannot imagine this woman, this strange ideal derived from an aesthetics of ugliness, this soul of nero in the body of a phryne, except in furs." "i understand," wanda interrupted. "it gives a dominant and imposing quality to a woman." "not only that," i continued. "you know i am _supersensual._ with me everything has its roots in the imagination, and thence it receives its nourishment. i was already pre-maturely developed and highly sensitive, when at about the age of ten the legends of the martyrs fell into my hands. i remember reading with a kind of horror, which really was rapture, of how they pined in prisons, were laid on the gridiron, pierced with arrows, boiled in pitch, thrown to wild animals, nailed to the cross, and suffered the most horrible torment with a kind of joy. to suffer and endure cruel torture from then on seemed to me exquisite delight, especially when it was inflicted by a beautiful woman, for ever since i can remember all poetry and everything demonic was for me concentrated in woman. i literally carried the idea into a sort of cult. "i felt there was something sacred in sex; in fact, it was the only sacred thing. in woman and her beauty i saw something divine, because the most important function of existence--the continuation of the species--is her vocation. to me woman represented a personification of nature, _isis_, and man was her priest, her slave. in contrast to him she was cruel like nature herself who tosses aside whatever has served her purposes as soon as she no longer has need for it. to him her cruelties, even death itself, still were sensual raptures. "i envied king gunther whom the mighty brunhilde fettered on the bridal night, and the poor troubadour whom his capricious mistress had sewed in the skins of wolves to have him hunted like game. i envied the knight ctirad whom the daring amazon scharka craftily ensnared in a forest near prague, and carried to her castle divin, where, after having amused herself a while with him, she had him broken on the wheel--" "disgusting," cried wanda. "i almost wish you might fall into the hands of a woman of their savage race. in the wolf's skin, under the teeth of the dogs, or upon the wheel, you would lose the taste for your kind of poetry." "do you think so? i hardly do." "have you actually lost your senses." "possibly. but let me go on. i developed a perfect passion for reading stories in which the extremest cruelties were described. i loved especially to look at pictures and prints which represented them. all the sanguinary tyrants that ever occupied a throne; the inquisitors who had the heretics tortured, roasted, and butchered; all the woman whom the pages of history have recorded as lustful, beautiful, and violent women like libussa, lucretia borgia, agnes of hungary, queen margot, isabeau, the sultana roxolane, the russian czarinas of last century--all these i saw in furs or in robes bordered with ermine." "and so furs now rouse strange imaginings in you," said wanda, and simultaneously she began to drape her magnificent fur-cloak coquettishly about her, so that the dark shining sable played beautifully around her bust and arms. "well, how do you feel now, half broken on the wheel?" her piercing green eyes rested on me with a peculiar mocking satisfaction. overcome by desire, i flung myself down before her, and threw my arms about her. "yes--you have awakened my dearest dream," i cried. "it has slept long enough." "and this is?" she put her hand on my neck. i was seized with a sweet intoxication under the influence of this warm little hand and of her regard, which, tenderly searching, fell upon me through her half-closed lids. _"to be the slave of a woman, a beautiful woman, whom i love, whom i worship."_ "and who on that account maltreats you," interrupted wanda, laughing. "yes, who fetters me and whips me, treads me underfoot, the while she gives herself to another." "and who in her wantonness will go so far as to make a present of you to your successful rival when driven insane by jealousy you must meet him face to face, who will turn you over to his absolute mercy. why not? this final tableau doesn't please you so well?" i looked at wanda frightened. "you surpass my dreams." "yes, we women are inventive," she said, "take heed, when you find your ideal, it might easily happen, that she will treat you more cruelly than you anticipate." "i am afraid that i have already found my ideal!" i exclaimed, burying my burning face in her lap. "not i?" exclaimed wanda, throwing off her furs and moving about the room laughing. she was still laughing as i went downstairs, and when i stood musing in the yard, i still heard her peals of laughter above. * * * * * "do you really then expect me to embody your ideal?" wanda asked archly, when we met in the park to-day. at first i could find no answer. the most antagonistic emotions were battling within me. in the meantime she sat down on one of the stone-benches, and played with a flower. "well--am i?" i kneeled down and seized her hands. "once more i beg you to become my wife, my true and loyal wife; if you can't do that then become the embodiment of my ideal, absolutely, without reservation, without softness." "you know i am ready at the end of a year to give you my hand, if you prove to be the man i am seeking," wanda replied very seriously, "but i think you would be more grateful to me if through me you realized your imaginings. well, which do you prefer?" "i believe that everything my imagination has dreamed lies latent in your personality." "you are mistaken." "i believe," i continued, "that you enjoy having a man wholly in your power, torturing him--" "no, no," she exclaimed quickly, "or perhaps--." she pondered. "i don't understand myself any longer," she continued, "but i have a confession to make to you. you have corrupted my imagination and inflamed my blood. i am beginning to like the things you speak of. the enthusiasm with which you speak of a pompadour, a catherine the second, and all the other selfish, frivolous, cruel women, carries me away and takes hold of my soul. it urges me on to become like those women, who in spite of their vileness were slavishly adored during their lifetime and still exert a miraculous power from their graves. "you will end by making of me a despot in miniature, a domestic pompadour." "well then," i said in agitation, "if all this is inherent in you, give way to this trend of your nature. nothing half-way. if you can't be a true and loyal wife to me, be a demon." i was nervous from loss of sleep, and the proximity of the beautiful woman affected me like a fever. i no longer recall what i said, but i remember that i kissed her feet, and finally raised her foot and put my neck under it. she withdrew it quickly, and rose almost angrily. "if you love me, severin," she said quickly, and her voice sounded sharp and commanding, "never speak to me of those things again. understand, never! otherwise i might really--" she smiled and sat down again. "i am entirely serious," i exclaimed, half-raving. "i adore you so infinitely that i am willing to suffer anything from you, for the sake of spending my whole life near you." "severin, once more i warn you." "your warning is vain. do with me what you will, as long as you don't drive me away." "severin," replied wanda, "i am a frivolous young woman; it is dangerous for you to put yourself so completely in my power. you will end by actually becoming a plaything to me. who will give warrant that i shall not abuse your insane desire?" "your own nobility of character." "power makes people over-bearing." "be it," i cried, "tread me underfoot." wanda threw her arms around my neck, looked into my eyes, and shook her head. "i am afraid i can't, but i will try, for your sake, for i love you severin, as i have loved no other man." * * * * * to-day she suddenly took her hat and shawl, and i had to go shopping with her. she looked at whips, long whips with a short handle, the kind that are used on dogs. "are these satisfactory?" said the shopkeeper. "no, they are much too small," replied wanda, with a side-glance at me. "i need a large--" "for a bull-dog, i suppose?" opined the merchant. "yes," she exclaimed, "of the kind that are used in russia for intractable slaves." she looked further and finally selected a whip, at whose sight i felt a strange creeping sensation. "now good-by, severin," she said. "i have some other purchases to make, but you can't go along." i left her and took a walk. on the way back i saw wanda coming out at a furrier's. she beckoned me. "consider it well," she began in good spirits, "i have never made a secret of how deeply your serious, dreamy character has fascinated me. the idea of seeing this serious man wholly in my power, actually lying enraptured at my feet, of course, stimulates me--but will this attraction last? woman loves a man; she maltreats a slave, and ends by kicking him aside." "very well then, kick me aside," i replied, "when you are tired of me. i want to be your slave." "dangerous forces lie within me," said wanda, after we had gone a few steps further. "you awaken them, and not to your advantage. you know how to paint pleasure, cruelty, arrogance in glowing colors. what would you say should i try my hand at them, and make you the first object of my experiments. i would be like dionysius who had the inventor of the iron ox roasted within it in order to see whether his wails and groans really resembled the bellowing of an ox. "perhaps i am a female dionysius?" "be it," i exclaimed, "and my dreams will be fulfilled. i am yours for good or evil, choose. the destiny that lies concealed within my breast drives me on--demoniacally--relentlessly." "my beloved, i do not care to see you to-day or to-morrow, and not until evening the day after tomorrow, and then _as my slave_. your mistress wanda." "as my slave" was underlined. i read the note which i received early in the morning a second time. then i had a donkey saddled, an animal symbolic of learned professors, and rode into the mountains. i wanted to numb my desire, my yearning, with the magnificent scenery of the carpathians. i am back, tired, hungry, thirsty, and more in love than ever. i quickly change my clothes, and a few moments later knock at her door. "come in!" i enter. she is standing in the center of the room, dressed in a gown of white satin which floods down her body like light. over it she wears a scarlet _kazabaika_, richly edged with ermine. upon her powdered, snowy hair is a little diadem of diamonds. she stands with her arms folded across her breast, and with her brows contracted. "wanda!" i run toward her, and am about to throw my arm about her to kiss her. she retreats a step, measuring me from top to bottom. "slave!" "mistress!" i kneel down, and kiss the hem of her garment. "that is as it should be." "oh, how beautiful you are." "do i please you?" she stepped before the mirror, and looked at herself with proud satisfaction. "i shall become mad!" her lower lip twitched derisively, and she looked at me mockingly from behind half-closed lids. "give me the whip." i looked about the room. "no," she exclaimed, "stay as you are, kneeling." she went over to the fire-place, took the whip from the mantle-piece, and, watching me with a smile, let it hiss through the air; then she slowly rolled up the sleeve of her fur-jacket. "marvellous woman!" i exclaimed. "silence, slave!" she suddenly scowled, looked savage, and struck me with the whip. a moment later she threw her arm tenderly about me, and pityingly bent down to me. "did i hurt you?" she asked, half-shyly, half-timidly. "no," i replied, "and even if you had, pains that come through you are a joy. strike again, if it gives you pleasure." "but it doesn't give me pleasure." again i was seized with that strange intoxication. "whip me," i begged, "whip me without mercy." wanda swung the whip, and hit me twice. "are you satisfied now?" "no." "seriously, no?" "whip me, i beg you, it is a joy to me." "yes, because you know very well that it isn't serious," she replied, "because i haven't the heart to hurt you. this brutal game goes against my grain. were i really the woman who beats her slaves you would be horrified." "no, wanda," i replied, "i love you more than myself; i am devoted to you for death and life. in all seriousness, you can do with me whatever you will, whatever your caprice suggests." "severin!" "tread me underfoot!" i exclaimed, and flung myself face to the floor before her. "i hate all this play-acting," said wanda impatiently. "well, then maltreat me seriously." an uncanny pause. "severin, i warn you for the last time," began wanda. "if you love me, be cruel towards me," i pleaded with upraised eyes. "if i love you," repeated wanda. "very well!" she stepped back and looked at me with a sombre smile. _"be then my slave, and know what it means to be delivered into the hands of a woman."_ and at the same moment she gave me a kick. "how do you like that, slave?" then she flourished the whip. "get up!" i was about to rise. "not that way," she commanded, "on your knees." i obeyed, and she began to apply the lash. the blows fell rapidly and powerfully on my back and arms. each one cut into my flesh and burned there, but the pains enraptured me. they came from her whom i adored, and for whom i was ready at any hour to lay down my life. she stopped. "i am beginning to enjoy it," she said, "but enough for to-day. i am beginning to feel a demonic curiosity to see how far your strength goes. i take a cruel joy in seeing you tremble and writhe beneath my whip, and in hearing your groans and wails; i want to go on whipping without pity until you beg for mercy, until you lose your senses. you have awakened dangerous elements in my being. but now get up." i seized her hand to press it to my lips. "what impudence." she shoved me away with her foot. "out of my sight, slave!" * * * * * after having spent a feverish night filled with confused dreams, i awoke. dawn was just beginning to break. how much of what was hovering in my memory was true; what had i actually experienced and what had i dreamed? that i had been whipped was certain. i can still feel each blow, and count the burning red stripes on my body. and _she_ whipped me. now i know everything. my dream has become truth. how does it make me feel? am i disappointed in the realization of my dream? no, i am merely somewhat tired, but her cruelty has enraptured me. oh, how i love her, adore her! all this cannot express in the remotest way my feeling for her, my complete devotion to her. what happiness to be her slave! * * * * * she calls to me from her balcony. i hurry upstairs. she is standing on the threshold, holding out her hand in friendly fashion. "i am ashamed of myself," she says, while i embrace her, and she hides her head against my breast. "why?" "please try to forget the ugly scene of yesterday," she said with quivering voice, "i have fulfilled your mad wish, now let us be reasonable and happy and love each other, and in a year i will be your wife." "my mistress," i exclaimed, "and i your slave!" "not another word of slavery, cruelty, or the whip," interrupted wanda. "i shall not grant you any of those favors, none except wearing my fur-jacket; come and help me into it." * * * * * the little bronze clock on which stood a cupid who had just shot his bolt struck midnight. i rose, and wanted to leave. wanda said nothing, but embraced me and drew me back on the ottoman. she began to kiss me anew, and this silent language was so comprehensible, so convincing-and it told me more than i dared to understand. a languid abandonment pervaded wanda's entire being. what a voluptuous softness there was in the gloaming of her half-closed eyes, in the red flood of her hair which shimmered faintly under the white powder, in the red and white satin which crackled about her with every movement, in the swelling ermine of the _kazabaika_ in which she carelessly nestled. "please," i stammered, "but you will be angry with me." "do with me what you will," she whispered. "well, then whip me, or i shall go mad." "haven't i forbidden you," said wanda sternly, "but you are incorrigible." "oh, i am so terribly in love." i had sunken on my knees, and was burying my glowing face in her lap. "i really believe," said wanda thoughtfully, "that your madness is nothing but a demonic, unsatisfied sensuality. _our unnatural way of life must generate such illnesses._ were you less virtuous, you would be completely sane." "well then, make me sane," i murmured. my hands were running through her hair and playing tremblingly with the gleaming fur, which rose and fell like a moonlit wave upon her heaving bosom, and drove all my senses into confusion. and i kissed her. no, she kissed me savagely, pitilessly, as if she wanted to slay me with her kisses. i was as in a delirium, and had long since lost my reason, but now i, too, was breathless. i sought to free myself. "what is the matter?" asked wanda. "i am suffering agonies." "you are suffering--" she broke out into a loud amused laughter. "you laugh!" i moaned, "have you no idea--" she was serious all of a sudden. she raised my head in her hands, and with a violent gesture drew me to her breast. "wanda," i stammered. "of course, you enjoy suffering," she said, and laughed again, "but wait, i'll bring you to your senses." "no, i will no longer ask," i exclaimed, "whether you want to belong to me for always or for only a brief moment of intoxication. i want to drain my happiness to the full. you are mine now, and i would rather lose you than never to have had you." "now you are sensible," she said. she kissed me again with her murderous lips. i tore the ermine apart and the covering of lace and her naked breast surged against mine. then my senses left me-the first thing i remember is the moment when i saw blood dripping from my hand, and she asked apathetically: "did you scratch me?" "no, i believe, i have bitten you." * * * * * it is strange how every relation in life assumes a different face as soon as a new person enters. we spent marvellous days together; we visited the mountains and lakes, we read together, and i completed wanda's portrait. and how we loved one another, how beautiful her smiling face was! then a friend of hers arrived, a divorced woman somewhat older, more experienced, and less scrupulous than wanda. her influence is already making itself felt in every direction. wanda wrinkles her brows, and displays a certain impatience with me. has she ceased loving me? * * * * * for almost a fortnight this unbearable restraint has lain upon us. her friend lives with her, and we are never alone. a circle of men surrounds the young women. with my seriousness and melancholy i am playing an absurd role as lover. wanda treats me like a stranger. to-day, while out walking, she staid behind with me. i saw that this was done intentionally, and i rejoiced. but what did she tell me? "my friend doesn't understand how i can love you. she doesn't think you either handsome or particularly attractive otherwise. she is telling me from morning till night about the glamour of the frivolous life in the capital, hinting at the advantages to which i could lay claim, the large parties which i would find there, and the distinguished and handsome admirers which i would attract. but of what use is all this, since it happens that i love you." for a moment i lost my breath, then i said: "i have no wish to stand in the way of your happiness, wanda. do not consider me." then i raised my hat, and let her go ahead. she looked at me surprised, but did not answer a syllable. when by chance i happened to be close to her on the way back, she secretly pressed my hand. her glance was so radiant, so full of promised happiness, that in a moment all the torments of these days were forgotten and all their wounds healed. i now am aware again of how much i love her. * * * * * "my friend has complained about you," said wanda to-day. "perhaps she feels that i despise her." "but why do you despise her, you foolish young man?" exclaimed wanda, pulling my ears with both hands. "because she is a hypocrite," i said. "i respect only a woman who is actually virtuous, or who openly lives for pleasure's sake." "like me, for instance," replied wanda jestingly, "but you see, child, a woman can only do that in the rarest cases. she can neither be as gaily sensual, nor as spiritually free as man; her state is always a mixture of the sensual and spiritual. her heart desires to enchain man permanently, while she herself is ever subject to the desire for change. the result is a conflict, and thus usually against her wishes lies and deception enter into her actions and personality and corrupt her character." "certainly that is true," i said. "the transcendental character with which woman wants to stamp love leads her to deception." "but the world likewise demands it," wanda interrupted. "look at this woman. she has a husband and a lover in lemberg and has found a new admirer here. she deceives all three and yet is honored by all and respected by the world." "i don't care," i exclaimed, "but she is to leave you alone; she treats you like an article of commerce." "why not?" the beautiful woman interrupted vivaciously. "every woman has the instinct or desire to draw advantage out of her attractions, and much is to be said for giving one's self without love or pleasure because if you do it in cold blood, you can reap profit to best advantage." "wanda, what are you saying?" "why not?" she said, "and take note of what i am about to say to you. _never feel secure with the woman you love,_ for there are more dangers in woman's nature than you imagine. women are neither as _good_ as their admirers and defenders maintain, nor as _bad_ as their enemies make them out to be. _woman's character is characterlessness._ the best woman will momentarily go down into the mire, and the worst unexpectedly rises to deeds of greatness and goodness and puts to shame those that despise her. no woman is so good or so bad, but that at any moment she is capable of the most diabolical as well as of the most divine, of the filthiest as well as of the purest, thoughts, emotions, and actions. in spite of all the advances of civilization, woman has remained as she came out of the hand of nature. she has the nature of a savage, who is faithful or faithless, magnanimous or cruel, according to the impulse that dominates at the moment. throughout history it has always been a serious deep culture which has produced moral character. man even when he is selfish or evil always follows _principles,_ woman never follows anything but _impulses._ don't ever forget that, and never feel secure with the woman you love." * * * * * her friend has left. at last an evening alone with her again. it seems as if wanda had saved up all the love, which had been kept from her, for this superlative evening; never had she been so kind, so near, so full of tenderness. what happiness to cling to her lips, and to die away in her arms! in a state of relaxation and wholly mine, her head rests against my breast, and with drunken rapture our eyes seek each other. i cannot yet believe, comprehend, that this woman is mine, wholly mine. "she is right on one point," wanda began, without moving, without opening her eyes, as if she were asleep. "who?" she remained silent. "your friend?" she nodded. "yes, she is right, you are not a man, you are a dreamer, a charming cavalier, and you certainly would be a priceless slave, but i cannot imagine you as husband." i was frightened. "what is the matter? you are trembling?" "i tremble at the thought of how easily i might lose you," i replied. "are you made less happy now, because of this?" she replied. "does it rob you of any of your joys, that i have belonged to another before i did to you, that others after you will possess me, and would you enjoy less if another were made happy simultaneously with you?" "wanda!" "you see," she continued, "that would be a way out. you won't ever lose me then. i care deeply for you and intellectually we are harmonious, and i should like to live with you always, if in addition to you i might have--" "what an idea," i cried. "you fill me with a sort of horror." "do you love me any the less?" "on the contrary." wanda had raised herself on her left arm. "i believe," she said, "that to hold a man permanently, it is vitally important not to be faithful to him. what honest woman has ever been as devotedly loved as a hetaira?" "there is a painful stimulus in the unfaithfulness of a beloved woman. it is the highest kind of ecstacy." "for you, too?" wanda asked quickly. "for me, too." "and if i should give you that pleasure," wanda exclaimed mockingly. "i shall suffer terrible agonies, but i shall adore you the more," i replied. "but you would never deceive me, you would have the daemonic greatness of saying to me: i shall love no one but you, but i shall make happy whoever pleases me." wanda shook her head. "i don't like deception, i am honest, but what man exists who can support the burden of truth. were i say to you: this serene, sensual life, this paganism is my ideal, would you be strong enough to bear it?" "certainly. i could endure anything so as not to lose you. i feel how little i really mean to you." "but severin--" "but it is so," said i, "and just for that reason--" "for that reason you would--" she smiled roguishly--"have i guessed it?" "be your slave!" i exclaimed. "be your unrestricted property, without a will of my own, of which you could dispose as you wished, and which would therefore never be a burden to you. while you drink life at its fullness, while surrounded by luxury, you enjoy the serene happiness and olympian love, i want to be your servant, put on and take off your shoes." "you really aren't so far from wrong," replied wanda, "for only as my slave could you endure my loving others. furthermore the freedom of enjoyment of the ancient world is unthinkable without slavery. it must give one a feeling of like unto a god to see a man kneel before one and tremble. i want a slave, do you hear, severin?" "am i not your slave?" "then listen to me," said wanda excitedly, seizing my hand. "i want to be yours, as long as i love you." "a month?" "perhaps, even two." "and then?" "then you become my slave." "and you?" "i? why do you ask? i am a goddess and sometimes i descend from my olympian heights to you, softly, very softly, and secretly. "but what does all this mean," said wanda, resting her head in both hands with her gaze lost in the distance, "a golden fancy which never can become true." an uncanny brooding melancholy seemed shed over her entire being; i have never seen her like that. "why unachievable?" i began. "because slavery doesn't exist any longer." "then we will go to a country where it still exists, to the orient, to turkey," i said eagerly. "you would--severin--in all seriousness," wanda replied. her eyes burned. "yes, in all seriousness, i want to be your slave," i continued. "i want your power over me to be sanctified by law; i want my life to be in your hands, i want nothing that could protect or save me from you. oh, what a voluptuous joy when once i feel myself entirely dependent upon your absolute will, your whim, at your beck and call. and then what happiness, when at some time you deign to be gracious, and the slave may kiss the lips which mean life and death to him." i knelt down, and leaned my burning forehead against her knee. "you are talking as in a fever," said wanda agitatedly, "and you really love me so endlessly." she held me to her breast, and covered me with kisses. "you really want it?" "i swear to you now by god and my honor, that i shall be your slave, wherever and whenever you wish it, as soon as you command," i exclaimed, hardly master of myself. "and if i take you at your word?" said wanda. "please do!" "all this appeals to me," she said then. "it is different from anything else--to know that a man who worships me, and whom i love with all my heart, is so wholly mine, dependent on my will and caprice, my possession and slave, while i--" she looked strangely at me. "if i should become frightfully frivolous you are to blame," she continued. "it almost seems as if you were afraid of me already, but you have sworn." "and i shall keep my oath." "i shall see to that," she replied. "i am beginning to enjoy it, and, heaven help me, we won't stick to fancies now. you shall become my slave, and i--i shall try to be _venus in furs_." * * * * * i thought that at last i knew this woman, understood her, and now i see i have to begin at the very beginning again. only a little while ago her reaction to my dreams was violently hostile, and now she tries to carry them into execution with the soberest seriousness. she has drawn up a contract according to which i give my word of honor and agree under oath to be her slave, as long as she wishes. with her arm around my neck she reads this, unprecedented, incredible document to me. the end of each sentence she punctuates with a kiss. "but all the obligations in the contract are on my side," i said, teasing her. "of course," she replied with great seriousness, "you cease to be my lover, and consequently i am released from all duties and obligations towards you. you will have to look upon my favors as pure benevolence. you no longer have any rights, and no longer can lay claim to any. there can be no limit to my power over you. remember, that you won't be much better than a dog, or some inanimate object. you will be mine, my plaything, which i can break to pieces, whenever i want an hour's amusement. you are nothing, i am everything. do you understand?" she laughed and kissed me again, and yet a sort of cold shiver ran through me. "won't you allow me a few conditions--" i began. "conditions?" she contracted her forehead. "ah! you are afraid already, or perhaps you regret, but it is too late now. you have sworn, i have your word of honor. but let me hear them." "first of all i should like to have it included in our contract, that you will never completely leave me, and then that you will never give me over to the mercies of any of your admirers--" "but severin," exclaimed wanda with her voice full of emotion and with tears in her eyes, "how can you imagine that i--and you, a man who loves me so absolutely, who puts himself so entirely in my power--" she halted. "no, no!" i said, covering her hands with kisses. "i don't fear anything from you that might dishonor me. forgive me the ugly thought." wanda smiled happily, leaned her cheek against mine, and seemed to reflect. "you have forgotten something," she whispered coquettishly, "the most important thing!" "a condition?" "yes, that i must always wear my furs," exclaimed wanda. "but i promise you i'll do that anyhow because they give me a despotic feeling. and i shall be very cruel to you, do you understand?" "shall i sign the contract?" i asked. "not yet," said wanda. "i shall first add your conditions, and the actual signing won't occur until the proper time and place." "in constantinople?" "no. i have thought things over. what special value would there be in owning a slave where everyone owns slaves. what i want is to _have a slave, i alone,_ here in our civilized sober, philistine world, and a slave who submits helplessly to my power solely on account of my beauty and personality, not because of law, of property rights, or compulsions. this attracts me. but at any rate we will go to a country where we are not known and where you can appear before the world as my servant without embarrassment. perhaps to italy, to rome or naples." * * * * * we were sitting on wanda's ottoman. she wore her ermine jacket, her hair was loose and fell like a lion's mane down her back. she clung to my lips, drawing my soul from my body. my head whirled, my blood began to seethe, my heart beat violently against hers. "i want to be absolutely in your power, wanda," i exclaimed suddenly, seized by that frenzy of passion when i can scarcely think clearly or decide freely. "i want to put myself absolutely at your mercy for good or evil without any condition, without any limit to your power." while saying this i had slipped from the ottoman, and lay at her feet looking up at her with drunken eyes. "how beautiful you now are," she exclaimed, "your eyes half-broken in ecstacy fill me with joy, carry me away. how wonderful your look would be if you were being beaten to death, in the extreme agony. you have the eye of a martyr." * * * * * sometimes, nevertheless, i have an uneasy feeling about placing myself so absolutely, so unconditionally into a woman's hands. suppose she did abuse my passion, her power? well, then i would experience what has occupied my imagination since my childhood, what has always given me the feeling of seductive terror. a foolish apprehension! it will be a wanton game she will play with me, nothing more. she loves me, and she is good, a noble personality, incapable of a breach of faith. but it lies in her hands --_if she wants to she can._ what a temptation in this doubt, this fear! now i understand manon l'escault and the poor chevalier, who, even in the pillory, while she was another man's mistress, still adored her. love knows no virtue, no profit; it loves and forgives and suffers everything, because it must. it is not our judgment that leads us; it is neither the advantages nor the faults which we discover, that make us abandon ourselves, or that repel us. it is a sweet, soft, enigmatic power that drives us on. we cease to think, to feel, to will; we let ourselves be carried away by it, and ask not whither? * * * * * a russian prince made his first appearance today on the promenade. he aroused general interest on account of his athletic figure, magnificent face, and splendid bearing. the women particularly gaped at him as though he were a wild animal, but he went his way gloomily without paying attention to any one. he was accompanied by two servants, one a negro, completely dressed in red satin, and the other a circassian in his full gleaming uniform. suddenly he saw wanda, and fixed his cold piercing look upon her; he even turned his head after her, and when she had passed, he stood still and followed her with his eyes. and she--she veritably devoured him with her radiant green eyes--and did everything possible to meet him again. the cunning coquetry with which she walked, moved, and looked at him, almost stifled me. on the way home i remarked about it. she knit her brows. "what do you want," she said, "the prince is a man whom i might like, who even dazzles me, and i am free. i can do what i please--" "don't you love me any longer--" i stammered, frightened. "i love only you," she replied, "but i shall have the prince pay court to me." "wanda!" "aren't you my slave?" she said calmly. "am i not venus, the cruel northern venus in furs?" i was silent. i felt literally crushed by her words; her cold look entered my heart like a dagger. "you will find out immediately the prince's name, residence, and circumstances," she continued. "do you understand?" "but--" "no argument, obey!" exclaimed wanda, more sternly than i would have thought possible for her, "and don't dare to enter my sight until you can answer my questions." it was not till afternoon that i could obtain the desired information for wanda. she let me stand before her like a servant, while she leaned back in her arm-chair and listened to me, smiling. then she nodded; she seemed to be satisfied. "bring me my footstool," she commanded shortly. i obeyed, and after having put it before her and having put her feet on it, i remained kneeling. "how will this end?" i asked sadly after a short pause. she broke into playful laughter. "why things haven't even begun yet." "you are more heartless than i imagined," i replied, hurt. "severin," wanda began earnestly. "i haven't done anything yet, not the slightest thing, and you are already calling me heartless. what will happen when i begin to carry your dreams to their realization, when i shall lead a gay, free life and have a circle of admirers about me, when i shall actually fulfil your ideal, tread you underfoot and apply the lash?" "you take my dreams too seriously." "too seriously? i can't stop at make-believe, when once i begin," she replied. "you know i hate all play-acting and comedy. you have wished it. was it my idea or yours? did i persuade you or did you inflame my imagination? i am taking things seriously now." "wanda," i replied, caressingly, "listen quietly to me. we love each other infinitely, we are very happy, will you sacrifice our entire future to a whim?" "it is no longer a whim," she exclaimed. "what is it?" i asked frightened. "something that was probably latent in me," she said quietly and thoughtfully. "perhaps it would never have come to light, if you had not called it to life, and made it grow. now that it has become a powerful impulse, fills my whole being, now that i enjoy it, now that i cannot and do not want to do otherwise, now you want to back out-you--are you a man?" "dear, sweet wanda!" i began to caress her, kiss her. "don't--you are not a man--" "and you," i flared up. "i am stubborn," she said, "you know that. i haven't a strong imagination, and like you i am weak in execution. but when i make up my mind to do something, i carry it through, and the more certainly, the more opposition i meet. leave me alone!" she pushed me away, and got up. "wanda!" i likewise rose, and stood facing her. "now you know what i am," she continued. "once more i warn you. you still have the choice. i am not compelling you to be my slave." "wanda," i replied with emotion and tears filling my eyes, "don't you know how i love you?" her lips quivered contemptuously. "you are mistaken, you make yourself out worse than you are; you are good and noble by nature--" "what do you know about my nature," she interrupted vehemently, "you will get to know me as i am." "wanda!" "decide, will you submit, unconditionally?" "and if i say no." "then--" she stepped close up to me, cold and contemptuous. as she stood before me now, the arms folded across her breast, with an evil smile about her lips, she was in fact the despotic woman of my dreams. her expression seemed hard, and nothing lay in her eyes that promised kindness or mercy. "well--" she said at last. "you are angry," i cried, "you will punish me." "oh no!" she replied, "i shall let you go. you are free. i am not holding you." "wanda--i, who love you so--" "yes, you, my dear sir, you who adore me," she exclaimed contemptuously, "but who are a coward, a liar, and a breaker of promises. leave me instantly--" "wanda i--" "wretch!" my blood rose in my heart. i threw myself down at her feet and began to cry. "tears, too!" she began to laugh. oh, this laughter was frightful. "leave me--i don't want to see you again." "oh my god!" i cried, beside myself. "i will do whatever you command, be your slave, a mere object with which you can do what you will--only don't send me away--i can't bear it--i cannot live without you." i embraced her knees, and covered her hand with kisses. "yes, you must be a slave, and feel the lash, for you are not a man," she said calmly. she said this to me with perfect composure, not angrily, not even excitedly, and it was what hurt most. "now i know you, your dog-like nature, that adores where it is kicked, and the more, the more it is maltreated. now i know you, and now you shall come to know me." she walked up and down with long strides, while i remained crushed on my knees; my head was hanging supine, tears flowed from my eyes. "come here," wanda commanded harshly, sitting down on the ottoman. i obeyed her command, and sat down beside her. she looked at me sombrely, and then a light suddenly seemed to illuminate the interior of her eye. smiling, she drew me toward her breast, and began to kiss the tears out of my eyes. * * * * * the odd part of my situation is that i am like the bear in lily's park. i can escape and don't want to; i am ready to endure everything as soon as she threatens to set me free. * * * * * if only she would use the whip again. there is something uncanny in the kindness with which she treats me. i seem like a little captive mouse with which a beautiful cat prettily plays. she is ready at any moment to tear it to pieces, and my heart of a mouse threatens to burst. what are her intentions? what does she purpose to do with me? * * * * * it seems she has completely forgotten the contract, my slavehood. or was it actually only stubbornness? and she gave up her whole plan as soon as i no longer opposed her and submitted to her imperial whim? how kind she is to me, how tender, how loving! we are spending marvellously happy days. to-day she had me read to her the scene between faust and mephistopheles, in which the latter appears as a wandering scholar. her glance hung on me with strange pleasure. "i don't understand," she said when i had finished, "how a man who can read such great and beautiful thoughts with such expression, and interpret them so clearly, concisely, and intelligently, can at the same time be such a visionary and supersensual ninny as you are." "were you pleased," said i, and kissed her forehead. she gently stroked my brow. "i love you, severin," she whispered. "i don't believe i could ever love any one more than you. let us be sensible, what do you say?" instead of replying i folded her in my arms; a deep inward, yet vaguely sad happiness filled my breast, my eyes grew moist, and a tear fell upon her hand. "how can you cry!" she exclaimed, "you are a child!" * * * * * on a pleasure drive we met the russian prince in his carriage. he seemed to be unpleasantly surprised to see me by wanda's side, and looked as if he wanted to pierce her through and through with his electric gray eyes. she, however, did not seem to notice him. i felt at that moment like kneeling down before her and kissing her feet. she let her glance glide over him indifferently as though he were an inanimate object, a tree, for instance, and turned to me with her gracious smile. * * * * * when i said good-night to her to-day she seemed suddenly unaccountably distracted and moody. what was occupying her? "i am sorry you are going," she said when i was already standing on the threshold. "it is entirely in your hands to shorten the hard period of my trial, to cease tormenting me--" i pleaded. "do you imagine that this compulsion isn't a torment for me, too," wanda interjected. "then end it," i exclaimed, embracing her, "be my wife." "_never, severin_," she said gently, but with great firmness. "what do you mean?" i was frightened in my innermost soul. "_you are not the man for me._" i looked at her, and slowly withdrew my arm which was still about her waist; then i left the room, and she--she did not call me back. * * * * * a sleepless night; i made countless decisions, only to toss them aside again. in the morning i wrote her a letter in which i declared our relationship dissolved. my hand trembled when i put on the seal, and i burned my fingers. as i went upstairs to hand it to the maid, my knees threatened to give way. the door opened, and wanda thrust forth her head full of curling-papers. "i haven't had my hair dressed yet," she said, smiling. "what have you there?" "a letter--" "for me?" i nodded. "ah, you want to break with me," she exclaimed, mockingly. "didn't you tell me yesterday that i wasn't the man for you?" _"i repeat it now!"_ "very well, then." my whole body was trembling, my voice failed me, and i handed her the letter. "keep it," she said, measuring me coldly. "you forget that is no longer a question as to whether you satisfy me as a man; as a _slave_ you will doubtless do well enough." "madame!" i exclaimed, aghast. "that is what you will call me in the future," replied wanda, throwing back her head with a movement of unutterable contempt. "put your affairs in order within the next twenty-four hours. the day after to-morrow i shall start for italy, and you will accompany me as my servant." "wanda--" "i forbid any sort of familiarity," she said, cutting my words short, "likewise you are not to come in unless i call or ring for you, and you are not to speak to me until you are spoken to. from now on your name is no longer severin, but _gregor_." i trembled with rage, and yet, unfortunately, i cannot deny it, i also felt a strange pleasure and stimulation. "but, madame, you know my circumstances," i began in my confusion. "i am dependent on my father, and i doubt whether he will give me the large sum of money needed for this journey--" "that means you have no money, gregor," said wanda, delightedly, "so much the better, you are then entirely dependent on me, and in fact my slave." "you don't consider," i tried to object, "that as man of honor it is impossible for me--" "i have indeed considered it," she replied almost with a tone of command. "as a man of honor you must keep your oath and redeem your promise to follow me as slave whithersoever i demand and to obey whatever i command. now leave me, gregor!" i turned toward the door. "not yet--you may first kiss my hand." she held it out to me with a certain proud indifference, and i the dilettante, the donkey, the miserable slave pressed it with intense tenderness against my lips which were dry and hot with excitement. there was another gracious nod of the head. then i was dismissed. * * * * * though it was late in the evening my light was still lit, and a fire was burning in the large green stove. there were still many things among my letters and documents to be put in order. autumn, as is usually the case with us, had fallen with all its power. suddenly she knocked at my window with the handle of her whip. i opened and saw her standing outside in her ermine-lined jacket and in a high round cossack cap of ermine of the kind which the great catherine favored. "are you ready, gregor?" she asked darkly. "not yet, mistress," i replied. "i like that word," she said then, "you are always to call me mistress, do you understand? we leave here to-morrow morning at nine o'clock. as far as the district capital you will be my companion and friend, but from the moment that we enter the railway-coach you are my slave, my servant. now close the window, and open the door." after i had done as she had demanded, and after she had entered, she asked, contracting her brows ironically, "well, how do you like me." "wanda, you--" "who gave you permission?" she gave me a blow with the whip. "you are very beautiful, mistress." wanda smiled and sat down in the arm-chair. "kneel down--here beside my chair." i obeyed. "kiss my hand." i seized her small cold hand and kissed it. "and the mouth--" in a surge of passion i threw my arms around the beautiful cruel woman, and covered her face, arms, and breast with glowing kisses. she returned them with equal fervor--the eyelids closed as in a dream. it was after midnight when she left. * * * * * at nine o'clock sharp in the morning everything was ready for departure, as she had ordered. we left the little carpathian health-resort in a comfortable light carriage. the most interesting drama of my life had reached a point of development whose denouement it was then impossible to foretell. so far everything went well. i sat beside wanda, and she chatted very graciously and intelligently with me, as with a good friend, concerning italy, pisemski's new novel, and wagner's music. she wore a sort of amazonesque travelling-dress of black cloth with a short jacket of the same material, set with dark fur. it fitted closely and showed her figure to best advantage. over it she wore dark furs. her hair wound into an antique knot, lay beneath a small dark fur-hat from which a black veil hung. wanda was in very good humor; she fed me candies, played with my hair, loosened my neck cloth and made a pretty cockade of it; she covered my knees with her furs and stealthily pressed the fingers of my hand. when our jewish driver persistently went on nodding to himself, she even gave me a kiss, and her cold lips had the fresh frosty fragrance of a young autumnal rose, which blossoms alone amid bare stalks and yellow leaves and upon whose calyx the first frost has hung tiny diamonds of ice. * * * * * we are at the district capital. we get out at the railway station. wanda throws off her furs and places them over my arm, and goes to secure the tickets. when she returns she has completely changed. "here is your ticket, gregor," she says in a tone which supercilious ladies use to their servants. "a third-class ticket," i reply with comic horror. "of course," she continues, "but now be careful. you won't get on until i am settled in my compartment and don't need you any longer. at each station you will hurry to my car and ask for my orders. don't forget. and now give me my furs." after i had helped her into them, humbly like a slave, she went to find an empty first-class coupe. i followed. supporting herself on my shoulder, she got on and i wrapped her feet in bear-skins and placed them on the warming bottle. then she nodded to me, and dismissed me. i slowly ascended a third-class carriage, which was filled with abominable tobacco-smoke that seemed like the fogs of acheron at the entrance to hades. i now had the leisure to muse about the riddle of human existence, and about its greatest riddle of all--_woman_. * * * * * whenever the train stops, i jump off, run to her carriage, and with drawn cap await her orders. she wants coffee and then a glass of water, at another time a bowl of warm water to wash her hands, and thus it goes on. she lets several men who have entered her compartment pay court to her. i am dying of jealousy and have to leap about like an antelope so as to secure what she wants quickly and not miss the train. in this way the night passes. i haven't had time to eat a mouthful and i can't sleep, i have to breathe the same oniony air with polish peasants, jewish peddlers, and common soldiers. when i mount the steps of her coupe, she is lying stretched out on cushions in her comfortable furs, covered up with the skins of animals. she is like an oriental despot, and the men sit like indian deities, straight upright against the walls and scarcely dare to breathe. * * * * * she stops over in vienna for a day to go shopping, and particularly to buy series of luxurious gowns. she continues to treat me as her servant. i follow her at the respectful distance of ten paces. she hands me her packages without so much as even deigning a kind look, and laden down like a donkey i pant along behind. before leaving she takes all my clothes and gives them to the hotel waiters. i am ordered to put on her livery. it is a cracovian costume in her colors, light-blue with red facings, and red quadrangular cap, ornamented with peacock-feathers. the costume is rather becoming to me. the silver buttons bear her coat of arms. i have the feeling of having been sold or of having bonded myself to the devil. my fair demon leads me from vienna to florence. instead of linen-garbed mazovians and greasy-haired jews, my companions now are curly-haired contadini, a magnificent sergeant of the first italian grenadiers, and a poor german painter. the tobacco smoke no longer smells of onions, but of salami and cheese. night has fallen again. i lie on my wooden bed as on a rack; my arms and legs seem broken. but there nevertheless is an element of poetry in the affair. the stars sparkle round about, the italian sergeant has a face like apollo belvedere, and the german painter sings a lovely german song. "now that all the shadows gather and endless stars grow light, deep yearning on me falls and softly fills the night." "through the sea of dreams sailing without cease, sailing goes my soul in thine to find release." and i am thinking of the beautiful woman who is sleeping in regal comfort among her soft furs. * * * * * florence! crowds, cries, importunate porters and cab-drivers. wanda chooses a carriage, and dismisses the porters. "what have i a servant for," she says, "gregor--here is the ticket-get the luggage." she wraps herself in her furs and sits quietly in the carriage while i drag the heavy trunks hither, one after another. i break down for a moment under the last one; a good-natured _carabiniere_ with an intelligent face comes to my assistance. she laughs. "it must be heavy," said she, "all my furs are in it." i get up on the driver's seat, wiping drops of perspiration from my brow. she gives the name of the hotel, and the driver urges on his horse. in a few minutes we halt at the brilliantly illuminated entrance. "have you any rooms?" she asks the portier. "yes, madame." "two for me, one for my servant, all with stoves." "two first-class rooms for you, madame, both with stoves," replied the waiter who had hastily come up, "and one without heat for your servant." she looked at them, and then abruptly said: "they are satisfactory, have fires built at once; my servant can sleep in the unheated room." i merely looked at her. "bring up the trunks, gregor," she commands, paying no attention to my looks. "in the meantime i'll be dressing, and then will go down to the dining-room, and you can eat something for supper." as she goes into the adjoining room, i drag the trunks upstairs and help the waiter build a fire in her bed-room. he tries to question me in bad french about my employer. with a brief glance i see the blazing fire, the fragrant white poster-bed, and the rugs which cover the floor. tired and hungry i then descend the stairs, and ask for something to eat. a good-natured waiter, who used to be in the austrian army and takes all sorts of pains to entertain me in german, shows me the dining-room and waits on me. i have just had the first fresh drink in thirty-six hours and the first bite of warm food on my fork, when she enters. i rise. "what do you mean by taking me into a dining-room in which my servant is eating," she snaps at the waiter, flaring with anger. she turns around and leaves. meanwhile i thank heaven that i am permitted to go on eating. later i climb the four flights upstairs to my room. my small trunk is already there, and a miserable little oil-lamp is burning. it is a narrow room without fire-place, without a window, but with a small air-hole. if it weren't so beastly cold, it would remind me of one of the venetian _piombi_. [footnote: these were notorious prisons under the leaden roof of the palace of the doges.] involuntarily i have to laugh out aloud, so that it re-echoes, and i am startled by my own laughter. suddenly the door is pulled open and the waiter with a theatrical italian gesture calls "you are to come down to madame, at once." i pick up my cap, stumble down the first few steps, but finally arrive in front of her door on the first floor and knock. "come in!" i enter, shut the door, and stand attention. wanda has made herself comfortable. she is sitting in a neglige of white muslin and laces on a small red divan with her feet on a footstool that matches. she has thrown her fur-cloak about her. it is the identical cloak in which she appeared to me for the first time, as goddess of love. the yellow lights of the candelabra which stand on projections, their reflections in the large mirrors, and the red flames from the open fireplace play beautifully on the green velvet, the dark-brown sable of the cloak, the smooth white skin, and the red, flaming hair of the beautiful woman. her clear, but cold face is turned toward me, and her cold green eyes rest upon me. "i am satisfied with you, gregor," she began. i bowed. "come closer." i obeyed. "still closer," she looked down, and stroked the sable with her hand. "venus in furs receives her slave. i can see that you are more than an ordinary dreamer, you don't remain far in arrears of your dreams; you are the sort of man who is ready to carry his dreams into effect, no matter how mad they are. i confess, i like this; it impresses me. there is strength in this, and strength is the only thing one respects. i actually believe that under unusual circumstances, in a period of great deeds, what seems to be your weakness would reveal itself as extraordinary power. under the early emperors you would have been a martyr, at the time of the reformation an anabaptist, during the french revolution one of those inspired girondists who mounted the guillotine with the marseillaise on their lips. but you are my slave, my--" she suddenly leaped up; the furs slipped down, and she threw her arms with soft pressure about my neck. "my beloved slave, severin, oh, how i love you, how i adore you, how handsome you are in your cracovian costume! you will be cold to-night up in your wretched room without a fire. shall i give you one of my furs, dear heart, the large one there--" she quickly picked it up, throwing it over my shoulders, and before i knew what had happened i was completely wrapped up in it. "how wonderfully becoming furs are to your face, they bring out your noble lines. as soon as you cease being my slave, you must wear a velvet coat with sable, do you understand? otherwise i shall never put on my fur-jacket again." and again she began to caress me and kiss me; finally she drew me down on the little divan. "you seem to be pleased with yourself in furs," she said. "quick, quick, give them to me, or i will lose all sense of dignity." i placed the furs about her, and wanda slipped her right arm into the sleeve. "this is the pose in titian's picture. but now enough of joking. don't always look so solemn, it makes me feel sad. as far as the world is concerned you are still merely my servant; you are not yet my slave, for you have not yet signed the contract. you are still free, and can leave me any moment. you have played your part magnificently. i have been delighted, but aren't you tired of it already, and don't you think i am abominable? well, say something--i command it." "must i confess to you, wanda?" i began. "yes, you must." "even if you take advantage of it," i continued, "i shall love you the more deeply, adore you the more fanatically, the worse you treat me. what you have just done inflames my blood and intoxicates all my senses." i held her close to me and clung for several moments to her moist lips. "oh, you beautiful woman," i then exclaimed, looking at her. in my enthusiasm i tore the sable from her shoulders and pressed my mouth against her neck. "you love me even when i am cruel," said wanda, "now go!--you bore me--don't you hear?" she boxed my ears so that i saw stars and bells rang in my ears. "help me into my furs, slave." i helped her, as well as i could. "how awkward," she exclaimed, and was scarcely in it before she struck me in the face again. i felt myself growing pale. "did i hurt you?" she asked, softly touching me with her hand. "no, no," i exclaimed. "at any rate you have no reason to complain, you want it thus; now kiss me again." i threw my arms about her, and her lips clung closely to mine. as she lay against my breast in her large heavy furs, i had a curiously oppressive sensation. it was as if a wild beast, a she-bear, were embracing me. it seemed as if i were about to feel her claws in my flesh. but this time the she-bear let me off easily. with my heart filled with smiling hopes, i went up to my miserable servant's room, and threw myself down on my hard couch. "life is really amazingly droll," i thought. "a short time ago the most beautiful woman, venus herself, rested against your breast, and now you have an opportunity for studying the chinese hell. unlike us, they don't hurl the damned into flames, but they have devils chasing them out into fields of ice. "very likely the founders of their religion also slept in unheated rooms." * * * * * during the night i startled out of my sleep with a scream. i had been dreaming of an icefield in which i had lost my way; i had been looking in vain for a way out. suddenly an eskimo drove up in a sleigh harnessed with reindeer; he had the face of the waiter who had shown me to the unheated room. "what are you looking for here, my dear sir?" he exclaimed. "this is the north pole." a moment later he had disappeared, and wanda flew over the smooth ice on tiny skates. her white satin skirt fluttered and crackled; the ermine of her jacket and cap, but especially her face, gleamed whiter than the snow. she shot toward me, inclosed me in her arms, and began to kiss me. suddenly i felt my blood running warm down my side. "what are you doing?" i asked horror-stricken. she laughed, and as i looked at her now, it was no longer wanda, but a huge, white she-bear, who was digging her paws into my body. i cried out in despair, and still heard her diabolical laughter when i awoke, and looked about the room in surprise. early in the morning i stood at wanda's door, and the waiter brought the coffee. i took it from him, and served it to my beautiful mistress. she had already dressed, and looked magnificent, all fresh and roseate. she smiled graciously at me and called me back, when i was about to withdraw respectfully. "come, gregor, have your breakfast quickly too," she said, "then we will go house-hunting. i don't want to stay in the hotel any longer than i have to. it is very embarassing here. if i chat with you for more than a minute, people will immediately say: 'the fair russian is having an affair with her servant, you see, the race of catherines isn't extinct yet.'" half an hour later we went out; wanda was in her cloth-gown with the russian cap, and i in my cracovian costume. we created quite a stir. i walked about ten paces behind, looking very solemn, but expected momentarily to have to break out into loud laughter. there was scarcely a street in which one or the other of the attractive houses did not bear the sign _camere ammobiliate_. wanda always sent me upstairs, and only when the apartment seemed to answer her requirements did she herself ascend. by noon i was as tired as a stag-hound after the hunt. we entered a new house and left it again without having found a suitable habitation. wanda was already somewhat out of humor. suddenly she said to me: "severin, the seriousness with which you play your part is charming, and the restrictions, which we have placed upon each other are really annoying me. i can't stand it any longer, i do love you, i must kiss you. let's go into one of the houses." "but, my lady--" i interposed. "gregor?" she entered the next open corridor and ascended a few steps of the dark stair-way; then she threw her arms about me with passionate tenderness and kissed me. "oh, severin, you were very wise. you are much more dangerous as slave than i would have imagined; you are positively irrestible, and i am afraid i shall have to fall in love with you again." "don't you love me any longer then," i asked seized by a sudden fright. she solemnly shook her head, but kissed me again with her swelling, adorable lips. we returned to the hotel. wanda had luncheon, and ordered me also quickly to get something to eat. of course, i wasn't served as quickly as she, and so it happened that just as i was carrying the second bite of my steak to my mouth, the waiter entered and called out with his theatrical gesture: "madame wants you, at once." i took a rapid and painful leave of my food, and, tired and hungry, hurried toward wanda, who was already on the street. "i wouldn't have imagined you could be so cruel," i said reproachfully. "with all these, fatiguing duties you don't even leave me time to eat in peace." wanda laughed gaily. "i thought you had finished," she said, "but never mind. man was born to suffer, and you in particular. the martyrs didn't have any beefsteaks either." i followed her resentfully, gnawing at my hunger. "i have given up the idea of finding a place in the city," wanda continued. "it will be difficult to find an entire floor which is shut off and where you can do as you please. in such a strange, mad relationship as ours there must be no jarring note. i shall rent an entire villa--and you will be surprised. you have my permission now to satisfy your hunger, and look about a bit in florence. i won't be home till evening. if i need you then, i will have you called." i looked at the duomo, the palazzo vecchio, the logia di lanzi, and then i stood for a long time on the banks of the arno. again and again i let my eyes rest on the magnificent ancient florence, whose round cupolas and towers were drawn in soft lines against the blue, cloudless sky. i watched its splendid bridges beneath whose wide arches the lively waves of the beautiful, yellow river ran, and the green hills which surrounded the city, bearing slender cypresses and extensive buildings, palaces and monasteries. it is a different world, this one in which we are--a gay, sensuous, smiling world. the landscape too has nothing of the seriousness and somberness of ours. it is a long ways off to the last white villas scattered among the pale green of the mountains, and yet there isn't a spot that isn't bright with sunlight. the people are less serious than we; perhaps, they think less, but they all look as though they were happy. it is also maintained that death is easier in the south. i have a vague feeling now that such a thing as beauty without thorn and love of the senses without torment does exist. wanda has discovered a delightful little villa and rented it for the winter. it is situated on a charming hill on the left bank of the arno, opposite the cascine. it is surrounded by an attractive garden with lovely paths, grass plots, and magnificent meadow of camelias. it is only two stories high, quadrangular in the italian fashion. an open gallery runs along one side, a sort of loggia with plaster-casts of antique statues; stone steps lead from it down into the garden. from the gallery you enter a bath with a magnificent marble basin, from which winding stairs lead to my mistress' bed-chamber. wanda occupies the second story by herself. a room on the ground floor has been assigned to me; it is very attractive, and even has a fireplace. i have roamed through the garden. on a round hillock i discovered a little temple, but i found its door locked. however, there is a chink in the door and when i glue my eye to it, i see the goddess of love on a white pedestal. a slight shudder passes over me. it seems to me as if she were smiling at me saying: "are you there? i have been expecting you." * * * * * it is evening. an attractive maid brings me orders to appear before my mistress. i ascend the wide marble stairs, pass through the anteroom, a large salon furnished with extravagant magnificence, and knock at the door of the bedroom. i knock very softly for the luxury displayed everywhere intimidates me. consequently no one hears me, and i stand for some time in front of the door. i have a feeling as if i were standing before the bed-room of the great catherine, and it seems as if at any moment she might come out in her green sleeping furs, with the red ribbon and decoration on her bare breast, and with her little white powdered curls. i knocked again. wanda impatiently pulls the door open. "why so late?" she asks. "i was standing in front of the door, but you didn't hear me knock," i reply timidly. she closes the door, and clinging to me, she leads me to the red damask ottoman on which she had been resting. the entire arrangement of the room is in red damask--wall-paper, curtains, portieres, hangings of the bed. a magnificent painting of samson and delilah forms the ceiling. wanda receives me in an intoxicating dishabille. her white satin dress flows gracefully and picturesquely down her slender body, leaving her arms and breast bare, and carelessly they nestle amid the dark hair of the great fur of sable, lined with green velvet. her red hair falls down her back as far as the hips, only half held by strings of black pearls. "venus in furs," i whisper, while she draws me to her breast and threatens to stifle me with her kisses. then i no longer speak and neither do i think; everything is drowned out in an ocean of unimagined bliss. "do you still love me?" she asks, her eye softening in passionate tenderness. "you ask!" i exclaimed. "you still remember your oath," she continued with an alluring smile, "now that everything is prepared, everything in readiness, i ask you once more, is it still your serious wish to become my slave?" "am i not ready?" i asked in surprise. "you have not yet signed the papers." "papers--what papers?" "oh, i see, you want to give it up," she said, "well then, we will let it go." "but wanda," i said, "you know that nothing gives me greater happiness than to serve you, to be your slave. i would give everything for the sake of feeling myself wholly in your power, even unto death--" "how beautiful you are," she whispered, "when you speak so enthusiastically, so passionately. i am more in love with you than ever and you want me to be dominant, stern, and cruel. i am afraid, it will be impossible for me to be so." "i am not afraid," i replied smiling, "where are the papers?'" "so that you may know what it means to be absolutely in my power, i have drafted a second agreement in which you declare that you have decided to kill yourself. in that way i can even kill you, if i so desire." "give them to me." while i was unfolding the documents and reading them, wanda got pen and ink. she then sat down beside me with her arm about my neck, and looked over my shoulder at the paper. the first one read: agreement between mme. von dunajew and severin von kusiemski "severin von kusiemski ceases with the present day being the affianced of mme. wanda von dunajew, and renounces all the rights appertaining thereunto; he on the contrary binds himself on his word of honor as a man and nobleman, that hereafter he will be her _slave_ until such time that she herself sets him at liberty again. "as the slave of mme. von dunajew he is to bear the name gregor, and he is unconditionally to comply with every one of her wishes, and to obey every one of her commands; he is always to be submissive to his mistress, and is to consider her every sign of favor as an extraordinary mercy. "mme. von dunajew is entitled not only to punish her slave as she deems best, even for the slightest inadvertence or fault, but also is herewith given the right to torture him as the mood may seize her or merely for the sake of whiling away the time. should she so desire, she may kill him whenever she wishes; in short, he is her unrestricted property. "should mme. von dunajew ever set her slave at liberty, severin von kusiemski agrees to forget everything that he has experienced or suffered as her slave, and promises _never under any circumstances and in no wise to think of vengeance or retaliation_. "mme. von dunajew on her behalf agrees as his mistress to appear as often as possible in her furs, especially when she purposes some cruelty toward her slave." appended at the bottom of the agreement was the date of the present day. the second document contained only a few words. "having since many years become weary of existence and its illusions, i have of my own free will put an end to my worthless life." i was seized with a deep horror when i had finished. there was still time, i could still withdraw, but the madness of passion and the sight of the beautiful woman that lay all relaxed against my shoulder carried me away. "this one you will have to copy, severin," said wanda, indicating the second document. "it has to be entirely in your own handwriting; this, of course, isn't necessary in the case of the agreement." i quickly copied the few lines in which i designated myself a suicide, and handed them to wanda. she read them, and put them on the table with a smile. "now have you the courage to sign it?" she asked with a crafty smile, inclining her head. i took the pen. "let me sign first," said wanda, "your hand is trembling, are you afraid of the happiness that is to be yours?" she took the agreement and pen. while engaging in my internal struggle, i looked upward for a moment. it occurred to me that the painting on the ceiling, like many of those of the italian and dutch schools, was utterly unhistorical, but this very fact gave it a strange mood which had an almost uncanny effect on me. delilah, an opulent woman with flaming red hair, lay extended, half-disrobed, in a dark fur-cloak, upon a red ottoman, and bent smiling over samson who had been overthrown and bound by the philistines. her smile in its mocking coquetry was full of a diabolical cruelty; her eyes, half-closed, met samson's, and his with a last look of insane passion cling to hers, for already one of his enemies is kneeling on his breast with the red-hot iron to blind him. "now--" said wanda. "why you are all lost in thought. what is the matter with you, everything will remain just as it was, even after you have signed, don't you know me yet, dear heart?" i looked at the agreement. her name was written there in bold letters. i peered once more into her eyes with their potent magic, then i took the pen and quickly signed the agreement. "you are trembling," said wanda calmly, "shall i help you?" she gently took hold of my hand, and my name appeared at the bottom of the second paper. wanda looked once more at the two documents, and then locked them in the desk which stood at the head of the ottoman. "now then, give me your passport and money." i took out my wallet and handed it to her. she inspected it, nodded, and put it with other things while in a sweet drunkenness i kneeled before her leaning my head against her breast. suddenly she thrusts me away with her foot, leaps up, and pulls the bell-rope. in answer to its sound three young, slender negresses enter; they are as if carved of ebony, and are dressed from head to foot in red satin; each one has a rope in her hand. suddenly i realize my position, and am about to rise. wanda stands proudly erect, her cold beautiful face with its sombre brows and contemptous eyes is turned toward me. she stands before me as mistress, commanding, gives a sign with her hand, and before i really know what has happened to me the negresses have dragged me to the ground, and have tied me hand and foot. as in the case of one about to be executed my arms are bound behind my back, so that i can scarcely move. "give me the whip, haydee," commands wanda, with unearthly calm. the negress hands it to her mistress, kneeling. "and now take off my heavy furs," she continues, "they impede me." the negress obeyed. "the jacket there!" wanda commanded. haydee quickly brought her the _kazabaika_, set with ermine, which lay on the bed, and wanda slipped into it with two inimitably graceful movements. "now tie him to the pillar here!" the negresses lifted me up, and twisting a heavy rope around my body, tied me standing against one of the massive pillars which supported the top of the wide italian bed. then they suddenly disappeared, as if the earth had swallowed them. wanda swiftly approached me. her white satin dress flowed behind her in a long train, like silver, like moonlight; her hair flared like flames against the white fur of her jacket. now she stood in front of me with her left hand firmly planted on her hips, in her right hand she held the whip. she uttered an abrupt laugh. "now play has come to an end between us," she said with heartless coldness. "now we will begin in dead earnest. you fool, i laugh at you and despise you; you who in your insane infatuation have given yourself as a plaything to _me_, the frivolous and capricious woman. you are no longer the man i love, but _my slave_, at my mercy even unto life and death. "you shall know me! "first of all you shall have a taste of the whip in all seriousness, without having done anything to deserve it, so that you may understand what to expect, if you are awkward, disobedient, or refractory." with a wild grace she rolled back her fur-lined sleeve, and struck me across the back. i winced, for the whip cut like a knife into my flesh. "well, how do you like that?" she exclaimed. i was silent. "just wait, you will yet whine like a dog beneath my whip," she threatened, and simultaneously began to strike me again. the blows fell quickly, in rapid succession, with terrific force upon my back, arms, and neck; i had to grit my teeth not to scream aloud. now she struck me in the face, warm blood ran down, but she laughed, and continued her blows. "it is only now i understand you," she exclaimed. "it really is a joy to have some one so completely in one's power, and a man at that, who loves you--you do love me?--no--oh! i'll tear you to shreds yet, and with each blow my pleasure will grow. now, twist like a worm, scream, whine! you will find no mercy in me!" finally she seemed tired. she tossed the whip aside, stretched out on the ottoman, and rang. the negresses entered. "untie him!" as they loosened the rope, i fell to the floor like a lump of wood. the black women grinned, showing their white teeth. "untie the rope around his feet." they did it, but i was unable to rise. "come over here, gregor." i approached the beautiful woman. never did she seem more seductive to me than to-day in spite of all her cruelty and contempt. "one step further," wanda commanded. "now kneel down, and kiss my foot." she extended her foot beyond the hem of white satin, and i, the supersensual fool, pressed my lips upon it. "now, you won't lay eyes on me for an entire month, gregor," she said seriously. "i want to become a stranger to you, so you will more easily adjust yourself to our new relationship. in the meantime you will work in the garden, and await my orders. now, off with you, slave!" * * * * * a month has passed with monotonous regularity, heavy work, and a melancholy hunger, hunger for her, who is inflicting all these torments on me. i am under the gardener's orders; i help him lop the trees and prune the hedges, transplant flowers, turn over the flower beds, sweep the gravel paths; i share his coarse food and his hard cot; i rise and go to bed with the chickens. now and then i hear that our mistress is amusing herself, surrounded by admirers. once i heard her gay laughter even down here in the garden. i seem awfully stupid to myself. was it the result of my present life, or was i so before? the month is drawing to a close--the day after to-morrow. what will she do with me now, or has she forgotten me, and left me to trim hedges and bind bouquets till my dying day? a written order. "the slave gregor is herewith ordered to my personal service. wanda dunajew." with a beating heart i draw aside the damask curtain on the following morning, and enter the bed-room of my divinity. it is still filled with a pleasant half darkness. "is it you, gregor?" she asks, while i kneel before the fire-place, building a fire. i tremble at the sound of the beloved voice. i cannot see her herself; she is invisible behind the curtains of the four-poster bed. "yes, my mistress," i reply. "how late is it?" "past nine o'clock." "breakfast." i hasten to get it, and then kneel down with the tray beside her bed. "here is breakfast, my mistress." wanda draws back the curtains, and curiously enough at the first glance when i see her among the pillows with loosened flowing hair, she seems an absolute stranger, a beautiful woman, but the beloved soft lines are gone. this face is hard and has an expression of weariness and satiety. or is it simply that formerly my eye did not see this? she fixes her green eyes upon me, more with curiosity than with menace, perhaps even somewhat pityingly, and lazily pulls the dark sleeping fur on which she lies over the bared shoulder. at this moment she is very charming, very maddening, and i feel my blood rising to my head and heart. the tray in my hands begins to sway. she notices it and reached out for the whip which is lying on the toilet-table. "you are awkward, slave," she says furrowing her brow. i lower my looks to the ground, and hold the tray as steadily as possible. she eats her breakfast, yawns, and stretches her opulent limbs in the magnificent furs. she has rung. i enter. "take this letter to prince corsini." i hurry into the city, and hand the letter to the prince. he is a handsome young man with glowing black eyes. consumed with jealousy, i take his answer to her. "what is the matter with you?" she asks with lurking spitefulness. "you are very pale." "nothing, mistress, i merely walked rather fast." at luncheon the prince is at her side, and i am condemned to serve both her and him. they joke, and i am, as if non-existent, for both. for a brief moment i see black; i was just pouring some bordeaux into his glass, and spilled it over the table-cloth and her gown. "how awkward," wanda exclaimed and slapped my face. the prince laughed, and she also, but i felt the blood rising to my face. after luncheon she drove in the cascine. she has a little carriage with a handsome, brown english horse, and holds the reins herself. i sit behind and notice how coquettishly she acts, and nods with a smile when one of the distinguished gentlemen bows to her. as i help her out of the carriage, she leans lightly on my arm; the contact runs through me like an electric shock. she _is_ a wonderful woman, and i love her more than ever. * * * * * for dinner at six she has invited a small group of men and women. i serve, but this time i do not spill any wine over the table-cloth. a slap in the face is more effective than ten lectures. it makes you understand very quickly, especially when the instruction is by the way of a small woman's hand. * * * * * after dinner she drives to the pergola theater. as she descends the stairs in her black velvet dress with its large collar of ermine and with a diadem of white roses on her hair, she is literally stunning. i open the carriage-door, and help her in. in front of the theater i leap from the driver's seat, and in alighting she leaned on my arm, which trembled under the sweet burden. i open the door of her box, and then wait in the vestibule. the performance lasts four hours; she receives visits from her cavaliers, the while i grit my teeth with rage. it is way beyond midnight when my mistress's bell sounds for the last time. "fire!" she orders abruptly, and when the fire-place crackles, "tea!" when i return with the samovar, she has already undressed, and with the aid of the negress slipped into a white negligee. haydee thereupon leaves. "hand me the sleeping-furs," says wanda, sleepily stretching her lovely limbs. i take them from the arm-chair, and hold them while she slowly and lazily slides into the sleeves. she then throws herself down on the cushions of the ottoman. "take off my shoes, and put on my velvet slippers." i kneel down and tug at the little shoe which resists my efforts. "hurry, hurry!" wanda exclaims, "you are hurting me! just you wait--i will teach you." she strikes me with the whip, but now the shoe is off. "now get out!" still a kick--and then i can go to bed. * * * * * to-night i accompanied her to a soiree. in the entrance-hall she ordered me to help her out of her furs; then with a proud smile, confident of victory, she entered the brilliantly illuminated room. i again waited with gloomy and monotonous thoughts, watching hour after hour run by. from time to time the sounds of music reached me, when the door remained open for a moment. several servants tried to start a conversation with me, but soon desisted, since i knew only a few words of italian. finally i fell asleep, and dreamed that i murdered wanda in a violent attack of jealousy. i was condemned to death, and saw myself strapped on the board; the knife fell, i felt it on my neck, but i was still alive-then the executioner slapped my face. no, it wasn't the executioner; it was wanda who stood wrathfully before me demanding her furs. i am at her side in a moment, and help her on with it. there is a deep joy in wrapping a beautiful woman into her furs, and in seeing and feeling how her neck and magnificent limbs nestle in the precious soft furs, and to lift the flowing hair over the collar. when she throws it off a soft warmth and a faint fragrance of her body still clings to the ends of the hairs of sable. it is enough to drive one mad. * * * * * finally a day came when there were neither guests, nor theater, nor other company. i breathed a sigh of relief. wanda sat in the gallery, reading, and apparently had no orders for me. at dusk when the silvery evening mists fell she withdrew. i served her at dinner, she ate by herself, but had not a look, not a syllable for me, not even a slap in the face. i actually desire a slap from her hand. tears fill my eyes, and i feel that she has humiliated me so deeply, that she doesn't even find it worth while to torture or maltreat me any further. before she goes to bed, her bell calls me. "you will sleep here to-night, i had horrible dreams last night, and am afraid of being alone. take one of the cushions from the ottoman, and lie down on the bearskin at my feet." then wanda put out the lights. the only illumination in the room was from a small lamp suspended from the ceiling. she herself got into bed. "don't stir, so as not to wake me." i did as she had commanded, but could not fall asleep for a long time. i saw the beautiful woman, beautiful as a goddess, lying on her back on the dark sleeping-furs; her arms beneath her neck, with a flood of red hair over them. i heard her magnificent breast rise in deep regular breathing, and whenever she moved ever so slightly. i woke up and listened to see whether she needed me. but she did not require me. no task was required of me; i meant no more to her than a night-lamp, or a revolver which one places under one's pillow. * * * * * am i mad or is she? does all this arise out of an inventive, wanton woman's brain with the intention of surpassing my supersensual fantasies, or is this woman really one of those neronian characters who take a diabolical pleasure in treading underfoot, like a worm, human beings, who have thoughts and feelings and a will like theirs? what have i experienced? when i knelt with the coffee-tray beside her bed, wanda suddenly placed her hand on my shoulder and her eyes plunged deep into mine. "what beautiful eyes you have," she said softly, "and especially now since you suffer. are you very unhappy?" i bowed my head, and kept silent. "severin, do you still love me," she suddenly exclaimed passionately, "can you still love me?" she drew me close with such vehemence that the coffee-tray upset, the can and cups fell to the floor, and the coffee ran over the carpet. "wanda--my wanda," i cried out and held her passionately against me; i covered her mouth, face, and breast with kisses. "it is my unhappiness that i love you more and more madly the worse you treat me, the more frequently you betray me. oh, i shall die of pain and love and jealousy." "but i haven't betrayed you, as yet, severin," replied wanda smiling. "not? wanda! don't jest so mercilessly with me," i cried. "haven't i myself taken the letter to the prince--" "of course, it was an invitation for luncheon." "you have, since we have been in florence--" "i have been absolutely faithful to you," replied wanda, "i swear it by all that is holy to me. all that i have done was merely to fulfill your dream and it was done for your sake. "however, i shall take a lover, otherwise things will be only half accomplished, and in the end you will yet reproach me with not having treated you cruelly enough, my dear beautiful slave! but to-day you shall be severin again, the only one i love. i haven't given away your clothes. they are here in the chest. go and dress as you used to in the little carpathian health-resort when our love was so intimate. forget everything that has happened since; oh, you will forget it easily in my arms; i shall kiss away all your sorrows." she began to treat me tenderly like a child, to kiss me and caress me. finally she said with a gracious smile, "go now and dress, i too will dress. shall i put on my fur-jacket? oh yes, i know, now run along!" when i returned she was standing in the center of the room in her white satin dress, and the red _kazabaika_ edged with ermine; her hair was white with powder and over her forehead she wore a small diamond diadem. for a moment she reminded me in an uncanny way of catherine the second, but she did not give me much time for reminiscences. she drew me down on the ottoman beside her and we enjoyed two blissful hours. she was no longer the stern capricious mistress, she was entirely a fine lady, a tender sweetheart. she showed me photographs and books which had just appeared, and talked about them with so much intelligence, clarity, and good taste, that i more than once carried her hand to my lips, enraptured. she then had me recite several of lermontov's poems, and when i was all afire with enthusiasm, she placed her small hand gently on mine. her expression was soft, and her eyes were filled with tender pleasure. "are you happy?" "not yet." she then leaned back on the cushions, and slowly opened her _kazabaika_. but i quickly covered the half-bared breast again with the ermine. "you are driving me mad." i stammered. "come!" i was already lying in her arms, and like a serpent she was kissing me with her tongue, when again she whispered, "are you happy?" "infinitely!" i exclaimed. she laughed aloud. it was an evil, shrill laugh which made cold shivers run down by back. "you used to dream of being the slave, the plaything of a beautiful woman, and now you imagine you are a free human being, a man, my lover-you fool! a sign from me, and you are a slave again. down on your knees!" i sank down from the ottoman to her feet, but my eye still clung doubtingly on hers. "you can't believe it," she said, looking at me with her arms folded across her breast. "i am bored, and you will just do to while away a couple of hours of time. don't look at me that way--" she kicked me with her foot. "you are just what i want, a human being, a thing, an animal--" she rang. the three negresses entered. "tie his hands behind his back." i remained kneeling and unresistingly let them do this. they led me into the garden, down to the little vineyard, which forms the southern boundary. corn had been planted between the espaliers, and here and there a few dead stalks still stood. to one side was a plough. the negresses tied me to a post, and amused themselves sticking me with their golden hair-needles. but this did not last long, before wanda appeared with her ermine cap on her head, and with her hands in the pockets of her jacket. she had me untied, and then my hands were fastened together on my back. she finally had a yoke put around my neck, and harnessed me to the plough. then her black demons drove me out into the field. one of them held the plough, the other one led me by a line, the third applied the whip, and venus in furs stood to one side and looked on. * * * * * when i was serving dinner on the following day wanda said: "bring another cover, i want you to dine with me to-day," and when i was about to sit down opposite her, she added, "no, over here, close by my side." she is in the best of humors, gives me soup with her spoon, feeds me with her fork, and places her head on the table like a playful kitten and flirts with me. i have the misfortune of looking at haydee, who serves in my place, perhaps a little longer than is necessary. it is only now that i noticed her noble, almost european cast of countenance and her magnificent statuesque bust, which is as if hewn out of black marble. the black devil observes that she pleases me, and, grinning, shows her teeth. she has hardly left the room, before wanda leaps up in a rage. "what, you dare to look at another woman besides me! perhaps you like her even better than you do me, she is even more demonic!" i am frightened; i have never seen her like this before; she is suddenly pale even to the lips and her whole body trembles. venus in furs is jealous of her slave. she snatches the whip from its hook and strikes me in the face; then she calls her black servants, who bind me, and carry me down into the cellar, where they throw me into a dark, dank, subterranean compartment, a veritable prison-cell. then the lock of the door clicks, the bolts are drawn, a key sings in the lock. i am a prisoner, buried. i have been lying here for i don't know how long, bound like a calf about to be hauled to the slaughter, on a bundle of damp straw, without any light, without food, without drink, without sleep. it would be like her to let me starve to death, if i don't freeze to death before then. i am shaking with cold. or is it fever? i believe i am beginning to hate this woman. * * * * * a red streak, like blood, floods across the floor; it is a light falling through the door which is now thrust open. wanda appears on the threshold, wrapped in her sables, holding a lighted torch. "are you still alive?" she asks. "are you coming to kill me?" i reply with a low, hoarse voice. with two rapid strides wanda reaches my side, she kneels down beside me, and places my head in her lap. "are you ill? your eyes glow so, do you love me? i want you to love me." she draws forth a short dagger. i start with fright when its blade gleams in front of my eyes. i actually believe that she is about to kill me. she laughs, and cuts the ropes that bind me. * * * * * every evening after dinner she now has me called. i have to read to her, and she discusses with me all sorts of interesting problems and subjects. she seems entirely transformed; it is as if she were ashamed of the savagery which she betrayed to me and of the cruelty with which she treated me. a touching gentleness transfigures her entire being, and when at the good-night she gives me her hand, a superhuman power of goodness and love lies in her eyes, of the kind which calls forth tears in us and causes us to forget all the miseries of existence and all the terrors of death. * * * * * i am reading _manon l'escault_ to her. she feels the association, she doesn't say a word, but she smiles from time to time, and finally she shuts up the little book. "don't you want to go on reading?" "not to-day. we will ourselves act _manon l'escault_ to-day. i have a rendezvous in the cascine, and you, my dear chevalier, will accompany me; i know, you will do it, won't you?" "you command it." "i do not command it, i beg it of you," she says with irresistible charm. she then rises, puts her hands on my shoulders, and looks at me. "your eyes!" she exclaims. "i love you, severin, you have no idea how i love you!" "yes, i have!" i replied bitterly, "so much so that you have arranged for a rendezvous with some one else." "i do this only to allure you the more," she replied vivaciously. "i must have admirers, so as not to lose you. i don't ever want to lose you, never, do you hear, for i love only you, you alone." she clung passionately to my lips. "oh, if i only could, as i would, give you all of my soul in a kiss-thus--but now come." she slipped into a simple black velvet coat, and put a dark _bashlyk_ [footnote: a kind of russian cap.] on her head. then she rapidly went through the gallery, and entered the carriage. "gregor will drive," she called out to the coachman who withdrew in surprise. i ascended the driver's seat, and angrily whipped up the horses. in the cascine where the main roadway turns into a leafy path, wanda got out. it was night, only occasional stars shone through the gray clouds that fled across the sky. by the bank of the arno stood a man in a dark cloak, with a brigand's hat, and looked at the yellow waves. wanda rapidly walked through the shrubbery, and tapped him on the shoulder. i saw him turn and seize her hand, and then they disappeared behind the green wall. an hour full of torments. finally there was a rustling in the bushes to one side, and they returned. the man accompanied her to the carriage. the light of the lamp fell full and glaringly upon an infinitely young, soft and dreamy face which i had never before seen, and played in his long, blond curls. she held out her hand which he kissed with deep respect, then she signaled to me, and immediately the carriage flew along the leafy wall which follows the river like a long green screen. * * * * * the bell at the garden-gate rings. it is a familiar face. the man from the cascine. "whom shall i announce?" i ask him in french. he timidly shakes his head. "do you, perhaps, understand some german?" he asks shyly. "yes. your name, please." "oh! i haven't any yet," he replies, embarrassed--"tell your mistress the german painter from the cascine is here and would like-but there she is herself." wanda had stepped out on the balcony, and nodded toward the stranger. "gregor, show the gentleman in!" she called to me. i showed the painter the stairs. "thanks, i'll find her now, thanks, thanks very much." he ran up the steps. i remained standing below, and looked with deep pity on the poor german. venus in furs has caught his soul in the red snares of hair. he will paint her, and go mad. * * * * * it is a sunny winter's day. something that looks like gold trembles on the leaves of the clusters of trees down below in the green level of the meadow. the camelias at the foot of the gallery are glorious in their abundant buds. wanda is sitting in the loggia; she is drawing. the german painter stands opposite her with his hands folded as in adoration, and looks at her. no, he rather looks at her face, and is entirely absorbed in it, enraptured. but she does not see him, neither does she see me, who with the spade in my hand am turning over the flower-bed, solely that i may see her and feel her nearness, which produces an effect on me like poetry, like music. * * * * * the painter has gone. it is a hazardous thing to do, but i risk it. i go up to the gallery, quite close, and ask wanda "do you love the painter, mistress?" she looks at me without getting angry, shakes her head, and finally even smiles. "i feel sorry for him," she replies, "but i do not love him. i love no one. _i used to love you, as ardently, as passionately, as deeply as it was possible for me to love,_ but now i don't love even you any more; my heart is a void, dead, and this makes me sad." "wanda!" i exclaimed, deeply moved. "soon, you too will no longer love me," she continued, "tell me when you have reached that point, and i will give back to you your freedom." "then i shall remain your slave, all my life long, for i adore you and shall always adore you," i cried, seized by that fanaticism of love which has repeatedly been so fatal to me. wanda looked at me with a curious pleasure. "consider well what you do," she said. "i have loved you infinitely and have been despotic towards you so that i might fulfil your dream. something of my old feeling, a sort of real sympathy for you, still trembles in my breast. when that too has gone who knows whether then i shall give you your liberty; whether i shall not then become really cruel, merciless, even brutal toward; whether i shall not take a diabolical pleasure in tormenting and putting on the rack the man who worships me idolatrously, the while i remain indifferent or love someone else; perhaps, i shall enjoy seeing him die of his love for me. consider this well." "i have long since considered all that," i replied as in a glow of fever. "i cannot exist, cannot live without you; i shall die if you set me at liberty; let me remain your slave, kill me, but do not drive me away." "very well then, be my slave," she replied, "but don't forget that i no longer love you, and your love doesn't mean any more to me than a dog's, and dogs are kicked." * * * * * to-day i visited the venus of medici. it was still early, and the little octagonal room in the tribuna was filled with half-lights like a sanctuary; i stood with folded hands in deep adoration before the silent image of the divinity. but i did not stand for long. not a human soul was in the gallery, not even an englishman, and i fell down on my knees. i looked up at the lovely slender body, the budding breasts, the virginal and yet voluptuous face, the fragrant curls which seemed to conceal tiny horns on each side of the forehead. * * * * * my mistress's bell. it is noonday. she, however, is still abed with her arms intertwined behind her neck. "i want to bathe," she says, "and you will attend me. lock the door!" i obey. "now go downstairs and make sure the door below is also locked." i descended the winding stairs that lead from her bedroom to the bath; my feet gave way beneath me, and i had to support myself against the iron banister. after having ascertained that the door leading to the loggia and the garden was locked, i returned. wanda was now sitting on the bed with loosened hair, wrapped in her green velvet furs. when she made a rapid movement, i noticed that the furs were her only covering. it made me start terribly, i don't know why? i was like one condemned to death, who knows he is on the way to the scaffold, and yet begins to tremble when he sees it. "come, gregor, take me on your arms." "you mean, mistress?" "you are to carry me, don't you understand?" i lifted her up, so that she rested in my arms, while she twined hers around my neck. slowly, step by step, i went down the stairs with her and her hair beat from time to time against my cheek and her foot sought support against my knee. i trembled under the beautiful burden i was carrying, and every moment it seemed as if i had to break down beneath it. the bath consisted of a wide, high rotunda, which received a soft quiet light from a red glass cupola above. two palms extended their broad leaves like a roof over a couch of velvet cushions. from here steps covered with turkish rugs led to the white marble basin which occupied the center. "there is a green ribbon on my toilet-table upstairs," said wanda, as i let her down on the couch, "go get it, and also bring the whip." i flew upstairs and back again, and kneeling put both in my mistress's hands. she then had me twist her heavy electric hair into a large knot which i fastened with the green ribbon. then i prepared the bath. i did this very awkwardly because my hands and feet refused to obey me. again and again i had to look at the beautiful woman lying on the red velvet cushions, and from time to time her wonderful body gleamed here and there beneath the furs. some magnetic power stronger than my will compelled me to look. i felt that all sensuality and lustfulness lies in that which is half-concealed or intentionally disclosed; and the truth of this i recognized even more acutely, when the basin at last was full, and wanda threw off the fur-cloak with a single gesture, and stood before me like the goddess in the tribuna. at that moment she seemed as sacred and chaste to me in her unveiled beauty, as did the divinity of long ago. i sank down on my knees before her, and devoutly pressed my lips on her foot. my soul which had been storm-tossed only a little while earlier, suddenly was perfectly calm, and i now felt no element of cruelty in wanda. she slowly descended the stairs, and i could watch her with a calmness in which not a single atom of torment or desire was intermingled. i could see her plunge into and rise out of the crystalline water, and the wavelets which she herself raised played about her like tender lovers. our nihilistic aesthetician is right when he says: a real apple is more beautiful than a painted one, and a living woman is more beautiful than a venus of stone. and when she left the bath, and the silvery drops and the roseate light rippled down her body, i was seized with silent rapture. i wrapped the linen sheets about her, drying her glorious body. the calm bliss remained with me, even now when one foot upon me as upon a footstool, she rested on the cushions in her large velvet cloak. the lithe sables nestled desirously against her cold marble-like body. her left arm on which she supported herself lay like a sleeping swan in the dark fur of the sleeve, while her left hand played carelessly with the whip. by chance my look fell on the massive mirror on the wall opposite, and i cried out, for i saw the two of us in its golden frame as in a picture. the picture was so marvellously beautiful, so strange, so imaginative, that i was filled with deep sorrow at the thought that its lines and colors would have to dissolve like mist. "what is the matter?" asked wanda. i pointed to the mirror. "ah, that is really beautiful," she exclaimed, "too bad one can't capture the moment and make it permanent." "and why not?" i asked. "would not any artist, even the most famous, be proud if you gave him leave to paint you and make you immortal by means of his brush. "the very thought that this extra-ordinary beauty is to be lost to the world," i continued still watching her enthusiastically, "is horrible--all this glorious facial expression, this mysterious eye with its green fires, this demonic hair, this magnificence of body. the idea fills me with a horror of death, of annihilation. but the hand of an artist shall snatch you from this. you shall not like the rest of us disappear absolutely and forever, without leaving a trace of your having been. your picture must live, even when you yourself have long fallen to dust; your beauty must triumph beyond death!" wanda smiled. "too bad, that present-day italy hasn't a titian or raphael," she said, "but, perhaps, love will make amends for genius, who knows; our little german might do?" she pondered. "yes, he shall paint you, and i will see to it that the god of love mixes his colors." * * * * * the young painter has established his studio in her villa; he is completely in her net. he has just begun a madonna, a madonna with red hair and green eyes! only the idealism of a german would attempt to use this thorough-bred woman as a model for a picture of virginity. the poor fellow really is an almost bigger donkey than i am. our misfortune is that our titania has discovered our ass's ears too soon. * * * * * now she laughs derisively at us, and how she laughs! i hear her insolent melodious laughter in his studio, under the open window of which i stand, jealously listening. * * * * * "are you mad, me--ah, it is unbelievable, me as the mother of god!" she exclaimed and laughed again. "wait a moment, i will show you another picture of myself, one that i myself have painted, and you shall copy it." her head appeared in the window, luminous like a flame under the sunlight. "gregor!" i hurried up the stairs, through the gallery, into the studio. "lead him to the bath," wanda commanded, while she herself hurried away. a few moments passed and wanda arrived; dressed in nothing but the sable fur, with the whip in her hand; she descended the stairs and stretched out on the velvet cushions as on the former occasion. i lay at her feet and she placed one of her feet upon me; her right hand played with the whip. "look at me," she said, "with your deep, fanatical look, that's it." the painter had turned terribly pale. he devoured the scene with his beautiful dreamy blue eyes; his lips opened, but he remained dumb. "well, how do you like the picture?" "yes, that is how i want to paint you," said the german, but it was really not a spoken language; it was the eloquent moaning, the weeping of a sick soul, a soul sick unto death. * * * * * the charcoal outline of the painting is done; the heads and flesh parts are painted in. her diabolical face is already becoming visible under a few bold strokes, life flashes in her green eyes. wanda stands in front of the canvas with her arms crossed over her breast. "this picture, like many of those of the venetian school, is simultaneously to represent a portrait and to tell a story," explained the painter, who again had become pale as death. "and what will you call it?" she asked, "but what is the matter with you, are you ill?" "i am afraid--" he answered with a consuming look fixed on the beautiful woman in furs, "but let us talk of the picture." "yes, let us talk about the picture." "i imagine the goddess of love as having descended from mount olympus for the sake of some mortal man. and always cold in this modern world of ours, she seeks to keep her sublime body warm in a large heavy fur and her feet in the lap of her lover. i imagine the favorite of a beautiful despot, who whips her slave, when she is tired of kissing him, and the more she treads him underfoot, the more insanely he loves her. and so i shall call the picture: _venus in furs_." * * * * * the painter paints slowly, but his passion grows more and more rapidly. i am afraid he will end up by committing suicide. she plays with him and propounds riddles to him which he cannot solve, and he feels his blood congealing in the process, but it amuses her. during the sitting she nibbles at candies, and rolls the paper-wrappers into little pellets with which she bombards him. "i am glad you are in such good humor," said the painter, "but your face has lost the expression which i need for my picture." "the expression which you need for your picture," she replied, smiling. "wait a moment." she rose, and dealt me a blow with the whip. the painter looked at her with stupefaction, and a child-like surprise showed on his face, mingled with disgust and admiration. while whipping me, wanda's face acquired more and more of the cruel, contemptuous character, which so haunts and intoxicates me. "is this the expression you need for your picture?" she exclaimed. the painter lowered his look in confusion before the cold ray of her eye. "it is the expression--" he stammered, "but i can't paint now--" "what?" said wanda, scornfully, "perhaps i can help you?" "yes--" cried the german, as if taken with madness, "whip me too." "oh! with pleasure," she replied, shrugging her shoulders, "but if i am to whip you i want to do it in sober earnest." "whip me to death," cried the painter. "will you let me tie you?" she asked, smiling. "yes--" he moaned-wanda left the room for a moment, and returned with ropes. "well--are you still brave enough to put yourself into the power of venus in furs, the beautiful despot, for better or worse?" she began ironically. "yes, tie me," the painter replied dully. wanda tied his hands on his back and drew a rope through his arms and a second one around his body, and fettered him to the cross-bars of the window. then she rolled back the fur, seized the whip, and stepped in front of him. the scene had a grim attraction for me, which i cannot describe. i felt my heart beat, when, with a smile, she drew back her arm for the first blow, and the whip hissed through the air. he winced slightly under the blow. then she let blow after blow rain upon him, with her mouth half-opened and her teeth flashing between her red lips, until he finally seemed to ask for mercy with his piteous, blue eyes. it was indescribable. * * * * * she is sitting for him now, alone. he is working on her head. she has posted me in the adjoining room behind a heavy curtain, where i can't be seen, but can see everything. what does she intend now? is she afraid of him? she has driven him insane enough to be sure, or is she hatching a new torment for me? my knees tremble. they are talking. he has lowered his voice so that i cannot understand a word, and she replies in the same way. what is the meaning of this? is there an understanding between them? i suffer frightful torments; my heart seems about to burst. he kneels down before her, embraces her, and presses his head against her breast, and she--in her heartlessness--laughs--and now i hear her saying aloud: "ah! you need another application of the whip." "woman! goddess! are you without a heart--can't you love," exclaimed the german, "don't you even know, what it means to love, to be consumed with desire and passion, can't you even imagine what i suffer? have you no pity for me?" "no!" she replied proudly and mockingly, "but i have the whip." she drew it quickly from the pocket of her fur-coat, and struck him in the face with the handle. he rose, and drew back a couple of paces. "now, are you ready to paint again?" she asked indifferently. he did not reply, but again went to the easel and took up his brush and palette. the painting is marvellously successful. it is a portrait which as far as the likeness goes couldn't be better, and at the same time it seems to have an ideal quality. the colors glow, are supernatural; almost diabolical, i would call them. the painter has put all his sufferings, his adoration, and all his execration into the picture. * * * * * now he is painting me; we are alone together for several hours every day. to-day he suddenly turned to me with his vibrant voice and said: "you love this woman?" "yes." "i also love her." his eyes were bathed in tears. he remained silent for a while, and continued painting. "we have a mountain at home in germany within which she dwells," he murmured to himself. "she is a demon." * * * * * the picture is finished. she insisted on paying him for it, munificently, in the manner of queens. "oh, you have already paid me," he said, with a tormented smile, refusing her offer. before he left, he secretly opened his portfolio, and let me look inside. i was startled. her head looked at me as if out of a mirror and seemed actually to be alive. "i shall take it along," he said, "it is mine; she can't take it away from me. i have earned it with my heart's blood." * * * * * "i am really rather sorry for the poor painter," she said to me to-day, "it is absurd to be as virtuous as i am. don't you think so too?" i did not dare to reply to her. "oh, i forgot that i am talking with a slave; i need some fresh air, i want to be diverted, i want to forget. "the carriage, quick!" her new dress is extravagant: russian half-boots of violet-blue velvet trimmed with ermine, and a skirt of the same material, decorated with narrow stripes and rosettes of furs. above it is an appropriate, close-fitting jacket, also richly trimmed and lined with ermine. the headdress is a tall cap of ermine of the style of catherine the second, with a small aigrette, held in place by a diamond-agraffe; her red hair falls loose down her back. she ascends on the driver's seat, and holds the reins herself; i take my seat behind. how she lashes on the horses! the carriage flies along like mad. apparently it is her intention to attract attention to-day, to make conquests, and she succeeds completely. she is the lioness of the cascine. people nod to her from carriages; on the footpath people gather in groups to discuss her. she pays no attention to anyone, except now and then acknowledging the greetings of elderly gentlemen with a slight nod. suddenly a young man on a lithe black horse dashes up at full speed. as soon as he sees wanda, he stops his horse and makes it walk. when he is quite close, he stops entirely and lets her pass. and she too sees him--the lioness, the lion. their eyes meet. she madly drives past him, but she cannot tear herself free from the magic power of his look, and she turns her head after him. my heart stops when i see the half-surprised, half-enraptured look with which she devours him, but he is worthy of it. for he is, indeed, a magnificent specimen of man, no, rather, he is a man whose like i have never yet seen among the living. he is in the belvedere, graven in marble, with the same slender, yet steely musculature, with the same face and the same waving curls. what makes him particularly beautiful is that he is beardless. if his hips were less narrow, one might take him for a woman in disguise. the curious expression about the mouth, the lion's lip which slightly discloses the teeth beneath, lends a flashing tinge of cruelty to the beautiful face-apollo flaying marsyas. he wears high black boots, closely fitting breeches of white leather, short fur coat of black cloth, of the kind worn by italian cavalry officers, trimmed with astrakhan and many rich loops; on his black locks is a red fez. i now understand the masculine eros, and i marvel at socrates for having remained virtuous in view of an alcibiades like this. * * * * * i have never seen my lioness so excited. her cheeks flamed when she left from the carriage at her villa. she hurried upstairs, and with an imperious gesture ordered me to follow. walking up and down her room with long strides, she began to talk so rapidly, that i was frightened. "you are to find out who the man in the cascine was, immediately-"oh, what a man! did you see him? what do you think of him? tell me." "the man is beautiful," i replied dully. "he is so beautiful," she paused, supporting herself on the arm of a chair, "that he has taken my breath away." "i can understand the impression he has made on you," i replied, my imagination carrying me away in a mad whirl. "i am quite lost in admiration myself, and i can imagine--" "you may imagine," she laughed aloud, "that this man is my lover, and that he will apply the lash to you, and that you will enjoy being punished by him. "but now go, go." * * * * * before evening fell, i had the desired information. wanda was still fully dressed when i returned. she reclined on the ottoman, her face buried in her hands, her hair in a wild tangle, like the red mane of a lioness. "what is his name?" she asked, uncanny calm. "alexis papadopolis." "a greek, then," i nodded. "he is very young?" "scarcely older than you. they say he was educated in paris, and that he is an atheist. he fought against the turks in candia, and is said to have distinguished himself there no less by his race-hatred and cruelty, than by his bravery." "all in all, then, a man," she cried with sparkling eyes. "at present he is living in florence," i continued, "he is said to be tremendously rich--" "i didn't ask you about that," she interrupted quickly and sharply. "the man is dangerous. aren't you afraid of him? i am afraid of him. has he a wife?" "no." "a mistress?" "no." "what theaters does he attend?" "to-night he will be at the nicolini theater, where virginia marini and salvini are acting; they are the greatest living artists in italy, perhaps in europe. "see that you get a box--and be quick about it!" she commanded. "but, mistress--" "do you want a taste of the whip?" * * * * * "you can wait down in the lobby," she said when i had placed the opera-glasses and the programme on the edge of her box and adjusted the footstool. i am standing there and had to lean against the wall for support so as not to fall down with envy and rage--no, rage isn't the right word; it was a mortal fear. i saw her in her box dressed in blue moire, with a huge ermine cloak about her bare shoulders; he sat opposite. i saw them devour each other with their eyes. for both of them the stage, goldoni's _pamela,_ salvini, marini, the public, even the entire world, were non-existant to-night. and i--what was i at that moment?- * * * * * to-day she is attending the ball at the greek ambassador's. does she know, that she will meet him there? at any rate she dressed, as if she did. a heavy sea-green silk dress plastically encloses her divine form, leaving the bust and arms bare. in her hair, which is done into a single flaming knot, a white water-lily blossoms; from it the leaves of reeds interwoven with a few loose strands fall down toward her neck. there no longer is any trace of agitation or trembling feverishness in her being. she is calm, so calm, that i feel my blood congealing and my heart growing cold under her glance. slowly, with a weary, indolent majesty, she ascends the marble staircase, lets her precious wrap slide off, and listlessly enters the hall, where the smoke of a hundred candles has formed a silvery mist. for a few moments my eyes follow her in a daze, then i pick up her furs, which without my being aware, had slipped from my hands. they are still warm from her shoulders. i kiss the spot, and my eyes fill with tears. * * * * * he has arrived. in his black velvet coat extravagantly trimmed with sable, he is a beautiful, haughty despot who plays with the lives and souls of men. he stands in the ante-room, looking around proudly, and his eyes rest on me for an uncomfortably long time. under his icy glance i am again seized by a mortal fear. i have a presentiment that this man can enchain her, captivate her, subjugate her, and i feel inferior in contrast with his savage masculinity; i am filled with envy, with jealousy. i feel that i am a queer weakly creature of brains, merely! and what is most humiliating, i want to hate him, but i can't. why is that among all the host of servants he has chosen me. with an inimitably aristocratic nod of the head he calls me over to him, and i--i obey his call--against my own will. "take my furs," he quickly commands. my entire body trembles with resentment, but i obey, abjectly like a slave. * * * * * all night long i waited in the ante-room, raving as in a fever. strange images hovered past my inner eye. i saw their meeting--their long exchange of looks. i saw her float through the hall in his arms, drunken, lying with half-closed lids against his breast. i saw him in the holy of holies of love, lying on the ottoman, not as slave, but as master, and she at his feet. on my knees i served them, the tea-tray faltering in my hands, and i saw him reach for the whip. but now the servants are talking about him. he is a man who is like a woman; he knows that he is beautiful, and he acts accordingly. he changes his clothes four or five times a day, like a vain courtesan. in paris he appeared first in woman's dress, and the men assailed him with love-letters. an italian singer, famous equally for his art and his passionate intensity, even invaded his home, and lying on his knees before him threatened to commit suicide if he wouldn't be his. "i am sorry," he replied, smiling, "i should like to do you the favor, but you will have to carry out your threat, for i am a man." * * * * * the drawing-room has already thinned out to a marked degree, but she apparently has no thought of leaving. morning is already peering through the blinds. at last i hear the rustling of her heavy gown which flows along behind her like green waves. she advances step by step, engaged in conversation with him. i hardly exist for her any longer; she doesn't even trouble to give me an order. "the cloak for madame," he commands. he, of course, doesn't think of looking after her himself. while i put her furs about her, he stands to one side with his arms crossed. while i am on my knees putting on her fur over-shoes, she lightly supports herself with her hand on his shoulder. she asks: "and what about the lioness?" "when the lion whom she has chosen and with whom she lives is attacked by another," the greek went on with his narrative, "the lioness quietly lies down and watches the battle. even if her mate is worsted she does not go to his aid. she looks on indifferently as he bleeds to death under his opponent's claws, and follows the victor, the stronger--that is the female's nature." at this moment my lioness looked quickly and curiously at me. it made me shudder, though i didn't know why--and the red dawn immerses me and her and him in blood. * * * * * she did not go to bed, but merely threw off her ball-dress and undid her hair; then she ordered me to build a fire, and she sat by the fire-place, and stared into the flames. "do you need me any longer, mistress?" i asked, my voice failed me at the last word. wanda shook her head. i left the room, passed through the gallery, and sat down on one of the steps, leading from there down into the garden. a gentle north wind brought a fresh, damp coolness from the arno, the green hills extended into the distance in a rosy mist, a golden haze hovered over the city, over the round cupola of the duomo. a few stars still tremble in the pale-blue sky. i tore open my coat, and pressed my burning forehead against the marble. everything that had happened so far seemed to me a mere child's play; but now things were beginning to be serious, terribly serious. i anticipated a catastrophe, i visualized it, i could lay hold of it with my hands, but i lacked the courage to meet it. my strength was broken. and if i am honest with myself, neither the pains and sufferings that threatened me, not the humiliations that impended, were the thing that frightened me. i merely felt a fear, the fear of losing her whom i loved with a sort of fanatical devotion; but it was so overwhelming, so crushing that i suddenly began to sob like a child. * * * * * during the day she remained locked in her room, and had the negress attend her. when the evening star rose glowing in the blue sky, i saw her pass through the garden, and, carefully following her at a distance, watched her enter the shrine of venus. i stealthily followed and peered through the chink in the door. she stood before the divine image of the goddess, her hands folded as in prayer, and the sacred light of the star of love casts its blue rays over her. * * * * * on my couch at night the fear of losing her and despair took such powerful hold of me that they made a hero and a libertine of me. i lighted the little red oil-lamp which hung in the corridor beneath a saint's image, and entered her bedroom, covering the light with one hand. the lioness had been hunted and driven until she was exhausted. she had fallen asleep among her pillows, lying on her back, her hands clenched, breathing heavily. a dream seemed to oppress her. i slowly withdrew my hand, and let the red light fall full on her wonderful face. but she did not awaken. i gently set the lamp on the floor, sank down beside wanda's bed, and rested my head on her soft, glowing arm. she moved slightly, but even now did not awaken. i do not know how long i lay thus in the middle of the night, turned as into a stone by horrible torments. finally a severe trembling seized me, and i was able to cry. my tears flowed over her arm. she quivered several times and finally sat up; she brushed her hand across her eyes, and looked at me. "severin," she exclaimed, more frightened than angry. i was unable to reply. "severin," she continued softly, "what is the matter? are you ill?" her voice sounded so sympathetic, so kind, so full of love, that it clutched my breast like red-hot tongs and i began to sob aloud. "severin," she began anew. "my poor unhappy friend." her hand gently stroked my hair. "i am sorry, very sorry for you; but i can't help you; with the best intention in the world i know of nothing that would cure you." "oh, wanda, must it be?" i moaned in my agony. "what, severin? what are you talking about?" "don't you love me any more?" i continued. "haven't you even a little bit of pity for me? has the beautiful stranger taken complete possession of you?" "i cannot lie," she replied softly after a short pause. "he has made an impression on me which i haven't yet been able to analyse, further than that i suffer and tremble beneath it. it is an impression of the sort i have met with in the works of poets or on the stage, but i always thought it was a figment of the imagination. oh, he is a man like a lion, strong and beautiful and yet gentle, not brutal like the men of our northern world. i am sorry for you, severin, i am; but i must possess him. what am i saying? i must give myself to him, if he will have me." "consider your reputation, wanda, which so far has remained spotless," i exclaimed, "even if i no longer mean anything to you." "i am considering it," she replied, "i intend to be strong, as long as it is possible, i want--" she buried her head shyly in the pillows --"i want to become his wife--if he will have me." "wanda," i cried, seized again by that mortal fear, which always robs me of my breath, makes me lose possession of myself, "you want to be his wife, belong to him for always. oh! do not drive me away! he does not love you--" "who says that?" she exclaimed, flaring up. "he does not love you," i went on passionately, "but i love you, i adore you, i am your slave, i let you tread me underfoot, i want to carry you on my arms through life." "who says that he doesn't love me?" she interrupted vehemently. "oh! be mine," i replied, "be mine! i cannot exist, cannot live without you. have mercy on me, wanda, have mercy!" she looked at me again, and her face had her cold heartless expression, her evil smile. "you say he doesn't love me," she said, scornfully. "very well then, get what consolation you can out of it." with this she turned over on the other side, and contemptuously showed me her back. "good god, are you a woman without flesh or blood, haven't you a heart as well as i!" i cried, while my breast heaved convulsively. "you know what i am," she replied, coldly. "i am a woman of stone, _venus in furs_, your ideal, kneel down, and pray to me." "wanda!" i implored, "mercy!" she began to laugh. i buried my face in her pillows. pain had loosened the floodgates of my tears and i let them flow. for a long time silence reigned, then wanda slowly raised herself. "you bore me," she began. "wanda!" "i am tired, let me go to sleep." "mercy," i implored. "do not drive me away. no man, no one, will love you as i do." "let me go to sleep,"--she turned her back to me again. i leaped up, and snatched the poinard, which hung beside her bed, from its sheath, and placed its point against my breast. "i shall kill myself here before your eyes," i murmured dully. "do what you please," wanda replied with complete indifference. "but let me go to sleep." she yawned aloud. "i am very sleepy." for a moment i stood as if petrified. then i began to laugh and cry at the same time. finally i placed the poinard in my belt, and again fell on my knees before her. "wanda, listen to me, only for a few moments," i begged. "i want to go to sleep! don't you hear!" she cried, leaping angrily out of bed and pushing me away with her foot. "you forget that i am your mistress?" when i didn't budge, she seized the whip and struck me. i rose; she struck me again--this time right in the face. "wretch, slave!" with clenched fist held heavenward, i left her bedroom with a sudden resolve. she tossed the whip aside, and broke out into clear laughter. i can imagine that my theatrical attitude must have been very droll. * * * * * i have determined to set myself free from this heartless woman, who has treated me so cruelly, and is now about to break faith and betray me, as a reward for all my slavish devotion, for everything i have suffered from her. i packed my few belongings into a bundle, and then wrote her as follows: "dear madam,-i have loved you even to madness, i have given myself to you as no man ever has given himself to a woman. you have abused my most sacred emotions, and played an impudent, frivolous game with me. however, as long as you were merely cruel and merciless, it was still possible for me to love you. now you are about to become _cheap_. i am no longer the slave whom you can kick about and whip. you yourself have set me free, and i am leaving a woman i can only hate and despise. severin kusiemski." i handed these lines to the negress, and hastened away as fast as i could go. i arrived at the railway-station all out of breath. suddenly i felt a sharp pain in my heart and stopped. i began to weep. it is humiliating that i want to flee and i can't. i turn back-whither?--to her, whom i abhor, and yet, at the same time, adore. again i pause. i cannot go back. i dare not. but how am i to leave florence. i remember that i haven't any money, not a penny. very well then, on foot; it is better to be an honest beggar than to eat the bread of a courtesan. but still i can't leave. she has my pledge, my word of honor. i have to return. perhaps she will release me. after a few rapid strides, i stop again. she has my word of honor and my bond, that i shall remain her slave as long as she desires, until she herself gives me my freedom. but i might kill myself. i go through the cascine down to the arno, where its yellow waters plash monotonously about a couple of stray willows. there i sit, and cast up my final accounts with existence. i let my entire life pass before me in review. on the whole, it is rather a wretched affair--a few joys, an endless number of indifferent and worthless things, and between these an abundant harvest of pains, miseries, fears, disappointments, shipwrecked hopes, afflictions, sorrow and grief. i thought of my mother, whom i loved so deeply and whom i had to watch waste away beneath a horrible disease; of my brother, who full of the promise of joy and happiness died in the flower of youth, without even having put his lips to the cup of life. i thought of my dead nurse, my childhood playmates, the friends that had striven and studied with me; of all those, covered by the cold, dead, indifferent earth. i thought of my turtle-dove, who not infrequently made his cooing bows to me, instead of to his mate.--all have returned, dust unto dust. i laughed aloud, and slid down into the water, but at the same moment i caught hold of one of the willow-branches, hanging above the yellow waves. as in a vision, i see the woman who has caused all my misery. she hovers above the level of the water, luminous in the sunlight as though she were transparent, with red flames about her head and neck. she turns her face toward me and smiles. * * * * * i am back again, dripping, wet through, glowing with shame and fever. the negress has delivered my letter; i am judged, lost, in the power of a heartless, affronted woman. well, let her kill me. i am unable to do it myself, and yet i have no wish to go on living. as i walk around the house, she is standing in the gallery, leaning over the railing. her face is full in the light of the sun, and her green eyes sparkle. "still alive?" she asked, without moving. i stood silent, with bowed head. "give me back my poinard," she continued. "it is of no use to you. you haven't even the courage to take your own life." "i have lost it," i replied, trembling, shaken by chills. she looked me over with a proud, scornful glance. "i suppose you lost it in the arno?" she shrugged her shoulders. "no matter. well, and why didn't you leave?" i mumbled something which neither she nor i myself could understand. "oh! you haven't any money," she cried. "here!" with an indescribably disdainful gesture she tossed me her purse. i did not pick it up. both of us were silent for some time. "you don't want to leave then?" "i can't." * * * * * wanda drives in the cascine without me, and goes to the theater without me; she receives company, and the negress serves her. no one asks after me. i stray about the garden, irresolutely, like an animal that has lost its master. lying among the bushes, i watch a couple of sparrows, fighting over a seed. suddenly i hear the swish of a woman's dress. wanda approaches in a gown of dark silk, modestly closed up to the neck; the greek is with her. they are in an eager discussion, but i cannot as yet understand a word of what they are saying. he stamps his foot so that the gravel scatters about in all directions, and he lashes the air with his riding whip. wanda startles. is she afraid that he will strike her? have they gone that far? he has left her, she calls him; he does not hear her, does not want to hear her. wanda sadly lowers her head, and then sits down on the nearest stone-bench. she sits for a long time, lost in thought. i watch her with a sort of malevolent pleasure, finally i pull myself together by sheer force of will, and ironically step before her. she startles, and trembles all over. "i come to wish you happiness," i said, bowing, "i see, my dear lady, too, has found a master." "yes, thank god!" she exclaimed, "not a new slave, i have had enough of them. a master! woman needs a master, and she adores him." "you adore him, wanda?" i cried, "this brutal person--" "yes, i love him, as i have never loved any one else." "wanda!" i clenched my fists, but tears already filled my eyes, and i was seized by the delirium of passion, as by a sweet madness. "very well, take him as your husband, let him be your master, but i want to remain your slave, as long as i live." "you want to remain my slave, even then?" she said, "that would be interesting, but i am afraid he wouldn't permit it." "he?" "yes, he is already jealous of you," she exclaimed, "he, of you! he demanded that i dismiss you immediately, and when i told him who you were--" "you told him--" i repeated, thunderstruck. "i told him everything," she replied, "our whole story, all your queerness, everything--and he, instead of being amused, grew angry, and stamped his foot." "and threatened to strike you?" wanda looked to the ground, and remained silent. "yes, indeed," i said with mocking bitterness, "you are afraid of him, wanda!" i threw myself down at her feet, and in my agitation embraced her knees. "i don't want anything of you, except to be your slave, to be always near you! i will be your dog-" "do you know, you bore me?" said wanda, indifferently. i leaped up. everything within me was seething. "you are now no longer cruel, but cheap," i said, clearly and distinctly, accentuating every word. "you have already written that in your letter," wanda replied, with a proud shrug of the shoulders. "a man of brains should never repeat himself." "the way you are treating me," i broke out, "what would you call it?" "i might punish you," she replied ironically, "but i prefer this time to reply with reasons instead of lashes. you have no right to accuse me. haven't i always been honest with you? haven't i warned you more than once? didn't i love you with all my heart, even passionately, and did i conceal the fact from you, that it was dangerous to give yourself into my power, to abase yourself before me, and that i want to be dominated? but you wished to be my plaything, my slave! you found the highest pleasure in feeling the foot, the whip of an arrogant, cruel woman. what do you want now? "dangerous potentialities were slumbering in me, but you were the first to awaken them. if i now take pleasure in torturing you, abusing you, it is your fault; you have made of me what i now am, and now you are even unmanly, weak, and miserable enough to accuse me." "yes, i am guilty," i said, "but haven't i suffered because of it? let us put an end now to the cruel game." "that is my wish, too," she replied with a curious deceitful look. "wanda!" i exclaimed violently, "don't drive me to extremes; you see that i am a man again." "a fire of straw," she replied, "which makes a lot of stir for a moment, and goes out as quickly as it flared up. you imagine you can intimidate me, and you only make yourself ridiculous. had you been the man i first thought you were, serious, reserved, stern, i would have loved you faithfully, and become your wife. woman demands that she can look up to a man, but one like you who voluntarily places his neck under her foot, she uses as a welcome plaything, only to toss it aside when she is tired of it." "try to toss me aside," i said, jeeringly. "some toys are dangerous." "don't challenge me," exclaimed wanda. her eyes began to flash, and a flush entered her cheeks. "if you won't be mine now," i continued, with a voice stifled with rage, "no one else shall possess you either." "what play is this from?" she mocked, seizing me by the breast. she was pale with anger at this moment. "don't challenge me," she continued, "i am not cruel, but i don't know whether i may not become so and whether then there will be any bounds." "what worse can you do, than to make your lover, your husband?" i exclaimed, more and more enraged. "i might make you _his_ slave," she replied quickly, "are you not in my power? haven't i the agreement? but, of course, you will merely take pleasure in it, if i have you bound, and say to him. "do with him what you please." "woman, are you mad!" i cried. "i am entirely rational," she said, calmly. "i warn you for the last time. don't offer any resistance, one who has gone as far as i have gone might easily go still further. i feel a sort of hatred for you, and would find a real joy in seeing him beat you to death; i am still restraining myself, but--" scarcely master of myself any longer, i seized her by the wrist and forced her to the ground, so that she lay on her knees before me. "severin!" she cried. rage and terror were painted on her face. "i shall kill you if you marry him," i threatened; the words came hoarsely and dully from my breast. "you are mine, i won't let you go, i love you too much." then i clutched her and pressed her close to me; my right hand involuntarily seized the dagger which i still had in my belt. wanda fixed a large, calm, incomprehensible look on me. "i like you that way," she said, carelessly. "now you are a man, and at this moment i know i still love you." "wanda," i wept with rapture, and bent down over her, covering her dear face with kisses, and she, suddenly breaking into a loud gay laugh, said, "have you finished with your ideal now, are you satisfied with me?" "you mean?" i stammered, "that you weren't serious?" "i am very serious," she gaily continued. "i love you, only you, and you--you foolish, little man, didn't know that everything was only make-believe and play-acting. how hard it often was for me to strike you with the whip, when i would have rather taken your head and covered it with kisses. but now we are through with that, aren't we? i have played my cruel role better than you expected, and now you will be satisfied with my being a good, little wife who isn't altogether unattractive. isn't that so? we will live like rational people--" "you will marry me!" i cried, overflowing with happiness. "yes--marry you--you dear, darling man," whispered wanda, kissing my hands. i drew her up to my breast. "now, you are no longer gregor, my slave," said she, "but severin, the dear man i love--" "and he--you don't love him?" i asked in agitation. "how could you imagine my loving a man of his brutal type? you were blind to everything, i was really afraid for you." "i almost killed myself for your sake." "really?" she cried, "ah, i still tremble at the thought, that you were already in the arno." "but you saved me," i replied, tenderly. "you hovered over the waters and smiled, and your smile called me back to life." * * * * * i have a curious feeling when i now hold her in my arms and she lies silently against my breast and lets me kiss her and smiles. i feel like one who has suddenly awakened out of a feverish delirium, or like a shipwrecked man who has for many days battled with waves that momentarily threatened to devour him and finally has found a safe shore. * * * * * "i hate this florence, where you have been so unhappy," she declared, as i was saying good-night to her. "i want to leave immediately, tomorrow, you will be good enough to write a couple of letters for me, and, while you are doing that, i will drive to the city to pay my farewell visits. is that satisfactory to you?" "of course, you dear, sweet, beautiful woman." * * * * * early in the morning she knocked at my door to ask how i had slept. her tenderness is positively wonderful. i should never have believed that she could be so tender. * * * * * she has now been gone for over four hours. i have long since finished the letters, and am now sitting in the gallery, looking down the street to see whether i cannot discover her carriage in the distance. i am a little worried about her, and yet i know there is no reason under heaven why i should doubt or fear. however, a feeling of oppression weighs me down, and i cannot rid myself of it. it is probably the sufferings of the past days, which still cast their shadows into my soul. * * * * * she is back, radiant with happiness and contentment. "well, has everything gone as you wished?" i asked tenderly, kissing her hand. "yes, dear heart," she replied, "and we shall leave to-night. help me pack my trunks." * * * * * toward evening she asked me to go to the post-office and mail her letters myself. i took her carriage, and was back within an hour. "mistress has asked for you," said the negress, with a grin, as i ascended the wide marble stairs. "has anyone been here?" "no one," she replied, crouching down on the steps like a black cat. i slowly passed through the drawing-room, and then stood before her bedroom door. why does my heart beat so? am i not perfectly happy? opening the door softly, i draw back the portiere. wanda is lying on the ottoman, and does not seem to notice me. how beautiful she looks, in her silver-gray dress, which fits closely, and while displaying in tell-tale fashion her splendid figure, leaves her wonderful bust and arms bare. her hair is interwoven with, and held up by a black velvet ribbon. a mighty fire is burning in the fire-place, the hanging lamp casts a reddish glow, and the whole room is as if drowned in blood. "wanda," i said at last. "oh severin," she cried out joyously. "i have been impatiently waiting for you." she leaped up, and folded me in her arms. she sat down again on the rich cushions and tried to draw me down to her side, but i softly slid down to her feet and placed my head in her lap. "do you know i am very much in love with you to-day?" she whispered, brushing a few stray hairs from my forehead and kissing my eyes. "how beautiful your eyes are, i have always loved them as the best of you, but to-day they fairly intoxicate me. i am all--" she extended her magnificent limbs and tenderly looked at me from beneath her red lashes. "and you--you are cold--you hold me like a block of wood; wait, i'll stir you with the fire of love," she said, and again clung fawningly and caressingly to my lips. "i no longer please you; i suppose i'll have to be cruel to you again, evidently i have been too kind to you to-day. do you know, you little fool, what i shall do, i shall whip you for a while--" "but child--" "i want to." "wanda!" "come, let me bind you," she continued, and ran gaily through the room. "i want to see you very much in love, do you understand? here are the ropes. i wonder if i can still do it?" she began with fettering my feet and then she tied my hands behind my back, pinioning my arms like those of a prisoner. "so," she said, with gay eagerness. "can you still move?" "no." "fine--" she then tied a noose in a stout rope, threw it over my head, and let it slip down as far as the hips. she drew it tight, and bound me to a pillar. a curious tremor seized me at that moment. "i have a feeling as if i were about to be executed," i said with a low voice. "well, you shall have a thorough punishment to-day," exclaimed wanda. "but put on your fur-jacket, please," i said. "i shall gladly give you that pleasure," she replied. she got her _kazabaika_, and put it on. then she stood in front of me with her arms folded across her chest, and looked at me out of half-closed eyes. "do you remember the story of the ox of dionysius?" she asked. "i remember it only vaguely, what about it?" "a courtier invented a new implement of torture for the tyrant of syracuse. it was an iron ox in which those condemned to death were to be shut, and then pushed into a mighty furnace. "as soon as the iron ox began to get hot, and the condemned person began to cry out in his torment, his wails sounded like the bellowing of an ox. "dionysius nodded graciously to the inventor, and to put his invention to an immediate test had him shut up in the iron ox. "it is a very instructive story. "it was you who innoculated me with selfishness, pride, and cruelty, and _you shall be their first victim._ i now literally enjoy having a human being that thinks and feels and desires like myself in my power; i love to abuse a man who is stronger in intelligence and body than i, especially a man who loves me. "do you still love me?" "even to madness," i exclaimed. "so much the better," she replied, "and so much the more will you enjoy what i am about to do with you now." "what is the matter with you?" i asked. "i don't understand you, there is a gleam of real cruelty in your eyes to-day, and you are strangely beautiful--completely _venus in furs."_ without replying wanda placed her arms around my neck and kissed me. i was again seized by my fanatical passion. "where is the whip?" i asked. wanda laughed, and withdrew a couple of steps. "you really insist upon being punished?" she exclaimed, proudly tossing back her head. "yes." suddenly wanda's face was completely transformed. it was as if disfigured by rage; for a moment she seemed even ugly to me. "very well, then _you_ whip him!" she called loudly. at the same instant the beautiful greek stuck his head of black curls through the curtains of her four-poster bed. at first i was speechless, petrified. there was a horribly comic element in the situation. i would have laughed aloud, had not my position been at the same time so terribly cruel and humiliating. it went beyond anything i had imagined. a cold shudder ran down my back, when my rival stepped from the bed in his riding boots, his tight-fitting white breeches, and his short velvet jacket, and i saw his athletic limbs. "you are indeed cruel," he said, turning to wanda. "only inordinately fond of pleasure," she replied with a wild sort of humor. "pleasure alone lends value to existence; whoever enjoys does not easily part from life, whoever suffers or is needy meets death like a friend. "but whoever wants to enjoy must take life gaily in the sense of the ancient world; he dare not hesitate to enjoy at the expense of others; he must never feel pity; he must be ready to harness others to his carriage or his plough as though they were animals. he must know how to make slaves of men who feel and would enjoy as he does, and use them for his service and pleasure without remorse. it is not his affair whether they like it, or whether they go to rack and ruin. he must always remember this, that if they had him in their power, as he has them they would act in exactly the same way, and he would have to pay for their pleasure with his sweat and blood and soul. that was the world of the ancients: pleasure and cruelty, liberty and slavery went hand in hand. people who want to live like the gods of olympus must of necessity have slaves whom they can toss into their fish-ponds, and gladiators who will do battle, the while they banquet, and they must not mind if by chance a bit of blood bespatters them." her words brought back my complete self-possession. "unloosen me!" i exclaimed angrily. "aren't you my slave, my property?" replied wanda. "do you want me to show you the agreement?" "untie me!" i threatened, "otherwise--" i tugged at the ropes. "can he tear himself free?" she asked. "he has threatened to kill me." "be entirely at ease," said the greek, testing my fetters. "i shall call for help," i began again. "no one will hear you," replied wanda, "and no one will hinder me from abusing your most sacred emotions or playing a frivolous game with you." she continued, repeating with satanic mockery phrases from my letter to her. "do you think i am at this moment merely cruel and merciless, or am i also about to become cheap? what? do you still love me, or do you already hate and despise me? here is the whip--" she handed it to the greek who quickly stepped closer. "don't you dare!" i exclaimed, trembling with indignation, "i won't permit it--" "oh, because i don't wear furs," the greek replied with an ironical smile, and he took his short sable from the bed. "you are adorable," exclaimed wanda, kissing him, and helping him into his furs. "may i really whip him?" he asked. "do with him what you please," replied wanda. "beast!" i exclaimed, utterly revolted. the greek fixed his cold tigerish look upon me and tried out the whip. his muscles swelled when he drew back his arms, and made the whip hiss through the air. i was bound like marsyas while apollo was getting ready to flay me. my look wandered about the room and remained fixed on the ceiling, where samson, lying at delilah's feet, was about to have his eyes put out by the philistines. the picture at that moment seemed to me like a symbol, an eternal parable of passion and lust, of the love of man for woman. "each one of us in the end is a samson," i thought, "and ultimately for better or worse is betrayed by the woman he loves, whether he wears an ordinary coat or sables." "now watch me break him in," said the greek. he showed his teeth, and his face acquired the blood-thirsty expression, which startled me the first time i saw him. and he began to apply the lash--so mercilessly, with such frightful force that i quivered under each blow, and began to tremble all over with pain. tears rolled down over my cheeks. in the meantime wanda lay on the ottoman in her fur-jacket, supporting herself on her arm; she looked on with cruel curiosity, and was convulsed with laughter. the sensation of being whipped by a successful rival before the eyes of an adored woman cannot be described. i almost went mad with shame and despair. what was most humiliating was that at first i felt a certain wild, supersensual stimulation under apollo's whip and the cruel laughter of my venus, no matter how horrible my position was. but apollo whipped on and on, blow after blow, until i forgot all about poetry, and finally gritted my teeth in impotent rage, and cursed my wild dreams, woman, and love. all of a sudden i saw with horrible clarity whither blind passion and lust have led man, ever since holofernes and agamemnon--into a blind alley, into the net of woman's treachery, into misery, slavery, and death. it was as though i were awakening from a dream. blood was already flowing under the whip. i wound like a worm that is trodden on, but he whipped on without mercy, and she continued to laugh without mercy. in the meantime she locked her packed trunk and slipped into her travelling furs, and was still laughing, when she went downstairs on his arm and entered the carriage. then everything was silent for a moment. i listened breathlessly. the carriage door slammed, the horse began to pull--the rolling of the carriage for a short time--then all was over. * * * * * for a moment i thought of taking vengeance, of killing him, but i was bound by the abominable agreement. so nothing was left for me to do except to keep my pledged word and grit my teeth. * * * * * my first impulse after this, the most cruel catastrophe of my life, was to seek laborious tasks, dangers, and privations. i wanted to become a soldier and go to asia or algiers, but my father was old and ill and wanted me. so i quietly returned home and for two years helped him bear his burdens, and learned how to look after the estate which i had never done before. to _labor_ and to _do my duty_ was comforting like a drink of fresh water. then my father died, and i inherited the estate, but it meant no change. i had put on my own spanish boots and went on living just as rationally as if the old man were standing behind me, looking over my shoulder with his large wise eyes. one day a box arrived, accompanied by a letter. i recognized wanda's writing. curiously moved, i opened it, and read. "sir.-now that over three years have passed since that night in florence, i suppose, i may confess to you that i loved you deeply. you yourself, however, stifled my love by your fantastic devotion and your insane passion. from the moment that you became my slave, i knew it would be impossible for you ever to become my husband. however, i found it interesting to have you realize your ideal in my own person, and, while i gloriously amused myself, perhaps, to cure you. i found the strong man for whom i felt a need, and i was as happy with him as, i suppose, it is possible for any one to be on this funny ball of clay. but my happiness, like all things mortal, was of short duration. about a year ago he fell in a duel, and since then i have been living in paris, like an aspasia-and you?--your life surely is not without its sunshine, if you have gained control of your imagination, and those qualities in you have materialized, which at first so attracted me to you--your clarity of intellect, kindness of heart, and, above all else, your--_moral seriousness_. i hope you have been cured under my whip; the cure was cruel, but radical. in memory of that time and of a woman who loved you passionately, i am sending you the portrait by the poor german. _venus in furs_." i had to smile, and as i fell to musing the beautiful woman suddenly stood before me in her velvet jacket trimmed with ermine, with the whip in her hand. and i continued to smile at the woman i had once loved so insanely, at the fur-jacket that had once so entranced me, at the whip, and ended by smiling at myself and saying: the cure was cruel, but radical; but the main point is, i have been cured. * * * * * "and the moral of the story?" i said to severin when i put the manuscript down on the table. "that i was a donkey," he exclaimed without turning around, for he seemed to be embarrassed. "if only i had beaten her!" "a curious remedy," i exclaimed, "which might answer with your peasant-women--" "oh, they are used to it," he replied eagerly, "but imagine the effect upon one of our delicate, nervous, hysterical ladies--" "but the moral?" "that woman, as nature has created her and as man is at present educating her, is his enemy. she can only be his slave or his despot, but _never his companion._ this she can become only when she has the same rights as he, and is his equal in education and work. "at present we have only the choice of being hammer or anvil, and i was the kind of donkey who let a woman make a slave of him, do you understand? "the moral of the tale is this: whoever allows himself to be whipped, deserves to be whipped. "the blows, as you see, have agreed with me; the roseate supersensual mist has dissolved, and no one can ever make me believe again that these 'sacred apes of benares' [footnote: one of schopenhauer's designations for women.] or plato's rooster [footnote: diogenes threw a plucked rooster into plato's school and exclaimed: "here you have plato's human being."] are the image of god." (online soon in an extended version, also linking to free sources for education worldwide ... mooc's, educational materials,...) images generously made available by the internet archive. _les bijoux indiscrets._ or, the indiscreet toys. [by denis diderot.] translated from the congese language. printed at monomotapa. in two volumes. adorned with copper-plates. _tobago:_ re-printed for _pierrot ragout_, with the approbation of _m----l s----xe_, mdccxlix. and sold by r. freeman, near st. _paul's_; and at all the booksellers. to zima. zima, embrace the moment. the aga narkis entertains your mother, and your governess is upon the watch in a balcony for your father's return: take, read, fear nothing. but even tho' the _bijoux indiscrets_ should be found behind your toilet, do you think it would be a matter of wonder? no, zima, no; it is well known, that the _sopha_, the _tanzai_, and the _confessions_ have been under your pillow. do you hesitate still? know then, that aglaé has not disdained to set her hand to the work, which you blush to accept. "aglaé," say you, "the sober aglaé!"--the same. while zima was straying with, or perhaps contriving how to get rid of the young bonza alleluia; aglaé amused herself innocently, by relating to me the adventures of zaide, alphana, fannia, &c.--furnished me with the few strokes, which please me in the history of mangogul, revised it, and pointed me out the means of making it better: for if aglaé is one of the most virtuous and least edifying women in congo; she is likewise one of the least jealous of wit, and one of the most witty. can zima now think, that it becomes her to play the scrupulous? once more, zima, take, read, read all; even without excepting the narrative of the _rambling toy_, which may be interpreted to you, without any expence to your virtue, provided the interpreter be neither your spiritual director nor your lover. contents. preface chap. i. birth of mangogul. chap. ii. education of mangogul. chap. iii. which may be regarded as the first of this history. chap. iv. evocation of the genius. chap. v. mangogul's dangerous temptation. chap. vi. first trial of the ring, or alcina. chap. vii. second trial of the ring, or the altars. chap. viii. third trial of the ring, or the private supper. chap. ix. the state of the academy of sciences at banza. chap. x. less learned and less tedious than the preceding. continuation of the academical sitting. chap. xi. fourth trial of the ring, or the echo. chap. xii. fifth trial of the ring, or play. chap. xiii. sixth trial of the ring, or the opera at banza. chap. xiv. orcotomus's experiments. chap. xv. the bramins. chap. xvi. the muzzles. chap. xvii. the two devouts. chap. xviii. the toyman's return. chap. xix. seventh trial of the ring, or the stifled toy. chap. xx. eighth trial of the ring, or the vapors. chap. xxi. ninth trial of the ring, or things lost and found. chap. xxii. a sketch of mangogul's moral philosophy. chap. xxiii. tenth trial of the ring, or the dogs. chap. xxiv. eleventh trial of the ring, or the pensions. chap. xxv. twelfth trial of the ring, or a law-case. chap. xxvi. mirzoza's metaphysical essay, or the soul. chap. xxvii. sequel of the preceding conversation. chap. xxviii. thirteenth trial of the king, or the little mare. chap. xxix. mangogul's dream, or a voyage into the region of hypotheses. chap. xxx. fourteenth trial of the ring, or the mute toy. chap. xxxi. was mangogul in the right? chap. xxxii. the fifteenth trial of the ring, or alphana. chap. xxxiii. sixteenth trial of the ring, or the _petits-maitres_. chap. xxxiv. seventeenth trial of the ring, or the comedy. chap. xxxv. conversation on literature. chap. xxxvi. eighteenth and nineteenth trials of the ring, or the flatted spheroïd, and girgiro the entangled. chap. xxxvii. mirzoza's dream. chap. xxxviii. twenty-first and twenty-second trials of the ring, or fricamona and callipiga. chap. xxxix. dreams. chap. xl. twenty-third trial of the ring, or fannia. chap. xli. the history of selim's travels. chap. xlii. twenty-fourth and twenty-fifth trials of the ring, or, the masquerade, and sequel of the masquerade. chap. xliii. selim at banza. chap. xliv. twenty-sixth trial of the ring, or the rambling toy. chap. xlv. cydalisa. chap. xlvi. twenty-seventh trial of the ring, or fulvia. chap. xlvii. prodigious events of the reign of kanaglou, mangogul's grand-father. chap. xlviii. twenty-eighth trial of the ring, or olympia. chap. xlix. twenty-ninth trial of the ring, or zuleiman and zaide. chap. l. platonic love. chap. li. thirtieth and last trial of the ring, or mirzoza. [transcriber's note: chapters i.-xxi. of the second volume of the 1749 publication have been renumbered xxxi.-li. illustrations weren't present in the copy of the english edition we used, we added those from the original french (at gallica, bibliothèque nationale de france.] list of illustrations. 1. cupid in bed (_frontispiece_). 2. man, woman and cupid, or _folly, imagination,_ and _love_. 3. evocation of the genius. 4. dogs and lady in bed. 5. the mare, &c. 6. the bubble-blower. 7. women walking on their hands. 8. man and lady on a sopha (zuleiman). the indiscreet toys. chap. i. _birth of mangogul._ hiaouf zeles tanzai had already reigned long in great chechianea, and this voluptuous prince still continued to be the delight of his subjects. acajou king of minutia had undergone the fate predicted by his father: zulmis was no more: the count de ---was still living: splendidus, angola, misapouf and some other potentates of the indies and asia were carried off by sudden deaths. the people tired of obeying weak sovereigns, had shaken off the yoke of their posterity; and the descendants of those unfortunate monarchs rambled unknown, or not regarded, in the provinces of their empires. the grandson of the illustrious scheherazad was the only one who maintain'd his throne: and he was obeyed in indostan by the name of schach baam, at the time when mangogul was born in congo. thus it appears, that the death of several sovereigns was the mournful epoch of his birth. his father erguebzed did not summon the fairies round the cradle of his son; because he had observed, that most of the princes of his time, who had been educated by these female intelligences, were no better than fools. he contented himself with ordering his nativity to be calculated by one codindo, a person fitter for a portrait than an acquaintance. codindo, was head of the college of soothsayers at banza, the ancient capital of the empire. erguebzed had settled a large pension on him, and had granted to him and his descendants, on account of the merit of their great uncle, who was an excellent cook, a magnificent castle on the frontiers of congo. codindo was appointed to observe the flight of birds, and the state of the heavens, and to make a report thereof at court: which office he executed very indifferently. if it be true, that they had at banza the best theatrical pieces, and the worst play-houses in all africa; in return they had the most beautiful college in the world, and the most wretched predictions. codindo, informed of the business for which he was summoned to erguebzed's palace, set out much embarrassed; for the poor man could no more read the stars than you or i. he was expected with impatience. the principal lords of the court were assembled in the appartment of the great sultana. the ladies, magnificently dress'd, stood round the infant's cradle. the courtiers were hurrying to congratulate with erguebzed on the great things, which he was undoubtedly on the point of hearing concerning his son. erguebzed was a father, and thought it quite natural, to discern in the unform'd lines of an infant, what he was to be. in fine, codindo arrived. "draw near," says erguebzed to him: "as soon as heaven had granted me the prince before you, i ordered the instant of his birth to be exactly registered, and without doubt you have been informed of it. speak sincerely to your master, and tell him boldly the destiny which heaven has reserved for his son." "most magnanimous sultan," answered codindo, "the prince, born of parents equally illustrious and happy, can have no other than a great and fortunate destiny: but i should impose on your highness, if i plumed myself with a science which i do not possess. the stars rise and set for me as for the rest of mankind; and i am not more enlightened in futurity by their means, than the most ignorant of your subjects." "but," replied the sultan, "are you not an astrologer?" "magnanimous prince," answered codindo, "i have not that honour." "what the devil are you then?" says the old, but passionate erguebzed. "an aruspex! by the heavens i did not imagine, that you had so much as thought of it. believe me, seigneur codindo, suffer your poultry to feed in quiet, and pronounce on the fate of my son, as you lately did on the cold of my wife's parrot." codindo immediately drew a glass out of his pocket, took the infant's left ear, rubb'd his eyes, turn'd his spectacles again and again, peep'd at that ear, did the like to the right ear, and pronounced, "that the young prince's reign would be happy, if it proved long." "i understand you," replied erguebzed: "my son will do the finest things in the world, if he has time. but, zounds! what i want to have told me is, that he will have time. what matter is it to me, after he is dead, that he would have been the greatest prince upon earth, had he lived. i have sent for you to cast my son's horoscope, and you make me his funeral oration." codindo assured the prince, that he was sorry he was not more knowing; but beseeched his highness to consider, that his knowledge was sufficient for the little time he had been a conjurer. in effect, the moment before, what was codindo? chap. ii. _education of mangogul._ i will pass lightly over mangogul's first years. the infancy of princes is the same with that of the rest of mankind; with this difference, however, that princes have the gift of saying a thousand pretty things, before they can speak. thus before erguebzed's son was full four years old, he furnished matter for a volume of mangogulana. erguebzed, who was a man of sense, and was resolved that his son's education should not be so much neglected as his own had been, sent betimes for all the great men in congo; as, painters, philosophers, poets, musicians, architects, masters of dancing, mathematicks, history, fencing, &c. thanks to the happy dispositions of mangogul, and to the constant lessons of his masters, he was ignorant in nothing of what a young prince is wont to learn the first fifteen years of his life; and at the age of twenty he could eat, drink, and sleep, as completely as any potentate of his age. erguebzed, whose weight of years began to make him feel the weight of his crown, tired with holding the reins of the empire, frighted at the disturbances which threatened it, full of confidence in the superior qualifications of mangogul, and urged by sentiments of religion, sure prognostics of the approaching death or imbecility of the great, descended from the throne, to seat his son thereon: and this good prince thought he was under an obligation of expiating, by a retirement, the crimes of the most just administration, of which there is any account in the annals of congo. thus it was, that in the year of the world 15,000,000,032,000,021, of the empire of congo 390,000,070,003, began the reign of mangogul, the 1,234,500 of his race in a direct line. frequent conferences with his ministers, wars carried on, and the management of affairs, taught him in a very short time what remained for him to know at getting out of the hands of his pedagogues; and that was somewhat. however, in less than ten years mangogul acquired the reputation of a great man. he gained battles, stormed towns, enlarged his empire, quieted his provinces, repaired the disorder of his finances, restored arts and sciences, raised edifices, immortalized himself by useful establishments, strengthened and corrected the legislative power, even founded academies; and, what his university could never comprehend, he executed all these great things, without knowing one word of latin. mangogul was not less amiable in his seraglio than great on the throne. he did not take it into his head to regulate his conduct by the ridiculous customs of his country. he broke the gates of the palaces inhabited by his women; he drove out those injurious guards of their virtue; he prudently confided in themselves for their fidelity: the entrance into their appartments was as free for men as into those of the canonesses of flanders; and doubtless their behaviour as decent. oh! how good a sultan he was! there never was his equal, but in some french romance. he was mild, affable, chearful, gallant, of a charming figure, a lover of pleasures, cut out for them, and contained more wit and sense in his head, than had been in those of all his predecessors put together. 'tis easy to judge that, with such uncommon merit, a number of the sex aspired to make him their conquest: some few succeeded. those who miss'd his heart, endeavour'd to console themselves with the grandees of the court. young mirzoza was of the number of the former. i shall not amuse myself with detailing the qualities and charms of mirzoza: the work would be without end, and i am resolved that this history shall have one. chap. iii. _which may be regarded as the first of this history._ mirzoza had already fixed mangogul for some years. these lovers had said, and a thousand times repeated, all that a violent passion suggests to persons who have the most wit. they were got as far as confidences, and they would impute it to themselves as a crime, to conceal the most minute circumstance of their lives from each other. these singular suppositions, "if heaven, which has placed me on the throne, had given me an obscure low birth, would you have deign'd to descend down to me, would mirzoza have crown'd me?" "should mirzoza happen to lose the few charms which she is thought to have, would mangogul love her still?" these suppositions, i say, which exercise the fancy of ingenious lovers, which sometimes make tender lovers quarrel, and frequently oblige the most sincere lovers to tell untruths, were quite worn out between our pair. the favorite, who possess'd in a supreme degree, the necessary and uncommon talent of making a good narrative, had drained the scandalous history of banza. as she had not the best constitution, she was not always disposed to receive the sultan's caresses, nor he always in the humour of offering them. in short, there were some days, in which mangogul and mirzoza had little to say, hardly any thing to do, and in which, without any diminution of love, they amused themselves but indifferently. those days were rare indeed, but there were some; and this was one of them. the sultan was carelessly stretch'd on a sopha, opposite to the favorite, who was knotting in silence. the weather did not permit them to take a walk. mangogul would not venture to propose a party of piquet; and this posture had lasted near a quarter of an hour, when the sultan, yawning several times, said, "it must be allowed, that geliotta sung like an angel." "and that your highness is tired to death," answered the favorite. "no, madam," replied mangogul, endeavouring to smother a yawn, "the minute that one sees you, is not that of tiresomeness." "if that is not a polite compliment, 'tis no body's fault but your own," rejoin'd mirzoza: "but you ponder, you are absent, you yawn. prince, what ails you?" "i know not," said the sultan. "but i guess," continued the favorite. "i was eighteen, when i had the good fortune to please you. it is full four years since you began to love me. eighteen and four make twenty-two. therefore i am now very old." mangogul smiled at this calculation. "but if i am no longer worth any thing for pleasure," added mirzoza, "i will at least demonstrate that i am very good for advice. the variety of amusements which attend you, has not been able to secure you against disgust. you are disgusted. prince, there is your disease." "i do not allow, that you have hit it off," says mangogul: "but supposing you have, do you know a remedy?" mirzoza answered the sultan, after a moment's pause, that his highness seem'd to take so much pleasure at the narratives she made him of the gallantries of the town, that she was sorry she had no more to relate to him, or that she was not better informed of those of the court; that she would have tried that expedient, till she thought of somewhat better. "i think it a good one," says mangogul: "but who knows the stories of all those fools; and tho' they were known to any, who could relate them like you?" "let us learn them however," replied mirzoza. "whosoever it be that tells them, i am certain that your highness will gain more by the matter, than you will lose by the form." "i shall join with you, if you please, in fancying the adventures of the court ladies very diverting," says mangogul: "but tho' they were to be a hundred times more so, what does that avail, if it be impossible to come at them?" "there may be a difficulty in it," answers mirzoza, "but in my opinion, that is all. the genius cucufa, your relation and friend, has done greater things. why do you not consult him?" "ah, joy of my heart!" cried the sultan, "you are an admirable creature. i make no doubt but the genius will employ all his power in my favour. this moment i shut myself up in my closet, and invoke him." accordingly mangogul arose, kissed the favorite on the left eye, pursuant to the custom of congo, and departed. chap. iv. _evocation of the genius._ the genius cucufa is an old hypochondriac, who fearing lest the concerns of the world, and dealings with the rest of the genii, might prove an obstacle to his salvation, took refuge in the void; in order to employ himself quite at leisure on the infinite perfections of the great pagoda, to pinch, scratch and make notches in his flesh, to fret himself into madness, and starve himself to death. in that place he lies on a straw mat, his body tuck'd up in a sack, his flanks squeez'd with a cord, his arms crossed on his breast, and his head sunk into a hood, which suffers nothing to issue but the end of his beard. he sleeps, but one would think him in contemplation. all his company is an owl which nods at his feet, some rats which gnaw his mat, and bats which hover round his head. the manner of evoking him, is, by repeating, to the sound of a bell, the first verse of the nocturnal office of the bramins: then he lifts up his hood, rubs his eyes, puts on his sandals, and sets out. figure to yourself an old camaldolian monk carried in the air by two large horn-owls, which he holds by the legs. in this equipage it was, that cucufa appear'd to the sultan. "may the blessing of brama be within these walls," says he, bowing. "amen," answered the prince. "what do you want, my son?" "a very small matter," says mangogul; "to procure me some pleasure at the expence of the court ladies." "oh, my son!" replied cucufa, "you have a larger appetite than a whole monastery of bramins. what do you pretend to do with this troop of extravagants?" "to learn from themselves their present and past adventures, that is all." "but that is impossible," says the genius. "to have women confess their adventures, is a thing that never was, nor ever will be." "yet it must be," added the sultan. at these words, the genius scratching his ear, and combing his long beard with his fingers, fell to thinking. his meditation was short. "my child," said he to mangogul, "i love you, you shall be satisfied." instantly he plunged his right hand into a deep pocket made under his arm-pit on the left side of his frock, and, together with images, bless'd beads, little leaden pagoda's, and musty sweatmeats, drew out a silver ring, which mangogul at first took for one of st. hubert's rings. "you see this ring," said he to the sultan, "put it on your finger, my child: every woman, at whom you shall level the stone, will relate her intrigues in a plain, audible voice. do not imagine however, that 'tis by the mouth that they are to speak." "by what then will they speak?" says mangogul. "by the frankest part about them, and the best instructed in those things which you desire to know," says cucufa; "by their toys." "by their toys," replies mangogul bursting into laughter; "that is particular. talking toys! that is an unheard extravagance." "my son," said the genius, "i have performed many greater prodigies for your grandfather: therefore depend on my word. go, and may brama bless you. make a good use of your secret, and remember that there are ill-placed curiosities." this said, the old hypocrite nodded his head, pull'd his hood over his face, took his horn-owls by the legs, and vanish'd in the air. chap. v. _mangogul's dangerous temptation._ scarcely was mangogul in possession of cucufa's mysterious ring, when he was tempted to make the first trial of it on the favorite. i forgot to mention, that besides the vertue of obliging the toys of those women, on whom he turn'd the stone, to speak, it had that also of rendering the person invisible, who wore it on the little finger. thus could mangogul transport himself in the twinkling of an eye to a thousand places where he was not expected, and with his own eyes see many things, which are frequently transacted without witnesses. he had nothing more to do than to put on his ring, and say "i desire to be in such a place," and he was there in an instant. behold him then in mirzoza's bed-chamber. mirzoza, who gave over all hopes of the sultan's company, was in bed. mangogul approach'd her pillow softly, and saw by the glimmering light of a night taper, that she was asleep. "good," say he, "she sleeps, let us quickly shift the ring on another finger, resume our natural shape, turn the stone on this fair sleeper, and awake her toy a little while.--but what stops me?--i tremble.--is it possible that mirzoza?--no, it is not possible, mirzoza is faithful to me. fly from me, injurious suspicions, i will not, i ought not to heed ye." he said, and put his fingers on the ring: but taking them off as hastily as if it had been fire, he cried within himself. "what do i do, wretched man! i insult cucufa's advice. for the sake of satisfying a silly curiosity, i am going to run the hazard of losing my mistress and my life. if her toy should be in the humor of talking extravagantly, i should never see her more, and i should dye of grief. and who knows what a toy may have in its soul?" mangogul's agitation made him in some measure forget himself: he pronounced these last words pretty loud, and the favorite awoke. "ah, prince," said she, less surprized than charmed at his presence, "you are here. why did you not send me notice? must you condescend to wait for my awaking?" mangogul answered the favorite by relating the success of his interview with cucufa, shew'd her the ring, and did not conceal one of its properties from her. "ah! what a diabolical secret has he given you!" cry'd mirzoza. "but pray, prince, do you intend to make any use of it." "how," said the sultan, "do i intend to use it? i shall begin by you, if you argue with me." at these terrible words the favorite turn'd pale, trembled, recover'd herself, and conjured the sultan by brama, and all the pagoda's of the indies and congo, not to try the experiment on her of a secret power, which indicated a diffidence of her fidelity. "if i have been constantly honest," continued she, "my toy will not speak a word, and you will have done me such an injury as i shall never forgive. if it happens to speak, i shall lose your esteem and heart, and that will make you run distracted. hitherto you have, in my opinion, found your account in our connection; why would you run the risk of breaking it off? prince, believe me. follow the advice of the genius; he has had great experience, and advices of genius are always good to follow." "this is exactly what i was saying to myself," answered mangogul, "when you awoke. and yet if you had slept two minutes longer, i cannot answer for what might have happened." "what would have happened," says mirzoza, "is, that my toy would have given you no information, and that you would have lost me for ever." "that may be," replied mangogul; "but now that i have a full view of the danger which i incurred, i solemnly swear to you by the eternal pagoda, that you shall be excepted from the number of those, on whom i shall turn the ring." at these words mirzoza brightened up, and fell to joking at the expence of the toys which the prince should hereafter interrogate. "cydalisa's toy," said she, "has many stories to tell, and if it be as indiscreet as its mistress, it will not require much intreaty. haria's toy is no longer of this world, and your highness will obtain no tales from it of fresher date than the days of my grandmother. as for that of glauce, i believe it is a proper one to be consulted. she is a coquet and pretty." "and for that reason precisely it is," replied the sultan, "that her toy will be mute." "why then," said the sultana, "apply to that of phedima, she is ugly, and loves gallantry." "yes," continued the sultan; "and so ugly, that one must be as ill-natured as you, to accuse her of gallantry. phedima is sober; 'tis i who say it, and who know something of the matter." "as sober as you please," replied the favorite, "but she has a sort of grey eyes that speak the contrary." "her eyes belye her," said the sultan warmly. "you tire my patience with your phedima. might not one say, that there is no other toy but this to examine." "but may i presume, without offending your highness," added mirzoza, "to ask which is the first you intend to honour with your choice." "we shall see anon," said mangogul, "in the circle of the manimonbanda, (the congese name of the great sultana). we shall have a good deal of work upon our hands and when we happen to be tired of the toys of my court, we may chance make a tour thro' banza. possibly we may find those of the city women more reasonable than those of dutchesses." "prince," said mirzoza, "i have some acquaintance with the former, and can assure you, that they are only more circumspect." "we shall soon hear from them: but i cannot refrain from laughter," continued mangogul, "when i think on the confusion and surprize of these women at the first words of their toys, ha, ha, ha! remember, delight of my soul, that i shall expect you at the great sultana's, and that i shall make no use of my ring till you are come." "prince," said mirzoza, "i rely on the promise you have made me." mangogul smiled at her allarm, reiterated his promise, sealed them with kisses, and retired. chap. vi. _first trial of the ring._ alcina. mangogul arrived before her at the great sultana's, and found all the ladies very busy at cards. he survey'd all those, whose reputation was established, fully resolved to try his ring on one of them, and his only difficulty was in the choice. while, he was in suspence by whom to begin, he spied a young lady of the household of the manimonbanda in a window. she was toying with her husband; which appear'd singular to the sultan, inasmuch as they had been married above eight days. they had made their appearance in the same box at the opera, in the same coach at the bois de boulogne, they had finished their visits; and the fashion of the times exempted them from loving or even meeting each other. "if this toy," says mangogul, "is as silly as its mistress, we shall have a diverting soliloquy." at this instant the favorite appear'd. "welcome," said the sultan to her in a whisper. "i have cast my lead, waiting for you." "and on whom?" ask'd mirzoza. "on that couple which you see sporting in that window," answer'd mangogul with a wink. "well set out," replied the favorite. alcina, for that was the young lady's name, was sprightly and pretty. the sultan's court had few women more amiable, and not one of a gayer disposition. one of the sultan's emirs had filled his head with her. he was not left in ignorance of what the chronicle had published concerning alcina: the report alarm'd him, but he followed the custom: he consulted his mistress about it. alcina swore, that it was pure calumny invented by some coxcombs, who would have been silent, if they had had any reason for talking; but however, that there was no harm done, and that he was at full liberty to believe it or not, as he thought proper. this answer, delivered with an air of confidence, convinced the amorous emir of his mistress's innocence. he closed the affair, and assumed the title of alcina's husband with all its prerogatives. the sultan levelled his ring at her. a loud burst of laughter, which seized alcina at some comical saying of her husband, was suddenly cut short by the operation of the ring; and immediately a murmuring noise was heard under her petticoats. "well, now i am titled. truly i am glad on't. nothing like having a rank. if my first advices had been heeded, i should have been provided with something better than an emir: but yet an emir is better than nothing." at these words all the ladies quitted the game, to seek from what quarter the voice issued. this movement made a great noise. "silence," says mangogul, "this deserves attention." they obeyed, and the toy continued. "one would be apt to think, that a husband is a guest of great importance, by the precautions which are taken to receive him. what preparatives! what profusion of myrtle water! another fortnight of this regimen would have demolished me. i had disappear'd, and the emir might have sought lodgings elsewhere, or have shipped me off for the island jonquille." here my author says, that all the ladies grew pale, look'd at each other in deep silence, and grew vastly serious; which he ascribes to their fear, lest the conversation should grow warm, and become general. "yet," continued alcina's toy, "in my opinion the emir did neither require nor stand in need of so many formalities: but i must still acknowledge the prudence of my mistress. she guarded against the worst, and i was treated for the great lord as for his little page." the toy was on the point of continuing its extravagant harangue, when the sultan, observing that this strange scene shock'd the modest manimonbanda, interrupted the orator by turning off the ring. the emir had vanish'd at the first words of his wife's toy. alcina, without being disconcerted, pretended to take a nap: mean while the ladies whispered that she had the vapours. "yes," says a _petit-maitre_, "---vapours: ch----y calls them hysterics, as much as to say, things which come from the lower region. for this case he has a divine elixir; it is a principle, principiating, principiated, which revives----which----i will propose it to the lady." the company laugh'd at this gibberish, and our cynic resumed. "nothing more true, ladies: i, who speak, have used it for a deperdition of substance." "a deperdition of substance, good marquiss," said a young person, "pray what is that?" "madam," replied the marquiss, "it is one of those casual accidents which happen----but every body knows it." by this time the pretended drowziness went off. alcina sat down to play with as much intrepidity as if her toy either had not spoken a word, or had made the finest speech in the world. nay, she was the only lady that play'd without distraction. this sitting was worth a considerable sum to her. the rest did not know what they were about, could not count the dots on the cards, forgot their reckonings, neglected their good luck, dealt wrong, and committed a hundred other mistakes, of which alcina took the advantage. in fine, they broke up play, and every one withdrew. this adventure made great noise not only at court and in town, but all over congo. epigrams were handed about on it. the discourse of alcina's toy was published, revised, corrected, enlarged and commented by the agreeables of the court. the emir was lampoon'd, and his wife immortalized. she was pointed at in the play-house, and followed in the public walks. people flock'd about her, and she heard them buzzing: "yes, 'tis she: her toy made a discourse two hours long." alcina bore her new reputation with admirable tranquillity. she listened to these expressions, and many more, with a serenity, which the rest of the women could not shew. they were every moment under apprehensions of some indiscretions being committed by their toys: but the adventure of the following chapter compleated their confusion. as soon as the company had broke up, mangogul gave his hand to the favorite, and conduced her to her appartment. she was far from having that lively chearful air, which seldom quitted her. she had lost considerably at play, and the effect of the dreadful ring had plunged her into a pensiveness, out of which she was not yet thoroughly recovered. she knew the sultan's curiosity, and she had not sufficient confidence in the promises of a man less amorous than despotic, to be free from uneasiness. "what ails you, my soul's delight?" said mangogul. "you are pensive." "i played with bad luck without example," answered mirzoza. "i lost the possibility. i had twelve tableaux, and i don't think i mark'd three times." "that is vexatious," replied mangogul; "but what think you of my secret?" "prince," said the favorite, "i persist in deeming it diabolical. doubtless it will amuse you, but that amusement will be attended with dismal consequences. you are going to spread discord in every family, undeceive husbands, throw lovers into despair, ruin wives, dishonour daughters, and raise a thousand other hurly-burlys. ah! prince, i conjure you.----" "by the light," said mangogul, "you moralize like nicole! i would be glad to know why the concern for your neighbour touches you so to the quick. no, no, madam; i will keep my ring. and what do i matter those husbands undeceived, those lovers thrown into despair, those wives ruined, those daughters dishonoured, provided i amuse myself. am i then a sultan for nothing? good night, madam, we must hope that future scenes will be more comic than the first, and that you will take more pleasure in them by degrees." "i do not believe it, sir," replied mirzoza. "and for my part, i promise you, that you will find pleasant toys, nay, so pleasant, that you cannot refuse giving them audience. and what would you do, if i sent them to you in quality of ambassadors? i will if you desire it, spare you the trouble of their harangues; but as to the recital of their adventures, you shall hear it either from their own mouths or mine. 'tis a determined point; and i can abate nothing of it. resolve to familiarize yourself with these new speech-makers." at these words he embraced her, and went into his closet, reflecting on the trial he had made, and devoutly thanking the genius cucufa. chap. vii. _second trial of the ring._ the altars. the next evening there was to be a private supper in mirzoza's appartment. the persons invited came early. before the prodigy of the preceding day, people came by inclination; this night they came purely out of politeness. all the ladies had an air of constraint, and spoke in monosyllables. they were upon the watch, and expected every moment, that some toy would join in conversation. notwithstanding their itch of bringing alcina's odd adventure on the carpet, none of them dared to undertake opening the topic. not that they were restrained by her presence: tho' included in the supper-list, she did not appear; it was judged that she had a swimming in her head. however, whether it was that they became less apprehensive of danger, as the whole day long they had heard no body speak but from the mouth; or whether they affected to appear courageous, the conversation revived, the women most suspected composed their countenances, put on an air of assurance, and mirzoza ask'd the courtier zegris, if he knew any entertaining news. "madam," replied zegris, "you have been informed of a match between the aga chazour and young siberina: i assure you it is broke off." "upon what account?" interrupted the favorite. "on account of a strange voice," continued zegris, "which chazour says he heard at the toilet of his princess. since yesterday, the sultan's court is full of people, who go with their ears cock'd, in hopes of catching, i can't say how, such declarations, as most certainly the persons concerned have no inclination to make them." "that is silly," replied the favorite. "alcina's misfortune, if it be one, is far from being averred. we have not got to the bottom----" "madam," interrupted zelmaida, "i have heard her most distinctly. she spoke without opening her mouth. the facts were well articulated, and it was not very difficult to guess whence this extraordinary sound issued. i assure you, that i should have died, were i in her place." "died!" replied zegris. "folks survive other sorts of accidents." "how?" cried zelmaida. "can there be a more dreadful one than the indiscretion of a toy? well, there is no medium left. one must either renounce gallantry, or resolve to pass for a woman of pleasure." "indeed," said mirzoza, "the option is severe." "no, no, madam," replied another lady, "you will see that women will fix their resolution. they will allow toys to prate as much as they please; and will go their own way, without troubling themselves with what the world shall say. and after all, what does it signify, whether it be a woman's toy or her lover that proves indiscreet? are things less exposed?" "upon a serious consideration of the whole affair," continued a third, "if a woman's adventures must be divulged, 'tis better it should happen by her toy than her lover." "the notion is singular," said the favorite; "and true," replied she who had broach'd it: "for, pray, observe that a lover is generally dissatisfied, before he becomes indiscreet, and therefore tempted to be revenged by exaggerating every thing: whereas a toy talks without passion, and adds nothing to the truth." "for my part," said zelmaida, "i am not of that opinion. in this case it is not so much the importance of the depositions, as the strength of the evidence, that ruins the criminal. a lover, who by his discourse dishonours the altar, on which he has sacrificed, is a kind of impious person, who deserves no credit: but if the altar lifts up its voice, what answer can be made." "that the altar knows not what it says," replied the second. monima, hitherto mute, broke silence, in order to say in a dragging, lazy tone: "ah! let my altar, since you call it so, speak or be silent, i fear nothing from its talk." mangogul enter'd that very instant, and monima's last words did not escape him. he levell'd his ring at her, and her toy was heard to cry out: "do not believe her, she lies." her female neighbours, gazing at each other, ask'd whose toy it was that made this answer. "'tis not mine," said zelmaida; "nor mine," said another; "nor mine," said monima; "nor mine," said the sultan. every one, and the favorite among the rest, persisted in the negative. the sultan, taking the advantage of this incertainty, and addressing the ladies, said: "you have altars then? pray, how are they feasted?" as he was speaking, he nimbly turn'd his ring successively on all the women except mirzoza; and every one of their toys answering in its turn, these words were heard in different tones. "i am frequented, batter'd, abandon'd, perfum'd, fatigu'd, ill serv'd, disgusted, &c." they all spoke their word, but so precipitately, that no just application could be made. their jargon, sometimes rumbling, sometimes yelping, accompanied with loud laughs of mangogul and his courtiers, made a noise of a new kind. the ladies agreed with a very grave air, that it was very diverting. "how," said the sultan, "sure we are too happy, that the toys deign to speak our language, and furnish half the expence of the conversation. society must be a considerable gainer by this duplication of organs. possibly we men shall speak also in our turn, by something else besides our mouths. who knows? what agrees so perfectly well with toys, may happen to be destin'd to make questions and responses to them: nevertheless my anatomist is of a different opinion." chap. viii. _third trial of the ring._ the private supper. supper was served up, the company sate down at table, and at first they diverted themselves at monima's charge: all the women unanimously agreed that her toy had spoke first; and she must have sunk under this confederacy, had not the sultan taken her part. "i do not pretend," said he, "that monima is less gallant than zelmaida; but i believe her toy has more discretion. besides, when the mouth and toy of a woman contradict each other, which to believe?" "sir," replied a courtier, "i know not what toys will say hereafter; but hitherto they have explain'd themselves on a subject, which is very familiar to them. as long as they shall have the prudence to speak of nothing but what they understand, i shall believe them as so many oracles." "others," said mirzoza, "of greater authenticity might be consulted." "pray, madam," replied mangogul, "what interest can these have in disguising the truth? nothing but a chimæra of honour could be their motive: but a toy has none of these chimæras. that is not the place of prejudices." "a chimera of honour," said mirzoza, "prejudices! if your highness had been exposed to the same inconveniences with us, you would become sensible, that whatever touches virtue, is far from being chimærical." all the ladies, encouraged by the sultana's answer, insisted that it was superfluous to put them to certain proofs; and mangogul, that these proofs were generally dangerous at least. this conversation ushered in the champagne: it moved briskly round, they plied it close, and it warmed the toys. then it was that mangogul had intended to resume his frolicks. he turn'd his ring on a very gay sprightly young lady, who sate pretty near him, and directly opposite to her husband: and immediately issued from under the table a plaintive noise, a weak languishing voice, which said: "oh, how i am harrassed! i can bear it no longer, i am at death's door." "how, by the pagoda pongo sabiam," cried husseim, "my wife's toy speaks, and what can it say?" "we are going to hear," answered the sultan.----"prince, you will permit me not to be of the number of its auditors," replied husseim; "for if any thing ridiculous drop'd from it, do you think?"----"i think you are a fool," said the sultan, "to alarm yourself at the prattle of a toy: do we not know a good part of what it can say, and may we not guess the rest? sit down, then, and endeavour to divert yourself." husseim sat down, and his wife's toy began to prate like a magpye. "shall i eternally have this huge flandrian valanto? i have seen some who have made an end; but this man"----at these words husseim arose in a fury, snatch'd up a knife, sprang to the other side of the table; and would have pierced his wife's breast, if his neighbours had not prevented him. "husseim," said the sultan, "you make too much noise: the company cannot hear. might not one say, that your wife's toy is the only one that has not common sense? and what would become of these ladies, if their husbands were of your humour? how! you are out of your wits for a pitiful little adventure of one valanto, who never made an end. return to your seat, behave like a man of honour; see that you watch yourself, and not commit a second failure before a prince, who admits you to his pleasures." while husseim, stifling his rage, was leaning on the back of a chair, his eyes shut, and his hand on his forehead; the sultan dexterously levell'd his ring, and the toy went on. "valanto's young page would suit me pretty well: but i know not when he will begin. in the mean time till the one begins, and the other makes an end, i practise patience with the bramin egon. he is a frightful figure, i must own: but his talent is to make an end and begin again. oh, what a great man a bramin is!" by the time the toy had got as far as this exclamation, husseim blush'd to fret for a woman who was so unworthy, and fell a laughing with the rest of the company; but he kept something in reserve for his spouse. the entertainment being over, every one went home directly, except husseim, who conducted his wife into a house of veiled maidens, and there shut her up. mangogul being inform'd of her disgrace paid her a visit. he found the whole community busy in comforting her, but still more in trying to get the secret of her exile from her. "'tis for a mere trifle," said she, "that i am here. being last night at supper with the sultan, the champagne was whip'd about, the tokay gallop'd, people hardly knew what they said, when my toy must needs fall to prating. i do not remember on what subject it talk'd, but it made my husband take dudgeon." "to be sure, madam, he is in the wrong," replied the nuns: "people ought not to put themselves into such passions for trifles!----how! your toy has spoke. pray does it speak still? how charm'd we should be to hear it! it must certainly express itself with wit and a good grace." they were gratified: for the sultan turn'd his ring on the poor recluse, and her toy thank'd them for their civilities; protesting to them at the same time, that how pleased soever it was with their company, that of a bramin would suit it better. the sultan embraced the opportunity, to learn some particulars of the life of these virgins. his ring interrogated the toy of a young recluse, whose name was cleanthis; and the pretended virgin-toy confessed two gardeners, a bramin, and three cavaliers; and related how by the assistance of a purging draught and two bleedings, she had escaped giving scandal. zephirina owned, by the organ of her toy, that she was indebted to the errand-boy of the house, for the honourable title of mother. but one thing that astonish'd the sultan, was, that tho' those sequester'd toys expressed themselves in very indecent terms; the virgins, to whom they belong'd, heard them without blushing: which made him conjecture, that if they failed of the practical part in those retreats, they had in return a large share of speculation. in order to clear up this point, he turn'd his ring on a novice between fifteen and sixteen years of age. "flora," said her toy, "has more than once ogled a young officer thro' the grate. i am certain that she had an inclination for him. her little finger told me so." this was a mortifying stroke for flora. the ancient ladies condemned her to two months silence and discipline; and ordered prayers, that the toys of the community might remain mute. chap. ix. _the state of the academy of sciences at banza._ mangogul had scarcely quitted the recluses, among whom i left him, when a report was spread thro' banza, that the virgins of the congregation of brama's coccyx, spoke by their toys. this report, to which husseim's violent proceedings had given credit, rouzed the curiosity of the learned. the phænomenon was thoroughly examined and allowed: and the freethinkers began to seek in the properties of matter, the reasons of a fact, which they had at first deemed impossible. the tattle of the toys gave birth to a great number of excellent works; and this important subject swell'd the collections of the academies with several memoirs, which may be esteemed the utmost efforts of human understanding. in order to model and perpetuate that of banza, invitations with suitable encouragement had been, and still continued to be, given to all persons of the brightest parts in congo, monoémugi, beleguanza, and the circumjacent kingdoms. it took in, under different titles, all those who had distinguished themselves in natural history, natural philosophy, mathematicks, and the greatest part of those, who promised to make a figure in them one time or other. this swarm of indefatigable bees labour'd incessantly in the research of truth, and every year the public reaped the fruits of their labours in a volume full of discoveries. it was at that time divided into two factions, the one composed of vorticists, and the other of attractionists. olibrio, an able geometrician and great natural philosopher, founded the sect of the vorticists. circino, an able natural philosopher and great geometrician, was the first attractionist. both olibrio and circino proposed to explain nature. olibrio's principles have at first sight a certain air of simplicity, which seduces: in the gross they account for the principal phænomena, but they contradict themselves in the detail. as for circino, he seems to set out upon an absurdity; but 'tis the first step alone that is expensive. the minute details, which ruin olibrio's system, establish his. he follows a road, dark at entrance, but which grows more lightsome according as a person advances. on the contrary, that of olibrio, lightsome at entrance, grows darker and darker. the philosophy of the latter requires less study than understanding. one cannot be a disciple of the former, without a large share of understanding and study. one enters without preparation into olibrio's school; every body has the key of it. that of circino is open to none but geometricians of the first class. olibrio's vortices are within the reach of all capacities. circino's central powers are made for first rate algebraists only. wherefore there will always be an hundred vorticists for one attractionist; and one attractionist will always be worth an hundred vorticists. such was the state of the academy of sciences at banza, when it handled the subject of the indiscreet toys. this phænomenon was very slippery: it dodged the attraction, and the subtile matter could not come within reach of it. in vain did the president summon all those who had any notions, to communicate them: a profound silence reigned in the assembly. at length persiflo the vorticist, who had published treatises on many subjects, which he did not understand, rose up and said: "the fact, gentlemen, might well agree with the system of the world. i should suspect that it has in general the same cause with the tides. for pray take notice, that this day is the equinoctial full moon. but before i can depend on my conjecture, i must wait to hear what the toys will say next month." the company shrug'd their shoulders: they dared not remonstrate to him, that he reasoned like a toy; but as he is a man of penetration he perceived in an instant that they thought as much. the attractionist reciproco opened, and said: "gentlemen, i have tables calculated by a theory on the highth of the tides in every port of the kingdom. true it is, that observations somewhat bely my calculations: but i flatter myself that this small inconvenience will be repaired by the advantage that will result from them, if the tattle of toys continues to square with the phænomena of the ebb and flow." a third person started up, went to the board, traced his figure, and said "let a toy be a b, and----" here the ignorance of the translators has deprived us of a demonstration, which without doubt the african author had preserv'd. after a blank of about two pages, we read: reciproco's reasoning was thought demonstrative; and it was unanimously agreed, from the essays he had given on dialectics, that he would be able one day or other to make this deduction: women have from time immemorial heard with their ears: therefore they ought at this day to speak by their toys. doctor orcotomus, of the tribe of anatomists, spoke next, and said: "gentlemen, i am of opinion, that it would be properer to drop a phænomenon, than to seek its cause in vapory hypotheses. for my part, i would not have open'd my mouth, if i had nought but trifling conjectures to offer: but i have examined, studied, meditated. i have seen toys in the paroxysm, and i am got so far, by means of my knowledge of the parts, and experience, as to be convinced, that that which in greek we call delphys, has all the properties of the windpipe, and that there are some who can speak as well by the toy as by the mouth. yes, gentlemen, the delphys is a string and wind instrument; but much more a string than a wind one. the outward air, which lights on it, properly does the office of a bow on the tendinous fibres of the wings, which i shall call ribbons or vocal strings. the gentle collision of this air and the vocal strings puts them into a trembling motion; and it is by their quicker or slower vibrations, that they utter different sounds. the person modifies these sounds at discretion, speaks, and even might sing. "as there are but two ribbons or vocal strings, and as they are to the eye of equal length, it will doubtless be ask'd, how they suffice to give the multitude of sounds, grave and acute, strong and weak, of which the human voice is capable. i answer, in pursuing the comparison of this organ with musical instruments, that their lengthening and shortening are sufficient to produce these effects. "that these parts are capable of distention and contraction, is needless to be demonstrated in an assembly of literati of your rank: but that in consequence of this distention and contraction, the delphys can utter sounds more or less acute; in a word, all the inflexions of the voice, and modulation of singing; is a fact, which i flatter myself i shall put out of doubt. my appeal is to experiments. yes, gentlemen, i engage to make both a delphys and a toy reason, speak, nay, and sing too, before ye." thus harangued orcotomus, promising to himself nothing less than to raise the toys to the level of the windpipes of one of his learned brethren, whose success jealousy had attack'd in vain. chap. x. _less learned and less tedious than the preceding. continuation of the academical sitting._ by the difficulties started against orcotomus, before he could make his experiments, it appeared, that his notions were judged to have less of solidity than ingenuity. "if toys have the faculty of speech naturally," say they, "why have they not made use of it till now? if it was an effect of the goodness of brama, who has been pleased to endow women with so strong a desire of talking, to double the organs of speech in them; it is very strange, that they have so long been ignorant of, or at least neglected this valuable gift of nature. why has not the same toy spoke more than once? why has none of them spoke of aught but the same subject? by what mechanism does it fall out, that one of the mouths is forcibly kept shut, while the other speaks? moreover," added they, "if we judge of the prattle of toys by the circumstances, in which most of them have spoken, and by the things they have told; there is all the reason in the world to believe it involuntary, and that those parts would continue mute, if it had been in the power of their possessors to impose silence on them." orcotomus arose to answer these objections, and insisted that toys talk'd in all ages; but so low, that what they said was hardly heard, even by those to whom they belonged. that it is not surprizing, that they have raised their voice in our days, when the freedom of conversation is carried so high, that one may without impudence and indiscretion converse on those things, which are the most familiar to them: that if they have spoke audibly but once, we are not to infer that that will be the only time. that there is a vast difference between being mute and keeping silence; that if they have talk'd but on one and the same subject only, probably the reason is, that it is the only one, of which they have ideas. that those who have not spoke as yet, will speak. that if they remain silent, it is because they have nothing to say, or that they are ill made, or want ideas and terms. "in a word," continued he, "to pretend that it was an effect of the goodness of brama to grant to women the means of gratifying their strong desire of talking, by multiplying in them the organs of speech; is to grant, that if this benefaction drag'd any inconveniences after it, it was an effect of his wisdom to prevent them: and this he has done, by compelling one of the mouths to keep silence, while the other speaks. it is already but too inconvenient for us, that women change their mind from one instant to another: what then would it have been, if brama had left them the power of being of two contradictory sentiments at the same time? further, the gift of speech has been given, purely in order to be understood; but the women, who find it a difficult talk to understand one another with a single mouth each, how could they possibly do it, if they spoke with two at a time?" thus orcotomus answered several things, and thought he had given satisfactory solutions to all difficulties: but he was mistaken. new doubts were raised, and he was on the point of sinking under them; when cimonazes came to his assistance. then the dispute became tumultuous. they stray'd wide of the question, they bewilder'd themselves, they return'd, they bewilder'd themselves a second time, they grew angry, they brawled; from brawling they pass'd to injurious words, and the academical sitting ended. chap. xi. _fourth trial of the ring._ the echo. while the prattle of the toys employed the academy, in other companies it became the news of the day, and the subject of the morrow, and of several succeeding days. it was an inexhaustible text. true facts were blended with false; every thing went down, the prodigy had removed all incredulity. in conversation people lived on it upwards of six months. the sultan had made but three trials of his ring; and yet, in a circle of ladies who were allowed a stool at the manimonbanda's, one of them related a discourse held by the toy of a president's lady, next that of a marchioness, then she disclosed the pious secrets of a devotee, in fine those of several women who were not there: and god knows the stories that were father'd on their toys; nor was there any parcimony of smutty tales. from facts they came to reflections. "i must confess," says one of those ladies, "that this witchcraft (for it is a spell cast on toys) keeps us in a cruel state. how! to be eternally under apprehensions of hearing an impertinent voice issuing from one's self." "but madam," answered another, "this fright astonishes us with regard to you. when a toy has nothing ridiculous to tell, what does it signify, whether it be silent or speak?" "it signifies so much," replied the first, "that i would freely give half my jewels, to be assured that mine will never speak." "surely," replied the second, "there must be substantial reasons for keeping measures with people, to purchase their discretion at so high a price." "i have not better reasons than another," said cephisa: "and yet i do not eat my words. twenty thousand crowns, is not too large a sum to buy tranquillity: for i will frankly own, that i have not more confidence in my toy than in my mouth, and many silly things have slipt from me in my life. i hear every day so many incredible adventures unveiled, attested, detailed by toys, that even retrenching three fourths, the remaining part is sufficient to destroy a reputation. if mine should prove but half so great a lyer as all those, i should be ruined. was it not enough then that our conduct was in the power of our toys, without our reputation being dependent on their discourses?" "for my part," answered ismene smartly, without entering into endless arguments, "i allow things to go their own way. if it be brama, that has given the faculty of speech to toys, as my bramin has convinced me, he will not suffer them to lye. it would be impious to assert the contrary. wherefore my toy may talk as often and much as it will. but after all what will it say?" then was heard a hollow voice, which seemed to come out of the ground, and answered by way of echo: _many things_. ismene, not imagining whence the answer proceeded, flew into a passion, attack'd her neighbours, and increased the diversion of the company. the sultan, charmed with her mistake, quitted his minister, with whom he was in conference in a corner, went to her, and said: "i am afraid, madam, you have heretofore admitted some one of these ladies into your confidence, and that their toys are so malicious as to recollect histories, which your own might have forgot." at the same time, by moving his ring up and down with dexterity, mangogul caused a very singular dialogue between the lady and her toy. ismene, who had always conducted her little affairs well enough, and had never had a confidante, answer'd the sultan, that all the art of calumniators would be ineffectual. "_perhaps,_" answer'd the unknown voice. "how, perhaps," reply'd ismene, piqued at this injurious doubt, "what have i to fear from them?" "_every thing, if they knew as much as i._" "and what do you know?" "_many things, i tell you._" "many things, that says much, but means nothing. can you tell any particulars?" "_without doubt._" "and of what nature? have i been really in love?" "_no._" "have i had intrigues, adventures?" "_exactly._" "and with whom, pray? with petits-maitres, military men, senators?" "_no._" "comedians?" "_no._" "you shall see, it was with my pages, my footmen, my confessor, or my husband's chaplain." "_no._" "mr impostor, you are at your wits end?" "_not quite._" "yet i can see no other person, with whom one can possibly have adventures. was it before, was it after my marriage? answer me then, impertinent." "_ah, madam, spare invectives, if you please. compel not the best of your friends to take some disagreeable steps._" "speak, my dear, tell, tell all. i value your services as little as i fear your indiscretion. explain your self: i not only give you full permission, but even dare you to it." "_to what do you reduce me, ismene?_" said the toy, breathing a deep sigh. "to render justice to vertue." "_well then, virtuous ismene, have you quite forgot young osmin, the sangiac zegris, your dancing master alaziel, your music master almoura?_" "ah! what horrid calumnies," cried ismene. "i had a mother, who was too vigilant to expose me to such irregularities: and my husband, were he here, would testify that he found me just such as he could wish." "_very true,_" replied the toy, "_thanks to the secret of your intimate friend alcina._" "this is so extravagantly and so grossly ridiculous," said ismene, "that it deserves no refutation. i cannot say," continued she, "which of these ladies toys it is, that pretends to be so knowing in my affairs: but it has related things, of which my own does not know a syllable." "madam," answered cephisa, "i can assure you, that mine has gone no farther than giving ear." the rest said as much, and they sate down to play, without precisely knowing the interlocutor of the conversation above related. chap. xii. _fifth trial of the ring._ play. most of the ladies who made the party with the manimonbanda, play'd with great eagerness; and it was not necessary to have mangogul's sagacity, to perceive it. the passion of gaming is one of those that puts on the least disguise. it shews itself, whether in winning or losing, by strong symptoms. "but whence proceeds this fury?" said he within himself. "how can the ladies bear to pass whole nights round a pharaoh table, to tremble in expectation of an ace or a seven? this phrensy injures their health and beauty, when they have any: without reckoning the disorders into which i am sure it precipitates them. i have a great desire," said he to mirzoza in the ear, "to execute here a thought just come into my head." "and what is this fine thought, which you meditate?" said the favorite. "it is," answered mangogul, "to turn my ring on the most unbridled of these brelandiers, to interrogate her toy, and to transmit by that organ, a good advice to all those weak husbands, who allow their wives to stake the honour and fortune of their house on a card or a dye." "i like this notion mightily," replied mirzoza; "but know, prince, that the manimonbanda has just now sworn by her pagoda's, that she would keep no more drawing-room nights, if ever she found herself again exposed to the impudence of engastrimuthes." "what have you said, my soul's delight?" interrupted the sultan. "i have," answered the favorite, "made use of the name, which the modest manimonbanda gives to all those, whose toys have the faculty of speech." "it is of the invention of her stupid bramin, who values himself upon knowing the greek, and being ignorant of the congese language," replied the sultan. "however, with the manimonbanda's leave, and that of her chaplain too, i would desire to question manilla's toy; and it would be proper to make the interrogatories here, for the edification of the neighbours." "prince," said mirzoza, "if you take my word, you will spare the manimonbanda the uneasiness this proceeding must give her: which you may do, without balking your own curiosity or mine. why do you not go to manilla's house?" "i will go, since you advise," said mangogul. "but at what hour?" said the sultana. "about midnight," answered the sultan. "at midnight she is at play," said the favorite. "i will put off my visit then till two in the morning," replied mangogul. "prince, you don't consider," rejoined the favorite: "'tis the most pleasant hour of the four and twenty for female gamesters. if your highness will be led by me, you will take manilla in her first sleep, between seven and eight." mangogul followed mirzoza's advice, and visited manilla about seven. her women were going to put her to bed. he judged by the sadness predominant in her countenance, that she had play'd with bad luck. she walk'd to and fro, stopp'd, lifted her eyes to heaven, stamp'd with her foot, cover'd her eyes with her hands, and muttered somewhat, which the sultan could not understand. her women, who were undressing her, followed all these motions in panicks; and if they at length compassed getting her into bed, it was not done without receiving harsh language and something worse. now manilla is in bed, having made no other night prayer, but some curses against a damned ace, which came seven times successively to her loss. scarcely had she closed her eyes, when mangogul levell'd his ring at her. instantly her toy exclaimed in a sorrowful tone: "now i am repiqued and capotted." the sultan smiled to hear that every thing about manilla, even to her toy, spoke gaming. "no," continued the toy, "i will never play against abidul: he knows nothing but tricking. speak to me no more of dares: with him one runs the risq of some unlucky hits. ismal is a pretty fair player, but every body has him not that would. mazulim was a treasure, before he fell into the hands of crissa. i don't know a more whimsical player than zulmis. rica is less so; but the poor lad is run dry. what can one do with lazuli? the prettiest woman of banza could not make him play high. what a piddling player mollius is! in truth, desolation has spread among the gamesters: and e'er long we shall not know with whom to make a party." after this jeremiad, the toy fell to relating uncommon strokes, of which it had been a witness; and excessively extoll'd the constancy and resources of its mistress in bad luck. "were it not for me," it said, "manilla would have ruin'd herself twenty times over. all the sultan's treasures would not have discharged the debts that i have paid. in one match at breland she lost to a farmer of the revenue and an _abbé_, above ten thousand ducats. she had nothing left but her jewels: but her husband had so lately redeem'd them, that she dared not to venture them. nevertheless she took the cards, and had one of those seducing hands, which fortune sends, when she is on the point of cutting your throat. they urged her to speak. manilla look'd at her cards, put her hand into her purse, whence she was sure to pull nothing, return'd to her cards, examined them again, but without determining. 'does madam stand it at last?' said the farmer. 'yes; i stake,' said she,--'i stake--i stake my toy.' 'for what value?' replied turcares. 'for a hundred ducats,' said manilla. the _abbé_ withdrew, esteeming the toy too high rated. turcares declared at it: manilla lost and paid. "the silly vanity of possessing a titled toy got the better of turcares. he offered to supply my mistress with play-money, on condition that i should be subservient to his pleasures. the bargain was struck in a moment. but as manilla play'd high, and the farmer was not inexhaustible, we soon saw the bottom of his coffers. "my mistress had appointed a most brilliant party at pharaoh. all her acquaintance were invited. they were to punt with nothing under ducats. we depended on the purse of turcares. but the morning of this great day, the rascal wrote us word that he had not a penny, and left us in the utmost consternation. however, we must extricate ourselves, and there was not a moment to be lost. we pitch'd on an old chief of the bramins, to whom we sold at a dear rate some complaisances, which he had sollicited a long time. this sitting cost him double the income of his ecclesiastical preferment. "turcares returned notwithstanding, in a few days. he said he was excessively concerned that madam had taken him at a nonplus: he still reckon'd on her goodness. 'indeed you reckon ill, my dear,' replied manilla: 'i cannot with decency receive you more. when you were in a condition to lend, the world knew why i admitted you: but now that you are good for nothing, you would blast my honour.' "turcares was piqued at this discourse, and so was i: for he was perhaps the best lad in banza. he waved his usual politeness, and gave manilla to understand, that she cost him more than three opera girls, who would have amused him better, 'alas!' cried he most mournfully, 'why did i not stick to my little milliner? she loved me to folly. i made her so happy with a silk gown.'----manilla, who did not relish comparisons, interrupted him in a tone, eno' to make one tremble, and bade him begone in an instant. turcares knew her, and chose rather to return peaceably down stairs, than to leap thro' the window. "after that, manilla borrowed of another bramin, who came, said she, to administer comfort in her afflictions. the holy man succeeded the farmer of the revenue, and we reimbursed him his comforts in the same coin. she lost me several times more, and 'tis well known that play-debts are the only ones that are paid among the _beau monde_. "if manilla happens to play with good luck, she is the most regular woman in congo. excepting her play, she takes surprising care of her conduct: she is never heard to swear an oath: she entertains well: she pays her mercer and other tradesmen, is liberal to her servants, redeems her nicknacks sometimes, and caresses her lap dog and her husband: but thirty times a month she risks these happy dispositions and her money on an ace of spades. such is the life she leads, and will lead: and god knows how many times yet i shall be pawn'd." here the toy ceased, and mangogul went to take repose. he was awaken'd at five in the afternoon, and went to the opera, according to a promise made to the favorite. chap. xiii. _of the opera at banza._ _sixth trial of the ring._ of all the public diversions of banza, none supported itself but the opera. utmiutsol and utremifasolasiututut, two celebrated musicians, one of whom was growing old, and the other was but just new-fledged, alternately occupied the lyric scene. each of these two original authors had his partisans. the ignorant and the grey-bearded dotards stood up for utmiutsol; the smart young fellows and the virtuosi were for utremifasolasiututut: and the people of taste, as well young as old, held them both in high esteem. utremifasolasiututut, said the latter, is excellent when he is good, but he sleeps at times; and, pray, to whom does not that happen? utmiutsol holds up better, and is more uniform. he is full of beauties; yet he has not one, of which there are not examples to be found, and even more striking, in his rival; in whom there are strokes to be observed, which are entirely his own, and are not to be met with any where but in his works. old utmiutsol is simple, natural, smooth, sometimes too smooth, and that is his fault. young utremifasolasiututut is singular, brilliant, composed, learned, sometimes too learned: but perhaps that is his hearer's fault. the one has but one opening, beautiful indeed, but repeated at the head of all his pieces. the other has made as many openings as pieces, and they all pass for masterpieces. nature guided utmiutsol in the ways of melody; study and experience discovered the sources of harmony to utremifasolasiututut. who ever knew how to declaim, and who will ever speak a part like the old man? who will compose light catches, voluptuous airs, and symphonies in character like the young one? utmiutsol is the only person who understood dialogue. before utremifasolasiututut no body distinguished the delicate touches, which separate the tender from the voluptuous, the voluptuous from the passionate, the passionate from the lascivious. nay some partisans of the latter pretend, that if utmiutsol's dialogue is superior to his, this is not so much owing to the inequality of their talents, as to the difference of the poets, whom they made use of. "read, read," cried they, "the scene of dardanus, and you will be convinced, that if we give good words to utremifasolasiututut, utmiutsol's charming scenes will be revived." however that be, in my time, the whole town flock'd to the tragedies of the latter, and people stifled one another at the interludes of the former. they were just then exhibiting in banza an excellent piece of utremifasolasiututut, which would never have been represented but in nightcaps, had not the favorite sultana had the curiosity to see it. and besides, the periodical indisposition of toys favored the jealousy of the fiddles, and made the principal actress flinch. she, who supplied her place, had not so good a voice, but as she made amends by her manner of acting, nothing hindered the sultan and the favorite from honouring the piece with their presence. mirzoza was already come, mangogul comes, the curtain is raised, they begin. every thing went on marvellously well: miss chevalier had effaced the memory of miss le maure, and they were at the fourth act, when the sultan bethought himself, in the middle of a chorus, which he thought lasted too long, and had already cost the favorite two yawns, to point his ring on all the singers. never was there seen on the stage so odd and comical a sight. thirty women were struck dumb on a sudden. their mouths were wide open, and they kept the same theatrical attitudes they held before. and at the same time their toys made their throats sore with the violence of singing, this a _pont-neuf_, that a _vaudeville polisson_, another a very indecent parody, and all of them extravagances relative to their characters. on one hand was heard, _oh vraiment ma comere, oui_; on the other, _quoi douze fois?_ here, _qui me baise, est-ce blaise?_ there, _rien, pere cyprien, ne vous retient_. in fine, they all wound themselves up into a strain, so high, so rude, and so mad, that they formed the most extravagant brawling ridiculous choir, that had been heard before and since that of----no----d----on---_here the manuscript was worm-eaten._ all this while the orchestra went on, and the loud laughs of the pit and boxes joined to the sound of the instruments, and the singing of the toys, compleated the cacophony. some of the actresses, fearing lest their toys, tired with quavering impertinences, might resolve to speak them out, ran behind the scenes: but they escaped with the fright only. mangogul being perswaded that the public would learn nothing new, turn'd off his ring. in an instant all the toys were silent, the bursts of laughter ceased, the audience grew calm, the play was resumed and finished peaceably. the curtain drop'd, the sultana and sultan went off, and the toys of our actresses went to their several appointments, where they were to have a different employment from singing. this affair made a great noise. the men laugh'd, the women were alarmed, the bonza's were scandalized, the academicians rack'd their brains about it. but what did orcotomus say? orcotomus triumph'd. he had hinted in one of his memoirs, that the toys would infallibly sing: they had sung accordingly, and this phænomenon, which disconcerted his brethren, was to him a new ray of light, and compleated the confirmation of his system. chap. xiv. _orcotomus's experiments._ it was on the fifteenth of the moon of ----, that orcotomus had read his memoir to the academy, and communicated his thoughts on the tattle of the toys. as he then did with the greatest assurance promise to produce infallible experiments, which he had repeated several times, and always with success; the majority of people was struck with his doctrine. for some time the public preserved the favorable impressions they had received: and for full six weeks orcotomus pass'd for having made considerable discoveries. nothing was wanting to complete his triumph, but performing before the academy the famous experiments, which he had preached so loudly. the assembly that met on this occasion was extremely brilliant. the ministers of state graced the meeting: the sultan himself did not disdain to be there, but invisible. as mangogul was a great monologue maker, and the futility of the conversations of his time had tainted him with the habitude of soliloquy: "either orcotomus," said he, "must be an arrant quack, or the genius my protector, a great fool. if the academician, who certainly is not a conjurer, can restore speech to dead toys; the genius who protects me was in the wrong to make a compact, and sell his soul to the devil, for the sake of communicating it to toys full of life." mangogul was puzzling himself with such reflections, when he found himself in the middle of his academy. orcotomus had for spectators, as appears, all those in banza, who were knowing in the subject of toys. in order to be satisfied with his audience, all he wanted was to give them satisfaction: but the issue of his experiments proved very unhappy. orcotomus took up a toy, put his mouth to it, blew into it till he was out of breath, quieted it, returned, tried another: for he had brought a variety of them with him, of all ages, sizes, conditions and colours: but in vain did he blow; nothing was heard but inarticulate sounds, vastly different from what he had promised. then ran a buzzing murmur thro' the company, which disconcerted him for a moment: but he recovered himself, and alledged that such experiments were not easy to be made before so great a number of people: and he was right. mangogul got up in wrath, went away, and in the twinkling of an eye was in the favorite sultana's appartment. "well, prince," said she upon seeing him, "who has won the day, you or orcotomus? for his toys have performed wonders to be sure." the sultan took some turns about the room without a word of answer. "but," resumed the favorite, "your highness seems dissatisfied." "oh! madam, the impudence of that orcotomus is not to be match'd. pray, do not so much as mention him from this moment--what will you say, o future generations, when you shall be informed, that the great mangogul allowed a hundred thousand crowns in yearly pensions to such fellows; while gallant officers, who with their blood had watered the laurels that surround his brow, were reduced to twenty pound a year?----by jove, the thought distracts me: i shall be out of humor this month to come." here mangogul broke off, and continued to walk about the room. he hung down his head, marched to and fro, stop'd, and now and then stamp'd the floor with his foot. he sat down a moment, rose up in a hurry, took his leave of mirzoza, forgot to kiss her, and retir'd to his own appartment. the african author, who has immortalized himself by the history of the high and marvellous exploits of erguebzed and mangogul, continues in these words: by mangogul's ill humor it was thought, that he was on the point of banishing all the learned out of his dominions. far from it, the next day he arose in a gay mood, performed his exercises at the riding-house in the morning, in the evening supp'd with mirzoza and some favorites, under a magnificent tent in the gardens of the seraglio, and never appeared more disengaged from affairs of state. the dissatisfied and the disaffected of congo, and the newsmongers of banza, did not fail to spread their reports of this conduct. for what do not people of this stamp find fault with? "is this," said they in the public walks and coffee-houses, "is this governing a state? to spend the day in tilting, and the night at table." "well, if i was sultan," cried a little senator ruined by gaming, parted from his wife, and whose children had the worst of education, "if i was sultan, i would make congo a flourishing empire. i would be the terror of my enemies, and the darling of my subjects. within six months i would reestablish the police, the laws, the army and the navy in their full vigour. i would have a hundred ships of the line. our heaths should soon be grub'd up, and our high-ways repair'd. i would abolish the taxes, or at least reduce them to one half. as for pensions, gentlemen of sublime wit, by my faith, ye should but just taste them with the tip of your tongues. good officers, pongo sabiam, good officers, old soldiers, magistrates like us, who devote our labours and night studies to dealing out justice to the people; these are the men on whom i would shed my bounty." "gentlemen," said an old toothless politician, with greasy flat hair, a coat worn out at elbows, and ragged ruffles, "have ye quite forgot our great emperor abdelmalek, of the dynasty of the abyssinians, who reigned two thousand three hundred and eighty five years ago? have ye forgot how he caused two astronomers to be impaled, for an error of three minutes in their prediction of an eclipse; and his first physician and surgeon to be dissected alive, for having ordered him a dose of manna at an improper time?" "moreover i ask you," continued another, "what are those idle bramins good for, that vermin who suck our blood, and grow fat on it. would not their immense overflowing riches better become honest folks like us." from another quarter was heard: "forty years ago, were the new cookery and the liquors of lorraine so much as known? our rulers are plung'd deep into luxury, which threatens approaching destruction to the empire, a necessary consequence of the contempt of the pagoda's and dissolution of morals. at the time when people eat but coarse meats, and drank but sherbet at kanaglou's table; what regard would be paid to the cut-paper ornaments, to martin's varnishes, and to rameau's music? the opera girls were not more cruel then than at present, and were to be had much cheaper. the prince, you see, spoils many good things. but if i was sultan----" "if thou wert sultan," answered in wrath an old officer, who had escaped the dangers of the battle of fontenoy, and had lost an arm close to his prince in the fight of laufelt; "thou wouldst commit greater impertinences than thou now dealst out. eh, friend, thou can'st not govern thy tongue, and thou wouldst willingly rule an empire: thou hast not sense to manage thy family, and thou pretendst to guide a state. respect the powers of the earth, and thank the gods for having given thee birth in the empire, and in the reign of a prince, whose prudence instructs his ministers, and whose soldiery admire his valor; who has made himself dreaded by his enemies, and beloved by his people; and whose only fault is the lenity with which persons of thy stamp are treated under his government." chap. xv. _the bramins._ after the learned had spent themselves on the toys, the bramins took possession of them. religion laid claim to their chit-chat, as a subject that came within its jurisdiction, and its ministers pretended that the hand of brama manifested itself in that work. there was held a general assembly of pontiffs, and a resolution was taken to employ the best pens to prove in form, that the thing was supernatural, and that, till their works could be published, it should be defended by way of theses in the schools, in private conversations, in the direction of consciences, and in public harangues. now, altho' they unanimously agreed that the thing was supernatural; yet as the people of congo admitted two principles, and professed a sort of manicheism, they were divided in opinion, to which of these two principles the chit-chat of the toys ought to be attributed. those who had seldom or never been out of their cells, and had turned over nothing but their books, ascribed the prodigy to brama. "there is none but he," said they, "that can interrupt the course of nature; and time will shew, that in all this he has most profound views." those on the contrary, who frequented the toilets, and were oftner surprized at bed-sides than in their closets, fearing lest some indiscreet toy or other might unveil their hypocrisy, laid their prattle to the charge of cadabra, a mischief-making deity, and a sworn enemy to brama and his servants. this latter system was exposed to terrible objections, and had not so direct a tendency towards the reformation of morals. nay, its defenders did not impose on themselves about it. but the business was, to screen themselves: and in order to compass that, religion had not a single minister, who would not have sacrificed the pagodas and their altars a hundred times over. mangogul and mirzoza assisted regularly at the religious service of brama, and the whole empire was informed thereof by the news-papers. on a certain day appointed for celebrating one of the principal solemnities in the great mosq, they were present. the bramin, whose turn it was to explain the law, mounted the rostrum, pour'd forth a volley of affected phrases and fulsome compliments on the sultan and his favorite; and made an eloquent peroration on the manner of sitting orthodoxly in company. he had already demonstrated the necessity thereof by numberless authorities, when being instantaneously seized with a fit of sacred enthusiasm, he spoke this declamation, which had the greater effect, as it came in quite unexpected. "what do i hear in all assemblies? a confused murmur, an unheard noise strikes my ears. all things are turn'd topsy-turvy, and the faculty of speech, which the goodness of brama had hitherto appropriated to the tongue, is now by an effect of his vengeance transported to other organs. and what organs? you know, gentlemen. o ungrateful people, was there a necessity for a new prodigy, to rouze ye from your lethargy; and had not your crimes witnesses enough, but their principal instruments must raise their voice? doubtless their measure is filled up; since the wrath of heaven has sought new chastisements. in vain did you envelop yourself in darkness, in vain did you choose mute accomplices: do you not hear them at present? they have given depositions against ye from every quarter, and revealed your baseness to the universe. o thou who governest by thy wisdom! o brama! just are thy judgments. thy law condemns theft, perjury, lying and adultery: it proscribes the blackness of calumny, the intrigues of ambition, the fury of hatred, and the artifices of insincerity. thy faithful ministers have not ceased declaring these truths to thy children, and threatening them with the chastisements, which thou in thy just anger reservedst for prevaricators: but in vain; the fools have delivered themselves up to the tide of their passions, they followed the torrent, they have despised our admonitions, they have laughed at our threats, they have regarded our anathema's as empty noise; their vices are accumulated, strengthen'd, multiplied; the voice of their impiety has ascended even to thy throne, and we have not been able to prevent the tremendous scourge, with which thou hast smote them. after having long implored thy mercy, let us now extoll thy justice. overwhelmed by thy strokes, doubtless they will return to thee, and acknowledge the hand which is laid heavy on them. but o prodigy of hardheartedness! o excess of blindness! they have imputed the effect of thy power to the blind mechanism of nature. they have said in their hearts, brama is not. all the properties of matter are not known to us, and the new proof of its existence is but a proof of the ignorance and credulity of those, who object it to us. on this foundation they have raised systems, invented hypotheses, tried experiments: but from the highth of his eternal habitation, brama has laugh'd at their vain projects. he has confounded audacious knowledge, and the toys have broke, as glass, the impotent obstacles opposed to their loquacity. wherefore let those vainglorious worms confess the weakness of their reason, and the vanity of their efforts. let them cease to deny the existence of brama, or to prescribe limits to his power. brama is, he is almighty, and he does not shew himself to us more visibly in his dreadful scourges, than in his ineffable favours. "but who has drawn down these scourges on this wretched country? is it not thy injustice, greedy incredulous man? thy gallantries and silly amours, worldly immodest woman! thy excesses and shameful debaucheries, infamous man of pleasure! thy hardheartedness for our monasteries, miser! thy injustice, corrupt magistrate! thy usuries, insatiable money-dealer! thy effeminacy and irreligion, impious and sycophant courtier. "and you, on whom this scourge is particularly fallen, women and maidens plunged into licentiousness; tho' we, renouncing the duties of our calling, should keep profound silence with regard to your irregularities, you carry about you a more importunate voice than ours: it accompanies you, and will every where rebuke you for your impure desires, your equivocal connections, your criminal conversations, such excessive care to please, so many artifices to engage, so much address to fix, and the impetuosity of your transports, and the fury of your jealousy. why then do you delay to shake off the yoke of cadabra, and return under the mild laws of brama? but let us return to our subject. well then i was saying that worldlings sit down heretically, and that for nine reasons; the first, &c." this discourse made very different impressions. mangogul and the sultana, who were the only persons that knew the secret of the ring, were convinced that the bramin had as happily hit off the tattle of toys by the assistance of religion, as orcotomus by the light of reason. the court ladies and petits-maitres declared the sermon seditious, and the preacher a visionary. the rest of the audience esteem'd him a prophet, shed tears, fell to prayers, and even flagellations, and did not change their courses of life. the noise of this sermon spread to the very coffee-houses. a wit pronounced in a decisive tone, that the bramin had but very superficially handled the subject, and that his discourse was but a cold insipid declamation: but in the opinion of the devout women and the enlightened, it was the most solid piece of eloquence that had been delivered in the temples these hundred years. and in mine, both the wit and the devout women were in the right. chap. xvi. _the muzzles._ while the bramins were making brama speak, airing their pagoda's by processions, and exhorting the people to repentance; others were thinking how to reap benefit by the prattle of toys. great cities swarm with persons, whom misery renders industrious.--they neither rob nor pick pockets: but they are to pick-pockets, what pick-pockets are to gamblers. they know every thing, they do every thing. they go up and down, they insinuate themselves. they are found at court, in the city, at westminster hall, at church, at the play, at ladies toilets, in coffee-houses, at balls, opera's and in academies. they are any thing that you would have them be. do you sollicit a pension, they have the minister's ear. have you a law-suit, they will sollicite for you. do you love gaming, they will make a party with you; good chear, they keep a good kitchen; women, they will introduce you to amina or acaris. from which of the two would you please to purchase the distemper? take your choice, they will undertake your cure. their chief occupation is to find the ridicules of private persons, and to make advantage of the follies of the public. from them it is, that papers are distributed in the streets, at the gates of temples, at the play-house doors, and other public places, by which you are advertised gratis, that such an one living at the louvre, st. john's, the temple, or the abby, at such a sign, dupes mankind at home from nine in the morning to noon, and abroad the rest of the day. scarce had the toys began to speak, when one of these sharpers fill'd the houses of banza with a printed bill of this form and tenor.----advertisement to the ladies. and underneath in small italic, by permission of my lord the great seneschal, and with the approbation of the gentlemen of the royal academy of sciences. and lower down: the sieur eolipila of the royal academy of banza, member of the royal society of monoémugi, of the imperial academy of biafara, of the academy of the curious of loango, of the society of camur in monomotapa, of the institute of ereeco, and of the royal academies of beleguanza and angola; who has for many years given courses of baubles, with the applause of the court, the town, and the province; has, in favour of the fair sex, invented muzzles or portable gags, which deprive toys of the use of speech, without obstructing their natural functions. they are neat and convenient. he has some of all sizes, of all prices, and for all ages: and he has had the honour to serve persons of the highest distinction with them. there is nothing like being a member of a body of men. be a work ever so ridiculous, it is puff'd into success. thus it was, that eolipila's invention gain'd ground. people flock'd to his house. the gay ladies went thither in their own equipages, prudent women in hackney-coaches; the devouts sent their confessors or footmen, and nuns their door-keepers. every body must have a muzzle, so that not one from the dutchess down to the cobler's joan, but had one either for the fashion or for reasons. the bramins, who had declared the prattle of toys to be a divine punishment, and flatter'd themselves with a reformation of manners and other advantages from it, could not without horror see a machine, which eluded the vengeance of heaven and their hopes. scarcely had they come down from their pulpits, but they mount again, thunder, roar, make the oracles to speak, and pronounce that a muzzle is an infernal machine, and that there is no salvation for those who shall use them. "carnal women, quit your muzzles; submit," cried they, "to the will of brama. permit the voice of your toys to awaken that of your consciences, and blush not to acknowledge crimes, which you have not been ashamed to commit." but their exclamations were of little avail: the same fate attended muzzles, that had formerly attended the gowns without sleeves. the preachers were left to catch cold in the temples. all the women took gags, and quitted them not, either till they found them useless, or were tired of them. chap. xvii. _the two devouts._ for some days past the sultan left the toys at rest. important affairs, on which he was busy, suspended the effects of his ring. in this interval it was, that two women of banza made diversion for the whole town. they were professed devouts. they had managed their intrigues with all possible discretion, and were in full enjoyment of a reputation, which even the malice of those of their own class paid respect to. in the mosques nothing was talk'd of but their virtue. mothers proposed them as patterns to their daughters, and husbands to their wives. the principal maxim of both was, that scandal is the greatest of all sins. this conformity of sentiments, but above all, the difficulty of edifying a clear-sighted and crafty neighbour at an easy expence, had got the better of the difference of their tempers, and they were very good friends. zelida received sophia's bramin: and it was at sophia's house that zelida confer'd with her director; and by a little self-examination, the one could hardly be ignorant of what concerned the other's toy: but the whimsical indiscretion of these toys kept them both in cruel apprehensions. they held themselves as on the point of being unmask'd, and of losing that reputation of virtue, which had cost them fifteen years dissimulation and management, and which now embarassed them very much. at some moments they would even forfeit their lives, especially zelida, to be as much blasted as the greatest part of their acquaintance. "what will the world say? what will my husband do?----what! that woman so reserved, so modest, so virtuous, that zelida, like others, is but----alas! this thought distracts me!----yes, i wish i never had any reputation," cried zelida in a passion. she was then with her female friend, who was making the same reflections, but without such violent commotion. zelida's last words made her smile. "laugh, madam, without constraint. burst out," said zelida, touched to the quick. "to be sure you have good cause." "i am as sensible of the impending danger, as you can be," answered sophia, with an air of indifference; "but how to shun it? for you will agree with me, that there is no likelyhood that your wish will be accomplish'd." "contrive an expedient then," replied zelida: "oh!" said sophia, "i am tired of rummaging my brain, i can find none.----to bury one's self in a country seat, is one way; but to abandon the pleasures of banza, and renounce life, is what i will never do. i perceive that my toy will never approve it." "what is to be done then?" "what! to leave all to providence, and laugh, as i do, at what the world will say. i have tried all shifts to reconcile reputation with pleasures: but since it is decreed that we must renounce reputation, let us at least preserve pleasures. we were uniques: but now, my dear, we shall be like a hundred thousand others; do you look on this as a hard fate?" "yes, without doubt," replied zelida; "to me it seems hard to be like those, for whom i had put on a sovereign contempt. in order to avoid this mortification, methinks i would fly to the world's end." "set out, my dear," continued sophia; "for my part, i stay--but _à propos_, i advise you to furnish yourself with some secret, to prevent your toy from blabbing on the road." "indeed," replied zelida, "pleasantry here has a very ill grace, and your intrepidity----" "you are mistaken, zelida, there is not a grain of intrepidity in my proceeding. to let things go their own way, when we cannot stop them, is resignation. i see that i am to be dishonoured: well then, dishonour for dishonour, i shall spare myself as much of the uneasiness as i can." "dishonour'd!" replied zelida, bursting into tears. "dishonour'd! what a shock! i cannot bear it.--oh! accursed bonza, 'tis thou that hast ruin'd me. i loved my husband, i was born virtuous; i should have loved him still, if thou hadst not made a wicked use of thy ministry and my confidence. dishonour'd, dear sophia!----" she had not power to make an end. sobs intercepted her words, and she fell on the carpet, quite in despair. as soon as zelida recovered her speech, she cried out in a lamentable tone: "alas! my dear sophia, i shall die----i must die. no, i shall never survive my reputation." "but zelida, my dear zelida, do not be in a hurry to die: perhaps," said sophia----"no perhaps shall stop me, i must dye."----"but perhaps one might"----"one might do nothing, i tell you"----"but speak, my dear, what might one do?"----"perhaps one might hinder a toy from talking." "ah! sophia, you endeavour to comfort me by false hopes, you deceive me." "no, no, i do not deceive you; only hear me, instead of distracting yourself like a mad creature. i have heard talk of frenicol, eolipila, gags and muzzles." "pray, what connexion is there between frenicol, eolipila, muzzles, and the danger which threatens us? what business has my toyman here, and what is a muzzle?" "it is this, my dear. a muzzle is a machine invented by frenicol, approved by the academy, and improved by eolipila, who claims the honour of the invention." "but pray, this machine invented by frenicol, approved by the academy, and improved by that silly fellow eolipila."----"oh! you are of a vivacity that surpasses imagination. well then, this machine being applied to a toy, renders it discreet in spite of its teeth."----"can this be true, my dear?" "it is so said." "we must know it," replied zelida, "and immediately too." she rang, one of her women appeared, and she sent for frenicol. "why not for eolipila?" said sophia. "frenicol is less taken notice of," answered zelida. the toyman came away with the messenger. "ah! frenicol, are you there," said zelida, "you are welcome. make haste, my friend, to extricate two women out of cruel anxiety."--"what is the business, ladies? would you please to have some rare toys?"--"no, we have two already, and we would willingly"--"part with them, i suppose. pray, ladies, let me see them, i will take them, or we will make an exchange."--"you are mistaken, mr. frenicol, we have nothing to truck."--"well, i understand you, you have some ear-rings, which you would desire to lose, so as that your husbands may find them in my shop."----"not that neither; pray, sophia, inform him of the matter." "frenicol," continued sophia, "we want two----what, don't you understand?" "no, madam: how would you have me understand, when you say nothing?"----"'tis," said sophia, "because when a woman is modest, it gives her pain to speak plain on certain things." "but yet," replied frenicol, "she must speak plain. i am a toyman, not a conjuror."----"you must guess however."----"faith, ladies, the more i look on ye, the less i comprehend ye. when a lady is young, rich, and pretty as you are, she is not reduced to artifice: moreover, i declare sincerely, that i sell them no longer. i have left the dealing in those baubles to young beginners in the trade." our devouts found the toyman's mistake so ridiculous, that they both burst out into a violent fit of laughter, which disconcerted him. "permit me, ladies, to make my bow, and withdraw. you might well have spared yourselves the trouble of sending for me three miles off, to divert yourselves at my cost." "stop, stop, friend," said zelida, still laughing on. "that was not our intention. but by your misapprehending us, such ridiculous notions came into your head."----"'tis in your power, ladies, to put juster into it. what is the business?" "oh! mr. frenicol, let me laugh at ease, before i answer you." zelida laugh'd till she panted for breath. the toyman thought within himself that she had the vapors, or was out of her senses, and had patience. at length zelida ceased.----"well," said she, "the business relates to our toys, our own toys, do you understand me, mr. frenicol? to be sure you cannot be ignorant, that for some time past several toys have prattled like magpyes: now we would be very glad that ours would not follow this bad example." "ah! now i take it, that is to say," replied frenicol, "that you want a muzzle each."----"very right, you have hit it off truly. i have been told that mr. frenicol was no fool." "madam, your goodness is very great. as to what you require, i have of all sorts, i go this moment to bring you some." frenicol went accordingly: in the mean while zelida embraced her friend, and thank'd her for her expedient: and i, says the african author, went to take a nap, waiting his return. chap. xviii. _the toyman's return._ the toyman returned, and presented the ladies with two muzzles of the best sort.----"ah! mercy!" cried zelida. "what enormous muzzles are these! and who are the unhappy women, whom these will fit? this is an ell long. indeed, friend, you must certainly have taken measure by the sultan's mare."----"yes," said sophia indolently, after having measured them with her fingers, "you are in the right; and there is but the sultan's mare and old rimosa, for whom these can do."----"i protest, ladies, that they are of the common size; and that zelmaida, zyrphila, amiana, and a hundred other ladies, have of the same sort." "that is impossible," said zelida.----"'tis actually so however," replied frenicol: "but they all said the same thing as ye have: and as they have, so may you undeceive yourselves by trying them on." "mr. frenicol may say what he will; but he shall never perswade me that this will fit me," said zelida, "nor this me," said sophia. "let him shew us others, if he has any." frenicol, who had often experienced that women are not to be converted on that article, shew'd them muzzles for the age of thirteen. "well," cried both at the same time, "these are such as we want." "i wish they may prove so," whisper'd frenicol aside. "how do you sell them?" said zelida. "but ten ducats a piece, madam."----"ten ducats, you forget yourself, frenicol."----"madam, that is the price in conscience."----"you make us pay for the novelty."----"i protest, ladies, 'tis but two sixpences for a shilling." "i must own they are neatly made, but ten ducats are a great deal of money."----"i'll abate nothing."----"we will go to eolipila's."----"you may, ladies: but there are workmen and workmen, muzzles and muzzles." frenicol held firm, and zelida came to. she paid for the two muzzles, and the toyman went back, fully perswaded that they would be too little for them, and would soon be returned on his hands for a fourth part of the price he received for them. he was mistaken. mangogul not happening to come within reach of turning his ring on those two women, their toys were not seized with the humor of talking louder than ordinary; and happily for them: for zelida having tried her muzzle, found it too little by one half. however, she did not part with it, fancying that it would be pretty near as inconvenient to change it, as not to make use of it at all. these circumstances came to light from one of her women, who told them in confidence to her lover, who related them in confidence to others, who spread them all over banza under the seal of secresy. nor was frenicol silent: the adventure of the devouts became public, and for sometime afforded employment to the calumniators of congo. zelida became inconsolable upon it. this woman, more to be pitied than blamed, conceived an aversion for her bramin, quitted her husband, and shut herself up in a convent. as for sophia, she threw off the mask, despised censures, patch'd and painted, frequented public places, and had adventures. chap. xix. _seventh trial of the ring._ the stifled toy. tho' the female cits of banza doubted whether toys of their rank would be honoured with the gift of speech; yet they all furnish'd themselves with muzzles. in banza muzzles became as common, as a general court mourning in this country. here the african author observes with astonishment, that neither the lowness of the price, nor the commonness of muzzles put them out of fashion in the seraglio. "this once," says he, "utility got the better of prejudice." so trite a reflection was not worth the pains of repeating: but to me it seems as if it was the defect of all the ancient authors of congo, to fall into repetitions; whether they thereby hoped to give a greater air of truth and facility to their productions; or that they were far from having as much fecundity of invention as their admirers ascribe to them. however that be, one day mangogul, walking in his gardens, attended by his whole court, took the maggot to level his ring at zelais. she was handsome, and suspected of several adventures: yet her toy did no more than stammer, and utter'd only some few mangled words, which had no meaning, and which the blasters interpreted as they thought fit.----"pshuh!" says the sultan, "here is a toy that has a vast impediment of speech. most certainly there must be somewhat that impedes its respiration." wherefore he applied his ring more intensely. the toy made a second effort to speak; and in some measure surmounting the obstacle, that stop'd its mouth, these words were heard very distinctly. "alas! alas!--i am--i am--i am stifled. i can no more.--alas! alas! i am stifled." immediately zelais found herself going: she grew pale, her neck swell'd, and she fell, with her eyes shut and mouth half open, between the arms of those who stood around her. any where else zelais would have been speedily relieved. 'twas only debarrassing her of her muzzle, and allowing her toy a freedom of respiration: but how to lend the helping hand in mangogul's presence. "quick, quick, physicians," cried the sultan, "zelais is dying." some pages ran to the palace, and returned, with the doctors gravely marching after them. orcotomus was at their head. some gave their opinion for bleeding, others for the _kermes mineral_; but the penetrating orcotomus ordered zelais to be carried to a neighbouring closet, examined her, and cut the braces of her harness. this muzzled toy was one of those, which he boasted to have seen in the paroxysm. however, the bloating was excessive, and zelais would have continued to suffer, had not the sultan had pity on her condition. he turn'd off his ring, the fluids return'd to their equilibrium. zelais came to herself, and orcotomus assumed the honour of this miraculous cure. zelais's accident and her physician's indiscretion, made the muzzles lose much of their credit. orcotomus, without any regard to eolipila's interest, proposed to himself to raise his own fortune on the ruins of the others; advertised himself as a patentee physician of toys that had caught cold: and some of his bills are to be seen at this day in the by-streets. he began by getting money, and ended by falling into contempt. the sultan took pleasure in lowering the presumption of the empiric. did orcotomus boast of silencing a toy that had never utter'd a word? mangogul had the cruelty to make it speak. people went so far as to remark, that any toy that was tired of silence, need only have two or three visits from orcotomus. in a little time he was rank'd with eolipila in the class of quacks; and they will both continue therein, until it shall please brama to take them out. shame was preferred to the apoplexy. "the one kills," said the women, "the other does not." wherefore they renounced their muzzles; let their toys talk on; and no body died thereby. chap. xx. _eighth trial of the ring._ the vapors. there was a time, as we have seen, when the women dreaded the prating of their toys, were stifled, and died away; but another succeeded, when they set themselves above this dread, threw away their muzzles, and had nothing beyond the vapors. the favorite, among her attendants, had a very singular young lady. her humour was charming, tho' uneven. she changed countenance ten times a day; but whatever face she put on, was pleasing. unique in her melancholy, as well as in her gaiety, there slip'd from her, in her most extravagant moments, things of exquisite sense; and in her fits of sadness she uttered very diverting extravagances. mirzoza was so used to callirhoe (for that is the name of this young mad girl) that she could hardly be without her. one time that the sultan complain'd to the favorite of somewhat restless and cold, which he remark'd in her; "prince," said she, embarrassed at his reproach, "without my three beasts, my nightingale, my lap-dog and callirhoe, i am good for nothing; and you see that i have not the last." "and why is she not here?" said mangogul. "i can't tell," answered mirzoza; "but i remember, that some months ago she told me, that if mazul made the campaign, she could not avoid having the vapors; and mazul set out yesterday." "i easily excuse her," said the sultan: "for i look on her vapors to be well grounded. but upon what account do a hundred other women take it into their heads to be vapor'd, who have young husbands, and besides take care to be well provided with lovers?" "prince," answered a courtier, "'tis a fashionable disease. it is genteel in a woman to have the vapors. without a lover and the vapors, she knows nothing of the world: and there is not a citizen's wife in banza, who does not affect to have them." mangogul smiled, and resolved to visit some of these vaporish women immediately. he went directly to salica's house, and found her in bed, with her neck quite bare, her eyes flaming, and her hair dishevel'd; and at her bed's side the little stammering hump-back'd physician farfadi, telling her stories: while she was stretching out, now one arm, then another, yawning, sighing, putting her hand to her head, and exclaiming bitterly: "alas i can't bear it--throw the windows open--give me air--i shall faint, i shall dye.----" mangogul took advantage of the moment that her affrighted women were assisting farfadi in lightening the bed-cloaths, to turn his ring on her, and instantly these words were heard: "oh! how tired i am of this humor! behold, madam has taken into her noddle to have the vapors. this farce will last eight days at least, and may i dye, if i know the cause: for after farfadi's efforts to ferret out this disease, i think it is in the wrong to continue."--"good," said the sultan turning off his ring, "i understand. this dame has the vapors in favor of her physician. let us try elsewhere." he went from salica's house to that of arsinoe, which is not far from it. on entering her chambers he heard loud bursts of laughter, and advanced, thinking to find her in company: but she was alone; and mangogul was not much surprized. "a woman who gives herself the vapors," says he, "gives them melancholy or merry, as is most convenient." he turn'd his ring on her, and presently her toy began to laugh unmercifully. from these immoderate laughing fits it made a sudden transition to ridiculous lamentations on the absence of narces, whom it advised as a friend to hasten his return; and continued to sob, weep, groan, sigh, and be comfortless, as if it had buried all its relations. the sultan, who could hardly refrain from laughing aloud at so whimsical an affliction, turn'd off his ring and departed; leaving arsinoe and her toy to lament at leisure, and inferring the falsity of the proverb. chap. xxi. _ninth trial of the ring._ of things lost and found. _to serve as a supplement to the learned treatise of pancirollus, and to the memoirs of the academy of inscriptions._ mangogul returning to his palace, pondering on the ridiculous airs which women give themselves, found himself, whether thro' absence of mind, or some blunder of his ring, under the portico of the sumptuous building, which thelis has decorated with the rich spoils of her lovers. he embraced the opportunity, to interrogate her toy. thelis was the wife of the emir sambuco, whose ancestors had reign'd in guinea. sambuco had acquired a high reputation in congo, by five or six signal victories, which he had gain'd over erguebzed's enemies. as he was not a less able negotiator than a great captain, he had been employ'd in embassies of the greatest consequence, and executed his high trust with superior talents. on his return from loango he saw thelis, and was smitten. he was then upon the brink of fifty, and thelis was not above twenty-five. she was rather agreeable than a beauty: the women said she was well enough, and the men thought her charming. powerful matches sought her; but whether she had already fix'd her notions, or that there was too great a disproportion of fortune between her and her admirers, they were all rejected. sambuco saw her, laid at her feet immense riches, a great name, laurels, and titles inferior to none but those of sovereigns, and obtain'd her. thelis was, or appear'd virtuous for six whole weeks after her marriage. but a toy born voluptuous, seldom conquers itself; and a quinquagenarian husband, tho' otherwise ever so great a hero, is a madman, if he flatters himself with conquering such an enemy. altho' thelis mix'd prudence with her conduct, her first adventures were not unknown. this was sufficient for supposing afterwards, that she had others undisclosed: and mangogul, desirous of full information, hastened to pass from the porch of her palace into her appartment. it was then the middle of summer. the heat was excessive, and thelis, after dining, had thrown herself on a couch, in a back closet adorned with glasses and paintings. she was a-sleep, her hand leaning on a collection of persian tales, which had lull'd her to repose. mangogul view'd her some time, allowed that she had charms, and turn'd his ring on her. "i remember it as perfectly as if it had been yesterday: nine proofs of love in four hours. ah! what moments! zermounzaid is a divine man! he is not the old frozen sambuco.--dear zermounzaid, i had been ignorant of true pleasures, real good: you alone made me sensible of them." mangogul, desirous of learning the particulars of thelis's commerce with zermounzaid, which the toy kept from him, by dwelling on what affects a toy the most feelingly, rubb'd the stone of his ring for some time against his waistcoat, and levell'd it, quite sparkling with light, at thelis. its influence soon reach'd her toy, which being thereby better informed of what was required of it, re-assumed its discourse in a more historical strain. "sambuco commanded the monoémugian army, and i followed him to the field. zermounzaid served under him in quality of a colonel, and the general, who honoured him with his confidence, had put us under his escort. the zealous zermounzaid did not abandon his post: he thought it too pleasing, to resign it: and the danger of losing it was the only one he fear'd during the whole campaign. "while we were in winter quarters, i entertained a few new guests; cacil, jekia, almamoun, jasub, selim, manzora, nereskim, all military men, who were commended by zermounzaid, but were inferior to him. the credulous sambuco relied for his wife's virtue on herself, and on zermounzaid's care: and being entirely taken up with the immense business of the war, and the great operations which he was meditating for the glory of congo, he never had the least suspicion either of the treachery of zermounzaid, or the infidelity of thelis. "the war continued; the armies took the field, and we our litters. as they went a very slow pace, the main body of the army gain'd ground of us, and we found ourselves in the rear, which zermounzaid commanded. this gallant youth, whom the sight of the greatest dangers had never made to swerve a foot from the path of glory, could not resist that of pleasure. he entrusted a subaltern with the care of watching the motions of the enemy, who harrassed us; and got up into our litter: but he was hardly there, when we heard a confused noise of arms and outcries. zermounzaid, leaving his business half done, attempts to jump out: but he is level'd with the ground, and we become a prey to the conqueror. "thus i began by swallowing up the honor and services of an officer, who from his valour and merit might have expected the highest military employments, if he had never known his general's wife. upwards of three thousand men fell in this action; and therefore of so many good subjects have we robb'd the nation." let any one, if he can, imagine mangogul's surprize at this discourse. he had heard zermounzaid's funeral oration, and did not know him by these features. his father erguebzed had regretted this officer: the news-papers, after lavishing the highest eulogies on his fine retreat, had attributed his defeat and death to the enemy's superior numbers, which, as they said, were found to be six to one. all congo had lamented a man, who had done his duty so well. his wife obtain'd a pension: his regiment was given to his eldest son, and an ecclesiastical preferment promised to his younger. "what horror!" cried mangogul, but softly. "a husband dishonor'd, the state betray'd, subjects sacrificed, crimes not only concealed, but even rewarded as virtues: and all that for a toy." thelis's toy, which had stopt to take breath, continued: "thus am i abandoned to the enemy's discretion. a regiment of dragoons was ready to fall upon us. thelis seem'd quite frighted, and yet wish'd nothing more ardently: but the charms of the prey sowed discord among the plunderers. the scimiters were drawn, and thirty or forty men were massacred in the twinkling of an eye. the noise of this disorder reach'd the general officer. he ran thither, calmed the furious soldiers, and sequestrated us under a tent; where we had not time to know ourselves, when he came and demanded the price of his good services. 'woe to the vanquished,' cried thelis, falling backward on a bed: and the whole night was spent in feeling her misfortune. "the next day we found ourselves on the banks of the niger. a saick was waiting for us, and my mistress and i set out, in order to be presented to the emperor of benin. in this twenty-four hours voyage the captain of the vessel offer'd himself to thelis, and was accepted: and i found by experience, that the sea service is infinitely brisker than the land service. "we saw the emperor of benin. he was young, ardent, voluptuous. thelis made a conquest of him: but those of her husband affrighted the monarch. he demanded peace: and the price, at which he purchased it, was but three provinces and my ransom. "different times, different fatigues. sambuco came to know, i can't tell how, the reason of the misfortunes of the preceding campaign; and during this, he deposited me with a friend of his, a chief of the bramins, on the frontiers. the holy man made but a weak defence: he was ensnared by the wiles of thelis, and in less than six months devoured his immense income, three lakes and two forests." "mercy," cried mangogul, "three lakes and two forests! what an appetite for a toy!" "'tis a mere trifle," resumed the toy. "peace was made, and thelis accompanied her husband in his embassy to monomotapa. she gamed, and very fairly lost a hundred thousand sequins in one day, which i won back again in an hour. a minister, whose master's affairs did not fill up all his time, fell into my clutches; and in three or four months i eat him up a fine landed estate, together with his castle well furnish'd, a park, and equipage, with the little pyed horses. a favor of four minutes duration, but well spun out, brought us in feasts, presents and jewels: and the blind or politic sambuco did not disturb us. "i shall not bring into the accompt," added the toy, "the marquisats, counties, titles, coats of arms, &c. which have been eclipsed at my appearance. apply to my secretary, who will tell you what is become of them. i have close-pared the horns of the dominions of biafara, and am in possession of an entire province of beleguanza. erguebzed made overtures to me a little before his death." at these words mangogul turn'd off his ring, and silenced this gulph: he respected his father's memory, and would hear nothing that might tarnish the splendor of the great qualities, which he knew were in him. returning to the seraglio, he entertained the favorite with the vapored ladies, and with the trial of his ring on thelis. "you admit this woman," said he, "to your familiarity: but in all probability you do not know her as well as i." "i understand you, sir," answered the sultana. "her toy has perhaps been foolish enough to give you a narrative of her adventures with the general micokof, the emir feridour, the senator marsupha, and the great bramin ramanadanutio. but pray, who is ignorant, that she keeps young alamir, and that old sambuco, who speaks not a word, is as well apprized of it as you." "you have not hit the mark," replied mangogul. "i have compell'd her toy to make a full discharge." "had it swallowed any thing of yours," said mirzoza. "no," said the sultan, "but much belonging to my subjects, to the grandees of my empire, to the neighbouring potentates; as estates, provinces, castles, lakes, forests, diamonds, equipages, with the little pyed horses." "without reckoning their reputation and virtue, sir," added mirzoza. "i cannot tell what benefit you will reap by your ring; but the more you try it, the more odious my sex becomes to me: even those, whom i thought i justly held in some esteem, are not expected. they have thrown me me into such an humor, that i beg your highness will allow me to indulge it alone for some moments." mangogul, who knew that the favorite was an enemy to all constraint, kiss'd her right ear thrice, and retired. chap. xxii. _a sketch of mangogul's moral philosophy._ mangogul, impatient to see the favorite again, slept little, arose earlier than usual, and was in her appartment before sun-rising. she had already rung the bell: a servant had just opened the curtains, and her women were preparing to dress her. the sultan look'd narrowly around her, and seeing never a dog, he asked her the reason of this oddity. "i see," answered mirzoza, "that you think me singular in this article, but there is nothing in it." "i assure you," replied the sultan, "that i see dogs about all the women of my court, and you will oblige me in informing me why they have them, or why you have none. most of them have several, and not one of them but lavishes such caresses on her own, as she seems not to bestow on her lover without some difficulty. how come these beasts to deserve the preference? what use is made of them?" mirzoza was puzzled at these questions: however, she made this answer. "to be sure, one keeps a dog as a parrot or a canary bird. it may be ridiculous to set one's heart on these animals; but there is nothing wonderful in having them: they sometimes amuse, and never injure. if they are caressed, 'tis because such caresses are of no consequence. besides, do you believe, prince, that a lover is satisfied with a kiss, such as a woman bestows on her pug-dog?" "doubtless, i believe it," says the sultan. "by jupiter the man must be very nice, who would not be satisfied." one of mirzoza's women, who had gain'd the good will of the sultan and his favorite by sweetness of temper, good parts, and zeal, said: "these animals are inconvenient and nasty: they dirty one's clothes, spoil the furniture, tare laces, and do more mischief in a quarter of an hour, than would be sufficient to throw the most faithful lady's woman into disgrace: and yet they are kept." "tho', according to madam, they are good for nothing but that," added the sultan. "prince," said mirzoza, "we stick to our fancies, and the keeping of dogs must be one, like many others, which would be no longer fancies, if we could give a reason for them. the reign of monkeys is past, the parrots still support themselves. dogs fell, and now they rise again. squirrels have had their time: and it is with animals, as it has successively been with italian, english, geometry, farthingales, and furbela's." "mirzoza," replied the sultan, shaking his head, "has not all the knowledge that may be acquired on this subject; and the toys----" "is not your highness going to imagine," said the favorite, "that you will be inform'd by haria's toy, why that woman, who saw her son, one of her daughters, and her husband, die without shedding a tear, wept the loss of her lap-dog for a whole fortnight." "why not?" replied mangogul. "truly," says mirzoza, "if our toys could explain all our whims, they would be more knowing than ourselves." "pray, who disputes that with you?" replied the sultan. "for my part i believe that the toy makes a woman do a hundred things, without her perceiving it: and i have remark'd on more occasions than one, that a woman, who thought she was following her head, was obeying her toy. a great philosopher placed the soul, i mean ours, in the pineal gland. if i allowed women to have one, i well know where i would place it." "i excuse you from informing me," rejoin'd mirzoza hastily. "but you will permit me at least," said mangogul, "to communicate some notions to you, which my ring has suggested to me concerning women, upon a supposition that they have a soul. the experiments, which i have made with my ring, have made me a great moralist. i have neither the wit of la bruyere, nor the logic of port royal, nor the imagination of montaigne, nor the wisdom of charron: but i have collected facts, to which perhaps they were strangers." "speak, prince," answered mirzoza ironically, "i will hear you with all my ears. moral essays of a sultan of your age must be something curious." "the system of orcotomus is extravagant, with the leave of his fellow academician hiragu: yet i find some sense in the answers which he gave to the objections started against it. if i allowed a soul to women, i would willingly suppose with him, that toys have spoken from the beginning, but softly: and that the effect of the genius cucufa's ring is reduced to raising their voice. upon this foundation nothing can be more easy than to define the whole sex. "the sober woman, for example, would be she whose toy is silent, or is not attended to. "the prude, she who pretends not to listen to her toy. "the intriguing woman, she whose toy desires a great deal, and who allows it too much. "the voluptuous, she who gives ear to her toy with complaisance. "the courtezan, she on whom her toy is making demands every moment, and who refuses it nothing. "the coquette, she whose toy is mute, or is not attended to; but who gives hopes to all the men that come near her, that her toy will speak one day or other, and it may happen that she will not lend it a deaf ear. "well, delight of my soul, what do you think of my definitions?" "i think," said the favorite, "that your highness has forgot the tender woman." "if i have not mentioned her," answered the sultan, "'tis because i don't know what the term means; and that some able men pretend, that the word tender, abstracting from all connection with the toy, is void of sense." "how, void of sense," cried mirzoza. "what! there is no medium then; and a woman must absolutely be a prude, an intriguer, a coquette, a voluptuous woman, or a libertin." "delight of my soul," said the sultan, "i am willing to own the inaccuracy of my enumeration, and will add the tender woman to the preceding characters; but on condition that you will furnish me with a definition of her, which will not coincide with any of mine." "most willingly," said mirzoza. "i hope to compass it without quitting your system." "let us see," added mangogul. "well then," replied the favorite--"a tender woman is she----" "courage, mirzoza," said mangogul. "oh! i beg you won't disturb me. the tender woman is she----who has loved without a word utter'd by her toy, or----whose toy has never spoke, but in favor of the single man whom she loved." it would not have been polite in the sultan to chicane the favorite, and ask her what she understood by love: wherefore he avoided it. mirzoza took his silence for consent, and proceeded, proud of having extricated herself from a difficulty, which to her appeared considerable. "ye men believe, because we do not argue in form, that we do not reason. know once for all, that we could as easily discover the falsity of your paradoxes, as ye that of our reasonings, if we would give ourselves the trouble. if your highness was less in a hurry to satisfy your curiosity on the subject of lap-dogs, i would in my turn give you a scrap of my philosophy. but it shall not be lost: i will reserve it for one of those days, that you will have more time to bestow on me." mangogul assured her that he had no better business, than to profit of her philosophical notions; that the metaphysics of a sultana of twenty two, ought not to be less singular than the morals of a sultan of his age. but mirzoza apprehending that this was pure complaisance in mangogul, begg'd some time to prepare, and thus gave the sultan a pretext for flying whither his impatience might call him. chap. xxiii. _tenth trial of the ring._ the dogs. mangogul went immediately to haria's house; and as he took pleasure in soliloquy, he said within himself: "this woman never goes to bed without her four dogs, and either toys know nothing of those animals, or her's will give me some account of them; for, thank god, 'tis well known that she loves her dogs to admiration." at the end of this monology he found himself in haria's anti-chamber, and his olfactory organ already informed him of madam having her usual company in bed with her. these were a little shag-dog, a spaniel, and two pug-dogs. the sultan drew out his snuff-box, took two pinches of spanish by way of preservative, and approached haria. she was asleep, but the pack, who were upon the watch, hearing some noise, fell to barking, and woke her. "peace, my children," said she, but in so mild a tone, that she could not be suspected of speaking to her daughters, "go to sleep, go to sleep, and don't disturb my rest nor your own." haria was formerly young and pretty. she had had lovers of her own rank, but they all disappear'd even sooner than her charms. by way of comforting herself for this desertion, she gave into a whimsical sort of pomp, and her footmen were the handsomest fellows in banza. she grew older and older, and years threw her into oeconomy: she restrained herself to four dogs and two bramins, and became a model of edification. and surely the most envenom'd satyr could find no room to carp at this management; and for above ten years haria was in peaceful possession of a high reputation of virtue, and of those animals. nay, her tenderness for the pug-dogs was so well known, that the bramins were no longer suspected of sharing it. haria renewed her intreaty to those beasts, and they had the complaisance to obey. then mangogul applied his ring, and the superannuated toy set about relating the last of its adventures. it was such a vast while since the first were atchieved, that it had almost lost the very remembrance of them. "withdraw, pompey," it said with a hoarse voice, "you fatigue me. i like dido better; i find her more gentle." pompey, who was absolutely ignorant of the toy's voice, went on in his own way: but haria awaking, continued. "get away, then, you little rogue, you hinder me from taking rest. that is well some times: but too much is too much." pompey withdrew. dido took his place, and haria fell asleep. mangogul, who had suspended the energy of his ring, turn'd it on, and the antiquated toy, uttering a deep, sigh, fell to jabbering, and said: "alas! how i am grieved for the death of my large grey-hound; she was the best little wife, the most caressing creature: she never ceased giving amusement. she was so sensible, so genteel. ye are but beasts in comparison of her. that naughty master of mine killed her.----poor zinzolina, i never think of her, without watering my plants. i thought it would have been the death of my mistress. she neither eat nor drank for two days, and narrowly escaped losing her senses. judge of her sorrow: her director, her friends, nay her very pug-dogs were kept from me. orders were issued to her women to refuse the door of her appartment to my master, under the penalty of being turn'd off.----'that monster has robb'd me of my dear zinzolina,' cried she; 'let him not appear before me, i am resolved never to see him more.'" mangogul, curious of learning the circumstances of zinzolina's death, revived the electrical power of his ring by rubbing it on the skirt of his doublet, pointed it at haria, and the toy resumed: "haria, ramadec's widow, coiffed herself with sindor. this youth was of good birth, had no other fortune, but a certain merit which pleases the sex, and was, after dogs, haria's predominant taste. sindor's indigence conquered his repugnance to haria's years and dogs. twenty thousand crowns a year blinded his eyes with regard to the wrinkles of his mistress, and the inconveniency of the pug-dogs; and he married her. "he was in hopes of getting the better of our beasts by his talents, and complaisant behavior; and to bring them into disgrace from the very commencement of his reign; but he was deceived. after the expiration of some months, when he thought he had merited much by his services; he took into his head to remonstrate to madam, that her dogs were not as good company in bed for him as for her; that it was ridiculous to have more than three; and that to admit more than one at a time, was turning the nuptial bed into a kennel. "'i advise you,' said haria, in a furious tone, 'to attack me with such speeches. truly it well becomes a pitiful younger son from gascony, whom i have taken from a garret, which was not good enough for my dogs, to give himself airs of nicety! to be sure, your sheets were perfumed, my little squire, when you dwelt in furnish'd lodgings. know this once for all, that my dogs were long before you in possession of my bed, and that you may choose either to quit it, or be content to share it with them.' "the declaration was peremptory, and our dogs remain'd masters of their post. but one night, as we were all asleep, sindor, in turning unluckily kick'd zinzolina. the hound, not used to such treatment, bit the calf of his leg; and madam was immediately awaked by sindor's cries. 'what is the matter with you, sir, one would think your throat was cutting: you dream.' 'it is your dogs, madam, that devour me, and your grey-hound has just torn off a piece of my leg.' 'is that all?' says haria, turning from him. 'you make a vast noise for nothing.' "sindor, piqued at this discourse, jump'd out of bed, swearing that he would never set his foot in it again, till the pack was banish'd thence. he employ'd friends, in order to obtain the exile of the dogs: but they all failed in that important negotiation. haria's answer to them was, that sindor was a knight of the post, whom she had drawn out of a cock-loft, which he shared with rats and mice; that it ill became him to be so nice; that he slept the whole night long; that she loved her dogs; that they amused her; that from her infancy she had taken a liking to their caresses; and that she was resolved never to deprive herself of them till death. 'tell him besides,' continued she, addressing the mediators, 'that if he does not humbly submit to my will, he will repent it while he lives; that i will retract the donation i have made him, and will add it to the sums which i have bequeathed by my will, for the support of my dear children.' "between you and me," added the toy, "sindor must have been a great fool, to hope that she would do for him, what could not be obtained by twenty lovers, a director, a confessor, with a legion of bramins, who had all lost their latin on that head. mean while, as often as sindor met our animals, he was seized with such fits of passion, as he could hardly conquer. one day the unfortunate zinzolina fell in his way. he took her by the neck, and threw her out of the window. the poor creature was kill'd by the fall. then it was, that a fine noise was made. haria, with inflamed countenance, and eyes bathed in tears----" the toy was going to repeat what it had already told; for toys willingly fall into repetitions: but mangogul cut its words short. its silence was not of long duration: when the prince thought he had put this doting toy out of its road, he restored it the freedom of speech; and the tatler, bursting out into a loud laugh, resumed by way of recollection: "but _à propos_, i forgot to tell you what pass'd on haria's wedding-night. i have seen a power of ridiculous things in my life, but never one that came up to this. after a splendid supper, the bride and bridegroom were conduced to their appartment. every body retired except madam's women who undress her: she is undress'd, put to bed, and sindor alone remains with her. observing that the shag-dog, the two pugs, and the grey-hound, more alert than himself, were taking possession of his bride; 'permit me, madam,' he said, 'to remove these rivals a little.' 'my dear, do what you can,' answered haria: 'for my part, i have not the courage to drive them away; these little animals are so attached to me; and i have been so long without any other company.' 'perhaps,' replied sindor, 'they will have the politeness this night to surrender the fort to me, which i must take possession of.' 'try, sir,' said haria. "at first sindor tried gentle means, and pray'd zinzolina to retire to a corner. but the untractable animal fell to growling: the allarm spread among the rest of the troop; and the pug-dogs and shag-dog bark'd as if their mistress's throat was cutting. sindor, losing all patience at this noise, tosses away one of the pugs, drives off the other, and seizes pompey by the paw. pompey, the faithful pompey, abandoned by his allies, endeavour'd to repair this loss by the advantages of the post. fix'd on his mistress's thighs, with eyes inflamed, hair standing an end, and open mouth, he grin'd, and shew'd the enemy two rows of very sharp teeth. sindor made several assaults on him, and pompey repell'd him as often, with bitten fingers and torn ruffles. the action lasted above a quarter of an hour with an obstinacy which gave diversion to none but haria; when sindor had recourse to a stratagem against an enemy, whom he despaired conquering by force. he provoked pompey with the right hand. pompey watching this motion, did not observe that of the left, and was seized by the neck. he made most vigorous efforts to disengage himself, but in vain. he was obliged to quit the field of battle, and surrender up haria. sindor took possession of her, but not without effusion of blood: in all likelihood haria had resolved that her wedding-night should be a bloody one: her animals made a good defence, and disappointed not her expectations." "there," says mangogul, "is a toy, that could write a gazette better than my secretary." and now well knowing what notions to form of lap dogs, he return'd to the favorite. "prepare yourself," said he, as soon as he saw her, "to hear the most extravagant things in the world. 'tis much worse than the baboons of palabria. could you believe, that haria's four dogs were the rivals, and the preferred rivals of her husband; and that the death of a greyhound has raised a quarrel between that couple, never to be made up." "what do you say," replied the favorite, "of rivals and dogs. i am quite in the dark. i know that haria loves her dogs excessively; but i know at the same time that sindor is a hot-temper'd man, who perhaps did not use all that complaisance, which women require, to whom a man owes his fortune. but yet, whatever has been his conduct, i cannot conceive that it has drawn rivals on him. haria is so venerable, that i could wish your highness would vouchsafe to explain yourself more intelligibly." "listen," says mangogul, "and agree that women have excessively whimsical tastes, to say nothing worse;" then he related haria's history to her word for word, as the toy had told it. mirzoza could not refrain from laughter at the first night's battle: but presently resuming a serious air: "i can't tell," said she to mangogul, "what indignation seizes me. i shall have an aversion for these animals and all those who keep any, and i shall declare to my women that i will turn off the first, who shall be even suspected of having a lap-dog." "pray," replied the sultan, "why will you extend your hatred so far? you women are always upon extremes. these animals are good for hunting, are necessary in the country, and have many other uses, without reckoning that which haria makes of them." "in truth," said mirzoza, "i begin to believe that your highness will find it a difficult task to light on a virtuous woman." "i told you so," answered mangogul; "but let us not be over hasty: you may one time or other upbraid me with being indebted to your want of patience for a declaration, which i pretend to owe entirely to the trials of my ring. i have some in my mind, which will astonish you. all secrets are not yet unveiled; and i expect to draw more important discoveries from those toys, which remain to be consulted." mirzoza was in perpetual apprehensions for her own. mangogul's discourse threw her into such uneasiness, as she was not able to conceal from him: but the sultan, who had bound himself by an oath, and in his heart had a regard for religion, used his best endeavours to calm her mind, gave her some very tender kisses, and went to his council, whither affairs of moment called him. chap. xxiv. _eleventh trial of the ring._ the pensions. congo had been disturbed by bloody wars in the reigns of kanaglou and erguebzed; and those two monarchs had immortalized themselves by the conquests they had made over their neighbours. the emperors of abex and angola look'd on the youth of mangogul and the beginning of his reign, as favourable conjunctures to recover the provinces that had been taken from them. wherefore they declared war against congo, and attacked it on every side. mangogul had the best council in all africa: and old sambuco and the emir mirzala, who were train'd up in the former wars, were placed at the head of the troops, gain'd victories on victories, and formed generals capable of succeeding them; an advantage of greater importance than even their successes. thanks to the activity of the council, and the good conduct of the generals, the enemy, who thought themselves sure of overcoming the empire, did not advance as far as the frontiers, made a poor defence of their own, and saw their fortified towns and provinces ravaged. but, such constant and glorious successes notwithstanding, congo grew weaker by aggrandizing itself: the frequent raising of troops unpeopled the towns and country: and the treasury was exhausted. the sieges and battles had cost a vast number of lives: the grand visir, very lavish of the blood of the soldiery, was accused of having hazarded battles that tended to nothing. every family was in mourning: not one, but wept a father, a brother, or a friend. the number of officers slain was prodigious; and could be compared to naught but their wives, who sollicited pensions. the closets of the ministers were beset with them. they pestered the sultan himself with petitions, in which the merit and services of the deceased, the grief of their widows, the dismal condition of their children, and other moving motives were not forgotten. nothing seemed more equitable than their requests: but on what fund to ground pensions which amounted to millions? the ministers, after having exhausted speeches, and sometimes peevishness and rough language, were obliged to deliberate on the means of bringing this affair to a final issue: but they had an excellent reason for concluding nothing: there was not a penny left. mangogul, tired with the false reasonings of his ministers and the lamentations of the widows, hit upon the expedient, which his ministry had been so long hunting after. "gentlemen," said he to his council, "i am of opinion that, before any pensions are granted, it would be proper to examine if they are lawfully due." "this examination," answered the great seneschal, "will be immense, and of prodigious discussion. yet how to resist the clamors and persecution of these women, by whom you, sir, are particularly teazed?" "it will not be as difficult a talk as you imagine, mr. seneschal," replied the sultan; "and i promise you that by to morrow noon the whole affair shall be terminated, by the laws of the strictest equity. do you only bring them to my audience chamber by nine in the morning." the council broke up, the seneschal went into his office, pondered profoundly, and drew up the following proclamation; which in three hours time was printed, published by sound of trumpet, and fixed up at all the most public places of banza. by the sultan's most excellent majesty, and my lord the grand seneschal, we gander-beak, grand seneschal of congo, visir of the first bench, train-bearer to the great manimonbanda, chief and super-intendant of the sweepers of the divan, give notice, that to-morrow morning at nine of the clock, the magnanimous sultan will give audience to the widows of the officers slain in his service, in order to decree, on sight of their pretensions, what to him shall seem meet. given at our office the twelfth of the moon of regeb, in the year 147200000009. all the distressed women of congo, and a great number of them there was, did not fail to read the proclamation, or to send their footmen to read it; and less still to be at the appointed hour, in the lobby of the audience chamber. "in order to avoid a crowd, let no more enter," said the sultan, "than six of these ladies at once. when we have heard them, let them pass thro' the back door, which leads to the outward courts. you, gentlemen, be attentive, and pronounce on their demands." this said, he made a signal to the first gentleman usher of the audiences; and the six, who happen'd to be next the door, were introduced. they entered in long mourning robes, and made low reverences to his highness. mangogul addressed the youngest and handsomest of them, whose name was ifec. "madam," said he, "how long is it since you have lost your husband?" "three months," answered ifec weeping. "he was lieutenant general in your highness's service. he was kill'd in the last battle, and six children are the only legacy he left me"--"he left you?" interrupted a voice, which, tho' issuing from ifec, was not exactly in the same tone with her's. "madam knows better than she says. they were all begun and finished by a young bramin, who daily came to comfort her, while my master was in the field." 'tis easy to guess, whence proceeded the indiscreet voice, which pronounced this answer. poor ifec, being put out of countenance, grew pale, trembled, fainted. "madam is subject to the vapors," said mangogul with an air of tranquillity: "let her be carried into an appartment of the seraglio, and be taken care of." then immediately addressing phenice: "madam," said he, "was not your husband a pacha?" "yes, sir," answered phenice in a trembling voice. "and how have you lost him?" "sir, he died in his bed, quite exhausted with the fatigues of the last campaign"--"with the fatigues of the last campaign," replied phenice's toy. "go, madam, your husband brought a firm and vigorous state of health from the camp; and he would still enjoy it, had not two or three scoundrel players,--you understand me, take care of yourself." "write," says the sultan, "that phenice demands a pension, for the good services, which she has rendered to the state and her husband." a third was interrogated on her husband's age and name, who was said to have died in the army of the small-pox. "of the small pox," said the toy, "a fine story indeed: say, madam, of two good strokes of a scymeter which he received from the sangiac cavaglio, because he took it ill, that his eldest son was said to be as like the sangiac, as one egg is to another: and madam knows as well as i," added the toy, "that a likeness was never better grounded." the fourth was going to speak without being interrogated by mangogul, when her toy was heard to cry out from the lower regions, that these ten years part, which the war had lasted, she had made pretty good use of her time; that two pages and a huge scoundrel of a footman had supplied her husband's place; and that without doubt she designed the pension, which she was solliciting, for keeping an actor of the comic opera. a fifth stept forward with intrepidity, and with an air of confidence demanded the reward of her late husband's services, who was an aga of the janissaries, and lost his life under the walls of matatras. the sultan turn'd his ring on her, but to no purpose. her toy was mute. "i must own," says the african author, who had seen her, "that she was so ugly, that the by-standers would be astonished, if her toy had any thing to say." mangogul was got to the sixth, and here are the express words of her toy. "truly, it well becomes madam," meaning her, whose toy was obstinately silent, "to sollicite pensions, while she lives upon the poule, keeps a breland table which brings her in three thousand sequins a year, makes private suppers at the expence of the gamesters, and received six hundred sequins from osman, to draw me to one of these suppers, where the treacherous osman----" "due regard shall be paid to your petitions, ladies," said the sultan: "for the present ye may withdraw." then directing his words to his counsellors, he ask'd them, if it did not seem ridiculous to them to grant pensions to a herd of little bastards of bramins and others, and to women whose employment it was to dishonor brave men, who had enter'd into his service in quest of glory, at the expence of their lives. the seneschal stood up, answered, declaimed, resumed, and gave his opinion obscurely as usual. while he was yet speaking, ifec recovered from her fit, quite enraged at her adventure; and, as she expected no pension for herself, and would run distracted, if any other obtain'd one, which would have happened in all likelihood, she went directly into the antichamber, and whispered to two or three of her female friends, that they were summoned thither purely to hear their toys chatter; that she herself heard one deliver horrid things in the audience chamber; that she would not name it for the world; but that they must be fools, to expose themselves to the same danger. this advice passed from hand to hand, and dispersed the crowd of widows. when the gentleman usher opened the door to let in a second parcel, not one was there. "well, seneschal, will you believe me another time?" said mangogul informed of the desertion, to the good man, clapping him on the shoulder. "i promised to rid you of these female weepers, and i have done it. yet they were very assiduous in making court to you, notwithstanding your fourscore and fifteen years of age. but whatever pretensions you may possibly have: for i am not ignorant of the facility you had to form pretensions on these ladies, i fancy you are obliged to me for their retreat. they gave you more _embarras_ than pleasure." the african author informs us, that the remembrance of this trial is kept up in congo; and for that reason it is, that the government is so sparing of granting pensions: but this was not the only good effect of cucufa's ring, as we shall see in the following chapter. chap. xxv. _twelfth trial of the ring._ a law case. rapes were severely punished in congo: and there happened a most notorious one in mangogul's reign. this prince, at his accession to the crown, had sworn, like all his predecessors, never to grant a pardon for that crime: but be laws ever so severe, they seldom curb those, whom a considerable advantage urges to infringe them. the criminal was condemned to lose that part of him, by which he had sinned; a cruel operation, of which he generally died; as the person who performed it, used less precaution than b----ll. kerfael, a young man of a good family, had now languished six months in a dungeon, waiting for the day of execution. fatme, a young pretty woman, was his lucretia and accuser. every body knew, that they had been very well together: fatme's indulgent husband took no exceptions against it: therefore it would be ungenteel in the public to intermeddle in their affairs. after an undisturbed commerce of two years, whether thro' inconstancy or disgust, kerfael took to a dancer at the opera of banza, and grew cold towards fatme, yet without coming to an open rupture. he resolved to make a decent retreat; which obliged him to continue his visits in the house. fatme enraged for being thus forsaken, meditated revenge, and made use of this remnant of his assiduities to destroy her unfaithful lover. one day, that the convenient husband had left them _tête à tête_, and that kerfael, having ungirt his scymeter, was endeavouring to allay fatme's suspicions by protestations, which cost nothing to lovers, but never surprize the credulity of a jealous woman; she assumed an affrighted air, and having tore her dress at five or six pulls, shriek'd out horridly, and call'd to her husband and domestics for help; who ran immediately, and became witnesses to the injury, which fatme said she received from kerfael; and shewing the scymeter, added: "this the infamous villain lifted at my head ten times to make me submit to his will." the young man, struck dumb at the blackness of the accusation, had not power either to answer or make his escape. he was seiz'd, dragg'd to prison, and deliver'd up to justice and the prosecution of the cadilesker. the laws ordained that fatme should be visited. accordingly she was; and the report of the matrons proved very unfavourable to the accused. they had an original standard, by which they could determine the condition of a violated woman; and every circumstance concurred against kerfael. the judges examined him, fatme was confronted with him, and the evidence was heard. in vain did he plead innocence, deny the fact, and demonstrate by the commerce which he held with his accuser above two years, that she was not a woman to be ravished. the circumstance of the scymeter, the _tête à tête_ solitude, kerfael's confusion at the sight of the husband and domestics; taken all together formed, in the opinion of the judges, violent presumptions. fatme on her side, far from owning that she had granted him favors, would not even allow that she gave him the least glimmering of hopes; and maintain'd that her obstinate adherence to her duty, from which she had never flinch'd, was without doubt what urged kerfael to acquire by force, what he despair'd obtaining by craft. the verbal process drawn up by the commissaries was another terrible piece. nothing more was requisite, than to run it over, and compare it with the articles of the criminal code, to read unhappy kerfael's condemnation therein. he lost all expectations of life either by his defence, or the credit of his family; the magistrates had fixed the definitive sentence to the thirteenth of the month of rebeg: and this was even published by sound of trumpet, according to custom. this affair became the topic of conversations, and people were divided upon it for a good while. some old hags, who had always been very safe from any apprehensions of a rape, ran about crying: "that kerfael's attack was enormous; that unless a severe example were made of him, innocence would be no longer in security; and that an honest woman would be exposed to insults, even at the horns of the altar." then they cited instances of little impertinent puppies having attack'd the virtue of several respectable ladies: and the circumstances left no room to doubt, but that those respectable ladies mentioned by them were themselves: and all these speeches were made to bramins less innocent than kerfael, and by devotes as chaste as fatme, by way of edifying conversations. the _petits-maitres_ on the contrary, and even some _petites-maitresses_, asserted that a rape was a chimæra, that a woman never surrendered but by capitulation; and that, if a fort was defended, tho' ever so little, it was absolutely impossible to take it by storm. examples were alledged in support of this reasoning: the women knew some; the _petits-maitres_ invented others; and there was no end of quoting instances of women, who had not been ravished. "poor kerfael," said they, "what the devil had he in his head, to take to little bimbreloqua," which was the dancer's name, "why did he not stick to fatme? they were extremely well together, and the husband left them at full liberty: what a blessing----those witches the matrons put on their spectacles to no purpose, for they saw nothing. and indeed, who is the person that can see clear in that place? and besides, the senators are going to deprive him of his joy, for having burst an open door. the poor lad will die of it, no doubt. after that, pray consider, what will not dissatisfied women be authorized to do."----"if this execution takes place," interrupted another, "i will make myself a free mason." mirzoza, naturally compassionate, remonstrated to mangogul, who was joking her on kerfael's case, that if the laws spoke against kerfael, good sense deposed against fatme. "moreover," added she, "it has never been heard, that, in a wise government, the letter of the law should be so closely adhered to, that the simple allegation of a female accuser should be sufficient to endanger the life of a subject. the reality of a rape cannot be too clearly proved; and you will allow, sir, that this fact is as much at least within the province of your ring as of your senators. it would be very singular, that the matrons should be more knowing on this head than the toys themselves. hitherto your highness's ring has done little more than satisfy your curiosity. might not the genius, from whom you had it, have intended some more important end? if you employ it for the discovery of truth, and the happiness of your subjects, can you think the genius will be offended? try. you are in possession of an infallible method of drawing from fatme a confession of her crime, or a proof of her innocence." "you are in the right," replied mangogul, "and you shall be satisfied." the sultan departed immediately: and indeed there was no time to lose: for it was the night of the twelfth of the moon rebeg, and the senate was to pronounce sentence on the thirteenth. fatme was just got into bed, the curtains were not quite closed. a night taper threw a dull light on her countenance. the sultan thought her beautiful, notwithstanding the violent commotions which disfigured her. compassion and hatred, grief and revenge, audaciousness and shame were painted in her eyes, according as they succeeded each other in her heart. she uttered deep sighs, shed tears, wiped them off, shed fresh ones, remained some moments with her head drooping and eyes dejected, then suddenly raised them, and darted furious looks towards the heavens. what was mangogul doing all this time? he was talking to himself, and saying. "these are the symptoms of despair. her former tenderness for kerfael has revived in all its violence. she has lost sight of the offence he committed, and has nothing in view but the punishment reserved for her lover." as soon as he had finished these words, he turned the fatal ring on fatme, and her toy cried out with vehemence. "twelve hours more, and we shall be revenged. the treacherous ingrateful man shall perish, and his blood shall be shed." fatme affrighted at the extraordinary motion which she felt within her, and shock'd at the buzzing voice of her toy, clapt both hands on it, and put herself upon duty to stop its mouth. but the powerful ring continued to act, and the ungovernable toy breaking thro' every obstacle, added: "yes, we shall be revenged. o! thou who hast betray'd me, wretched kerfael, dye, and thou, whom he has preferred to me, o bimbreloqua, despair!----twelve hours more! alas! how tedious will this time appear to me. hasten, sweet moments, when i shall see the treacherous, the ingrateful kerfael under the executioner's knife, his blood trickling down----ah! wretch, what have i said? can i without horror see the dearest object of my love perish? can i see the fatal weapon lifted up?----ah! far from me this cruel thought.--he hates me, 'tis true; he has quitted me for bimbreloqua, but perhaps some time or other----why do i say, perhaps? love will certainly recall him under my yoke. that little bimbreloqua is a fancy that will fly off; he must sooner or later be sensible of the injustice of his preference, and the ridiculousness of his new choice. comfort thyself, fatme, thou shalt see thy kerfael again. yes, thou shalt see him again. arise quickly, run, fly to remove the dreadful danger which threatens him. dost thou not tremble to come too late?--but whither shall i run, mean wretch that i am. does not kerfael's disdain foretel me, that he has abandoned me for ever. bimbreloqua enjoys him, and 'tis for her that i was going to save him: ah! let him rather dye a thousand deaths. if he lives no more for me, why should i be concerned for his death?--yes, i am now convinced that my wrath is just. the ingrateful kerfael has deserved all my hatred. i no longer have any remorse. i had done every thing to keep him, i will do every thing to destroy him. yet one day later, and my revenge was disappointed. but his evil genius delivered him up to me, the very moment that he thought to escape me. he is fallen into the snare which i laid for him. i have him fast. the appointment, to which i contrived to bring thee, was the last which thou intendedst for me: but thou wilt not so soon forget it.--with what address did you bring him to your beck? fatme, how well concerted was your disorder? your shrieks, your grief, your tears, your confusion, every thing, even to your silence, has ruin'd kerfael. nothing can snatch him from his impending fate. kerfael is dead--you weep, wretched woman. he loved another, of what consequence is his life to you." mangogul, filled with horror at this discourse, turned off his ring; and while fatme was recruiting her spirits, he flew back to the sultana. "well, prince," said she, "what have you heard? is kerfael still guilty, and the chast fatme"--"i beseech you to excuse me," answered the sultan, "from repeating the abominations which i come from hearing. how an exasperated woman is to be dreaded! who could believe, that a body formed by the graces, sometimes enclosed a heart molded by the furies? but the sun shall not set to-morrow on my dominions, before they be purged of a monster more dangerous than those which are produced in my deserts." the sultan immediately sent for the seneschal, and commanded him to seize fatme, to remove kerfael into one of the appartments of the seraglio, and to inform the senate, that he reserved to himself the cognizance of his affair. his orders were executed that very night. the next morning at dawn of day, the sultan attended by the seneschal and an effendi, went to mirzoza's appartment, and had fatme brought thither. this unfortunate woman threw herself at mangogul's feet, confessed her crime with all its circumstances, and conjured mirzoza to intercede for her. mean while kerfael was conducted in. he expected nothing but death: however he made his appearance with that composed assurance, which innocence alone can give. some ill-natured wags said, that he would be in greater consternation, if what he was threaten'd to lose, was worth preserving. the women were upon the tenters to know the issue. he prostrated himself respectuously before his highness. mangogul made him a signal to arise, and giving him his hand, "you are innocent," said he, "be free. render thanks to brama for your preservation. in order to make amends for the misery you have suffered, i grant you a pension of two thousand sequins on my exchequer, and the first commandery that shall fall in the order of the crocodile." the more favors were bestowed on kerfael, the more fatme dreaded punishment. the great seneschal gave his opinion for death, grounded upon the law: _si foemina ff. de vi c. calumniatrix_. the sultan was inclined for perpetual imprisonment. mirzoza finding too much rigor in one of these judgments, and too much indulgence in the other, condemned fatme's toy to the padlock. the florentine machine was publickly clapt on, upon the same scaffold that had been erected for kerfael's execution. thence she was conducted to a house of correction, together with the matrons who had given their decisive opinions with so much knowledge. chap. xxvi. _mirzoza's metaphysics._ the souls. while mangogul was interrogating the toys of haria, the widows, and fatme, mirzoza had full time to prepare her philosophical lecture. one evening, that the manimonbanda was performing her devotions, that there was neither play nor drawing room at court, and that the favorite was almost certain of a visit from the sultan; she took two black petticoats, put one on in the usual manner, and the other over her shoulders, passed her hands thro' the two slits, put on the peruke of mangogul's seneschal, and his chaplain's square cap; and thought herself equipped as a philosopher, whereas she had disguised herself into a bat. in this masquerade dress, she walked up and down her appartments, as a professor of the royal college waiting for his scholars. she affected even to the gloomy pensive physiognomy of a learned man in meditation. mirzoza did not hold this forced gravity long. the sultan entered with some of his courtiers, and made a low bow to the new philosopher; whose gravity disconcerted her audience, and was in its turn disconcerted by the loud laughter it occasioned. "madam," said mangogul, "have you not advantage enough by your wit and figure, without taking the robe to your aid? without which your words would have all the weight that you could have desired." "it seems to me, sir," answered mirzoza, "that you do not much respect this robe, and that a disciple should pay more regard to what constitutes half the merit at least of his master." "i perceive," replied the sultan, "that you have already acquired the spirit and tone of your new condition. i make no doubt at present, but your capacity answers to the dignity of your dress, and i impatiently expect a proof of it."--"you shall be satisfied this minute," said mirzoza, sitting down in the center of a large carpet. the sultan and courtiers placed themselves around her, and she began. "have the philosophers, who presided over your highness's education, ever entertain'd you on the nature of the soul?" "oh! very often," said mangogul; "but all their systems had no other end, but giving me uncertain notions of it; and were it not for an inward sentiment, which seems to suggest to me, that it is a substance different from matter, i should either have denied its existence, or confounded it with the body. would you undertake to clear up this chaos?" "so far from it," replied mirzoza, "that i am not farther advanced on that head than your pedagogues. the only difference between them and me, is that i suppose the existence of a substance different from matter, and that they hold it demonstrated. but this substance, if it exists, must be lodged somewhere. have they not preached many extravagances to you on that article?" "no," said mangogul: "they all pretty generally agreed, that it resides in the head; and this opinion to me seemed probable. 'tis the head that thinks, imagines, reflects, judges, disposes, commands; and we say every day of a man who does not think, that he has no brains, or that he wants a head." "well then," replied the sultana, "the result of your long studies and of all your philosophy, is, to suppose a fact, and to ground it on popular expressions. prince, what would you say of your first geographer, if he presented your highness with a map of your dominions, in which he had put the east in the west, and the north in the south?" "that is too gross an error," answered mangogul, "for any geographer to have ever committed." "that may be," continued the favorite; "and in the case before us, your philosophers are greater bunglers, than the most bungling geographer can be. they had not a vast empire to survey; the business was not to fix the limits of the four parts of the world: all they had to do, was to enter into themselves, and there mark the true seat of their soul. yet they have placed the east in the west, and the south in the north. they have pronounced that the soul is in the head, whereas the greatest part of mankind dye, without it's ever inhabiting that appartment; and its first residence is in the feet." "in the feet!" interrupted the sultan. "that is the most empty notion that i have ever heard." "yes, in the feet," replied mirzoza, "and this opinion, which to you seems so silly, will, upon thoroughly examining it, become rational; contrary to all those, which you allow as true, and which upon a thorough examination are found to be false. your highness agreed with me just now, that the existence of our soul was founded on the interior testimony alone, which it bore to itself; and i will now demonstrate, that all the proofs imaginable of sense concur to fix the soul in the seat which i have assigned it." "there we expect you," said mangogul. "i desire no favor," continued she; "and i invite ye all to propose your difficulties. well then, i was saying that the soul takes up its first residence in the feet, that there it begins to exist, and from the feet it advances into the body. to experience i appeal for this fact; and perhaps i am going to lay the first foundations of experimental metaphysics. "we have all experienced in our infancy, that the benumbed soul remains whole months in a state of sleepiness. at that time the eyes open without seeing, the mouth without speaking, and the ears without hearing. 'tis elsewhere that the soul endeavours to stretch itself and awake; 'tis in other members that she practises her first functions. 'tis by the feet that a child gives notice of his formation. his body, head and arms are immoveable in the mother's womb; but his feet unfold and extend themselves, and give proofs of his existence, and perhaps of his exigences. when he is on the point of birth, what would become of his head, body and arms? they would never come out of their confinement, had they not been assisted by the feet: here the feet act the principal part, and drive the rest of the body before them. such is the order of nature; and whenever any other member attempts to lead the van; when the head, for example, takes the place of the feet; every thing goes wrong, and god knows what is the consequence sometimes, both to the mother and the child. "is the child born? 'tis still in the feet that the chief motions are performed. we are obliged to confine them: and this is never done without some reluctance on their part. the head is a block, with which we do what we will; but the feet are sensible of, shake off the yoke, and seem jealous of the liberty, of which they are deprived. "is the child able to stand alone? the feet make a thousand efforts to move; they put every thing into action: they command the other members, and the obedient hands lean against the walls, and advance forward to prevent or break the falls, and facilitate the action of the feet. "whither do all the thoughts of a child tend, what are his pleasures, when, secure on his legs, his feet have acquired the habit of moving? to exercise them, to go to and fro', to run, to leap, to bounce. this turbulence pleases us, we take it for a mark of sense; and we predict the future stupidity of the child, when we see him indolent and sullen. have you a mind to vex a child of four years old? make him sit down for a quarter of an hour, or imprison him between four chairs: he will grow peevish and ill-humor'd: for 'tis not his legs alone that you deprive of exercise, 'tis his soul that you hold in captivity. "the soul remains in the feet to the age of two or three years; at four it inhabits the legs; it gets up to the knees and thighs at fifteen. then we love dancing, fencing, riding, and the other violent bodily exercises. this is the predominant passion of all young folks, and the madness of some. what! does not the soul reside in those places, where she almost only manifests herself, and where she feels the most agreeable sensations? but if her residence varies in infancy and youth, why should it not vary thro' every stage of life?" mirzoza pronounced this discourse with such rapidity as made her pant. selim, one of the sultan's favorites, embraced the moment while she was taking breath, and said to her: "madam, i will make use of the liberty you have granted the company, of proposing their objections. your system is ingenious, and you have delivered it with equal grace and clearness: but i am not so far seduced by it, as to think it stands demonstrated. methinks one may say, that even in infancy 'tis the head that commands the feet, and from thence the spirits flow, which, by means of the nerves, running into all the members, stop or move them at the will of the soul seated on the pineal gland: just as we see his highness's orders issuing from the sublime porte, which set all his subjects in action." "doubtless," replied mirzoza, "but one would tell me a very obscure thing; to which i should give no other answer than by an experienced fact. in infancy we have no certainty that the head thinks; and even you, my lord, who have so good an one, and who in your tender years passed for a prodigy of reason, do you remember that you thought at that time? but you might well assert, that when you gamboled about like a little dæmon, so as to drive your governants out of their wits, your feet then governed your head." "that proves nothing," said the sultan. "selim was lively, and so are a thousand other children. they do not reflect, but they think: time slips away, the remembrance of things wears out, and they remember not that they thought." "but by what part did they think," replied mirzoza: "for that is the point in dispute?" "by the head," answered selim. "what! always this head, into which one cannot peep," replied the sultana. "pray, drop your dark lanthorn, in which you suppose a light, that is seen by none but by him who carries it: hear my experiment, and own the truth of my hypothesis. it is so constantly true, that the soul begins its progress in the body by the feet, that there are some of both sexes, in whom it never rose higher. my lord, you have admired nini's nimbleness and saligo's feats of activity a thousand times: answer me then sincerely, do you think that these creatures have their souls any where else but in their legs? and have you not remarked, that in volucer and zelindor the head is submissive to the feet? the eternal temptation of a dancer is to contemplate his legs. at every step his attentive eye follows his paces, and his head bows respectuously before his feet, as do before his highness his invincible pacha's." "i allow the observation," said selim: "but i deny that it is a general one." "nor do i pretend," replied mirzoza, "that the soul always fixes in the feet: she advances, she travels, she quits a part, returns to it, and quits it again; but i maintain that the other members are subordinate to that which she inhabits. all this varies according to the age, temper and circumstances; and thence arises the difference of tastes, the diversity of inclinations and characters. do you not admire the fecundity of my principle? and is not its certainty evinced by the number of phænomena, to which it extends?" "madam," answered selim, "if you applied it to some in particular, perhaps it might give us a degree of conviction, which we have not yet acquired." "most willingly," replied mirzoza, who began to be sensible of the advantages she gain'd: "you shall be satisfied, only follow the chain of my notions. i do not pretend to make arguments in form. i speak from my heart; this is the philosophy of our sex, and you understand it almost as well as we. it is probable enough," added she, "that the soul occupies the feet and legs to the age of eight or ten: but about that time, or rather later, she quits that lodging, either of her own free motion, or by force. by force, when a tutor employs certain machines to drive her out of her native place, and lead her into the brain; where she is metamorphosed generally into memory, and seldom or never into judgment. this is the fate of school-boys. in like manner, if a weak governant labours hard to form a young girl, stuffs her mind with knowledge, and neglects the heart and morals; the soul rapidly flies towards the head, stops on the tongue, or fixes in the eyes; and her scholar is but a tiresome pratler, or a coquet. "thus the voluptuous woman is she whose soul occupies her toy, and never strays from it. "the woman of gallantry, she whose soul is sometimes in her toy, and sometimes in her eyes. "the affectionate woman, she whose soul is habitually in the heart, but sometimes also in her toy. "the virtuous woman, she whose soul is sometimes in her head, sometimes in her heart, but never any where else. "if the soul fixes in the heart, she forms the characters of sensibility, compassion, truth, generosity. if she quits the heart without returning thither, and retires to the head; then she forms those whom we call hardhearted, ungrateful, deceitful, cruel men. "the class of those, in whom the soul visits the head merely as a country-house, where its stay is short, is very numerous. it is composed of _petits-maitres_, coquets, musicians, poets, romancers, courtiers, and all those who are called pretty women. listen to the reasoning of these entities, and you will instantly discern vagabond souls, which are influenced by the different climes they inhabit." "if that be the case," said selim, "nature has formed many useless things. and yet our sages hold as a constant maxim, that she has produced nothing in vain." "drop your sages and their lofty expressions," answered mirzoza; "and as to nature, let us consider her with the eyes of experience only, and we shall learn from her, that she has placed the soul in the body of man, as in a spacious palace, of which she does not always occupy the most beautiful appartment. the head and heart are principally destined for her, as the center of virtue, and the residence of truth: but most commonly she stops on the road, and prefers a garret, a suspicious place, a miserable inn, where she drops asleep in perpetual drunkenness. ah! if i were allowed for twenty-four hours only, to settle the world according to my fancy, i would divert you with a very strange sight: in a moment i would deprive each soul of the superfluous parts of its habitation; and you would see each individual characterised by the part left him. thus dancers would be reduced to two feet, or two legs at most; singers to a throat; most women to a toy; hero's and prize-fighters to an armed hand; certain learned men to a skull without brains; a female gamester should be stinted to two hands incessantly shuffling the cards; a glutton to two jaws always in motion; a coquet to two eyes; a rake to the sole instrument of his passion; the ignorant and lazy to nothing." "if you leave the women any hands at all," interrupted the sultan, "those men whom you would reduce to the sole instrument of their passions, would be pursued. this chace would be a pleasant sight: and if the sex was as greedy of this game every where else as in congo, the species would soon be extinct." "but," said selim to the favorite, "of what would you compose affectionate and sensible women, constant and faithful lovers?" "of a heart," answered mirzoza; "and i well know," added she, darting a tender glance on mangogul, "that, to which mine would wish to be united." the sultan could not stand against this declaration: he sprung from his seat to the favorite: the courtiers disappear'd, and the new philosopher's chair became the theatre of their pleasures: he gave her repeated proofs that he was not less charmed with her sentiments than with her discourse; and the philosophic equipage was thrown into disorder. mirzoza return'd the black petticoats to her women, sent my lord seneschal his enormous peruke, and to _monsieur l'abbé_ his square cap, with assurances that he should be on the list at the next nomination. what would he not have attained, if he had been a genius? a seat in the academy was the least reward that he could expect: but unluckily he knew but two or three hundred words, and had never been able from that stock, to compass the composing of two _ritournelles_. chap. xxvii. _sequel of the preceding conversation._ mangogul was the only person that had given attention to mirzoza's philosophic lecture without interrupting her; and as he was pretty much inclined to contradict, she was astonish'd at it. "does the sultan allow my system from beginning to end?" said she within herself. "no, that is not probable: has he found it too bad to deign to attack it? that may be. my notions are not the most just that have been broach'd to this day; i grant it: but neither are they the most false; and i am apt to think that worse have been invented." in order to clear up this doubt, the favorite resolved to ask some questions of mangogul. "well, prince," said she, "what are your thoughts of my system?" "it is admirable," answered the sultan; "i find but one defect in it." "what defect is that?" replied the favorite. "it is," said mangogul, "that it is as false as false can be. pursuant to your notions, we must all be endowed with souls: now observe, my soul's delight, that there is not common sense in this supposition. i have a soul: there is an animal that acts most part of the time as if he had none; and perhaps in reality he has none, even while he acts as if he had one. but he has a nose made like mine; i feel that i have a soul, and that i think: therefore that animal has a soul, and thinks likewise. this argument has been made use of above a thousand years, and it has been impertinent full as long." "i own," said the favorite, "that it is not always evident that others think." "and add," replied mangogul, "that it is evident on an hundred occasions that they do not think." "but in my opinion," says mirzoza, "it would be going a great length, to infer from thence, that they never have or ever will think. a person is not always a beast, for having been so sometimes; and your highness----" mirzoza, fearing to offend the sultan, stopt short. "continue, madam," said mangogul, "i understand you; would you not have said, has my highness never acted the beast? i answer you, that i have now and then, and that even i excused others for taking me for such: for you may easily imagine, that they did not fail so to do, tho' they dared not to speak out."----"ah! prince," cried the favorite, "if men refused a soul to the greatest monarch upon earth, to whom could they allow one?" "pray, forbear compliments," says mangogul. "i have for a moment laid down the crown and scepter. i have ceased to be sultan, in order to be a philosopher, and i can hear and speak the truth. i believe i have given you proofs of the one; and you have hinted to me, without offending me, and quite at your ease, that i have been sometimes no better than a beast. permit me thoroughly to fulfil the duties of my new character. "far from agreeing with you," continued he, "that every creature that has legs, arms, hands, eyes and ears as i have, possesses a soul like me; i declare to you, that i am absolutely perswaded, that three fourths of the men and all the women are but mere machines." "there may possibly be as much truth," answered the favorite, "as politeness in what you say." "oh!" says the sultan, "madam seems to be angry: and why the devil do you take it into your head to philosophize, if you will not allow one to speak the truth? is it in the schools that politeness is to be sought for? i have left you full elbow-room; pray, allow me the same, if you please. well, then, i was saying, that ye are all beasts." "yes, prince; and this is what remained to be proved," added mirzoza. "nothing more easy," answered the sultan. then he set about detailing all the impertinences which had been said over and over, with as little wit and delicacy as possible, against a sex which possesses both these qualities in a sovereign degree. never was mirzoza's patience put to a greater trial; and you would never be so tired in your whole life, as if i related all mangogul's reasonings. this prince, who did not want good sense, was that day absurd beyond all comprehension: of which you shall be a judge. "it is so true, by jupiter," said he, "that a woman is but an animal, that i'll wager, if i turn cucufa's ring on my mare, i shall make her speak like a woman." "without doubt," answered mirzoza, "there is the strongest argument that has ever been, or ever will be made against us." then she burst out into a loud fit of laughter. mangogul, vexed to see no end to her laughter, went out in a hurry, resolved to try the whimsical experiment, which occur'd to his imagination. chap. xxviii. _thirteenth trial of the ring._ the little mare. i am not a great portrait-maker. i have exempted the reader from that of the favorite sultana; but i can never condescend to remit him that of the sultan's mare. she was of a middling size, and had a pretty good gait; the chief fault found with her in that regard was, that she did not bridle her head sufficiently. her colour was white, with blue eyes, small hoofs, clean legs, firm hams, and light haunches. she had been taught to dance for a long time, and she made her bows like a master of the ceremonies. upon the whole she was a pretty beast enough, and remarkably gentle: she was easily mounted, but one must be an excellent horseman to be able to keep the saddle. she had belong'd to the senator aaron: but on a fine evening the skittish creature took fright, threw the judge, and ran full speed to the sultan's studs, carrying with her the saddle, bridle, furniture, housings and caparisons of value; which became her so well, that it was not thought proper to send them back. mangogul went into his stables, accompanied by his first secretary ziguezague. "listen attentively," said he, "and write."----that very instant he turn'd his ring on the mare, which fell to leaping, prancing, kicking, bouncing, and neighing under the tail.----"where are your thoughts," said the prince to his secretary, "write then."----"sultan," replied ziguezague, "i wait till your highness begins."----"my mare," says mangogul, "will dictate to you this once, write." ziguezague, whom this order reduced too low in his own opinion, assumed the liberty of representing to the sultan, that he would always esteem it a high honour to be his secretary, but not that of his mare. "write, i tell you," said the sultan again. "prince, i cannot," replied ziguezague: "i know not the orthography of this sort of words."----"write however," said the sultan once more----"i am excessively mortified, to be obliged to disobey your highness," added ziguezague; "but"----"but you are a scoundrel," interrupted mangogul, incensed at a refusal so much out of place; "quit my palace, and never appear there more." poor ziguezague disappear'd, having learn'd by experience, that a man of spirit ought not to enter the palaces of most part of the great, without leaving his sentiments at the gate. his deputy was called. he was a provencal, frank, honest, and thoroughly disinterested. he flew whither he thought his duty and fortune called him, made a low bow to the sultan, a lower still to his mare, and wrote every thing that the beast vouchsafed to dictate. i must beg leave to refer those, who are curious to know her discourse, to the archives of congo. this prince immediately ordered copies of it to be distributed among all his interpreters and professors of foreign languages, both ancient and modern. one said, that it was a scene of some old greek tragedy, which to him appear'd very moving; another, by the strength of his genius discovered, that it was an important fragment of egyptian theology: a third pretended, that it was the exordium of hannibal's funeral oration in the punic language; and a fourth asserted, that the piece was writ in chinese, and that it was a very devout prayer to confucius. while the litterati were trying the sultan's patience with their learned conjectures, he recollected gulliver's travels, and made no doubt, but that a person, who had lived so long as this englishman, in an island, where horses have a government, laws, kings, gods, priests, a religion, temples and altars, and who seemed so perfectly well instructed in their manners and customs, was a thorough master of their language. accordingly gulliver read and interpreted the mare's discourse off hand, notwithstanding the orthographical errors, with which it abounded. nay, it is the only good translation of it in all congo. mangogul learned for his own private satisfaction, and for the honour of his system, that it was an historical abridgment of the amours of an old pacha of three tails with the little mare, which had been attack'd by an infinite number of jack-asses before him: a singular anecdote, the truth of which however was not unknown, either to the sultan, or to any other person at court, at banza, and in the rest of the empire. chap. xxix. _the best perhaps, and the least read of this history._ _mangogul's dream, or a voyage into the region of hypotheses._ "waa," says mangogul, yawning and rubbing his eyes, "my head achs. let nobody evermore talk philosophy to me. such conversations are unwholsome. last night i lay on empty ideas; and instead of sleeping like a sultan, my brain work'd more than those of my ministers do in a year. you laugh; but to convince you that i do not exaggerate, and to take my revenge for the bad night which your reasonings gave me, i enjoin you the penance of hearing my dream in its full extent. "as soon as i began to nod, and my imagination to take its flight, i saw an odd animal bounce by my side. he had the head of an eagle, the feet of a griffon, the body of a horse, and the tail of a lion. i seized him, notwithstanding his prancing; and holding by his mane, i nimbly sprung on his back. immediately he spread out long wings, which issued from his flanks, and i felt myself carried in the air with incredible swiftness. "after driving a vast way, i espied, in the emptiness of space, a building suspended as by enchantment. it was a vast one. i will not say that it was faulty in its foundation; for it had none. its columns, which were not half a foot in diameter, ran up out of sight, and supported arches, which would not have been visible, were it not for the symmetrical lights made in them. "at the entrance into this edifice it was that my beast first stop'd. at first i was in a doubt whether i should alight: for i apprehended less danger in sitting on my hippogriffon, than in walking under this portico. however, encouraged by the multitude of its inhabitants, and by a remarkable security, which was predominant in their countenances, i alight, go forward, mix with the crowd, and make my observations on those that composed it. "they were old men, either bloated or feeble; without _embonpoint_ and strength, and almost all deform'd. the head of one was too little, the arms of another too short. one was hump-back'd, another bandy-legg'd. most of them had no feet, and walk'd on crutches. a breath threw them down, and they remain'd on the ground, till some new comer was pleased to lift them up. all these defects notwithstanding, they pleased at first sight. they had in their physiognomy somewhat engaging and confident. they were almost naked: for all their cloathing consisted of a small rag of stuff, which did not cover the hundredth part of their body. "i continued to pierce the crowd, and got to the foot of a rostrum, for which a cobweb served as a canopy. the boldness of this rostrum was of a piece with that of the building. to me it seemed placed on the point of a needle, and to support itself there in æquilibrio. i trembled a hundred times for the person, who was in it. he was an old man, with a long beard, as wither'd and naked as any of his disciples: he had a cup full of a subtil fluid before him, into which he dipp'd a straw-pipe; then put it to his mouth, and blew bubbles to a crowd of spectators around him, who were using their utmost endeavours to drive them up to the clouds. "'where am i?' said i to myself, all in confusion at these childish tricks. 'what means this blower of bubbles, and all these decrepit infants employ'd in making them fly about? who will let me into the secret of these things?'--besides, the little scraps of stuff had struck me; and i observed that the larger they were, the less those that wore them interested themselves in the bubbles. this singular remark embolden'd me to accost him, who was the least undress'd of the company. "i saw one, whose shoulders were half covered with pieces so well fitted together, that the seams were not to be seen. he walk'd forward and backward in the crowd, with very little concern for what they were doing. he had an affable air, a smiling mouth, a noble gait, a mild look; and i went directly to him, and asked him without ceremony: 'who are you? where am i? and who are all these folks?'--he answered, 'i am plato. you are in the region of hypotheses, and these folks are systematics.' 'but by what chance,' replied i, 'is the divine plato here, and what does he do among these madmen?'--'raising recruits,' said he. 'at a distance from this portico i have a sanctuary, whither i conduct those who abandon systems.' 'and how do you employ them?' 'in knowing man, practising virtue, and sacrificing to the graces'--'these are noble employments: but what mean these shreds of fluff, whereby you look more like beggers than philosophers?'--'oh! what a question do you propose to me,' said he with a sigh, 'and what thoughts do you bring back to my mind? this temple was formerly that of philosophy. alas! how much this place is changed! the chair of socrates was here.'--'how,' said i, interrupting him, 'had socrates a straw, and did he blow bubbles?'--'no, no,' replied plato, 'it was not by such means that he merited of the gods the name of the wisest of men. his constant occupation, during life, was forming heads and hearts. the secret was lost at his death. socrates died, and the bright days of philosophy were no more. these pieces of stuff, which those very systematics think it an honour to wear, are scraps of his garment. scarcely had his eyes been closed, when those, who aspired to the title of philosophers, seized his robe, and tore it in pieces.' 'i understand,' said i, 'these pieces served as tickets both to them and their long posterity.'--'who will collect these scraps,' continued plato, 'and restore us socrates's robe? "while he was uttering these words, i saw at a distance a child walking towards us in a slow but sure pace. he had a little head, slender body, weak arms and short legs: but all these parts increased in all dimensions, according as he came forward. in the progress of his successive growth, he appear'd to me under a hundred different forms; i saw him directing a long telescope towards the heavens, estimating the fall of bodies by means of a pendulum, determining the weight of the air by a tube fill'd with quicksilver, and discomposing light with a prism. he was now become an enormous colossus: his head touch'd the heavens, his feet were lost in the abyss, and his arms reach'd from one to the other pole. with his right hand he brandished a torch, whose light spread a vast way in the sky, enlightened even the bottom of the waters, and penetrated into the entrails of the earth. i ask'd plato, what that gigantic figure was, that was coming towards us. 'it is experience,' said he. scarcely had he made me this short answer, when i saw experience draw near, and the columns of the portico of hypotheses to shake, its arches to sink in, and its pavement to crack under our feet. 'let us fly,' said plato, 'let us fly: this edifice has but a moment to stand.' at these words he departs, and i follow him. the colossus arrives, strikes the portico, it tumbles down with a frightful noise, and i awake." "ah! prince," cried mirzoza, "'tis you that ought to dream. i would indeed be very glad, that you had had a good night: but now that i know your dream, i should be very sorry that you had not dream'd it." "madam," said mangogul, "i could point out nights better spent than that of this dream, which gives you so much pleasure; and if i had been master of making the journey, or not; it is very probable, that, not hoping to find you in the country of hypotheses, i should have bent my course elsewhere. and then, either i should not have the head-ach, which i actually feel, or at least i should have reason to make myself easy under it." "prince," replied mirzoza, "it is to be hoped, that it will soon go off; and that one or two experiments of your ring will rid you of it." "i must try," said mangogul. the conversation lasted some time longer between the sultan and mirzoza; so that he did not quit her till eleven, when he went upon the expedition related in the following chapter. chap. xxx. _fourteenth trial of the ring._ the mute toy. of all the ladies, who shone at the sultan's court, none had more charms and wit than young egle, the wife of his highness's great cupbearer. she was of all mangogul's parties, who was much taken with the chearfulness of her conversation: and as if there could be neither pleasure nor amusement without egle, she was also of all the parties of the grandees of his court. balls, public diversions, drawing rooms, feasts, private suppers, hunting matches, play, every where egle was invited, and every where she appear'd: it seem'd as if the taste of amusements multiplied her, according to the will of those who desired her company. wherefore it is needless to say, that if no woman was as much sought after as egle, there was none so diffused. she had been always pursued by a crowd of lovers, and people were persuaded that she had not treated them all with severity. whether it were inadvertence, or thorough good nature, her common politeness frequently resembled premeditated regard: and those who endeavour'd to gain her, sometimes read affection in her eyes, when she never intended more than affability. neither caustic, nor detracting, she never open'd her mouth but to say pleasing things: which she did with such spirit and vivacity, that on several occasions, her encomiums raised a suspicion that she had a choice to justify. thus it appears, that those, of whom egle was the ornament and delight, were unworthy of her. it was natural to think, that a woman, in whom no fault perhaps was to be found, but an excess of goodness, ought to have no enemies. yet she had some, and very bitter ones. the devouts of banza found that she had too free an air, and somewhat too loose in her carriage; saw nothing in her conduct but a rage of worldly pleasures; inferred thence, that her morals were equivocal at least, and charitably insinuated this to all those that would hear them. the court ladies did not treat egle with greater tenderness. they suspected her intimacies, gave her gallants, even honored her with some great adventures, made her a party concerned in others: they knew particulars, and quoted witnesses. "good," whispered they, "she has been surprized _tête à tête_ with melraim in one of the groves of the great park. egle does not want wit," added they; "but melraim has too much good sense to be amused with her speeches alone, at ten at night, in a grove."--"you are mistaken," said a _petit-maitre_, "i have walked with her a hundred times in the dusk of the evening, and found my account in it. but _à propos_, do you know that zulemar is daily at her toilette?"--"doubtless, we know it, and that she has no toilette but when her husband is in waiting at court."----"poor celebi," continued another, "indeed his wife advertises him by the aigrette and diamond buckles, which she received of the pacha ismael."----"is that true, madam?"----"it is strict truth, i have it from her own mouth: but in the name of brama let this go no farther. egle is my friend, and i should be very sorry"----"alas," cried a third sorrowfully, "the poor little creature ruins herself very chearfully. a great pity truly. but twenty intrigues at a time, that seems rather too much." the _petits-maitres_ were not more sparing of her. one related a hunting match, in which she and he lost themselves together. another, out of respect for the sex, suppress'd the consequences of a very smart conversation he held with her at a masquerade, where he met her. a third made a panegyric on her wit and charms, and ended it by shewing her portrait, which he declared he had from the best hands. "this portrait," said a fourth, "is more like her than that, of which she made a present to jenaki." these stories at length came to her husband's ears. celebi loved his wife, but still with such decency, that no body had the least suspicion of it. he repulsed the first reports, but they return'd to the charge from so many quarters, that he thought his friends more clear-sighted than himself: and the more liberty he had granted to egle, the more he suspected that she had abused it. jealousy took possession of his soul. he began by cramping his wife. egle bore this change of behaviour with the greater impatience, as she was conscious of her innocence. her vivacity and the advices of her female friends, hurried her into inconsiderate deportment, which made all the appearances turn against her, and had like to cost her her life. the violent celebi for some time rack'd his brain with a thousand projects of revenge, steel, poison, the fatal noose, &c. and at length resolved on a slower and more cruel punishment, by confining her to his country seat: which is death indeed to a court lady. in a word, orders are given: egle is inform'd of her destiny: he is insensible to her tears and deaf to her reasons, and she is banish'd two hundred miles from banza, to an old castle, where she is allowed no other company than two maids and four black eunuchs, who continually watch her. scarcely was she set out, when she was innocent. the _petits-maitres_ forgot her adventures; the women forgave her her wit and charms, and all the world bemoaned her. mangogul was apprized, from celebi's own mouth, of his motives for the dreadful resolution he had taken against his wife, and seem'd to be the only person that approved it. the wretched egle had already groaned near six months under her exile, when kerfael's adventure happened. mirzoza wish'd she might prove innocent, but durst not indulge those flattering hopes. however, she one day said to the sultan: "prince, might not your ring, which has saved kerfael's life, put an end to egle's banishment? but i forget myself: in order to that, her toy should be consulted; and the poor recluse is dying with grief two hundred miles hence."----"you interest yourself much," answered mangogul, "in egle's fate." "yes prince," said mirzoza; "especially if she is innocent." "you shall have tydings of this affair within an hour," replied mangogul. "do you not remember the properties of my ring?"----at these words, he went into the garden, turn'd his ring, and in less than fifteen minutes was in the park of the castle wherein egle dwelt. there he espied egle alone and overwhelm'd with sorrow: her head was leaning on her hand, she was tenderly repeating her husband's name, and with her tears she was watering the green turf, on which she sate. mangogul drawing near turn'd his ring on her, and egle's toy said in a mournful strain: "i love celebi." the sultan waited for the sequel; but as it came not, he had recourse to his ring, which he rubb'd two or three times against his hat, before he levell'd it on egle: but his labour was vain. the toy repeated: "i love celebi," and stop'd short. "there is a very discreet toy," said the sultan. "let us try once more, and ply it closer." whereupon he gave to his ring all the energy, which it was capable of receiving, and turn'd it nimbly on egle: but her toy continued mute. it either constantly kept silence, or broke it only by repeating these plaintive words: "i love celebi, and have never loved any other man." mangogul, being thoroughly satisfied, returned to mirzoza in fifteen minutes. "what, prince," said she, "return'd already. well, what have you learnt? do you bring fresh matter for our conversations?" "i bring nothing," answered the sultan. "what! nothing?"--"nothing at all. i never knew a toy so silent: i could get nothing from it but these words. 'i love celebi, i love celebi, and have never loved any other man.'" "ah! prince," replied mirzoza with vivacity, "what do you tell me? what happy news! there is one virtuous woman found at last. will you suffer her to remain longer miserable?" "no," answered mangogul: "her banishment shall be at an end, but have you no apprehensions that it may be at the expence of her virtue? egle is chaste, but consider, my heart's delight, what you require of me; to re-call her to my court, in order that she may continue so: however you shall be satisfied." the sultan sent for celebi immediately, and told him; that having made a strict inquiry into the reports spread abroad concerning egle, he had found them false and calumnious, and commanded him to bring her back to court. celebi obey'd, and presented his wife to mangogul: she was going to throw herself at his highness's feet, but the sultan stopping her said: "madam, thank mirzoza. her friendship for you determined me to clear up the truth of the facts imputed to you. continue to embellish my court; but remember that a pretty woman sometimes does herself as much mischief by acts of imprudence, as by adventures." the very next day egle waited on the manimonbanda, who received her with a smile. the _petits-maitres_ redoubled their insipidities towards her, and the women all ran to embrace and give her joy, and began again to tear her in pieces. end of the first volume. chap. xxxi. was mangogul in the right? from the time that mangogul had received the fatal present of cucufa, the ridicules and vices of the sex were become the eternal subject of his jokes: he was never done with them, and his favorite's patience was frequently quite tired out. now, two cruel effects of this teizing on her, as well as on many others, was to put her into a bad humor, and to sour her temper. at those times woe to him that came near her: she made no distinction of persons, and the sultan himself was not spared. "prince," said she to him, in one of these peevish fits, "tho' you are so knowing in many things, perhaps you do not know the news of the day."----"what is it?" said mangogul.----"it is, that every morning you get by heart three pages of brantome, or of ouville: people do not determine which of these two profound writers you prefer"----"they are mistaken, madam," answered mangogul, "'tis crebillon, that"----"o, pray don't excuse yourself from that sort of reading," interrupted the favorite. "the new calumnies that are invented on us, are so insipid, that it is better to revive the old. truly there are very good things in this same brantome: if to these little stories you add three or four chapters of bayle, you alone will in a thrice have as much wit as the marquiss d'----, and the chevalier de mouhi. that would spread a surprising variety on your conversation. when you have equipped the ladies from head to foot, you might then fall on the pagoda's; and from the pagoda's you might return on the women. in truth, all that you want to make you quite diverting, is a small collection of impieties." "you are in the right, madam," answered mangogul, "and i will take care to lay in a good stock. he who is afraid of being duped in this world and the next, cannot be too much upon his guard against the power of the pagoda's, the probity of men, and virtue of women." "then, in your opinion, this virtue is a very ambiguous thing?" replied mirzoza. "more so than you imagine," answered mangogul. "prince," returned mirzoza, "you have a hundred times talk'd to me of your ministers as the honestest men in congo. i have so often patiently heard the praises of your seneschal, of the governors of your provinces, of your secretaries, of your treasurer, in a word, of all your officers, that i am able to repeat them by memory word for word. it is strange, that the object of your tenderness should be the only person excepted from the good opinion, which you have conceived of those who have the honor of being near your person." "and who told you that it is so?" replied the sultan. "be perswaded, madam, that the discourses, true or false, which i make on women, do by no means concern you, unless you think proper to represent the sex in general.----" "i should not advise madam to that," added selim, who was present at this conversation. "she would gain nothing by it but defects." "i do not," answered mirzoza, "relish compliments which are addressed to me at the expence of my sex. when any one takes it into his head to praise me, i could wish that nobody suffered by it. most of the fine speeches which are offered to us, are like the sumptuous entertainments which your highness receives from your pacha's: they are always at the expence of the public." "let us pass that by," said mangogul. "but sincerely, are you not convinced that the virtue of the women of congo is but a mere chimæra? pray observe, my soul's delight, what the present fashionable education is, what examples mothers set to their daughters, and how the head of a pretty woman is filled with the notion, that to confine herself to domestic affairs, to manage her family, and keep to her husband, is to lead a dismal life, to be eat up with vapors, and to bury herself alive. and at the same time we men are so forward, and a young unexperienced girl is so raptured with being attack'd. i have said that virtuous women were rare, excessively rare; and far from changing my sentiment, i might add freely, that 'tis surprizing they are not more so. ask selim what he thinks of the matter." "prince," answered mirzoza, "selim has too great obligations to our sex, to tear them in pieces without mercy." "madam," said selim, "his highness, who could not possibly meet with cruel women, ought naturally to think of the sex as he does: and you, who have the good nature to judge of others by yourself, can hardly have any other sentiments than those which you defend. i will own however, that i am apt to believe there are women of sense, to whom the benefits of virtue are known by experience, and whom a serious reflection has convinced of the ill consequences of an irregular life; women happily born, well educated, who have learn'd to feel their duty, who love it, and will never swerve from it." "and not to lose ourselves in speculative reasoning," added the favorite, "is not egle, with all her sprightliness and charms, a model of virtue? prince, you cannot doubt it, and all banza knows it from your mouth: now, if there be one virtuous woman, there may be a thousand." "oh! as to the possibility," said mangogul, "i dispute it not." "but if you allow it possible," replied mirzoza, "who has revealed to you, that they do not actually exist?" "nothing but their toys," answered the sultan. "and yet i grant that this evidence does not come up to the strength of your argument. may i be transform'd into a mole, if you have not borrowed it from some bramin. order the manimonbanda's chaplain to be called, and he will tell you that you have proved the existence of virtuous women, much as he demonstrates that of brama, in braminology. _a propos_, have you not taken a course in that sublime school, before you entered the seraglio?" "no ill-natured jokes," replied mirzoza. "i do not draw my conclusion from possibility: i ground it on a fact, on an experiment." "yes," continued mangogul, "on a lame fact, on a single experiment; while, to your certain knowledge, i have a multitude of trials for my opinion: but i will not sour your temper by farther contradictions." "it is a favor," said mirzoza, "that after two hours teizing, you cease to persecute me." "if i have committed the fault," answered mangogul, "i will endeavour to make amends for it. madam, i give up all my past advantages; and if, in the trials which i shall hereafter make, i light on a single woman really and constantly virtuous."----"what will you do?" interrupted mirzoza smartly. "i will declare to the world, if you require it, that i am charmed with your reasoning on the possibility of virtuous women; i will support the reputation of your logic with all my might; and will give you my castle of amara, with all the saxon porcelaines which adorn it; even without excepting the little sapajou, or red-faced monkey in enamel, and the other valuable nick-nacks, which i had out of the cabinet of madame de verue." "prince," says mirzoza, "i will be content with the porcelaines of the castle, and the little monkey." "a bargain," replies the sultan, "selim shall be our judge. i only desire a little respite before i examine egle's toy. the court air, and her husband's jealousy, must be allowed time to operate." mirzoza granted a month to mangogul; which was double the time he required: and they parted equally filled with hope. the city of banza also would have been full of wagers on either side, if the sultan's promise had been divulged. but selim kept the secret, and mangogul clandestinely prepared for winning or losing. as he was quitting the favorite's appartment, he heard her call out to him from her closet: "prince, and the little monkey." "and the little monkey," answered mangogul, and went out. he was going directly to the private lodge of a senator, whither we will attend him. chap. xxxii. _the fifteenth trial of the ring._ alphana. the sultan was not ignorant, that the young lords of the court had private lodges; but he was lately informed, that those retreats were likewise used by some senators. he was much surprized at this. "what do they do there?" said he to himself. (for in this volume he will keep up the custom of monology, which he contracted in the first.) "i should think, that a man, whom i have entrusted with the tranquillity, fortune, liberty, and lives of my people, ought not to have a private lodge. but perhaps a senator's private lodge is quite different from that of a _petit-maitre_. can a magistrate, before whom the interests of the greatest of my subjects are discussed, who holds the fatal urn, out of which he is to draw the widow's lot, can he, i say, forget the dignity of his state, and the importance of his duty; and while cochin fatigues his lungs in vain by carrying the cries of the orphan to his ear, can he be studying subjects of gallantry, which are to be ornaments over the door of a place of secret debauchery? that cannot be.----however, let us see." he said, and departed for alcanto, where the senator hippomanes has his private lodge. he enters, walks round the appartments, and examines the furniture. every thing has a gay appearance. the private lodge of agefilas, the nicest and most voluptuous of his courtiers, is not more elegant. he was on the point of resolving to leave it, without knowing what to think; (for besides all the rich beds, the looking-glass alcoves, the soft sofa's; the cabinet of exquisite liquors, and every thing else, were silent witnesses of what he desired to know:) when he espied a corpulent figure stretched on a couch, and sunk in a deep sleep. he turn'd his ring on her, and from her toy he obtained the following anecdotes. "alphana is the daughter of a senator. if her mother's life had been shorter than it was, i should not have been here. the immense wealth of the family was squandered by the old fool: and she left little or nothing to her four children, three boys and a girl, whose toy i am, alas! to my great misfortune, and to be sure for my sins. how many indignities have i suffered! how many more still remain to be borne! the world said, that the cloister agreed very well with the fortune and figure of my mistress; but i found it did not suit with me: i preferred the military art to the monastic state, and i made my first campaigns under the emir azalaph. i perfected myself under the great nangazaki. but the ingratitude of the service disgusted me, and made me quit the sword for the gown. thus i am upon the point of belonging to a little scoundrel of a senator, quite bloated with his talents, his wit, his figure, his equipage, and his birth. i am now two hours in waiting for him. to be sure he will come, because his gentleman has apprized me, that when he comes, it is his madness to let people wait a long time." alphana's toy was thus far advanced, when hippomanes arrived. at the bustle of his train, and the caresses he bestowed on his favorite grey-hound, alphana awoke. "oh! are you there, my queen?" says the little president. "'tis very difficult to come at you. how do you like my little lodge; it is as good as some others, is it not?" alphana putting on a bashful, shy, distressed air, "as if we had never seen a private lodge before," says her toy, "and as if i had no share in her adventures," cried out in a mournful manner. "my lord president, i take an unaccountable step for you. the passion that drags me to you must surely be very violent, since it shuts my eyes to the dangers which i incur. for what would the world say, if there was any suspicion of my being here?" "you are right," answered hippomanes; "your proceeding is liable to misinterpretations. but you may rely on my discretion." "but," replied alphana, "i rely also on your conduct." "oh! as to that," says hippomanes, "i shall be very modest: and how is it possible not to be as devote as an angel in a private lodge? in truth, you have a charming neck----" "ha' done," says alphana, "you break your word already." "not at all," replies the president: "but you have not answered my question. what do you think of this furniture?" and then turning to his grey-hound, "come hither, folly, give me thy paw, my child. folly is a good girl.----will madam be pleased to take a turn in the garden? let us walk on my terrass, it is a charming one. i am overlooked by some of my neighbours, but possibly they will not know you.--" "my lord president, i am not curious," says alphana with an air of dudgeon. "i think we are better here." "just as you please," answers hippomanes. "if you are tired, there is a bed. if you have the least inclination, i advise you to try it. young asteria, and little phenice, who are great judges, assure me that it is a good one." while hippomanes was talking thus impertinently to alphana, he pull'd off her gown by the sleeves, unlaced her stays, untied her petticoats, and disengaged her two clumsy feet from two little slippers. when alphana was almost naked, then did she perceive that hippomanes was undressing her.--"what are you doing?" cryed she quite surprized. "president, you don't consider. i shall be angry in earnest." "ah, my queen," answered hippomanes, "to be angry with a man who loves you as i do, would be such an oddity as you are not capable of. may i presume to entreat you to walk to this bed?" "to this bed," replied alphana. "ah! my lord president, you abuse my tenderness. i to go into a bed! i, into a bed!" "no, no, my queen," answered hippomanes. "that is not the thing, who desires you to go to it. but you must, if you please, suffer yourself to be conducted to it: for you may easily conclude from your size, that i cannot be in the humor of carrying you to it."--nevertheless he grasped her about the waist, and making some efforts, "oh how weighty she is," says he. "but, my child, if you do not lend a helping hand, we shall never reach it." alphana was sensible that he spoke truth, lent her assistance, compassed getting on her legs, advanced towards that bed, at which she had been so scared, partly on her own feet, and partly on the shoulders of hippomanes, to whom she pantingly said: "surely i must have been a great fool to come hither. i confided in your good conduct, and your extravagance is quite unreasonable."--"not at all," answered the president, "not at all. you see that what i do is decent, very decent." 'tis probable that they said many other genteel things of this sort; but as the sultan did not think proper to spend more time in attending their conversation, those things are lost to posterity. what a pity! chap. xxxiii. _sixteenth trial of the ring._ the _petits-maitres._ twice a week the favorite kept a drawing room. the preceding evening she named the women whom she would willingly see, and the sultan gave the list of the men. the company always came richly dress'd. the conversation was either general, or particular. when the amorous history of the court fail'd of furnishing real diverting adventures, stories were invented, and necessity sometimes compelled them to run into bad tales; which were called a continuation of the arabian nights entertainments. the men had the privilege of saying all the extravagant things that came into their heads, and the women that of knotting, while they gave ear to them. at these meetings, the sultan and his favorite put themselves on a level with their subjects: their presence gave no sort of check to whatever could amuse; and people seldom found the time tedious. mangogul had learned early in his life, that pleasures are not to be found above the foot of the throne; and no man descended from it with better grace, or knew how to put off majesty more _à propos_. while he was surveying the private lodge of the senator hippomanes, mirzoza waited for him in the rose-colour'd salon, with the youthful zaide, the chearful leocris, the lively serica, amina and benzaira, the wives of two emirs, orphisa the prude, and vetula the great seneschal's lady, temporal mother of all the bramins. it was not long before he appeared. he enter'd attended by count hannetillon and the chevalier fadaes. alciphenor an old rake, and his disciple young marmolin followed him; and two minutes after, arrived the pacha grifgrif, the aga fortimbek, and the selictar velvet-paw. these were the most absolute _petits-maitres_ of the court. mangogul call'd them together designedly. having heard a thousand stories of their gallant exploits, he resolved to be informed in such a manner as might banish all future doubt. "well, gentlemen," says he to them, "ye whom nothing escapes, that passes in the empire of gallantry, what news from thence? how far are the speaking toys got." "sir," replied alciphenor, "the racket they make encreases daily; and if it continues, we shall soon not be able to hear ourselves. but nothing is so diverting as the indiscretion of zobeida's toy. it has given her husband a catalogue of her adventures." "and a prodigious one," says marmolin: "it mentions five aga's, twenty captains, almost an entire company of janissaries, twelve bramins: and they say that i am named too, but that is a mere joke." "the best past of the affair is," added grifgrif, "that the affrighted husband ran away with his fingers in his ears." "this is quite horrible," said mirzoza. "yes, madam," interrupted fortimbek, "horrible, frightful, execrable." "more than all that, if you please," replied the favorite, "to dishonor a woman upon hearsay." "madam, it is literally true, marmolin has not added one word to the story," says velvet-paw. "it is fact," says grifgrif. "good," says hannetillon, "there is an epigram already handed about concerning it, and an epigram is not made for nothing." "but why should marmolin be safe from the prattle of the toys? cynara's toy has insisted on speaking in its turn, and to blend me with people, who do not stake their all. but how to help that? the right thing is not, to be disturbed at it," says velvet-paw. "you are right," answered hannetillon, and instantly fell to singing: "mon bonheur fut si grand, que j'ai peine à le croire." my fortune was so great, that i can scarce believe it. "count," says mangogul to hannetillon, "then you have been particularly acquainted with cynara?" "sir," answered velvet-paw, "who doubts, it? he has walk'd with her for more moons than one? they have been song'd; and all this would have lasted to this day, if he had not at length discovered that she was not handsome, and that she had a large mouth." "allowed," replied hannetillon; "but that imperfection was ballanced by an uncommon agreeableness." "how long since this adventure?" ask'd the prude orphisa. "madam," replied hannetillon, "its epoch is not present to my memory. i must have recourse to the chronological tables of my good fortune. there may be seen the day and minute: but 'tis a large volume, with which my servants amuse themselves in the antichamber." "hold," says alciphenor; "i recollect that it was precisely a year after grifgrif fell out with madam la seneschale. she has the memory of an angel, and can tell you exactly."--"that nothing is more false than your date," answered the seneschal's lady gravely. "'tis well known that blockheads were never of my taste." "yet, madam," replied alciphenor, "you will never persuade us, that marmolin was excessively wise, when he was conducted into your appartment by the back stairs, whenever his highness summoned the seneschal to council." "there can be no greater extravagance in my opinion," added velvet-paw, "than to enter into a woman's chamber by stealth, for nothing at all; for people thought nothing more of his visits than what was really fact, and madam was already in full enjoyment of that reputation of virtue, which she has so well supported since that time." "but that is an age ago," says fadaes. "it was pretty much about that same time that zulica made a slip from the selictar, who was her humble servant, to take possession of grifgrif, whom she drop'd six months after; she is now got as far as fortimbek. i am not sorry for my friend's little stroke of good luck; i see her, i admire her, but entirely without any pretensions." "yet zulica," says the favorite, "is very amiable. she has wit, taste, and something, i know not how, engaging in her countenance, which i should prefer to charms." "i grant that, madam," answer'd fadaes: "but she is maigre, has no neck, and her thigh is so skinny, that it raises one's pity." "you are well acquainted with it, to be sure," added the sultana. "oh! madam," replied hannetillon, "you may guess that. i have visited zulica but seldom, and yet i know as much of that affair as fadaes." "i can easily believe you," says the favorite. "but _à propos_, might one ask grifgrif," says the selictar, "if he has been long in possession of zirphila. there is what you may call a pretty woman. she has an admirable shape." "and who doubts it!" added marmolin. "how happy is the selictar," continued fadaes. "i give you fadaes," interrupted the selictar, "for the best provided gallant of the court. to my knowledge he has the visir's wife, the two prettiest actresses of the opera, and an adorable _grisette_, whom he keeps in his private lodge." "and i," replied fadaes, "would give up the visir's wife, the two actresses and the _grisette_, for one glance from a certain woman, with whom the selictar is very well, and who has not the least suspicion that the world knows it;" and then stepping up to leocris, says, "your blushes are ravishing.----" "hannetillon was a long time wavering," says marmolin, "between melissa and fatima, two charming women. one day he was for melissa the fair, the next for fatima the nut-brown." "the poor man," continues fadaes, "was strangely embarassed: why did he not take them both?" "so he did," says alciphenor. our _petits-maitres_ were, as you see, in a right cue not to stop here, when zobeida, cynara, zulica, melissa, fatima and zirphila sent in their names. this ill-timed circumstance disconcerted them for a moment; but they soon recover'd from their ruffle, and fell on other women, whom their detraction had hitherto spared, only because they had not time to tear them to pieces. mirzoza, quite out of patience at their discourses, said: "gentlemen, considering the merit and probity in particular, which must needs be allowed ye, it cannot be doubted but that you have enjoyed all the good fortunes of which you boast. i must own nevertheless, that i would be very glad to hear the toys of these ladies on this head; and that i would most heartily thank brama, if he would deign to render justice to truth by their mouths." "that is to say," replies hannetillon, "that madam would desire to hear the same things twice over: well, to oblige her, we'll repeat them." but mangogul set about applying his ring in order of seniority: he began by madame la seneschale, whose toy cough'd three times, and with a trembling and broken voice said: "to the great seneschal i am indebted for the first fruits of my pleasures: but i had not been his property above six months, when a young bramin gave my mistress to understand, that a woman can do no injury to her husband, while she thinks on him. i relished the moral, and thenceforward thought i might with a safe conscience admit a senator, then a privy counsellor, then a pontif, then one or two masters of requests, then a musician"----"and marmolin?" says fadaes.----"marmolin," replies the toy, "i know him not, unless it be that young coxcomb, whom my lady ordered to be kick'd out of her house, for some insolence, the particulars of which i have forgot.----" cynara's toy took up the discourse, and said: "do you interrogate me concerning alciphenor, fadaes, and grifgrif? i have indeed been pretty well served; but this is the first time that i ever heard these folks named. however, i shall get some account of them from amalek the emir, telenor the financier, or the visir abdiram, who know the whole world, and are my good friends." "cynara's toy is discreet," says hannetillon: "it mentions not zarafis, ahiram, the old trebister, and the young mahmoud, who is not made to be forgotten; nor does it accuse the least bramin, tho' it has been running thro' the monasteries these twelve years." "i have received some visits in my life," says melissa's toy, "but not one from grifgrif or fortimbek, and much less still from hannetillon." "my little heart of a toy," replied grifgrif, "you are mistaken. you may disclaim fortimbek and me, but as to hannetillon, he is better with you than you allow. he has told me a word or two on the subject, and he is a spark of the greatest veracity in congo, a better man than any of those whom you have known, and is still capable of establishing the reputation of a toy." "the reputation of an impostor can no more escape him than his friend fadaes," says fatima's toy with a sob. "what have i done to these monsters to dishonour me? the son of the abyssinian emperor came to erguebzed's court: i pleased him; he pursued me; but he would have fail'd of success, and i should have continued faithful to my husband whom i loved; had not the traitor velvet-paw and his base accomplice fadaes corrupted my women, and introduced the young prince into my bath." the toys of zirphila and zulica, who had the same cause to defend, spoke both at the same time, but with such rapidity, that it was extremely difficult to render each of them its due.--"favors!" cried one----"to velvet-paw!" says the other----"something may be said for zinzim"----"cerbelon"----"bemengel"----"agarias"----"the french slave riqueli"----"the young ethiopian thezaca"----"but as for the insipid velvet-paw"----"the insolent fadaes"----"i swear by brama"----"i call the great pagoda and the genius cucufa to witness"----"i know them not"----"i never had the least dealings with them.----" zirphila and zulica would have run on, god knows how far, if mangogul had not turn'd off his ring: but as this magic ring ceased acting on them, their toys closed their lips, and a profound silence succeeded the noise they made. then the sultan rose up, and darting furious looks on our young blockheads, said: "you have taken the liberty to defame women whom you never had the honour of coming near, and who hardly know your names. who has made ye insolent enough to lie in my presence? tremble, wretches." at these words he grasped his cymeter: but the screams of the affrighted ladies stop'd his hand. "i was going," says mangogul, "to give ye the death which you have merited: but the ladies, whom you have injured, have a right to determine your fate: it shall depend on them, either to crush ye, or to let ye live. speak, ladies, what are your commands?" "that they live," says mirzoza, "and hold their tongues, if possible." "live," replies the sultan, "these ladies permit it: but if ever you forget on what condition, i swear by my father's soul----" mangogul did not complete his oath; being interrupted by one of the gentlemen of his bed-chamber, who inform'd him that the comedians were ready. this prince had imposed it on himself as a law never to retard the public diversions. "let them begin," says he, and immediately gave his hand to the favorite, whom he accompanied to her box. chap. xxxiv. _seventeenth trial of the ring._ the comedy. had the taste of good declamation been known in congo, there were some comedians who might well be spared. of thirty persons which composed the band, there was but one great actor, and two tolerable actresses. the genius of authors was obliged to comply with the mediocrity of the greatest number; and there was no room to hope, that a play would be performed with any tolerable success, without taking care to model the characters on the defects of the comedians. this is what was meant in my time by the custom of the stage. formerly the actors were made for the pieces; but now the pieces were made for the actors. if you offer'd a new play, to be sure it underwent an examination, to know whether the subject was engaging, the intrigue well connected, the characters supported, and the diction pure and flowing: but if there were no parts for roscius and amiana, it was refused. the kislar agasi, superintendant of the sultan's pleasures, had packed a company of players together, as he could find them; and this was the first representation of a new tragedy at the seraglio. it was composed by a modern author, who had gain'd such reputation, that tho' his piece had been but a string of impertinences, it would assuredly have met with a favorable reception. but he did not debase his character. his work was well written, his scenes conducted with art, his incidents managed with dexterity, the interest went on increasing, and the passions in being developed. the acts, naturally link'd together, and full, constantly held the audience in suspence with regard to the sequel, and satisfied with what was past: and they were got to the fourth act of this master-piece, to a very moving scene, which was a preparation to another still more interesting; when mangogul, in order to save himself from the ridicule of listening to the tender parts, pull'd out his glass, and acting the inattentive, surveyed the several boxes. in the front box he observed a woman in great emotion, but of an ill-timed sort, as having no relation to the piece. his ring was instantly levelled at her, and in the midst of most pathetic commendations, a toy, panting for breath, was heard addressing the player in these terms: "ah!----ah!----pray stop, orgogli;----you melt me excessively----ah!----ah!----there's no bearing it.----" the audience listened, and look'd towards the place whence the voice proceeded: and the word ran thro' the pit, that it was a toy that made the speech. "which toy," says one, "and what has it said?" and without waiting for an answer, there was a general clap and cry: _encore, encore_. the author, who was behind the scenes, fearing that this unlucky accident might interrupt the representation of his piece, foamed with rage, and gave the whole race of toys to belzebub. the noise was great and lasting; and had it not been for the respect due to the sultan, the play would have stop'd short at this incident: but mangogul made a sign for silence; the actors resumed their parts, and went thro' the play. the sultan, curious to know the consequences of so public a declaration, caused the toy that made it, to be observed. word was soon brought him, that the player was to go from the stage to eriphila's house. he prevented him, thanks to the power of his ring, and was in this lady's appartment when orgogli sent in his name. eriphila was under arms, that is, in an amorous _deshabillé_, and wantonly stretch'd on a couch. the comedian entered with a solemn, haughty, insipid air of a conqueror. with the left hand he waved a plain hat with a white feather in it, and caressed his nostrils and upper lip with the tops of the fingers of his right hand, a very theatrical gesture, which was admired by connoisseurs. his bow was cavalier, and his compliment familiar. "oh! my queen," cried he, in an affected tone, stooping to eriphila, "what a trim you are in! but do you know that in that careless garb you are adorable.----" the tone of this scoundrel shock'd mangogul. the prince was young, and might possibly be ignorant of certain customs----"then you like me, my dear," answered eriphila. "to ravishment, i tell you."--"that gives me great joy. i wish you would repeat that passage which raised such emotions in me a while ago. that passage----there----yes----it is that same----how seducing a rogue he is?----but go on; that moves me strangely." in pronouncing these words, eriphila darted such glances on her hero, as bespoke every thing, and stretch'd out her hand to him, which the impertinent orgogli kissed by way of acquittance. prouder of his talent than of his conquest, he declaimed with emphasis, and the lady was so enraptur'd, that one minute she conjur'd him to continue, and the next to stop. mangogul judging by her looks, that her toy would willingly play its part in this rehearsal, chose rather to guess at the rest of the scene, than to be present at it. he disappear'd, and return'd to the favorite, who expected him. on the recital which the sultan made her of this adventure,----"prince, what do you say?" cried she. "then the women are fallen into the lowest degree of meanness! a comedian, the slave of the public! a buffoon! well, if those folks had nothing against them but their state of life: but most of them have neither morals nor sentiments; and even among them, that orgogli is but a machine. he has never thought, and if he had not learn'd some parts in plays, perhaps he would never have spoken.----" "delight of my heart," replied mangogul, "you run into lamentations without considering the matter sufficiently. then have you forgot haria's pack? by jove, a comedian, i think, is as good as a pug-dog." "you say right, prince," resumed the favorite. "i am a fool for interesting myself for creatures that do not deserve it. let palabria idolize her boobies! let salica have her vapors treated by farfadi in her own way! let haria live and dye among her dogs! let eriphila abandon herself to all the buffoons of congo! what is all this to me? i only risque a castle thereby. nay, i perceive that i must have no thoughts of it, and i have taken my resolution accordingly." "farewell then the little monkey," says mangogul. "farewell the little monkey," replies mirzoza; "and the good opinion which i had conceived of my sex; i believe i shall never resume it. prince, you will allow me not to suffer a women to enter these doors this fortnight at least." "but you must have some company," added the sultan. "i shall enjoy your company, or please myself in expecting it," replied the favourite: "and if any moments remain on my hands, i shall dispose of them in favor of ricaric and selim, who are attached to me, and whose conversation i love. when i happen to be tired of the erudition of my lecturer, your courtier will divert me with the adventures of his youth." chap. xxxv. _conversation on literature._ the favorite loved men of genius, without pretending to be a genius herself. on her toilette, among jewels and other female ornaments, the novels and pamphlets of the time were to be met with, and she talk'd of them wonderfully well. from a cavagnol and biribi she passed with ease and propriety to the course of an academician, or other learned man: and every body confessed, that the natural delicacy of her understanding made her discover beauties or defects in those several works, which had sometimes escaped their lucubrations. mirzoza astonished them by her penetration, embarrassed them by her questions; but never abused the advantages which her wit and beauty gave her: and people were not sorry for being detected in the wrong by her. towards the close of an evening, which she had passed with mangogul, selim came, and she sent for ricaric. the african author has reserved selim's character for another place: but he informs us here, that ricaric was a member of the academy of congo; that his erudition had not hindered him from being a man of wit; that he had acquired a profound knowledge of former ages; that he had a scrupulous attachment to the ancient rules which he cited eternally; that he was a machine by principles; and that it was impossible to be a more zealous partisan of the first writers of congo; but more especially of one miroufla, who, about 3040 years before, had composed a sublime poem in the caffrian language, on the conquest of a great forest, out of which the caffres expelled the monkeys, who were in possession of it from time immemorial. ricaric had translated it into congese, and published a very beautiful edition of it, illustrated with notes, scholia, various readings, and all the embellishments of a benedictine edition. besides, they had of him two bad tragedies writ according to all the rules, a panegyric on crocodiles, and some opera's. "i bring you, madam," says ricaric with a low bow, "a novel, which is ascribed to the marchioness tamazi; but in which we unluckily discover the hand of mulhazen, the answer of our president lambadago to the discourse of the poet tuxigraphus, which we received yesterday; and the tamerlan of this last." "this is admirable!" says mangogul. "the press goes on incessantly; and if the husbands of congo performed their duty as well as the writers, in less than ten years i might be enabled to set sixteen hundred thousand men on foot, and promise myself the conquest of monoémugi. we will read the novel at leisure. now let us see the harangue, especially that part which relates to me." ricaric turn'd it over, and light on this passage. "the ancestors of our august emperor have rendered themselves illustrious without doubt. but mangogul, greater than they, has prepared quite different subjects of admiration for future ages. what do i say of admiration? let us speak more accurately; of incredulity. if our ancestors had cause to assert, that posterity would esteem as fables the wonders of kanaglou's reign; how much more reason have we to think, that our descendants will refuse credit to the prodigies of wisdom and valor, of which we are witnesses?" "my poor mr. lambadago," says the sultan, "you are but retailer of phrases. what i have reason to believe, is that your successors will one day eclipse my glory by that of my son, as you make my father's vanish before mine; and so on, as long as there will be one academician left. what think you, mr. ricaric?" "prince, all that i can say," answered ricaric, "is, that the passage which i have read to your highness, was extremely relished by the public." "so much the worse," replied mangogul. "then the true taste of eloquence is lost in congo? it was not thus that the sublime homilogo praised the great aben." "prince," said ricaric, "true eloquence is nothing but the art of speaking in a noble, and at the same time agreeable and perswasive manner." "add, and sensible," continued the sultan, "and upon this principle judge your friend lambadago. with all the respect that i have for modern eloquence, he is but a false declaimer." "but, prince," answered ricaric, "without passing the bounds of that, which i owe your highness, will you permit me----" "what i give you full permission to do," replied mangogul smartly, "is to respect good sense beyond my highness, and to tell me sincerely, if an eloquent man can ever dispense himself from shewing some signs of it." "no, prince," answered ricaric, and he was going to string up a long bead-roll of authorities, and cite all the rhetoricians of afric, the two arabia's, and china, in order to prove the most incontestable thing in the world, when he was interrupted by selim. "all your authors," said the courtier, "will never prove that lambadago is not a very awkward and indecent haranguer. pray, mr. ricaric, excuse these expressions. i honour you in a singular manner; but indeed, laying aside the prejudice of confraternity, can you avoid allowing with us, that, as the sultan now reigning is just, amiable, beneficent, and a great warrior, he does not stand in need of the embroidery of your rhetoricians, to be as great as his ancestors; and that a son, who is exalted by depressing his father and grandfather, would be very ridiculously vain, if he were not sensible, that in embellishing him with one hand, he is disfigured by the other. in order to prove that mangogul is as well-made a man as any of his predecessors, do you think it necessary to knock off the heads of the statues of erguebzed and kanaglou?" "mr. ricaric," says mirzoza, "selim is in the right. let every one enjoy what belongs to him, and let us not make the public suspect, that our panegyrics are a sort of robberies committed on the memory of our fathers: declare this from me in the next full meeting of the academy." "people are too long in possession of this custom," replied selim, "to expect any benefit from this advice." "i believe, sir, that you are mistaken," said ricaric to selim. "the academy is still the sanctuary of good taste; and its best times do not afford us either philosophers or poets, whom we cannot match at this day. our stage has passed, and may still pass for the first stage of africa. oh! what a work is the tamerlane of tuxigraphus! 'tis the pathetic of eurisope, and the loftiness of azopha. 'tis antiquity quite pure." "i saw," said the favorite, "the first representation of tamerlane; and join with you in thinking the work well conducted, the dialogue elegant, and the propriety of characters well observed." "what difference, madam," interrupted ricaric, "between such an author as tuxigraphus, fatted with the perusal of the ancients, and most part of our moderns." "yet these moderns," said selim, "whom you demolish here at your ease, are not so contemptible as you pretend. what, don't you find genius, invention, fire, details, characters, and fine strokes of wit in them? and of what importance are rules to me, provided a writer pleases me? certainly it is neither the observations of the wise almudir and the learned abaldok, nor the art of poetry of the deep-read facardin, which i have never perused, that makes me admire the pieces of aboulcazem, muhardar, albaboukre, and many other sarracens! is there any other rule but the imitation of nature; and have we not as good eyes as those who studied her?" "nature," answered ricaric, "presents us with different faces every instant. they are all true, but all are not equally beautiful. it is in these works, on which you seem not to set any great value, that we should learn to choose. they are collections of their own experiments, and also of those which had been made before them. whatever strength of understanding a person may have, things must be observed successively; and one man cannot hope to see in the short course of his life, all that had been discovered to his time. otherwise we may assert, that any one science might owe its birth, progress, and utmost perfection to one head: which is contrary to experience." "mr. ricaric," replied selim, "the only consequence that i can draw from your argument is, that as the moderns are in possession of treasures amassed up to their times, they must be richer than the ancients; or, if this comparison displeases you, that as they are raised on the shoulders of those giants, they ought to see farther than them. and in fact, what is their natural philosophy, their astronomy, their navigation, their mechanics, their calculations, in comparison of ours? and why may not our eloquence and poesy have the superiority likewise?" "selim," said the sultana, "ricaric will, at some proper time, give you the reasons of this difference. he will tell you why our tragedy is inferior to that of the ancients: for my part, i willingly undertake to shew you, that it is so. i will not accuse you," continued she, "of not having read the ancients. your mind is too well adorned, to be ignorant of their stage. now, abstracting from certain notions relative to their customs, manners and religion, which shock you purely because circumstances are changed; you will allow that their subjects are noble, well-chosen, and interesting; that the action naturally develops itself; that their dialogue is simple, and very near nature; that the unravelling of their plot is not strained; that the interest is not divided, nor the action overloaded with episodes. transport yourself in idea to the isle of alindala; examine every thing that passes there; attend to all that is said, from the moment that young ibrahim and the crafty forfanti landed thereon: approach the cave of the wretched polipsile; lose not a word of her complaints; and then tell me, if any one circumstance draws you out of the illusion. name me a modern piece that can bear the same examination, and pretend to the same degree of perfection; and i grant you the victory." "by brama," cried the sultan, yawning, "madam has made an academical dissertation." "i do not understand the rules," continued the favorite; "and much less the learned words, in which they are expressed: but i know that nothing but the _true_ can please and touch. i also know that the perfection of a dramatic piece consists in the exact imitation of an action, so that the spectator, continually deceived, imagines he is present at the very action. now, pray, is there any thing like this in the tragedies which you extol to us? "do you admire the manner in which they are conducted? it is generally so complicated, that it must be a miracle, that so many things should happen in so little time. the ruin or preservation of an empire, the marriage of a princess, the loss of a prince; all this is done with the turn of a hand. is the subject a conspiracy? it is sketch'd out in the first act; it is connected and strengthened in the second; all the measures are taken, the obstacles removed, the conspirators are quite ready for action in the third; immediately there shall be a revolt, an engagement, perhaps a pitch'd battle; and you will call this conduct, interest, fire, verisimilitude: i can never excuse it, in you especially, who are not ignorant, what it sometimes costs to put an end to a pitiful intrigue; and how much time the smallest political affair absorbs in taking measures, in previous meetings, and in deliberations." "i grant, madam," answered selim, "that our pieces are a little overcharged; but it is a necessary evil: without the assistance of episodes, the audience would be chill'd." "that is to say, that in order to give spirit to the representation of a fact, it must be made such as it neither is, nor ought to be. this is ridiculous in the highest degree; unless it be still more absurd to make the violins play up rigadoons and country-dances, while the audience are in deep concern for a prince, who is on the point of losing his mistress, his throne and his life." "madam, you are are in the right," said mangogul: "the music should be mournful on those occasions; and i go to order you some of that kind." mangogul rose up, went out, and the conversation was continued between selim, ricaric, and the favorite. "at least, madam," replied selim, "you will not deny, that if the episodes draw us out of the illusion, the dialogue leads us back into it. i see none who understand it like our tragic writers." "then, nobody understands it," resumed mirzoza. "the emphasis, wit and affected decorations, which predominate in it, are a thousand leagues distant from nature. in vain does the author endeavour to conceal himself, my eyes are penetrating and i discover him incessantly behind the persons of the drama. cinna, sertorius, maximus, and æmilius, are corneille's speaking trumpets in almost every page. this is not the way that people converse in our ancient sarracen authors. ricaric will, if you desire it, translate you some scenes out of them; and then you will hear pure nature speaking by their mouths. i could willingly say to the moderns: 'gentlemen, instead of dealing out wit to your personages on every occasion, put them into such circumstances as must inspire them with some.'" "after what madam has declared on the management and the dialogue of our drama's; there is no great probability," says selim; "that she will shew indulgence to the plots." "no certainly," replied the favorite: "there are a hundred bad for one good. this is not brought on properly, that is quite miraculous. is an author encumbered with a personage, which he has drag'd from scene to scene thro' five acts, he dispatches him with a stab of a ponyard: every body falls to crying, and i burst into laughter. besides, did mortals ever speak as we declaim? do kings and princes walk otherwise than a well-bred man? have they ever gesticulated like persons possessed or raging mad? do princesses speak in a shrill squeaking tone? it is generally supposed that we have carried tragedy to a high degree of perfection; and i on the contrary think it is next to demonstration, that of all the kinds of literary works, to which the africans have applied themselves in these latter ages, this is the most imperfect." the favorite was advanced thus far in her sally against our theatrical pieces, when mangogul returned. "madam," said he, "you will oblige me in continuing. you see i have a secret to abridge a poetical subject, when i find it tedious." "i suppose," continued the favorite, "a person just arrived from angola, who had never heard a play mentioned, but otherwise does not want good sense and breeding, has some acquaintance with the courts of princes, the intrigues of courtiers, the jealousies of ministers, and the double dealings of women; to whom i say in confidence 'my friend, there are terrible commotions actually in the seraglio. the prince, dissatisfied with his son, in whom he suspects a passion for the manimonbanda, is a man capable of taking the most cruel vengeance of them both. this adventure will, in all probability, be attended with dismal consequences. if you choose it, i will make you an eye-witness of all that passes.' he accepts my offer, and i carry him into a box screen'd by a blind, from whence he sees the stage, which he takes for the sultan's palace, do you believe, notwithstanding the serious air i put on, that this person's illusion can last a moment? will you not rather agree with me, that the stiff-affected carriage of the actors, the oddity of their dress, the extravagance of their gestures, the emphasis of a singular language in rhyme and cadence, and a thousand other shocking dissonances, must make him laugh in my face before the first scene is over, and tell me either that i make game of him, or that the prince and all his court are mad." "i own," said selim, "that this supposition strikes me: but may i not observe to you, that people go to the play-house, fully perswaded that they are to see the imitation of an event, and not the event itself." "and ought that perswasion," replied mirzoza, "to hinder the players from representing the event in the most natural manner?" "all this means, madam," interrupted mangogul, "that you put yourself at the head of the censors." "and if your opinion be received," continued selim, "the empire is threatened with the decay of good taste; barbarism will revive, and we are in danger of relapsing into the ignorance of the ages of mamurrha and orondado." "my lord, pray have no such apprehensions. i hate peevish humors, and will not add to their number. besides, i have the glory of his highness too much at heart, to think of ever attempting to tarnish the splendor of his reign. but if credit were given to us, is it not true, mr. ricaric, that literature would shine with greater lustre?" "how," said mangogul, "have you not a memorial on this subject to present to my seneschal?" "no, sir," answered ricaric; "but after having thanked your highness in behalf of the literati, for the new inspector, which you have given them; i would most humbly remonstrate to your seneschal, that the choice of learned men appointed to revise manuscripts is an affair of great nicety: that this trust is committed to persons, who seem to me very much inferior to their employ; and from thence results a crowd of evil effects, such as curtailing good works, cramping the best genius's, who not being at liberty to write in their own way, either write not at all, or send their productions with considerable sums to foreigners; giving a bad opinion of those topicks which are prohibited to be discussed, and a thousand other inconveniencies, which it would be too tedious to mention to your highness. i would advise him to retrench the pensions of certain literary leaches, who are always craving unmercifully; i mean glossators, antiquaries, commentators, and others of this stamp, who would be very useful, if they did their business well; but who are got into the wretched custom of passing over obscure places, and of dwelling upon passages that admit of no difficulty. i would have him be very attentive to suppress almost all posthumous works; and not to suffer the memory of a great author to be tarnished by the covetousness of a bookseller, who collects and publishes, a long time after a man's death, such works as he had condemned to oblivion in his lifetime." "and i," continued the favorite, "would point out to him a small number of men of distinguished merit, such as mr. ricaric, on whom he may bestow your benefactions. is it not somewhat surprising, that the poor man has no provision made for him, while the precious chiromancer of the manimonbanda receives a thousand sequins a year from your treasury." "well, madam,", answered mangogul, "i assign mr. ricaric the like sum on my coffers, in consideration of the wonderful things you tell me of him." "mr. ricaric," said the favorite, "i also must do something for you: in your favor i sacrifice the small resentment of my self-love; and in consideration of the recompence which mangogul has granted to your merit, i forget the injury he has done me." "pray, madam, may i ask you what that injury is?" replied mangogul. "you may, sir, and i will tell you. you yourself make us embark in a conversation on the _belles-lettres_: you begin by a piece of modern eloquence, which is not extraordinary; and when, to oblige you, we prepare to pursue the disagreeable argument which you have started, you are seized with uneasiness and yawning, you teize yourself in your seat, you change your posture a hundred times, without finding one easy one: tired in fine of keeping your countenance, tho' a sad one, you come to a sudden resolution, you get up and disappear: and then, whither do you go? perhaps to give ear to a toy!" "i own the fact, madam, but i see nothing in it that should give offence. if a man happens to be disgusted at fine things, and amuse himself with hearing bad, so much the worse for him. this unjust preference takes nothing from the merit of what he has quitted: he only declares himself a bad judge. to this i could add, madam, that while you were labouring hard at selim's conversion, i was working with no better success to procure you a castle. in fine, if i must be culpable, since you have pronounc'd me so, i can assure you that you have had your revenge at the very time." "pray, how that?" said the favorite. "thus it is," answered the sultan. "in order to refresh myself from the fatigue of the academical sitting which i had undergone, i went to examine some toys."----"well, prince"----"well, i never heard such insipid creatures as the two which i light upon."----"this gives me the highest joy," replied the favorite.----they both fell to talking an unintelligible language. i have perfectly well retained every thing they said; but let me die, if i understand a word of it. chap. xxxvi. _eighteenth and nineteenth trials of the ring._ the flatted spheroïd, and girgiro the entangled: catch who can. "that is singular," continued the favorite. "till this moment, i always imagined, that the chief fault found with toys, was their speaking too plainly." "oh! madam," replied mangogul, "these two are not of that tribe; understand them who can. "you know that little crumpling of woman, whose head is sunk into her shoulders, whose arms are hardly to be seen, and whose legs are so short, and her belly so lank, that one might mistake her for a hedge-hog, for a clumsy ill-develop'd embryo, who bears the the nick-name of the _flatted spheroïd_; who has filled her head with a notion that brama called her to the study of geometry, because he has given her the figure of a bowl; and who consequently might have chosen the profession of artillery: for considering her make, she must have issued out of nature's bosom, as a bullet out of the mouth of a cannon. "willing to receive informations from her toy, i examined it. but the vorticose creature spoke in terms of such sublime geometry, that i did not understand one word, nor perhaps did it understand its own language. it was nothing but right lines, concave surfaces, given quantities, longitude, latitude, profundity, solids, living forces, dead forces, cone, cylinder, conic sections, curves, elastic curves, curve re-entring into itself, with its point conjugated----" "i pray your highness to excuse me from the rest," cried the favorite mournfully. "you have a cruel memory, enough to put one to death. it has raised a swimming in my head, which i dare say i shall not get rid of these eight days. but was the other so diverting?" "you shall be the judge," replied mangogul. "by brama's great toe, i have performed a prodigy. i have retain'd its motly gibberish word for word, tho' it be so thoroughly void of sense and perspicuity, that if you give me a subtile and critical explanation of it, madam, you will make me an acceptable present." "how have you said, prince?" cried mirzoza. "let me die, if you have not stolen that phrase from somebody." "i can't tell how it has happened," replied mangogul: "for these two toys are the only persons to whom i have given audience this day. the last, on whom i turned my ring, after a moment's silence, said, as if addressing an audience, "'gentlemen, "'i shall take the liberty to avoid seeking, to the contempt of my own reason, a model of thinking and expressing myself. but yet if i advance any thing new, it shall not be affectation, but the subject shall have furnished me with it: if i repeat what has been already said, it will be my own thought, as well as it has been that of others. let not irony come to turn this preamble into ridicule, and accuse me of either not having read, or of having read to no purpose. a toy like me is not made for reading, or profiting by its reading, or foreseeing an objection, or answering it. "'i shall not debar myself of reflections and ornaments proportioned to my subject; the rather because in this regard it is extremely modest, and will not admit of any great quantity or brilliancy. but i will avoid sinking into those little minute details, which fall to the share of the barren orator. it would be cause of great grief to me to be suspected of this defect. "'after having informed ye, gentlemen, of what you are to expect from my discoveries and elocution, some few strokes of the pencil will be sufficient, to sketch you out my character. "'you know, gentlemen, as well as i, that there are two sorts of toys: proud toys and modest toys. the former are haughty, and always expect the place of honour. the latter affect to be courteous, and present themselves with an air of submission. these two intentions appear manifestly in the execution of their projects, and determine both sorts to act according to the genius that guides them. "'i imagined, thro' attachment to the prejudices of my first education, that i should open to myself a safer, easier, and more agreeable career, if i preferr'd the part of humility to that of pride; and i offered myself with infantile bashfulness and winning supplications to all, whom i had the good fortune to meet. "'but oh! how unhappy are the times. after ten times more _buts_ and _ifs_ and _ands_ than were sufficient to make the most unemployed toy lose all patience, my services were accepted. alas! this job was of short duration. my first possessor giving himself up to the flattering glory of a new conquest, discarded me, and i found myself all at once out of employment. "'my treasure was gone, and i did not flatter myself that fortune would make me amends for it. in effect the vacant place was occupied, but not filled by a sexagenarian, to whom good will was less wanting than the means. "'he laboured with all his might to make me forget my past state. he had for me all that behavior, which is esteemed polite and engaging in the career that i pursued: but his efforts did not conquer my regret. "'if industry, which is said never to fall short, made him find in the treasures of the natural faculty some abatement to my grief; this compensation to me appeared insufficient, in spite of my imagination, which was daily on the rack to find new resemblances, and even to suppose imaginary ones, but to no purpose. "'such is the advantage of primacy, that it seizes the idea, and forms a barrier against every thing that would afterwards present itself under other forms: and such is, shall i say it, to our shame, the ungrateful nature of toys, that they never take the good-will for the deed. "'this remark seems to me so natural, that, without being indebted to any body for it, i cannot think that i am the only one who has made it. but if any person before me has been struck with it; at least, gentlemen i am the first who undertake, by demonstrating it, to set its full value in a proper light. "'i am far from laying the least blame to the charge of those who have raised their voice hitherto, for having let this stroke escape them; my self-love being abundantly satisfied, to be able, after so great a number of orators, to present my observation as something new.--'" "ah! prince," cried mirzoza smartly, "i fancy i hear the chiromancer of the manimonbanda. apply to him, and you will have the subtile and critical explanation, of which you would in vain expect the agreeable present from any other person." the african author says, that mangogul smiled, and continued. "but i do not intend," says he, "to relate the rest of his discourse. if this beginning has not given as much amusement as the first pages of _la fée taupe_, the sequel would be more tiresome than the last pages of the _fée moustache_." chap. xxxvii. _mirzoza's dream._ by the time that mangogul had finished the academical discourse of girgiro the entangled, night came on, and the company went to bed. that night the favorite might well flatter herself with sleeping soundly: but the evening's conversation ran in her head while asleep: and its ideas mixing with others, produced an odd dream, which she did not fail relating to the sultan, in these words. "i was in my first sleep, when i imagined that i was transported into an immense gallery quite full of books. i shall say nothing of their contents: they were to me at that time, what they are to many others, who are not asleep. i did not so much as look at one title-page: a more striking sight attracted my whole attention. "from space to space between the presses, that contain'd the books, there were pedestals, on which were placed most beautiful busto's of marble and bronze. the injury of time had spared them; and some little defects excepted, they were entire and perfect. that nobleness and elegance which characterized the works of the ancients, were stamped on them. most of them had long beards, large foreheads like yours, and engaging countenances. "i was anxious to learn their names, and know their merit, when a woman came thro' the casement of a window, and accosted me. her shape was genteel, her gait majestic, and her carriage noble, sweetness and loftiness were blended in her looks, and her voice had some inexpressible charm that delighted. a helmet, a coat of mail, and a flowing petticoat, made up all her attire. 'i know your anxiety,' said she to me, 'and am going to satisfy your curiosity: the men whose busto's have struck you, were my favorites. they consecrated their studies to the perfection of the elegant arts, whereof the invention is due to me. they lived in the most polite countries of the world, and their writings, which were the delight of their contemporaries, are the admiration of the present age. draw near, and you will see carved on the several pedestals in _basso relievo_, some remarkable subjects, which will at least point out to you the character of their writings.' "the first busto which i examined, was that of a majestic old man, who seem'd to have been blind. in all probability he had sung of battles: for such were the subjects on the sides of his pedestal. the front was all taken up with a single figure, which was that of a young hero. his hand grasped the handle of his cymeter, and a woman's arm appear'd holding him back by the hair of the head, who seem'd to moderate his wrath. "opposite to this bust was placed that of a young man: he was the picture of modesty. his looks were turned on the old man with uncommon attention. he had also sung of wars and combats: but these were not the only subjects that employed him: for of the _basso relievo's_ which surrounded him, the principal one represented on one side husbandmen stooping on their ploughs, and tilling the ground; on the other, shepheards stretched on the grass, and played on their flutes amidst their herds and dogs. "the busto placed below the old man on the same side, had a wild look. his eye seem'd to pursue some object that was flying from him: and under him were represented a lyre carelessly thrown aside, scattered laurels, broken chariots, and fiery horses running away in a vast plain. "fronting this i saw a busto, which made so deep an impression on me, that i fancy i see him still. he had a fine air, an aquiline pointed nose, a steady look, and an arch smile. the _basso relievo's_, which adorned his pedestal, were so full of matter, that it would be an endless task to undertake the description of them. "after examining some others, i began to ask some questions of my guide. "'who is that,' said i, 'who bears truth on his lips, and probity on his countenance.' 'he was,' replied she, 'the friend and victim to both. he spent his life in improving his fellow citizens in knowledge and virtue, and these ingrateful citizens put him to death.' "'and this busto placed below him?' 'which? that which appears supported by the graces carved on the sides of his pedestal?' 'the same.'--'he is the disciple and inheriter of the sense and principles of the unfortunate virtuous man above mentioned.' "'and this lusty jolly fellow, crowned, with vine branches and myrtle, who is he?'--'a lovely philosopher, who made it his sole business to sing and taste pleasure. he died in the arms of voluptuousness.' "'and this other blind man?'--'he is,' said she----but i waited not for her answer. i imagined i was got among my acquaintance, and hurried to a busto placed opposite to him. this was posed on a trophy of different attributes of arts and sciences: cupids sported among them on one of the sides of the pedestal: on another was a group of the genii of politics, history, and philosophy. on the third, on one hand appear'd two armies drawn up in battle-array; astonishment and horror dwelt on every countenance, blended with marks of admiration and pity. these passions were probably excited by an object, which was there express'd. it was a young man expiring, and by his side an aged warrior, who pointed his sword to his own breast. these figures were exquisitely beautiful, and nothing could be more artfully touch'd than the despair of the one, and the mortal languor spread throughout the limbs of the other. i drew nearer, and under it i read this inscription in gold letters: _alas! this was his son._ "on the other hand was carved a furious sultan, plunging a ponyard into the breast of a young person, in sight of a multitude of people. some turn'd their heads aside, others melted in tears: and round this relievo were these words engraved: _is it you, nerestan?_ "as i was passing to other busto's, a sudden noise made me look back. it was made by a band of men cloath'd in long black gowns. some carried censers, which exhaled a gross vapor; others had garlands of flowers in their hands, gather'd without choice, and disposed without taste. they march'd up to the busto's, and offered incense to them, singing hymns in two unknown languages. the smoak of their incense stuck to the busto's, and the crowns of flowers put on them made a most ridiculous sight. but the antiques soon resumed their beauty, and i saw the crowns wither and fall shriveled on the ground. there arose a quarrel amongst this set of barbarians, because some of them had not bent the knee low enough in the opinion of others; and they were on the point of coming to blows, when my guide dispersed them with one look, and re-established tranquillity in her habitation. "scarcely were they eclipsed, when i saw a long train of pigmies entering by an opposite door. these little men were not two cubits high, but in recompense they had very sharp teeth and very long nails. they divided into several bands, and fell on the busto's. some endeavour'd to scratch the _basso relievo's_, and the floor was strewed with the broken pieces of their nails. others, with greater insolence, mounted on one another's shoulders, to the highth of the heads, and gave them raps with their fists. but what diverted me much, was that these raps, instead of reaching the nose of the bust, rebounded on that of the pigmy; in consequence of which, upon a close inspection, i found most of them to be flat-nosed. "'you see,' says my guide, 'the impudence and chastisements of these myrmidons. this war has lasted a long while, and always to their disadvantage. i use them with less severity than the black gowns. the incense of the latter might possibly disfigure the busto's; but the efforts of the former generally end in augmenting their beauty. but as you have not above an hour or two to remain here, i advise you to pass to other objects.' "a great curtain opened that instant, and i saw a work shop occupied by a different sort of pigmies. these had neither teeth nor nails; but in return they were armed with razors and scissers. in their hands they held heads, which seemed animated; and they were very busy with these heads, in cutting off the hair of one, pulling off the nose and ears of another; putting out the right eye of this, the left of that, and in dissecting almost all of them. after this fine operation, they viewed them attentively, and smiled, as if they thought them the prettiest heads in the world. in vain did the heads send forth loud cries, they scarcely deign'd to make them any answer. i heard one begging back its nose, and remonstrating that it could not possibly appear in public without that piece. 'my friend, head,' replied the pigmy, 'you are a fool. that nose, which you regret, disfigured you. it was long, long--you never would have made your fortune with it. but since it has been curtail'd and pared, you are charming, and you will have many a spark after you.' "while the fate of those heads moved my compassion, at a distance i saw other more charitable pigmies, who were crawling on the ground with spectacles on. they were picking up noses and ears, and fitting them to some old heads, from which time had disengaged them. there were some of them, but those were few in number, who succeeded: the rest fixed the nose where the ear should be, and the ear where the nose: and this rendered the heads more disfigured than before. "being very desirous to know what all those things meant, i ask'd my guide: and she had just open'd her lips, in order to give me an answer, when i awoke in a fright." "that was cruel," says mangogul: "this female would have revealed a number of mysteries to you. but in her stead, i am of opinion that we ought to address ourselves to my juggler bloculocus." "who?" replied the favorite. "that silly fellow, to whom you have granted the sole privilege of shewing the magic lanthorn in your court." "the same," answered the sultan. "he will interpret your dream, or no body can. let bloculocus be called," says mangogul. chap. xxxviii. _twenty-first and twenty-second trials of the ring._ fricamona and callipiga. the african author does not inform us what became of mangogul, while he waited for bloculocus. 'tis very probable that he went out, catechized some toys; and that satisfied with the intelligence he received from them, he returned to the favorite, sending forth shouts of joy, which begin this chapter. "victory, victory!" cried he. "you triumph, madam; the castle, the porcelains, and the little sapajou are yours." "'tis egle, without doubt?" replied the favorite. "no, madam, no, 'tis not egle," interrupted the sultan, "but another female." "prince," says the favorite, "envy me no longer the comfort of knowing this phoenix."----"well, 'tis: who would have thought it?" "it is?" says the favorite----"fricamona," replies mangogul.----"fricamona!" says mirzoza: "i see no impossibility in that. this woman has spent the greatest part of her youth in a convent; and since she left it, she has led the most edifying and most retired life imaginable. no man has set his foot within her doors, and she has, in some measure, made herself the abbess of a troop of young devotees, whom she trains up to a state of perfection, and of whom her house does not grow thin. there was nothing there to answer your purpose," added the favorite, smiling and nodding her head. "madam, you are in the right," says mangogul. "i have interrogated her toy, but no answer. i doubled the virtue of my ring, by rubbing it once and again. nothing came of it. 'to be sure,' said i to myself, 'this toy must be deaf:' and i was preparing to leave fricamona on the couch where i found her, when she began to speak, by the mouth i mean. "'dear acaris,' cried she, 'how happy am i in those moments, which i snatch from every thing that employs me, to deliver myself up to thee. after those which i pass in thy arms, these are the sweetest of my life.----nothing disturbs me; around me all is silence: my curtains not quite closed, let in but just as much day as is necessary for moving me to tenderness, and gazing on thee. i command my imagination: it calls thee forth, and immediately i see thee. dear acaris, how beautiful thou appear'st to me!----yes, those are thy eyes, thy smile, thy mouth. hide not that growing bosom from me----let me kiss it----i have not sufficiently gazed on it.--let me kiss it again. ah! let me die on it----what fury seizes me?----acaris, dear acaris, where art thou?----come then, dear acaris. ah! dear and tender friend, i swear to thee, that unknown sentiments have taken possession of my soul. it is filled with them, it is astonished at them, it is not able to contain them.----flow, delightful tears, flow, and ease the ardor which devours me.----no, dear acaris, no; that alizali, whom thou prefer'st to me, will not love thee as i do---but i hear a noise--ah! 'tis acaris without doubt----come, dear female friend, come----' "fricamona was not deceived," continued mangogul; "for it was acaris herself. i left them to entertain each other; and firmly perswaded that fricamona's toy would persevere in its discretion, i hurried to let you know that i have lost my wager." "but," replied the sultana, "i am quite in the dark with regard to this fricamona. either she must be mad, or she is cruelly afflicted with vapors. no, prince, no, i have more conscience than you may imagine. i have nothing to object to this experiment: but yet i perceive somewhat in it, that hinders me from reaping any advantage by it: and i am resolved to reap none. if ever i accept your castle and porcelaines, it must be upon a better title." "madam," answered mangogul, "i do not comprehend you. you are inconceivably difficult. sure you have not well examined the little sapajou." "prince, i have thoroughly viewed it," replied mirzoza. "i know it is a charming thing. but i suspect that this fricamona is not the person i seek. if you desire that i should enjoy it one day or other, apply elsewhere." "faith, madam," says mangogul after mature consideration, "i see none but mirolo's mistress that can make you win the wager." "ah! prince, you dream," answered the favorite. "i am not acquainted with your mirolo; but whosoever he be, since he has a mistress, he does not keep her for nothing." "very true," says mangogul; "and yet i would lay another wager, that callipiga's toy knows nothing at all." "pray be consistent with yourself," continued the favorite. "of two things one must happen, either that callipiga's toy----but i was embarking in a ridiculous argument---prince, do whatever you think proper: consult callipiga's toy; if it keep silence, so much the worse for mirolo, and the better for me." mangogul departed, and found himself in an instant close to the jonquil sopha, embroidered with silver, on which callipiga was reposing. scarcely had he turned his ring on her, but he heard an obscure voice, which mutter'd out the following discourse. "what do you ask me? i do not comprehend your questions. i am not as much as thought of: and yet i fancy i am as good as another. mirolo, it is true, often passes by my door, but----" _there is a considerable deficiency in this place. the republic of letters would certainty have great obligations to the person, who would restore the discourse of callipiga's toy, of which we have only the two last lines remaining. we invite the learned to study them, and consider whether this deficiency be not a voluntary omission of the author, dissatisfied with what he had said, and who yet found nothing better to say._ ----"it is said that my rival has altars beyond the alps. alas! were it not for mirolo, the whole universe would erect some to me." mangogul returned immediately to the seraglio, and repeated to the favorite the complaint of callipiga's toy, word for word: for he had a wonderful memory. "every circumstance of this story, madam," said he, "concurs to make you win: i give up the whole wager; and you will thank callipiga when you shall think proper." "sir," answered mirzoza seriously, "'tis to the most confirmed virtue that i am resolved to be obliged for the wager, and not----" "but, madam," replied the sultan, "i know of none better confirmed than that which has seen the enemy so near." "and for my part, prince," replied the favorite, "i understand my own meaning well: and here come selim and bloculocus, who shall be our judges." selim and bloculocus entered: mangogul stated the case to them, and they both gave judgment in mirzoza's favor. chap. xxxix. _dreams._ "my lord," said the favorite to bloculocus, "you must render me another piece of service. last night a crowd of extravagant fancies disturbed my head. it was a dream of a very odd kind: and i have been assured that you are the most able person of congo in decyphering dreams. then give me quickly the interpretation of this;" and withal she related her own. "madam," answered bloculocus, "i am but a middling oneirocritic"----"pray spare these terms of art," cried the favorite: "drop your learning, and talk reason to me." "madam, you shall be obeyed. i have some singular notions relating to dreams: and to this alone perhaps i am indebted for the honour of conversing with you, and for the epithet of saturnine. i will explain them to you with all the perspicuity i am capable of. "you are not ignorant, madam," continued he, "of what the bulk of philosophers, with the rest of mankind, deliver on that subject. they say, that the objects which most sensibly struck us the preceding day, employ our soul in the night. the traces which they imprinted on the fibres of our brain, subsist. the animal spirits, accustomed to flow to certain places, pursue a course which is become familiar to them: and thence arise these involuntary images which afflict or rejoice us. in this system i should think, that a happy lover ought always to be well served by his dreams. nevertheless it frequently happens that a person who is not cruel to him, while he is awake, in his sleep treats him like a slave; or that instead of enjoying a charming woman, he finds a little deformed monster in his arms." "that is exactly my adventure of last night," interrupted mangogul: "for i seldom pass a night without dreaming. it is a family disease; and we dream from father to son, since the sultan togrul, who dream'd in 743500000002, and began the custom. now, madam, last night you appeared to me," says he to mirzoza. "'twas your skin, your arms, your breast, your neck, your shoulders, this firm flesh, this easy shape, this incomparable _embonpoint_, in a word it was yourself; excepting this circumstance, that instead of that charming face, that adorable head which i expected to find, i found myself nose to nose with the snout of a dutch pug. "i scream'd out dreadfully; my chamberlain kotluk ran to me, and ask'd me what was the matter. 'mirzoza,' answered i, half asleep, 'has just now undergone the most hideous metamorphosis. she is become a dutch dog.' kotluk did not think proper to awake me: he withdrew, and i fell asleep again: but i can assure you that i knew you wonderfully well, your body with a dog's head. will bloculocus give me the explanation of this phænomenon?" "i do not despair of doing it," answered bloculocus, "provided your highness will agree with me in one very plain principle; which is, that all beings have many conformities one with another, by qualities which are common to them: and that it is a certain combination of qualities which characterizes and distinguishes them." "that is evident," replies mirzoza. "ipsiphila has feet, hands, and a mouth, like a woman of sense;" "and pharasmena," adds mangogul, "wears her sword like a man of courage." "if a person is not sufficiently acquainted with the qualities, the combination of which characterizes this or that species; or if he passes a hasty judgment, that this combination does or does not belong to this or that individual; he runs the risque of mistaking copper for gold, a paste for a brillant, a calculator for a geometrician, a retailer of phrases for a wit, crito for an honest man, and phedima for a pretty woman," added the sultana. "well, madam," replies bloculocus, "do you know what might be said of those who pass these judgments?" "that they dream wide awake," says mirzoza. "very well, madam," continued bloculocus; "and nothing is more philosophical or more exact in a thousand circumstances than this familiar expression: _i believe you dream_: for nothing is more common than men who fancy that they reason, and in reality only dream with their eyes open." "'tis of those," interrupted the favorite, "one may literally say, that their whole life is but a dream." "i cannot too much admire, madam," replied bloculocus, "the ease with which you comprehend such abstruse notions. our dreams are but precipitate judgments which succeed each other with incredible rapidity, and by bringing objects together, whose sole connexion is by very distant qualities, compose one whimsical image." "if i understand you right," said mirzoza, "as i think i do, a dream is a piece of patch-work, the patches of which are more in number, more regularly fitted, according as the dreamer has a more lively turn of thought, a more rapid imagination, and a more faithful memory. might not madness also consist in this? and when an inhabitant of the _petites maisons_ cries out that he sees lightning, hears the rattling of thunder, and that gulphs gape under his feet; or when ariadne at her glass smiles at herself, finds her eyes sparkling, her complexion charming, her teeth white, and her mouth little; might not one justly say, that these two disordered brains, deceived by very distant affinities, look on imaginary objects as present and real?" "you have hit it off, madam: yes, a due examination of mad folks will convince any body, that their condition is but a continual dream." "i have," says selim addressing himself to bloculocus, "some facts by me, to which your notions are very applicable; which makes me resolve to adopt them. once i dream'd that i heard some brayings, and that i saw two parallel rows of singular animals coming out of the great mosque; they walk'd gravely on their hinder feet: the hoods in which their snouts were muffled up, had two holes in each, thro' which issued two long moveable hairy ears; and very long sleeves envelopped their fore feet. i rack'd my brain at the time, to find some meaning, in this vision: but i now recollect that i had been at montmartre[1] the preceding evening." [1] a hill near paris famous for asses. "another time, while we were in the field, commanded by the great sultan erguebzed in person, and i, harassed by a forced march, was taking a nap in my tent, i thought i had the conclusion of an important affair to sollicite in the divan: i went to appear before the council of regency: but you may judge how much i had reason to be surprized. i found the hall full of racks, troughs, mangers, and coops for fowls; in the great seneschal's easy chair i saw but an ox chewing the cud; in the seraskier's place, a barbary sheep; on the testesdar's bench, an eagle with a hooked bill and long talons; instead of the kiaja and kadilesker, two large owls cloathed in fur; and for visirs, geese with peacocks tails. i presented my petition, and instantly heard a horrible racket, which awaked me." "is that a dream of very difficult interpretation?" said mangogul, "you had at that time some affair in the divan, and before you went thither, you took a walk to the menagerie: but signor bloculocus, you tell me nothing concerning my dog's head." "prince," answer'd bloculocus, "'tis a hundred to one, that madam wore, or you had observed some other lady wear a sable tippet; and that the first dutch dog, which you saw, struck your imagination. there you have ten times more connections than is requisite to employ your mind during your sleep: the resemblance of colour made you substitute hair for a tippet, and in an instant you planted an ugly dog's head in the place of a very beautiful woman's head." "your notions to me appear just," replied mangogul: "why do you not publish them? they may contribute to the progress of divination by dreams, an important science, which was much cultivated two thousand years ago; and has since been too much neglected. another advantage of your system is, that it would not fail throwing light on several works, both ancient and modern, which are but a string of dreams; such as plato's treatise of idea's, the fragments of hermes trismegistus, the literary paradoxes of father harduin, the newton, the optic of colours, and the universal mathematicks of a certain bramin. for example, would you not inform us, mr. conjurer, what orcotomus had seen in the daytime, when he dream'd his hypothesis; what father c---had dreamt, when he set about constructing his organ of colours; and what was cleobulus's dream, when he composed his tragedy?" "with a little meditation, sir," answered bloculocus, "i might compass all that: but i reserve these nice phænomena for the time, when i shall put out my translation of philoxenus, for which i beseech your highness to grant me the privilege." "with all my heart," says mangogul: "but who is this same philoxenus?"----"prince," replies bloculocus, "he is a greek author, who was very knowing in the subject of dreams."----"then you understand greek?"----"who i, sir, not a syllable."----"have you not told me that you are translating philoxenus, and that he wrote in greek?" "yes, sir; but in order to translate a language, it is not necessary to understand it: because translations are made for those only, who understand it not." "that is wonderful," says the sultan; "signor bloculocus, well then translate greek without understanding it. i give you my word, that i will keep the secret, and it shall not make me honour you one jot the less." chap. xl. _twenty-third trial of the ring._ fannia. there still remain'd a good part of the day, when this conversation was closed: which determined mangogul to make one trial of his ring, before he retired to his appartment; tho' it were purely to fall asleep on more chearful idea's than those which had hitherto employ'd him. he went directly to fannia's house; but found her not. he return'd thither after supper; she was still absent. wherefore he put off his experiment to the next morning. mangogul, says the african author, whose journal we translate, was at fannia's house by half an hour after nine this morning. she was but just put to bed. the sultan drew near her pillow, view'd her for some time, and could not conceive how, with so few charms, she had run through so many adventures. fannia is fair even to insipidity, tall, ungainly, with an indecent gait, no features, few _agrémens_, and an air of intrepidity, intolerable any where but at court. as for wit, she is allowed to have just as much as gallantry can communicate: and a woman must be born very weak, if she has not acquired a stock of jargon after a score of intrigues; for fannia was advanced thus far. at this time she was possessed by a man suited to her character. he gave himself little or no concern about her infidelities; tho' indeed he was not as well informed as the public, how far she carried them. he had taken fannia by caprice, and kept her by habit; like a piece of furniture. they had spent the night at the ball, went to bed at nine, and fell asleep without ceremony. alonzo's indifference would not have suited fannia, were it not for her easy humour. thus our couple were sleeping soundly back to back, when the sultan turn'd his ring on fannia's toy. it instantly began to speak, its mistress to snoar, and alonzo to awake. after yawning several times; "this is not alonzo, what's o'clock, who wants me? your business," said the toy. "i think i have not been long in bed, let me take another nap." the toy was preparing to compose itself to rest accordingly; but that was not the sultan's intention. "what persecution," resumed the toy. "once more who wants me, and for what? 'tis a misfortune to be born of illustrious ancestors: how unhappy is the condition of a titled toy! if any thing could console me for the fatigues of my state, it would be the goodness of the nobleman, whose property i am. oh! he is certainly the best man in the world in that regard. he has never given us the least uneasiness: and in return we have made great use of the liberty he granted us. what would have become of me, great brama, if i had fallen to the share of one of those insipid wretches, who are always upon the watch? what a fine life we should have led!" here the toy added some words, which mangogul understood not, and then with surprising rapidity fell to sketching out a crowd of heroic, comic, burlesque, and tragicomic adventures: and it was almost out of breath, when it continued in these terms. "you see i have some memory. but i am like all others; i have retained but the smallest part of what i have been intrusted with. be satisfied therefore with what i have related to you, i can recollect no more at present." "'tis pretty well," said mangogul within himself; but still he urged afresh. "lud, how teizing you are," resumed the toy: "as if one had nothing better to do than to prate. come then, since it must be so, let us prate on: perhaps when i have told all, i shall be permitted to do something else. "my mistress fannia," continued the toy, "thro' an inconceivable spirit of retirement, quitted the court, to shut her self up in her house at banza. it was then the beginning of autumn, and every body was out of town. and if you ask me what she did there; faith, i can't tell. but fannia never did but one thing; and if she had been employ'd that way, i should have known it. probably she was out of work: true, i now recollect, we spent a day and a half in perfect idleness, which threw us into a cruel fit of the vapors. "i was heart-sick of this sort of life, when amisadar was so good to relieve us from it.---'ah! you are there, my poor amisadar, indeed you give me great pleasure. you come to me very opportunely.'----'and who knew that you were at banza?' replied amisadar.--'no body truly; and neither you nor any one else will ever imagine what brought me hither. don't you guess at the cause?'----'no, really, i cannot comprehend it.'--'not at all?'--'no, not at all.'--'well then know, my dear, that i resolved to be converted'--'you, to be converted?'----'yes, i'----'look on me a little: but you are as charming as ever, and i see nothing in that countenance that bespeaks conversion. this is all pleasantry'----'no, faith, i am serious. i am determined to renounce the world. i am tired of it'----'this is a whim, that will soon fly off. let me die, if ever you run into devotion'----'i will, i tell you: there is no sincerity in man'----'pray has mazul fail'd you?'----'i have not seen him this age.'----'then it must be zumpholo?'----'less still, i have ceased seeing him, i can't tell how, without thinking about it.'----'ah! i have it, 'tis young imola?'--'good, who can fix such fribbles?'--'what is it then?'----'i can't tell, i am angry with the whole earth?'----'ah! madam, you are in the wrong; for this earth, at which you are angry, might furnish you wherewithal to repair your losses.'----'then, amisadar, you sincerely believe that there are still some good souls, who have escaped from the corruption of the age, and are capable of love?'----'how, love! is it possible that you give into those pitiful notions? you expect to be loved, you?'----'and why not?'----'but reflect, madam, that a man who loves, pretends to be loved, and alone too. you have too much good sense, to enslave your self to the jealousies and caprices of a tender and faithful lover. nothing so fatiguing as these folks. to see but them, to love but them, to dream of none but them, to have no wit, humour, or charms but for them; all this most certainly does not suit you. it would be pleasant to see you stive yourself up in, what is called, the noble passion, and give your self all the awkward airs of a little female cit.' 'well, amisadar, you seem to be in the right. i verily think it would ill become us to run into fawning love. let us change then, since it must be so. besides, i do not see, that those loving women, whom they set us as models, are happier than others'----'who told you so, madam?'----'no body, but it is easily foreseen.'----'trust not to such foresight? a loving woman constitutes her own, and her lover's happiness: but this part is not suited to all women.'----'faith, my dear, it is suited to none: for all, who attempt it, are sufferers. what advantage is there in fixing to one?'----'a thousand, a woman, who fixes her affections, will preserve her reputation; will be sovereignly esteemed by the man she loves; and you cannot imagine, how much love owes to esteem.'----'i do not comprehend your meaning, you make a jumble of reputation, love, esteem, and i can't tell what besides. would you be understood, that inconstancy must dishonour a woman? how, i take a man, and find he does not answer my expectations: i take another, and am still disappointed: i change him for a third, who does not turn out a jot better: and because i have had the misfortune to make a score of wrong choices, instead of pitying me, you would'----'i would, madam, advise a woman who has been deceived in her first choice, not to make a second; for fear of being deceived again, and running from one error into another.'----'good god, what strange morality! i fancy, my dear, that you preached me a quite different sort just now. might one be informed what sort of woman would hit your taste?'----'most willingly, madam but 'tis late, and the discourse would run into too great a length.'----'so much the better: i am alone, and you will be company for me. thus the affair is settled, is it not? seat yourself on this couch, and go on: i shall hear you more at ease.' "amisadar obey'd, and sate down by fannia. 'that mantelet of yours, madam,' says he, leaning towards her, and uncovering her bosom, 'wraps you up strangely.'--'you say right.'----'why then do you hide such beautiful things?' added he, kissing them.----'come, ha' done. do you know that you are mad? you are become intolerably impudent. mr. moralist, resume the conversation which you began.' "'well then,' said amisadar, 'i would be glad to find in my mistress a good figure, good sense, good sentiments, and decency above all. i would have her approve my attendance; not deceive me by looks; make me thoroughly sensible, once at least, that i am agreeable to her; and even inform me how i may become still more so; not conceal from me the progress i make in her heart; give ear to none but me, have no eyes but for me; neither think, nor even dream, but of me; love but me; busy herself about nothing but me; do nothing but what may tend to convince me of all this: and at length yielding herself up to my transports, let me plainly perceive that i owe every thing to my love and to hers. oh, what a triumph, madam! and how happy is the man who possesses such a woman!'----'alas, my poor amisadar, you are certainly out of your senses. you have drawn the portrait of woman who does not exist.'----'pardon me, madam, there are some in being. i own that they are rare; but yet i have had the good fortune to light of one. alas! if death had not snatch'd her from me, for 'tis death alone that ever robs one of such women, perhaps i should be in her arms at present'----'but how then did you behave with her?'--'i loved to distraction, and miss'd no opportunity of giving her proofs of my passion. i had the sweet satisfaction of seeing that they were well received. i was scrupulously faithful to her, and she to me. the only disputes between us were, whose love was strongest; and in these little debates it was, that we laid our hearts open. we were never so fond as after this scrutiny of our souls. our caresses always became more tender and vigorous after our explanations. oh! what love and truth were then in our looks! i read in her eyes, and she in mine, that we burned with equal and mutual ardor.'----'and whither did all this lead ye?'----'to pleasures unknown to all mortals less amorous and sincere than us.'----'you enjoyed?'----'yes i enjoyed, but a good on which i set an infinite value. if esteem does not intoxicate, at least it hightens the intoxication considerably. we unbosom'd ourselves without reserve, and you can't imagine how much it strengthened our passion. the more i examined, the more perfections i discovered, and the greater were my transports. i spent half my time at her feet, and i regretted the loss of the rest. i made her happiness, and she filled up the measure of mine. i always saw her with pleasure, and always quitted her with pain. thus we lived together: and now, madam, you may judge if loving women are so much to be pitied'----'no they are not, if what you tell me be true; but i can scarcely believe it. there is no such love as you describe. nay, i imagine, that such a passion as you have felt, must make a man purchase the pleasures it affords at the expence of great uneasinesses.'----'i had some, madam, but i was fond of them. i felt some twitches of jealousy. the least alteration which i remarked in her countenance, spread the alarm all over my soul.'----'what extravagance! upon mature consideration, i conclude that it is better to love in the present fashionable way; to take a lover at one's ease, keep to him while he amuses, quit him when he becomes tiresome, or that our fancy speaks for another. inconstancy affords a variety of pleasures unknown to you languishing folks.'----'i grant that that method may be proper enough for little kept mistresses and common women; but does not suit with a man of tenderness and delicacy. at most it may amuse him, when his heart is disengaged, and he is willing to make comparisons. in a word, a woman of gallantry is by no means of my taste.'----'you are in the right, my dear amisadar, you have a ravishing way of thinking. but do you love any thing at present?'----'nothing, madam, but yourself; and i dare not tell you so neither.'----'ah! my dear, dare on: you may continue,' replied fannia, gazing on him stedfastly. "amisadar understood this reply thoroughly well, moved forward on the couch, fell to playing with a ribbon, which hung down on fannia's breast, and he was not interrupted. his hand, meeting with no obstacle, slipt down lower. she continued to fire him with glances, which he did not misinterpret. for my part," says the toy, "i found, he was a sensible man. he took a kiss on that neck, on which he had bestowed so many encomiums. he was desired to stop, but in such a tone as plainly shewed that she would take it ill, if he obeyed; and accordingly he did not. he kissed her hands, returned to her neck, passed to her mouth: nothing resisted him. insensibly fannia's leg was on amisadar's thighs. he put his hand on it: it was soft, and amisadar did not fail to remark it. his elogy was heard with an air of distraction. by favor of this inattention, amisadar's hand advanced, and with rapidity reached her knees. the absence of mind still continued; and amisadar was preparing for the charge, when fannia came to herself. she accused the little philosopher of want of respect; but he became so absent in his turn, that he did not hear one word, or at least made no other answer to the reproaches she threw on him, but by compleating his happiness. "what a charming man he appear'd to me! of the multitude of those, who preceded and followed him, not one was ever so much to my taste. i cannot mention him without panting. pray suffer me to recover breath! i think i have spoken a pretty sufficient time, considering it is my first speech." alonzo did not lose one single word of fannia's toy; and he was no less impatient than mangogul to hear the remaining part of the adventure: but neither of them had time to be out of patience, when the tale-telling toy resumed in these words. "all that i can comprehend after serious consideration, is, that in some few days amisadar went to the country, that he was asked the reason of his stay in town, and that he related his adventure with my mistress. for somebody of amisadar's and her acquaintance, passing by our door, enquired either by chance or design, if madam was at home, sent in his name, and went up.----'ah! madam, who could imagine you were in banza? and how long are you here?'----'an age, my dear, this fortnight, that i have renounced society.' 'may i presume to ask, madam, upon what account?'----'alas! because i was tired of it. women are become such strange libertines, that there is no bearing them. one must either do as they do, or pass for a silly creature; and sincerely, i think both extremes should be avoided.'----'indeed, madam, you are become quite edifying. pray, is it the conversation of the bramin brelibibi, that has wrought your conversion?'----'no, 'tis a squall of philosophy, 'tis a quint of devotion. it seized me suddenly; and it is not poor amisadar's fault that i am not at present practising the highest austerity.'----'then madam has seen him lately?'----'yes, once or twice.'----'and you have seen no body else.'----'no, truly. he is the only thinking, reasoning, active being, that has entered my doors during the eternity of my retreat.'----'that is singular'----'and what singularity is there in it?'----'nothing but an adventure which he had the other day with a lady of banza, alone like you, devout like you, retired from the world like you. but i must tell you the story: perhaps it will amuse you.'----'without doubt,' replied fannia: and immediately amisadar's friend set about relating his adventure word for word, as i have done," says the toy: "and when he was advanced as far as i am now.----'well, madam,' said he, 'what do you think? is not amisadar a lucky man?'----'but,' answered fannia, 'amisadar is a lier perhaps: do you imagine that there are women so daring as to abandon themselves without shame?'----'but consider, madam,' replied maruspha, 'that amisadar has named no body, and it is very improbable that he has imposed'----'i begin to see thro' the affair,' says fannia: 'amisadar has wit, and is a handsome man, he has, to be sure, infused some notions of sensual pleasure sure into this poor recluse, which have mastered her. yes, this must be it: this sort of folks are dangerous to hear, and amisadar is matchless in that way.'----'how, madam,' interrupted marsupha, 'is amisadar the only man that has the art of perswading, and will you not do justice to others, who deserve, as much as he, a share in your esteem?---'pray, whom do you mean?'----'myself, madam, who think you a charming woman, and'----'i fancy you joke. look at me then, marsupha. i have neither paint nor patches. my night-cap does not become me. i make a frightful figure.'----'you are mistaken, madam: that undress sets you off surprisingly. it gives you so winning and kind an air!'---"to these gallantries marsupha added others. i insensibly joined in the conversation; and when marsupha had finished with me, he resumed with my mistress. 'seriously, amisadar has attempted your conversion; he has an admirable hand at conversions. could you give me a sample of his morals? i would lay a wager they are much the same with mine.'----'we have thoroughly handled some points of gallantry. we have analysed the difference between an affectionate woman and a woman of gallantry. he is for the affectionate women'----'and you too without doubt?'----'not at all, my dear. i took great pains to demonstrate to him, that we were all alike, and that we acted upon the same principles: but he is not of this opinion. he establishes an infinity of distinctions, which, i think, exist nowhere but in his imagination. he has formed to himself, i can't tell what ideal creature, a chimæra of a woman, a non-entity in a coif.'----'madam,' answered marsupha, 'i know amisadar. he is a lad of good sense, and has been very conversant with the sex. if he has told you that there were such'----'oh! whether there are such or not,' interrupted fannia, 'i could never conform to their customs.'----'i believe it,' said marsupha: 'and accordingly you have chosen another sort of conduct more suitable to your birth and merit. those silly creatures are to be abandoned to philosophers: they would never be look'd on at court.----" here fannia's toy stopt short. one of the principal perfections of these orators was to break off their discourse _à propos_. they talk'd as if they had never done any thing else: whence some authors have inferr'd, that they were pure machines. in this place the african author specifies all the metaphysical arguments of the cartesians against the soul of brutes, which he applies with all possible sagacity to the prating of toys. in a word, his opinion is, that toys speak as birds sing; that is to say, so perfectly without having been taught, that, to be sure, they are prompted by some superior intelligence. but you ask me how he disposes of his prince. he sends him to dine with the favorite: at least 'tis there we shall find him in the following chapter. chap. xli. _the history of selim's travels._ mangogul, whose thoughts ran solely on diversifying his pleasures, and multiplying the trials of his ring; after having interrogated the most interesting toys of the court, had the curiosity to hear some of the city toys. but as he had no advantageous opinion of what his should learn from them, he would willingly consult them at his ease, and save himself the trouble of going to find them out. how to bring them to him, was what embarassed him. "you are in great pain for a trifle," says mirzoza. "sir, you have only to give a ball, and i promise you this very night a greater number of those speech-makers than you will covet to hear." "my heart's joy, you say right," replied mangogul; "and your contrivance is the better still, because we shall certainly have none but those whom we have occasion for." in a moment an order was dispatch'd to the kislar-agasi, and the master of the revels, to prepare the ball, and to distribute no more than four thousand tickets. they were probably better judges in that country than elsewhere, of the room that six thousand persons would take up. to amuse themselves till the hour of the ball, selim, mangogul, and the favorite set about telling news. "does madam know," says selim to the favorite, "that poor codindo is dead?" "this is the first word i heard of it, but what did he the of?" says the favorite. "alas, madam," answered selim, "he fell a victim to attraction. he filled his head with this system in his youth, and it turn'd his brain in his old days." "how so?" says the favorite. "he had found," continued selim, "by the methods of halley and circino, two celebrated astronomers of monoémugi, that a certain comet, which made so much noise towards the end of kanaglou's reign, was to return the day before yesterday; and fearing lest it might double its steps, and he should not have the happiness of being the first to see it; he resolved to spend the night in his observatory, and yesterday morning at nine o'clock he had still his eye clung to the telescope. "his son apprehending the consequences of so long a sitting, went to him at eight, pull'd him by the sleeve, and called him several times: _father, father_. not a word of answer. _father, father,_ repeated the young codindo. 'it is just going to appear,' replied codindo: 'it will appear; zounds! i shall see it.' 'but you do not consider, dear father, that there is a dismal fog'----'i must see it, i will see it, i tell thee.' "the young man, convinced by these answers, that the fog had got into his father's head, called out for help. the family ran to him, and sent for farfadi; and i was with him (for he is my physician) when codindo's servant came.----'quick, quick, sir, make haste, old codindo, my master'----'well, what is the matter, champagne? what has befallen your master?'----'sir, he is run mad.'----'thy master is run mad'----'oh! yes, sir. he cries out that he must see beasts, that he will see beasts; that they will come. the apothecary is with him already, and they wait for you. come quickly.'----'_maniacal_,' says farfadi, putting on his gown, and hunting for his square-cap; '_maniacal_, a terrible maniacal fit.' then turning to the servant, he ask'd: 'does not thy master see butterflies? does he not pick the ends of his coverlid?'----'oh! no, sir,' replied champagne. 'the poor man is on the top of his observatory, where his wife, daughters and son have much ado to hold him. come quickly, you will find your square-cap to-morrow.' "codindo's disease seemed to me to be of an odd kind: i took farfadi in my coach, and we drove to the observatory. at the bottom of the stairs we heard codindo crying out in a furious tone: 'i must see the comet, i will see it: withdraw ye rascals and jades.' "in all probability his family, finding that they could not prevail on him to go down to his bed-chamber, had ordered his bed up to him: for we found him lying in bed at the top of his observatory. an apothecary of the neighbourhood, and the bramin of the parish had been called before we arrived. the latter was trumpeting into his ear: 'brother, dear brother, your salvation is at stake: you cannot with a safe conscience expect a comet at this hour of the day: you damn yourself.'----'that is my business,' said codindo. 'what answer will you give to brama, before whom you are going to appear?' replied the bramin.----'mr. rector,' says codindo, without stirring his eye from the telescope, 'my answer shall be, that it is your trade to exhort me for my money, and the apothecary's there, to extol his warm water to me; that the physician does his duty of feeling my pulse, and learning nothing from it; and i my own, of waiting for the comet.'----in vain did they teize him, they drew nothing more from him: he continued to observe with heroic courage; and he died on the leads, his left hand on his eye of that side, his right laid on the tube of the telescope, and his right eye applied close to the eye-glass; between his son, who cried that he made a false calculation; his apothecary, who proposed him a clyster, his physician, who with a toss of his head pronounced, that there was nothing more to be done; and his priest, who said to him: 'brother, make an act of contrition, and recommend yourself to brama.----'" "that is," says mangogul, "what they call dying in the bed of honour." "let us leave poor codindo," added the favorite, "to rest in peace, and pass to some more agreeable subject." then addressing herself to selim, "my lord," says she, "as you are so gallant at this time of life, have so much wit, talents, and so good a mien, and lived in a court devoted to pleasures; it is no wonder if the toys have formerly celebrated your fame. but yet i suspect that they have not told all they knew of you. i do not require this supplement: you may have good reasons for refusing it. but after all the adventures, with which this gentry have honoured you, you ought to know womankind: and this is one of those things of no consequence, which you may safely own." "this compliment, madam," replied selim, "would have flattered my self-love at the age of twenty: but i have gained some experience, and one of my first reflections is, that the more one practises this business, the less knowledge he obtains. i, to know women! that i have studied them much, may be allowed." "well, what do you think of them?" said the favorite. "madam," answered selim, "whatsoever their toys might have published concerning them, i esteem the whole sex as most respectable." "indeed, my friend," says the sultan, "you deserve to be a toy; you would have no occasion for a muzzle." "selim," added the sultana, "abandon the satyrical strain, and speak the truth." "madam," replied the courtier, "i may possibly mix some disagreeable strokes with my narrative: do not impose the task on me of offending a sex, which has always used me well enough, and which i revere by"----"what, always veneration! i know nothing so caustic as those sweet-tongued folks, when they set on," intermitted mirzoza; and imagining that it was through regard for her that selim excused himself, "let not my presence restrain you," added she: "we are contriving to amuse ourselves; and i promise upon my honour to apply to myself all the obliging things you shall say of my sex, and to leave the rest to other women. well, you have studied women much? pray, give us an account of the course of your studies: it must have been very brilliant, if i may judge of it by what is known of the success: and it is reasonable to presume, that this will not be contradicted by what is unknown." the old courtier complied with her desire, and began thus. "the toys, i own, have talked a good deal of me: but they have not told all. those who were capable of completing my history, either are no more, or are not in our climate: and those who have begun it, have but lightly touched the subject. i have hitherto inviolably kept the secret which i had promised them; although i was better made to speak than they: but since they have broke silence, i think they have dispensed me from the obligation of keeping it. "born with a fiery constitution, i loved almost as soon as i knew what a beautiful woman was. i had governants which i detested; but in return i was much pleased with my mother's waiting-women. they were for the most part young and pretty: they conversed, dressed, and undressed before me without ceremony; they have even enticed me to take liberties with them, and my temper naturally inclining to gallantry, turned every thing to advantage. with these elements of instruction, at five or six years of age i was put under the care of men; and god knows how forward i was in improving them, when the ancient authors were put into my hands, and my tutors explained certain passages, of which possibly they themselves did not penetrate into the sense. my father's pages taught me some pretty college tricks: and the perusal of _aloysia_, which they lent me, gave me a vehement desire of becoming perfect. i was then fourteen years of age. "i cast my eyes around, seeking among the women who frequented the house, one to whom i might make my addresses: but they all appeared equally proper to ease me of my irksome load of innocence. a commenced acquaintance, and still more the courage i felt to attack a person of my own age, and which failed me with regard to others, determined my choice in favor of one of my cousins. emilia was young, and so was i: i thought her pretty, and she liked me: she was not difficult, and i was enterprizing: i had a mind to learn, and she was not less curious to know. we frequently asked one another very frank and strong questions: and one day she deceived the vigilance of her governants, and we instructed each other. ah! how great a master is nature! it soon set us in the high road of pleasure, and we abandoned ourselves to its impulse, without the least thought of the consequences: and this was not the way to prevent them. emilia had indispositions, which she took the less pains to hide, as she did not suspect the cause. her mother examined her, extorted a confession of our commerce, and my father was informed of it. he made me some reprimands blended with an air of satisfaction; and it was immediately resolved that i should travel. i set out with a governor, who was charged to watch my conduct attentively, but not to put me under any restraint: and five months after, the gazette informed me, that emilia died of the small pox; and a letter from my father, that her tenderness for me had cost her her life. the first fruit of my love serves with distinction in the sultan's army: i have always supported him by my credit, and to this day he knows me solely as his protector. "we were at tunis, when i received the news of his birth and his mother's death. her fate touched me to the quick, and i believe i should have been inconsolable, had i not embarked in an intrigue with a sea-captain's wife, who did not afford me time to run into despair. the tunetine was intrepid, and i was fool-hardy: for with the assistance of a rope-ladder, which she threw to me, i passed every night from my lodging on her terrass, and thence into a closet, where she put the finishing hand to my instructions; emilia having only made a beginning. her husband return'd from a cruize, just at the time, that my governor, who had received his instructions, urged me to cross over into europe. i embarked on board a vessel bound for lisbon, but not without several times taking leave of elvira, from whom i received this diamond. "the vessel, in which we sailed, was laden with merchandise; but the most valuable commodity on board, to my taste, was the captain's wife. she was not quite twenty: and her husband was as jealous of her as a tyger, and not quite without cause. we all soon understood one another: donna velina perceived that i had a liking for her; i, that i was not indifferent to her; and her husband, that he incommoded us. the sailor resolved not to lose sight of us till we were landed at lisbon. i read in the eyes of his dear wife, how much she fretted at her husband's assiduity: mine testified the same things to her, and the husband understood us wonderfully well. we spent two whole days in an inconceivable thirst of pleasure; which would certainly have kill'd us, had not heaven assisted us: but it always assists souls in pain. just upon our passing the streights of gibraltar, a furious tempest arose. i would not fail, madam, to raise the winds about your ears, and make thunder rattle over your head; to set the heavens on fire with lightning; raise the billows up to the clouds, and describe the most horrid tempest which you have ever met with in any romance; were i not giving you a history. i shall only tell you, that the captain was compelled by the sailors cries to quit his room, and expose himself to one danger for fear of another. he went up on deck together with my governor, and i threw myself without hesitation into the arms of my fair portuguese; quite forgetting that there was any such thing in nature as a sea, storms, or tempests; that we were on board a tottering vessel; and abandoning myself without reserve to the perfidious element. our course was rapid, and you may well judge, madam, by the weather at that time, that i saw a great deal of land in a few hours. we put in at cadiz, where i left a promise with the signora to meet her at lisbon, if my mentor agreed to it, whose design was to go directly to madrid. "the spanish women are more closely confined, and more amorous than ours. love is managed in that country by a sort of ambassadresses, who have orders to catechize strangers, to make proposals to them, to conduct them forward and backward; and the ladies undertake the task of making them happy. i was not obliged to go through this ceremony, thanks to the conjuncture. a great revolution had lately placed a prince of the blood royal of france on the throne of this kingdom: his arrival and coronation occasioned festivals at the court, where i then appeared. i was accosted at a masquerade; and a meeting was proposed me for the next day: i accepted the challenge, and went into a little house, where i found only one man mask'd, his nose wrapp'd in his cloak, who delivered me a letter, in which donna oropeza put off the party to the next day at the same hour. i returned, and was introduced into an appartment sumptuously furnish'd, and well illuminated with wax tapers. my goddess did not make me wait long. she enter'd just at my heels, and rush'd into my arms without speaking a word, or taking off her mask. was she ugly? was she handsome? was what i knew not. i only perceived on the couch, to which she drew me, that she was young, well-made, and loved pleasure. when she found herself satisfied with my panegyricks, she unmask'd, and shewed me the original of this picture, which you see in my snuff-box." selim open'd, and at the same time presented the favorite with a gold box, of exquisite work, and richly adorn'd with jewels. "the present is gallant," says mangogul: "what i esteem most in it," added the favorite, "is the portrait. what eyes! what a mouth! what a neck! but is not all this hightened?" "so little, madam," replied selim, "that oropeza would probably have fixed me at madrid, if her husband, informed of our commerce, had not disturbed it by his threats. i loved oropeza, but i loved life better still. besides, my governor was not of opinion, that i should expose myself to be poniarded by the husband, for the sake of enjoying his wife some few months more. wherefore i wrote to the fair spanish donna a very moving farewel letter, which i stole out of some romance of that country, and set out for france. "the monarch, who then reigned in france, was the king of spain's grandfather, and his court was justly esteemed the most magnificent, most polite, and most gallant in europe. i appeared there as a phænomenon. 'a young lord of congo,' says a beautiful marquise. 'that must be surely very diverting: those men are better then ours. i think congo is not far from morocco.' suppers were given, to which i was invited. let my discourse have ever so little sense in it, it was found fine, admirable: people retracted, who had at first done me the honour to suspect that i had not common sense. 'he is a charming man,' says another court lady briskly: 'it would be murther to suffer so pretty a figure to return into a wretched country, where the women are narrowly watched by men who are no longer so. is it true, sir? 'tis said, that they have nothing. that is very unseemly in a man.'----'but,' adds another, 'we must keep this great boy here, (for he is well born) tho' he were only made a knight of malta. i engage, if you will, to procure him an employment; and the dutchess victoria, my old friend, will speak to the king in his favor, if it be requisite.' "i soon had indubitable proofs of their good-will, and i put the marquise into a condition of pronouncing on the merit of the inhabitants of morocco and congo. i found that the employment, which the dutchess and her friend had promised me, was difficult to execute, and therefore gave it up. it was in this recess that i learned to form those noble passions of twenty-four hours. i circulated during six months in a vortex, where the beginning of an adventure did not wait for the end of another; because enjoyment was the only thing intended. or if that was slow in coming, or as soon as it was obtained, we ran upon the scent of new pleasures." "what do you tell me, selim?" interrupted the favorite. "decency is then unknown in those countries?" "pardon me, madam," replied the old courtier. "they have scarcely any other word in their mouths. but the french women are no more slaves to the thing than their neighbors." "what neighbors?" says mirzoza. "the english women," replied selim, "who are cold and scornful in appearance, but passionate, voluptuous, vindictive; less witty and more rational than the french women. these love the jargon of sentiment, those prefer the expression of pleasure. but at london as at paris, people love, separate, rejoin to separate again. from the daughter of a lord bishop (these are a sort of bramins who do not keep celibacy) i passed to a baronet's wife. while he was warmly supporting the interest of the nation in the house of commons, against the attempts of the court; his wife and i had quite different debates in his house. but the session was closed, and madam was obliged to attend her knight to his manor. i then light upon a colonel's wife, whose regiment was quartered along the sea-coast: i afterwards belong'd to the lady mayoress. ah, what a woman! i should never have seen congo again, if the prudence of my governor, who saw me wasting away, had not redeemed me from this gally. he counterfeited letters from my family, which recalled me with all possible expedition, and we embarked for holland: our design was to travel through germany into italy, where we expected frequent opportunities of vessels to carry us to afric. "we saw holland only in riding post; and did not tarry much longer in germany. all the women of rank there resemble important citadels, which must be besieged in form. they are to be reduced, but the approaches require so many measures, there are so many _ifs_ and _buts_, when the articles of capitulation are to be settled, that those conquests soon tired me. "i shall never forget the expression of a german lady of the first quality, on the subject of granting me what she had not refused to several others. 'alas!' cried she mournfully, 'what would my father the great alkizi say, if he knew that i abandon myself to such a low creature as a congese.' 'he shall say nothing, madam,' replied i: 'so much grandeur affrights me, and i withdraw.' it was wisely done of me; for if my mediocrity had compromised with her highness, i might have repented it. brama, who protects the wholesome climes, which we inhabit, inspired me without doubt in this critical moment. "the italian ladies, whom we frequented afterwards, are not mounted on so high a pin. it was with them that i learned the modes of pleasure. there is indeed much caprice and whim in those refinements; but you will pardon me, ladies, if i say, that sometimes there is no pleasing you without them. from venice and rome i brought some merry receipts before my time unknown in our barbarous country. but i restore all the glory of them to the italian women, who communicated them to me. "i spent about four years in europe, and returned through egypt into this empire, modelled as you see, and stock'd with the rare secrets of italy, which i soon divulged." here, says the african author, selim perceiving that the common place language, which he held to the favorite on his adventures in europe, and on the characters of the women of the countries through which he passed, had plunged mangogul into a deep sleep, was afraid of awaking him; and therefore drew near to the favorite, and continued in a lower voice. "madam," said he, "were i not apprehensive that i have tired you by a narrative, which has perhaps been already too long; i would relate you the adventure, by which i commenced my operations on my arrival at paris: i cannot think how it has escaped me." "tell it, my good friend," answered the favorite; "i will double my attention, and make amends, as much as i am able, for the sultan's inattention, who sleeps." "at madrid," continued selim, "we had taken recommendations for some lords of the court of france, and at our setting foot in paris we found ourselves loaded with protestations of friendship. it was then the pleasant season of the year, and in the evenings my governor and i went to walk in the gardens of the palais royal. one day we were joined there by some _petits-maitres_, who shewed us the most celebrated beauties, and gave us their history, true, or false, not forgetting themselves on every occasion, as you may well imagine. the garden was already stock'd by a great number of women; but there arrived a considerable reinforcement about eight o'clock. by the quantity of their jewels, the magnificence of their dress, and the crowd of their attendants, i took them for dutchesses at least. i spoke my thoughts to one of the young lords of the company, whose answer was, that he found i was a connoisseur; and if i was inclined, i should have the pleasure of supping that very night with some of the most lovely of them. i accepted his offer, and in an instant he slipt a word into the ears of two or three of his friends, who dispersed themselves into different parts of the walks, and in less than a quarter of an hour returned to give us an account of their negotiation. 'gentlemen,' said they to us, 'you are expected this night to supper at the dutchess asteria's.' those who were not of the party, congratulated us on our good fortune: and after some turns in the gardens, they left us, and we went into our coach, in order to reap the benefit of it. "we alight at a little door, at the foot of a very narrow pair of stairs, where we climbed up to a second floor; and i found the appartments more spacious and better furnished than they would appear to me at present. i was presented to the mistress of the house, to whom i made one of the most profound reverences, which i accompanied with so respectuous a compliment, that she was almost unhinged. supper was served up, and i was seated next to a little charming person, who fell to acting the dutchess to admiration. truly i can't tell how i dared to fall in love with her: but so it was." "then you have loved once in your life," interrupted the favorite. "oh! yes, madam," replied selim, "as people love at eighteen years of age, with extreme impatience to conclude an affair just broach'd. i had not a wink of sleep all that night, and at dawn of day i set about composing a most gallant letter to my _belle_. i sent it, received an answer, and obtained a meeting. neither the style of the answer, nor the yielding temper of the lady, did undeceive me; and i flew to the place of assignation, strongly perswaded that i was going to enjoy the wife or daughter of a prime minister. my goddess was waiting for me on a grand couch: i threw myself at her feet, took her hand, kissed it with uncommon eagerness, and felicitated myself on the favor which she condescended to grant me. 'is it true,' said i, 'that you permit selim to love you, and to tell you so; and that he may, without offending you, flatter himself with the sweetest hope?' on ending these words, i snatch'd a kiss from her neck; and as she was recumbent i was preparing to support the attack with vigor, when she stop'd me, and said: 'hold, my friend, you are a pretty lad, you have wit at will, you talk like an angel; but i must have four _louis d'or's_.' 'what do you say,' interrupted i.----'i tell you,' replied she, 'there is nothing to be done, if you have not brought four _louis_'----'how, miss,' said i quite amazed, 'is that your full value? it was well worth my while, to be sure, to come from congo for such a trifle.' and in a moment i put myself in order, hurried down stairs, and left her. "i began, madam, as you see, to mistake actresses for princesses." "i am quite astonished at it," replied mirzoza, "surely the difference is very great." "i doubt not," said selim, "but they were guilty of a hundred impertinences. but what then? a young man, and a stranger too, is not so nice an observer. and i had heard so many bad stories in congo, on the liberties taken by the european women.----" here mangogul awak'd, and yawning and rubbing his eyes, said: "by the l--d, he is still at paris. might one ask you, good mr. story-teller, when you expect to be return'd to banza, and how long i am doomed to sleep: for 'tis proper you should know, my friend, that it is not possible to broach an account of travels without throwing me into yawnings. it is a bad habit, which i contracted in reading tavernier and other travellers." "prince," answered selim, "it is above an hour since i am come back to banza." "i congratulate you thereupon," replied the sultan; and then turning to the sultana, "madam," said he, "the hour appointed for the masquerade is come: we will set out, if the fatigue of the journey permits you." "prince," answered mirzoza, "i am ready." mangogul and selim slipt on their domino's, and the favorite took hers likewise: the sultan handed her to the ball-room where they separated, in order to mix in the crowd. selim followed them, "and so did i," says the african author; "tho' i had a stronger inclination to take a nap than to see the dancing." chap. xlii. _twenty-fourth and twenty-fifth trial of the ring._ masquerade, and sequel of the masquerade. the most extravagant toys of banza did not fail flocking whither pleasure called them. some came in city-coaches, some in public vehicles, and some few on foot. "i should never finish," says the african author, whose trainbearer i have the honour to be, "if i enter'd into a detail of the tricks which mangogul play'd on them." he gave more exercise to his ring that night alone, than it ever had had, since the genius presented him with it. he turn'd it sometimes on one, sometimes on another, and frequently on twenty together; and then it was, that the noise they made was ravishing; one cried out with a squeaking voice, "violins, pray give us _le carillon de dunkerque_;" another in a hoarse voice, "i will have the _sautriots_;" "and i the _tricotets_," said a third: and a multitude at once call'd for old country-dances, such as _la bourée, les quatre faces, la calotine, la chaine, le pistolet, la mariée, le pistolet, le pistolet, le pistolet_. all these cries were interlarded with a million of extravagances. on one side was heard: _plague take the noodle, let him be sent to school._ on another, _must i return then without my earnest?_ here, _who pays my coach?_ there, _he has slipt away from me, but i'll hunt him till i find him._ and again, _till to-morrow; but twenty louis's at least, or there's nothing to be done._ and every where in short, speeches, which expressed desires or exploits. in the crowd, a citizen's daughter, young and pretty, singled out mangogul, pursued him, and provoked him so, that he turned his ring on her. then was her toy heard to cry out: "why do you fly me? stop, charming mask, be not insensible to the ardor of a toy, which burns for you." the sultan shock'd at this rash declaration, was determined to punish the forward creature. he disappear'd, and sought among his guards some one who was pretty much of his make, gave him his mask and domino, and abandoned him to the pursuits of the little female cit; who being still deceived by appearances, continued to say a thousand ridiculous things to him, whom she took for mangogul. the sham sultan was no fool, he was one of those who could talk by signs: he made one, which drew the _belle_ into a lonesome place, where, for above an hour, she imagined herself the favorite sultana, and god knows what mighty projects were working in her brain. but the enchantment lasted not long. after she had surfeited the pretended sultan with caresses, she pray'd him to unmask; which he did, and shewed a physiognomy armed with a large pair of whiskers, which did not belong to mangogul. "oh! fy," cried the little wench, "fie"--"fell mine little shoul," answered the swiss, "fat you ail? me tought mee done you kood services enof, dat you no be angry at nowing mee." but his goddess, without answering him, slipt nimbly thro' his hands, and was lost in the crowd. but even such of the toys as did not aspire to so great honours, did not fail of lighting on pleasure: and they all took the road back to banza, thoroughly satisfied with their journey. as the company was withdrawing, mangogul overheard two of his principal officers at high words. "she is my mistress," says one, "i have kept her these twelve months, and you are the first who has taken it into his head to tread on my heels. why do you make me uneasy? nasses, my friend, apply elsewhere; you will find a hundred lovely women, who will think themselves too happy to possess you." "i love amina," replied nasses. "i see none but her, who takes my fancy. she has given me hopes, and you will give me leave to pursue them." "hopes!" replied alibeg----"yes, hopes"----"zounds, that is not"----"i tell you, sir, that it is, and i expect satisfaction this moment for the lye you give me." down they went immediately into the court yard; their scymeters were already drawn, and they were on the point of ending their dispute in a tragical manner, when the sultan stop'd them, and forbid them to fight, before they had consulted their _helena_. they obeyed, and went to amina's house, and mangogul close after them. "the ball has quite spent me," said she: "my eyes are dropping out of my head. you are very cruel folks, to come the moment i was ready to get into bed: but both of ye look very oddly. may i be informed what brings ye hither?"----"a trifle," replied alibeg. "this gentleman boasts, and even loftily," added he, shewing his friend, "that you give him hopes. madam, how stands this matter?"--amina was opening her mouth, but the sultan turning his ring that very instant, she closed it, and her toy answered for her----"in my opinion nasses is mistaken: no, it is not he that madam chooses. has he not a lusty footman who is a better man? oh! how foolish these men are in imagining that dignities, honours, titles, names, words void of meaning, impose on toys. every one has his own philosophy, and ours consists in distinguishing personal merit, true merit, from that which is but imaginary. with monsieur de claville's leave, he knows less of that subject than we; which i will prove. "you are both acquainted," continued the toy, "with the marchioness bibicosa. you know her amours with cleandor, as also her disgrace, and the high devotion she professes at this day. amina is a good friend; she has constantly kept up her former intimacy with bibicosa, and has not ceased frequenting her house, where all sorts of bramins are met with. on a certain day one of these pressed my mistress to speak to bibicosa in his favor. 'pray, what would you have me ask of her?' replied amina. 'she is a drowned woman, who can do nothing for herself. to be sure, she will be much obliged to you for treating her still as a person of consequence. believe me, my friend, prince cleandor and mangogul will never do any thing for her, and you may freeze in the anti-chambers.'----'but, madam,' replied the bramin, 'the affair is but a trifle, which entirely depends on the marchioness: and this it is. she has built a little chapel in her house, doubtless for the sala, which supposes an iman: and 'tis this place which i ask'----'what say you?' says amina. 'an iman: you don't consider: the marchioness wants only a marabou, whom she will call from time to time, when it rains, or when she chooses to have the sala, before she goes to bed: but an iman lodged, cloathed, dieted in her house, with a salary, does not suit bibicosa. i know her affairs. the poor woman has not six thousand zecchins a year, and you expert her to give two thousand of it to an iman. surely this is a strange fancy.'----'by brama,' replied the holy man, 'i am sorry for it: for if i had once got to be her iman, i should soon become more necessary to her; and when one is got thus far, it rains gold and pensions. howsoever i may appear to you, i am of monomotapa, and do my duty extremely well.'----'upon second thoughts,' answered amina, with panting interruptions, 'your affair is not perhaps impossible. pity it is, that the merit you speak of is not known.'----'one runs no risque in doing good offices to persons of my country,' replied the monomotapan, 'pray behold.'----he forthwith gave amina a complete proof of such surprising merit, that from that moment you lost in her eyes half the value she put on you. well! long live the monomotapans." alibeg and nasses made long faces, and look'd on each other without uttering a word: but when they had recovered from their astonishment, they mutually embraced; and casting disdainful looks on amina, they ran prostrate themselves at the sultan's feet, and thank him for having undeceived them with regard to this woman, and preserved their lives and reciprocal friendship. they arrived just as mangogul, return'd to the favorite, was relating amina's history to her. it made mirzoza laugh, but did not augment her esteem for the court ladies and the bramins. chap. xliii. _selim at banza._ from the masquerade mangogul went immediately to take rest; but the favorite finding that she had no inclination to sleep, sent for selim, and pressed him to continue the history of his amours. selim obeyed, and resumed the discourse in these terms. "madam, galantry did not fill up all my time: i snatched some moments from pleasure, which i bestowed on serious occupations; and the intrigues in which i was embarked, did not prevent my learning fortification, riding, fencing, music and dancing; observing the customs and arts of the europeans, and studying their politicks and military art. on my return to congo, i was presented to the emperor, grandfather to the sultan, who granted me an honourable post in his troops; and i soon was made one of all the parties of the prince erguebzed, and consequently concerned in the adventures of pretty women. i was acquainted with some of all nations, ages, and conditions, and found very few cruel; whether it was that my rank dazzled them, that my prattle pleased them, or my person struck them. at that time i had two qualities, with which a rapid progress is made in love-affairs; assurance and presumption. "at first i dealt among the women of quality. i took them in the evening in the circle, or at play at the manimonbanda's: i passed the night with them, and we hardly knew each other in the morning. one of the occupations of these ladies, is to procure lovers, nay, to decoy them away from their best female friends; and the other, to get rid of them. thro' apprehensions of ever being unprovided, while they are enjoying the sweets of one intrigue, they squint at two or three others. they possess a number of little arts to attract the man they have in view, and a thousand tricks in reserve, to disengage themselves from their present spark. this has always been, and always will be. i shall name no body; but i knew every woman of erguebzed's court, who had any reputation for youth and beauty; and all these engagements were formed, broken off, resumed, forgot, in less than six months. "disgusted with that world, i passed into its antipodes. i visited the citizen's wives, whom i found dissembling, vain of their beauty, perched on the pinacle of honour, and almost constantly beset with savage brutal husbands, or certain splaw-footed cousins, who acted the passionate lovers with their female cousins from morning till night, and were very disagreeable to me. it was impossible to be alone with these women one moment. those animals broke in upon us perpetually, disconcerted a rendezvous; and thrust themselves into all our conversations. these obstacles notwithstanding, i brought five or six of these prattling creatures to my intended point, before i finished with any one of them. what diverted me much in their commerce, was, that they piqued themselves, on delicacy of sentiments, and i must value myself on the same; and they talk'd on that subject eno' to make one die with laughing. besides, they required assiduity of attendance; and in their dialect i was continually deficient in this point. they preached such correct love, that there was a necessity of renouncing it. but the worst of all was, that they had your name eternally in their mouths, and that sometimes one was obliged to appear in public with them, and incur all the ridicule of a city adventure. wherefore on a fine summer's day i bid adieu to their shops and the whole rue st. denis for ever. "people had then the madness of keeping private lodges. i hired one in the eastern suburb, and there successively had some of those girls who are seen and not seen; to whom one speaks, and says not a word; and whom we discard, when tired of them. i frequently mustered a set of friends and opera actresses together, and gave little suppers, which prince erguebzed now and then honoured with his presence. ah! madam, i had delicious wines, exquisite cordials, and the best cook in congo. "but nothing gave me so great amusement as an enterprize which i executed in a province remote from the capital, where my regiment was in quarters. i set out from banza to review it; and as that was my only business, i should have been quickly back, were it not for the extravagant project to which i devoted myself. at baruthi there was a monastery of very beautiful nuns. i was young and beardless; and i contrived how to get admission under the disguise of a widow, who sought an asylum against the dangers of the age. i ordered womens cloaths to be made for me, then dressed myself, and went to offer myself at the grate of those recluses. i met with a very tender reception: they comforted me for the loss of my husband; the price of my board was agreed on, and in i went. "the appartment appointed me had a communication with the dormitory of the novices. they were very numerous, most of them young, and of a surprising bloom. i was extremely polite to them, and soon became their bosom friend. in less than eight days i was let into all the interests of the little republic, informed of the several characters, and instructed in their secret history; i received confidences of all colours, and found that detraction and calumny are not better managed by us profane mortals. i observed their rules with severity, catch'd the wheedling air and smooth canting tone: and they whispered to each other, that the community would be happy, if i took the habit. "no sooner had i thought my reputation established in the house, but i fixed upon a young virgin, who had just taken the first veil. she was an adorable nut-brown girl: she called me her mamma, and i called her my little angel. she gave me innocent kisses, and i returned very tender ones. youth is curious: zirziphila put me daily on the subject of matrimony, and the pleasure of husbands, and desired me to inform her: i artfully whetted her curiosity; and from question to question i led her to the practice of the lessons which i gave her. she was not the only novice that i instructed; and some young nuns came likewise to be edified in my cell. i managed the hours and meetings so dexterously, that no one interfered with another. in fine, madam, what shall i tell you? the pious widow made a numerous progeny. but when the scandal, which caused many a secret sigh, broke out, and a council of discreet matrons met, and sent for the physician of the convent; i meditated my retreat. wherefore in the dead of the night, when the whole house was asleep, i scaled the garden wall, and disappeared. i went to the waters of piombino, whither the physician had sent half the convent; and there, in the habit of a cavalier, i finished the work, which i had begun under that of a widow. this, madam, is a fact which the whole empire remembers, and of which you alone know the author. "the rest of my youth," added selim, "was spent in the like amusements, always women, and of all sorts, seldom any mystery, a number of oaths, and no sincerity." "but at this rate," says the favorite, "you have never been in love?" "psha!" replied selim, "i thought much of love at that time; i aim'd at pleasure only, and at those women who were most likely to afford it me"----"but," interrupted the favorite, "is there any pleasure without loving? what can it be, when the heart says nothing?" "alas! madam," rejoined selim, "is it the heart that speaks at the age of eighteen or twenty?" "but in fine, what is the result of all these experiments? what have you pronounced on women?" "that most women have no character at all," says selim. "that they are most powerfully influenced by three things, interest, pleasure and vanity; that perhaps there is not one of them who is not governed by one of these passions; and that those who join all the three together, are monsters." "as for pleasure, that i can allow them," said mangogul, who had just then joined the company: "though little dependance can be had on this sort of women, yet they are to be excused. when the constitution is wound up to a certain pitch, it is an unruly horse, which carries his rider over hedges and ditches; and most women are mounted astride on that beast." "'tis probably for that reason," says selim, "that the dutchess menega calls the chevalier kaidar her master of the horse." "but is it possible," says the sultana to selim, "that you have not had the least adventure, in which the heart was concerned. will your sincerity tend only to dishonour a sex which constituted your pleasures, if you were their darling. what! in so great a number of women, not one that desired, and even deserved to be beloved; that is not to be conceived." "ah! madam," replied selim, "i feel, by the readiness with which i obey you, that years have not weakened the empire of a lovely woman over my heart. yes, madam, i have loved like other folks. you desire to know all; i am going to tell all, and you will judge if i have performed a lover's part in all the forms." "are there any travels in this part of your history?" says the sultan. "no, prince," replied selim. "so much the better," says mangogul, "for i find no propensity to sleep." "for my part," rejoined the favorite, "selim will allow me to take a little rest." "let him go to bed likewise," says the sultan; "and while ye both are reposing, i will interrogate cypria." "but, prince," answered mirzoza, "your highness does not reflect, that that toy will lead you into a string of voyages without end." the african author informs us in this place, that the sultan, struck with mirzoza's observation, took care to provide a most powerful antihypnotic. he adds, that mangogul's physician, being his intimate friend, had given him the prescription, and that he had put it in to the preface of his book: but of that preface there remains no more than; the three last lines, which are as follow. take of--- of--- of--- of _mariamne, and the paysan par_, four pages. of the _egaremens du coeur_, one sheet. of the _confessions_, twenty five lines and a half. chap. xliv. _twenty-sixth trial of the ring._ the rambling toy. while the favorite and selim were reposing after the fatigues of the preceding day, mangogul was viewing with astonishment the magnificent appartments of cypria. this woman had, by means of her toy, made a fortune equal to that of a general farmer of the revenue. after having been through a long row of chambers, each surpassing the other in richness and elegance of furniture, he came to the great salon; where, in the midst of a numerous circle, he distinguished the mistress of the house by the enormous quantity of jewels, which disfigured her; and her husband, by the good-manship painted on his countenance. two _abbés_, a wit, and three academicians of banza, were posted at the sides of cypria's easy chair; and towards the end of the salon fluttered about two _petits-maitres_, and a young magistrate full of airs, blowing on his ruffles, incessantly adjusting his peruke, visiting his mouth, and complimenting himself in the glass that his paint held on so well. except these three butterflies, all the company was in profound veneration for the honorable mummy, who was seated in an indecent posture, yawned, spoke while she yawned, judged of every thing, judged ill of every thing, and was never contradicted. "how," said mangogul within himself, who had not talked alone of a long time, and was chagrined at it; "how came she to have it in her power to dishonor a man of a good family, with so wrong a turn of mind, and such a figure as she makes?" cypria would fain pass for fair; tho' her skin, tawney striped with red, had a good resemblance with a variegated tulip. with large eyes, she was short-sighted; she was of a squat shape, crowded features, with a long slender nose, a flat mouth, hollow cheeks, and a narrow forehead; no neck, a dry hand, and skinny arm. with those charms it was, that she inchanted her husband. the sultan turn'd his ring on her, and instantly she began to open. the company were deceived, thinking that cypria spoke from her mouth, and that she was going to pass judgment: whereas her toy began in these words. "the history of my travels. i was born in morocco, in the year 17000000012; and i danced on the stage of the opera, when mehemet tripathoud, who kept me, was named ambassador extraordinary from our potent emperor to the monarch france. i followed him in this ambassy. the charms of the french women soon robbed me of my lover; and i speedily made reprisals. the courtiers greedy of novelty, would needs try maroquine: for thus they nick-named my mistress. she treated them with great humanity; and her affability in six months brought her in twenty thousand crowns in jewels, as much more in cash, and a neat well furnished house. but the french are fickle, and i soon ceased to be in fashion. i did not mispend my time in galloping about the provinces: great talents require vast theatres. i suffered tripathoud to return without me; and i devoted myself to the metropolis of another kingdom. "un my lord tres opulent, qui voyageoit en france, m'entraina a londres. oui, c'etoit la vraiment un homme. il m'arrosoit six fois par jour, et six autres fois par nuit. son v--t lancoit des dards de feu, comme la queue d'une comete. jamais n'ai-je ressenti des bottes si vives et si bien appliquées. mais il n'etoit pas possible à la prouesse humaine de continuer ce train long tems: aussi se rallentit-il peu à peu, et je recus son ame distillée par son _penis_. il me fit present de cinquante mil guinées. a ce noble seigneur succederent deux amateurs nouvellement revenus de course. comme ils etoient amis intimes, ils me chevauchoient, comme ils avoient voyagés, en compagnie; chacun faisant tous ses efforts pour surpasser l'autre en vigeur et en feu. pendant que l'un etoit a la rade, je remorqueois l'autre par son v--t, et je le preparois à une nouvelle attaque. par un calcul tres moderé je contai cent quatre-vingt coups de balles, que je recus en huit jours. mais je m'ennuiai bientot de tenir un compte si exacte: car leurs bordées ne finissoient pas. ils me payerent douze mil guinées pour ma part des captures qu'ils avaient faites. dés que l'hiver fut passé, ils furent contraints de mettre à la voile; et ils auroient bien voulu m'engager en qualité d'allege: mais j'avois deja fait contract avec un comte allemand. "duxit me viennam in austria patriam suam, ubi venereâ voluptate, quantâ maximâ poteram, ingurgitatus sum, per menses tres integros ejus splendidè nimis epulatus hospes. illi, rugosi et contracti lotharingo more colei, et eo usque longa crassaque mentula, ut dimidiam nondum acciperem, quamvis iterato coitu fractus rictus mihi miserè pateret. immanem ast usu frequenti vagina tandem admisit laxè gladium; novasque excogitavimus artes, quibus fututionum quotidianaram vinceremus fastidium. modò me resupinum agitabat; modò ipsum, eques adhærescens inguinibus, motu quasi tolutario versabam. sæpe turgentem spumantemque admovit ori priapum, simulque appressis ad labia labiis, fellatrice me linguâ perfricuit. etsi veneri nunquam indulgebat posticæ, à tergo me tamen adorsus, cruribus altera sublato, altera depresso, inter femora subibat, voluptaria quærens per impedimenta transire. amatoria sanchesii præcepta calluit ad unguem, et festivas aretini tabulas sic expressit, ut nemo melius. his a me laudibus acceptis, multis florenorum millibus mea solvit obsequia, et romam secessi. "quella citta è il tempio de venere, ed il soggiorno delle delizie. tuttavia mi dispiaceva, que le natiche leggiadre sossero là encora più festeggiate delle più belle potte; quello che provai il terno giorno del mio arrivo in quel paese. una cortigiana illustre si offerisce a farmi guadagnare mila scudi, s'io voleva passar la sera con esso lei in una vigna. accettai l'invito; salimmo in una carozza, e giungemmo in un luogo da lei ben conosciuto, nel quale due cavaliere colle braghenesse rosse si fecero incontro à noi, e ci condussero in un boschetto spesso e solto, dove cavatosi subito le vesti, vedemmo i più furiosi cazzi che risaltero mai. ogn'uno chiavò la sua. il trastullo poi si prese à quadrille, dopo per farsi guattare in bocca, poscia nelle tette; alla perfine, uno de chiavatori impadronissi del mio rivale, mentro l'altro mi lavorava. l'istesso fu fatto alla conduttrice mia; e ciò tutto dolcemente condito di bacci alla fiorentina. e quando i campioni nostri ebbero posto fine alla battaglia, facemmo la fricardella per risvegliar il gusto a quei benedetti signori, i quali ci pagarono con generosita. in più volte simili guadagnai con loro sessanta mila scudi; e due altre volte tanto, con colloro che mi proccurava la cortigiana. mi ricordo di uno che visitava mi spesso, e che sborrava sempre due volte senza cavarlo; e d'un altro il quale usciva da me pian piano, per entrare sotilmente nel mio vicino; e per questo bastava fare sù e giù le natiche. ecco una uzanza curiosa che si prattica in italia." cypria's toy continued her history; in a strain half congese and half spanish. in all probability it was not a sufficient master of the latter language, to employ it alone. "a language is not learnt," says the african author, who would sooner hang himself, than miss a common observation, "without talking it much:" and cypria's toy had little or no time to talk at madrid. "i fled from italy," said the toy, "notwithstanding some secret desires that called me back, influxo malo del clima! y tuve luego la resolucion de ir me a una tierra donde pudiesse gozar mis fueros, sin partir los con un usurpador. i travelled into old castille, where i was brought back to my simple functions: but this did not gratify my revenge. le impuse la tarea de batter el compas en los bayles che celebrava de dia y de noche; and he performed so well, that we were reconciled. we appear'd at the court of madrid as good friends. al entrar de la ciudad, i link'd con un pape venerable por sus canas: happily for me: for he had compassion for my youth, and gave me a secret, the fruit of sixty years experience, para guardar me del mal de que merecieron los franceses ser padrinos, por haver sido sus primeros pregones. with this receipt, and a relish for cleanliness, which i vainly endeavoured to introduce in spain, i preserved myself from all accidents at madrid, where my vanity alone was mortified. my mistress, you know, has a very little foot. esta prenda es el incentivo mas poderoso de una imaginacion castellana. a little foot, serves for a pasport at madrid to a girl, que tiene la mas dilatada fima entre las piernas. i resolved to quit a country, where i owed the greatest part of my triumphs to a foreign merit; y me arrime a un definidor muy virtuoso que passava a las indias. under the wings of his reverence i saw the land of promise, that country where the happy mortal without scandal carries gold in his purse, a ponyard under his girdle, and his mistress behind him. how delightful a life is spent there! what nights! gods, what nights! hay de mi! al recordarme de tantos gustos me méo----algo mas----ya, ya---pierdo il sentido----me muero---"after spending a year at madrid, and in america, i embarked for constantinople. there i could not relish the customs of a people, by whom toys are lock'd up; and i soon quitted a country, in which my liberty was in danger. however, i practised sufficiently with the mussulmans, to perceive that they are much improved by their commerce with the europeans: and i found in them the levity of the french, the ardor of the english, the strength of the germans, the longanimity of the spaniards, together with strong tinctures of the italian refinements: in a word, a single aga is worth a cardinal, four dukes, a lord, three grandees of spain, and two german princes. "from constantinople i came, as you know, gentlemen, to the court of the great erguebzed, where i formed the most amiable of our nobility: and when at length i became good for nought, i threw myself on that odd figure there," says the toy, singling out cypria's husband by a certain familiar gesture. "gods, what a fall!" the african author closes this chapter with an advertisement to the ladies, who might be tempted to order a translation of those parts of the the narrative, where cypria's toy expressed itself in foreign languages. "i should be wanting," says he, "to the duty of an historian, by suppressing them; and to the respect which i bear the sex, by preserving them in my work; without acquainting virtuous ladies, that cypria's toy had excessively spoil'd its speech in travelling, and that its narratives are infinitely more free than any of the clandestine lectures which it ever made." chap. xlv. _cydalisa._ mangogul returned to the favorite, where selim was come before him. "well, prince," said mirzoza, "has the account of cypria's travels done you any good?" "neither good nor harm," answered the sultan: "i understood it not." "why so?" replied the favorite. "because," says the sultan, "her toy speaks like a polyglot, all languages but mine. it is an impertinent story-teller, but would make a excellent interpreter." "what!" replied mirzoza, "did you gather nothing at all from her narrative?" "but one thing, madam," answered mangogul, "and that is, that travelling is more pernicious, if possible, to the modesty of the women, than to the religion of the men; and that there is very little merit in knowing many languages. for one may be master of greek, latin, italian, french, spanish, and the language of congo, and yet have no more sense than a toy. is this your opinion, madam? and what is selim's? now let him begin his story: but above all, no more travels. they fatigue me to death." selim promised the sultan, that the scene should be confined to one place, and spoke thus. "i was about thirty years of age when i lost my father: i married to keep up my family, and i lived with my wife as becomes a husband; regards, attentions, politeness, decent behavior without much familiarity. the prince erguebzed came to the throne: i had been in his good graces long before his reign: he continued me in them to his death, and i endeavour'd to do justice to this mark of distinction by my zeal and fidelity. the place of inspector general of his armies became vacant: i obtained it, and this post obliged me to take frequent journies to the frontiers." "frequent journies?" cried the sultan. "a single one is sufficient to make me sleep till to morrow. think of that." "prince," continued selim, "it was in one of these tours that i became acquainted with the wife of a colonel of the spahi's, whose name was ostaluk, a man of bravery, and a good officer, but by no means an agreeable husband, jealous as a tyger, and his person was a sufficient warrant to justify that madness: for he was horribly ugly. "he had lately espoused cydalisa, young, lively, handsome; one of those uncommon women, for whom, at the first interview, one feels somewhat more than politeness, from whom one parts with regret, and who return a hundred times to your thoughts, till you see them again. "cydalisa had a just way of thinking, expressed herself with grace: her conversation was engaging, and if a person was never tired of seeing her, he was still less so of hearing her. with these qualities she had a right to make strong impressions on every heart, and i felt their effects. i esteemed her much; from esteem i soon ran into tenderness, and all my proceedings immediately assumed the true colour of a strong passion. the ease with which i obtained my former triumphs, had somewhat spoiled me: when i attacked cydalisa, i imagined she would not hold out long; and that being very much honoured by the pursuit of mr. inspector general, she would only make a decent defence. judge then at the surprise i was thrown into by the answer which she made to my declaration. 'my lord,' said she, 'altho' i had the presumption to believe that you are touched with some charms, which i am thought to have; yet i should be a fool to listen seriously to those same discourses with which you have deceived thousands, before you addressed them to me. without esteem, what is love? a trifle, and you do not know me sufficiently to esteem me. whatever judgment and penetration a person may have, he cannot in two days time enter deep enough into the character of a woman, to say that she deserves to be adored. mr. inspector general seeks an amusement; he is in the right; and so is cydalisa too, in amusing no body.' "in vain did i swear to the sincerity of my passion, that my happiness was in her hands, and that her indifference would poison the rest of my life. 'jargon,' said she, 'pure jargon. either think no more of me, or do not believe me stupid enough to be catch'd by those trite protestations. what you have just said to me, every body says without thinking of it, and every body hears without believing it.' "if i had had but a bare liking to cydalisa, her severity would have mortified me: but as i loved her, it afflicted me. i set out for the court: her image followed me thither; and absence, far from weakening the passion which i had conceived for her, did but augment it. "cydalisa had so far taken possession of me, that i thought a hundred times to make a sacrifice to her of the employments and rank which bound me to the court: but the uncertainty of success always withheld me. "in the impossibility of flying to the place where i left her, i formed a project to bring her where i was. i took advantage of the confidence with which erguebzed honoured me, by extolling the merit and valor of ostaluk. he was named lieutenant of the spahi's of his guard, an office which fixed him near the prince; and ostaluk appeared at court, and with him cydalisa, who instantly became the beauty of the day." "you did well," says the sultan, "to keep your employments, and call your cydalisa to court: for i swear to you by brama, that i should have suffered you to set out alone for the province she was in." "she was ogled, surveyed, beset, but all in vain," continued selim. "i enjoyed the sole privilege of seeing her every day. the more i visited her, the more graces and good qualities i perceived in her, and the more desperately i became enamoured. i fancied that possibly the remembrance of my numerous adventures might injure me in her mind; in order to efface it, and convince her of the sincerity of my love, i banished myself from company, and i saw no women but those which chance threw in my way at her house. it seemed to me as if this conduct had some effect on her, and that she relaxed somewhat of her former severity. i doubled my diligence, i asked for love, and she granted me esteem. cydalisa began to treat me with distinction. i had some share in her confidence: she often consulted me on her family affairs, but was quite silent on those of her heart. if i expressed myself in tender sentiments, she answered me in maxims, which made me mad. this painful state had lasted a long time, when i took up the resolution to get out of it, and to know positively once for all, what i might depend on." "how did you set about it?" said mirzoza. "madam, you will soon be informed," answered mangogul: and selim continued. "i have told you, madam, that i saw cydalisa every day: i began by seeing her less frequently, i went on by slackening my visits more and more, till infine i scarce saw her at all. whenever i happened to converse with her _tête à tête_, i spoke as little of love as if i had never felt the least spark of it. this change astonished her: she suspected me of some secret engagement, and one day, as i was making her a narrative of the galantries of the court, 'selim,' said she to me with an air of confusion, 'you tell me nothing concerning yourself: you relate the good fortune of others charmingly, but you are very discreet with regard to your own.' 'madam,' answered i, ''tis probably because i have none, or that i think it is proper to conceal it.' 'to be true,' interrupted she, ''tis of vast consequence to conceal those things to day, which all the world will know to morrow.' 'be that as it will, madam,' replied i, 'yet at least nobody shall have them from me.' 'indeed,' said she, 'you are quite marvellous with your reserves; but pray who does not know that you have designs upon the fair misis, the little zibelina, and the nut-brown sephera?' 'and on whom you please besides, madam,' added i coldly. 'truly,' replied she, 'i can easily believe that these are not all: these two months past, that the sight of you is a favour, you have not been idle, and business goes on fast with those ladies.' 'i, to remain idle,' answered i; 'i should never forgive myself. my heart is made to love, and somewhat to be beloved too; and i will go so far as to own that it is: but ask me no farther questions on this head, perhaps i have already said too much.' "'selim,' replied she seriously, 'i have no secret for you, and you shall have none for me, if you please. how far are you advanced?'----'almost to the end of the novel'----'and with whom?' said she earnestly----'you know marteza'--'yes, sure; she is a very amiable woman.' 'well then, after having in vain tried all means to please you, i turned to that side. i was wished for above half a year; two interviews levell'd the outworks, a third will compleat my happiness; and this very night marteza expects me to supper. her conversation is amusing, light, and a little caustic; but, that excepted, she is the best creature in the world. a person transacts his little affairs better with those giggling women, than with those lofty dames, who.'----'but, my lord,' interrupted cydalisa with a down-cast look, 'in complimenting you on your choice, may one observe to you, that marteza is not new, and that before you, she has reckoned lovers?'----'what is that to me, madam?' replied i. 'if marteza loves me sincerely, i look on myself as her first. but the hour of my appointment draws near, permit me.'----'one word more, my lord. is it really true that marteza loves you?----'i believe it.'----'and you love her?' added cydalisa.----'madam,' answered i, ''tis you that have thrown me into the arms of marteza: i need say no more to you.'----i was departing, but cydalisa pull'd me by my doliman, and turned back in a hurry.----'does madam want to speak with me? has she any commands for me?'----'no, sir, how, are you there still? i thought you were a good way off by this time.'----'madam, i will double my pace.'----'selim'----'cydalisa.'----'then you are going?'----'yes, madam.'----'ah! selim, to whom do you sacrifice me? was not cydalisa's esteem of greater value than the favors of a marteza?'----'without doubt, madam,' replied i, 'if i had nothing more than esteem for you. but i loved you.'----'it is not so,' cried she with transport: 'if you had loved me, you would have distinguished my real sentiments; you would have been prepossessed with them, you would have flattered yourself, that your perseverance would in time get the better of my pride: but you grew tired, you have abandoned me, and perhaps in the very moment'----at this word cydalisa stopt short, a sigh slipt from her, and her eyes were wet.--'speak, madam,' said i, 'make an end. if my tenderness lasted still, notwithstanding your rigorous treatment, could you.'----'i can do nothing, you do no longer love me, and marteza waits for you.'----'if marteza was indifferent to me; if cydalisa was dearer to me than ever, what would you do?'--'it would be folly to explain myself on suppositions.'----'cydalisa, i beseech you to answer me, as if i had supposed nothing. if cydalisa was constantly the most lovely of her sex in my eyes; and if i never had the least design on marteza; once again what would you do?'----'what i have always done, ingrateful man,' answered at length cydalisa: 'i would love you.'--'and selim adores you,' said i, falling on my knees, and kissing her hands which i water'd with my tears. cydalisa was struck dumb, this unexpected change threw her into the utmost confusion: i took advantage of her disorder, and our reconciliation was sealed by certain marks of tenderness, which she had not power to refuse." "and what did the good natured ostaluk say to this?" interrupted mangogul. "doubtless he allowed his dear half to be generous to a man, to whom he was indebted for his lieutenancy of the spahi's." "prince," replied selim, "ostaluk shewed great gratitude, whilst i was not listened to; but no sooner was i made happy, but he became troublesome, ill-humour'd, insupportable to me, and brutal to his wife. not content with disturbing us in person, he caused us to be watched, we were betrayed, and ostaluk, convinced of his pretended dishonour, had the impudence to challenge me to a duel. we fought in the great park of the seraglio: i gave him two wounds, and obliged him to own himself indebted to me for his life. "while he was under cure of his wounds, i never quitted his wife: but the first use that he made of his recovery, was to part us and ill-use cydalisa. she sent me a pathetic account of her unhappy situation: i proposed carrying her off, to which she consented, and our jealous pate, returning from the chase, wherein he attended the sultan, was vastly surprized to find himself a widower. ostaluk, instead of giving vent to his passion in useless complaints against the author of the rape, instantly meditated revenge. "i had cydalisa in a country house, two leagues from banza; and every other night i stole out of town, and went to cisara. mean while ostaluk set a price on the head of his false one, bribed my servants, and was let into my park. that evening i was enjoying the refreshing breeze there with cydalisa; we were got to the remoter end of a dark walk, and i was on the point of lavishing the most tender caresses on her, when an invisible hand pierced her breast with a ponyard before my eyes. it was the hand of cruel ostaluk. the same fate hung over my head: but i prevented ostaluk, i drew my dagger, and cydalisa was revenged. i ran to the dear woman: her heart still panted: i hastened to carry her to the house, but before i reached it she expired, her mouth closely pressing on mine. "when i perceived cydalisa's limbs to grow stiff in my arms, i cryed out with vehemence: my people ran to me, and forced me away from this place of horror. i returned to banza, and shut myself up in my palace, excessively grieved at cydalisa's death, and loading myself with the most cruel reproaches. i loved cydalisa sincerely, and was passionately beloved by her; and i was at full leisure to consider the greatness of the loss, which i had sustained, and to mourn for her." "but at length," said the favorite, "you comforted your self?" "alas! madam," replied selim, "i thought i never should; but this one thing i have learnt by it, that there is no grief eternal." "well," said mirzoza, "let me hear no more of the men: there they are all. that is to say, signor selim, that this poor cydalisa, whose history has moved us to compassion, and whom you have so much regretted, was a great fool to rely on your oath; and that, while brama perhaps chastises her severely for her credulity, you pass your time pleasantly enough in the arms of another." "pray, madam," replied the sultan, "calm your self: selim loves again, cydalisa will be revenged." "sir," answered selim, "your highness may possibly be misinformed. ought i not to have learnt, once for my whole life, by my adventure with cydalisa, that true love was too prejudicial to happiness?"--"without doubt," interrupted mirzoza, "and yet i would lay a wager, notwithstanding your philosophical reflections, that you actually love another more ardently than--" "more ardently," replied selim, "i dare not assert: these five years past i am attached, but attached from my heart to a charming woman. it was not without difficulty, that i made her listen to me, for she had always been of a virtue!"--"virtue!" cried the sultan; "courage, my friend, i am charmed, when one talks to me of the virtue of a court lady." "selim," said the favorite, "continue your story:" "and always believe, as a good mussulman, in the fidelity of your mistress," added the sultan. "ah! prince," replied selim with vivacity, "fulvia is faithful to me:" "faithful, or not," answered mangogul, "what is that to your happiness? you believe it, and that is sufficient?" "oh then! 'tis fulvia that you are now in love with," said the favorite. "yes, madam," answered selim. "so much the worse, my friend," added mangogul: "i have not a grain of faith in her. she is perpetually beset by bramins, and these bramins are terrible fellows: besides, i find she has little chinese eyes, with a turn'd up nose; and an air thoroughly inclining to the side of pleasure. between us, is this true?" "prince," answered selim, "i believe she has no aversion to it." "well," replied the sultan, "every thing gives way to that charm: which you ought to know better than i, or you are not"--"you are mistaken," replied the favorite, "a man may have all the sense in the world, and not know that. i wager"--"always wagers," interrupted mangogul: "i am out of all patience; those women are incorrigible. pray, madam, win your castle, and lay wagers afterward." "madam," says selim to the favorite, "might not fulvia be of use to you in some station or other?" "as how?" ask'd mirzoza. "i have observed," answered the courtier, "that the toys have seldom or never spoke, but in presence of his highness; and i have fancied, that the genius cucufa, who has done so many surprising things in favour of kanaglou the sultan's grand-father, might have endowed his grand-son with the gift of making them speak. but fulvia's toy has not as yet opened its mouth, as far as i could ever learn: might it not be possible to interrogate it, in order to procure you the castle, and to convince me of the fidelity of my mistress?" "doubtless," replied the sultan; "what is your opinion, madam?" "oh! i shall not meddle in so ticklish an affair. selim is too much my friend, to expose him, for the sake of a castle; to the risque of being made unhappy the rest of his days." "but you do not consider," replied the sultan: "fulvia is virtuous: selim would run his hand into the fire to prove it. he has said it, and he is not a man to flinch from his word." "no, prince," answered selim, "and if your highness will give me a meeting at fulvia's house, i will certainly be there before you." "be cautious of what you propose," replied the favorite. "selim, my poor selim, you go very fast, and how worthy soever you are of being beloved"--"fear not, madam; since the dye is cast, i will hear fulvia: the worst that can befal me, is to lose a faithless woman." "and to die of regret," added the sultana, "for having lost her." "what a romance," says mangogul. "you believe then that selim is become very weak. he has lost the lovely cydalisa, and yet there he is full of life; and you pretend, that if he happened to find fulvia unfaithful to him, it would kill him. i'll insure him to you as immortal, if he is never demolished but by that stroke. selim, to morrow at fulvia's, do you hear? you will have notice of the hour." selim bow'd, mangogul quitted the company: the favorite continued to remonstrate to the old courtier, that he play'd a high game. selim thank'd her for her tokens of good will, and each retired in expectation of the great event. chap. xlvi. _twenty-seventh trial of the ring._ fulvia. the african author, who had promised to bring selim's character into some part of his book, has thought fit to place it here: and i have too much esteem for the works of antiquity, to assert that it would come in better some where else. "there are," says he, "some men, whose merit gives them access every where, who by their graceful person, and free easy wit, are in their youth the darlings of many women; and whose gray hairs are respected, because having known how to reconcile their duties with their pleasures, they have rendered their middle stage of life illustrious, by services done for the state: in a word, men, who at all times are the delight of society. such was selim. though he had reached sixty years, and that he had entered the list of pleasure early; a strong constitution and some management had preserved him from the infirmities of age. a noble air, an easy carriage, insinuating language, a great knowledge of the world, founded on long experience, the habit of dealing with the sex, made him to be regarded at court, as a man whom every body would chuse to resemble, but who would be unsuccessfully copied, for want of being endowed by nature with the talents and genius which had distinguished him. "now i desire to know," continues the african author, "if this man had reason to make himself uneasy on the score of a mistress, and to spend the night like a mad man? for the fact is, that a thousand reflexions rolled in his head; and the more he loved fulvia, the more he feared to find her unfaithful. 'into what labyrinth have i thrust my self?' said he to himself. 'and to what purpose? what advantage will accrue to me, in case the favorite should win a castle; and what will be my fate, if she loses it? but why should she lose it? am i not certain of fulvia's love? ah! i am in the sole and entire possession of her; and if her toy speak, it will be of me alone.--but if the treacherous--no, no, i should have had some previous notion of it; i should have observed some unevenness in her temper. some time or other, these five years past, she would have betrayed herself.--yet the trial is dangerous.----but it is now no longer time to recoil, i have lifted the vessel to my mouth, i must finish, tho' i were to spill the liquor.----perhaps also the oracle will be in my favour.--alas! what can i expect from it? why must others have failed in their attacks on that virtue, over which i have triumphed?----ah! dear fulvia, i wrong thee by my suspicions, and i forget what it cost me to conquer thee. a ray of hope enlightens me, and i flatter myself that thy toy will obstinately keep silence.----'" selim was in this agitation of mind, when he received a card from the sultan, which contained these words: _this night, precisely at half an hour after eleven, you will be where you know._ selim took his pen, and answered with a trembling hand: _prince, i will obey._ selim passed the rest of the day, as he had done the preceding night, fluctuating between hope and fear. nothing is truer, than that lovers have an instinct: if their mistress be unfaithful, they are seized with an horror much like to that, which animals feel at the approach of bad weather. the suspicious lover is a cat, whose ear itches in cloudy weather. animals and lovers have this property also in common, that domestic animals lose this instinct, and that it grows dull in lovers, when they are converted into husbands. the hours seemed very tedious to selim, he look'd a hundred times on his watch: infine the fatal moment came, and the courtier went to visit his mistress. it was late, but as he had admission at all hours, fulvia's appartment was opened for him----"i had given you over," said she, "and i went to bed with a swimming in my head, which i owe to the impatience you have thrown me into"----"madam," answered selim, "business and respect have detained me with the sultan; and since i parted from you, i have not been master of myself one moment." "and for my part," replied fulvia, "i have been in a dreadful humour. how! two whole days without seeing you."--"you know," answered selim, "what my rank obliges me to: and let the favour of the great appear ever so fixed"----"how," interrupted fulvia, "has the sultan shewn you any coldness? has he forgot your services? selim, you are pensive, you do not answer me.----alas! if you love me, of what avail is the prince's good or bad reception to your happiness. it is not in his eyes, it is in mine, 'tis in my arms that you are to seek it." selim listened attentively to this discourse, examined the countenance of his mistress, and in its motions sought that character of truth, in which a person is not deceived, and which is impossible to counterfeit well: when i say impossible, i mean to us men: for fulvia was so perfectly composed, that selim began to blame himself for having suspected her, when mangogul entered the room. fulvia was silent in an instant, selim trembled; and the toy said: "in vain does my lady make pilgrimages to all the pagoda's of congo, she will have no children; for reasons well known to me, who am her toy.----" at this declaration a deadly paleness seized selim: he attempted to rise, but his trembling knees failed him, and he fell back into his seat. the invisible sultan step'd up to him, and whispered in his ear: "have you enough?" "alas! prince," replied the melancholic selim, "why did i not follow the advice of mirzoza; and the misgivings of my own heart? my happiness is eclipsed, i am a lost man: i die, if her toy does not speak; if it does, i am a dead man: let it speak out however. i expect frightful intelligences; but i fear them less than i hate the state of perplexity, in which i am.----" in the mean time fulvia's first motion was to put her hand on her toy, and to shut its mouth: what it had hitherto said, might bear a favorable interpretation: but she dreaded the sequel. as she began to take courage on account of its remaining silent, the sultan, urged by selim, turned his ring: fulvia was obliged to spread her fingers, and the toy went on. "i will never hold, i am too much harassed. the too assiduous visits of so many holy men will always obstruct my intentions, and madam will not have any children. if i had been regaled by none but selim, i might possibly prove fruitful: but i lead the life of a gally-slave. this day fatigued by one, to morrow by another; and always at the oar. the last man which fulvia sees, is always the person, whom she believes destined by heaven to perpetuate her race. none can be safe from this fancy. o how tiresome is the condition of the toy of a titled lady, who has no heirs! these ten years past, i am exposed to people, who were not made even to lift their eyes up to me." here mangogul was of opinion that selim had heard enough, to cure him of his perplexity: wherefore he exempted him from the remaining part, turned off his ring, and went away, abandoning fulvia to the reproaches of her lover. at first the miserable selim was petrified: but his fury giving him strength and speech, he darted a scornful look on his unfaithful mistress, and said: "ingrateful, perfidious woman, if i loved you still, i would take revenge: but as you are unworthy of my affection, so you are likewise of my wrath. a man like me, selim to be mixed with a pack of scoundrels.----" "truly," interrupted fulvia smartly, in the strain of an unmasked courtisan, "it much becomes you to give yourself airs for a trifle: instead of thanking me for concealing matters from you, which would have made you mad at the time of their transacting; you take fire, you fly into a rage, as if you had been injured. and pray, sir, what reason can you have for preferring yourself to rickel, to seton, to mollio, to tachmas, to the most amiable cavaliers of the court, from whom their mistresses won't be at the pains even of cloaking the slips they make. consider, selim, that you are exhausted, infirm, and long incapable of engrossing a pretty woman, who is not a fool. acknowledge then, that your presumption is ill-timed, and your rage impertinent. infine you may, if you are dissatisfied, leave the field open to others, who will make better use of it." "so i do, and most heartily," replied selim with excessive indignation: and went away, fully resolved never more to see that woman. he went home, and shut himself up for some days, less grieved for his loss, than for his long error. not his heart, but his vanity suffered. he dreaded the reproches of the favorite, and the jokes of the sultan; and he shun'd the one and the other. he was upon the point of resolving to renounce the court, to go into retirement, and turn philosopher for the remaining part of a life, of which he had thrown away a great part in quality of a courtier; when mirzoza, who guess'd his thoughts, undertook to comfort him, sent for him to the seraglio, and made him this speech. "well, my poor selim, then you abandon me? 'tis not fulvia, it is me that you punish for her infidelity. we are all concerned for your adventure, we agree that it is vexatious: but if you set any value on the sultan's protection and my esteem, you will continue to enliven our company, and you will forget that fulvia, who never was worthy of a man like you." "madam," answered selim, "age admonishes me that it is high time for me to retire. i have sufficiently seen the world; and four days ago i would have boasted that i knew it. but fulvia's stroak confounds me. women are indefinable, and i should hate them all, if you had not been included in the sex, of which you have all the charms. may brama grant, that you never imbibe their perverseness. farewell, madam, i am going to give myself up to useful reflections in solitude. the remembrance of the favours, with which you and the sultan have honoured me, will follow me thither; and if my heart forms any vows henceforth, they will be for your happiness and his glory." "selim," replied the favorite, "your chagrine is your adviser. you are afraid of mockery, which you will less avoid by withdrawing from court, than by remaining at it. have as much philosophy as you will, this is not the time to put it in practice; your retreat will be attributed to peevishness and melancholy. you are not framed to confine yourself in a desert; and the sultan----" mangogul's arrival interrupted the favorite: she informed him of selim's design. "then he is turn'd fool," says the prince; "is it possible that the base usage of that little fulvia has turn'd his head." and then addressing himself to selim----"that shall not be, my friend, you shall stay," continues he: "i want your counsel, and madam your company. the welfare of my empire, and mirzoza's satisfaction require it, and it shall be." selim, moved with the sentiments of mangogul and the favorite, bowed respectuously, staid at court, was loved, cherished, sought for, and distinguished by his favour with the sultan and mirzoza. chap. xlvii. _prodigious events of the reign of kanaglou, mangogul's grand-father._ the favorite was very young. born towards the end of erguebzed's reign, she had scarce any idea at all of the court of kanaglou. a word accidentally dropt had given her a curiosity to know the prodigies, which the genius cucufa had wrought in favour of that good prince; and none could more faithfully inform her than selim. he had been an eye-witness and even a sharer in them, and was throughly versed in the history of his time. one day that he was alone with her, mirzoza put him on that topic, and asked him if the reign of kanaglou, which made so great noise, had seen greater wonders, than those, which then engrossed the attention of congo? "i have no interest, madam," answered selim, "in preferring times past to those of the reigning prince. great things are come to pass under him, but they are perhaps no more than specimens of those which will continue to render mangogul illustrious; and my time is too far advanced, to flatter my self with seeing them." "you are mistaken," replied mirzoza; "you have acquired, and will keep the epithet of eternal. but tell me what you have seen." "madam," continued selim, "kanaglou's reign was long, and our poets have named it the golden age. this title suits it upon several accounts. it has been signalized by successes and victories: but the advantages were blended with crosses, which prove that this gold was sometimes mixed with bad alloy. the court, which sets the example to the rest of the empire, was very gallant. the sultan had mistresses, the nobility piqued themselves on imitating him, and the lower people insensibly assumed the same air. the magnificence in dress, furniture, and equipages, was excessive. delicacy in feasting was reduced to an art. people gam'd high, ran in debt, paid no body, and spent while they had either money or credit. there were very good laws enacted against luxury, but not put in execution. towns were taken, provinces conquered, palaces begun, and the empire drained of men and money. the people sung victory, and were starving at the same time. the great had stately castles and delightful gardens, and their lands lay uncultivated. a hundred ships of war had rendered us masters of the sea, and the terror of our neighbours: but a good calculator made an exact estimate what it cost the government to keep these hulks in good order; and notwithstanding the remonstrances of the rest of the ministry, they were ordered to be turned into a bon-fire. the royal treasury was a great empty coffer, which this wretched oeconomy did not fill; gold and silver became so scarce, that the mints were, on a summer's morning, converted into paper-mills. to compleat our happiness, kanaglou suffered himself to be persuaded by a set of fanatics, that it was of the utmost importance, that all his subjects should resemble him, and that they should have blue eyes, snub noses, and red whiskers, as well as he: and he expelled from congo above two millions of people, who were not blessed with these regimentals, or who refused to counterfeit them. such, madam, was this golden age; such those good old times, which you daily hear regretted: but let those dotards prate on, and do you believe that we have our turennes and our colberts, that, all things considered, the present is better than the time past; and that if the people are happier under mangogul than they were under kanaglou, his highness's reign is more illustrious than that of his grandfather, because the happiness of the subject is the exact measure of the greatness of the prince. but let us return to the particulars of kanaglou's reign. "i will begin by the origin of the pantins." "selim, i will excuse you, i know that story by heart," says the favorite, "proceed to other matters." "madam," answered selim, "might one ask from whom you have it?" "why," says mirzoza, "it is published." "true madam," replied selim, "and by people, who knew nothing of the matter. i am out of humour, when i see little obscure private persons, who have never been near princes, but at a public entry into the metropolis, or some such other ceremony, pretend to write their history. "madam," continued selim, "we had spent the night at a masquerade in the great salons in the seraglio, when the genius cucufa, a vowed protector of the reigning family, appeared to us, and commanded us to go to bed, and sleep twenty four hours on a stretch. he was obeyed, and at the expiration of this term, the seraglio was found to be transformed into a vast and magnificent galery of pantins. at one end appeared kanaglou seated on his throne: a long pack-thread, almost worn out, hung down between his legs: an old decrepit fairy was incessantly pulling it, and with a turn of her wrist, moved an innumerable multitude of subaltern pantins, to whom fine imperceptible threads answered, which issued from kanaglou's fingers and toes. she pulled, and in an instant the seneschal drew up, and sealed ruinous edicts; or pronounced a panegyric on the fairy, which was prompted by his secretary: the minister of war sent card matches to the army; the superintendant of the finances built houses, and suffered the soldiery to starve; and so of the other pantins. "when any of the pantins happened to execute their movements aukwardly, by not lifting up their arms sufficiently, or not bowing their knee in a proper manner, the fairy cut their threads with a jerk of her left hand, and they became paralytic. i shall never forget two most valiant emirs, whom she found deficient in their duty, and who were ever after deprived of the use of their arms. "the threads which issued from every part of kanaglou's body, were extended to immense distances, and from the palace of congo, put whole armies of pantins into motion or winter quarters, even to the remotest parts of monoémugi. with one pull of the pack-thread, a town was besieged, the trenches were opened, they battered in breach, and the enemy was preparing to capitulate; but upon a second pull, the besiegers fire slackened, the attacks were not carried on with the same vigour, troops came to the relief of the place, dissentions were kindled among the generals: we were attacked, surprized, beaten, and routed. "these bad tidings never gave any concern to kanaglou: he seldom heard them, till they were forgot by his subjects: and the fairy would not suffer him to be informed of them, but by pantins, who had each a thread fastned to the tip of their tongue, and who said no more than what she thought proper, on pain of being struck dumb. "another time we young fools were all charmed with an adventure, which gave bitter scandal to the godly. the women all at once became tumblers, and fell to walking with their heads down, their legs up in air, and their hands in their slippers. "this threw all our former knowledge into confusion; and we were obliged to commence a course of studies on these new physiognomies. many were slighted, who ceased to be thought lovely, as soon as they shewed themselves; and others, who were never so much as talked of, gained vastly by making themselves known. their petticoats and gowns falling over their eyes, put them in danger, either of losing their way, or stumbling: wherefore the former were shortened, and the latter cut open before. such is the origin of short petticoats and open gowns. when the women returned to the use of their feet, they retained this part of their dress as it was: and if we thoroughly consider the petticoats of our fine ladies, we shall easily perceive, that they were not made to be worn, as they are worn at this day. "any mode, that has but one drift, will soon pass away: in order to make it lasting, it ought to answer two ends at least. in those same days a secret was discovered for plumping the breasts downward: and it is used at this day for plumping them upward. "the devout women, surprized to find their heads down, and their heels up in the air, at first covered themselves with their hands: but this attention made them lose their poise, and stumble in their walks. by the advice of the bramins, they afterwards tied their petticoats about their legs with little black ribbons. the gay part of the sex found this expedient ridiculous, and publickly declared, that it incommoded their respiration, and threw them into the vapours. this prodigy was attended with happy consequences; it occasioned a number of marriages, or somewhat like them, and a crowd of conversions. all those, who had disagreeable buttocks, ran headlong into the religious party, and took little black ribbons. four missions of bramins would not have made so many proselytes. "we had scarcely got rid of this trial, when we underwent another, less universal indeed, but not less instructive. the young girls, one and all, from thirteen to eighteen, nineteen, twenty years of age, and upwards, rose on a fine summer's morning, the middle finger caught, guess where, madam?" says selim to the favorite. "it was not in their mouth, nor in their ear, nor infine, _à la turque_. their disease was easily guess'd, and the remedy quickly applied. from that time may our custom be dated of marrying children, who are fit for nothing but dressing their dolls. "another blessing: kanaglou's court swarmed with _petits-maitres_, and i had the honour to be of the number. one day as i was entertaining them with the young french nobility, i perceived our shoulders working upwards, till they became higher than our heads: but that was not all; in an instant we all fell to whirling about on one heel." "and what rarity was there in that?" said the favorite. "nothing, madam," replied selim, "but that the first metamorphosis is the origin of the round shoulders, so much in vogue in your infancy; and the second, that of the scoffers, whose reign is not yet over. then, as now, a discourse was begun to some one person, which by a sudden twirl on the heel, was continued to a second, and finished to a third, to whom it became half unintelligible, half impertinent. "another time we all found our selves short sighted, and were forced to have recourse to bion: the rogue made us pay ten sequins for glasses, which we continued to use, even after recovering our sight. thence come, madam, the opera spy glasses. "i could never learn what the fine ladies did to the genius cucufa about this time; but he took severe vengeance of them. at the end of a certain year, whereof they had spent the nights in balls, banquets, and gaming, and the days in dressing, or between the arms of their lovers, they were all astonished to find themselves horridly ugly. one was as black as a mole, another bronzed over; a third pale and lean, a fourth of a sickly yellow, and full of wrinkles. there was a necessity to palliate this fatal enchantment, and our chemists found out the white, the red, pomatums, waters, venus's handkerchiefs, virgins milk, patches, and a thousand other cosmetics, which they employed, to avoid appearing ugly, and becoming frightful. cucufa still held them under this curse, when erguebzed, who loved beautiful women, became their intercessor. the genius did all that he could; but the charm was so powerful, that he was not able to dissolve it thoroughly; and the court ladies remained such as you see them at this day." "was the fate of the other charms the same?" says mirzoza. "no, madam," answered selim, "they lasted some longer, some shorter: the round shoulders sunk by degrees, and people stood upright: and for fear of being thought hump-back'd, they turned up their noses to the wind, and danced as they walked. the whirlgig motion continued, and they whirl about to this day. broach a serious or sensible conversation in presence of a young lord of the _bel air_; and _zeste_, you shall see him wheel away from you in an instant, and go mutter out a parody to some body, who asks him the news of the war, or of his health; or to whisper in his ear, that he supped last night with miss rabon, and that she is an adorable girl; that there is a new romance coming abroad; that he has read some pages of it, and that it is fine, very fine: and then another twirl or two towards a lady, whom he asks if she has seen the new opera, and answers her, that miss dangeville has performed to a miracle." mirzoza found these ridicules very diverting, and asked selim if he had been a sharer in them. "how, madam," replied the old courtier, "was it possible not to have them, without passing for a man come from the other world? i put on the round shoulders, i stood erect, i danced in walking, i cock'd the spy-glass, i whirled about, i hissed like the rest: and the utmost efforts of my judgment went no farther than to be one of the first in taking up these several biasses, and none of the last in shaking them off." selim was got thus far, when mangogul appeared. the african author does not inform us, what was become of him, or what were his occupations during this preceding chapter. probably the princes of congo may be allowed to perform indifferent actions, to say miserable things sometimes, and to resemble the rest of mankind, who spend a great part of their lives in doing nothing, or such things at least, as are not worthy of being known. chap. xlviii. _twenty-eighth trial of the ring._ olympia. "rejoice, madam," says mangogul, coming in to the favorite's appartment. "i bring you an agreeable piece of news. the toys are a parcel of little fools, who know not what they say. cucufa's ring can indeed make them speak, but not extort the truth from them." "and how has your highness caught them in a lye?" says the favorite. "you shall hear," answered the sultan. "selim promised you an account of all his adventures, and you make no doubt but that he has kept his word. well then, i am just come from consulting a toy, who accuses him of a naughty trick, which he has not confessed to you, and which most certainly he has not play'd, as it is quite contrary to his character. to tyrannize over a pretty woman, to lay her under contribution, on pain of military execution: can you discover selim in this proceeding?" "pray, why not, sir?" replied the favorite. "there is no malice of this sort, of which selim has not been capable: and if he has concealed the adventure which you have discovered, possibly it is, that he is reconciled to this toy, that they are well together, and that he thought he might keep that peccadillo from me, without swerving from his promise." "the perpetual falsity of your conjectures," replied mangogul, "ought to cure you of the disease of ever making any. there is nothing of what you imagine in the affair: it is one of the first flights of selim's youthful days. it regards one of those women, who are gained in a minute, but are never kept long." "madam," says selim to the favorite, "in vain do i examine my self, i can recal nothing more to my memory; and at present i find my conscience quite clear." "olympia," says mangogul--"ah! prince," interrupted selim, "i know the thing; but this little story is so old, that it is no wonder that it has escaped me." "olympia," continued mangogul, "wife of the chief cashier of hasna, had coiffed herself with a young officer, captain in selim's regiment. her lover came to her one morning in deep concern, to inform her that orders were issued for all the officers to set out and join their respective corps. my grandfather kanaglou had resolved that year to open the campaign early: and an admirable project, which he had formed, miscarried, purely through the making these orders too publick. the politicians murmured, the women exclaimed, each party had their reasons. i have told you those of olympia. this woman took the party of seeing selim, and, if possible, to prevent the departure of gabalis: for that was her lover's name. selim already passed for a dangerous man. olympia thought it was proper to have an escort: and two of her female friends, as handsome as her self, offered to accompany her. selim was at home when they came. he received olympia, who appeared alone, with that easy politeness, which you know he is master of, and asked what had procured him this agreeable visit? 'sir,' says olympia, 'i interest my self for gabalis: he has some important affairs on his hands, which make his presence necessary at banza, and i come to you to beg six months leave of absence for him.' "'six months leave, madam? you do not consider,' replied selim: 'the sultan's orders are precise: i am heartily concerned, that i cannot make a merit towards you of a favour, which would infallibly ruin me.' new instances on olympia's side: on selim's new refusals--'the grand vizir has promised me, that i should be comprehended in the next promotion. can you desire me, madam, to drown my self, in order to oblige you?' 'no, sir, you may oblige me, without drowning your self'--'madam, it is impossible: but if you go to the visir'--'alas! sir, to whom do you send me, that man never did any thing for the ladies'--'i rack my brain to no purpose: for i should be highly rejoiced in being able to render you service, and i can see but one way.' 'and which is that?' asked olympia with eagerness.--'your intention,' answered selim, 'would be to make gabalis happy for six months: but, madam, could you not dispose of one quarter of an hour of those pleasures which you design for him?' olympia understood him wonderfully well, blushed, stammered; and concluded by exclaiming at the severity of the condition. 'let us say no more of the affair,' replied the colonel with a cold air, 'gabalis shall join his regiment: the prince's service must be done. i might venture to take somewhat on my self: but you are inflexible. at least, madam, if gabalis departs, it is you that send him away.' 'i,' cry'd olympia sharply: 'ah! sir, make out his warrant quickly, and let him remain here.' the essential preliminaries of the treaty were ratified on a sopha, and the lady thought she had made sure of gabalis; when the traitor, who stands before you, took it into his head to ask her, who those two ladies were, who came with her, and whom she left in the next appartment. 'they are two of my intimate friends,' replied olympia; 'and of gabalis too,' added selim, 'beyond all doubt. this supposed, i do not believe they will refuse to execute each a third part of the articles of the treaty. yes, this to me seems just: and to you, madam, i commit the care of disposing them to it.' 'indeed, sir,' says olympia, 'you are a strange man. i protest, these ladies have no pretentions to gabalis: but in order to extricate them and my self from this _embarras_, if you think me responsible, i will endeavour to discharge the bill of exchange, which you draw on them.' selim accepted the offer. olympia did honour to her word: and there, madam, is what selim ought to have informed you of." "i excuse him," says the favorite: "olympia was not so good an acquaintance, that i should condemn him for having forgot her. i cannot imagine whither you go to hunt out that sort of women: indeed, prince, your conduct is that of a man, who has no desire to lose a castle." "madam, to me it seems, as if you had entirely changed your notions within these few days," answered mangogul: "do me the favour to recollect the first trial of my ring, which i proposed to you; and you will see, it was not my fault that i have not lost it ere now." "yes," replied the sultana, "i know, you have sworn to me, that i should be excepted out of the number of speaking toys; and that since that time you have applied to such women only as have forfeited their character; to an amina, a zobeida, a thelis, a zulica, whose reputations were already pretty well settled." "i grant," says mangogul, "that it would be ridiculous indeed to rely on those toys: but for want of others, i was necessitated to confine myself to them. i have already told you, and i now repeat it: good company with respect to toys is scarcer than you think; and if you will not resolve to gain yourself----" "i," interrupted mirzoza smartly, "i shall never have a castle while i live, if i must use those means for obtaining one. a speaking toy! fy! that is so indecent.----prince, in one word, you know my reasons, and with great seriousness i now reiterate my menaces." "but, either do not complain of my trials, or at least hint at some persons, to whom you think we may have recourse: for i am quite uneasy that the affair is not terminated. libertin toys, and what next? libertin toys, and always libertin toys." "i have great confidence," says mirzoza, "in egle's toy; and i wait with impatience for the end of the fortnight which you demanded of me." "madam," replied mangogul, "that term expired yesterday; and while selim was telling you stories of the old court, i learnt from egle's toy, that, thanks to the ill humor of celebi, and the constant attendance of almanzor, it's mistress can do you no service." "ah! prince," cry'd the favourite, "what have you said?" "'tis fact," replied the sultan; "i will regale you with that story some other time: but in the mean while seek another string to your bow." "egle, the virtuous egle, has at length given herself the lye," says the favorite in a surprize; "indeed i cannot recover myself." "i see you are quite unhinged," replies mangogul, "and know not whither to turn yourself." "not so," says the favorite; "but i own to you that i depended much on egle." "pray think no more about it," added mangogul; "only tell us if she was the only virtuous woman that you know." "no, prince, there are a hundred others, and amiable women too, whom i will name to you," replied mirzoza. "i will answer, as much as for myself, for----for----" mirzoza stop'd short, without having pronounced any one name. selim could not refrain from smiling, and the sultan from bursting out into laughter, at the favorite's embarrassment, who knew so many virtuous women, and could not recollect any one. mirzoza, piqued at this, turned to selim, and said: "pray, selim, help me out, you, who are so great a connoisseur. prince," continued she directing her discourse to the sultan, "apply to----whom shall i name? prithee, selim, assist me." "to mirzoza," says selim. "you make your court to me very ill," replied the favorite. "i am not afraid of the trial, but i abhor it. name some one else quickly, if you would have me pardon you." "one may try," says selim, "if zaide has found the reality of the ideal lover, which she formed to herself, and to whom she was formerly wont to compare all those who made love to her." "zaide?" replys mangogul. "i must own that she is a very proper subject to make me lose." "she is," added the favorite, "perhaps the only woman, whose reputation has been spared by the prude arsinoe and the coxcomb janeki." "this is strong," says mangogul: "but the trial of my ring is a better argument. let us go directly to her toy. "_that oracle is surer much than calchas._" "how," adds the favorite smiling: "you retain your racine, like a player." chap. xlix. _twenty-ninth trial of the ring._ zuleiman and zaide. mangogul, without answering the favorite's joke, departed instantly, and went to zaide's house. he found her retired in a closet, at a small table, on which he observed some letters, a portrait, and some trifles scatter'd here and there, which came from a cherished lover, as it was easy to presume, by the fondness she expressed for them. she was writing; tears ran down her cheeks, and wetted the paper. every now and then she kiss'd the portrait with transport opened the letters, wrote some words, returned to the portrait, snatched up the above mentioned trifles, and pressed them to her breast. the sultan's astonishment was incredible; he had never seen any tender woman, but the favorite and zaide. he thought himself beloved by mirzoza: but did not zaide love zuleiman better still? and were not this pair the only true lovers of congo. the tears, which zaide shed in writing, were not tears of sorrow. 'twas love that made them flow. and in that moment, a delicious sentiment, which arose from a certainty of possessing the heart of zuleiman, was the only one that affected her. "dear zuleiman," cry'd she, "how i love thee! how dear thou art to me! how agreeably thou employest me! in those instants, when zaide has not the happiness of seeing thee, she writes to thee how much she is thine: separated from zuleiman, his love is the only conversation which gives her pleasure." zaide was thus far advanced in her amorous meditation, when mangogul pointed his ring at her. immediately he heard her toy send forth a sigh and repeat the first words of her mistress's monology. "dear zuleiman, how i love thee! how dear thou art to me! how agreeably thou employest me!" zaide's heart and toy were too well agreed, to vary in their discourse. zaide was surprized at first; but she was so sure that her toy would say nothing, but what zuleiman might hear with pleasure, that she wish'd him present. mangogul repeated his trial, and zaide's toy repeated with a soft tender voice: "zuleiman, dear zuleiman, how i love thee! how dear thou art to me!" "zuleiman," says the sultan, "is the happiest mortal of my empire. let us abandon this place, where the image of a happiness greater than mine is presented to my sight, and afflicts me." accordingly he withdrew, and went to his favorite with an air of inquietude and pensiveness. "prince," says she, "what ails you, you say nothing to me of zaide?"----"zaide is an adorable woman, madam," replied mangogul. "she loves beyond any thing that ever loved"--"so much the worse for her," says mirzoza. "what do you say?" replied the sultan.----"i say," answers the favorite, "that kermades is one of the most disagreeable persons of congo; that interest and the authority of the parents made that match; and that there never was a couple worse sorted than kermades and zaide." "but, madam," replies mangogul, "it is not her husband that she loves"----"who then?" says mirzoza.----"'tis zuleiman," replies mangogul----"adieu then to the porcelains and the little sapajou," added the sultana----"ah!" says mangogul whispering to himself, "this zaide has struck me: she pursues me, she occupies my thoughts; i must absolutely see her again." mirzoza interrupted him by some questions, which he answered in monosyllables. he refused a game of piquet which she proposed, complain'd of a head-ach which he counterfeited, retired to his appartment, went to bed without supping, which he had never done before, and had no sleep. the charms and tenderness of zaide, the qualities and happiness of zuleiman tormented him the whole night. one may easily imagine, that he had no business so much in his head this day, as to return to zaide. he walk'd out of his palace, even without enquiring after mirzoza, the first time that ever he fail'd in this point. he found zaide in the same closet as the preceding day, and zuleiman with her; who held his mistresses hands between his own, and had his eyes fixed on her. zaide on her knees, and inclining forward, darted glances animated with the most ardent passion on zuleiman. they continued some time in this attitude: but both in the same instant yielding to the violence of their desires, they rush'd into each others arms, and embraced with eagerness. the profound silence, which had hitherto reigned about them, was disturbed by their sighs, the sound of their mutual kisses, and some inarticulated words, which slip'd from them----"you love me!"----"i adore you"----"will you love me constantly?"----"alas! the last sigh of my life shall be for zaide!----" mangogul overwhelm'd with sorrow, threw himself into an easy chair, and covered his eyes with his hand. he dreaded seeing things, which are easily imagined, and yet did not happen. after a silence of some moments, "ah! dear and tender lover," says zaide, "why have i not always found you such as you are at present? i should not love you the less, nor should i have any reproach to throw on myself.----but you weep, dear zuleiman. come, dear and tender lover, come, and let me wipe off your tears. zuleiman, you cast down your eyes, what ails you? pray look on me.----come, dear friend, come, that i may comfort thee: cling thy lips on my mouth, breathe thy soul into me, receive mine; suspend----ah! no----no"----zaide finished her discourse with a deep sigh, and was silent. the african author informs us, that this scene touched mangogul most sensibly, that he built some hopes on the impotence of zuleiman, and that some secret proposals were made on his behalf to zaide, who rejected them, and never made any merit of it with her lover. chap. l. _platonic love._ "but is this zaide an unique? mirzoza is no ways inferior to her in charms, and i have a thousand proofs of her affection. i desire to be loved, i am, and who has told me that zuleiman is more so than i? i was a fool to envy another's happiness. no, there is no man under the heavens happier than mangogul." thus began the remonstrances, which the sultan made to himself. the author has surpressed the rest, and contents himself with apprizing us, that the prince paid more regard to them, than to those which his ministers presented him with, and that zaide never after returned on his mind. one of those evenings, that he was entirely satisfied with his mistress or with himself, he proposed sending for selim, to walk in the groves of the seraglio. these were verdant closets, where many things may be said and done without witnesses. in their way thither, mangogul turn'd the conversation on the reasons people have for loving. mirzoza, mounted on grand principles, and fill'd with idea's of virtue, which certainly did not suit with her rank, person, or age, maintain'd that people very frequently loved for the sake of loving; and that connections begun by a likeness of characters, supported by esteem, and cemented by mutual confidence, were very lasting and constant; without any pretensions to favors on the man's side, or on the woman's any temptation to grant them. "thus it is, madam," replied the sultan, "that you have been spoil'd by romances. in them you have seen hero's respectuous, and princesses virtuous even to folly; without reflecting that those beings never existed but in the brains of authors. if you ask selim, who thoroughly well knows the catechism of cythera, 'what is love?' i would lay a wager that he would answer you, that love, is nothing else but----" "would you lay a wager," interrupted the sultana, "that delicacy of sentiments is but a chimæra, and that without hopes of enjoyment, there would not be a grain of love in the world? if so, you must certainly entertain a very bad opinion of the human heart." "so i do," replied mangogul, "our virtues are not more disinterested than our vices. the brave pursues glory by exposing himself to dangers; the coward loves tranquility and life; and the lover desires enjoyment." selim declaring himself of the sultan's party, added, that if two things happened, love would be banished from society, never more to make its appearance again. "and which are those two things?" says the favorite. "they are," replied mangogul, "if you and i, madam, and all the race of mankind, chanced to lose what tanzai and neadarne found in a dream." "what! you believe," interrupted mirzoza, "that without those pitiful things, there would be neither esteem nor confidence between two persons of different sexes? a woman adorn'd with talents, wit and beauty, would not touch? a man bless'd with an amiable person, a fine genius, and excellent character, would not be heeded?" "no, madam," replies mangogul; "for pray tell me what he would say?" "a number of pretty things, which i think would always afford much pleasure to hear," answers the favorite. "observe, madam," says selim, "that those things are said every day without love. no, no, madam, i have complete proofs, that without a well organised body, there is no love. agenor, the handsomest young man of congo, and the most refined wit of the court, would, if i had been a woman, in vain shew me his genteel leg, turn his large blue eyes on me, squander on me the most artful praise, and set himself off with every other advantage of which he is master; i would say but one word, and if he did not give an express answer to this word, i might have all possible esteem for him, but i should not love him." "that is positive," added the sultan, "and you yourself will allow the justness and utility of this mysterious word, when one loves. you ought indeed, for your instruction, to cause the conversation of a wit of banza with a school-master to be related to you. you could comprehend in an instant, how the wit, who sustained your thesis, confessed in the end that he was in the wrong, and that his antagonist reasoned like a toy. but selim, of whom i had it, will you tell the story." the favorite imagined, that a story, which mangogul would not relate to her, must be very mortifying: and therefore she went into one of the arbors, without asking it of selim, and happy it was for him; for with all his wit, he would have ill satisfied the favorite's curiosity, or much allarm'd her modesty. but in order to amuse her, and make her forget the story of the school-master, he related the following. "madam," says the courtier, "in a vast country near the sources of the nile, lived a young man, beautiful as adonis. before he was eighteen years of age, all the maidens contended for his heart, and there were few women, who would not accept of him for their lover. born with an amorous heart, he loved as soon as he was in a condition to love. "on a certain day, while he was in the temple assisting at the public worship of the great pagoda; and was, according to the usual ceremony, preparing to make the seventeen genuflexions prescribed by the law; the beauty, with which he was captivated, chanced to pass by, and darted a glance on him accompany'd with a smile, which threw him into such distraction, that he lost his poize, fell on his nose, scandalized the congregation by his fall, forgot the number of genuflexions, and performed but sixteen. "the great pagoda irritated at the offence and scandal, punished him cruelly. hilas, for that was his name, the poor hilas felt himself instantly inflamed with the most violent desires, and smack-smooth as the palm of his hand, deprived of the means of gratifying them. equally surprized and grieved at so great a loss, he consulted the pagoda. 'thou shalt never be restored to thy pristine state,' answered she sneezing, 'but between the arms of a woman, who shall not love thee the less for knowing thy misfortune.' "presumption is generally the companion of youth and beauty. hilas fancied that his wit and the comeliness of his person would soon gain him a heart of nice sentiments; who content with what he had remaining, would love him for himself, and soon restore to him what he had lost. he first addrest himself to the lady, who had been the innocent cause of his misfortune. she was young, brisk, voluptuous and a coquet. hilas adored her, and obtained a meeting; where by a train of allurements he was drawn into the road leading to a place which it was impossible for him to reach. in vain did he torment himself, and in the arms of his mistress seek the accomplishment of the oracle: nothing appeared. when the lady was tired of waiting, she set herself to rights in a moment, and quitted him. the worst of the affair was, that the foolish girl told it in confidence to one of her female friends, who, out of her great discretion, related it but to three or four of hers, who did the same to as many others: so that hilas, two days before the darling of all the sex, was despised, pointed at, and looked on as a monster. "the wretched hilas, cried down in his native country, resolved to travel, and seek a remedy for his disease in remote climes. he set out alone, and arrived incognito at the court of the abyssinian emperor. the young stranger was singled out by the ladies, and the contest was, who should have him but hilas prudently avoided all engagements, in which he had apprehensions of not finding his account, proportionable to his certainty that the women who pursued him would not find theirs in him. but observe and admire the penetration of the sex: 'a man so young, so comely, and so modest,' said they, 'is quite a prodigy:' and the union of these qualities in him had almost made them suspect his real defect; so as, for fear of allowing him what an accomplished man should have, to refuse him the very thing which he wanted. "after having for some time studied the chart of the country, hilas linked an acquaintance with a young woman, who, by some unknown caprice, had passed from refined gallantry to the highest devotion. he gradually insinuated himself into her confidence, espoused her notions, copied her practices, handed her in and out of the temples, and conversed with her so frequently on the vanity of worldly pleasures, that he insensibly revived her taste, as well as remembrance of them. they had now, for above a month, frequented the mosques, assisted at sermons, and visited the sick together, when he prepared himself for a thorough cure; but all in vain. his devote friend, tho' intimately acquainted with all the transactions of heaven, knew as well as others, how a man should be made on earth: and the poor lad lost in a moment all the fruits of his good works. if any thing consoled him, it was, that his secret was inviolably kept. one word would have rendered his disease incurable; but this word was not uttered, and hilas linked in with some other pious women, whom he took, one after another, for the specific ordained by the oracle, and who did not break his enchantment, because they loved him only for what he was not. the habit, they had acquired of spiritualizing all objects, was of no service to him. they required sense, but it was of that sort which springs from pleasure. hilas complained that they did not love him. but their answer was, 'pray, sir, are you ignorant, that people should know each other, before they love; nay, you must acknowledge, that, disgraced as you are, you are not lovely even when you are known.' "'alas!' said he retiring, 'this pure love, so much talked of, is no where to be found; this delicacy of sentiments, upon which both sexes value themselves, is a mere chimæra. the oracle has deceived me, and my disease is for life.' "in his way, he met some of those women, who allow no other commerce with man, but that of the heart, and who hate a forward spark like a toad. they so seriously recommended to him to let nothing gross and terrestrial enter into his views, that he conceived great hopes of his cure. he complied heartily, and was quite astonished, after the amorous conversations, which they held with him, that he still remained as he was. 'i must certainly be cured,' said he to himself, 'but perhaps otherwise than by words:' and he sought an occasion of placing himself according to the intentions of the oracle. thus it soon offered. a young female platonic, who was excessively fond of walking, led him into a lonesome wood and when they had penetrated far from the reach of any impertinent eye, the fair one was seized with a fainting fit. hilas threw himself on her, and neglected nothing in his power to relieve her; but all his endeavours were fruitless: of which she soon became as sensible as himself. 'ah! sir,' cried she, disengaging herself from his arms, 'what sort of man are you? i shall be very cautious of ever venturing thus into lonesome places, where i have been taken so ill, and may dye a hundred times for want of help.' "others knew his condition, pitied him, protested to him, that the tenderness they had conceived for him, should not change; and never saw him more. "the miserable hilas, with his graceful figure, and the most refined sentiments, gave great dissatisfaction to many ladies." "then he was a fool," interrupted the sultan. "why did he not address some of the vestals, of which our monasteries are full? they would be charmed with him, and he would infallibly receive his cure through a grate." "prince," replied selim, "chronicles assure us, that he tried that method, and found by experience, that the sex of all conditions do not care to love to their certain loss." "if that be the case," said the sultan, "i take his distemper to be incurable." "so did he himself as well as your highness," continued selim; "and tired out with unsuccessful trials, he plunged himself into solitude, on the word of an infinite number of women, who had expresly declared to him, that he was useless in society. "he had already been several days rambling in a desert, when he heard some sighs issuing from a lonely place. he listened, the sighs began again, he drew near, and saw a young maiden, fair as the morn, her head leaning on her hand, her eyes bathed in tears, and the rest of her body in a pensive and mournful posture. 'what seek you here, madam?' said he to her. 'and are these deserts made for you?' 'yes,' replied she in a melancholy strain: 'i can at least afflict myself here quite at my ease.' 'and what is the cause of your affliction?'--'alas!'--'speak, madam, what is the cause?'----'nothing'----'how, nothing?'----'no, nothing at all, i say, is the cause of my grief: two years ago i had the misfortune to offend a pagoda, who deprived me of my all: and it was so small a matter, that in so doing, she gave no great proof of her power. since that time, all the men shun me, and will shun me, said the pagoda, until i meet with one, who knowing my misfortune, will cleave to me, and love me in the state, in which i am.' "'what do i hear!' cried hilas. 'this wretch, whom you behold at your feet, has nothing, and that is his distemper likewise. some time since he had the misfortune to offend a pagoda, who deprived him of all that he had, and without vanity it was somewhat. from that time all the women shun him, and will shun him, said the pagoda, until he meets with one, who, knowing his misfortune, will cleave to him, and love him in the state, in which he is.' "'is this possible?' says the young maiden.----'is what you have told me true?' says hilas.----'see,' answered the maiden. 'see,' answered hilas. "they both convinced each other beyond all doubt, that they were two objects of the celestial wrath. their common misfortune united them. iphis, this was the young maiden's name, was made for hilas, hilas was made for her. they loved each other in a platonic manner, as you may easily imagine; for they could not well love otherwise: but in an instant the inchantment was broken, they uttered cries of joy on the event, and platonic love vanished. "during several months, that they continued together in the desert, they had full time to be persuaded of their change. when they quitted it, iphis was perfectly cured; but as to hilas, the author says that he was threatned with a relapse." chap. li. _thirtieth and last trial of the ring._ mirzoza. while mangogul was entertaining himself with the favorite and selim, news was brought him of the death of sulamek. sulamek's rise began by being appointed the sultan's dancing-master, and that even contrary to the intentions of erguebzed: but some intriguing ladies, whom he had taught certain dangerous steps, pushed him with all their might, and so bestirred themselves, that he was preferred to marcel and others, whose deputy he was not worthy of being. he possessed the spirit of trifling, the court jargon, the gift of telling diverting stories, and of amusing children; but he knew nothing of the high dance. when the post of grand vizir became vacant, by dint of cringing, he supplanted the great seneschal, who was an indefatigable dancer, but stiff-necked, and bowed with a bad grace. his ministry was not signalized by any events glorious to the nation. his enemies, (and who is there without them? true merit has many) accused him of playing ill on the violin, and of having no knowledge of choregraphy; of having suffered himself to be duped by the pantomimes of prester john, and to be affrighted by a bear from monoémugi, who danced one day before him; of having given millions to the emperor of tombur to keep him from dancing, at a time when he had the gout, and spent yearly five hundred thousand zecchins in resin, and more in persecuting all the fidlers, who played any other minuets but his own: in a word, of having slept fifteen years of a stretch, at the sound of a cymbal of a clumsy native of guinea, who accompanied his instrument with some congo songs. true it is, that he had introduced the fashion of dutch lime trees, &c. mangogul had an excellent heart: he regretted sulamek, and ordered him a magnificent burial, with a funeral oration, which the orator brrrouboubou was ordered to make. on the day appointed for the ceremony, the chief bramins, the whole divan in a body, and the sultanas led by their eunuchs, went to the great mosque. brrrouboubou proved for two hours together, with surprizing rapidity, that sulamek had risen to his high station by superior talents, made prefaces on prefaces, did not forget either mangogul or his exploits during the administration of sulamek; and he had almost spent himself in exclamations, when mirzoza, to whom a lye gave the vapors, fell into a fit of the lethargy. her officers and women ran to her assistance; she was put into her palanquine, and instantly carried to the seraglio. mangogul, being informed of the danger she was in, ran to her; and the whole pharmacopoeia was rummaged. the garus, general la motte's drops, the english drops, were all tried, but to no purpose. the distressed sultan, one moment weeping over mirzoza, the next swearing at orcotomus, at length was deprived of all hopes, except some glimmerings which might remain in his ring. "if i have lost you, delight of my soul," cried he, "your toy, as well as your mouth, must keep eternal silence." in an instant he commanded every body to withdraw: he was obeyed; and being alone with the favorite, he turned his ring on her. but mirzoza's toy, which was tired at the sermon, as it happens to others every day, and besides had probably a touch of the lethargy, at first only mutter'd some confused and ill articulated words. the sultan repeated the experiment, and the toy then very distinctly said: "separated from you, mangogul, what would become of me?--faithful even to the grave, i would have sought you; and if love and constancy have any recompence among the dead, dear prince, i would have found you--alas! without you the delightful palace where brama dwells, and which he has promised to his true believers, would prove a disagreeable residence to me." mangogul, transported with joy, did not perceive that the favorite was recovering from her lethargy; and that, if he did not turn off his ring, she would hear the last words of her toy: which happened accordingly. "ah! prince," said she, "what is become of your oaths? you have then cleared up your unjust suspicions? nothing has withheld you, neither the condition i was in, the injury you were doing me, nor the word you had given me?" "madam," replied the sultan, "impute not to a shameful curiosity, an impatience, which the despair for having lost you, has alone suggested to me. it was not an usual trial of my ring, that i made on you; but i believed that i might, without breach of promise, make use of a resource, which restores you to my vows, and secures my heart to you for ever." "prince," says the favorite, "i believe you; but pray restore the ring to the genius, and let not his fatal present disturb your heart or empire for the future." mangogul immediately made a prayer, and cucufa appeared. "almighty genius," said mangogul, "take back your ring, and continue me your protection". "prince," answered the genius, "divide your days between love and glory. mirzoza will certainly afford you the first of these blessings; and i promise you the second." at these words the hooded spectre closed the tails of his owls, and went off, as he came, in a whirling motion. the end. proofreading team. là-bas (down there) by j.k. huysmans translated by keene wallace [transcriber's note: original published 1891, english translation privately published 1928.] chapter i "you believe pretty thoroughly in these things, or you wouldn't abandon the eternal triangle and the other stock subjects of the modern novelists to write the story of gilles de rais," and after a silence des hermies added, "i do not object to the latrine; hospital; and workshop vocabulary of naturalism. for one thing, the subject matter requires some such diction. again, zola, in _l'assommoir_, has shown that a heavy-handed artist can slap words together hit-or-miss and give an effect of tremendous power. i do not really care how the naturalists maltreat language, but i do strenuously object to the earthiness of their ideas. they have made our literature the incarnation of materialism--and they glorify the democracy of art! "say what you will, their theory is pitiful, and their tight little method squeezes all the life out of them. filth and the flesh are their all in all. they deny wonder and reject the extra-sensual. i don't believe they would know what you meant if you told them that artistic curiosity begins at the very point where the senses leave off. "you shrug your shoulders, but tell me, how much has naturalism done to clear up life's really troublesome mysteries? when an ulcer of the soul--or indeed the most benign little pimple--is to be probed, naturalism can do nothing. 'appetite and instinct' seem to be its sole motivation and rut and brainstorm its chronic states. the field of naturalism is the region below the umbilicus. oh, it's a hernia clinic and it offers the soul a truss! "i tell you, durtal, it's superficial quackery, and that isn't all. this fetid naturalism eulogizes the atrocities of modern life and flatters our positively american ways. it ecstasizes over brute force and apotheosizes the cash register. with amazing humility it defers to the nauseating taste of the mob. it repudiates style, it rejects every ideal, every aspiration towards the supernatural and the beyond. it is so perfectly representative of bourgeois thought that it might be sired by homais and dammed by lisa, the butcher girl in _ventre de paris_." "heavens, how you go after it!" said durtal, somewhat piqued. he lighted his cigarette and went on, "i am as much revolted by materialism as you are, but that is no reason for denying the unforgettable services which naturalism has rendered. "it has demolished the inhuman puppets of romanticism and rescued our literature from the clutches of booby idealists and sex-starved old maids. it has created visible and tangible human beings--after balzac--and put them in accord with their surroundings. it has carried on the work, which romanticism began, of developing the language. some of the naturalists have had the veritable gift of laughter, a very few have had the gift of tears, and, in spite of what you say, they have not all been carried away by an obsession for baseness." "yes, they have. they are in love with the age, and that shows them up for what they are." "do you mean to tell me flaubert and the de goncourts were in love with the age?" "of course not. but those men were artists, honest, seditious, and aloof, and i put them in a class by themselves. i will also grant that zola is a master of backgrounds and masses and that his tricky handling of people is unequalled. then, too, thank god, he has never followed out, in his novels, the theories enunciated in his magazine articles, adulating the intrusion of positivism upon art. but in the works of his best pupil, rosny, the only talented novelist who is really imbued with the ideas of the master, naturalism has become a sickening jargon of chemist's slang serving to display a layman's erudition, which is about as profound as the scientific knowledge of a shop foreman. no, there is no getting around it. everything this whole poverty-stricken school has produced shows that our literature has fallen upon evil days. the grovellers! they don't rise above the moral level of the tumblebug. read the latest book. what do you find? simple anecdotes: murder, suicide, and accident histories copied right out of the newspaper, tiresome sketches and wormy tales, all written in a colorless style and containing not the faintest hint of an outlook on life nor an appreciation of human nature. when i have waded through one of these books its insipid descriptions and interminable harangues go instantly out of my mind, and the only impression that remains is one of surprise that a man can write three or four hundred pages when he has absolutely nothing to reveal to us--nothing to say!" "if it's all the same to you, des hermies, let's speak of something else. we shall never agree on the subject of naturalism, as the very mention of it makes you see red. what about this mattei system of medicine? your globules and electric phials at least relieve a few sufferers?" "hmph. a little better than the panaceas of the codex, though i can't say the effects are either lasting or sure. but, it serves, like anything else. and now i must run along. the clock is striking ten and your concierge is coming to put out the hall light. see you again very soon, i hope. good night." when the door closed durtal put some more coke in the grate and resumed a comfortless train of thought aggravated by this too pertinent discussion with his friend. for some months durtal had been trying to reassemble the fragments of a shattered literary theory which had once seemed inexpugnable, and des hermies's opinions troubled him, in spite of their exaggerated vehemence. certainly if naturalism confined one to monotonous studies of mediocre persons and to interminable inventories of the objects in a drawing-room or a landscape, an honest and clear-sighted artist would soon cease to produce, and a less conscientious workman would be under the necessity of repeating himself over and over again to the point of nausea. nevertheless durtal could see no possibilities for the novelist outside of naturalism. were we to go back to the pyrotechnics of romanticism, rewrite the lanuginous works of the cherbuliez and feuillet tribe, or, worse yet, imitate the lachrymose storiettes of theuriet and george sand? then what was to be done? and durtal, with desperate determination, set to work sorting out a tangle of confused theories and inchoate postulations. he made no headway. he felt but could not define. he was afraid to. definition of his present tendencies would plump him back into his old dilemma. "we must," he thought, "retain the documentary veracity, the precision of detail, the compact and sinewy language of realism, but we must also dig down into the soul and cease trying to explain mystery in terms of our sick senses. if possible the novel ought to be compounded of two elements, that of the soul and that of the body, and these ought to be inextricably bound together as in life. their interreactions, their conflicts, their reconciliation, ought to furnish the dramatic interest. in a word, we must follow the road laid out once and for all by zola, but at the same time we must trace a parallel route in the air by which we may go above and beyond.... a spiritual naturalism! it must be complete, powerful, daring in a different way from anything that is being attempted at present. perhaps as approaching my concept i may cite dostoyevsky. yet that _exorable_ russian is less an elevated realist than an evangelic socialist. in france right now the purely corporal recipe has brought upon itself such discredit that two clans have arisen: the liberal, which prunes naturalism of all its boldness of subject matter and diction in order to fit it for the drawing-room, and the decadent, which gets completely off the ground and raves incoherently in a telegraphic patois intended to represent the language of the soul--intended rather to divert the reader's attention from the author's utter lack of ideas. as for the right wing verists, i can only laugh at the frantic puerilities of these would-be psychologists, who have never explored an unknown district of the mind nor ever studied an unhackneyed passion. they simply repeat the saccharine feuillet and the saline stendhal. their novels are dissertations in school-teacher style. they don't seem to realize that there is more spiritual revelation in that one reply of old hulot, in balzac's _cousine bette_, 'can't i take the little girl along?' than in all their doctoral theses. we must expect of them no idealistic straining toward the infinite. for me, then, the real psychologist of this century is not their stendhal but that astonishing ernest hello, whose unrelenting unsuccess is simply miraculous!" he began to think that des hermies was right. in the present disorganized state of letters there was but one tendency which seemed to promise better things. the unsatisfied need for the supernatural was driving people, in default of something loftier, to spiritism and the occult. now his thoughts carried him away from his dissatisfaction with literature to the satisfaction he had found in another art, in painting. his ideal was completely realized by the primitives. these men, in italy, germany, and especially in flanders, had manifested the amplitude and purity of vision which are the property of saintliness. in authentic and patiently accurate settings they pictured beings whose postures were caught from life itself, and the illusion was compelling and sure. from these heads, common enough, many of them, and these physiognomies, often ugly but powerfully evocative, emanated celestial joy or acute anguish, spiritual calm or turmoil. the effect was of matter transformed, by being distended or compressed, to afford an escape from the senses into remote infinity. durtal's introduction to this naturalism had come as a revelation the year before, although he had not then been so weary as now of _fin de siècle_ silliness. in germany, before a crucifixion by matthæus grünewald, he had found what he was seeking. he shuddered in his armchair and closed his eyes as if in pain. with extraordinary lucidity he revisualized the picture, and the cry of admiration wrung from him when he had entered the little room of the cassel museum was reechoing in his mind as here, in his study, the christ rose before him, formidable, on a rude cross of barky wood, the arm an untrimmed branch bending like a bow under the weight of the body. this branch seemed about to spring back and mercifully hurl afar from our cruel, sinful world the suffering flesh held to earth by the enormous spike piercing the feet. dislocated, almost ripped out of their sockets, the arms of the christ seemed trammelled by the knotty cords of the straining muscles. the laboured tendons of the armpits seemed ready to snap. the fingers, wide apart, were contorted in an arrested gesture in which were supplication and reproach but also benediction. the trembling thighs were greasy with sweat. the ribs were like staves, or like the bars of a cage, the flesh swollen, blue, mottled with flea-bites, specked as with pin-pricks by spines broken off from the rods of the scourging and now festering beneath the skin where they had penetrated. purulence was at hand. the fluvial wound in the side dripped thickly, inundating the thigh with blood that was like congealing mulberry juice. milky pus, which yet was somewhat reddish, something like the colour of grey moselle, oozed from the chest and ran down over the abdomen and the loin cloth. the knees had been forced together and the rotulæ touched, but the lower legs were held wide apart, though the feet were placed one on top of the other. these, beginning to putrefy, were turning green beneath a river of blood. spongy and blistered, they were horrible, the flesh tumefied, swollen over the head of the spike, and the gripping toes, with the horny blue nails, contradicted the imploring gesture of the hands, turning that benediction into a curse; and as the hands pointed heavenward, so the feet seemed to cling to earth, to that ochre ground, ferruginous like the purple soil of thuringia. above this eruptive cadaver, the head, tumultuous, enormous, encircled by a disordered crown of thorns, hung down lifeless. one lacklustre eye half opened as a shudder of terror or of sorrow traversed the expiring figure. the face was furrowed, the brow seamed, the cheeks blanched; all the drooping features wept, while the mouth, unnerved, its under jaw racked by tetanic contractions, laughed atrociously. the torture had been terrific, and the agony had frightened the mocking executioners into flight. against a dark blue night-sky the cross seemed to bow down, almost to touch the ground with its tip, while two figures, one on each side, kept watch over the christ. one was the virgin, wearing a hood the colour of mucous blood over a robe of wan blue. her face was pale and swollen with weeping, and she stood rigid, as one who buries his fingernails deep into his palms and sobs. the other figure was that of saint john, like a gipsy or sunburnt swabian peasant, very tall, his beard matted and tangled, his robe of a scarlet stuff cut in wide strips like slabs of bark. his mantle was a chamois yellow; the lining, caught up at the sleeves, showed a feverish yellow as of unripe lemons. spent with weeping, but possessed of more endurance than mary, who was yet erect but broken and exhausted, he had joined his hands and in an access of outraged loyalty had drawn himself up before the corpse, which he contemplated with his red and smoky eyes while he choked back the cry which threatened to rend his quivering throat. ah, this coarse, tear-compelling calvary was at the opposite pole from those debonair golgothas adopted by the church ever since the renaissance. this lockjaw christ was not the christ of the rich, the adonis of galilee, the exquisite dandy, the handsome youth with the curly brown tresses, divided beard, and insipid doll-like features, whom the faithful have adored for four centuries. this was the christ of justin, basil, cyril, tertullian, the christ of the apostolic church, the vulgar christ, ugly with the assumption of the whole burden of our sins and clothed, through humility, in the most abject of forms. it was the christ of the poor, the christ incarnate in the image of the most miserable of us he came to save; the christ of the afflicted, of the beggar, of all those on whose indigence and helplessness the greed of their brother battens; the human christ, frail of flesh, abandoned by the father until such time as no further torture was possible; the christ with no recourse but his mother, to whom--then powerless to aid him--he had, like every man in torment, cried out with an infant's cry. in an unsparing humility, doubtless, he had willed to suffer the passion with all the suffering permitted to the human senses, and, obeying an incomprehensible ordination, he, in the time of the scourging and of the blows and of the insults spat in his face, had put off divinity, nor had he resumed it when, after these preliminary mockeries, he entered upon the unspeakable torment of the unceasing agony. thus, dying like a thief, like a dog, basely, vilely, physically, he had sunk himself to the deepest depth of fallen humanity and had not spared himself the last ignominy of putrefaction. never before had naturalism transfigured itself by such a conception and execution. never before had a painter so charnally envisaged divinity nor so brutally dipped his brush into the wounds and running sores and bleeding nail holes of the saviour. grünewald had passed all measure. he was the most uncompromising of realists, but his morgue redeemer, his sewer deity, let the observer know that realism could be truly transcendent. a divine light played about that ulcerated head, a superhuman expression illuminated the fermenting skin of the epileptic features. this crucified corpse was a very god, and, without aureole, without nimbus, with none of the stock accoutrements except the blood-sprinkled crown of thorns, jesus appeared in his celestial super-essence, between the stunned, grief-torn virgin and a saint john whose calcined eyes were beyond the shedding of tears. these faces, by nature vulgar, were resplendent, transfigured with the expression of the sublime grief of those souls whose plaint is not heard. thief, pauper, and peasant had vanished and given place to supraterrestial creatures in the presence of their god. grünewald was the most uncompromising of idealists. never had artist known such magnificent exaltation, none had ever so resolutely bounded from the summit of spiritual altitude to the rapt orb of heaven. he had gone to the two extremes. from the rankest weeds of the pit he had extracted the finest essence of charity, the mordant liquor of tears. in this canvas was revealed the masterpiece of an art obeying the unopposable urge to render the tangible and the invisible, to make manifest the crying impurity of the flesh and to make sublime the infinite distress of the soul. it was without its equivalent in literature. a few pages of anne emmerich upon the passion, though comparatively attenuated, approached this ideal of supernatural realism and of veridic and exsurrected life. perhaps, too, certain effusions of ruysbroeck, seeming to spurt forth in twin jets of black and white flame, were worthy of comparison with the divine befoulment of grünewald. hardly, either. grünewald's masterpiece remained unique. it was at the same time infinite and of earth earthy. "but," said durtal to himself, rousing out of his revery, "if i am consistent i shall have to come around to the catholicism of the middle ages, to _mystic_ naturalism. ah, no! i will not--and yet, perhaps i may!" here he was in the old dilemma. how often before now had he halted on the threshold of catholicism, sounding himself thoroughly and finding always that he had no faith. decidedly there had been no effort on the part of god to reclaim him, and he himself had never possessed the kind of will that permits one to let oneself go, trustingly, without reserve, into the sheltering shadows of immutable dogma. momentarily at times when, after reading certain books, his disgust for everyday life was accentuated, he longed for lenitive hours in a cloister, where the monotonous chant of prayers in an incense-laden atmosphere would bring on a somnolence, a dreamy rapture of mystical ideas. but only a simple soul, on which life's wear and tear had left no mark, was capable of savouring the delights of such a self-abandon, and his own soul was battered and torn with earthly conflict. he must admit that the momentary desire to believe, to take refuge in the timeless, proceeded from a multitude of ignoble motives: from lassitude with the petty and repeated annoyances of existence, quarrels with the laundress, with the waiter, with the landlord; the sordid scramble for money; in a word, from the general spiritual failure of a man approaching forty. he thought of escaping into a monastery somewhat as street girls think of going into a house where they will be free from the dangers of the chase, from worry about food and lodging, and where they will not have to do their own washing and ironing. unmarried, without settled income, the voice of carnality now practically stilled in him, he sometimes cursed the existence he had shaped for himself. at times, weary of attempting to coerce words to do his bidding, he threw down his pen and looked into the future. he could see nothing ahead of him but bitterness and cause for alarm, and, seeking consolation, he was forced to admit that only religion could heal, but religion demanded in return so arrant a desertion of common sense, so pusillanimous a willingness to be astonished at nothing, that he threw up his hands and begged off. yet he was always playing with the thought, indeed he could not escape it. for though religion was without foundation it was also without limit and promised a complete escape from earth into dizzy, unexplored altitudes. then, too, durtal was attracted to the church by its intimate and ecstatic art, the splendour of its legends, and the radiant naïveté of the histories of its saints. he did not believe, and yet he admitted the supernatural. right here on earth how could any of us deny that we are hemmed in by mystery, in our homes, in the street,--everywhere when we came to think of it? it was really the part of shallowness to ignore those extrahuman relations and account for the unforeseen by attributing to fate the more than inexplicable. did not a chance encounter often decide the entire life of a man? what was love, what the other incomprehensible shaping influences? and, knottiest enigma of all, what was money? there one found oneself confronted by primordial organic law, atrocious edicts promulgated at the very beginning of the world and applied ever since. the rules were precise and invariable. money attracted money, accumulating always in the same places, going by preference to the scoundrelly and the mediocre. when, by an inscrutable exception, it heaped up in the coffers of a rich man who was not a miser nor a murderer, it stood idle, incapable of resolving itself into a force for good, however charitable the hands which fain would administer it. one would say it was angry at having got into the wrong box and avenged itself by going into voluntary paralysis when possessed by one who was neither a sharper nor an ass. it acted still more strangely when by some extraordinary chance it strayed into the home of a poor man. immediately it defiled the clean, debauched the chaste, and, acting simultaneously on the body and the soul, it insinuated into its possessor a base selfishness, an ignoble pride; it suggested that he spend for himself alone; it made the humble man a boor, the generous man a skinflint. in one second it changed every habit, revolutionized every idea, metamorphosed the most deeply rooted passions. it was the instigator and vigilant accomplice of all the important sins. if it permitted one of its detainers to forget himself and bestow a boon it awakened hatred in the recipient, it replaced avarice with ingratitude and re-established equilibrium so that the account might balance and not one sin of commission be wanting. but it reached its real height of monstrosity when, concealing its identity under an assumed name, it entitled itself capital. then its action was not limited to individual incitation to theft and murder but extended to the entire human race. with one word capital decided monopolies, erected banks, cornered necessities, and, if it wished, caused thousands of human beings to starve to death. and it grew and begot itself while slumbering in a safe, and the two worlds adored it on bended knee, dying of desire before it as before a god. well! money was the devil, otherwise its mastery of souls was inexplicable. and how many other mysteries, equally unintelligible, how many other phenomena were there to make a reflective man shudder! "but," thought durtal, "seeing that there are so many more things betwixt heaven and earth than are dreamed of in anybody's philosophy, why not believe in the trinity? why reject the divinity of christ? it is no strain on one to admit the _credo quia absurdum_ of saint augustine and tertullian and say that if the supernatural were comprehensible it would not be supernatural, and that precisely because it passes the faculties of man it is divine. "and--oh, to hell with it! what's it all about, anyway?" and again, as so often when he had found himself before this unbridgeable gulf between reason and belief, he recoiled from the leap. well, his thoughts had strayed far from the subject of that naturalism so reviled by des hermies. he returned to grünewald and said to himself that the great crucifixion was the masterpiece of an art driven out of bounds. one need not go far in search of the extra-terrestrial as to fall into perfervid catholicism. perhaps spiritualism would give one all one required to formulate a supernaturalistic method. he rose and went into his tiny workroom. his pile of manuscript notes about the marshal de rais, surnamed bluebeard, looked at him derisively from the table where they were piled. "all the same," he said, "it's good to be here, in out of the world and above the limits of time. to live in another age, never read a newspaper, not even know that the theatres exist--ah, what a dream! to dwell with bluebeard and forget the grocer on the corner and all the other petty little criminals of an age perfectly typified by the café waiter who ravishes the boss's daughter--the goose who lays the golden egg, as he calls her--so that she will have to marry him!" bed was a good place, he added, smiling, for he saw his cat, a creature with a perfect time sense, regarding him uneasily as if to remind him of their common convenience and to reproach him for not having prepared the couch. durtal arranged the pillows and pulled back the coverlet, and the cat jumped to the foot of the bed but remained humped up, tail coiled beneath him, waiting till his master was stretched out at length before burrowing a little hollow to curl up in. chapter ii nearly two years ago durtal had ceased to associate with men of letters. they were represented in books and in the book-chat columns of magazines as forming an aristocracy which had a monopoly on intelligence. their conversation, if one believed what one read, sparkled with effervescent and stimulating wit. durtal had difficulty accounting to himself for the persistence of this illusion. his sad experience led him to believe that every literary man belonged to one of two classes, the thoroughly commercial or the utterly impossible. the first consisted of writers spoiled by the public, and drained dry in consequence, but "successful." ravenous for notice they aped the ways of the world of big business, delighted in gala dinners, gave formal evening parties, spoke of copyrights, sales, and long run plays, and made great display of wealth. the second consisted of café loafers, "bohemians." rolling on the benches, gorged with beer they feigned an exaggerated modesty and at the same time cried their wares, aired their genius, and abused their betters. there was now no place where one could meet a few artists and privately, intimately, discuss ideas at ease. one was at the mercy of the café crowd or the drawing-room company. one's interlocutor was listening avidly to steal one's ideas, and behind one's back one was being vituperated. and the women were always intruding. in this indiscriminate world there was no illuminating criticism, nothing but small talk, elegant or inelegant. then durtal learned, also by experience, that one cannot associate with thieves without becoming either a thief or a dupe, and finally he broke off relations with his confrères. he not only had no sympathy but no common topic of conversation with them. formerly when he accepted naturalism--airtight and unsatisfactory as it was--he had been able to argue esthetics with them, but now! "the point is," des hermies was always telling him, "that there is a basic difference between you and the other realists, and no patched-up alliance could possibly be of long duration. you execrate the age and they worship it. there is the whole matter. you were fated some day to get away from this americanized art and attempt to create something less vulgar, less miserably commonplace, and infuse a little spirituality into it. "in all your books you have fallen on our _fin de siècle_--our _queue du siècle_--tooth and nail. but, lord! a man soon gets tired of whacking something that doesn't fight back but merely goes its own way repeating its offences. you needed to escape into another epoch and get your bearings while waiting for a congenial subject to present itself. that explains your spiritual disarray of the last few months and your immediate recovery as soon as you stumbled onto giles de rais." des hermies had diagnosed him accurately. the day on which durtal had plunged into the frightful and delightful latter mediæval age had been the dawn of a new existence. the flouting of his actual surroundings brought peace to durtal's soul, and he had completely reorganized his life, mentally cloistering himself, far from the furore of contemporary letters, in the château de tiffauges with the monster bluebeard, with whom he lived in perfect accord, even in mischievous amity. thus history had for durtal supplanted the novel, whose forced banality, conventionality, and tidy structure of plot simply griped him. yet history, too, was only a peg for a man of talent to hang style and ideas on, for events could not fail to be coloured by the temperament and distorted by the bias of the historian. as for the documents and sources! well attested as they might be, they were all subject to revision, even to contradiction by others exhumed later which were no less authentic than the first and which also but waited their turn to be refuted by newer discoveries. in the present rage for grubbing around in dusty archives writing of history served as an outlet for the pedantry of the moles who reworked their mouldy findings and were duly rewarded by the institute with medals and diplomas. for durtal history was, then, the most pretentious as it was the most infantile of deceptions. old clio ought to be represented with a sphinx's head, mutton-chop whiskers, and one of those padded bonnets which babies wore to keep them from bashing their little brains out when they took a tumble. of course exactitude was impossible. why should he dream of getting at the whole truth about the middle ages when nobody had been able to give a full account of the revolution, of the commune for that matter? the best he could do was to imagine himself in the midst of creatures of that other epoch, wearing their antique garb, thinking their thoughts, and then, having saturated himself with their spirit, to convey his illusion by means of adroitly selected details. that is practically what michelet did, and though the garrulous old gossip drivelled endlessly about matters of supreme unimportance and ecstasized in his mild way over trivial anecdotes which he expanded beyond all proportion, and though his sentimentality and chauvinism sometimes discredited his quite plausible conjectures, he was nevertheless the only french historian who had overcome the limitation of time and made another age live anew before our eyes. hysterical, garrulous, manneristic as he was, there was yet a truly epic sweep in certain passages of his history of france. the personages were raised from the oblivion into which the dry-as-dust professors had sunk them, and became live human beings. what matter, then, if michelet was the least trustworthy of historians since he was the most personal and the most evocative? as for the others, they simply ferreted around among the old state papers, clipped them, and, following m. taine's example, arranged, ticketed, and mounted their sensational gleanings in logical sequence, rejecting, of course, everything that did not advance the case they were trying to make. they denied themselves imagination and enthusiasm and claimed that they did not invent. true enough, but they did none the less distort history by the selection they employed. and how simply and summarily they disposed of things! it was discovered that such and such an event occurred in france in several communities, and straightway it was decided that the whole country lived, acted, and thought in a certain manner at a certain hour, on a certain day, in a certain year. no less than michelet they were doughty falsifiers, but they lacked his vision. they dealt in knickknacks, and their trivialities were as far from creating a unified impression as were the pointillistic puzzles of modern painters and the word hashes cooked up by the decadent poets. and worst of all, thought durtal, the biographers. the depilators! taking all the hair off a real man's chest. they wrote ponderous tomes to prove that jan steen was a teetotaler. somebody had deloused villon and shown that the grosse margot of the ballade was not a woman but an inn sign. pretty soon they would be representing the poet as a priggishly honest and judicious man. one would say that in writing their monographs these historians feared to dishonour themselves by treating of artists who had tasted somewhat fully and passionately of life. hence the expurgation of masterpieces that an artist might appear as commonplace a bourgeois as his commentator. this rehabilitation school, today all-powerful, exasperated durtal. in writing his study of gilles de rais he was not going to fall into the error of these bigoted sustainers of middle-class morality. with his ideas of history he could not claim to give an exact likeness of bluebeard, but he was not going to concede to the public taste for mediocrity in well-and evil-doing by whitewashing the man. durtal's material for this study consisted of: a copy of the memorial addressed by the heirs of gilles de rais to the king, notes taken from the several true copies at paris of the proceedings in the criminal trial at nantes, extracts from vallet de viriville's history of charles vii, finally the _notice_ by armand guéraut and the biography of the abbé bossard. these sufficed to bring before durtal's eyes the formidable figure of that satanic fifteenth century character who was the most artistically, exquisitely cruel, and the most scoundrelly of men. no one knew of the projected study but des hermies, whom durtal saw nearly every day. they had met in the strangest of homes, that of chantelouve, the catholic historian, who boasted of receiving all classes of people. and every week in the social season that drawing-room in the rue de bagneux was the scene of a heterogeneous gathering of under sacristans, café poets, journalists, actresses, partisans of the cause of naundorff,[1] and dabblers in equivocal sciences. [footnote 1: a watchmaker who at the time of the july monarchy attempted to pass himself off for louis xvii.] this salon was on the edge of the clerical world, and many religious came here at the risk of their reputations. the dinners were discriminately, if unconventionally, ordered. chantelouve, rotund, jovial, bade everyone make himself at home. now and then through his smoked spectacles there stole an ambiguous look which might have given an analyst pause, but the man's bonhomie, quite ecclesiastical, was instantly disarming. madame was no beauty, but possessed a certain bizarre charm and was always surrounded. she, however, remained silent and did nothing to encourage her voluble admirers. as void of prudery as her husband, she listened impassively, absently, with her thoughts evidently afar, to the boldest of conversational imprudences. at one of these evening parties, while la rousseil, recently converted, howled a hymn, durtal, sitting in a corner having a quiet smoke, had been struck by the physiognomy and bearing of des hermies, who stood out sharply from the motley throng of defrocked priests and grubby poets packed into chantelouve's library and drawing-room. among these smirking and carefully composed faces, des hermies, evidently a man of forceful individuality, seemed, and probably felt, singularly out of place. he was tall, slender, somewhat pale. his eyes, narrowed in a frown, had the cold blue gleam of sapphires. the nose was short and sharp, the cheeks smooth shaven. with his flaxen hair and vandyke he might have been a norwegian or an englishman in not very good health. his garments were of london make, and the long, tight, wasp-waisted coat, buttoned clear up to the neck, seemed to enclose him like a box. very careful of his person, he had a manner all his own of drawing off his gloves, rolling them up with an almost inaudible crackling, then seating himself, crossing his long, thin legs, and leaning over to the right, reaching into the patch pocket on his left side and bringing forth the embossed japanese pouch which contained his tobacco and cigarette papers. he was methodic, guarded, and very cold in the presence of strangers. his superior and somewhat bored attitude, not exactly relieved by his curt, dry laugh, awakened, at a first meeting, a serious antipathy which he sometimes justified by venomous words, by meaningless silences, by unspoken innuendoes. he was respected and feared at chantelouve's, but when one came to know him one found, beneath his defensive shell, great warmth of heart and a capacity for true friendship of the kind that is not expansive but is capable of sacrifice and can always be relied upon. how did he live? was he rich or just comfortable? no one knew, and he, tight lipped, never spoke of his affairs. he was doctor of the faculty of paris--durtal had chanced to see his diploma--but he spoke of medicine with great disdain. he said he had become convinced of the futility of all he had been taught, and had thrown it over for homeopathy, which in turn he had thrown over for a bolognese system, and this last he was now excoriating. there were times when durtal could not doubt that his friend was an author, for des hermies spoke understandingly of tricks of the trade which one learns only after long experience, and his literary judgment was not that of a layman. when, one day, durtal reproached him for concealing his productions, he replied with a certain melancholy, "no, i caught myself in time to choke down a base instinct, the desire of resaying what has been said. i could have plagiarized flaubert as well as, if not better than, the poll parrots who are doing it, but i decided not to. i would rather phrase abstruse medicaments of rare application; perhaps it is not very necessary, but at least it isn't cheap." what surprised durtal was his friend's prodigious erudition. des hermies had the run of the most out-of-the-way book shops, he was an authority on antique customs and, at the same time, on the latest scientific discoveries. he hobnobbed with all the freaks in paris, and from them he became deeply learned in the most diverse and hostile sciences. he, so cold and correct, was almost never to be found save in the company of astrologers, cabbalists, demonologists, alchemists, theologians, or inventors. weary of the advances and the facile intimacies of artists, durtal had been attracted by this man's fastidious reserve. it was perfectly natural that durtal, surfeited with skin-deep friendships, should feel drawn to des hermies, but it was difficult to imagine why des hermies, with his taste for strange associations, should take a liking to durtal, who was the soberest, steadiest, most normal of men. perhaps des hermies felt the need of talking with a sane human being now and then as a relief. and, too, the literary discussions which he loved were out of the question with these addlepates who monologued indefatigably on the subject of their monomania and their ego. at odds, like durtal, with his confrères, des hermies could expect nothing from the physicians, whom he avoided, nor from the specialists with whom he consorted. as a matter of fact there had been a juncture of two beings whose situation was almost identical. at first restrained and on the defensive, they had come finally to _tu-toi_ each other and establish a relation which had been a great advantage to durtal. his family were dead, the friends of his youth married and scattered, and since his withdrawal from the world of letters he had been reduced to complete solitude. des hermies kept him from going stale and then, finding that durtal had not lost all interest in mankind, promised to introduce him to a really lovable old character. of this man des hermies spoke much, and one day he said, "you really ought to know him. he likes the books of yours which i have lent him, and he wants to meet you. you think i am interested only in obscure and twisted natures. well, you will find carhaix really unique. he is the one catholic with intelligence and without sanctimoniousness; the one poor man with envy and hatred for none." chapter iii durtal was in a situation familiar to all bachelors who have the concierge do their cleaning. only these know how a tiny lamp can fairly drink up oil, and how the contents of a bottle of cognac can become paler and weaker without ever diminishing. they know, too, how a once comfortable bed can become forbidding, and how scrupulously a concierge can respect its least fold or crease. they learn to be resigned and to wash out a glass when they are thirsty and make their own fire when they are cold. durtal's concierge was an old man with drooping moustache and a powerful breath of "three-six." indolent and placid, he opposed an unbudgeable inertia to durtal's frantic and profanely expressed demand that the sweeping be done at the same hour every morning. threats, prayers, insults, the withholding of gratuities, were without effect. père rateau took off his cap, scratched his head, promised, in the tone of a man much moved, to mend his ways, and next day came later than ever. "what a nuisance!" thought durtal today, as he heard a key turning in the lock, then he looked at his watch and observed that once again the concierge was arriving after three o'clock in the afternoon. there was nothing for it but to submit with a sigh to the ensuing hullabaloo. rateau, somnolent and pacific in his lodge, became a demon when he got a broom in his hand. in this sedentary being, who could drowse all morning in the stale basement atmosphere heavy with the cumulative aroma of many meat-stews, a martial ardour, a warlike ferocity, then asserted themselves, and like a red revolutionary he assaulted the bed, charged the chairs, manhandled the picture frames, knocked the tables over, rattled the water pitcher, and whirled durtal's brogues about by the laces as when a pillaging conqueror hauls a ravished victim along by the hair. so he stormed the apartment like a barricade and triumphantly brandished his battle standard, the dust rag, over the reeking carnage of the furniture. durtal at such times sought refuge in the room which was not being attacked. today rateau launched his offensive against the workroom, so durtal fled to the bedroom. from there, through the half open door, he could see the enemy, with a feather duster like a mohican war bonnet over his head, doing a scalp dance around a table. "if i only knew at what time that pest would break in on me so i could always arrange to be out!" groaned durtal. now he ground his teeth, as rateau, with a yell, grabbed up the mop and, skating around on one leg, belaboured the floor lustily. the perspiring conqueror then appeared in the doorway and advanced to reduce the chamber where durtal was. the latter had to return to the subjugated workroom, and the cat, shocked by the racket, arched its back and, rubbing against its master's legs, followed him to a place of safety. in the thick of the conflict des hermies rang the door bell. "i'll put on my shoes," cried durtal, "and we'll get out of this. look--" he passed his hand over the table and brought back a coat of grime that made him appear to be wearing a grey glove--"look. that brute turns the house upside down and knocks everything to pieces, and here's the result. he leaves more dust when he goes than he found when he came in!" "bah," said des hermies, "dust isn't a bad thing. besides having the taste of ancient biscuit and the smell of an old book, it is the floating velvet which softens hard surfaces, the fine dry wash which takes the garishness out of crude colour schemes. it is the caparison of abandon, the veil of oblivion. who, then, can despise it--aside from certain persons whose lamentable lot must often have wrung a tear from you? "imagine living in one of these paris _passages_. think of a consumptive spitting blood and suffocating in a room one flight up, behind the 'ass-back' gables of, say the passage des panoramas, for instance. when the window is open the dust comes in impregnated with snuff and saturated with clammy exudations. the invalid, choking, begs for air, and in order that he may breathe the window is _closed_. "well, the dust that you complain of is rather milder than that. anyway i don't hear you coughing.... but if you're ready we'll be on our way." "where shall we go?" asked durtal. des hermies did not answer. they left the rue du regard, in which durtal lived, and went down the rue du cherche-midi as far as the croix-rouge. "let's go on to the place saint-sulpice," said des hermies, and after a silence he continued, "speaking of dust, 'out of which we came and to which we shall return,' do you know that after we are dead our corpses are devoured by different kinds of worms according as we are fat or thin? in fat corpses one species of maggot is found, the rhizophagus, while thin corpses are patronized only by the phora. the latter is evidently the aristocrat, the fastidious gourmet which turns up its nose at a heavy meal of copious breasts and juicy fat bellies. just think, there is no perfect equality, even in the manner in which we feed the worms. "but this is where we stop." they had come to where the rue férou opens into the place saint-sulpice. durtal looked up and on an unenclosed porch in the flank of the church of saint-sulpice he read the placard, "tower open to visitors." "let's go up," said des hermies. "what for! in this weather?" and durtal pointed at the yellow sky over which black clouds, like factory smoke, were racing, so low that the tin chimneys seemed to penetrate them and crenelate them with little spots of clarity. "i am not enthusiastic about trying to climb a flight of broken, irregular stairs. and anyway, what do you think you can see up there? it's misty and getting dark. no, have a heart." "what difference is it to you where you take your airing? come on. i assure you you will see something unusual." "oh! you brought me here on purpose?" "yes." "why didn't you say so?" he followed des hermies into the darkness under the porch. at the back of the cellarway a little essence lamp, hanging from a nail, lighted a door, the tower entrance. for a long time, in utter darkness, they climbed a winding stair. durtal was wondering where the keeper had gone, when, turning a corner, he saw a shaft of light, then he stumbled against the rickety supports of a "double-current" lamp in front of a door. des hermies pulled a bell cord and the door swung back. above them on a landing they could see feet, whether of a man or of a woman they could not tell. "ah! it's you, m. des hermies," and a woman bent over, describing an arc, so that her head was in a stream of light. "louis will be very glad to see you." "is he in?" asked des hermies, reaching up and shaking hands with the woman. "he is in the tower. won't you stop and rest a minute?" "why, when we come down, if you don't mind." "then go up until you see a grated door--but what an old fool i am! you know the way as well as i do." "to be sure, to be sure.... but, in passing, permit me to introduce my friend durtal." durtal, somewhat flustered, made a bow in the darkness. "ah, monsieur, how fortunate. louis is so anxious to meet you." "where is he taking me?" durtal wondered as again he groped along behind his friend, now and then, just as he felt completely lost, coming to the narrow strip of light admitted by a barbican, and again proceeding in inky darkness. the climb seemed endless. finally they came to the barred door, opened it, and found themselves on a frame balcony with the abyss above and below. des hermies, who seemed perfectly at home, pointed downward, then upward. they were halfway up a tower the face of which was overlaid with enormous criss-crossing joists and beams riveted together with bolt heads as big as a man's fist. durtal could see no one. he turned and, clinging to the hand rail, groped along the wall toward the daylight which stole down between the inclined leaves of the sounding-shutters. leaning out over the precipice, he discerned beneath him a formidable array of bells hanging from oak supports lined with iron. the sombre bell metal was slick as if oiled and absorbed light without refracting it. bending backward, he looked into the upper abyss and perceived new batteries of bells overhead. these bore the raised effigy of a bishop, and a place in each, worn by the striking of the clapper, shone golden. all were in quiescence, but the wind rattled against the sounding-shutters, stormed through the cage of timbers, howled along the spiral stair, and was caught and held whining in the bell vases. suddenly a light breeze, like the stirring of confined air, fanned his cheek. he looked up. the current had been set in motion by the swaying of a great bell beginning to get under way. there was a crash of sound, the bell gathered momentum, and now the clapper, like a gigantic pestle, was grinding the great bronze mortar with a deafening clamour. the tower trembled, the balcony on which durtal was standing trepidated like the floor of a railway coach, there was the continuous rolling of a mighty reverberation, interrupted regularly by the jar of metal upon metal. in vain durtal scanned the upper abyss. finally he managed to catch sight of a leg, swinging out into space and back again, in one of those wooden stirrups, two of which, he had noticed, were fastened to the bottom of every bell. leaning out so that he was almost prone on one of the timbers, he finally perceived the ringer, clinging with his hands to two iron handles and balancing over the gulf with his eyes turned heavenward. durtal was shocked by the face. never had he seen such disconcerting pallor. it was not the waxen hue of the convalescent, not the lifeless grey of the perfume-or snuff-maker, it was a prison pallor of a bloodless lividness unknown today, the ghastly complexion of a wretch of the middle ages shut up till death in a damp, airless, pitch-dark _in-pace_. the eyes were blue, prominent, even bulging, and had the mystic's readiness to tears, but their expression was singularly contradicted by the truculent kaiser wilhelm moustache. the man seemed at once a dreamer and a fighter, and it would have been difficult to tell which character predominated. he gave the bell stirrup a last yank with his foot and with a heave of his loins regained his equilibrium. he mopped his brow and smiled down at des hermies. "well! well!" he said, "you here." he descended, and when he learned durtal's name his face brightened and the two shook hands cordially. "we have been expecting you a long time, monsieur. our friend here speaks of you at great length, and we have been asking him why he didn't bring you around to see us. but come," he said eagerly, "i must conduct you on a tour of inspection about my little domain. i have read your books and i know a man like you can't help falling in love with my bells. but we must go higher if we are really to see them." and he bounded up a staircase, while des hermies pushed durtal along in front of him in a way that made retreat impossible. as he was once more groping along the winding stairs, durtal asked, "why didn't you tell me your friend carhaix--for of course that's who he is--was a bell-ringer?" des hermies did not have time to answer, for at that moment, having reached the door of the room beneath the tower roof, carhaix was standing aside to let them pass. they were in a rotunda pierced in the centre by a great circular hole which had around it a corroded iron balustrade orange with rust. by standing close to the railing, which was like the well curb of the pit, one could see down, down, to the foundation. the "well" seemed to be undergoing repairs, and from the top to the bottom of the tube the beams supporting the bells were crisscrossed with timbers bracing the walls. "don't be afraid to lean over," said carhaix. "now tell me, monsieur, how do you like my foster children?" but durtal was hardly heeding. he felt uneasy, here in space, and as if drawn toward the gaping chasm, whence ascended, from time to time, the desultory clanging of the bell, which was still swaying and would be some time in returning to immobility. he recoiled. "wouldn't you like to pay a visit to the top of the tower?" asked carhaix, pointing to an iron stair sealed into the wall. "no, another day." they descended and carhaix, in silence, opened a door. they advanced into an immense storeroom, containing colossal broken statues of saints, scaly and dilapidated apostles, saint matthew legless and armless, saint luke escorted by a fragmentary ox, saint mark lacking a shoulder and part of his beard, saint peter holding up an arm from which the hand holding the keys was broken off. "there used to be a swing in here," said carhaix, "for the little girls of the neighbourhood. but the privilege was abused, as privileges always are. in the dusk all kinds of things were done for a few sous. the curate finally had the swing taken down and the room closed up." "and what is that over there?" inquired durtal, perceiving, in a corner, an enormous fragment of rounded metal, like half a gigantic skull-cap. on it the dust lay thick, and and in the hollow the meshes on meshes of fine silken web, dotted with the black bodies of lurking spiders, were like a fisherman's hand net weighted with little slugs of lead. "that? ah, monsieur!" and there was fire in carhaix's mild eyes, "that is the skull of an old, old bell whose like is not cast these days. the ring of that bell, monsieur, was like a voice from heaven." and suddenly he exploded, "bells have had their day!--as i suppose des hermies has told you.--bell ringing is a lost art. and why wouldn't it be? look at the men who are doing it nowadays. charcoal burners, roofers, masons out of a job, discharged firemen, ready to try their hand at anything for a franc. there are curates who think nothing of saying, 'need a man? go out in the street and pick up a soldier for ten sous. he'll do.' that's why you read about accidents like the one that happened lately at notre dame, i think. the fellow didn't withdraw in time and the bell came down like the blade of a guillotine and whacked his leg right off. "people will spend thirty thousand francs on an altar baldachin, and ruin themselves for music, and they have to have gas in their churches, and lord knows what all besides, but when you mention bells they shrug their shoulders. do you know, m. durtal, there are only two men in paris who can ring chords? myself and père michel, and he is not married and his morals are so bad that he can't be regularly attached to a church. he can ring music the like of which you never heard, but he, too, is losing interest. he drinks, and, drunk or sober, goes to work, then he bowls up again and goes to sleep. "yes, the bell has had its day. why, this very morning, monsignor made his pastoral visit to this church. at eight o'clock we sounded his arrival. the six bells you see down here boomed out melodiously. but there were sixteen up above, and it was a shame. those extras jangled away haphazard. it was a riot of discord." carhaix ruminated in silence as they descended. then, "ah, monsieur," he said, his watery eyes fairly bubbling, "the ring of bells, there's your real sacred music." they were now above the main door of the building and they came out into the great covered gallery on which the towers rest. carhaix smiled and pointed out a complete peal of miniature bells, installed between two pillars on a plank. he pulled the cords, and, in ecstasies, his eyes protruding, his moustache bristling, he listened to the frail tinkling of his toy. and suddenly he relinquished the cords. "i once had a crazy idea," he said, "of forming a class here and teaching all the intricacies of the craft, but no one cared to learn a trade which was steadily going out of existence. why, you know we don't even sound for weddings any more, and nobody comes to look at the tower. "but i really can't complain. i hate the streets. when i try to cross one i lose my head. so i stay in the tower all day, except once in the early morning when i go to the other side of the square for a bucket of water. now my wife doesn't like it up here. you see, the snow does come in through all the loopholes and it heaps up, and sometimes we are snowbound with the wind blowing a gale." they had come to carhaix's lodge. his wife was waiting for them on the threshold. "come in, gentlemen," she said. "you have certainly earned some refreshment," and she pointed to four glasses which she had set out on the table. the bell-ringer lighted a little briar pipe, while des hermies and durtal each rolled a cigarette. "pretty comfortable place," remarked durtal, just to be saying something. it was a vast room, vaulted, with walls of rough stone, and lighted by a semi-circular window just under the ceiling. the tiled floor was badly covered by an infamous carpet, and the furniture, very simple, consisted of a round dining-room table, some old _bergère_ armchairs covered with slate-blue utrecht velours, a little stained walnut sideboard on which were several plates and pitchers of breton faience, and opposite the sideboard a little black bookcase, which might contain fifty books. "of course a literary man would be interested in the books," said carhaix, who had been watching durtal. "you mustn't be too critical, monsieur. i have only the tools of my trade." durtal went over and took a look. the collection consisted largely of works on bells. he read some of the titles: on the cover of a slim parchment volume he deciphered the faded legend, hand-written, in rust-coloured ink, "_de tintinnabulis_ by jerome magius, 1664"; then, pell-mell, there were: _a curious and edifying miscellany concerning church bells_ by dom rémi carré; another _edifying miscellany_, anonymous; a _treatise of bells_ by jean-baptiste thiers, curate of champrond and vibraye; a ponderous tome by an architect named blavignac; a smaller work entitled _essay on the symbolism of bells_ by a parish priest of poitiers; a _notice_ by the abbé baraud; then a whole series of brochures, with covers of grey paper, bearing no titles. "it's no collection at all," said carhaix with a sigh. "the best ones are wanting, the _de campanis commentarius_ of angelo rocca and the _de tintinnabulo_ of percichellius, but they are so hard to find, and so expensive when you do find them." a glance sufficed for the rest of the books, most of them being pious works, latin and french bibles, an _imitation of christ_, görres' _mystik_ in five volumes, the abbé aubert's _history and theory of religious symbolism_, pluquet's _dictionary of heresies_, and several lives of saints. "ah, monsieur, my own books are not much account, but des hermies lends me what he knows will interest me." "don't talk so much!" said his wife. "give monsieur a chance to sit down," and she handed durtal a brimming glass aromatic with the acidulous perfume of genuine cider. in response to his compliments she told him that the cider came from brittany and was made by relatives of hers at landévennec, her and carhaix's native village. she was delighted when durtal affirmed that long ago he had spent a day in landévennec. "why, then we know each other already!" she said, shaking hands with him again. the room was heated to suffocation by a stove whose pipe zigzagged over to the window and out through a sheet-iron square nailed to the sash in place of one of the panes. carhaix and his good wife, with her honest, weak face and frank, kind eyes, were the most restful of people. durtal, made drowsy by the warmth and the quiet domesticity, let his thoughts wander. he said to himself, "if i had a place like this, above the roofs of paris, i would fix it up and make of it a real haven of refuge. here, in the clouds, alone and aloof, i would work away on my book and take my time about it, years perhaps. what inconceivable happiness it would be to escape from the age, and, while the waves of human folly were breaking against the foot of the tower, to sit up here, out of it all, and pore over antique tomes by the shaded light of the lamp." he smiled at the naïveté of his daydream. "i certainly do like your place," he said aloud, as if to sum up his reflections. "oh, you wouldn't if you had to live here," said the good wife. "we have plenty of room, too much room, because there are a couple of bedchambers as big as this, besides plenty of closet space, but it's so inconvenient--and so cold! and no kitchen--" and she pointed to a landing where, blocking the stairway, the cook stove had had to be installed. "and there are so many, many steps to go up when you come back from market. i am getting old, and i have a twinge of the rheumatics whenever i think about making the climb." "you can't even drive a nail into this rock wall and have a peg to hang things on," said carhaix. "but i like this place. i was made for it. now my wife dreams constantly of spending her last days in landévennec." des hermies rose. all shook hands, and monsieur and madame made durtal swear that he would come again. "what refreshing people!" exclaimed durtal as he and des hermies crossed the square. "and carhaix is a mine of information." "but tell me, what the devil is an educated man, of no ordinary intelligence, doing, working as a--as a day labourer?" "if carhaix could hear you! but, my friend, in the middle ages bell-ringers were high officials. true, the craft has declined considerably in modern times. i couldn't tell you myself how carhaix became hipped on the subject of bells. all i know is that he studied at a seminary in brittany, that he had scruples of conscience and considered himself unworthy to enter the priesthood, that he came to paris and apprenticed himself to a very intellectual master bell-ringer, père gilbert, who had in his cell at notre dame some ancient and of course unique plans of paris that would make your mouth water. gilbert wasn't a 'labourer,' either. he was an enthusiastic collector of documents relating to old paris. from notre dame carhaix came to saint sulpice, fifteen years ago, and has been there ever since." "how did you happen to make his acquaintance?" "first he was my patient, then my friend. i've known him ten years." "funny. he doesn't look like a seminary product. most of them have the shuffling gait and sheepish air of an old gardener." "carhaix will be all right for a few more years," said des hermies, as if to himself, "and then let us mercifully wish him a speedy death. the church, which has begun by sanctioning the introduction of gas into the chapels, will end by installing mechanical chimes instead of bells. that will be charming. the machinery will be run by electricity and we shall have real up-to-date, timbreless, protestant peals." "then carhaix's wife will have a chance to go back to finistère." "no, they are too poor, and then too carhaix would be broken-hearted if he lost his bells. curious, a man's affection for the object that he manipulates. the mechanic's love for his machine. the thing that one tends, and that obeys one, becomes personalized, and one ends by falling in love with it. and the bell is an instrument in a class of its own. it is baptized like a christian, anointed with sacramental oil, and according to the pontifical rubric it is also to be sanctified, in the interior of its chalice, by a bishop, in seven cruciform unctions with the oil of the infirm that it may send to the dying the message which shall sustain them in their last agonies. "it is the herald of the church, the voice from without as the priest is the voice from within. so you see it isn't a mere piece of bronze, a reversed mortar to be swung at a rope's end. add that bells, like fine wines, ripen with age, that their tone becomes more ample and mellow, that they lose their sharp bouquet, their raw flavour. that will explain--imperfectly--how one can become attached to them." "why, you seem to be an enthusiast yourself." "oh, i don't know anything about it. i am simply repeating what i have heard carhaix say. if the subject interests you, he will be only too glad to teach you the symbolism of bells. he is inexhaustible. the man is a monomaniac." "i can understand," said durtal dreamily. "i live in a quarter where there are a good many convents and at dawn the air is a-tingle with the vibrance of the chimes. when i was ill i used to lie awake at night awaiting the sound of the matin bells and welcoming them as a deliverance. in the grey light i felt that i was being cuddled by a distant and secret caress, that a lullaby was crooned over me, and a cool hand applied to my burning forehead. i had the assurance that the folk who were awake were praying for the others, and consequently for me. i felt less lonely. i really believe the bells are sounded for the special benefit of the sick who cannot sleep." "the bells ring for others, notably for the trouble-makers. the rather common inscription for the side of a bell, '_paco cruentos_,' 'i pacify the bloody-minded,' is singularly apt, when you think it over." this conversation was still haunting durtal when he went to bed. carhaix's phrase, "the ring of the bells is the real sacred music," took hold of him like an obsession. and drifting back through the centuries he saw in dream the slow processional of monks and the kneeling congregations responding to the call of the angelus and drinking in the balm of holy sound as if it were consecrated wine. all the details he had ever known of the liturgies of ages came crowding into his mind. he could hear the sounding of matin invitatories; chimes telling a rosary of harmony over tortuous labyrinths of narrow streets, over cornet towers, over pepper-box pignons, over dentelated walls; the chimes chanting the canonical hours, prime and tierce, sexte and none, vespers and compline; celebrating the joy of a city with the tinkling laughter of the little bells, tolling its sorrow with the ponderous lamentation of the great ones. and there were master ringers in those times, makers of chords, who could send into the air the expression of the whole soul of a community. and the bells which they served as submissive sons and faithful deacons were as humble and as truly of the people as was the church itself. as the priest at certain times put off his chasuble, so the bell at times had put off its sacred character and spoken to the baptized on fair day and market day, inviting them, in the event of rain, to settle their affairs inside the nave of the church and, that the sanctity of the place might not be violated by the conflicts arising from sharp bargaining, imposing upon them a probity unknown before or since. today bells spoke an obsolete language, incomprehensible to man. carhaix was under no misapprehension. living in an aërial tomb outside the human scramble, he was faithful to his art, and in consequence no longer had any reason for existing. he vegetated, superfluous and demoded, in a society which insisted that for its amusement the holy place be turned into a concert hall. he was like a creature reverted, a relic of a bygone age, and he was supremely contemptuous of the miserable _fin de siècle_ church showmen who to draw fashionable audiences did not fear to offer the attraction of cavatinas and waltzes rendered on the cathedral organ by manufacturers of profane music, by ballet mongers and comic opera-wrights. "poor carhaix!" said durtal, as he blew out the candle. "another who loves this epoch about as well as des hermies and i do. but he has the tutelage of his bells, and certainly among his wards he has his favourite. he is not to be pitied. he has his hobby, which renders life possible for him, as hobbies do." chapter iv "how is gilles de rais progressing?" "i have finished the first part of his life, making just the briefest possible mention of his virtues and achievements." "which are of no interest," remarked des hermies. "evidently, since the name of gilles de rais would have perished four centuries ago but for the enormities of vice which it symbolizes. i am coming to the crimes now. the great difficulty, you see, is to explain how this man, who was a brave captain and a good christian, all of a sudden became a sacrilegious sadist and a coward." "metamorphosed over night, as it were." "worse. as if at a touch of a fairy's wand or of a playwright's pen. that is what mystifies his biographers. of course untraceable influences must have been at work a long time, and there must have been occasional outcropping not mentioned in the chronicles. here is a recapitulation of our material. "gilles de rais was born about 1404 on the boundary between brittany and anjou, in the château de mâchecoul. we know nothing of his childhood. his father died about the end of october, 1415, and his mother almost immediately married a sieur d'estouville, abandoning her two sons, gilles and rené. they became the wards of their grandfather, jean de craon, 'a man old and ancient and of exceeding great age,' as the texts say. he seems to have allowed his two charges to run wild, and then to have got rid of gilles by marrying him to catherine de thouars, november 30, 1420. "gilles is known to have been at the court of the dauphin five years later. his contemporaries represent him as a robust, active man, of striking beauty and rare elegance. we have no explicit statement as to the rôle he played in this court, but one can easily imagine what sort of treatment the richest baron in france received at the hands of an impoverished king. "for at that moment charles vii was in extremities. he was without money, prestige, or real authority. even the cities along the loire scarcely obeyed him. france, decimated a few years before, by the plague, and further depopulated by massacres, was in a deplorable situation. "england, rising from the sea like the fabled polyp the kraken, had cast her tentacles over brittany, normandy, l'ile de france, part of picardy, the entire north, the interior as far as orléans, and crawling forward left in her wake towns squeezed dry and country exhausted. "in vain charles clamoured for subsidies, invented excuses for exactions, and pressed the imposts. the paralyzed cities and fields abandoned to the wolves could afford no succour. remember his very claim to the throne was disputed. he became like a blind man going the rounds with a tin cup begging sous. his court at chinon was a snarl of intrigue complicated by an occasional murder. weary of being hunted, more or less out of harm's way behind the loire, charles and his partisans finally consoled themselves by flaunting in the face of inevitable disaster the devil-may-care debaucheries of the condemned making the most of the few moments left them. forays and loans furnished them with opulent cheer and permitted them to carouse on a grand scale. the eternal _qui-vive_ and the misfortunes of war were forgotten in the arms of courtesans. "what more could have been expected of a used-up sleepy-headed king, the issue of an infamous mother and a mad father?" "oh, whatever you say about charles vii pales beside the testimony of the portrait of him in the louvre painted by foucquet. that bestial face, with the eyes of a small-town ursurer and the sly psalm-singing mouth that butter wouldn't melt in, has often arrested me. foucquet depicts a debauched priest who has a bad cold and has been drinking sour wine. yet you can see that this monarch is of the very same type as the more refined, less salacious, more prudently cruel, more obstinate and cunning louis xi, his son and successor. well, charles vii was the man who had jean sans peur assassinated, and who abandoned jeanne d'arc. what more need be said?" "what indeed? well, gilles de rais, who had raised an army at his own expense, was certainly welcomed by this court with open arms. there is no doubt that he footed the bills for tournaments and banquets, that he was vigilantly 'tapped' by the courtiers, and that he lent the king staggering sums. but in spite of his popularity he never seems to have evaded responsibility and wallowed in debauchery, like the king. we find gilles shortly afterward defending anjou and maine against the english. the chronicles say that he was 'a good and hardy captain,' but his 'goodness' and 'hardiness' did not prevent him from being borne back by force of numbers. the english armies, uniting, inundated the country, and, pushing on unchecked, invaded the interior. the king was ready to flee to the mediterranean provinces and let france go, when jeanne d'arc appeared. "gilles returned to court and was entrusted by charles with the 'guard and defence' of the maid of orleans. he followed her everywhere, fought at her side, even under the walls of paris, and was with her at rheims the day of the coronation, at which time, says monstrelet, the king rewarded his valour by naming him marshal of france, at the age of twenty-five." "lord!" des hermies interrupted, "promotion came rapidly in those times. but i suppose warriors then weren't the bemedalled, time-serving incompetents they are now." "oh, don't be misled. the title of marshal of france didn't mean so much in gilles's time as it did afterward in the reign of francis i, and nothing like what it has come to mean since napoleon. "what was the conduct of gilles de rais toward jeanne d'arc? we have no certain knowledge. m. vallet de viriville, without proof, accuses him of treachery. m. l'abbé bossard, on the contrary, claims--and alleges plausible reasons for entertaining the opinion--that he was loyal to her and watched over her devotedly. "what is certain is that gilles's soul became saturated with mystical ideas. his whole history proves it. "he was constantly in association with this extraordinary maid whose adventures seemed to attest the possibility of divine intervention in earthly affairs. he witnessed the miracle of a peasant girl dominating a court of ruffians and bandits and arousing a cowardly king who was on the point of flight. he witnessed the incredible episode of a virgin bringing back to the fold such black rams as la hire, xaintrailles, beaumanoir, chabannes, dunois, and gaucourt, and washing their old fleeces whiter than snow. undoubtedly gilles also, under her shepherding, docilely cropped the white grass of the gospel, took communion the morning of a battle, and revered jeanne as a saint. "he saw the maid fulfil all her promises. she raised the siege of orléans, had the king consecrated at rheims, and then declared that her mission was accomplished and asked as a boon that she be permitted to return home. "now i should say that as a result of such an association gilles's mysticism began to soar. henceforth we have to deal with a man who is half-freebooter, half-monk. moreover--" "pardon the interruption, but i am not so sure that jeanne d'arc's intervention was a good thing for france." "why not?" "i will explain. you know that the defenders of charles were for the most part mediterranean cut-throats, ferocious pillagers, execrated by the very people they came to protect. the hundred years' war, in effect, was a war of the south against the north. england at that epoch had not got over the conquest and was norman in blood, language, and tradition. suppose jeanne d'arc had stayed with her mother and stuck to her knitting. charles vii would have been dispossessed and the war would have come to an end. the plantagenets would have reigned over england and france, which, in primeval times before the channel existed, formed one territory occupied by one race, as you know. thus there would have been a single united and powerful kingdom of the north, reaching as far as the province of languedoc and embracing peoples whose tastes, instincts, and customs were alike. on the other hand, the coronation of a valois at rheims created a heterogeneous and preposterous france, separating homogeneous elements, uniting the most incompatible nationalities, races the most hostile to each other, and identifying us--inseparably, alas!--with those stained-skinned, varnished-eyed munchers of chocolate and raveners of garlic, who are not frenchmen at all, but spaniards and italians. in a word, if it hadn't been for jeanne d'arc, france would not now belong to that line of histrionic, forensic, perfidious chatterboxes, the precious latin race--devil take it!" durtal raised his eyebrows. "my, my," he said, laughing. "your remarks prove to me that you are interested in 'our own, our native land.' i should never have suspected it of you." "of course you wouldn't," said des hermies, relighting his cigarette. "as has so often been said, 'my own, my native land is wherever i happen to feel at home.' now i don't feel at home except with the people of the north. but i interrupted you. let's get back to the subject. what were you saying?" "i forget. oh, yes. i was saying that the maid had completed her task. now we are confronted by a question to which there is seemingly no answer. what did gilles do when she was captured, how did he feel about her death? we cannot tell. we know that he was lurking in the vicinity of rouen at the time of the trial, but it is too much to conclude from that, like certain of his biographies, that he was plotting her rescue. "at any rate, after losing track of him completely, we find that he has shut himself in at his castle of tiffauges. "he is no longer the rough soldier, the uncouth fighting-man. at the time when the misdeeds are about to begin, the artist and man of letters develop in gilles and, taking complete possession of him, incite him, under the impulsion of a perverted mysticism, to the most sophisticated of cruelties, the most delicate of crimes. "for he was almost alone in his time, this baron de rais. in an age when his peers were simple brutes, he sought the delicate delirium of art, dreamed of a literature soul-searching and profound; he even composed a treatise on the art of evoking demons; he gloried in the music of the church, and would have nothing about his that was not rare and difficult to obtain. "he was an erudite latinist, a brilliant conversationalist, a sure and generous friend. he possessed a library extraordinary for an epoch when nothing was read but theology and lives of saints. we have the description of several of his manuscripts; suetonius, valerius maximus, and an ovid on parchment bound in red leather, with vermeil clasp and key. "these books were his passion. he carried them with him when he travelled. he had attached to his household a painter named thomas who illuminated them with ornate letters and miniatures, and gilles himself painted the enamels which a specialist--discovered after an assiduous search--set in the gold-inwrought bindings. gilles's taste in furnishings was elevated and bizarre. he revelled in abbatial stuffs, voluptuous silks, in the sombre gilding of old brocade. he liked knowingly spiced foods, ardent wines heavy with aromatics; he dreamed of unknown gems, weird stones, uncanny metals. he was the des esseintes of the fifteenth century! "all this was very expensive, less so, perhaps, than the luxurious court which made tiffauges a place like none other. "he had a guard of two hundred men, knights, captains, squires, pages, and all these people had personal attendants who were magnificently equipped at gilles's expense. the luxury of his chapel and collegium was madly extravagant. there was in residence at tiffauges a complete metropolitan clergy, deans, vicars, treasurers, canons, clerks, deacons, scholasters, and choir boys. there is an inventory extant of the surplices, stoles, and amices, and the fur choir hats with crowns of squirrel and linings of vair. there are countless sacerdotal ornaments. we find vermilion altar cloths, curtains of emerald silk, a cope of velvet, crimson and violet with orpheys of cloth of gold, another of rose damask, satin dalmatics for the deacons, baldachins figured with hawks and falcons of cyprus gold. we find plate, hammered chalices and ciboria crusted with uncut jewels. there are reliquaries, among them a silver head of saint honoré. a mass of sparkling jewelleries which an artist, installed in the château, cuts to order. "and anyone who came along was welcome. from all corners of france caravans journeyed toward this château where the artist, the poet, the scholar, found princely hospitality, cordial goodfellowship, gifts of welcome and largesse at departure. "already undermined by the demands which the war had made on it, his fortune was giving way beneath these expenditures. now he began to walk the terrible ways of usury. he borrowed of the most unscrupulous bourgeois, hypothecated his châteaux, alienated his lands. at times he was reduced to asking advances on his religious ornaments, on his jewels, on his books." "i am glad to see that the method of ruining oneself in the middle ages did not differ sensibly from that of our days," said des hermies. "however, our ancestors did not have monte carlo, the notaries, and the bourse." "and _did_ have sorcery and alchemy. a memorial addressed to the king by the heirs of gilles de rais informs us that this immense fortune was squandered in less than eight years. "now it's the signories of confolens, chabanes, châteaumorant, lombert, ceded to a captain for a ridiculous price; now it's the fief of fontaine milon, of angers, the fortress of saint etienne de mer morte acquired by guillaume le ferron for a song; again it's the châteaux of blaison and of chemille forfeited to guillaume de la jumelière who never has to pay a sou. but look, there's a long list of castellanies and forests, salt mines and farm lands," said durtal, spreading out a great sheet of paper on which he had copied the account of the purchases and sales. "frightened by his mad course, the family of the marshal supplicated the king to intervene, and charles vii,'sure,' as he said, 'of the malgovernance of the sire de rais,' forbade him, in grand council, by letters dated 'amboise, 1436,' to sell or make over any fortress, any château, any land. "this order simply hastened the ruin of the interdicted. the grand skinflint, the master usurer of the time, jean v, duke of brittany, refused to publish the edict in his states, but, underhandedly, notified all those of his subjects who dealt with gilles. no one now dared to buy the marshal's domains for fear of incurring the wrath of the king, so jean v remained the sole purchaser and fixed the prices. you may judge how liberal his prices were. "that explains gilles's hatred of his family who had solicited these letters patent of the king, and why, as long as he lived, he had nothing to do with his wife, nor with his daughter whom he consigned to a dungeon at pouzauges. "now to return to the question which i put a while ago, how and with what motives gilles quitted the court. i think the facts which i have outlined will partially explain. "it is evident that for quite a while, long before the marshal retired to his estates, charles had been assailed by the complaints of gilles's wife and other relatives. moreover, the courtiers must have execrated the young man on account of his riches and luxuries; and the king, the same king who abandoned jeanne d'arc when he considered that she could no longer be useful to him, found an occasion to avenge himself on gilles for the favours gilles had done him. when the king needed money to finance his debaucheries or to raise troops he had not considered the marshal lavish. now that the marshal was ruined the king censured him for his prodigality, held him at arm's length, and spared him no reproach and no menace. "we may be sure gilles had no reason to regret leaving this court, and another thing is to be taken into consideration. he was doubtless sick and tired of the nomadic existence of a soldier. he was doubtless impatient to get back to a pacific atmosphere among books. moreover, he seems to have been completely dominated by the passion for alchemy, for which he was ready to abandon all else. for it is worth noting that this science, which threw him into demonomania when he hoped to stave off inevitable ruin with it, he had loved for its own sake when he was rich. it was in fact toward the year 1426, when his coffers bulged with gold, that he attempted the 'great work' for the first time. "we shall find him, then, bent over his retorts in the château de tiffauges. that is the point to which i have brought my history, and now i am about to begin on the series of crimes of magic and sadism." "but all this," said des hermies, "does not explain how, from a man of piety, he was suddenly changed into a satanist, from a placid scholar into a violator of little children, a 'ripper' of boys and girls." "i have already told you that there are no documents to bind together the two parts of this life so strangely divided, but in what i have been narrating you can pick out some of the threads of the duality. to be precise, this man, as i have just had you observe, was a true mystic. he witnessed the most extraordinary events which history has ever shown. association with jeanne d'arc certainly stimulated his desires for the divine. now from lofty mysticism to base satanism there is but one step. in the beyond all things touch. he carried his zeal for prayer into the territory of blasphemy. he was guided and controlled by that troop of sacrilegious priests, transmuters of metals, and evokers of demons, by whom he was surrounded at tiffauges." "you think, then, that the maid of orleans was really responsible for his career of evil?" "to a certain point. consider. she roused an impetuous soul, ready for anything, as well for orgies of saintliness as for ecstasies of crime. "there was no transition between the two phases of his being. the moment jeanne was dead he fell into the hands of sorcerers who were the most learned of scoundrels and the most unscrupulous of scholars. these men who frequented the château de tiffauges were fervent latinists, marvellous conversationalists, possessors of forgotten arcana, guardians of world-old secrets. gilles was evidently more fitted to live with them than with men like dunois and la hire. these magicians, whom all the biographers agree to represent--wrongly, i think--as vulgar parasites and base knaves, were, as i view them, the patricians of intellect of the fifteenth century. not having found places in the church, where they would certainly have accepted no position beneath that of cardinal or pope, they could, in those troubled times of ignorance, but take refuge in the patronage of a great lord like gilles. and gilles was, indeed, the only one at that epoch who was intelligent enough and educated enough to understand them. "to sum up: natural mysticism on one hand, and, on the other, daily association with savants obsessed by satanism. the sword of damocles hanging over his head, to be conjured away by the will of the devil, perhaps. an ardent, a mad curiosity concerning the forbidden sciences. all this explains why, little by little, as the bonds uniting him to the world of alchemists and sorcerers grow stronger, he throws himself into the occult and is swept on by it into the most unthinkable crimes. "then as to being a 'ripper' of children--and he didn't immediately become one, no, gilles did not violate and trucidate little boys until after he became convinced of the vanity of alchemy--why, he does not differ greatly from the other barons of his times. "he exceeds them in the magnitude of his debauches, in opulence of murders, and that's all. it's a fact. read michelet. you will see that the princes of this epoch were redoubtable butchers. there was a sire de giac who poisoned his wife, put her astride of his horse and rode at breakneck speed for five leagues, until she died. there was another, whose name i have forgotten, who collared his father, dragged him barefoot through the snow, and calmly thrust him into a subterranean prison and left him there until he died. and how many others! i have tried, without success, to find whether in battles and forays the marshal committed any serious misdeeds. i have discovered nothing, except that he had a pronounced taste for the gibbet; for he liked to string up all the renegade french whom he surprised in the ranks of the english or in the cities which were not very much devoted to the king. "we shall find his taste for this kind of torture manifesting itself later on in the château de tiffauges. "now, in conclusion, add to all these factors a formidable pride, a pride which incites him to say, during his trial, 'so potent was the star under which i was born that i have done what no one in the world has done nor ever can do.' "and assuredly, the marquis de sade is only a timid bourgeois, a mediocre fantasist, beside him!" "since it is difficult to be a saint," said des hermies, "there is nothing for it but to be a satanist. one of the two extremes. 'execration of impotence, hatred of the mediocre,' that, perhaps, is one of the more indulgent definitions of diabolism." "perhaps. one can take pride in going as far in crime as a saint in virtue. and that expresses gilles de rais exactly." "all the same, it's a mean subject to handle." "it certainly is, but happily the documents are abundant. satan was terrible to the middle ages--" "and to the modern." "what do you mean?" that satanism has come down in a straight, unbroken line from that age to this." "oh, no; you don't believe that at this very hour the devil is being evoked and the black mass celebrated?" "yes." "you are sure?" "perfectly." "you amaze me. but, man! do you know that to witness such things would aid me signally in my work? no joking, you believe in a contemporary satanistic manifestation? you have proofs?" "yes, and of them we shall speak later, for today i am very busy. tomorrow evening, when we dine with carhaix. don't forget. i'll come by for you. meanwhile think over the phrase which you applied a moment ago to the magicians: 'if they had entered the church they would not have consented to be anything but cardinals and popes,' and then just think what kind of a clergy we have nowadays. the explanation of satanism is there, in great part, anyway, for without sacrilegious priests there is no mature satanism." "but what do these priests want?" "everything!" exclaimed des hermies. "hmmm. like gilles de rais, who asked the demon for 'knowledge, power, riches,' all that humanity covets, to be deeded to him by a title signed with his own blood." chapter v "come right in and get warm. ah, messieurs, you must not do that any more," said mme. carhaix, seeing durtal draw from his pocket some bottles wrapped in paper, while des hermies placed on the table some little packages tied with twine. "you mustn't spend your money on us." "oh, but you see we enjoy doing it, mme. carhaix. and your husband?" "he is in the tower. since morning he has been going from one tantrum into another." "my, the cold is terrible today," said durtal, "and i should think it would be no fun up there." "oh, he isn't grumbling for himself but for his bells. take off your things." they took off their overcoats and came up close to the stove. "it isn't what you would call hot in here," said mme. carhaix, "but to thaw this place you would have to keep a fire going night and day." "why don't you get a portable stove?" "oh, heavens! that would asphyxiate us." "it wouldn't be very comfortable at any rate," said des hermies, "for there is no chimney. you might get some joints of pipe and run them out of the window, the way you have fixed this tubing. but, speaking of that kind of apparatus, durtal, doesn't it seem to you that those hideous galvanized iron contraptions perfectly typify our utilitarian epoch? "just think, the engineer, offended by any object that hasn't a sinister or ignoble form, reveals himself entire in this invention. he tells us, 'you want heat. you shall have heat--and nothing else.' anything agreeable to the eye is out of the question. no more snapping, crackling wood fire, no more gentle, pervasive warmth. the useful without the fantastic. ah, the beautiful jets of flame darting out from a red cave of coals and spurting up over a roaring log." "but there are lots of stoves where you can see the fire," objected madame. "yes, and then it's worse yet. fire behind a grated window of mica. flame in prison. depressing! ah, those fine fires of faggots and dry vine stocks out in the country. they smell good and they cast a golden glow over everything. modern life has set that in order. the luxury of the poorest of peasants is impossible in paris except for people who have copious incomes." the bell-ringer entered. every hair of his bristling moustache was beaded with a globule of snow. with his knitted bonnet, his sheepskin coat, his fur mittens and goloshes, he resembled a samoyed, fresh from the pole. "i won't shake hands," he said, "for i am covered with grease and oil. what weather! just think, i've been scouring the bells ever since early this morning. i'm worried about them." "why?" "why! you know very well that frost contracts the metal and sometimes cracks or breaks it. some of these bitterly cold winters we have lost a good many, because bells suffer worse than we do in bad weather.--wife, is there any hot water in the other room, so i can wash up?" "can't we help you set the table?" des hermies proposed. but the good woman refused. "no, no, sit down. dinner is ready." "mighty appetizing," said durtal, inhaling the odour of a peppery _pot-au-feu_, perfumed with a symphony of vegetables, of which the keynote was celery. "everybody sit down," said carhaix, reappearing with a clean blouse on, his face shining of soap and water. they sat down. the glowing stove purred. durtal felt the sudden relaxation of a chilly soul dipped into a warm bath: at carhaix's one was so far from paris, so remote from the epoch.... the lodge was poor, but cosy, comfortable, cordial. the very table, set country style, the polished glasses, the covered dish of sweet butter, the cider pitcher, the somewhat battered lamp casting reflections of tarnished silver on the great cloth, contributed to the atmosphere of home. "next time i come i must stop at the english store and buy a jar of that reliable orange marmalade," said durtal to himself, for by common consent with des hermies he never dined with the bell-ringer without furnishing a share of the provisions. carhaix set out a _pot-au-feu_ and a simple salad and poured his cider. not to be an expense to him, des hermies and durtal brought wine, coffee, liquor, desserts, and managed so that their contributions would pay for the soup and the beef which would have lasted for several days if the carhaixes had eaten alone. "this time i did it!" said mme. carhaix triumphantly, serving to each in turn a mahogany-colour bouillon whose iridescent surface was looped with rings of topaz. it was succulent and unctuous, robust and yet delicate, flavoured as it was with the broth of a whole flock of boiled chickens. the diners were silent now, their noses in their plates, their faces brightened by steam from the savoury soup, soup, two selected dishes, a salad, and a dessert. "now is the time to repeat the chestnut dear to flaubert, 'you can't dine like this in a restaurant,'" said durtal. "let's not malign the restaurants," said des hermies. "they afford a very special delight to the person who has the instinct of the inspector. i had an opportunity to gratify this instinct just the other night. i was returning from a call on a patient, and i dropped into one of these establishments where for the sum of three francs you are entitled to soup, two selected dishes, a salad, and a dessert. "the restaurant, where i go as often as once a month, has an unvarying clientele, hostile highbrows, officers in mufti, members of parliament, bureaucrats. "while laboriously gnawing my way through a redoubtable sole with sauce au gratin, i examined the habitués seated all around me and i found them singularly altered since my last visit. they had become bony or bloated; their eyes were either hollow, with violet rings around them, or puffy, with crimson pouches beneath; the fat people had become yellow and the thin ones were turning green. "more deadly than the forgotten venefices of the days of the avignon papacy, the terrible preparations served in this place were slowly poisoning its customers. "it was interested, as you may believe. i made myself the subject of a course of toxicological research, and, studying my food as it went down, i identified the frightful ingredients masking the mixtures of tannin and powdered carbon with which the fish was embalmed; and i penetrated the disguise of the marinated meats, painted with sauces the colour of sewage; and i diagnosed the wine as being coloured with fuscin, perfumed with furfurol, and enforced with molasses and plaster. "i have promised myself to return every month to register the slow but sure progress of these people toward the tomb." "oh!" cried mme. carhaix. "and you will claim," said durtal, "that you aren't satanic?" "see, carhaix, he's at it already. he won't even give us time to get our breath, but must be dogging us about satanism. it's true i promised him i'd try and get you to tell us something about it tonight. yes," continued des hermies, in response to carhaix's look of astonishment, "yesterday, durtal, who is engaged, as you know, in writing a history of gilles de rais, declared that he possessed all the information there was about diabolism in the middle ages. i asked him if he had any material on the satanism of the present day. he asked me what i was talking about, and wouldn't believe that these practices are being carried on right now." "but they are," replied carhaix, becoming grave. "it is only too true." "before we go any further, there is one question i'd like to put to des hermies," said durtal. "can you, honestly, without joking, without letting that saturnine smile play around the corner of your mouth, tell me, in perfectly good faith, whether you do or do not believe in catholicism?" "he!" exclaimed the bell-ringer. "why, he's worse than an unbeliever, he's a heresiarch." "the fast is, if i were certain of anything, i would be inclined toward manicheism," said des hermies. "it's one of the oldest and it is _the_ simplest of religions, and it best explains the abominable mess everything is in at the present time. "the principle of good and the principle of evil, the god of light and the god of darkness, two rivals, are fighting for our souls. that's at least clear. right now it is evident that the evil god has the upper hand and is reigning over the world as master. now--and on this point, carhaix, who is distressed by these theories, can't reprehend me--i am for the under dog. that's a generous and perfectly proper idea." "but manicheism is impossible!" cried the bell-ringer. "two infinities cannot exist together." "but nothing can exist if you get to reasoning. the moment you argue the catholic dogma everything goes to pieces. the proof that two infinities can coexist is that this idea passes beyond reason and enters the category of those things referred to in ecclesiasticus: 'inquire not into things higher than thou, for many things have shown themselves to be above the sense of men.' "manicheism, you see, must have had some good in it, because it was bathed in blood. at the end of the twelfth century thousands of albigenses were roasted for practising this doctrine. of course, i can't say that the manicheans didn't abuse their cult, mostly made up of devil worship, because we know very well they did. "on this point i am not with them," he went on slowly, after a silence. he was waiting till mme. carhaix, who had got up to remove the plates, should go out of the room to fetch the beef. "while we are alone," he said, seeing her disappear through the stairway door, "i can tell you what they did. an excellent man named psellus has revealed to us, in a book entitled _de operatione dæmonum_, the fact that they tasted of the two excrements at the beginning of their ceremonial, and that they mixed human semen with the host." "horrible!" exclaimed carhaix. "oh, as they took both kinds of communion, they did better than that," returned des hermies. "they cut children's throats and mixed the blood with ashes, and this paste, dissolved in liquid, constituted the eucharistic wine." "you bring us right back to satanism," said durtal. "why, yes, as you see, i haven't strayed off your subject." "i am sure monsieur des hermies has been saying something awful," murmured mme. carhaix as she came in, bearing a platter on which was a piece of beef smothered in vegetables. "oh, madame," protested des hermies. they burst out laughing and carhaix cut up the meat, while his wife poured the cider and durtal uncorked the bottle of anchovies. "i am afraid it's cooked too much," said the woman, who was a great deal more interested in the beef than in other-world adventures, and she added the famous maxim of housekeepers, "when the broth is good the beef won't cut." the men protested that it wasn't stringy a bit, it was cooked just right. "have an anchovy and a little butter with your meat, monsieur durtal." "wife, let's have some of the red cabbage that you preserved," said carhaix, whose pale face was lighted up while his great canine eyes were becoming suspiciously moist. visibly he was jubilant. he was at table with friends, in his tower, safe from the cold. "but, empty your glasses. you are not drinking," he said, holding up the cider pot. "let's see, des hermies, you were claiming yesterday that satanism has pursued an uninterrupted course since the middle ages," said durtal, wishing to get back to the subject which haunted him. "yes, and the documents are irrefutable. i'll put you into a position to prove them whenever you wish. "at the end of the fifteenth century, that is to say at the time of gilles de rais--to go no further back--satanism had assumed the proportions that you know. in the sixteenth it was worse yet. no need to remind you, i think, of the demoniac pactions of catherine de medici and of the valois, of the trial of the monk jean de vaulx, of the investigations of the sprengers and the lancres and those learned inquisitors who had thousands of necromancers and sorcerers roasted alive. all that is known, too well known. one case is not too well known for me to cite here: that of the priest benedictus who cohabited with the she-devil armellina and consecrated the hosts holding them upside down. here are the diabolical threads which bind that century to this. in the seventeenth century, in which the sorcery trials continue, and in which the 'possessed' of loudun appear, the black religion nourishes, but already it has been driven under cover. "i will cite you an example, one among many, if you like. "a certain abbé guibourg made a specialty of these abominations. on a table serving as tabernacle a woman lay down, naked or with her skirts lifted up over her head, and with her arms outstretched. she held the altar lights during the whole office. "guibourg thus celebrated masses on the abdomen of mme. de montespan, of mme. d'argenson, of mme. de saint-pont. as a matter of fact these masses were very frequent under the grand monarch. numbers of women went to them as in our times women flock to have their fortunes told with cards. "the ritual of these ceremonies was sufficiently atrocious. generally a child was kidnapped and burnt in a furnace out in the country somewhere, the ashes were saved and mixed with the blood of another child whose throat had been cut, and of this mixture a paste was made resembling that of the manicheans of which i was speaking. abbé guibourg officiated, consecrated the host, cut it into little pieces and mixed it with this mixture of blood and ashes. that was the material of the sacrament." "what a horrible priest!" cried mme. carhaix, indignant. "yes, he celebrated another kind of mass, too, that abbé did. it was called--hang it--it's unpleasant to say--" "say it, monsieur des hermies. when people have as great a hatred for that sort of thing as we here, they need not blink any fact. it isn't that kind of thing which is going to take me away from my prayers." "nor me," added her husband. "well, this sacrifice was called the spermatic mass." "oh!" "guibourg, wearing the alb, the stole, and the maniple, celebrated this mass with the sole object of making pastes to conjure with. the archives of the bastille inform us that he acted thus at the request of a lady named des oeillettes: "this woman, who was indisposed, gave some of her blood; the man who accompanied her stood patiently beside the bed where the scene took place, and guibourg gathered up some of his semen into the chalice, then added powdered blood and some flour, and after sacrilegious ceremonies the des oeillettes woman departed bearing her paste." "my heavenly saviour!" sighed the bell-ringer's wife, "what a lot of filth." "but," said durtal, "in the middle ages the mass was celebrated in a different fashion. the altar then was the naked buttocks of a woman; in the seventeenth century it was the abdomen, and now?" "nowadays a woman is hardly ever used for an altar, but let us not anticipate. in the eighteenth century we shall again find abbés--among how many other monsters--who defile holy objects. one canon duer occupied himself specially with black magic and the evocation of the devil. he was finally executed as a sorcerer in the year of grace 1718. there was another who believed in the incarnation of the holy ghost as the paraclete, and who, in lombary, which he stirred up to a feverish pitch of excitement, ordained twelve apostles and twelve apostolines to preach his gospel. this man, abbé beccarelli, like all the other priests of his ilk, abused both sexes, and he said mass without confessing himself of his lecheries. as his cult grew he began to celebrate travestied offices in which he distributed to his congregation aphrodisiac pills presenting this peculiarity, that after having swallowed them the men believed themselves changed into women and the women into men. "the recipe for these hippomanes is lost," continued des hermies with almost a sad smile. "to make a long story short, beccarelli met with a very miserable end. he was prosecuted for sacrilege and sentenced, in 1708, to row in the galleys for seven years." "these frightful stories seem to have taken away your appetite," said mme. carhaix. "come, monsieur des hermies, a little more salad?" "no, thanks. but now we've come to the cheese, i think it's time to open the wine," and he uncapped one of the bottles which durtal had brought. "it's a light chinon wine, but not too weak. i discovered it in a little shop down by the quay," said durtal. "i see," he went on after a silence, "that the tradition of unspeakable crimes has been maintained by worthy successors of gilles de rais. i see that in all centuries there have been fallen priests who have dared commit sins against the holy ghost. but at the present time it all seems incredible. surely nobody is cutting children's throats as in the days of bluebeard and of abbé guibourg." "you mean that nobody is brought to justice for doing it. they don't assassinate now, but they kill designated victims by methods unknown to official science--ah, if the confessionals could speak!" cried the bell-ringer. "but tell me, what class of people are these modern covenanters with the devil?" "prelates, abbesses, mission superiors, confessors of communities; and in rome, the centre of present-day magic, they're the very highest dignitaries," answered des hermies. "as for the laymen, they are recruited from the wealthy class. that explains why these scandals are hushed up if the police chance to discover them. "then, let us assume that the sacrifices to the devil are not preceded by preliminary murders. perhaps in some cases they aren't. the worshippers probably content themselves with bleeding a foetus which had been aborted as soon as it became matured to the point necessary. bloodletting is supererogatory anyway, and serves merely to whet the appetite. the main business is to consecrate the host and put it to an infamous use. the rest of the procedure varies. there is at present no regular ritual for the black mass." "well, then, is a priest absolutely essential to the celebration of these offices?" "certainly. only a priest can operate the mystery of transubstantiation. i know there are certain occultists who claim to have been consecrated by the lord, as saint paul was, and who think they can consummate a veritable sacrifice just like a real priest. absurd! but even in default of real masses with ordained celebrants, the people possessed by the mania of sacrilege do none the less realize the sacred stupration of which they dream. "listen to this. in 1855 there existed at paris an association composed of women, for the most part. these women took communion several times a day and retained the sacred wafer in their mouths to be spat out later and trodden underfoot or soiled by disgusting contacts." "you are sure of it?" "perfectly. these facts were revealed by a religious journal, _les annales de la sainteté_, and the archbishop of paris could not deny them. i add that in 1874 women were likewise enrolled at paris to practise this odious commerce. they were paid so much for every wafer they brought in. that explains why they presented themselves at the sacred table of different churches every day." "and that is not the half of it! look," said carhaix, in his turn, rising and taking from his bookshelf a blue brochurette. "here is a review, _la voix de la septaine_, dated 1843. it informs us that for twenty-five years, at agen, a satanistic association regularly celebrated black masses, and committed murder, and polluted three thousand three hundred and twenty hosts! and monsignor the bishop of agen, who was a good and ardent prelate, never dared deny the monstrosities committed in his diocese!" "yes, we can say it among ourselves," des hermies returned, "in the nineteenth century the number of foul-minded abbés has been legion. unhappily, though the documents are certain, they are difficult to verify, for no ecclesiastic boasts of such misdeeds. the celebrants of deicidal masses dissemble and declare themselves devoted to christ. they even affirm that they defend him by exorcising the possessed. "that's a good one. the 'possessed' are made so or kept so by the priests themselves, who are thus assured of subjects and accomplices, especially in the convents. all kinds of murderous and sadistic follies can be covered with the antique and pious mantle of exorcism." "let us be just," said carhaix. "the satanist would not be complete if he were not an abominable hypocrite." "hypocrisy and pride are perhaps the most characteristic vices of the perverse priest," suggested durtal. "but in the long run," des hermies went on, "in spite of the most adroit precautions, everything comes out. up to now i have spoken only of local satanistic associations, but there are others, more extensive, which ravage the old world and the new, for diabolism is quite up to date in one respect. it is highly centralized and very capably administered. there are committees, subcommittees, a sort of curia, which rules america and europe, like the curia of a pope. "the biggest of these societies founded as long ago as 1855 is the society of the re-theurgistes-optimates. beneath an apparent unity it is divided into two camps, one aspiring to destroy the universe and reign over the ruins, the other thinking simply of imposing upon the world a demoniac cult of which it shall be high priest. "this society has its seat in america. it was formerly directed by one longfellow, an adventurer, born in scotland, who entitled himself grand priest of the new evocative magism. for a long time it has had branches in france, italy, germany, russia, austria, even turkey. "it is at the present moment moribund, or perhaps quite dead, but another has just been created. the object of this one is to elect an antipope who will be the exterminating antichrist. and those are only two of them. how many others are there, more or less important numerically, more or less secret, which, by common accord, at ten o'clock the morning of the feast of the holy sacrament, celebrate black masses at paris, rome, bruges, constantinople, nantes, lyons, and in scotland--where sorcerers swarm! "then, outside of these universal associations and local assemblies, isolated cases abound, on which little light can be shed, and that with great difficulty. some years ago there died, in a state of penitence, a certain comte de lautree, who presented several churches with statues which he had bewitched so as to satanize the faithful. at bruges a priest of my acquaintance contaminates the holy ciboria and uses them to prepare spells and conjurements. finally one may, among all these, cite a clear case of possession. it is the case of cantianille, who in 1865 turned not only the city of auxerre, but the whole diocese of sens, upside down. "this cantianille, placed in a convent of mont-saint-sulpice, was violated, when she was barely fifteen years old, by a priest who dedicated her to the devil. this priest himself had been corrupted, in early childhood, by an ecclesiastic belonging to a sect of possessed which was created the very day louis xvi was guillotined. "what happened in this convent, where many nuns, evidently mad with hysteria, were associated in erotic devilry and sacrilegious rages with cantianille, reads for all the world like the procedure in the trials of wizards of long ago, the histories of gaufrédy and madeleine palud, of urbain grandier and madeleine bavent, or the jesuit girard and la cadière, histories, by the way, in which much might be said about hystero-epilepsy on one hand and about diabolism on the other. at any rate, cantianille, after being sent away from the convent, was exorcised by a certain priest of the diocese, abbé thorey, who seems to have been contaminated by his patient. soon at auxerre there were such scandalous scenes, such frenzied outbursts of diabolism, that the bishop had to intervene. cantianille was driven out of the country, abbé thorey was disciplined, and the affair went to rome. "the curious thing about it is that the bishop, terrified by what he had seen, requested to be dismissed, and retired to fontainebleau, where he died, still in terror, two years later." "my friends," said carhaix, consulting his watch, "it is a quarter to eight. i must be going up into the tower to sound the angelus. don't wait for me. have your coffee. i shall rejoin you in ten minutes." he put on his greenland costume, lighted a lantern, and opened the door. a stream of glacial air poured in. white molecules whirled in the blackness. "the wind is driving the snow in through the loopholes along the stair," said the woman. "i am always afraid that louis will take cold in his chest this kind of weather. oh, well, monsieur des hermies, here is the coffee. i appoint you to the task of serving it. at this hour of day my poor old limbs won't hold me up any longer. i must go lie down." "the fact is," sighed des hermies, when they had wished her good night, "the fact is that mama carhaix is rapidly getting old. i have vainly tried to brace her up with tonics. they do no good. she has worn herself out. she has climbed too many stairs in her life, poor woman!" "all the same, it's very curious, what you have told me," said durtal. "to sum up, the most important thing about satanism is the black mass." "that and the witchcraft and incubacy and succubacy which i will tell you about; or rather, i will get another more expert than i in these matters to tell you about them. sacrilegious mass, spells, and succubacy. there you have the real quintessence of satanism." "and these hosts consecrated in blasphemous offices, what use is made of them when they are not simply destroyed?" "but i already told you. they are used to consummate infamous acts. listen," and des hermies took from the bell-ringers bookshelf the fifth volume of the _mystik_ of görres. "here is the flower of them all: "'these priests, in their baseness, often go so far as to celebrate the mass with great hosts which then they cut through the middle and afterwards glue to a parchment, similarly cloven, and use abominably to satisfy their passions.'" "holy sodomy, in other words?" "exactly." at this moment the bell, set in motion in the tower, boomed out. the chamber in which durtal and des hermies were sitting trembled and a droning filled the air. it seemed that waves of sound came out of the walls, unrolling in a spiral from the very rock, and that one was transported, in a dream, into the inside of one of these shells which, when held up to the ear, simulate the roar of rolling billows. des hermies, accustomed to the mighty resonance of the bells at short range, thought only of the coffee, which he had put on the stove to keep hot. then the booming of the bell came more slowly. the humming departed from the air. the window panes, the glass of the bookcase, the tumblers on the table, ceased to rattle and gave off only a tenuous tinkling. a step was heard on the stair. carhaix entered, covered with snow. "cristi, boys, it blows!" he shook himself, threw his heavy outer garments on a chair, and extinguished his lantern. "there were blinding clouds of snow whirling in between the sounding-shutters. i can hardly see. dog's weather. the lady has gone to bed? good. but you haven't drunk your coffee?" he asked as he saw durtal filling the glasses. carhaix went up to the stove and poked the fire, then dried his eyes, which the bitter cold had filled with tears, and drank a great draught of coffee. "now. that hits the spot. how far had you got with your lecture, des hermies?" "i finished the rapid expose of satanism, but i haven't yet spoken of the genuine monster, the only real master that exists at the present time, that defrocked abbé--" "oh!" exclaimed carhaix. "take care. the mere name of that man brings disaster." "bah! canon docre--to utter his ineffable name--can do nothing to us. i confess i cannot understand why he should inspire any terror. but never mind. i should like for durtal, before we hunt up the canon, to see your friend gévingey, who seems to be best and most intimately acquainted with him. a conversation with gévingey would considerably amplify my contributions to the study of satanism, especially as regards venefices and succubacy. let's see. would you mind if we invited him here to dine?" carhaix scratched his head, then emptied the ashes of his pipe on his thumbnail. "well, you see, the fact is, we have had a slight disagreement." "what about?" "oh, nothing very serious. i interrupted his experiments here one day. but pour yourself some liqueur, monsieur durtal, and you, des hermies, why, you aren't drinking at all," and while, lighting their cigarettes, both sipped a few drops of almost proof cognac, carhaix resumed, "gévingey, who, though an astrologer, is a good christian and an honest man--whom, indeed, i should be glad to see again--wished to consult my bells. "that surprises you, but it's so. bells formerly played quite an important part in the forbidden science. the art of predicting the future with their sounds is one of the least known and most disused branches of the occult. gévingey had dug up some documents, and wished to verify them in the tower." "why, what did he do?" "how do i know? he stood under the bell, at the risk of breaking his bones--a man of his age on the scaffolding there! he was halfway into the bell, the bell like a great hat, you see, coming clear down over his hips. and he soliloquized aloud and listened to the repercussions of his voice making the bronze vibrate. "he spoke to me also of the interpretation of dreams about bells. according to him, whoever, in his sleep, sees bells swinging, is menaced by an accident; if the bell chimes, it is presage of slander; if it falls, ataxia is certain; if it breaks, it is assurance of afflictions and miseries. finally he added, i believe, that if the night birds fly around a bell by moonlight one may be sure that sacrilegious robbery will be committed in the church, or that the curate's life is in danger. "be all that as it may, this business of touching the bells, getting up into them--and you know they're consecrated--of attributing to them the gift of prophecy, of involving them in the interpretation of dream--an art formally forbidden in leviticus--displeased me, and i demanded, somewhat rudely, that he desist." "but you did not quarrel?" "no, and i confess i regret having been so hasty." "well then, i will arrange it. i shall go see him--agreed?" said des hermies. "by all means." "with that we must run along and give you a chance to get to bed, seeing that you have to be up at dawn." "oh, at half-past five for the six o'clock angelus, and then, if i want to, i can go back to bed, for i don't have to ring again till a quarter to eight, and then all i have to do is sound a couple of times for the curate's mass. as you can see, i have a pretty easy thing of it." "mmmm!" exclaimed durtal, "if i had to get up so early!" "it's all a matter of habit. but before you go won't you have another little drink? no? really? well, good night!" he lighted his lantern, and in single file, shivering, they descended the glacial, pitch-dark, winding stair. chapter vi next morning durtal woke later than usual. before he opened his eyes there was a sudden flash of light in his brain, and troops of demon worshippers, like the societies of which des hermies had spoken, went defiling past him, dancing a saraband. "a swarm of lady acrobats hanging head downward from trapezes and praying with joined feet!" he said, yawning. he looked at the window. the panes were flowered with crystal fleurs de lys and frost ferns. then he quickly drew his arms back under the covers and snuggled up luxuriously. "a fine day to stay at home and work," he said. "i will get up and light a fire. come now, a little courage--" and--instead of tossing the covers aside he drew them up around his chin. "ah, i know that you are not pleased to see me taking a morning off," he said, addressing his cat, which was hunched up on the counterpane at his feet, gazing at him fixedly, its eyes very black. this beast, though affectionate and fond of being caressed, was crabbed and set in its ways. it would tolerate no whims, no departures from the regular course of things. it understood that there was a fixed hour for rising and for going to bed, and when it was displeased it allowed a shade of annoyance to pass into its eyes, the sense of which its master could not mistake. if he returned before eleven at night, the cat was waiting for him in the vestibule, scratching the wood of the door, miaouing, even before durtal was in the hall; then it rolled its languorous green-golden eyes at him, rubbed against his trouser leg, stood up on its hind feet like a tiny rearing horse and affectionately wagged its head at him as he approached. if eleven o'clock had passed it did not run along in front of him, but would only, very grudgingly, rise when he came up, and then it would arch its back and suffer no caresses. when he came later yet, it would not budge, and would complain and groan if he took the liberty of stroking its head or scratching its throat. this morning it had no patience with durtal's laziness. it squatted on its hunkers, and swelled up, then it approached stealthily and sat down two steps away from its master's face, staring at him with an atrociously false eye, signifying that the time had come for him to abdicate and leave the warm place for a cold cat. amused by its manoeuvres, durtal did not move, but returned its stare. the cat was enormous, common, and yet bizarre with its rusty coat yellowish like old coke ashes and grey as the fuzz on a new broom, with little white tufts like the fleece which flies up from the burnt-out faggot. it was a genuine gutter cat, long-legged, with a wild-beast head. it was regularly striped with waving lines of ebony, its paws were encircled by black bracelets and its eyes lengthened by two great zigzags of ink. "in spite of your kill-joy character and your single track mind you testy, old bachelor, you are a very nice cat," said durtal, in an insinuating, wheedling tone. "then too, for many years now, i have told you what one tells no man. you are the drain pipe of my soul, you inattentive and indulgent confessor. never shocked, you vaguely approve the mental misdeeds which i confess to you. you let me relieve myself and you don't charge me anything for the service. frankly, that is what you are here for. i spoil you with care and attentions because you are the spiritual vent of solitude and celibacy, but that doesn't prevent you, with your spiteful way of looking at me, from being insufferable at times, as you are today, for instance!" the cat continued to stare at him, its ears sticking straight up as if they would catch the sense of his words from the inflections of his voice. it understood, doubtless, that durtal was not disposed to jump out of bed, for it went back to its old place, but now turned its back full on him. "oh come," said durtal, discouraged, looking at his watch, "i've simply got to get up and go to work on gilles de rais," and with a bound he sprang into his trousers. the cat, rising suddenly, galloped across the counterpane and rolled itself up into the warm covers, without waiting an instant longer. "how cold it is!" and durtal slipped on a knit jacket and went into the other room to start a fire. "i shall freeze!" he murmured. fortunately his apartment was easy to heat. it consisted simply of a hall, a tiny sitting-room, a minute bedroom, and a large enough bathroom. it was on the fifth floor, facing a sufficiently airy court. rent, eight hundred francs. it was furnished without luxury. the little sitting-room durtal had converted into a study, hiding the walls behind black wood bookcases crammed with books. in front of the window were a great table, a leather armchair, and a few straight chairs. he had removed the glass from the mantelpiece, and in the panel, just over the mantelshelf, which was covered with an old fabric, he had nailed an antique painting on wood, representing a hermit kneeling beside a cardinal's hat and purple cloak, beneath a hut of boughs. the colours of the landscape background had faded, the blues to grey, the whites to russet, the greens to black, and time had darkened the shadows to a burnt-onion hue. along the edges of the picture, almost against the black oak frame, a continuous narrative unfolded in unintelligible episodes, intruding one upon the other, portraying lilliputian figures, in houses of dwarfs. here the saint, whose name durtal had sought in vain, crossed a curly, wooden sea in a sailboat; there he marched through a village as big as a fingernail; then he disappeared into the shadows of the painting and was discovered higher up in a grotto in the orient, surrounded by dromedaries and bales of merchandise; again he was lost from sight, and after another game of hide-and-seek he emerged, smaller than ever, quite alone, with a staff in his hand and a knapsack on his back, mounting toward a strange, unfinished cathedral. it was a picture by an unknown painter, an old dutchman, who had perhaps visited certain of the italian masters, for he had appropriated colours and processes peculiar to them. the bedroom contained a big bed, a chest of drawers waist-high, and some easy chairs. on the mantel were an antique clock and copper candlesticks. on the wall there was a fine photograph of a botticelli in the berlin museum, representing a plump and penitent virgin who was like a housewife in tears. she was surrounded by gentleman-, lady-, and little-boy-angels. the languishing young men held spliced wax tapers that were like bits of rope; the coquettish hoydens had flowers stuck in their long hair; and the mischievous cherub-pages looked rapturously at the infant jesus, who stood beside the virgin and held out his hands in benediction. then there was a print of breughel, engraved by cock, "the wise and the foolish virgins": a little panel, cut in the middle by a corkscrew cloud which was flanked at each side by angels with their sleeves rolled up and their cheeks puffed out, sounding the trumpet, while in the middle of the cloud another angel, bizarre and sacerdotal, with his navel indicated beneath his languorously flowing robe, unrolled a banderole on which was written the verse of the gospel, "_ecce sponsus venit, exite obviam ei_." beneath the cloud, at one side, sat the wise virgins, good flemings, with their lighted lamps, and sang canticles as they turned the spinning wheel. at the other side were the foolish virgins with their empty lamps. four joyous gossips were holding hands and dancing in a ring on the greensward, while the fifth played the bagpipe and beat time with her foot. above the cloud the five wise virgins, slender and ethereal now, naked and charming, brandished flaming tapers and mounted toward a gothic church where christ stood to welcome them; while on the other side the foolish virgins, imperfectly draped, beat vainly on a closed door with their dead torches. the blessed naïveté of the primitives, the homely touches in the scenes of earth and of heaven! durtal loved this old engraving. he saw in it a union of the art of an ostade purified and that of a thierry bouts. waiting for his grate, in which the charcoal was crackling and peeling and running like frying grease, to become red, he sat down in front of his desk and ran over his notes. "let's see," he said to himself, rolling a cigarette, "we had come to the time when that excellent gilles de rais begins the quest of the 'great work.' it is easy to figure what knowledge he possessed about the method of transmuting metals into gold. "alchemy was already highly developed a century before he was born. the writings of albertus magnus, arnaud de villeneuve, and raymond lully were in the hands of the hermetics. the manuscripts of nicolas flamel circulated, and there is no doubt that gilles had acquired them, for he was an avid collector of the rare. let us add that at that epoch the edict of charles interdicting spagyric labours under pain of prison and hanging, and the bull, _spondent pariter quas non exhibent_, which pope john xxii fulminated against the alchemists, were still in vigour. these treatises were, then, forbidden, and in consequence desirable. it is certain that gilles had long studied them, but from that to understanding them is a far cry. "for they were written in an impossible jargon of allegories, twisted and obscure metaphors, incoherent symbols, ambiguous parables, enigmas, and ciphers. and here is an example." he took from one of the shelves of the library a manuscript which was none other than the asch-mezareph, the book of the jew abraham and of nicolas flamel, restored, translated, and annotated by eliphas levi. this manuscript had been lent him by des hermies, who had discovered it one day among some old papers. "in this is what claims to be the recipe for the philosopher's stone, for the grand quintessential and tinctural essence. the figures are not precisely clear," he said to himself, as he ran his eye over the pen drawings, retouched in colour, representing, under the title of "_the chemical coitus_" various bottles and flasks each containing a liquid and imprisoning an allegorical creature. a green lion, with a crescent moon over him, hung head downward. doves were trying to fly out through the neck of the bottle or to peck a way through the bottom. the liquid was black and undulated with waves of carmine and gold, or white and granulated with dots of ink, which sometimes took the shape of a frog or a star. sometimes the liquid was milky and troubled, sometimes flames rose from it as if there were a film of alcohol over the surface. eliphas levi explained the symbolism of these bottled volatiles as fully as he cared to, but abstained from giving the famous recipe for the grand magisterium. he was keeping up the pleasantry of his other books, in which, beginning with an air of solemnity, he affirmed his intention of unveiling the old arcana, and, when the time came to fulfil his promise, begged the question, alleging the excuse that he would perish if he betrayed such burning secrets. the same excuse, which had done duty through the ages, served in masking the perfect ignorance of the cheap occultists of the present day. "as a matter of fact, the 'great work' is simple," said durtal to himself, folding up the manuscript of nicolas flamel. "the hermetic philosophers discovered--and modern science, after long evading the issue, no longer denies--that the metals are compounds, and that their components are identical. they vary from each other according to the different proportions of their elements. with the aid of an agent which will displace these proportions one may transmute mercury, for example, into silver, and lead into gold. "and this agent is the philosopher's stone: mercury--not the vulgar mercury, which to the alchemists was but an aborted metallic sperm--but the philosophers' mercury, called also the green lion, the serpent, the milk of the virgin, the pontic water. "only the recipe for this mercury, or stone of the sages, has ever been revealed--and it is this that the philosophers of the middle ages, the renaissance, all centuries, including our own, have sought so frantically. "and in what has it not been sought?" said durtal, thumbing his notes. "in arsenic, in ordinary mercury, tin, salts of vitriol, saltpetre and nitre; in the juices of spurge, poppy, and purslane; in the bellies of starved toads; in human urine, in the menstrual fluid and the milk of women." now gilles de rais must have been completely baffled. alone at tiffauges, without the aid of initiates, he was incapable of making fruitful experiments. at that time paris was the centre of the hermetic science in france. the alchemists gathered under the vaults of notre dame and studied the hieroglyphics which nicolas flamel, before he died, had written on the walls of the charnal des innocents and on the portal of saint jacques de la boucherie, describing cabalistically the preparation of the famous stone. the marshal could not go to paris because the english soldiers barred the roads. there was only one thing to do. he wrote to the most celebrated of the southern transmuters, and had them brought to tiffauges at great expense. "from documents which we posses we can see his supervising the construction of the athanor, or alchemists' furnace, buying pelicans, crucibles, and retorts. he turned one of the wings of his château into a laboratory and shut himself up in it with antonio di palermo, françois lombard, and 'jean petit, goldsmith of paris,' all of whom busied themselves night and day with the concoction of the 'great work.'" they were completely unsuccessful. at the end of their resources, these hermetists disappeared, and there ensued at tiffauges an incredible coming-and-going of adepts and their helpers. they arrived from all parts of brittany, poitou, and maine, alone or escorted by promoters and sorcerers. gilles de sillé and roger de bricqueville, cousins and friends of the marshal, scurried about the country, beating up the game and driving it in to gilles de rais, while a priest of his chapel, eustache blanchet, went to italy where workers in metals were legion. while waiting, gilles de rais, not to be discouraged, continued his experiments, all of which missed fire. he finally came to believe that the magicians were right after all, and that no discovery was possible without the aid of satan. and one night, with a sorcerer newly arrived from poitiers, jean de la rivière, he betakes himself to a forest in the vicinity of the château de tiffauges. with his servitors henriet and poitou, he remains on the verge of the wood into which the sorcerer penetrates. the night is heavy and there is no moon. gilles becomes nervous, scrutinizing the shadows, listening to the muted sounds of the nocturnal landscape; his companions, terrified, huddle close together, trembling and whispering at the slightest stirring of the air. suddenly a cry of anguish is raised. they hesitate, then they advance, groping in the darkness. in a sudden flare of light they perceive de la rivière trembling and deathly pale, clutching the handle of his lantern convulsively. in a low voice he recounts how the devil has risen in the form of a leopard and rushed past without looking at the evocator, without saying a word. the next day the sorcerer vanished, but another arrived. this was a bungler named du mesnil. he required gilles to sign with blood a deed binding him to give the devil all the devil asked of him "except his life and soul," but, although to aid the conjurements gilles consented to have the office of the damned sung in his chapel on all saints' day, satan did not appear. the marshal was beginning to doubt the powers of his magicians, when the outcome of a new endeavor convinced him that frequently the devil does appear. an evocator whose name has been lost held a séance with gilles and de sillé in a chamber at tiffauges. on the ground he traces a great circle and commands his two companions to step inside it. sillé refuses. gripped by a terror which he cannot explain, he begins to tremble all over. he goes to the window, opens it, and stands ready for flight, murmuring exorcisms under his breath. gilles, bolder, stands in the middle of the circle, but at the first conjurgations he too trembles and tries to make the sign of the cross. the sorcerer orders him not to budge. at one moment he feels something seize him by the neck. panic-stricken, he vacillates, supplicating our lady to save him. the evocator, furious, throws him out of the circle. gilles precipitates himself through the door, de sillé jumps out of the window, they meet below and stand aghast. howls are heard in the chamber where the magician is operating. there is "a sound as of sword strokes raining on a wooden billet," then groans, cries of distress, the appeals of a man being assassinated. they stand rooted to the spot. when the clamour ceases they venture to open the door and find the sorcerer lying; in pools of blood, his forehead caved in, his body horribly mangled. they carry him out. gilles, smitten with remorse, gives the man his own bed, bandages him, and has him confessed. for several days the sorcerer hovers between life and death but finally recovers and flees from the castle. gilles was despairing of obtaining from the devil the recipe for the sovereign magisterium, when eustache blanchet's return from italy was announced. eustache brought the master of florentine magic, the irresistible evoker of demons and larvæ, francesco prelati. this man struck awe into gilles. barely twenty-three years old, he was one of the wittiest, the most erudite, and the most polished men of the time. what had he done before he came to install himself at tiffauges, there to begin, with gilles, the most frightful series of sins against the holy ghost that has ever been known? his testimony in the criminal trial of gilles does not furnish us any very detailed information on his own score. he was born in the diocese of lucca, at pistoia, and had been ordained a priest by the bishop of arezzo. some time after his entrance into the priesthood, he had become the pupil of a thaumaturge of florence, jean de fontenelle, and had signed a pact with a demon named barron. from that moment onward, this insinuating and persuasive, learned and charming abbé, must have given himself over to the most abominable of sacrileges and the most murderous practices of black magic. at any rate gilles came completely under the influence of this man. the extinguished furnaces were relighted, and that stone of the sages, which prelati had seen, flexible, frail, red and smelling of calcinated marine salt, they sought together furiously, invoking hell. their incantations were all in vain. gilles, disconsolate, redoubled them, but they finally produced a dreadful result and prelati narrowly escaped with his life. one afternoon eustache blanchet, in a gallery of the château, perceives the marshal weeping bitterly. plaints of supplication are heard through the door of a chamber in which prelati has been evoking the devil. "the demon is in there beating my poor francis. i implore you, go in!" cries gilles, but blanchet, frightened, refuses. then gilles makes up his mind, in spite of his fear. he is advancing to force the door, when it opens and prelati staggers out and falls, bleeding, into his arms. prelati is able, with the support of his friends, to gain the chamber of the marshal, where he is put to bed, but he has sustained so merciless a thrashing that he goes into delirium and his fever keeps mounting. gilles, in despair, stays beside him, cares for him, has him confessed, and weeps for joy when prelati is out of danger. "the fate of the unknown sorcerer and of prelati, both getting dangerously wounded in an empty room, under identical circumstances--i tell you, it's a remarkable coincidence," said durtal to himself. "and the documents which relate these facts are authentic. they are, indeed, excerpts from the procedure in gilles's trial. the confessions of the accused and the depositions of the witnesses agree, and it is impossible to think that gilles and prelati lied, for in confessing these satanic evocations they condemned themselves, by their own words, to be burned alive. "if in addition they had declared that the evil one had appeared to them, that they had been visited by succubi; if they had affirmed that they had heard voices, smelled odours, even touched a body; we might conclude that they had had hallucinations similar to those of certain bicêtre subjects, but as it was there could have been no misfunctioning of the senses, no morbid visions, because the wounds, the marks of the blows, the material fact, visible and tangible, are present for testimony. "imagine how thoroughly convinced of the reality of the devil a mystic like gilles de rais must have been after witnessing such scenes! "in spite of his discomfitures, he could not doubt--and prelati, half-killed, must have doubted even less--that if satan pleased, they should finally find this powder which would load them with riches and even render them almost immortal--for at that epoch the philosopher's stone passed not only for an agent in the transmutation of base metals, such as tin, lead, copper, into noble metals like silver and gold, but also for a panacea curing all ailments and prolonging life, without infirmities, beyond the limits formerly assigned to the patriarchs. "singular science," ruminated durtal, raising the fender of his fireplace and warming his feet, "in spite of the railleries of this time, which, in the matter of discoveries but exhumes lost things, the hermetic philosophy was not wholly vain. "the master of contemporary science, dumas, recognizes, under the name of isomery, the theories of the alchemists, and berthelot declares, 'no one can affirm _a priori_ that the fabrication of bodies reputed to be simple is impossible.' then there have been verified and certified achievements. besides nicolas flamel, who really seems to have succeeded in the 'great work,' the chemist van helmont, in the eighteenth century, received from an unknown man a quarter of a grain of philosopher's stone and with it transformed eight ounces of mercury into gold. "at the same epoch, helvetius, who combated the dogma of the spagyrics, received from another unknown a powder of projection with which he converted an ingot of lead into gold. helvetius was not precisely a charlatan, neither was spinoza, who verified the experiment, a credulous simpleton. "and what is to be thought of that mysterious man alexander sethon who, under the name of the cosmopolite, went all over europe, operating before princes, in public, transforming all metals into gold? this alchemist, who seems to have had a sincere disdain for riches, as he never kept the gold which he created, but lived in poverty and prayer, was imprisoned by christian ii, elector of saxony, and endured martyrdom like a saint. he suffered himself to be beaten with rods and pierced with pointed stakes, and he refused to give up a secret which he claimed, like nicolas flamel, to have received from god. "and to think that these researches are being carried on at the present time! only, most of the hermetics now deny medical and divine virtues to the famous stone. they think simply that the grand magisterium is a ferment, which, thrown into metals in fusion, produces a molecular transformation similar to that which organic matter undergoes when fermented with the aid of a leaven. "des hermies, who is well acquainted with the underworld of science, maintains that more than forty alchemic furnaces are now alight in france, and that in hanover and bavaria the adepts are more numerous yet. "have they rediscovered the incomparable secret of antiquity? in spite of certain affirmations, it is hardly probable. nobody need manufacture artificially a metal whose origins are so unaccountable that a deposit is likely to be found anywhere. for instance, in a law suit which took place at paris in the month of november, 1886, between m. popp, constructor of pneumatic city clocks, and financiers who had been backing him, certain engineers and chemists of the school of mines declared that gold could be extracted from common silex, so that the very walls sheltering us might be placers, and the mansards might be loaded with nuggets! "at any rate," he continued, smiling, "these sciences are not propitious." he was thinking of an old man who had installed an alchemic laboratory on the fifth floor of a house in the rue saint jacques. this man, named auguste redoutez, went every afternoon to the bibliothèque nationale and pored over the works of nicolas flamel. morning and evening he pursued the quest of the "great work" in front of his furnace. the 16th of march the year before, he came out of the bibliothèque with a man who had been sitting at the same table with him, and as they walked along together redoutez declared that he was finally in possession of the famous secret. arriving in his laboratory, he threw pieces of iron into a retort, made a projection, and obtained crystals the colour of blood. the other examined the salts and made a flippant remark. the alchemist, furious, threw himself upon him, struck him with a hammer, and had to be overpowered and carried in a strait-jacket to saint anne, pending investigation. "in the sixteenth century, in luxemburg, initiates were roasted in iron cages. the following century, in germany, they were clothed in rags and hanged on gilded gibbets. now that they are tolerated and left in peace they go mad. decidedly, fate is against them," durtal concluded. he rose and went to answer a ring at the door. he came back with a letter which the concierge had brought. he opened it. "why, what is this?" he exclaimed. his astonishment grew as he read: "monsieur, "i am neither an adventuress nor a seeker of adventures, nor am i a society woman grown weary of drawing-room conversation. even less am i moved by the vulgar curiosity to find out whether an author is the same in the flesh as he is in his books. indeed i am none of the things which you may think i am, from my writing to you this way. the fact is that i have just finished reading your last book," "she has taken her time," murmured durtal, "it appeared a year ago." "melancholy as an imprisoned soul vainly beating its wings against the bars of its cage." "oh, hell! what a compliment. anyway, it rings false, like all of them." "and now, monsieur, though i am convinced that it is always folly and madness to try to realize a desire, will you permit that a sister in lassitude meet you some evening in a place which you shall designate, after which we shall return, each of us, into our own interior, the interior of persons destined to fall because they are out of line with their 'fellows'? adieu, monsieur, be assured that i consider you a somebody in a century of nobodies. "not knowing whether this note will elicit a reply, i abstain from making myself known. this evening a maid will call upon your concierge and ask him if there is a letter for mme. maubel." "hmm!" said durtal, folding up the letter. "i know her. she must be one of these withered dames who are always trying to cash outlawed kiss-tickets and soul-warrants in the lottery of love. forty-five years old at least. her _clientele_ is composed of boys, who are always satisfied if they don't have to pay, and men of letters, who are yet more easily satisfied--for the ugliness of authors' mistresses is proverbial. unless this is simply a practical joke. but who would be playing one on me--i don't know anybody--and why?" in any case, he would simply not reply. but in spite of himself he reopened the letter. "well now, what do i risk? if this woman wants to sell me an over-ripe heart, there is nothing forcing me to purchase it. i don't commit myself to anything by going to an assignation. but where shall i meet her? here? no! once she gets into my apartment complications arise, for it is much more difficult to throw a woman out of your house than simply to walk off and leave her at a street corner. suppose i designated the corner of the rue de sèvres and the rue de la chaise, under the wall of the abbaye-au-bois. it is solitary, and then, too, it is only a minute's walk from here. or no, i will begin vaguely, naming no meeting-place at all. i shall solve that problem later, when i get her reply." he wrote a letter in which he spoke of his own spiritual lassitude and declared that no good could come of an interview, for he no longer sought happiness on earth. "i will add that i am in poor health. that is always a good one, and it excuses a man from 'being a man' if necessary," he said to himself, rolling a cigarette. "well, that's done, and she won't get much encouragement out of it. oh, wait. i omitted something. to keep from giving her a hold on me i shall do well to let her know that a serious and sustained liaison with me is impossible 'for family reasons.' and that's enough for one time." he folded the letter and scrawled the address. then he held the sealed envelope in his hand and reflected. "of course i am a fool to answer her. who knows what situations a thing like this is going to lead to? i am well aware that whoever she be, a woman is an incubator of sorrow and annoyance. if she is good she is probably stupid, or perhaps she is an invalid, or perhaps she is so disastrously fecund that she gets pregnant if you look at her. if she is bad, one may expect to be dragged through every disgusting kind of degradation. oh, whatever you do, you're in for it." he regurgitated the memories of his youthful amours. deception. disenchantment. how pitilessly base a woman is while she is young! " ... to be thinking of things like that now at my age! as if i had any need of a woman now!" but in spite of all, his pseudonymous correspondent interested him. "who knows? perhaps she is good-looking, or at least not very ill-looking. it doesn't cost me anything to find out." he re-read her letter. no misspelling. the handwriting not commercial. her ideas about his book were mediocre enough, but who would expect her to be a critic? "discreet scent of heliotrope," he added, sniffing the envelope. "oh, well, let's have our little fling." and as he went out to get some breakfast he left his reply with the concierge. chapter vii "if this continues i shall lose my mind," murmured durtal as he sat in front of his table reperusing the letters which he had been receiving from that woman for the last week. she was an indefatigable letter-writer, and since she had begun her advances he had not had time to answer one letter before another arrived. "my!" he said, "let's try and see just where we do stand. after that ungracious answer to her first note she immediately sends me this: "'monsieur, "'this is a farewell. if i were weak enough to write you any more letters they would become as tedious as the life i lead. anyway, have i not had the best part of you, in that hesitant letter of yours which shook me out of my lethargy for an instant? like yourself, monsieur, i know, alas! that nothing happens, and that our only certain joys are those we dream of. so, in spite of my feverish desire to know you, i fear that you were right in saying that a meeting would be for both of us the source of regrets to which we ought not voluntarily expose ourselves....' "then what bears witness to the perfect futility of this exordium is the way the missive ends: "'if you should take the fancy to write me, you can safely address your letters "mme. maubel, rue littré, general delivery." i shall be passing the rue littré post-office monday. if you wish to let matters remain just where they are--and thus cause me a great deal of pain--will you not tell me so, frankly?' "whereupon i was simple-minded enough to compose an epistle as ambiguous as the first, concealing my furtive advances under an apparent reluctance, thus letting her know that i was securely hooked. as her third note proves: "'never accuse yourself, monsieur--i repress a tenderer name which rises to my lips--of being unable to give me consolation. weary, disabused, as we are, and done with it all, let us sometimes permit our souls to speak to each other--low, very low--as i have spoken to you this night, for henceforth my thought is going to follow you wherever you are.' "four pages of the same tune," he said, turning the leaves, "but this is better: "'tonight, my unknown friend, one word only. i have passed a horrible day, my nerves in revolt and crying out against the petty sufferings they are subjected to every minute. a slamming door, a harsh or squeaky voice floating up to me out of the street.... yet there are whole hours when i am so far from being sensitive that if the house were burning i should not move. am i about to send you a page of comic lamentations? ah, when one has not the gift of rendering one's grief superbly and transforming it into literary or musical passages which weep magnificently, the best thing is to keep still about it. "'i bid you a silent goodnight. as on the first day, i am harassed by the conflict of the desire to see you and the dread of touching a dream lest it perish. ah, yes, you spoke truly. miserable, miserable wretches that we are, our timorous souls are so afraid of any reality that they dare not think a sympathy which has taken possession of them capable of surviving an interview with the person who gave it birth. yet, in spite of this fine casuistry, i simply must confess to you--no, no, nothing. guess if you can, and forgive me for this banal letter. or rather, read between the lines, and perhaps you will find there a little bit of my heart and a great deal of what i leave unsaid. "'a foolish letter with "i" written all over it. who would suspect that while i wrote it my sole thought was of you?'" "so far, so good. this woman at least piqued my curiosity. and what peculiar ink," he thought. it was myrtle green, very thin, very pale. with his finger-nail he detached some of the fine dust of rice powder, perfumed with heliotrope, clinging to the seal of the letters. "she must be blonde," he went on, examining the tint of the powder, "for it isn't the 'rachel' shade that brunettes use. now up to that point everything had been going nicely, but then and there i spoiled it. moved by i know not what folly, i wrote her a yet more roundabout letter, which, however, was very pressing. in attempting to fan her flame i kindled myself--for a spectre--and at once i received this: "'what shall i do? i neither wish to see you, nor can i consent to annihilate my overwhelming desire to meet you. last night, in spite of me, your name, which was burning me, sprang from my lips. my husband, one of your admirers, it seems, appeared to be somewhat humiliated by the preoccupation which, indeed, was absorbing me and causing unbearable shivers to run all through me. a common friend of yours and mine--for why should i not tell you that you know me, if to have met socially is to "know" anyone?--one of your friends, then, came up and said that frankly he was very much taken with you. i was in a state of such utter lack of self-control that i don't know what i should have done had it not been for the unwitting assistance which somebody gave me by pronouncing the name of a grotesque person of whom i can never think without laughing. adieu. you are right. i tell myself that i will never write you again, and i go and do it anyway. "'your own--as i cannot be in reality without wounding us both.' "then when i wrote a burning reply, this was brought by a maid on a dead run: "'ah, if i were not afraid, afraid!--and you know you are just as much afraid as i am--how i should fly to you! no, you cannot hear the thousand conversations with which my soul fatigues yours.... oh, in my miserable existence there are hours when madness seizes me. judge for yourself. the whole night i spent appealing to you furiously. i wept with exasperation. this morning my husband came into the room. my eyes were bloodshot. i began to laugh crazily, and when i could speak i said to him, "what would you think of a person who, questioned as to his profession, replied, 'i am a chamber succubus'?" "ah, my dear, you are ill," said he. "worse than you think," said i. "'but if i come to see you, what could we talk about, in the state you yourself are in? your letter has completely unbalanced me. you arraign your malady with a certain brutality which makes my body rejoice but alienates my soul a little. ah, what if our dreams could really come true! "'ah, say a word, just one word, from out your own heart. don't be afraid that even one of your letters can possibly fall into other hands than mine.' "so, so, so. this is getting to be no laughing matter," concluded durtal, folding up the letter. "the woman is married to a man who knows me, it seems. what a situation! let's see, now. whom have i ever visited?" he tried vainly to remember. no woman he had ever met at an evening party would address such declarations to him. and that common friend. "but i have no friends, except des hermies. i'd better try and find out whom he has been seeing recently. but as a physician he meets scores of people! and then, how can i explain to him? tell him the story? he will burst into a roar and disillusion me before i have got halfway through the narrative." and durtal became irritated, for within him a really incomprehensible phenomenon was taking place. he was burning for this unknown woman. he was positively obsessed by her. he who had renounced all carnal relations years ago, who, when the barns of his senses were opened, contented himself with driving the disgusting herd of sin to the commercial shambles to be summarily knocked in the head by the butcher girls of love, he, he! was getting himself to believe--in the teeth of all experience, in the teeth of good judgment--that with a woman as passionate as this one seemed to be, he would experience superhuman sensations and novel abandon. and he imagined her as he would have her, blonde, firm of flesh, lithe, feline, melancholy, capable of frenzies; and the picture of her brought on such a tension of nerves that his teeth rattled. for a week, in the solitude in which he lived, he had dreamed of her and had become thoroughly aroused and incapable of doing any work, even of reading, for the image of this woman interposed itself between him and the page. he tried suggesting to himself ignoble visions. he would imagine this creature in moments of corporal distress and thus calm his desires with unappetizing hallucinations; but the procedure which had formerly been very effective when he desired a woman and could not have her now failed utterly. he somehow could not imagine his unknown in quest of bismuth or of linen. he could not see her otherwise than rebellious, melancholy, dizzy with desire, kindling him with her eyes, inflaming him with her pale hands. and his sensual resurrection was incredible--an aberrated dog star flaming in a physical november, at a spiritual all hallows. tranquil, dried up, safe from crises, without veritable desires, almost impotent, or rather completely forgetful of sex for months at a time, he was suddenly roused--and for an unreality!--by the mystery of mad letters. "enough!" he cried, smiting the table a jarring blow. he clapped on his hat and went out, slamming the door behind him. "i know how to make my imagination behave!" and he rushed over to the latin quarter to see a prostitute he knew. "i have been a good boy too long," he murmured as he hurried down the street. "one can't stay on the straight and narrow path for ever." he found the woman at home and had a miserable time. she was a buxom brunette with festive eyes and the teeth of a wolf. an expert, she could, in a few seconds, drain one's marrow, granulate the lungs, and demolish the loins. she chid him for having been away so long, then cajoled him and kissed him. he felt pathetic, listless, out of breath, out of place, for he had no genuine desires. he finally flung himself on a couch and, enervated to the point of crying, he went through the back-breaking motions mechanically, like a dredge. never had he so execrated the flesh, never had he felt such repugnance and lassitude, as when he issued from that room. he strolled haphazard down the rue soufflot, and the image of the unknown obsessed him, more irritating, more tenacious. "i begin to understand the superstition of the succubus. i must try some bromo-exorcism. tonight i will swallow a gram of bromide of potassium. that will make my senses be good." but he realized that the trouble was not primarily physical, that really it was only the consequence of an extraordinary state of mind. his love for that which departed from the formula, for that projection _out of the world_ which had recently cheered him in art, had deviated and sought expression in a woman. she embodied his need to soar upward from the terrestrial humdrum. "it is those precious unworldly studies, those cloister thoughts picturing ecclesiastical and demoniac scenes, which have prepared me for the present folly," he said to himself. his unsuspected, and hitherto unexpressed, mysticism, which had determined his choice of subject for his last work was now sending him out, in disorder, to seek new pains and pleasures. as he walked along he recapitulated what he knew of the woman. she was married, blonde, in easy circumstances because she had her own sleeping quarters and a maid. she lived in the neighbourhood, because she went to the rue littré post-office for her mail. her name, supposing she had prefixed her own initial to the name of maubel, was henriette, hortense, honorine, hubertine, or hélène. what else? she must frequent the society of artists, because she had met him, and for years he had not been in a bourgeois drawing-room. she was some kind of a morbid catholic, because that word succubus was unknown to the profane. that was all. then there was her husband, who, gullible as he might be, must nevertheless suspect their liaison, since, by her own confession, she dissembled her obsession very badly. "this is what i get for letting myself be carried away. for i, too, wrote at first to amuse myself with aphrodisiac statements. then i ended by becoming completely hysterical. we have taken turns fanning smouldering ashes which now are blazing. it is too bad that we have both become inflamed at the same time--for her case must be the same as mine, to judge from the passionate letters she writes. what shall i do? keep on tantalizing myself for a chimera? no! i'll bring matters to a head, see her, and if she is good-looking, sleep with her. i shall have peace, anyway." he looked about him. without knowing how he had got there he found himself in the jardin des plantes. he oriented himself, remembered that there was a café on the side facing the quay, and went to find it. he tried to control himself and write a letter at once ardent and firm, but the pen shook in his fingers. he wrote at a gallop, confessed that he regretted not having consented, at the outset, to the meeting she proposed, and, attempting to check himself, declared, "we must see each other. think of the harm we are doing ourselves, teasing each other at a distance. think of the remedy we have at hand, my poor darling, i implore you." he must indicate a place of meeting. he hesitated. "let me think," he said to himself. "i don't want her to alight at my place. too dangerous. then the best thing to do would be to offer her a glass of port and a biscuit and conduct her to lavenue's, which is a hotel as well as a café. i will reserve a room. that will be less disgusting than an assignation house. very well, then, let us put in place of the rue de la chaise the waiting-room of the gare montparnasse. sometimes it is quite empty. well, that's done." he gummed the envelope and felt a kind of relief. "ah! i was forgetting. garçon! the bottin de paris." he searched for the name maubel, thinking that by some chance it might be her own. of course it was hardly probable, but she seemed so imprudent that with her anything was to be expected. he might very easily have met a mme. maubel and forgotten her. he found a maubé and a maubec, but no maubel. "of course, that proves nothing," he said, closing the directory. he went out and threw his letter into the box. "the joker in this is the husband. but hell, i am not likely to take his wife away from him very long." he had an idea of going home, but he realized that he would do no work, that alone he would relapse into daydream. "if i went up to des hermies's place. yes, today was his consultation day, it's an idea." he quickened his pace, came to the rue madame, and rang at an entresol. the housekeeper opened the door. "ah, monsieur durtal, he is out, but he will be in soon. will you wait?" "but you are sure he is coming back?" "why, yes. he ought to be here now," she said, stirring the fire. as soon as she had retired durtal sat down, then, becoming bored, he went over and began browsing among the books which covered the wall as in his own place. "des hermies certainly has some curious items," he murmured, opening a very old book. here's a treatise written centuries ago to suit my case exactly. _manuale exorcismorum_. well, i'll be damned! it's a plantin. and what does this manual have to recommend in the treatment of the possessed? "hmmm. contains some quaint counter-spells. here are some for energumens, for the bewitched; here are some against love-philtres and against the plague; against spells cast on comestibles; some, even, to keep butter and milk sweet. that isn't odd. the devil entered into everything in the good old days. and what can this be?" in his hand he held two little volumes with crimson edges, bound in fawn-coloured calf. he opened them and looked at the title, _the anatomy of the mass_, by pierre du moulin, dated, geneva, 1624. "might prove interesting." he went to warm his feet, and hastily skimmed through one of the volumes. "why!" he said, "it's mighty good." on the page which he was reading was a discussion of the priesthood. the author affirmed that none might exercise the functions of the priesthood if he was not sound in body, or if any of his members had been amputated, and asking apropos of this, if a castrated man could be ordained a priest, he answered his own question, "no, unless he carries upon him, reduced to powder, the parts which are wanting." he added, however, that cardinal tolet did not admit this interpretation, which nevertheless had been universally adopted. durtal, amused, read on. now du moulin was debating with himself the point whether it was necessary to interdict abbés ravaged by lechery. and in answer he cited himself the melancholy glose of canon maximianus, who, in his distinction 81, sighs, "it is commonly said that none ought to be deposed from his charge for fornication, in view of the fact that few can be found exempt from this vice." "why! you here?" said des hermies, entering. "what are you reading? _the anatomy of the mass?_ oh, it's a poor thing, for protestants. i am just about distracted. oh, my friend, what brutes those people are," and like a man with a great weight on his chest he unburdened himself. "yes, i have just come from a consultation with those whom the journals characterize as 'princes of science.' for a quarter of an hour i have had to listen to the most contradictory opinions. on one point, however, all agreed: that my patient was a dead man. finally they compromised and decided that the poor wretch's torture should be needlessly prolonged by a course of moxas. i timidly remarked that it would be simpler to send for a confessor, and then assuage the sufferings of the dying man with repeated injections of morphine. if you had seen their faces! they came as near as anything to denouncing me as a tout for the priests. "and such is contemporary science. everybody discovers a new or forgotten disease, and trumpets a forgotten or a new remedy, and nobody knows a thing! and then, too, what good does it do one not to be hopelessly ignorant since there is so much sophistication going on in pharmacy that no physician can be sure of having his prescriptions filled to the letter? one example among many: at present, sirup of white poppy, the diacodia of the old codex, does not exist. it is manufactured with laudanum and sirup of sugar, as if they were the same thing! "we have got so we no longer dose substances but prescribe ready-made remedies and use those surprising specifics which fill up the fourth pages of the journals. it's a compromise medicine, a democratic medicine, one cure for all cases. it's scandalous, it's silly. "no, there is no use in talking. the old therapeutics based on experience was better than this. at least it know that remedies ingested in pill, powder, or bolus form were treacherous, so it prescribed them only in the liquid state. now, too, every physician specializes. the oculists see only the eyes, and, to cure them, quite calmly poison the body. with their pilocarpine they have ruined the health of how many people for ever! others treat cutaneous affections. they drive an eczema inward on an old man who as soon as he is 'cured' becomes childish or dangerous. there is no more solidarity. allegiance to one party means hostility to all others. its a mess. now my honourable confrères are stumbling around, taking a fancy to medicaments which they don't even know how to use. take antipyrine, for example. it is one of the very few really active products that the chemists have found in a long time. well, where is the doctor who knows that, applied in a compress with iodide and cold bondonneau spring water, antipyrine combats the supposedly incurable ailment, cancer? and if that seems incredible, it is true, nevertheless." "honestly," said durtal, "you believe that the old-time doctors came nearer healing?" "yes, because, miraculously, they know the effects of certain invariable remedies prepared without fraud. of course it is self-evident that when old paré eulogized 'sack medicine' and ordered his patients to carry pulverized medicaments in a little sack whose form varied according to the organ to be healed, assuming the form of a cap for the head, of a bagpipe for the stomach, of an ox tongue for the spleen, he probably did not obtain very signal results. his claim to have cured gastralgia by appositions of powder of red rose, coral and mastic, wormwood and mint, aniseed and nutmeg, is certainly not to be borne out, but he also had other systems, and often he cured, because he possessed the science of simples, which is now lost. "the present-day physicians shrug their shoulders when the name of ambrose paré is mentioned. they used to pooh-pooh the idea of the alchemists that gold had medicinal virtue. their fine scorn does not now prevent them from using alternate doses of the salts and of the filings of this metal. they use concentrated arseniate of gold against anemia, muriate against syphilis, cyanide against amenorrhea and scrofula, and chloride of sodium and gold against old ulcers. no, i assure you, it is disgusting to be a physician, for in spite of the fact that i am a doctor of science and have extensive hospital experience i am quite inferior to humble country herborists, solitaries, who know a great deal more than i about what is useful to know--and i admit it." "and homeopathy?" "it has some good things about it and some bad ones. it also palliates without curing. it sometimes represses maladies, but for grave and acute cases it is impotent, just like this mattei system, which, however, is useful as an intermediary to stave off a crisis. with its blood-and lymph-purifying products, its antiscrofoloso, its angiotico, its anti-canceroso, it sometimes modifies morbid states in which other methods are of no avail. for instance, it permits a patient whose kidneys have been demoralized by iodide of potassium to gain time and recuperate so that he can safely begin to drink iodide again! "i add that terrific shooting pains, which rebel even against chloroform and morphine, often yield to an application of 'green electricity.' you ask me, perhaps, of what ingredients this liquid electricity is made. i answer that i know absolutely nothing about it. mattei claims that he has been able to fix in his globules and liquors the electrical properties of certain plants, but he has never given out his recipe, hence he can tell whatever stories suit him. what is curious, anyway, is that this system, thought out by a roman count, a catholic, has its most important following and propaganda among protestant pastors, whose original asininity becomes abysmal in the unbelievable homilies which accompany their essays on healing. indeed, considered seriously, these systems are a lot of wind. the truth is that in the art of healing we grope along at hazard. nevertheless, with a little experience and a great deal of nerve we can manage so as not too shockingly to depopulate the cities. enough of that, old man, and now where have you been keeping yourself?" "just what i was going to ask you. you haven't been to see me for over a week." "well, just now everybody in the world is ill and i am racing around all the time. by the way, i've been attending chantelouve, who has a pretty serious attack of gout. he complains of your absence, and his wife, whom i should not have taken for an admirer of your books, of your last novel especially, speaks to me unceasingly of them and you. for a person customarily so reserved, she seems to me to have become quite enthusiastic about you, does mme. chantelouve. why, what's the matter?" he exclaimed, seeing how red durtal had become. "oh, nothing, but i've got to be going. good night." "why, aren't you feeling well?" "oh, it's nothing, i assure you." "oh, well," said des hermies, knowing better than to insist. "look at this," and took him into the kitchen and showed him a superb leg of mutton hanging beside the window. "i hung it up in a draft so as to get some of the crass freshness out of it. we'll eat it when we have the astrologer gévingey to dine with us at carhaix's. as i am the only person alive who knows how to boil a _gigot à l'anglaise_, i am going to be the cook, so i shan't come by for you. you will find me in the tower, disguised as a scullery maid." once outside, durtal took a long breath. well, well, his unknown was chantelouve's wife. impossible! she had never paid the slightest attention to him. she was silent and cold. impossible! and yet, why had she spoken that way to des hermies? but surely if she had wanted to see him she would have come to his apartment, since they were acquaintances. she would not have started this correspondence under a pseudonym-"h. de maubel!" he said suddenly, "why, mme. chantelouve's name is hyacinthe, a boy's name which suits her very well. she lives in the rue babneux not vary far from the rue littré post-office. she is a blonde, she has a maid, she is a fervent catholic. she's the one." and he experienced, almost simultaneously, two absolutely distinct sensations. of disappointment, first, for his unknown pleased him better. mme. chantelouve would never realize the ideal he had fashioned for himself, the tantalizing features, the agile, wild animal body, the melancholy and ardent bearing, which he had dreamed. indeed, the mere fact of knowing the unknown rendered her less desirable, more vulgar. accessibility killed the chimera. at the same time he experienced a lively relief. he might have been dealing with a hideous old crone, and hyacinthe, as he immediately began to call her, was desirable. thirty-three at most, not pretty, but peculiar; blonde, slight and supple, with no hips, she seemed thin because she was small-boned. the face, mediocre, spoiled by too big a nose, but the lips incandescent, the teeth superb, her complexion ever so faint a rose in the slightly bluish milk white of rice water a little troubled. then her real charm, the really deceptive enigma of her, was in her eyes; ash-grey eyes which seemed uncertain, myopic, and which conveyed an expression of resigned boredom. at certain moments the pupils glowed like a gem of grey water and sparks of silver twinkled to the surface. by turns they were dolent, forsaken, languorous, and haughty. he remembered that those eyes had often brought his heart into his throat! in spite of circumstantial evidence, he reflected that those impassioned letters did not correspond in any way to this woman in the flesh. never was woman more controlled, more adept in the lies of good breeding. he remembered the chantelouve at-homes. she seemed attentive, made no contribution to the conversation, played the hostess smiling, without animation. it was a kind of case of dual personality. in one visible phase a society woman, prudent and reserved, in another concealed phase a wild romantic, mad with passion, hysterical of body, nymphomaniac of soul. it hardly seemed probable. "no," he said, "i am on the wrong track. it's merely by chance that mme. chantelouve spoke of my books to des hermies, and i mustn't jump to the conclusion that she is smitten with me and that she has been writing me these hot letters. it isn't she, but who on earth is it?" he continued to revolve the question, without coming any nearer a solution. again he called before his eyes the image of this woman, and admitted that she was really potently seductive, with a fresh, girlish body, flexible, and without a lot of repugnant flesh--and mysterious, with her concentrated air, her plaintive eyes, and even her coldness, real or feigned. he summarized all that he really knew about her: simply that she was a widow when she married chantelouve, that she had no children, that her first husband, a manufacturer of chasubles, had, for unknown reasons, committed suicide. that was all. on the other hand, too, too much was known about chantelouve! author of a history of poland and the cabinets of the north; of a history of boniface viii and his times; a life of the blessed jeanne de valois, founder of the annonciade; a biography of the venerable mother anne de xaintonge, teacher of the company of saint ursula; and other books of the same kind, published by lecoffre, palmé, poussielgue, in the inevitable shagreen or sheep bindings stamped with dendriform patterns: chantelouve was preparing his candidacy for the académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres, and hoped for the support of the party of the ducs. that was why he received influential hypocrites, provincial tartufes, and priests every week. he doubtless had to drive himself to do this, because in spite of his slinking slyness he was jovial and enjoyed a joke. on the other hand, he aspired to figure in the literature that counts at paris, and he expended a good deal of ingenuity inveigling men of letters to his house on another evening every week, to make them his aides, or at least keep them from openly attacking him, so soon as his candidacy--an entirely clerical affair--should be announced. it was probably to attract and placate his adversaries that he had contrived these baroque gatherings to which, out of curiosity as a matter of fact, the most utterly different kinds of people came. he had other motives. it was said that he had no scruples about exploiting his social acquaintances. durtal had even noticed that at each of the dinners given by chantelouve a well-dressed stranger was present, and the rumour went about that this guest was a wealthy provincial to whom men of letters were exhibited like a wax-work collection, and from whom, before or afterward, important sums were borrowed. "it is undeniable that the chantelouves have no income and that they live in style. catholic publishing houses and magazines pay even worse than the secular, so in spite of his established reputation in the clerical world, chantelouve cannot possibly maintain such a standard of living on his royalties. "there simply is no telling what these people are up to. that this woman's home life is unhappy, and that she does not love the sneaky sacristan to whom she is married, is quite possible, but what is her real rôle in that household? is she accessory to chantelouve's pecuniary dodges? if that is the case i don't see why she should pick on me. if she is in connivance with her husband, she certainly ought to have sense enough to seek an influential or wealthy lover, and she is perfectly aware that i fulfil neither the one nor the other condition. chantelouve knows very well that i am incapable of paying for her gowns and thus contributing to the upkeep of their establishment. i make about three thousand livres, and i can hardly contrive to keep myself going. "so that is not her game. i don't know that i want to have anything to do with their kind of people," he concluded, somewhat chilled by these reflections. "but i am a big fool. what i know about them proves that my unknown beloved is not chantelouve's wife, and, all things considered, i am glad she isn't." chapter viii next day his ferment had subsided. the unknown never left him, but she kept her distance. her less certain features were effaced in mist, her fascination became feebler, and she no longer was his sole preoccupation. the idea, suddenly formed on a word of des hermies, that the unknown must be chantelouve's wife, had, in fashion, checked his fever. if it was she--and his contrary conclusions of the evening before seemed hardly valid when he took up one by one the arguments by which he had arrived at them--then her reasons for wanting him were obscure, dangerous, and he was on his guard, no longer letting himself go in complete self-abandon. and yet, there was another phenomenon taking place within him. he had never paid any especial attention to hyacinthe chantelouve, he had never been in love with her. she interested him by the mystery of her person and her life, but outside her drawing-room he had never given her a thought. now ruminating about her he began almost to desire her. suddenly she benefited by the face of the unknown, for when durtal evoked her she came confused to his sight, her physiognomy mingled with that which he had visualized when the first letters came. though the sneaking scoundrelism of her husband displeased him, he did not think her the less attractive, but his desires were no longer beyond control. in spite of the distrust which she aroused, she might be an interesting mistress, making up for her barefaced vices by her good grace, but she was no longer the non-existent, the chimera raised in a moment of uncertainty. on the other hand, if his conjectures were false, if it was not mme. chantelouve who had written the letters, then the other, the unknown, lost a little of her subtlety by the mere fact that she could be incarnated in a creature whom he knew. still remote, she became less so; then her beauty deteriorated, because, in turn, she took on certain features of mme. chantelouve, and if the latter had profited, the former, on the contrary, lost by the confusion which durtal had established. in one as in the other case, whether she were mme. chantelouve or not, he felt appeased, calmed. at heart he did not know, when he revolved the adventure, whether he preferred his chimera, even diminished, or this hyacinthe, who at least, in her reality, was not a disenchanting frump, wrinkled with age. he profited by the respite to get back to work, but he had presumed too much upon his powers. when he tried to begin his chapter on the crimes of gilles de rais he discovered that he was incapable of sewing two sentences together. he wandered in pursuit of the marshal and caught up with him, but the prose in which he wished to embody the man remained listless and lifeless, and he could think only patchily. he threw down his pen and sank into an armchair. in revery he was transported to tiffauges, where satan, who had refused so obstinately to show himself, now became incarnate in the unwitting marshal, to wallow him, vociferating, in the joys of murder. "for this, basically, is what satanism is," said durtal to himself. "the external semblance of the demon is a minor matter. he has no need of exhibiting himself in human or bestial form to attest his presence. for him to prove himself, it is enough that he choose a domicile in souls which he ulcerates and incites to inexplicable crimes. then, he can hold his victims by that hope which he breathes into them, that instead of living in them as he does, and as they don't often know, he will obey evocations, appear to them, and deal out, duly, legally, the advantages he concedes in exchange for certain forfeits. our very willingness to make a pact with him must be able often to produce his infusion into us. "all the modern theories of the followers of maudsley and lombroso do not, in fact, render the singular abuses of the marshal comprehensible. nothing could be more just than to class him as a monomaniac, for he was one, if by the word monomaniac we designate every man who is dominated by a fixed idea. but so is every one of us, more or less, from the business man, all whose thoughts converge on the one idea of gain, to the artist absorbed in bringing his masterpiece into the world. but why was the marshal a monomaniac, how did he become one? that is what all the lombrosos in the world can't tell you. encephalic lesions, adherence of the _pia mater_ to the cerebrum, mean absolutely nothing in this question. for they are simple resultants, effects derived from a cause which ought to be explained, and which no materialist can explain. it is easy to declare that a disturbance of the cerebral lobes produces assassins and demonomaniacs. the famous alienists of our time claim that analysis of the brain of an insane woman disclosed a lesion or a deterioration of the grey matter. and suppose it did! it would still be a question whether, in the case of a woman possessed with demonomania, the lesion produced the demonomania, or the demonomania produced the lesion.... admitting that there was a lesion! the spiritual comprachicos have never resorted to cerebral surgery. they don't amputate the lobes--supposed to be reliably identified--after carefully trepanning. they simply act upon the pupil by inculcating ignoble ideas in him, developing his bad instincts, pushing him little by little into the paths of vice; and if this gymnastic of persuasion deteriorates the cerebral tissues in the subject, that proves precisely that the lesion is only the derivative and not the cause of the psychological state. "and then, and then, these doctrines which consist nowadays in confounding the criminal with the insane, the demonomaniac with the mad, have absolutely no foundation. nine years ago a lad of fourteen, felix lemaîre, assassinated a little boy whom he did not know. he just wanted to see the child suffer, just wanted to hear him cry. felix slashed the little fellow's stomach with a knife, turned the blade round and round in the warm flesh, then slowly sawed his victim's head off. felix manifested no remorse, and in the ensuing investigation proved himself to be intelligent and atrocious. dr. legrand du saule and other specialists kept him under vigilant surveillance for months, and could not discover the slightest pathological symptom. and he had had fairly good rearing and certainly had not been corrupted by others. "his behaviour was like that of the conscious or unconscious demonomaniacs who do evil for evil's sake. they are no more mad than the rapt monk in his cell, than the man who does good for good's sake. anybody but a medical theorist can see that the desire for good and the desire for evil simply form the two opposing poles of the soul. in the fifteenth century these extremes were represented by jeanne d'arc and the marshal de rais. now there is no more reason for attributing madness to gilles than there is for attributing it to jeanne d'arc, whose admirable excesses certainly have no connection with vesania and delirium. "all the same, some frightful nights must have been passed in that fortress," said durtal. he was thinking of the château de tiffauges, which he had visited a year ago, believing that it would aid him in his work to live in the country where gilles had lived and to dig among the ruins. he had established himself in the little hamlet which stretches along the base of the abandoned donjon. he learned what a living thing the legend of bluebeard was in this isolated part of la vendée on the border of brittany. "he was a young man who came to a bad end," said the young women. more fearful, their grandmothers crossed themselves as they went along the foot of the wall in the evening. the memory of the disembowelled children persisted. the marshal, known only by his surname, still had power to terrify. durtal had gone every day from the inn where he lodged to the château, towering over the valleys of the crume and of the sèvre, facing hills excoriated with blocks of granite and overgrown with formidable oaks, whose roots, protruding out of the ground, resembled monstrous nests of frightened snakes. one might have believed oneself transported into the real brittany. there was the same melancholy, heavy sky, the same sun, which seemed older than in other parts of the world and which but feebly gilded the sorrowful, age-old forests and the mossy sandstone. there were the same endless stretches of broken, rocky soil, pitted with ponds of rusty water, dotted with scattered clumps of gorse and fruze copse, and sprinkled with pink harebells and nameless yellow prairie flowers. one felt that this iron-grey sky; this starving soil, empurpled only here and there by the bleeding flower of the buckwheat; that these roads, bordered with stones placed one on top of the other, without cement or plaster; that these paths, bordered with impenetrable hedges; that these grudging plants; these inhospitable fields; these crippled beggars, eaten with vermin, plastered with filth; that even the flocks, undersized and wasted, the dumpy little cows, the black sheep whose blue eyes had the cold, pale gleam that is in the eyes of the slav or of the tribade; had perpetuated their primordial state, preserving an identical landscape through all the centuries. except for an incongruous factory chimney further away on the bank of the sèvre, the countryside of tiffauges remained in perfect harmony with the immense château, erect among its ruins. within the close, still to be traced by the ruins of the towers, was a whole plain, now converted into a miserable truck garden. cabbages, in long bluish lines, impoverished carrots, consumptive navews, spread over this enormous circle where iron mail had clanked in the tournament and where processionals had slowly devolved, in the smoke of incense, to the chanting of psalms. a thatched hut had been built in a corner. the peasant inhabitants, returned to a state of savagery, no longer understood the meaning of words, and could be roused out of their apathy only by the display of a silver coin. seizing the coin, they would hand over the keys. for hours one could browse around at ease among the ruins, and smoke and daydream. unfortunately, certain parts were inaccessible. the donjon was still shut off, on the tiffauges side, by a vast moat, at the bottom of which mighty trees were growing. one would have had to pass over the tops of the trees, growing to the very verge of the wall, to gain a porch on the other side, for there was now no drawbridge. but quite accessible was another part which overhung the sèvre. there the wings of the castle, overgrown with ivy and white-crested viburnum, were intact. spongy, dry as pumice stone, silvered with lichen and gilded with moss, the towers rose entire, though from their crenelated collarettes whole blocks were blown away on windy nights. within, room succeeded glacial room, cut into the granite, surmounted with vaulted roofs, and as close as the hold of a ship. then by spiral stairways one descended into similar chambers, joined by cellar passageways into the walls of which were dug deep niches and lairs of unknown utility. beneath, those corridors, so narrow that two persons could not walk along them abreast, descended at a gentle slope, and bifurcated so that there was a labyrinth of lanes, leading to veritable cells, on the walls of which the nitre scintillated in the light of the lantern like steel mica or twinkling grains of sugar. in the cells above, in the dungeons beneath, one stumbled over rifts of hard earth, in the centre or in a corner of which yawned now the mouth of an unsealed oubliette, now a well. finally, at the summit of one of the towers, that at the left as one entered, there was a roofed gallery running parallel to a circular foothold cut from the rock. there, without doubt, the men-at-arms had been stationed to fire on their assailants through wide loopholes opening overhead and underfoot. in this gallery the voice, even the lowest, followed the curving walls and could be heard all around the circuit. briefly, the exterior of the castle revealed a fortified place built to stand long sieges, and the dismantled interior made one think of a prison in which flesh, mildewed by the moisture, must rot in a few months. out in the open air again, one felt a sensation of well-being, of relief, which one lost on traversing the ruins of the isolated chapel and penetrating, by a cellar door, to the crypt below. this chapel, low, squat, its vaulted roof upheld by massive columns on whose capitals lozenges and bishop's croziers were carved, dated from the eleventh century. the altar stone survived intact. brackish daylight, which seemed to have been filtered through layers of horn, came in at the openings, hardly lighting the shadowed, begrimed walls and the earth floor, which too was pierced by the entrance to an oubliette or by a well shaft. in the evening after dinner he had often climbed up on the embankment and followed the cracked walls of the ruins. on bright nights one part of the castle was thrown back into shadow, and the other, by contrast, stood forth, washed in silver and blue, as if rubbed with mercurial lusters, above the sèvre, along whose surface streaks of moonlight darted like the backs of fishes. the silence was overpowering. after nine o'clock not a dog, not a soul. he would return to the poor chamber of the inn, where an old woman, in black, wearing the cornet head-dress her ancestors wore in the sixteenth century, waited with a candle to bar the door as soon as he returned. "all this," said durtal to himself, "is the skeleton of a dead keep. to reanimate it we must revisualize the opulent flesh which once covered these bones of sandstone. documents give us every detail. this carcass was magnificently clad, and if we are to see gilles in his own environment, we must remember all the sumptuosity of fifteenth century furnishing. "we must reclothe these walls with wainscots of irish wood or with high warp tapestries of gold and thread of arras, so much sought after in that epoch. then this hard, black soil must be repaved with green and yellow bricks or black and white flagstones. the vault must be starred with gold and sown with crossbows on a field _azur_, and the marshal's cross, _sable_ on shield _or_, must be set shining there." of themselves the furnishings returned, each to its own place. here and there were high-backed signorial chairs, thrones, and stools. against the walls were sideboards on whose carved panels were bas-reliefs representing the annunciation and the adoration of the magi. on top of the sideboards, beneath lace canopies, stood the painted and gilded statues of saint anne, saint marguerite, and saint catherine, so often reproduced by the wood-carvers of the middle ages. there were linen-chests, bound in iron, studded with great nails, and covered with sowskin leather. then there were coffers fastened by great metal clasps and overlaid with leather or fabric on which fair faced angels, cut from illuminated missal-backgrounds, had been mounted. there were great beds reached by carpeted steps. there were tasselled pillows and counterpanes heavily perfumed, and canopies and curtains embroidered with armories or sprinkled with stars. so one must reconstruct the decorations of the other rooms, in which nothing was standing but the walls and the high, basket-funneled fireplaces, whose spacious hearths, wanting andirons, were still charred from the old fires. one could easily imagine the dining-rooms and those terrible repasts which gilles deplored in his trial at nantes. gilles admitted with tears that he had ordered his diet so as to kindle the fury of his senses, and these reprobate menus can be easily reproduced. when he was at table with eustache blanchet, prelati, gilles de sillé, all his trusted companions, in the great room, the plates and the ewers filled with water of medlar, rose, and melilote for washing the hands, were placed on credences. gilles ate beef-, salmon-, and bream-pies; levert-and squab-tarts; roast heron, stork, crane, peacock, bustard, and swan; venison in verjuice; nantes lampreys; salads of briony, hops, beard of judas, mallow; vehement dishes seasoned with marjoram and mace, coriander and sage, peony and rosemary, basil and hyssop, grain of paradise and ginger; perfumed, acidulous dishes, giving one a violent thirst; heavy pastries; tarts of elder-flower and rape; rice with milk of hazelnuts sprinkled with cinnamon; stuffy dishes necessitating copious drafts of beer and fermented mulberry juice, of dry wine, or wine aged to tannic bitterness, of heady hypocras charged with cinnamon, with almonds, and with musk, of raging liquors clouded with golden particles--mad drinks which spurred the guests in this womanless castle to frenzies of lechery and made them, at the end of the meal, writhe in monstrous dreams. "remain the costumes to be restored," said durtal to himself, and he imagined gilles and his friends, not in their damaskeened field harness, but in their indoor costumes, their robes of peace. he visualized them in harmony with the luxury of their surroundings. they wore glittering vestments, pleated jackets, bellying out in a little flounced skirt at the waist. the legs were encased in dark skin-tight hose. on their heads were the artichoke chaperon hats like that of charles vii in his portrait in the louvre. the torso was enveloped in silver-threaded damask, which was crusted with jewelleries and bordered with marten. he thought of the costume of the women of the time, robes of precious tentered stuffs, with tight sleeves, great collars thrown back over the shoulders, cramping bodices, long trains lined with fur. and as he thus dressed an imaginary manikin, hanging ropes of heavy stones, purplish or milky crystals, cloudy uncut gems, over the slashed corsage, a woman slipped in, filled the robe, swelled the bodice, and thrust her head under the two-horned steeple-headdress. from behind the pendent lace smiled the composite features of the unknown and of mme. chantelouve. delighted, he gazed at the apparition without ever perceiving whom he had evoked, when his cat, jumping into his lap, distracted his thoughts and brought him back to his room. "well, well, she won't let me alone," and in spite of himself he began to laugh at the thought of the unknown following him even to the château de tiffauges. "it's foolish to let my thoughts wander this way," he said, drawing himself up, "but daydream is the only good thing in life. everything else is vulgar and empty. "no doubt about it, that was a singular epoch, the middle epoch of ignorance and darkness, the history professors and ages," he went on, lighting a cigarette. "for some it's all white and for others utterly black. no intermediate shade, atheists reiterate. dolorous and exquisite epoch, say the artists and the religious savants. "what is certain is that the immutable classes, the nobility, the clergy, the bourgeoisie, the people, had loftier souls at that time. you can prove it: society has done nothing but deteriorate in the four centuries separating us from the middle ages. "true, a baron then was usually a formidable brute. he was a drunken and lecherous bandit, a sanguinary and boisterous tyrant, but he was a child in mind and spirit. the church bullied him, and to deliver the holy sepulchre he sacrificed his wealth, abandoned home, wife, and children, and accepted unconscionable fatigues, extraordinary sufferings, unheard-of dangers. "by pious heroism he redeemed the baseness of his morals. the race has since become moderate. it has reduced, sometimes even done away with, its instincts of carnage and rape, but it has replaced them by the monomania of business, the passion for lucre. it has done worse. it has sunk to such a state of abjectness as to be attracted by the doings of the lowest of the low. the aristocracy disguises itself as a mountebank, puts on tights and spangles, gives public trapeze performances, jumps through hoops, and does weight-lifting stunts in the trampled tan-bark ring! "the clergy, then a good example--if we except a few convents ravaged by frenzied satanism and lechery--launched itself into superhuman transports and attained god. saints swarmed, miracles multiplied, and while still omnipotent the church was gentle with the humble, it consoled the afflicted, defended the little ones, and mourned or rejoiced with the people of low estate. today it hates the poor, and mysticism dies in a clergy which checks ardent thoughts and preaches sobriety of mind, continence of postulation, common sense in prayer, bourgeoisie of the soul! yet here and there, buried in cloisters far from these lukewarm priests, there perhaps still are real saints who weep, monks who pray, to the point of dying of sorrow and prayer, for each of us. and they--with the demoniacs--are the sole connecting link between that age and this. "the smug, sententious side of the bourgeoisie already existed in the time of charles vii. but cupidity was repressed by the confessor, and the tradesman, just like the labourer, was maintained by the corporations, which denounced overcharging and fraud, saw that decried merchandise was destroyed, and fixed a fair price and a high standard of excellence for commodities. trades and professions were handed down from father to son. the corporations assured work and pay. people were not, as now, subject to the fluctuations of the market and the merciless capitalistic exploitation. great fortunes did not exist and everybody had enough to live on. sure of the future, unhurried, they created marvels of art, whose secret remains for ever lost. "all the artisans who passed the three degrees of apprentice, journeyman, and master, developed subtlety and became veritable artists. they ennobled the simplest of iron work, the commonest faience, the most ordinary chests and coffers. those corporations, putting themselves under the patronage of saints--whose images, frequently besought, figured on their banners--preserved through the centuries the honest existence of the humble and notably raised the spiritual level of the people whom they protected. "all that is decisively at an end. the bourgeoise has taken the place forfeited by a wastrel nobility which now subsists only to set ignoble fashions and whose sole contribution to our 'civilization' is the establishment of gluttonous dining clubs, so-called gymnastic societies, and pari-mutuel associations. today the business man has but these aims, to exploit the working man, manufacture shoddy, lie about the quality of merchandise, and give short weight. "as for the people, they have been relieved of the indispensable fear of hell, and notified, at the same time, that they are not to expect to be recompensed, after death, for their sufferings here. so they scamp their ill-paid work and take to drink. from time to time, when they have ingurgitated too violent liquids, they revolt, and then they must be slaughtered, for once let loose they would act as a crazed stampeded herd. "good god, what a mess! and to think that the nineteenth century takes on airs and adulates itself. there is one word in the mouths of all. progress. progress of whom? progress of what? for this miserable century hasn't invented anything great. "it has constructed nothing and destroyed everything. at the present hour it glorifies itself in this electricity which it thinks it discovered. but electricity was known and used in remotest antiquity, and if the ancients could not explain its nature nor even its essence, the moderns are just as incapable of identifying that force which conveys the spark and carries the voice--acutely nasalized--along the wire. this century thinks it discovered the terrible science of hypnotism, which the priests and brahmins in egypt and india knew and practised to the utmost. no, the only thing this century has invented is the sophistication of products. therein it is passed master. it has even gone so far as to adulterate excrement. yes, in 1888 the two houses of parliament had to pass a law destined to suppress the falsification of fertilizer. now that's the limit." the doorbell rang. he opened the door and nearly fell over backward. mme. chantelouve was before him. stupefied, he bowed, while mme. chantelouve, without a word, went straight into the study. there she turned around, and durtal, who had followed, found himself face to face with her. "won't you please sit down?" he advanced an armchair and hastened to push back, with his foot, the edge of the carpet turned up by the cat. he asked her to excuse the disorder. she made a vague gesture and remained standing. in a calm but very low voice she said, "it is i who wrote you those mad letters. i have come to drive away this bad fever and get it over with in a quite frank way. as you yourself wrote, no liaison between us is possible. let us forget what has happened. and before i go, tell me that you bear me no grudge." he cried out at this. he would not have it so. he had not been beside himself when he wrote her those ardent pages, he was in perfectly good faith, he loved her-"you love me! why, you didn't even know that those letters were from me. you loved an unknown, a chimera. well, admitting that you are telling the truth, the chimera does not exist now, for here i am." "you are mistaken. i knew perfectly that it was mme. chantelouve hiding behind the pseudonym of mme. maubel." and he half-explained to her, without, of course, letting her know of his doubts, how he had lifted her mask. "ah!" she reflected, blinking her troubled eyes. "at any rate," she said, again facing him squarely, "you could not have recognized me in the first letters, to which you responded with cries of passion. those cries were not addressed to me." he contested this observation, and became entangled in the dates and happenings and in the sequence of the notes. she at length lost the thread of his remarks. the situation was so ridiculous that both were silent. then she sat down and burst out laughing. her strident, shrill laugh, revealing magnificent, but short and pointed teeth, in a mocking mouth, vexed him. "she has been playing with me," he said to himself, and dissatisfied with the turn the conversation had taken, and furious at seeing this woman so calm, so different from her burning letters, he asked, in a tone of irritation, "am i to know why you laugh?" "pardon me. it's a trick my nerves play on me, sometimes in public places. but never mind. let us be reasonable and talk things over. you tell me you love me--" "and i mean it." "well, admitting that i too am not indifferent, where is this going to lead us? oh, you know so well, you poor dear, that you refused, right at first, the meeting which i asked in a moment of madness--and you gave well-thought-out reasons for refusing." "but i refused because i did not know then that you were the women in the case! i have told you that it was several days later that des hermies unwittingly revealed your identity to me. did i hesitate as soon as i knew? no! i immediately implored you to come." "that may be, but you admit that i'm right when i claim that you wrote your first letters to another and not me." she was pensive for a moment. durtal began to be prodigiously bored by this discussion. he thought it more prudent not to answer, and was seeking a change of subject that would put an end to the deadlock. she herself got him out of his difficulty. "let us not discuss it any more," she said, smiling, "we shall not get anywhere. you see, this is the situation: i am married to a very nice man who loves me and whose only crime is that he represents the rather insipid happiness which one has right at hand. i started this correspondence with you, so i am to blame, and believe me, on his account i suffer. you have work to do, beautiful books to write. you don't need to have a crazy woman come walking into your life. so, you see, the best thing is for us to remain friends, but true friends, and go no further." "and it is the woman who wrote me such vivid letters, who now speaks to me of reason, good sense, and god knows what!" "but be frank, now. you don't love me." "i don't?" he took her hands, gently. she made no resistance, but looking at him squarely she said, "listen. if you had loved me you would have come to see me; and yet for months you haven't tried to find out whether i was alive or dead." "but you understand that i could not hope to be welcomed by you on the terms we now are on, and too, in your parlour there are guests, your husband--i have never had you even a little bit to myself at your home." he pressed her hands more tightly and came closer to her. she regarded him with her smoky eyes, in which he now saw that dolent, almost dolorous expression which had captivated him. he completely lost control of himself before this voluptuous and plaintive face, but with a firm gesture she freed her hands. "enough. sit down, now, and let's talk of something else. do you know your apartment is charming? which saint is that?" she asked, examining the picture, over the mantel, of the monk on his knees beside a cardinal's hat and cloak. "i do not know." "i will find out for you. i have the lives of all the saints at home. it ought to be easy to find out about a cardinal who renounced the purple to go live in a hut. wait. i think saint peter damian did, but i am not sure. i have such a poor memory. help me think." "but i don't know who he is!" she came closer to him and put her hand on his shoulder. "are you angry at me?" "i should say i am! when i desire you frantically, when i've been dreaming for a whole week about this meeting, you come here and tell me that all is over between us, that you do not love me--" she became demure. "but if i did not love you, would i have come to you? understand, then, that reality kills a dream; that it is better for us not to expose ourselves to fearful regrets. we are not children, you see. no! let me go. do not squeeze me like that!" very pale, she struggled in his embrace. "i swear to you that i will go away and that you shall never see me again if you do not let me loose." her voice became hard. she was almost hissing her words. he let go of her. "sit down there behind the table. do that for me." and tapping the floor with her heel, she said, in a tone of melancholy, "then it is impossible to be friends, only friends, with a man. but it would be very nice to come and see you without having evil thoughts to fear, wouldn't it?" she was silent. then she added, "yes, just to see each other--and if we did not have any sublime things to say to each other, it is also very nice to sit and say nothing!" then she said, "my time is up. i must go home." "and leave me with no hope?" he exclaimed, kissing her gloved hands. she did not answer, but gently shook her head, then, as he looked pleadingly at her, she said, "listen. if you will promise to make no demands on me and to be good, i will come here night after next at nine o'clock." he promised whatever she wished. and as he raised his head from her hands and as his lips brushed lightly over her breast, which seemed to tighten, she disengaged her hands, caught his nervously, and, clenching her teeth, offered her neck to his lips. then she fled. "oof!" he said, closing the door after her. he was at the same time satisfied and vexed. satisfied, because he found her enigmatic, changeful, charming. now that he was alone he recalled her to memory. he remembered her tight black dress, her fur cloak, the warm collar of which had caressed him as he was covering her neck with kisses. he remembered that she wore no jewellery, except sparkling blue sapphire eardrops. he remembered the wayward blonde hair escaping from under the dark green otter hat. holding his hands to his nostrils he sniffed again the sweet and distant odour, cinnamon lost among stronger perfumes, which he had caught from the contact of her long, fawn-coloured suède gloves, and he saw again her moist, rodent teeth, her thin, bitten lips, and her troubled eyes, of a grey and opaque lustre which could suddenly be transfigured with radiance. "oh, night after next it will be great to kiss all that!" vexed also, both with himself and with her. he reproached himself with having been brusque and reserved. he ought to have shown himself more expansive and less restrained. but it was her fault, for she had abashed him! the incongruity between the woman who cried with voluptuous suffering in her letters and the woman he had seen, so thoroughly mistress of herself in her coquetries, was truly too much! "however you look at them, these women are astonishing creatures," he thought. "here is one who accomplishes the most difficult thing you can imagine: coming to a man's room after having written him excessive letters. i, i act like a goose. i stand there ill at ease. she, in a second, has the self-assurance of a person in her own home, or visiting in a drawing-room. no awkwardness, pretty gestures, a few words, and eyes which supply everything! she isn't very agreeable," he thought, reminded of the curt tone she had used when disengaging herself, "and yet she has her tender spots," he continued dreamily, remembering not so much her words as certain inflections of her voice and a certain bewildered look in her eyes. "i must go about it prudently that night," he concluded, addressing his cat, which, never having seen a woman before, had fled at the arrival of mme. chantelouve and taken refuge under the bed, but had now advanced almost grovelling, to sniff the chair where she had sat. "come to think of it, she is an old hand, mme. hyacinthe! she would not have a meeting in a café nor in the street. she scented from afar the assignation house or the hotel. and though, from the mere fact of my not inviting her here, she could not doubt that i did not want to introduce her to my lodging, she came here deliberately. then, this first denial, come to think of it, is only a fine farce. if she were not seeking a liaison she would not have visited me. no, she wanted me to beg her to do what she wanted to do. like all women, she wanted me to offer her what she desired. i have been rolled. her arrival has knocked the props out from under my whole method. but what does it matter? she is no less desirable," he concluded, happy to get rid of disagreeable reflections and plunge back into the delirious vision which he retained of her. "that night won't be exactly dreary," he thought, seeing again her eyes, imagining them in surrender, deceptive and plaintive, as he would disrobe her and make a body white and slender, warm and supple, emerge from her tight skirt. "she has no children. that is an earnest promise that her flesh is quite firm, even at thirty!" a whole draft of youth intoxicated him. durtal, astonished, took a look at himself in the mirror. his tired eyes brightened, his face seemed more youthful, less worn. "lucky i had just shaved," he said to himself. but gradually, as he mused, he saw in this mirror, which he was so little in the habit of consulting, his features droop and his eyes lose their sparkle. his stature, which had seemed to increase in this spiritual upheaval, diminished again. sadness returned to his thoughtful mien. "i haven't what you would call the physique of a lady's man," he concluded. "what does she see in me? for she could very easily find someone else with whom to be unfaithful to her husband. enough of these rambling thoughts. let's cease to think them. to sum up the situation: i love her with my head and not my heart. that's the important thing. under such conditions, whatever happens, a love affair is brief, and i am almost certain to get out of it without committing any follies." chapter ix the next morning he woke, thinking of her, just as he had been doing when he went to sleep. he tried to rationalize the episode and revolved his conjectures over and over. once again he put himself this question: "why, when i went to her house, did she not let me see that i pleased her? never a look, never a word to encourage me. why this correspondence, when it was so easy to insist on having me to dine, so simple to prepare an occasion which would bring us together, either at her home or elsewhere?" and he answered himself, "it would have been usual and not at all diverting. she is perhaps skilled in these matters. she knows that the unknown frightens a man's reason away, that the unembodied puts the soul in ferment, and she wished to give me a fever before trying an attack--to call her advances by their right name. "it must be admitted that if my conjectures are correct she is strangely astute. at heart she is, perhaps, quite simply a crazy romantic or a comedian. it amuses her to manufacture little adventures, to throw tantalizing obstacles in the way of the realization of a vulgar desire. and chantelouve? he is probably aware of his wife's goings on, which perhaps facilitate his career. otherwise, how could she arrange to come here at nine o'clock at night, instead of the morning or afternoon on pretence of going shopping?" to this new question there could be no answer, and little by little he ceased to interrogate himself on the point. he began to be obsessed by the real woman as he had been by the imaginary creature. the latter had completely vanished. he did not even remember her physiognomy now. mme. chantelouve, just as she was in reality, without borrowing the other's features, had complete possession of him and fired his brain and senses to white heat. he began to desire her madly and to wish furiously for tomorrow night. and if she did not come? he felt cold in the small of his back at the idea that she might be unable to get away from home or that she might wilfully stay away. "high time it was over and done with," he said, for this saint vitus' dance went on not without certain diminution of force, which disturbed him. in fact he feared, after the febrile agitation of his nights, to reveal himself as a sorry paladin when the time came. "but why bother?" he rejoined, as he started toward carhaix's, where he was to dine with the astrologer gévingey and des hermies. "i shall be rid of my obsession awhile," he murmured, groping along in the darkness of the tower. des hermies, hearing him come up the stair, opened the door, casting a shaft of light into the spiral. durtal, reaching the landing, saw his friend in shirt sleeves and enveloped in an apron. "i am, as you see, in the heat of composition," and upon a stew-pan boiling on the stove des hermies cast that brief and sure look which a mechanic gives his machine, then he consulted, as if it were a manometer, his watch, hanging to a nail. "look," he said, raising the pot lid. durtal bent over and through a cloud of vapour he saw a coiled napkin rising and falling with the little billows. "where is the leg of mutton?" "it, my friend, is sewn into that cloth so tightly that the air cannot enter. it is cooking in this pretty, singing sauce, into which i have thrown a handful of hay, some pods of garlic and slices of carrot and onion, some grated nutmeg, and laurel and thyme. you will have many compliments to make me if gévingey doesn't keep us waiting too long, because a _gigot à l'anglaise_ won't stand being cooked to shreds." carhaix's wife looked in. "come in," she said. "my husband is here." durtal found him dusting the books. they shook hands. durtal, at random, looked over some of the dusted books lying on the table. "are these," he asked, "technical works about metals and bell-founding or are they about the liturgy of bells?" "they are not about founding, though there is sometimes reference to the founders, the 'sainterers' as they were called in the good old days. you will discover here and there some details about alloys of red copper and fine tin. you will even find, i believe, that the art of the 'sainterer' has been in decline for three centuries, probably due to the fact that the faithful no longer melt down their ornaments of precious metals, thus modifying the alloy. or is it because the founders no longer invoke saint anthony the eremite when the bronze is boiling in the furnace? i do not know. it is true, at any rate, that bells are now made in carload lots. their voices are without personality. they are all the same. they're like docile and indifferent hired girls when formerly they were like those aged servants who became part of the family whose joys and griefs they have shared. but what difference does that make to the clergy and the congregation? at present these auxiliaries devoted to the cult do not represent any symbol. and that explains the whole difficulty. "you asked me, a few seconds ago, whether these books treated of bells from the liturgical point of view. yes, most of them give tabulated explanations of the significance of the various component parts. the interpretations are simple and offer little variety." "what are a few of them?" "i can sum them all up for you in a very few words. according to the _rational_ of guillaume durand, the hardness of the metal signifies the force of the preacher. the percussion of the clapper on the sides expresses the idea that the preacher must first scourge himself to correct himself of his own vices before reproaching the vices of others. the wooden frame represents the cross of christ, and the cord, which formerly served to set the bell swinging, allegorizes the science of the scriptures which flows from the mystery of the cross itself. "the most ancient liturgists expound practically the same symbols. jean beleth, who lived in 1200, declares also that the bell is the image of the preacher, but adds that its motion to and fro, when it is set swinging, teaches that the preacher must by turns elevate his language and bring it down within reach of the crowd. for hugo of saint victor the clapper is the tongue of the officiating priest, which strikes the two sides of the vase and announces thus, at the same time, the truth of the two testaments. finally, if we consult fortunatus amalarius, perhaps the most ancient of the liturgists, we find simply that the body of the bell denotes the mouth of the preacher and the hammer his tongue." "but," said durtal, somewhat disappointed, "it isn't--what shall i say?--very profound." the door opened. "why, how are you!" said carhaix, shaking hands with gévingey, and then introducing him to durtal. while the bell-ringer's wife finished setting the table, durtal examined the newcomer. he was a little man, wearing a soft black felt hat and wrapped up like an omnibus conductor in a cape with a military collar of blue cloth. his head was like an egg with the hollow downward. the skull, waxed as if with siccatif, seemed to have grown up out of the hair, which was hard and like filaments of dried coconut and hung down over his neck. the nose was bony, and the nostrils opened like two hatchways, over a toothless mouth which was hidden by a moustache grizzled like the goatee springing from the short chin. at first glance one would have taken him for an art-worker, a wood engraver or a glider of saints' images, but on looking at him more closely, observing the eyes, round and grey, set close to the nose, almost crossed, and studying his solemn voice and obsequious manners, one asked oneself from what quite special kind of sacristy the man had issued. he took off his things and appeared in a black frock coat of square, boxlike cut. a fine gold chain, passed about his neck, lost itself in the bulging pocket of an old vest. durtal gasped when gévingey, as soon as he had seated himself, complacently put his hands on exhibition, resting them on his knees. enormous, freckled with blotches of orange, and terminating in milk-white nails cut to the quick, the fingers were covered with huge rings, the sets of which formed a phalanx. seeing durtal's gaze fixed on his fingers, he smiled. "you examine my valuables, monsieur. they are of three metals, gold, platinum, and silver. this ring bears a scorpion, the sign under which i was born. that with its two accoupled triangles, one pointing downward and the other upward, reproduces the image of the macrocosm, the seal of solomon, the grand pantacle. as for the little one you see here," he went on, showing a lady's ring set with a tiny sapphire between two roses, "that is a present from a person whose horoscope i was good enough to cast." "ah!" said durtal, somewhat surprised at the man's self-satisfaction. "dinner is ready," said the bell-ringer's wife. des hermies, doffing his apron, appeared in his tight cheviot garments. he was not so pale as usual, his cheeks being red from the heat of the stove. he set the chairs around. carhaix served the broth, and everyone was silent, taking spoonfuls of the cooler broth at the edge of the bowl. then madame brought des hermies the famous leg of mutton to cut. it was a magnificent red, and large drops flowed beneath the knife. everybody ecstasized when tasting this robust meat, aromatic with a purée of turnips sweetened with caper sauce. des hermies bowed under a storm of compliments. carhaix filled the glasses, and, somewhat confused in the presence of gévingey, paid the astrologer effusive attention to make him forget their former ill-feeling. des hermies assisted in this good work, and wishing also to be useful to durtal, brought the conversation around to the subject of horoscopes. then gévingey mounted the rostrum. in a tone of satisfaction he spoke of his vast labours, of the six months a horoscope required, of the surprise of laymen when he declared that such work was not paid for by the price he asked, five hundred francs. "but you see i cannot give my science for nothing," he said. "and now people doubt astrology, which was revered in antiquity. also in the middle ages, when it was almost sacred. for instance, messieurs, look at the portal of notre dame. the three doors which archeologists--not initiated into the symbolism of christianity and the occult--designate by the names of the door of judgment, the door of the virgin, and the door of saint marcel or saint anne, really represent mysticism, astrology, and alchemy, the three great sciences of the middle ages. today you find people who say, 'are you quite sure that the stars have an influence on the destiny of man?' but, messieurs, without entering here into details reserved for the adept, in what way is this spiritual influence stranger than that corporal influence which certain planets, the moon, for example, exercise on the organs of men and women? "you are a physician, monsieur des hermies, and you are not unaware that the doctors gillespin, jackson, and balfour, of jamaica, have established the influence of the constellations on human health in the west indies. at every change of the moon the number of sick people augments. the acute crises of fever coincide with the phases of our satellite. finally, there are _lunatics_. go out in the country and ascertain at what periods madness becomes epidemic. but does this serve to convince the incredulous?" he asked sorrowfully, contemplating his rings. "it seems to me, on the contrary, that astrology is picking up," said durtal. "there are now two astrologers casting horoscopes in the next column to the secret remedies on the fourth page of the newspapers." "and it's a shame! those people don't even know the first thing about the science. they are simply tricksters who hope thus to pick up some money. what's the use of speaking of them when they _don't even exist_! really it must be admitted that only in england and america is there anybody who knows how to establish the genethliac theme and construct a horoscope." "i am very much afraid," said des hermies, "that not only these so-called astrologers, but also all the mages, theosophists, occultists, and cabalists of the present day, know absolutely nothing--those with whom i am acquainted are indubitably, incontestably, ignorant imbeciles. and that is the pure truth, messieurs. these people are, for the most part, down-and-out journalists or broken spendthrifts seeking to exploit the taste of a public weary of positivism. they plagiarize eliphas levi, steal from fabre d'olivet, and write treatises of which they themselves are incapable of making head or tail. it's a real pity, when you come to think of it." "the more so as they discredit sciences which certainly contain verities omitted in their jumble," said durtal. "then another lamentable thing," said des hermies, "is that in addition to the dupes and simpletons, these little sects harbour some frightful charlatans and windbags." "péladan, among others. who does not know that shoddy mage, commercialized to his fingertips?" cried durtal. "oh, yes, that fellow--" "briefly, messieurs," resumed gévingey, "all these people are incapable of obtaining in practise any effect whatever. the only man in this century who, without being either a saint or a diabolist, has penetrated the mysteries, is william crookes." and as durtal, who appeared to doubt the apparitions sworn to by this englishman, declared that no theory could explain them, gévingey perorated, "permit me, messieurs. we have the choice between two diverse, and i venture to say, very clear-cut doctrines. either the apparition is formed by the fluid disengaged by the medium in trance to combine with the fluid of the persons present; or else there are in the air immaterial beings, elementals as they are called, which manifest themselves under very nearly determinable conditions; or else, and this is the theory of pure spiritism, the phenomena are produced by souls evoked from the dead." "i know it," durtal said, "and that horrifies me. i know also the hindu dogma of the migrations of souls after death. these disembodied souls stray until they are reincarnated or until they attain, from avatar to avatar, to complete purity. well, i think it's quite enough to live once. i'd prefer nothingness, a hole in the ground, to all those metamorphoses. it's more consoling to me. as for the evocation of the dead, the mere thought that the butcher on the corner can force the soul of hugo, balzac, baudelaire, to converse with him, would put me beside myself, if i believed it. ah, no. materialism, abject as it is, is less vile than that." "spiritism," said carhaix, "is only a new name for the ancient necromancy condemned and cursed by the church." gévingey looked at his rings, then emptied his glass. "in any case," he returned, "you will admit that these theories can be upheld, especially that of the elementals, which, setting satanism aside, seems the most veridic, and certainly is the most clear. space is peopled by microbes. is it more surprising that space should also be crammed with spirits and larvæ? water and vinegar are alive with animalcules. the microscope shows them to us. now why should not the air, inaccessible to the sight and to the instruments of man, swarm, like the other elements, with beings more or less corporeal, embryos more or less mature?" "that is probably why cats suddenly look upward and gaze curiously into space at something that is passing and that we can't see," said the bell-ringer's wife. "no, thanks," said gévingey to des hermies, who was offering him another helping of egg-and-dandelion salad. "my friends," said the bell-ringer, "you forget only one doctrine, that of the church, which attributes all these inexplicable phenomena to satan. catholicism has known them for a long time. it did not need to wait for the first manifestations of the spirits--which were produced, i believe, in 1847, in the united states, through the fox family--before decreeing that spirit rapping came from the devil. you will find in saint augustine the proof, for he had to send a priest to put an end to noises and overturning of objects and furniture, in the diocese of hippo, analogous to those which spiritism points out. at the time of theodoric also, saint cæsaræus ridded a house of lemurs haunting it. you see, there are only the city of god and the city of the devil. now, since god is above these cheap manipulations, the occultists and spiritists satanize more or less, whether they wish to or not." "nevertheless, spiritism has accomplished one important thing. it has violated the threshold of the unknown, broken the doors of the sanctuary. it has brought about in the extranatural a revolution similar to that which was effected in the terrestrial order in france in 1789. it has democratized evocation and opened a whole new vista. only, it has lacked initiates to lead it, and, proceeding at random without science, it has agitated good and bad spirits together. in spiritism you will find a jumble of everything. it is the hash of mystery, if i may be permitted the expression." "the saddest thing about it," said des hermies, laughing, "is that at a séance one never sees a thing! i know that experiments have been successful, but those which i have witnessed--well, the experimenters seemed to take a long shot and miss." "that is not surprising," said the astrologer, spreading some firm candied orange jelly on a piece of bread, "the first law to observe in magism and spiritism is to send away the unbelievers, because very often their fluid is antagonistic to that of the clairvoyant or the medium." "then how can there be any assurance of the reality of the phenomena?" thought durtal. carhaix rose. "i shall be back in ten minutes." he put on his greatcoat, and soon the sound of his steps was lost in the tower. "true," murmured durtal, consulting his watch. "it's a quarter to eight." there was a moment of silence in the room. as all refused to have any more dessert, mme. carhaix took up the tablecloth and spread an oilcloth in its place. the astrologer played with his rings, turning them about; durtal was rolling a pellet of crumbled bread between his fingers; des hermies, leaning over to one side, pulled from his patch pocket his embossed japanese pouch and made a cigarette. then when the bell-ringer's wife had bidden them good night and retired to her room, des hermies got the kettle and the coffee pot. "want any help?" durtal proposed. "you can get the little glasses and uncork the liqueur bottles, if you will." as he opened the cupboard, durtal swayed, dizzy from the strokes of the bells which shook the walls and filled the room with clamour. "if there are spirits in this room, they must be getting knocked to pieces," he said, setting the liqueur glasses on the table. "bells drive phantoms and spectres away," gévingey answered, doctorally, filling his pipe. "here," said des hermies, "will you pour hot water slowly into the filter? i've got to feed the stove. it's getting chilly here. my feet are freezing." carhaix returned, blowing out his lantern. "the bell was in good voice, this clear, dry night," and he took off his mountaineer cap and his overcoat. "what do you think of him?" des hermies asked durtal in a very low voice, and pointed at the astrologer, now lost in a cloud of pipe smoke. "in repose he looks like an old owl, and when he speaks he makes me think of a melancholy and discursive schoolmaster." "only one," said des hermies to carhaix, who was holding a lump of sugar over des hermies's coffee cup. "i hear, monsieur, that you are occupied with a history of gilles de rais," said gévingey to durtal. "yes, for the time being i am up to my eyes in satanism with that man." "and," said des hermies, "we were just going to appeal to your extensive knowledge. you only can enlighten my friend on one of the most obscure questions of diabolism." "which one?" "that of incubacy and succubacy." gévingey did not answer at once. "that is a much graver question than spiritism," he said at last, "and grave in a different way. but monsieur already knows something about it?" "only that opinions differ. del rio and bodin, for instance, consider the incubi as masculine demons which couple with women and the succubi as demons who consummate the carnal act with men. "according to their theories the incubi take the semen lost by men in dream and make use of it. so that two questions arise: first, can a child be born of such a union? the possibility of this kind of procreation has been upheld by the church doctors, who affirm, even, that children of such commerce are heavier than others and can drain three nurses without taking on flesh. the second question is whether the demon who copulates with the mother or the man whose semen has been taken is the father of the child. to which saint thomas answers, with more or less subtle arguments, that the real father is not the incubus but the man." "for sinistrari d'ameno," observed durtal, "the incubi and succubi are not precisely demons, but animal spirits, intermediate between the demon and the angel, a sort of satyr or faun, such as were revered in the time of paganism, a sort of imp, such as were exorcised in the middle ages. sinistrari adds that they do not need to pollute a sleeping man, since they possess genitals and are endowed with prolificacy." "well, there is nothing further," said gévingey. "görres, so learned, so precise, in his _mystik_ passes rapidly over this question, even neglects it, and the church, you know, is completely silent, for the church does not like to treat this subject and views askance the priest who does occupy himself with it." "i beg your pardon," said carhaix, always ready to defend the church. "the church has never hesitated to declare itself on this detestable subject. the existence of succubi and incubi is certified by saint augustine, saint thomas, saint bonaventure, denys le chartreux, pope innocent viii, and how many others! the question is resolutely settled for every catholic. it also figures in the lives of some of the saints, if i am not mistaken. yes, in the legend of saint hippolyte, jacques de voragine tells how a priest, tempted by a naked succubus, cast his stole at its head and it suddenly became the corpse of some dead woman whom the devil had animated to seduce him." "yes," said gévingey, whose eyes twinkled. "the church recognizes succubacy, i grant. but let me speak, and you will see that my observations are not uncalled for. "you know very well, messieurs," addressing des hermies and durtal, "what the books teach, but within a hundred years everything has changed, and if the facts i am are unknown to the many members of the clergy, and you will not find them cited in any book whatever. "at present it is less frequently demons than bodies raised from the dead which fill the indispensable rôle of incubus and succubus. in other words, formerly the living being subject to succubacy was known to be possessed. now that vampirism, by the evocation of the dead, is joined to demonism, the victim is worse than possessed. the church did not know what to do. either it must keep silent or reveal the possibility of the evocation of the dead, already forbidden by moses, and this admission was dangerous, for it popularized the knowledge of acts that are easier to produce now than formerly, since without knowing it spiritism has traced the way. "so the church has kept silent. and rome is not unaware of the frightful advance incubacy has made in the cloisters in our days." "that proves that continence is hard to bear in solitude," said des hermies. "it merely proves that the soul is feeble and that people have forgotten how to pray," said carhaix. "however that may be, messieurs, to instruct you completely in this matter, i must divide the creatures smitten with incubacy or succubacy into two classes. the first is composed of persons who have directly and voluntarily given themselves over to the demoniac action of the spirits. these persons are quite rare and they all die by suicide or some other form of violent death. the second is composed of persons on whom the visitation of spirits has been imposed by a spell. these are very numerous, especially in the convents dominated by the demoniac societies. ordinarily these victims end in madness. the psychopathic hospitals are crowded with them. the doctors and the majority of the priests do not know the cause of their madness, but the cases are curable. a thaumaturge of my acquaintance has saved a good many of the bewitched who without his aid would be howling under hydrotherapeutic douches. there are certain fumigations, certain exsufflations, certain commandments written on a sheet of virgin parchment thrice blessed and worn like an amulet which almost always succeed in delivering the patient." "i want to ask you," said des hermies, "does a woman receive the visit of the incubus while she is asleep or while she is awake?" "a distinction must be made. if the woman is not the victim of a spell, if she voluntarily consorts with the impure spirit, she is always awake when the carnal act takes place. if, on the other hand, the woman is the victim of sorcery, the sin is committed either while she is asleep or while she is awake, but in the latter case she is in a cataleptic state which prevents her from defending herself. the most powerful of present-day exorcists, the man who has gone most thoroughly into this matter, one johannès, doctor of theology, told me that he had saved nuns who had been ridden without respite for two, three, even four days by incubi!" "i know that priest," remarked des hermies. "and the act is consummated in the same manner as the normal human act?" "yes and no. here the dirtiness of the details makes me hesitate," said gévingey, becoming slightly red. "what i can tell you is more than strange. know, then, that the organ of the incubus is bifurcated and at the same time penetrates both vases. formerly it extended, and while one branch of the fork acted in the licit channels, the other at the same time reached up to the lower part of the face. you may imagine, gentlemen, how life must be shortened by operations which are multiplied through all the senses." "and you are sure that these are facts?" "absolutely." "but come now, you have proofs?" gévingey was silent, then, "the subject is so grave and i have gone so far that i had better go the rest of the way. i am not mad nor the victim of hallucination. well, messieurs, i slept one time in the room of the most redoubtable master satanism now can claim." "canon docre," des hermies interposed. "yes, and my sleep was fitful. it was broad daylight. i swear to you that the succubus came, irritant and palpable and most tenacious. happily, i remembered the formula of deliverance, which kept me-"so i ran that very day to doctor johannès, of whom i have spoken. he immediately and forever, i hope, liberated me from the spell." "if i did not fear to be indiscreet, i would ask you what kind of thing this succubus was, whose attack you repulsed." "why, it was like any naked woman," said the astrologer hesitantly. "curious, now, if it had demanded its little gifts, its little gloves--" said durtal, biting his lips. "and do you know what has become of the terrible docre?" des hermies inquired. "no, thank god. they say he is in the south, somewhere around nîmes, where he formerly resided." "but what does this abbé do?" inquired durtal. "what does he do? he evokes the devil, and he feeds white mice on the hosts which he consecrates. his frenzy for sacrilege is such that he had the image of christ tattooed on his heels so that he could always step on the saviour!" "well," murmured carhaix, whose militant moustache bristled while his great eyes flamed, "if that abominable priest were here, i swear to you that i would respect his feet, but that i would throw him downstairs head first." "and the black mass?" inquired des hermies. "he celebrates it with foul men and women. he is openly accused of having influenced people to make wills in his favor and of causing inexplicable death. unfortunately, there are no laws to repress sacrilege, and how can you prosecute a man who sends maladies from a distance and kills slowly in such a way that at the autopsy no traces of poison appear?" "the modern gilles de rais!" exclaimed durtal. "yes, less savage, less frank, more hypocritically cruel. he does not cut throats. he probably limits himself to 'sendings' or to causing suicide by suggestion," said des hermies, "for he is, i believe, a master hypnotist." "could he insinuate into a victim the idea to drink, regularly, in graduated doses, a toxin which he would designate, and which would simulate the phases of a malady?" asked durtal. "nothing simpler. 'open window burglars' that the physicians of the present day are, they recognize perfectly the ability of a more skilful man to pull off such jobs. the experiments of beaunis, liégois, liébaut, and bernheim are conclusive: you can even get a person assassinated by another to whom you suggest, without his knowledge, the will to the crime." "i was thinking of something, myself," said carhaix, who had been reflecting and not listening to this discussion of hypnotism. "of the inquisition. it certainly had its reason for being. it is the only agent that could deal with this fallen priest whom the church has swept out." "and remember," said des hermies, with his crooked smile playing around the corner of his mouth, "that the ferocity of the inquisition has been greatly exaggerated. no doubt the benevolent bodin speaks of driving long needles between the nails and the flesh of the sorcerers' fingers. 'an excellent gehenna,' says he. he eulogizes equally the torture by fire, which he characterizes as 'an exquisite death.' but he wishes only to turn the magicians away from their detestable practises and save their souls. then del rio declares that 'the question' must not be applied to demoniacs after they have eaten, for fear they will vomit. he worried about their stomachs, this worthy man. wasn't it also he who decreed that the torture must not be repeated twice in the same day, so as to give fear and pain a chance to calm down? admit that the good jesuit was not devoid of delicacy!" "docre," gévingey went on, not paying any attention to the words of des hermies, "is the only individual who has rediscovered the ancient secrets and who obtains results in practise. he is rather more powerful, i would have you believe, than all those fools and quacks of whom we have been speaking. and they know the terrible canon, for he has sent many of them serious attacks of ophthalmia which the oculists cannot cure. so they tremble when the name docre is pronounced in their presence." "but how did a priest fall so low?" "i can't say. if you wish ampler information about him," said gévingey, addressing des hermies, "question your friend chantelouve." "chantelouve!" cried durtal. "yes, he and his wife used to be quite intimate with canon docre, but i hope for their sakes that they have long since ceased to have dealings with the monster." durtal listened no more. mme. chantelouve knew canon docre! ah, was she satanic, too? no, she certainly did not act like a possessed. "surely this astrologer is cracked," he thought. she! and he called her image before him, and thought that tomorrow night she would probably give herself to him. ah, those strange eyes of hers, those dark clouds suddenly cloven by radiant light! she came now and took complete possession of him, as before he had ascended to the tower. "but if i didn't love you would i have come to you?" that sentence which she had spoken, with a caressing inflection of the voice, he heard again, and again he saw her mocking and tender face. "ah, you are dreaming," said des hermies, tapping him on the shoulder. "we have to go. it's striking ten." when they were in the street they said good night to gévingey, who lived on the other side of the river. then they walked along a little way. "well," said des hermies, "are you interested in my astrologer?" "he is slightly mad, isn't he?" "slightly? humph." "well, his stories are incredible." "everything is incredible," said des hermies placidly, turning up the collar of his overcoat. "however, i will admit that gévingey astounds me when he asserts that he was visited by a succubus. his good faith is not to be doubted, for i know him to be a man who means what he says, though he is vain and doctorial. i know, too, that at la salpêtrière such occurrences are not rare. women smitten with hystero-epilepsy see phantoms beside them in broad daylight and mate with them in a cataleptic state, and every night couch with visions that must be exactly like the fluid creatures of incubacy. but these women are hystero-epileptics, and gévingey isn't, for i am his physician. then, what can be believed and what can be proved? the materialists have taken the trouble to revise the accounts of the sorcery trials of old. they have found in the possession-cases of the ursulines of loudun and the nuns of poitiers, in the history, even, of the convulsionists of saint médard, the symptoms of major hysteria, the same contractions of the whole system, the same muscular dissolutions, the same lethargies, even, finally, the famous arc of the circle. and what does this demonstrate, that these demonomaniacs were hystero-epileptics? certainly. the observations of dr. richet, expert in such matters, are conclusive, but wherein do they invalidate possession? from the fact that the patients of la salpêtrière are not possessed, though they are hysterical, does it follow that others, smitten with the same malady as they, are not possessed? it would have to be demonstrated also that all demonopathics are hysterical, and that is false, for there are women of sound mind and perfectly good sense who are demonopathic without knowing it. and admitting that the last point is controvertible, there remains this unanswerable question: is a woman possessed because she is hysterical, or is she hysterical because she is possessed? only the church can answer. science cannot. "no, come to think it over, the effrontery of the positivists is appalling. they decree that satanism does not exist. they lay everything at the account of major hysteria, and they don't even know what this frightful malady is and what are its causes. no doubt charcot determines very well the phases of the attack, notes the nonsensical and passional attitudes, the contortionistic movements; he discovers hysterogenic zones and can, by skilfully manipulating the ovaries, arrest or accelerate the crises, but as for foreseeing them and learning the sources and the motives and curing them, that's another thing. science goes all to pieces on the question of this inexplicable, stupefying malady, which, consequently, is subject to the most diversified interpretations, not one of which can be declared exact. for the soul enters into this, the soul in conflict with the body, the soul overthrown in the demoralization of the nerves. you see, old man, all this is as dark as a bottle of ink. mystery is everywhere and reason cannot see its way." "mmmm," said durtal, who was now in front of his door. "since anything can be maintained and nothing is certain, succubacy has it. basically it is more literary--and cleaner--than positivism." chapter x the day was long and hard to kill. waking at dawn, full of thoughts of mme. chantelouve, he could not stay in one place, and kept inventing excuses for going out. he had no cakes, bonbons, and exotic liqueurs, and one must not be without all the little essentials when expecting a visit from a woman. he went by the longest route to the avenue de l'opéra to buy fine essences of cedar and of that alkermes which makes the person tasting it think he is in an oriental pharmaceutic laboratory. "the idea is," he said, "not so much to treat hyacinthe as to astound her by giving her a sip of an unknown elixir." he came back laden with packages, then went out again, and in the street was assailed by an immense ennui. after an interminable tour of the quays he finally tumbled into a beer hall. he fell on a bench and opened a newspaper. what was he thinking as he sat, not reading but just looking at the police news? nothing, not even of her. from having revolved the same matter over and over again and again his mind had reached a deadlock and refused to function. durtal merely found himself very tired, very drowsy, as one in a warm bath after a night of travel. "i must go home pretty soon," he said when he could collect himself a little, "for père rateau certainly has not cleaned house in the thorough fashion which i commanded, and of course i don't want the furniture to be covered with dust. six o'clock. suppose i dine, after a fashion, in some not too unreliable place." he remembered a nearby restaurant where he had eaten before without a great deal of dread. he chewed his way laboriously through an extremely dead fish, then through a piece of meat, flabby and cold; then he found a very few lentils, stiff with insecticide, beneath a great deal of sauce; finally he savoured some ancient prunes, whose juice smelt of mould and was at the same time aquatic and sepulchral. back in his apartment, he lighted fires in his bedroom and in his study, then he inspected everything. he was not mistaken. the concierge had upset the place with the same brutality, the same haste, as customarily. however, he must have tried to wash the windows, because the glass was streaked with finger marks. durtal effaced the imprints with a damp cloth, smoothed out the folds in the carpet, drew the curtains, and put the bookcases in order after dusting them with a napkin. everywhere he found grains of tobacco, trodden cigarette ashes, pencil sharpenings, pen points eaten with rust. he also found cocoons of cat fur and crumpled bits of rough draft manuscript which had been whirled into all corners by the furious sweeping. he finally could not help asking himself why he had so long tolerated the fuzzy filth which obscured and incrusted his household. while he dusted, his indignation against rateau increased mightily. "look at that," he said, perceiving his wax candles grown as yellow as tallow ones. he changed them. "that's better." he arranged his desk into studied disarray. notebooks, and books with paper-cutters in them for book-marks, he laid in careful disorder. "symbol of work," he said, smiling, as he placed an old folio, open, on a chair. then he passed into his bedroom. with a wet sponge he freshened up the marble of the dresser, then he smoothed the bed cover, straightened his photographs and engravings, and went into the bathroom. here he paused, disheartened. in a bamboo rack over the wash-bowl there was a chaos of phials. resolutely he grabbed the perfume bottles, scoured the bottoms and necks with emery, rubbed the labels with gum elastic and bread crumbs, then he soaped the tub, dipped the combs and brushes in an ammoniac solution, got his vapourizer to working and sprayed the room with persian lilac, washed the linoleum, and scoured the seat and the pipes. seized with a mania for cleanliness, he polished, scrubbed, scraped, moistened, and dried, with great sweeping strokes of the arm. he was no longer vexed at the concierge; he was even sorry the old villain had not left him more to do. then he shaved, touched up his moustache, and proceeded to make an elaborate toilet, asking himself, as he dressed, whether he had better wear button shoes or slippers. he decided that shoes were less familiar and more dignified but resolved to wear a flowing tie and a blouse, thinking that this artistic negligée would please a woman. "all ready," he said, after a last stroke of the brush. he made the turn of the other rooms, poked the fires, and fed the cat, which was running about in alarm, sniffing all the cleaned objects and doubtless thinking that those he rubbed against every day without paying any attention to them had been replaced by new ones. "oh, the 'little essentials' i am forgetting!" durtal put the teakettle on the hob and placed cups, teapot, sugar bowl, cakes, bonbons, and tiny liqueur glasses on an old lacquered "waiter" so as to have everything on hand when it was time to serve. "now i'm through. i've given the place a thorough cleaning. let her come," he said to himself, realigning some books whose backs stuck out further than the others on the shelves. "everything in good shape. except the chimney of the lamp. where it bulges, there are caramel specks and blobs of soot, but i can't get the thing out; i don't want to burn my fingers; and anyway, with the shade lowered a bit she won't notice. "well, how shall i proceed when she does come?" he asked himself, sinking into an armchair. "she enters. good. i take her hands. i kiss them. then i bring her into this room. i have her sit down beside the fire, in this chair. i station myself, facing her, on this stool. advancing a little, touching her knees, i can seize her. i make her bend over. i am supporting her whole weight. i bring her lips to mine and i am saved! "--or rather lost. for then the bother begins. i can't bear to think of getting her into the bedroom. undressing and going to bed! that part is appalling unless you know each other very well. and when you are just becoming acquainted! the nice way is to have a cosy little supper for two. the wine has an ungodly kick to it. she immediately passes out, and when she comes to she is lying in bed under a shower of kisses. as we can't do it that way we shall have to avoid mutual embarrassment by making a show of passion. if i speed up the tempo and pretend to be in a frenzy perhaps we shall not have time to think about the miserable details. so i must possess her here, in this very spot, and she must think i have lost my head when she succumbs. "it's hard to arrange in this room, because there isn't any divan. the best way would be to throw her down on the carpet. she can put her hands over her eyes, as they always do. i shall take good care to turn down the lamp before she rises. "well, i had better prepare a cushion for her head." he found one and slid it under the chair. "and i had better not wear suspenders, for they often cause ridiculous delays." he took them off and put on a belt. "but then there is that damned question of the skirts! i admire the novelists who can get a virgin unharnessed from her corsets and deflowered in the winking of an eye--as if it were possible! how annoying to have to fight one's way through all those starched entanglements! i do hope mme. chantelouve will be considerate and avoid those ridiculous difficulties as much as possible--for her own sake." he consulted his watch. "half-past eight. i mustn't expect her for nearly an hour, because, like all women, she will come late. what kind of an excuse will she make to chantelouve, to get away tonight? well, that is none of my business. hmmm. this water heater beside the fire looks like the invitation to the toilet, but no, the tea things handy banish any gross idea." and if hyacinthe did not come? "she will come," he said to himself, suddenly moved. "what motive would she have for staying away? she knows that she cannot inflame me more than i am inflamed." then, jumping from phase to phase of the same old question, "this will turn out badly, of course," he decided. "once i am satisfied, disenchantment is inevitable. oh, well, so much the better, for with this romance going on i cannot work." "miserable me! relapsing--only in mind, alas!--to the age of twenty. i am waiting for a woman. i who have scorned the doings of lovers for years and years. i look at my watch every five minutes, and i listen, in spite of myself, thinking it is her step i hear on the stair. "no, there is no getting around it. the little blue flower, the perennial of the soul, is difficult to extirpate, and it keeps growing up again. it does not show itself for twenty years, and then all of a sudden, you know not why nor how, it sprouts, and then forth comes a burst of blossoms. my god! i am getting foolish." he jumped from his chair. there was a gentle ring. "not nine o'clock yet. it isn't she," he murmured, opening the door. he squeezed her hands and thanked her for being so punctual. she said she was not feeling well. "i came only because i didn't want to keep you waiting in vain." his heart sank. "i have a fearful headache," she said, passing her gloved hands over her forehead. he took her furs and motioned her to the armchair. prepared to follow his plan of attack, he sat down on the stool, but she refused the armchair and took a seat beside the table. rising, he bent over her and caught hold of her fingers. "your hand is burning," she said. "yes, a bit of fever, because i get so little sleep. if you knew how much i have thought about you! now i have you here, all to myself," and he spoke of that persistent odour of cinnamon, faint, distant, expiring amid the less definite odours which her gloves exhaled, "well," and he sniffed her fingers, "you will leave some of yourself here when you go away." she rose, sighing. "i see you have a cat. what is his name?" "mouche." she called to the cat, which fled precipitately. "mouche! mouche!" durtal called, but mouche took refuge under the bed and refused to come out. "you see he is rather bashful. he has never seen a woman." "oh, would you try to make me think you have never received a woman here?" he swore that he never had, that she was the first.... "and you were not really anxious that this--first--should come?" he blushed. "why do you say that?" she made a vague gesture. "i want to tease you," she said, sitting down in the armchair. "to tell you the truth, i do not know why i like to ask you such presumptuous questions." he had sat down in front of her. so now, at last, the scene was set as he wished and he must begin the attack. his knee touched hers. "you know," he said, "that you cannot presume here. you have claims on--" "no, i haven't and i want none." "why?" "because.... listen," and her voice became grave and firm. "the more i reflect, the more inclined i am to ask you, for heaven's sake, not to destroy our dream. and then.... do you want me to be frank, so frank that i shall doubtless seem a monster of selfishness? well, personally, i do not wish to spoil the--the--what shall i say?--the extreme happiness our relation gives me. i know i explain badly and confusedly, but this is the way it is: i possess you when and how i please, just as, for a long time, i have possessed byron, baudelaire, gérard de nerval, those i love--" "you mean ...?" "that i have only to desire them, to desire you, before i go to sleep...." "and?" "and you would be inferior to my chimera, to the durtal i adore, whose caresses make my nights delirious!" he looked at her in stupefaction. she had that dolent, troubled look in her eyes. she even seemed not to see him, but to be looking into space. he hesitated.... in a sudden flash of thought he saw the scenes of incubacy of which gévingey had spoken. "we shall untangle all this later," he thought within himself, "meanwhile--" he took her gently by the arms, drew her to him and abruptly kissed her mouth. she rebounded as if she had had an electric shock. she struggled to rise. he strained her to him and embraced her furiously, then with a strange gurgling cry she threw her head back and caught his leg between both of hers. he emitted a howl of rage, for he felt her haunches move. he understood now--or thought he understood! she wanted a miserly pleasure, a sort of solitary vice.... he pushed her away. she remained there, quite pale, choking, her eyes closed, her hands outstretched like those of a frightened child. then durtal's wrath vanished. with a little cry he came up to her and caught her again, but she struggled, crying, "no! i beseech you, let me go." he held her crushed against his body and attempted to make her yield. "i implore you, let me go." her accent was so despairing that he relinquished her. then he debated with himself whether to throw her brutally on the floor and violate her. but her bewildered eyes frightened him. she was panting and her arms hung limp at her sides as she leaned, very pale, against the bookcase. "ah!" he said, marching up and down, knocking into the furniture, "i must really love you, if in spite of your supplications and refusals--" she joined her hands to keep him away. "good god!" he said, exasperated, "what are you made of?" she came to herself, and, offended, she said to him, "monsieur, i too suffer. spare me," and pell-mell she spoke of her husband, of her confessor, and became so incoherent that durtal was frightened. she was silent, then in a singing voice she said, "tell me, you will come to my house tomorrow night, won't you?" "but i suffer too!" she seemed not to hear him. in her smoky eyes, far, far back, there seemed to be a twinkle of feeble light. she murmured, in the cadence of a canticle, "tell me, dear, you will come tomorrow night, won't you?" "yes," he said at last. then she readjusted herself and without saying a word quitted the room. in silence he accompanied her to the entrance. she opened the door, turned around, took his hand and very lightly brushed it with her lips. he stood there stupidly, not knowing what to make of her behaviour. "what does she mean?" he exclaimed, returning to the room, putting the furniture back in place and smoothing the disordered carpet. "heavens, i wish i could as easily restore order to my brain. let me think, if i can. what is she after? because, of course, she has something in view. she does not want our relation to culminate in the act itself. does she really fear disillusion, as she claims? is she really thinking how grotesque the amorous somersaults are? or is she, as i believe, a melancholy and terrible player-around-the-edges, thinking only of herself? well, her obscene selfishness is one of those complicated sins that have to be shriven by the very highest confessor. she's a plain teaser! "i don't know. incubacy enters into this. she admits--so placidly!--that in dream she cohabits at will with dead or living beings. is she satanizing, and is this some of the work of canon docre? he's a friend of hers. "so many riddles impossible to solve. what is the meaning of this unexpected invitation for tomorrow night? does she wish to yield nowhere except in her own home? does she feel more at ease there, or does she think the propinquity of her husband will render the sin more piquant? does she loathe chantelouve, and is this a meditated vengeance, or does she count on the fear of danger to spur our senses? "after all, i think it is probably a final coquetry, an appetizer before the repast. and women are so funny anyway! she probably thinks these delays and subterfuges are necessary to differentiate her from a cocotte. or perhaps there is a physical necessity for stalling me off another day." he sought other reasons but could find none. "deep down in my heart," he said, vexed in spite of himself by this rebuff, "i know i have been an imbecile. i ought to have acted the cave man and paid no attention to her supplications and lies. i ought to have taken violent possession of her lips and breast. then it would be finished, whereas now i must begin at the beginning again, and god damn her! i have other things to do. "who knows whether she isn't laughing at me this very moment? perhaps she wanted me to be more violent and bold--but no, her soul-sick voice was not feigned, her poor eyes did not simulate bewilderment, and then what would she have meant by that _respectful_ kiss--for there was an impalpable shade of respect and gratitude in that kiss which she planted on my hand!" she was too much for him. "meanwhile, in this hurly-burly i have forgotten my refreshments. suppose i take off my shoes, now that i am alone, for my feet are swollen from parading up and down the room. suppose i do better yet and go to bed, for i am incapable of working or reading," and he drew back the covers. "decidedly, nothing happens the way one foresees it, yet my plan of attack wasn't badly thought out," he said, crawling in. with a sigh he blew out the lamp, and the cat, reassured, passed over him, lighter than a breath, and curled up without a sound. chapter xi contrary to his expectations, he slept all night, with clenched fists, and woke next morning quite calm, even gay. the scene of the night before, which ought to have exacerbated his senses, produced exactly the opposite effect. the truth is that durtal was not of those who are attracted by difficulties. he always made one hardy effort to surmount them, then when that failed he would withdraw, with no desire to renew the combat. if mme. chantelouve thought to entice him by delays, she had miscalculated. this morning, already, he was weary of the comedy. his reflections began to be slightly tinged with bitterness. he was angry at the woman for having wished to keep him in suspense, and he was angry at himself for having permitted her to make a fool of him. then certain expressions, the impertinence of which had not struck him at first, chilled him now. "her nervous trick of laughing, which sometimes caught her in public places," then her declaration that she did not need his permission, nor even his person, in order to possess him, seemed to him unbecoming, to say the least, and uncalled for, as he had not run after her nor indeed made any advances to her at all. "i will fix you," he said, "when i get some hold over you." but in the calm awakening of this morning the spell of the woman had relaxed. resolutely he thought, "keep two dates with her. this one tonight at her house. it won't count, because nothing can be done. for i intend neither to allow myself to be assaulted nor to attempt an assault. i certainly have no desire to be caught by chantelouve _in flagrante delicto_, and probably get into a shooting scrape and be haled into police court. have her here once. if she does not yield then, why, the matter is closed. she can go and tickle somebody else." and he made a hearty breakfast, and sat down to his writing table and ran over the scattered notes for his book. "i had got," he said, glancing at his last chapter, "to where the alchemic experiments and diabolic evocations have proved unavailing. prelati, blanchet, all the sorcerers and sorcerers' helpers whom the marshal has about him, admit that to bring satan to him gilles must make over his soul and body to the devil or commit crimes. "gilles refuses to alienate his existence and sell his soul, but he contemplates murder without any horror. this man, so brave on the battlefield, so courageous when he accompanied jeanne d'arc, trembles before the devil and is afraid when he thinks of eternity and of christ. the same is true of his accomplices. he has made them swear on the testament to keep the secret of the confounding turpitudes which the château conceals, and he can be sure that not one will violate the oath, for, in the middle ages, the most reckless of freebooters would not commit the inexpiable sin of deceiving god. "at the same time that his alchemists abandon their unfruitful furnaces, gilles begins a course of systematic gluttony, and his flesh, set on fire by the essences of inordinate potations and spiced dishes, seethes in tumultuous eruption. "now, there are no women in the château. gilles appears to have despised the sex ever since leaving the court. after experience of the ribalds of the camps and frequentation, with xaintrailles and la hire, of the prostitutes of charles vii, it seems that a dislike for the feminine form came over him. like others whose ideal of concupiscence is deteriorated and deviated, he certainly comes to be disgusted by the delicacy of the grain of the skin of women and by that odour of femininity which all sodomists abhor. "he depraves the choir boys who are under his authority. he chose them in the first place, these little psaltry ministrants, for their beauty, and 'beautiful as angels' they are. they are the only ones he loves, the only ones he spares in his murderous transports. "but soon infantile pollution seems to him an insipid delicacy. the law of satanism which demands that the elect of evil, once started, must go the whole way, is once more fulfilled. gilles's soul must become thoroughly cankered, a red tabernacle, that in it the very low may dwell at ease. "the litanies of lust arise in an atmosphere that is like the wind over a slaughter house. the first victim is a very small boy whose name we do not know. gilles disembowels him, and, cutting off the hands and tearing out the eyes and heart, carries these members into prelati's chamber. the two men offer them, with passionate objurgations, to the devil, who holds his peace. gilles, confounded, flees. prelati rolls up the poor remains in linen and, trembling, goes out at night to bury them in consecrated ground beside a chapel dedicated to saint vincent. "gilles preserves the blood of this child to write formulas of evocation and conjurements. it manures a horrible crop. not long afterward the marshal reaps the most abundant harvest of crimes that has ever been sown. "from 1432 to 1440, that is to say during the eight years between the marshal's retreat and his death, the inhabitants of anjou, poitou, and brittany walk the highways wringing their hands. all the children disappear. shepherd boys are abducted from the fields. little girls coming out of school, little boys who have gone to play ball in the lanes or at the edge of the wood, return no more. "in the course of an investigation ordered by the duke of brittany, the scribes of jean touscheronde, duke's commissioner in these matters, compile interminable lists of lost children. "lost, at la rochebernart, the child of the woman péronne, 'a child who did go to school and who did apply himself to his book with exceeding diligence.' "lost, at saint etienne de montluc, the son of guillaume brice, 'and this was a poor man and sought alms.' "lost, at mâchecoul, the son of georget le barbier, 'who was seen, a certain day, knocking apples from a tree behind the hôtel rondeau, and who since hath not been seen.' "lost, at thonaye, the child of mathelin thouars, 'and he had been heard to cry and lament and the said child was about twelve years of age.' "at mâchecoul, again, the day of pentecost, mother and father sergent leave their eight-year-old boy at home, and when they return from the fields 'they did not find the said child of eight years of age, wherefore they marvelled and were exceeding grieved.' "at chantelou, it is pierre badieu, mercer of the parish, who says that a year or thereabouts ago, he saw, in the domain de rais, 'two little children of the age of nine who were brothers and the children of robin pavot of the aforesaid place, and since that time neither have they been seen neither doth any know what hath become of them.' "at nantes, it is jeanne darel who deposes that 'on the day of the feast of the holy father, her true child named olivier did stray from her, being of the age of seven and eight years, and since the day of the feast of the holy father neither did she see him nor hear tidings.' "and the account of the investigation goes on, revealing hundreds of names, describing the grief of the mothers who interrogate passersby on the highway, and telling of the keening of the families from whose very homes children have been spirited away when the elders went to the fields to hoe or to sow the hemp. these phrases, like a desolate refrain, recur again and again, at the end of every deposition: 'they were seen complaining dolorously,' 'exceedingly they did lament.' wherever the bloodthirsty gilles dwells the women weep. "at first the frantic people tell themselves that evil fairies and malicious genii are dispersing the generation, but little by little terrible suspicions are aroused. as soon as the marshal quits a place, as he goes from the château de tiffauges to the château de champtocé, and from there to the castle of la suze or to nantes, he leaves behind him a wake of tears. he traverses a countryside and in the morning children are missing. trembling, the peasant realizes also that wherever prelati, roger de bricqueville, gilles de sillé, any of the marshal's intimates, have shown themselves, little boys have disappeared. finally, the peasant learns to look with horror upon an old woman, perrine martin, who wanders around, clad in grey, her face covered--as is that of gilles de sillé--with a black stamin. she accosts children, and her speech is so seductive, her face, when she raises her veil, so benign, that all follow her to the edge of a wood, where men carry them off, gagged, in sacks. and the frightened people call this purveyor of flesh, this ogress, 'la mefrraye,' from the name of a bird of prey. "these emissaries spread out, covering all the villages and hamlets, tracking the children down at the orders of the chief huntsman, the sire de bricqueville. not content with these beaters, gilles takes to standing at a window of the château, and when young mendicants, attracted by the renown of his bounty, ask an alms, he runs an appraising eye over them, has any who excite his lust brought in and thrown into an underground prison and kept there until, being in appetite, he is pleased to order a carnal supper. "how many children did he disembowel after deflowering them? he himself did not know, so many were the rapes he had consummated and the murders he had committed. the texts of the times enumerate between, seven and eight hundred, but the estimate is inaccurate and seems overconservative. entire regions were devastated. the hamlet of tiffauges had no more young men. la suze was without male posterity. at champtocé the whole foundation room of a tower was filled with corpses. a witness cited in the inquest, guillaume hylairet, declared also, "that one hight du jardin hath heard say that there was found in the said castle a wine pipe full of dead little children.' "even today traces of these assassinations linger. two years ago at tiffauges a physician discovered an oubliette and brought forth piles of skulls and bones. "gilles confessed to frightful holocausts, and his friends confirmed the atrocious details. "at dusk, when their senses are phosphorescent, enkindled by inflammatory spiced beverages and by 'high' venison, gilles and his friends retire to a distant chamber of the château. the little boys are brought from their cellar prisons to this room. they are disrobed and gagged. the marshal fondles them and forces them. then he hacks them to pieces with a dagger, taking great pleasure in slowly dismembering them. at other times he slashes the boy's chest and drinks the breath from the lungs; sometimes he opens the stomach also, smells it, enlarges the incision with his hands, and seats himself in it. then while he macerates the warm entrails in mud, he turns half around and looks over his shoulder to contemplate the supreme convulsions, the last spasms. he himself says afterwards, 'i was happier in the enjoyment of tortures, tears, fright, and blood, than in any other pleasure.' "then he becomes weary of these fecal joys. an unpublished passage in his trial proceedings informs us that 'the said sire heated himself with little boys, sometimes also with little girls, with whom he had congress in the belly, saying that he had more pleasure and less pain than acting in nature.' after which, he slowly saws their throats, cuts them to pieces, and the corpses, the linen and the clothing, are put in the fireplace, where a smudge fire of logs and leaves is burning, and the ashes are thrown into the latrine, or scattered to the winds from the top of a tower, or buried in the moats and mounds. "soon his furies become aggravated. until now he has appeased the rage of his senses with living or moribund beings. he wearies of stuprating palpitant flesh and becomes a lover of the dead. a passionate artist, he kisses, with cries of enthusiasm, the well-made limbs of his victims. he establishes sepulchral beauty contests, and whichever of the truncated heads receives the prize he raises by the hair and passionately kisses the cold lips. "vampirism satisfies him for months. he pollutes dead children, appeasing the fever of his desires in the blood smeared chill of the tomb. he even goes so far--one day when his supply of children is exhausted--as to disembowel a pregnant woman and sport with the foetus. after these excesses he falls into horrible states of coma, similar to those heavy lethargies which overpowered sergeant bertrand after his violations of the grave. but if that leaden sleep is one of the known phases of ordinary vampirism, if gilles de rais was merely a sexual pervert, we must admit that he distinguished himself from the most delirious sadists, the most exquisite virtuosi in pain and murder, by a detail which seems extrahuman, it is so horrible. "as these terrifying atrocities, these monstrous outrages, no longer suffice him, he corrodes them with the essence of a rare sin. it is no longer the resolute, sagacious cruelty of the wild beast playing with the body of a victim. his ferocity does not remain merely carnal; it becomes spiritual. he wishes to make the child suffer both in body and soul. by a thoroughly satanic cheat he deceives gratitude, dupes affection, and desecrates love. at a leap he passes the bounds of human infamy and lands plump in the darkest depth of evil. "he contrives this: one of the unfortunate children is brought into his chamber, and hanged, by bricqueville, prelati, and de sillé, to a hook fixed into the wall. just at the moment when the child is suffocating, gilles orders him to be taken down and the rope untied. with some precaution, he takes the child on his knees, revives him, caresses him, rocks him, dries his tears, and pointing to the accomplices, says, 'these men are bad, but you see they obey me. do not be afraid. i will save your life and take you back to your mother,' and while the little one, wild with joy, kisses him and at that moment loves him, gilles gently makes an incision in the back of the neck, rendering the child 'languishing,' to follow gilles's own expression, and when the head, not quite detached, bows, gilles kneads the body, turns it about, and violates it, bellowing. "after these abominable pastimes he may well believe that the art of the charnalist has beneath his fingers expressed its last drop of pus, and in a vaunting cry he says to his troop of parasites, "there is no man on earth who dare do as i have done.' "but if in love and well-doing the infinite is approachable for certain souls, the out-of-the-world possibilities of evil are limited. in his excesses of stupration and murder the marshal cannot go beyond a fixed point. in vain he may dream of unique violations, of more ingenious slow tortures, but human imagination has a limit and he has already reached it--even passed it, with diabolic aid. insatiable he seethes--there is nothing material in which to express his ideal. he can verify that axiom of demonographers, that the evil one dupes all persons who give themselves, or are willing to give themselves, to him. "as he can descend no further, he tries returning on the way by which he has come, but now remorse overtakes him, overwhelms him, and wrenches him without respite. his nights are nights of expiation. besieged by phantoms, he howls like a wounded beast. he is found rushing along the solitary corridors of the château. he weeps, throws himself on his knees, swears to god that he will do penance. he promises to found pious institutions. he does establish, at mâchecoul, a boys' academy in honour of the holy innocents. he speaks of shutting himself up in a cloister, of going to jerusalem, begging his bread on the way. "but in this fickle and aberrated mind ideas superpose themselves on each other, then pass away, and those which disappear leave their shadow on those which follow. abruptly, even while weeping with distress, he precipitates himself into new debauches and, raving with delirium, hurls himself upon the child brought to him, gouges out the eyes, runs his finger around the bloody, milky socket, then he seizes a spiked club and crushes the skull. and while the gurgling blood runs over him, he stands, smeared with spattered brains, and grinds his teeth and laughs. like a hunted beast he flees into the wood, while his henchmen remove the crimson stains from the ground and dispose prudently of the corpse and the reeking garments. "he wanders in the forests surrounding tiffauges, dark, impenetrable forests like those which brittany still can show at carnoet. he sobs as he walks along. he attempts to thrust aside the phantoms which accost him. then he looks about him and beholds obscenity in the shapes of the aged trees. it seems that nature perverts itself before him, that his very presence depraves it. for the first time he understands the motionless lubricity of trees. he discovers priapi in the branches. "here a tree appears to him as a living being, standing on its root-tressed head, its limbs waving in the air and spread wide apart, subdivided and re-subdivided into haunches, which again are divided and re-subdivided. here between two limbs another branch is jammed, in a stationary fornication which is reproduced in diminished scale from bough to twig to the top of the tree. there it seems the trunk is a phallus which mounts and disappears into a skirt of leaves or which, on the contrary, issues from a green clout and plunges into the glossy belly of the earth. "frightful images rise before him. he sees the skin of little boys, the lucid white skin, vellum-like, in the pale, smooth bark of the slender beeches. he recognizes the pachydermatous skin of the beggar boys in the dark and wrinkled envelope of the old oaks. beside the bifurcations of the branches there are yawning holes, puckered orifices in the bark, simulating emunctoria, or the protruding anus of a beast. in the joints of the branches there are other visions, elbows, armpits furred with grey lichens. even in the trunks there are incisions which spread out into great lips beneath tufts of brown, velvety moss. "everywhere obscene forms rise from the ground and spring, disordered, into a firmament which satanizes. the clouds swell into breasts, divide into buttocks, bulge as if with fecundity, scattering a train of spawn through space. they accord with the sombre bulging of the foliage, in which now there are only images of giant or dwarf hips, feminine triangles, great v's, mouths of sodom, glowing cicatrices, humid vents. this landscape of abomination changes. gilles now sees on the trunks frightful cancers and horrible wens. he observes exostoses and ulcers, membranous sores, tubercular chancres, atrocious caries. it is an arboreal lazaret, a venereal clinic. "and there, at a detour of the forest aisle, stands a mottled red beech. "amid the sanguinary falling leaves he feels that he has been spattered by a shower of blood. he goes into a rage. he conceives the delusion that beneath the bark lives a wood nymph, and he would feel with his hands the palpitant flesh of the goddess, he would trucidate the dryad, violate her in a place unknown to the follies of men. "he is jealous of the woodman who can murder, can massacre, the trees, and he raves. tensely he listens and hears in the soughing wind a response to his cries of desire. overwhelmed, he resumes his walk, weeping, until he arrives at the château and sinks to his bed exhausted, an inert mass. "the phantoms take more definite shape, now that he sleeps. the lubric enlacements of the branches, dilated crevices and cleft mosses, the coupling of the diverse beings of the wood, disappear; the tears of the leaves whipped by the wind are dried; the white abscesses of the clouds are resorbed into the grey of the sky; and--in an awful silence--the incubi and succubi pass. "the corpses of his victims, reduced to ashes and scattered, return to the larva state and attack his lower parts. he writhes, with the blood bursting his veins. he rebounds in a somersault, then he crawls to the crucifix, like a wolf, on all fours, and howling, strains his lips to the feet of the christ. "a sudden reaction overwhelms him. he trembles before the image whose convulsed face looks down on him. he adjures christ to have pity, supplicates him to spare a sinner, and sobs and weeps, and when, incapable of further effort, he whimpers, he hears, terrified, in his own voice, the lamentations of the children crying for their mothers and pleading for mercy." * * * * * and durtal, coming slowly out of the vision he had conjured up, closed his notebook and remarked, "rather petty, my own spiritual conflict regarding a woman whose sin--like my own, to be sure--is commonplace and bourgeois." chapter xii "easy to find an excuse for this visit, though it will seem strange to chantelouve, whom i have neglected for months," said durtal on his way toward the rue bagneux. "supposing he is home this evening--and he probably isn't, because surely hyacinthe will have seen to that--i can tell him that i have learned of his illness through des hermies and that i have come to see how he is getting along." he paused on the stoop of the building in which chantelouve lived. at each side and over the door were these antique lamps with reflectors, surmounted by a sort of casque of sheet iron painted green. there was an old iron balustrade, very wide, and the steps, with wooden sides, were paved with red tile. about this house there was a sepulchral and also clerical odour, yet there was also something homelike--though a little too imposing--about it such as is not to be found in the cardboard houses they build nowadays. you could see at a glance that it did not harbour the apartment house promiscuities: decent, respectable couples with kept women for neighbours. the house pleased him, and he considered hyacinthe the more desirable for her substantial environment. he rang at a first-floor apartment. a maid led him through a long hall into a sitting-room. he noticed, at a glance, that nothing had changed since his last visit. it was the same vast, high-ceilinged room with windows reaching to heaven. there was the huge fireplace; on the mantelpiece the same reproduction, reduced, in bronze, of fremiet's jeanne d'arc, between the two globe lamps of japanese porcelain. he recognized the grand piano, the table loaded with albums, the divan, the chairs in the style of louis xv with tapestried covers. in front of every window there were imitation chinese vases, mounted on tripods of imitation ebony and containing sickly palms. on the walls were religious pictures, without expression, and a portrait of chantelouve in his youth, three-quarter length, his hand resting on a pile of his works. an ancient russian icon in nielloed silver and one of these christs in carved wood, executed in the seventeenth century by bogard de nancy, in an antique frame of gilded wood backed with velvet, were the only things that slightly relieved the banality of the decoration. the rest of the furniture looked like that of a bourgeois household fixed up for lent, or for a charity dance or for a visit from the priest. a great fire blazed on the hearth. the room was lighted by a very high lamp with a wide shade of pink lace-"stinks of the sacristy!" durtal was saying to himself at the moment the door opened. mme. chantelouve entered, the lines of her figure advantageously displayed by a wrapper of white swanskin, which gave off a fragrance of frangipane. she pressed durtal's hand and sat down facing him, and he perceived under the wrap her indigo silk stockings in little patent leather bootines with straps across the insteps. they talked about the weather. she complained of the way the winter hung on, and declared that although the furnace seemed to be working all right she was always shivering, was always frozen to death. she told him to feel her hands, which indeed were cold, then she seemed worried about his health. "you look pale," she said. "you might at least say that i _am_ pale," he replied. she did not answer immediately, then, "yesterday i saw how much you desire me," she said. "but why, why, want to go so far?" he made a gesture, indicating vague annoyance. "how funny you are!" she went on. "i was re-reading one of your books today, and i noticed this phrase, 'the only women you can continue to love are those you lose.' now admit that you were right when you wrote that." "it all depends. i wasn't in love then." she shrugged her shoulders. "well," she said, "i must tell my husband you are here." durtal remained silent, wondering what rôle chantelouve actually played in this triangle. chantelouve returned with his wife. he was in his dressing-gown and had a pen in his mouth. he took it out and put it on the table, and after assuring durtal that his health was completely restored, he complained of overwhelming labours. "i have had to quit giving dinners and receptions," he said, "i can't even go visiting. i am in harness every day at my desk." and when durtal asked him the nature of these labours, he confessed to a whole series of unsigned volumes on the lives of the saints, to be turned out by the gross by a tours firm for exportation. "yes," said his wife, laughing, "and these are _sadly neglected_ saints whose biographies he is preparing." and as durtal looked at him inquiringly, chantelouve, also laughing, said, "it was their persons that were _sadly neglected_. the subjects are chosen for me, and it does seem as if the publisher enjoyed making me eulogize frowziness. i have to describe blessed saints most of whom were deplorably unkempt: labre, who was so lousy and ill-smelling as to disgust the beasts in the stables; saint cunegonde who 'through humility' neglected her body; saint oportune who never used water and who washed her bed only with her tears; saint silvia who never removed the grime from her face; saint radegonde who never changed her hair shirt and who slept on a cinder pile; and how many others, around whose heads i must draw a golden halo!" "there are worse than those," said durtal. "read the life of marie alacoque. you will see that she, to mortify herself, licked up with her tongue the dejections of one sick person and sucked an abscess from the toe of another." "i know, but i must admit that i am less touched than revolted by these tales." "i prefer saint lucius the martyr," said mme. chantelouve. "his body was so transparent that he could see through his chest the vileness of his heart. his kind of 'vileness' at least we can stand. but i must admit that this utter disregard of cleanliness makes me suspicious of the monasteries and renders your beloved middle ages odious to me." "pardon me, my dear," said her husband, "you are greatly mistaken. the middle ages were not, as you believe, an epoch of uncleanliness. people frequented the baths assiduously. at paris, for example, where these establishments were numerous, the 'stove-keepers' went about the city announcing that the water was hot. it is not until the renaissance that uncleanliness becomes rife in france. when you think that that delicious reine margot kept her body macerated with perfumes but as grimy as the inside of a stovepipe! and that henri quatre plumed himself on having 'reeking feet and a fine armpit.'" "my dear, for heaven's sake," said madame, "spare us the details." while chantelouve was speaking, durtal was watching him. he was small and rotund, with a bay window which his arms would not have gone around. he had rubicund cheeks, long hair very much pomaded, trailing in the back and drawn up in crescents along his temples. he had pink cotton in his ears. he was smooth shaven and looked like a pious but convivial notary. but his quick, calculating eye belied his jovial and sugary mien. one divined in his look the cool, unscrupulous man of affairs, capable, for all his honeyed ways, of doing one a bad turn. "he must be aching to throw me into the street," said durtal to himself, "because he certainly knows all about his wife's goings-on." but if chantelouve wished to be rid of his guest he did not show it. with his legs crossed and his hands folded one over the other, in the attitude of a priest, he appeared to be mightily interested in durtal's work. inclining a little, listening as if in a theatre, he said, "yes, i know the material on the subject. i read a book some time ago about gilles de rais which seemed to me well handled. it was by abbé bossard." "it is the most complete and reliable of the biographies of the marshal." "but," chantelouve went on, "there is one point which i never have been able to understand. i have never been able to explain to myself why the name bluebeard should have been attached to the marshal, whose history certainly has no relation to the tale of the good perrault." "as a matter of fact the real bluebeard was not gilles de rais, but probably a breton king, comor, a fragment of whose castle, dating from the sixth century, is still standing, on the confines of the forest of carnoet. the legend is simple. the king asked guerock, count of vannes, for the hand of his daughter, triphine. guerock refused, because he had heard that the king maintained himself in a constant state of widowerhood by cutting his wives' throats. finally saint gildas promised guerock to return his daughter to him safe and sound when he should reclaim her, and the union was celebrated. "some months later triphine learned that comor did indeed kill his consorts as soon as they became pregnant. she was big with child, so she fled, but her husband pursued her and cut her throat. the weeping father commanded saint gildas to keep his promise, and the saint resuscitated triphine. "as you see, this legend comes much nearer than the history of our bluebeard to the told tale arranged by the ingenious perrault. now, why and how the name bluebeard passed from king comor to the marshal de rais, i cannot tell. you know what pranks oral tradition can play." "but with your gilles de rais you must have to plunge into satanism right up to the hilt," said chantelouve after a silence. "yes, and it would really be more interesting if these scenes were not so remote. what would have a timely appeal would be a study of the diabolism of the present day." "no doubt," said chantelouve, pleasantly. "for," durtal went on, looking at him intently, "unheard-of things are going on right now. i have heard tell of sacrilegious priests, of a certain canon who has revived the sabbats of the middle ages." chantelouve did not betray himself by so much as a flicker of the eyelids. calmly he uncrossed his legs and looking up at the ceiling he said, "alas, certain scabby wethers succeed in stealing into the fold, but they are so rare as hardly to be worth thinking about." and he deftly changed the subject by speaking of a book he had just read about the fronde. durtal, somewhat embarrassed, said nothing. he understood that chantelouve refused to speak of his relations with canon docre. "my dear," said mme. chantelouve, addressing her husband, "you have forgotten to turn up your lamp wick. it is smoking. i can smell it from here, even through the closed door." she was most evidently conveying him a dismissal. chantelouve rose and, with a vaguely malicious smile, excused himself as being obliged to continue his work. he shook hands with durtal, begged him not to stay away so long in future, and gathering up the skirts of his dressing-gown he left the room. she followed him with her eyes, then rose, in her turn, ran to the door, assured herself with a glance that it was closed, then returned to durtal, who was leaning against the mantel. without a word she took his head between her hands, pressed her lips to his mouth and opened it. he grunted furiously. she looked at him with indolent and filmy eyes, and he saw sparks of silver dart to their surface. he held her in his arms. she was swooning but vigilantly listening. gently she disengaged herself, sighing, while he, embarrassed, sat down at a little distance from her, clenching and unclenching his hands. they spoke of banal things: she boasting of her maid, who would go through fire for her, he responding only by gestures of approbation and surprise. then suddenly she passed her hands over her forehead. "ah!" she said, "i suffer cruelly when i think that he is there working. no, it would cost me too much remorse. what i say is foolish, but if he were a different man, a man who went out more and made conquests, it would not be so bad." he was irritated by the inconsequentiality of her plaints. finally, feeling completely safe, he came closer to her and said, "you spoke of remorse, but whether we embark or whether we stand on the bank, isn't our guilt exactly the same?" "yes, i know. my confessor talks to me like that--only more severely--but i think you are both wrong." he could not help laughing, and he said to himself, "remorse is perhaps the condiment which keeps passion from being too unappetizing to the blasé." then aloud he jestingly, "speaking of confessors, if i were a casuist it seems to me i would try to invent new sins. i am not a casuist, and yet, having looked about a bit, i believe i _have_ found a new sin." "you?" she said, laughing in turn. "can i commit it?" he scrutinized her features. she had the expression of a greedy child. "you alone can answer that. now i must admit that the sin is not absolutely new, for it fits into the known category of lust. but it has been neglected since pagan days, and was never well defined in any case." "do not keep me in suspense. what is this sin?" "it isn't easy to explain. nevertheless i will try. lust, i believe, can be classified into: ordinary sin, sin against nature, bestiality, and let us add _demoniality_ and sacrilege. well, there is, in addition to these, what i shall call pygmalionism, which embraces at the same time cerebral onanism and incest. "imagine an artist falling in love with his child, his creation: with an hérodiade, a judith, a helen, a jeanne d'arc, whom he has either described or painted, and evoking her, and finally possessing her in dream. "well, this love is worse than normal incest. in the latter sin the guilty one commits only a half-offence, because his daughter is not born solely of his substance, but also of the flesh of another. thus, logically, in incest there is a quasi-natural side, almost licit, because part of another person has entered into the engendering of the _corpus delicti_; while in pygmalionism the father violates the child of his soul, of that which alone is purely and really his, which alone he can impregnate without the aid of another. the offence is, then, entire and complete. now, is there not also disdain of nature, of the work of god, since the subject of the sin is no longer--as even in bestiality--a palpable and living creature, but an unreal being created by a projection of the desecrated talent, a being almost celestial, since, by genius, by artistry, it often becomes immortal? "let us go further, if you wish. suppose that an artist depicts a saint and becomes enamoured of her. thus we have complications of crime against nature and of sacrilege. an enormity!" "which, perhaps, is exquisite!" he was taken aback by the word she had used. she rose, opened the door, and called her husband. "dear," she said, "durtal has discovered a new sin!" "surely not," said chantelouve, his figure framed in the doorway. "the book of sins is an edition _ne varietur_. new sins cannot be invented, but old ones may be kept from falling into oblivion. well, what is this sin of his?" durtal explained the theory. "but it is simply a refined expression of succubacy. the consort is not one's work become animate, but a succubus which by night takes that form." "admit, at any rate, that this cerebral hermaphrodism, self-fecundation, is a distinguished vice at least--being the privilege of the artist--a vice reserved for the elect, inaccessible to the mob." "if you like exclusive obscenity--" laughed chantelouve. "but i must get back to the lives of the saints; the atmosphere is fresher and more benign. so excuse me, durtal. i leave it to my wife to continue this marivaux conversation about satanism with you." he said it in the simplest, most debonair fashion to be imagined, but with just the slightest trace of irony. which durtal perceived. "it must be quite late," he thought, when the door closed after chantelouve. he consulted his watch. nearly eleven. he rose to take leave. "when shall i see you?" he murmured, very low. "your apartment tomorrow night at nine." he looked at her with beseeching eyes. she understood, but wished to tease him. she kissed him maternally on the forehead, then consulted his eyes again. the expression of supplication must have remained unchanged, for she responded to their imploration by a long kiss which closed them, then came down to his lips, drinking their dolorous emotion. then she rang and told her maid to light durtal through the hall. he descended, satisfied that she had engaged herself to yield tomorrow night. chapter xiii he began again, as on the other evening, to clean house and establish a methodical disorder. he slipped a cushion under the false disarray of the armchair, then he made roaring fires to have the rooms good and warm when she came. but he was without impatience. that silent promise which he had obtained, that mme. chantelouve would not leave him panting this night, moderated him. now that his uncertainty was at an end, he no longer vibrated with the almost painful acuity which hitherto her malignant delays had provoked. he soothed himself by poking the fire. his mind was still full of her, but plethoric, content. when his thoughts stirred at all it was, at the very most, to revolve the question, "how shall i go about it, when the time comes, so as not to be ridiculous?" this question, which had so harassed him the other night, left him troubled but inert. he did not try to solve it, but decided to leave everything to chance, since the best planned strategy was almost always abortive. then he revolted against himself, accused himself of stagnation, and walked up and down to shake himself out of a torpor which might have been attributed to the hot fire. well, well, was it because he had had to wait so long that his desires had left him, or at least quit bothering him--no, they had not, why, he was yearning now for the moment when he might crush that woman! he thought he had the explanation of his lack of enthusiasm in the stage fright inseparable from any beginning. "it will not be really exquisite tonight until after the newness wears off and the grotesque with it. after i know her i shall be able to consort with her again without feeling solicitous about her and conscious of myself. i wish we were on that happy basis now." the cat, sitting on the table, cocked up its ears, gazed at the door with its black eyes, and fled. the bell rang and durtal went to let her in. her costume pleased him. he took off her furs. her skirt was of a plum colour so dark that it was almost black, the material thick and supple, outlining her figure, squeezing her arms, making an hourglass of her waist, accentuating the curve of her hips and the bulge of her corset. "you are charming," he said, kissing her wrists, and he was pleased to find that his lips had accelerated her pulse. she did not speak, could hardly breathe. she was agitated and very pale. he sat down facing her. she looked at him with her mysterious, half sleepy eyes. he felt that he was falling in love all over again. he forgot his reasonings and his fears, and took acute pleasure in penetrating the mystery of these eyes and studying the vague smile of this dolorous mouth. he enlaced her fingers in his, and for the first time, in a low voice, he called her hyacinthe. she listened, her breast heaving, her hands in a fever. then in a supplicating voice, "i implore you," she said, "let us have none of that. only desire is good. oh, i am rational, i mean what i say. i thought it all out on the way here. i left him very sad tonight. if you knew how i feel--i went to church today and was afraid and hid myself when i saw my confessor--" these plaints he had heard before, and he said to himself, "you may sing whatever tune you want to, but you shall dance tonight." aloud he answered in monosyllables as he continued to take possession of her. he rose, thinking she would do the same, or that if she remained seated he could better reach her lips by bending over her. "your lips, your lips--the kiss you gave me last night--" he murmured, as his face came close to hers. she put up her lips and stood, and they embraced, but as his hands went seeking she recoiled. "think how ridiculous it all is," she said in a low voice, "to undress, put on night clothes--and that silly scene, getting into bed!" he avoided declaring, but attempted, by an embrace which bent her over backward, to make her understand that she could spare herself those embarrassments. tacitly, in his own turn, feeling her body stiffen under his fingers, he understood that she absolutely would not give herself in the room here, in front of the fire. "oh well," she said, disengaging herself, "if you will have it!" he made way to allow her to go into the other room, and seeing that she desired to be alone he drew the portière. sitting before the fire he reflected. perhaps he ought to have pulled down the bed covers, and not left her the task, but without doubt the action would have been too direct, too obvious a hint. ah! and that water heater! he took it and, keeping away from the bedroom door, went to the bathroom, placed the heater on the toilet table, and then, swiftly, he set out the rice powder box, the perfumes, the combs, and, returning into his study, he listened. she was making as little noise as possible, walking on tiptoe as if in the presence of the dead. she blew out the candles, doubtless wishing no more light than the rosy glow of the hearth. he felt positively annihilated. the irritating impression of the lips and eyes of hyacinthe was far from him now. she was nothing but a woman, like any other, undressing in a man's room. memories of similar scenes overwhelmed him. he remembered girls who like her had crept about on the carpet so as not to be heard, and who had stopped short, ashamed, for a whole second, if they bumped against the water pitcher. and then, what good was this going to do him? now that she was yielding he no longer desired her! disillusion had come even before possession, not waiting, as usual, till afterward. he was distressed to the point of tears. the frightened cat glided under the curtain, ran from one room to the other, and finally came back to his master and jumped onto his knees. caressing him, durtal said to himself, "decidedly, she was right when she refused. it will be grotesque, atrocious. i was wrong to insist, but no, it's her fault, too. she must have wanted to do this or she wouldn't have come. what a fool to think she could aggravate passion by delay. she is fearfully clumsy. a moment ago when i was embracing her and really was aroused, it would perhaps have been delicious, but now! and what do i look like? a young bridegroom waiting--or a green country boy. oh god, how stupid! well," he said, straining his ears and hearing no sound from the other room, "she's in bed. i must go in. "i suppose it took her all this time to unharness herself from her corset. she was a fool to wear one," he concluded, when, drawing the curtain, he stepped into the other room. mme. chantelouve was buried under the thick coverlet, her mouth half-open and her eyes closed; but he saw that she was peering at him through the fringe of her blonde eyelashes. he sat down on the edge of the bed. she huddled up, drawing the cover over her chin. "cold, dear?" "no," and she opened wide her eyes, which flashed sparks. he undressed, casting a rapid glance at hyacinthe's face. it was hidden in the darkness, but was sometimes revealed by a flare of the red hot fire, as a stick, half consumed and smouldering, would suddenly burst into flame. swiftly he slipped between the covers. he clasped a corpse; a body so cold that it froze him, but the woman's lips were burning as she silently gnawed his features. he lay stupified in the grip of this body wound around his own, supple as the ... and hard! he could not move; he could not speak for the shower of kisses traveling over his face. finally, he succeeded in disengaging himself, and, with his free arm he sought her; then suddenly, while she devoured his lips he felt a nervous inhibition, and, naturally, without profit, he withdrew. "i detest you!" she exclaimed. "why?" "i detest you!" he wanted to cry out, "and i you!" he was exasperated, and would have given all he owned to get her to dress and go home. the fire was burning low, unflickering. appeased, now, he sat up and looked into the darkness. he would have liked to get up and find another nightshirt, because the one he had on was tearing and getting in his way. but hyacinthe was lying on top of it--then he reflected that the bed was deranged and the thought affected him, because he liked to be snug in winter, and knowing himself incapable of respreading the covers, he foresaw a cold night. once more, he was enlaced; the gripe of the woman's on his own was renewed; rational, this time, he attended to her and crushed her with mighty caresses. in a changed voice, lower, more guttural, she uttered ignoble things and silly cries which gave him pain--"my dear!--oh, hon!--oh i can't stand it!"--aroused nevertheless, he took this body which creaked as it writhed, and he experienced the extraordinary sensation of a spasmodic burning within a swaddle of ice-packs. he finally jumped over her, out of bed, and lighted the candles. on the dresser the cat sat motionless, considering durtal and mme. chantelouve alternately. durtal saw an inexpressible mockery in those black eyes and, irritated, chased the beast away. he put some more wood on the fire, dressed, and started to leave the room. hyacinthe called him gently, in her usual voice. he approached the bed. she threw her arms around his neck and hung there, kissing him hungrily. then sinking back and putting her arms under the cover, she said, "the deed is done. now will you love me any better?" he did not have the heart to answer. ah yes, his disillusion was complete. the satiety following justified his lack of appetite preceding. she revolted him, horrified him. was it possible to have so desired a woman, only to come to--that? he had idealized her in his transports, he had dreamed in her eyes--he knew not what! he had wished to exalt himself with her, to rise higher than the delirious ravenings of the senses, to soar out of the world into joys supernal and unexplored. and his dream had been shattered. he remained fettered to earth. was there no means of escaping out of one's self, out of earthly limitations, and attaining an upper ether where the soul, ravished, would glory in its giddy flight? ah, the lesson was hard and decisive. for having one time hoped so much, what regrets, what a tumble! decidedly, reality does not pardon him who despises her; she avenges herself by shattering the dream and trampling it and casting the fragments into a cesspool. "don't be vexed, dear, because it is taking me so long," said mme. chantelouve behind the curtain. he thought crudely, "i wish you would get to hell out of here," and aloud he asked politely if she had need of his services. "she was so mysterious, so enticing," he resumed to himself. "her eyes, remote, deep as space, and reflecting cemeteries and festivals at the same time. and she has shown herself up for all she is, within an hour. i have seen a new hyacinthe, talking like a silly little milliner in heat. all the nastinesses of women unite in her to exasperate me." after a thoughtful silence he concluded, "i must be young indeed to have lost my head the way i did." as if echoing his thought, mme. chantelouve, coming out through the portière, laughed nervously and said, "a woman of my age doing a mad thing like that!" she looked at him, and though he forced a smile she understood. "you will sleep tonight," she said, sadly, alluding to durtal's former complaints of sleeplessness on her account. he begged her to sit down and warm herself, but she said she was not cold. "why, in spite of the warmth of the room you were cold as ice!" "oh, i am always that way. winter and summer my flesh is chilly." he thought that in august this frigid body might be agreeable, but now! he offered her some bonbons, which she refused, then she said she would take a sip of the alkermes, which he poured into a tiny silver goblet. she took just a drop, and amicably they discussed the taste of this preparation, in which she recognized an aroma of clove, tempered by flower of cinnamon moistened with distillate of rose water. then he became silent. "my poor dear," she said, "how i should love him if he were more confiding and not always on his guard." he asked her to explain herself. "why, i mean that you can't forget yourself and simply let yourself be loved. alas, you were reasoning all the time--" "i was not!" she kissed him tenderly. "you see i love you, anyway." and he was surprised to see how sad and moved she looked, and he observed a sort of frightened gratitude in her eyes. "she is easily satisfied," he said to himself. "what are you thinking about?" "you!" she sighed. then, "what time is it?" "half past ten." "i must go. he is waiting for me. no, don't say anything--" she passed her hands over her cheeks. he seized her gently by the waist and kissed her, holding her thus enlaced until they were at the door. "you will come again soon, won't you?" "yes.... yes." he returned to the fireside. "oof! it's done," he thought, in a whirl of confused emotions. his vanity was satisfied, his selfesteem was no longer bleeding, he had attained his ends and possessed this woman. moreover, her spell over him had lost its force. he was regaining his entire liberty of mind, but who could tell what trouble this liaison had yet in store for him? then, in spite of everything, he softened. after all, what could he reproach her with? she loved as well as she could. she was, indeed, ardent and plaintive. even this dualism of a mistress who was a low cocotte in bed and a fine lady when dressed--or no, too intelligent to be called a fine lady--was a delectable pimento. her carnal appetites were excessive and bizarre. what, then, was the matter with him? and at last he quite justly accused himself. it was his own fault if everything was spoiled. he lacked appetite. he was not really tormented except by a cerebral erethism. he was used up in body, filed away in soul, inept at love, weary of tendernesses even before he received them and disgusted when he had. his heart was dead and could not be revived. and his mania for thinking, thinking! previsualizing an incident so vividly that actual enactment was an anticlimax--but probably would not be if his mind would leave him alone and not be always jeering at his efforts. for a man in his state of spiritual impoverishment all, save art, was but a recreation more or less boring, a diversion more or less vain. "ah, poor woman, i am afraid she is going to get pretty sick of me. if only she would consent to come no more! but no, she doesn't deserve to be treated in that fashion," and, seized by pity, he swore to himself that the next time she visited him he would caress her and try to persuade her that the disillusion which he had so ill concealed did not exist. he tried to spread up the bed, get the tousled blankets together, and plump the pillows, then he lay down. he put out his lamp. in the darkness his distress increased. with death in his heart he said to himself, "yes, i was right in declaring that the only women you can continue to love are those you lose. "to learn, three years later, when the woman is inaccessible, chaste and married, dead, perhaps, or out of france--to learn that she loved you, though you had not dared believe it while she was near you, ah, that's the dream! these real and intangible loves, these loves made up of melancholy and distant regrets, are the only ones that count. because there is no flesh in them, no earthly leaven. "to love at a distance and without hope; never to possess; to dream chastely of pale charms and impossible kisses extinguished on the waxen brow of death: ah, that is something like it. a delicious straying away from the world, and never the return. as only the unreal is not ignoble and empty, existence must be admitted to be abominable. yes, imagination is the only good thing which heaven vouchsafes to the skeptic and pessimist, alarmed by the eternal abjectness of life." chapter xiv from this scene he had learned an alarming lesson: that the flesh domineers the soul and refuses to admit any schism. the flesh decisively does not intend that one shall get along without it and indulge in out-of-the-world pleasures which it can partake only on condition that it keep quiet. for the first time, reviewing these turpitudes, he really understood the meaning of that now obsolete word _chastity_, and he savoured it in all its pristine freshness. just as a man who has drunk too deeply the night before thinks, the morning after, of drinking nothing but mineral water in future, so he dreamed, today, of pure affection far from a bed. he was still ruminating these thoughts when des hermies entered. they spoke of amorous misadventures. astonished at once by durtal's languor and the ascetic tone of his remarks, des hermies exclaimed, "ah, we had a gay old time last night?" with the most decisive bad grace durtal shook his head. "then," replied des hermies, "you are superior and inhuman. to love without hope, immaculately, would be perfect if it did not induct such brainstorms. there is no excuse for chastity, unless one has a pious end in view, or unless the senses are failing, and if they are one had best see a doctor, who will solve the question more or less unsatisfactorily. to tell the truth, everything on earth culminates in the act you reprove. the heart, which is supposed to be the noble part of man, has the same form as the penis, which is the so-called ignoble part of man. there's symbolism in that similarity, because every love which is of the heart soon extends to the organ resembling it. the human imagination, the moment it tries to create artificially animated beings, involuntarily reproduces in them the movements of animals propagating. look at the machines, the action of the piston and the cylinder; romeos of steel and juliets of cast iron. nor do the loftier expressions of the human intellect get away from the advance and withdrawal copied by the machines. one must bow to nature's law if one is neither impotent nor a saint. now you are neither the one nor the other, i think, but if, from inconceivable motives, you desire to live in temporary continence, follow the prescription of an occultist of the sixteenth century, the neapolitan piperno. he affirms that whoever eats vervain cannot approach a woman for seven days. buy a jar, and let's try it." durtal laughed. "there is perhaps a middle course: never consummate the carnal act with her you love, and, to keep yourself quiet, frequent those you do not love. thus, in a certain measure, you would conjure away possible disgust." "no, one would never get it out of one's head that with the woman of whom one was enamoured one would experience carnal delights absolutely different from those which one feels with the others, so your method also would end badly. and too, the women who would not be indifferent to one, have not charity and discretion enough to admire the wisdom of this selfishness, for of course that's what it is. but what say, now, to putting on your shoes? it's almost six o'clock and mama carhaix's beef can't wait." it had already been taken out of the pot and couched on a platter amid vegetables when they arrived. carhaix, sprawling in an armchair, was reading his breviary. "what's going on in the world?" he asked, closing his book. "nothing. politics doesn't interest us, and general boulanger's american tricks of publicity weary you as much as they do us, i suppose. the other newspaper stories are just a little more shocking or dull than usual.--look out, you'll burn your mouth," as durtal was preparing to take a spoonful of soup. "in fact," said durtal, grimacing, "this marrowy soup, so artistically golden, is like liquid fire. but speaking of the news, what do you mean by saying there is nothing of pressing importance? and the trial of that astonishing abbé boudes going on before the assizes of aveyron! after trying to poison his curate through the sacramental wine, and committing such other crimes as abortion, rape, flagrant misconduct, forgery, qualified theft and usury, he ended by appropriating the money put in the coin boxes for the souls in purgatory, and pawning the ciborium, chalice, all the holy vessels. that case is worth following." carhaix raised his eyes to heaven. "if he is not sent to jail, there will be one more priest for paris," said des hermies. "how's that?" "why, all the ecclesiastics who get in bad in the provinces, or who have a serious falling out with the bishop, are sent here where they will be less in view, lost in the crowd, as it were. they form a part of that corporation known as 'scratch priests.'" "what are they?" "priests loosely attached to a parish. you know that in addition to a curate, ministrants, vicars, and regular clergy, there are in every church adjunct priests, supply priests. those are the ones i am talking about. they do the heavy work, celebrate the morning masses when everybody is asleep and the late masses when everybody is doing. it is they who get up at night to take the sacrament to the poor, and who sit up with the corpses of the devout rich and catch cold standing under the dripping church porches at funerals, and get sunstroke or pneumonia in the cemetery. they do all the dirty work. for a five or ten franc fee they act as substitutes for colleagues who have good livings and are tired of service. they are men under a cloud for the most part. churches take them on, ready to fire them at a moment's notice, and keep strict watch over them while waiting for them to be interdicted or to have their _celebret_ taken away. i simply mean that the provincial parishes excavate on the city the priests who for one reason or another have ceased to please." "but what do the curates and other titulary abbés _do_, if they unload their duties onto the backs of others?" "they do the elegant, easy work, which requires no effort, no charity. they shrive society women who come to confession in their most stunning gowns; they teach proper little prigs the catechism, and preach, and play the limelight rôles in the gala ceremonials which are got up to pander to the tastes of the faithful. at paris, not counting the scratch priests, the clergy is divided thus: man-of-the-world priests in easy circumstances: these are placed at la madeleine and saint roch where the congregations are wealthy. they are wined and dined, they pass their lives in drawing-rooms, and comfort only elegant souls. other priests who are good desk clerks, for the most part, but who have neither the education nor the fortune necessary to participate in the inconsequentialities of the idle rich. they live more in seclusion and visit only among the middle class. they console themselves for their unfashionableness by playing cards with each other and uttering crude commonplaces at the table." "now, des hermies," said carhaix, "you are going too far. i claim to know the clerical world myself, and there are, even in paris, honest men who do their duty. they are covered with opprobrium and spat on. every tom, dick, and harry accuses them of the foulest vices. but after all, it must be said that the abbé boudes and the canon docres are exceptions, thank god! and outside of paris there are veritable saints, especially among the country clergy." "it's a fact that satanic priests are relatively rare, and the lecheries of the clergy and the knaveries of the episcopate are evidently exaggerated by an ignoble press. but that isn't what i have against them. if only they were gamblers and libertines! but they're lukewarm, mediocre, lazy, imbeciles. that is their sin against the holy ghost, the only sin which the all merciful does not pardon." "they are of their time," said durtal. "you wouldn't expect to find the soul of the middle ages inculcated by the milk-and-water seminaries." "then," carhaix observed, "our friend forgets that there are impeccable monastic orders, the carthusians, for instance." "yes, and the trappists and the franciscans. but they are cloistered orders which live in shelter from an infamous century. take, on the other hand, the order of saint dominic, which exists for the fashionable world. that is the order which produces jewelled dudes like monsabre and didon. enough said." "they are the hussars of religion, the jaunty lancers, the spick and span and primped-up zouaves, while the good capuchins are the humble poilus of the soul," said durtal. "if only they loved bells," sighed carhaix, shaking his head. "well, pass the coulommiers," he said to his wife, who was taking up the salad bowl and the plates. in silence they ate this brie-type cheese. des hermies filled the glasses. "tell me," durtal asked des hermies, "do you know whether a woman who receives visits from the incubi necessarily has a cold body? in other words, is a cold body a presumable symptom of incubacy, as of old the inability to shed tears served the inquisition as proof positive to convict witches?" "yes, i can answer you. formerly women smitten with incubacy had frigid flesh even in the month of august. the books of the specialists bear witness. but now the majority of the creatures who voluntarily or involuntarily summon or receive the amorous larvæ have, on the contrary, a skin that is burning and dry to the touch. this transformation is not yet general, but tends to become so. i remember very well that dr. johannès, he of whom gévingey told you, was often obliged, at the moment when he attempted to deliver the patient, to bring the body back to normal temperature with lotions of dilute hydriodate of potassium." "ah!" said durtal, who was thinking of mme. chantelouve. "you don't know what has become of dr. johannès?" asked carhaix. "he is living very much in retirement at lyons. he continues, i believe, to cure venefices, and he preaches the blessed coming of the paraclete." "for heaven's sake, who is this doctor?" asked durtal. "he is a very intelligent and learned priest. he was superior of a community, and he directed, here in paris, the only review which ever was really mystical. he was a theologian much consulted, a recognized master of divine jurisprudence; then he had distressing quarrels with the papal curia at rome and with the cardinal-archbishop of paris. his exorcisms and his battles against the incubi, especially in the female convents, ruined him. "ah, i remember the last time i saw him, as if it were yesterday. i met him in the rue grenelle coming out of the archbishop's house, the day he quitted the church, after a scene which he told me all about. again i can see that priest walking with me along the deserted boulevard des invalides. he was pale, and his defeated but impressive voice trembled. he had been summoned and commanded to explain his actions in the case of an epileptic woman whom he claimed to have cured with the aid of a relic, the seamless robe of christ preserved at argenteuil. the cardinal, assisted by two grand vicars, listened to him, standing. "when he had likewise furnished the information which they demanded about his cures of witch spells, cardinal guibert said, 'you had best go to la trappe.' "and i remember word for word his reply, 'if i have violated the laws of the church, i am ready to undergo the penalty of my fault. if you think me culpable, pass a canonical judgment and i will execute it, i swear on my sacerdotal honour; but i wish a formal sentence, for, in law, nobody is bound to condemn himself: "_nemo se tradere tenetur_," says the corpus juris canonici.' "there was a copy of his review on the table. the cardinal pointed to a page and asked, 'did you write that?' "'yes, eminence.' "'infamous doctrines!' and he went from his office into the next room, crying, 'out of my sight!' "then johannès advanced as far as the threshold of the other room, and falling on his knees, he said, 'eminence, i had no intention of offending. if i have done so, i beg forgiveness.' "the cardinal cried more loudly, 'out of my sight before i call for assistance!' "johannès rose and left. "'all my old ties are broken,' he said, as he parted from me. he was so sad that i had not the heart to question him further." there was a silence. carhaix went up to his tower to ring a peal. his wife removed the dessert dishes and the cloth. des hermies prepared the coffee. durtal, pensive, rolled his cigarette. carhaix, when he returned, as if enveloped in a fog of sounds, exclaimed, "a while ago, des hermies, you were speaking of the franciscans. do you know that that order, to live up to its professions of poverty, was supposed not to possess even a bell? true, this rule has been relaxed somewhat. it was too severe! now they have a bell, but only one." "just like most other abbeys, then." "no, because all communities have at least three, in honour of the holy and triple hypostasis." "do you mean to say that the number of bells a monastery or church can have is limited by rule?" "formerly it was. there was a pious hierarchy of ringing: the bells of a convent could not sound when the bells of a church pealed. they were the vassals, and, respectful and submissive as became their rank, they were silent when the suzerain spoke to the multitudes. these principles of procedure, consecrated, in 1590, by a canon of the council of toulouse and confirmed by two decrees of the congress of rites, are no longer followed. the rulings of san carlo borromeo, who decreed that a church should have from five to seven bells, a boy's academy three, and a parochial school two, are abolished. today churches have more or fewer bells as they are more or less rich.... oh, well, why worry? where are the little glasses?" his wife brought them, shook hands with the guests, and retired. then while carhaix was pouring the cognac, des hermies said in a low voice, "i did not want to speak before her, because these matters distress and frighten her, but i received a singular visit this morning from gévingey, who is running over to lyons to see dr. johannès. he claims to have been bewitched by canon docre, who, it seems, is making a flying visit to paris. what have been their relations? i don't know. anyway, gévingey is in a deplorable state." "just what seems to be the matter with him?" asked durtal. "i positively do not know. i made a careful auscultation and examined him thoroughly. he complains of needles pricking him around the heart. i observed nervous trouble and nothing else. what i am most worried about is a state of enfeeblement inexplicable in a man who is neither cancerous nor diabetical." "ah," said carhaix, "i suppose people are not betwitched now with wax images and needles, with the 'manei' or the 'dagyde' as it was called in the good old days." "no, those practises are now out of date and almost everywhere fallen into disuse. gévingey who took me completely into his confidence this morning, told me what extraordinary recipes the frightful canon uses. these are, it seems, the unrevealed secrets of modern magic." "ah, that's what interests me," exclaimed durtal. "of course i limit myself to repeating what was told me," resumed des hermies, lighting his cigarette. "well, docre keeps white mice in cages, and he takes them along when he travels. he feeds them on consecrated hosts and on pastes impregnated with poisons skilfully dosed. when these unhappy beasts are saturated, he takes them, holds them over a chalice, and with a very sharp instrument he pricks them here and there. the blood flows into the vase and he uses it, in a way which i shall explain in a moment, to strike his enemies with death. formerly he operated on chickens and guinea pigs, but he used the grease, not the blood, of these animals, become thus execrated and venomous tabernacles. "formerly he also used a recipe discovered by the satanic society of the re-theurgistes-optimates, of which i have spoken before, and he prepared a hash composed of flour, meat, eucharist bread, mercury, animal semen, human blood, acetate of morphine and aspic oil. "latterly, and according to gévingey this abomination is more perilous yet, he stuffs fishes with communion bread and with toxins skilfully graduated. these toxins are chosen from those which produce madness or lockjaw when absorbed through the pores. then, when these fishes are thoroughly permeated with the substances sealed by sacrilege, docre takes them out of the water, lets them rot, distills them, and expresses from them an essential oil one drop of which will produce madness. this drop, it appears, is applied externally, by touching the hair, as in balzac's _thirteen_." "hmmm," said durtal, "i am afraid that a drop of this oil long ago fell on the scalp of poor old gévingey." "what is interesting about this story is not the outlandishness of these diabolical pharmacopoeia so much as the psychology of the persons who invent and manipulate them. think. this is happening at the present day, and it is the priests who have invented philtres unknown to the sorcerers of the middle ages." "the priests, no! a priest. and what a priest!" remarked carhaix. "gévingey is very precise. he affirms that others use them. bewitchment by veniniferous blood of mice took place in 1879 at châlons-sur-marne in a demoniac circle--to which the canon belonged, it is true. in 1883, in savoy, the oil of which i have spoken was prepared in a group of defrocked abbés. as you see, docre is not the only one who practises this abominable science. it is known in the convents; some laymen, even, have an inkling of it." "but now, admitting that these preparations are real and that they are active, you have not explained how one can poison a man with them either from a distance or near at hand." "yes, that's another matter. one has a choice of two methods to reach the enemy one is aiming at. the first and least used is this: the magician employs a voyant, a woman who is known in that world as 'a flying spirit'; she is a somnambulist, who, put into a hypnotic state, can betake herself, in spirit, wherever one wishes her to go. it is then possible to have her transmit the magic poisons to a person whom one designates, hundreds of leagues away. those who are stricken in this manner have seen no one, and they go mad or die without suspecting the venefice. but these voyants are not only rare, they are also unreliable, because other persons can likewise fix them in a cataleptic state and extract confessions from them. so you see why persons like docre have recourse to the second method, which is surer. it consists in evoking, just as in spiritism, the soul of a dead person and sending it to strike the victim with the prepared spell. the result is the same but the vehicle is different. there," concluded des hermies, "reported with painstaking exactness, are the confidences which our friend gévingey made me this morning." "and dr. johannès cures people poisoned in this manner?" asked carhaix. "yes, dr. johannès--to my knowledge--has made inexplicable cures." "but with what?" "gévingey tells me, in this connection, that the doctor celebrates a sacrifice to the glory of melchisedek. i haven't the faintest idea what this sacrifice is, but gévingey will perhaps enlighten us if he returns cured." "in spite of all, i should not be displeased, once in my life to get a good look at canon docre," said durtal. "not i! he is the incarnation of the accursed on earth!" cried carhaix, assisting his friends to put on their overcoats. he lighted his lantern, and while they were descending the stair, as durtal complained of the cold, des hermies burst into a laugh. "if your family had known the magical secrets of the plants, you would not shiver this way," he said. "it was learned in the sixteenth century that a child might be immune to heat or cold all his life if his hands were rubbed with juice of absinth before the twelfth month of his life had passed. that, you see, is a tempting prescription, less dangerous than those which canon docre abuses." once below, after carhaix had closed the door of his tower, they hastened their steps, for the north wind swept the square. "after all," said des hermies, "satanism aside--and yet satanism also is a phase of religion--admit that, for two miscreants of our sort, we hold singularly pious conversations. i hope they will be counted in our favour up above." "no merit on our part," replied durtal, "for what else is there to talk about? conversations which do not treat of religion or art are so base and vain." chapter xv the memory of these frightful magisteria kept racing through his head next day, and, while smoking cigarettes beside the fire, durtal thought of docre and johannès fighting across gévingey's back, smiting and parrying with incantations and exorcisms. "in the christian symbolism," he said to himself, "the fish is one of the representations of christ. doubtless the canon thinks to aggravate his sacrileges by feeding fishes on genuine hosts. his is the reverse of the system of the mediæval witches who chose a vile beast dedicated to the devil to submit the body of the saviour to the processes of digestion. how real is the pretended power which the deicide chemists are alleged to wield? what faith can we put in the tales of evoked larvæ killing a designated person to order with corrosive oil and blood virus? none, unless one is extremely credulous, and even a bit mad. "and yet, come to think of it, we find today, unexplained and surviving under other names, the mysteries which were so long reckoned the product of mediæval imagination and superstition. at the charity hospital dr. louis transfers maladies from one hypnotized person to another. wherein is that less miraculous than evocation of demons, than spells cast by magicians or pastors? a larva, a flying spirit, is not, indeed, more extraordinary than a microbe coming from afar and poisoning one without one's knowledge, and the atmosphere can certainly convey spirits as well as bacilli. certainly the ether carries, untransformed, emanations, effluences, electricity, for instance, or the fluids of a magnet which sends to a distant subject an order to traverse all paris to rejoin it. science has no call to contest these phenomena. on the other hand, dr. brown-sequard rejuvenates infirm old men and revitalizes the impotent with distillations from the parts of rabbits and cavies. were not the elixirs of life and the love philtres which the witches sold to the senile and impotent composed of similar or analogous substances? human semen entered almost always, in the middle ages, into the compounding of these mixtures. now, hasn't dr. brown-sequard, after repeated experiments, recently demonstrated the virtues of semen taken from one man and instilled into another? "finally, the apparitions, doppelgänger, bilocations--to speak thus of the spirits--that terrified antiquity, have not ceased to manifest themselves. it would be difficult to prove that the experiments carried on for three years by dr. crookes in the presence of witnesses were cheats. if he has been able to photograph visible and tangible spectres, we must recognize the veracity of the mediæval thaumaturges. incredible, of course--and wasn't hypnotism, possession of one soul by another which could dedicate it to crime--incredible only ten years ago? "we are groping in shadow, that is sure. but des hermies hit the bull's-eye when he remarked, 'it is less important to know whether the modern pharmaceutic sacrileges are potent, than to study the motives of the satanists and fallen priests who prepare them.' "ah, if there were some way of getting acquainted with canon docre, of insinuating oneself into his confidence, perhaps one would attain clear insight into these questions. i learned long ago that there are no people interesting to know except saints, scoundrels, and cranks. they are the only persons whose conversation amounts to anything. persons of good sense are necessarily dull, because they revolve over and over again the tedious topics of everyday life. they are the crowd, more or less intelligent, but they are the crowd, and they give me a pain. yes, but who will put me in touch with this monstrous priest?" and, as he poked the fire, durtal said to himself, "chantelouve, if he would, but he won't. there remains his wife, who used to be well acquainted with docre. i must interrogate her and find out whether she still corresponds with him and sees him." the entrance of mme. chantelouve into his reflections saddened him. he took out his watch and murmured, "what a bore. she will come again, and again i shall have to--if only there were any possibility of convincing her of the futility of the carnal somersaults! in any case, she can't be very well pleased, because, to her frantic letter soliciting a meeting, i responded three days later by a brief, dry note, inviting her to come here this evening. it certainly was lacking in lyricism, too much so, perhaps." he rose and went into his bedroom to make sure that the fire was burning brightly, then he returned and sat down, without even arranging his room as he had the other times. now that he no longer cared for this woman, gallantry and self-consciousness had fled. he awaited her without impatience, his slippers on his feet. "to tell the truth, i have had nothing pleasant from hyacinthe except that kiss we exchanged when her husband was only a few feet away. i certainly shall not again find her lips a-flame and fragrant. here her kiss is insipid." mme. chantelouve rang earlier than usual. "well," she said, sitting down. "you wrote me a nice letter." "how's that?" "confess frankly that you are through with me." he denied this, but she shook her head. "well," he said, "what have you to reproach me with? having written you only a short note? but there was someone here, i was busy and i didn't have time to assemble pretty speeches. not having set a date sooner? i told you our relation necessitates precautions, and we can't see each other very often. i think i gave you clearly to understand my motives--" "i am so stupid that i probably did not understand them. you spoke to me of 'family reasons,' i believe." "yes." "rather vague." "well, i couldn't go into detail and tell you that--" he stopped, asking himself whether the time had come to break decisively with her, but he remembered that he wanted her aid in getting information about docre. "that what? tell me." he shook his head, hesitating, not to tell her a lie, but to insult and humiliate her. "well," he went on, "since you force me to do it, i will confess, at whatever cost, that i have had a mistress for several years--i add that our relations are now purely amical--" "very well," she interrupted, "your family reasons are sufficient." "and then," he pursued, in a lower tone, "if you wish to know all, well--i have a child by her." "a child! oh, you poor dear." she rose. "then there is nothing for me to do but withdraw." but he seized her hands, and, at the same time satisfied with the success of his deception and ashamed of his brutality, he begged her to stay awhile. she refused. then he drew her to him, kissed her hair, and cajoled her. her troubled eyes looked deep into his. "ah, then!" she said. "no, let me undress." "not for the world!" "yes!" "oh, the scene of the other night beginning all over again," he murmured, sinking, overwhelmed, into a chair. he felt borne down, burdened by an unspeakable weariness. he undressed beside the fire and warmed himself while waiting for her to get to bed. when they were in bed she enveloped him with her supple, cold limbs. "now is it true that i am to come here no more?" he did not answer, but understood that she had no intention of going away and that he had to do with a person of the staying kind. "tell me." he buried his head in her breast to keep from having to answer. "tell me in my lips." he beset her furiously, to make her keep silent, then he lay disabused, weary, happy that it was over. when they lay down again she put her arm about his neck and ran her tongue around in his mouth like an auger, but he paid little heed to caresses and remained feeble and pathetic. then she bent over, reached him, and he groaned. "ah!" she exclaimed suddenly, rising, "at last i have heard you cry!" he lay, broken in body and spirit, incapable of thinking two thoughts in sequence. his brain seemed to whir, undone, in his skull. he collected himself, however, rose and went into the other room to dress and let her do the same. through the drawn portière separating the two rooms he saw a little pinhole of light which came from the wax candle placed on the mantel opposite the curtain. hyacinthe, going back and forth, would momentarily intercept this light, then it would flash out again. "ah," she said, "my poor darling, you have a child." "the shot struck home," said he to himself, and aloud, "yes, a little girl." "how old?" "she will soon be six," and he described her as flaxen-haired, lively, but in very frail health, requiring multiple precautions and constant care. "you must have very sad evenings," said mme. chantelouve, in a voice of emotion, from behind the curtain. "oh yes! if i were to die tomorrow, what would become of those two unfortunates?" his imagination took wing. he began himself to believe the mother and her. his voice trembled. tears very nearly came to his eyes. "he is unhappy, my darling is," she said, raising the curtain and returning, clothed, into the room. "and that is why he looks so sad, even when he smiles!" he looked at her. surely at that moment her affection was not feigned. she really clung to him. why, oh, why, had she had to have those rages of lust? if it had not been for those they could probably have been good comrades, sin moderately together, and love each other better than if they wallowed in the sty of the senses. but no, such a relation was impossible with her, he concluded, seeing those sulphurous eyes, that ravenous, despoiling mouth. she had sat down in front of his writing table and was playing with a penholder. "were you working when i came in? where are you in your history of gilles de rais?" "i am getting along, but i am hampered. to make a good study of the satanism of the middle ages one ought to get really into the environment, or at least fabricate a similar environment, by becoming acquainted with the practitioners of satanism all about us--for the psychology is the same, though the operations differ." and looking her straight in the eye, thinking the story of the child had softened her, he hazarded all on a cast, "ah! if your husband would give me the information he has about canon docre!" she stood motionless, but her eyes clouded over. she did not answer. "true," he said, "chantelouve, suspecting our liaison--" she interrupted him. "my husband has no concern with the relations which may exist between you and me. he evidently suffers when i go out, as tonight, for he knows where i am going; but i admit no right of control either on his part or mine. he is free, and i am free, to go wherever we please. i must keep house for him, watch out for his interests, take care of him, love him like a devoted companion, and that i do, with all my heart. as to being responsible for my acts, they're none of his business, no more his than anybody else's." she spoke in a crisp, incisive tone. "the devil;" said durtal. "you certainly reduce the importance of the rôle of husband." "i know that my ideas are not the ideas of the world i live in, and they appear not to be yours. in my first marriage they were a source of trouble and disaster--but i have an iron will and i bend the people who love me. in addition, i despise deceit, so when a few years after marriage i became smitten on a man i quite frankly told my husband and confessed my fault." "dare i ask you in what spirit he received this confidence?" "he was so grieved that in one night his hair turned white. he could not bear what he called--wrongly, i think--my treason, and he killed himself." "ah!" said durtal, dumbfounded by the placid and resolute air of this woman, "but suppose he had strangled you first?" she shrugged her shoulders and picked a cat hair off her skirt. "the result," he resumed after a silence, "being that you are now almost free, that your second husband tolerates--" "let us not discuss my second husband. he is an excellent man who deserves a better wife. i have absolutely no reason to speak of chantelouve otherwise than with praise, and then--oh, let's talk of something else, for i have had sufficient botheration on this subject from my confessor, who interdicts me from the holy table." he contemplated her, and saw yet another hyacinthe, a hard, pertinacious woman whom he had not known. not a sign nor an accent of emotion, nothing, while she was describing the suicide of her first husband--she did not even seem to imagine that she had a crime on her conscience. she remained pitiless, and yet, a moment ago, when she was commiserating him because of his fictitious parenthood, he had thought she was trembling. "after all, perhaps she is acting a part--like myself." he remained awed by the turn the conversation had taken. he sought, mentally, a way of getting back to the subject from which hyacinthe had diverted him, of the satanism of canon docre. "well, let us think of that no more," she said, coming very near. she smiled, and was once more the hyacinthe he knew. "but if on my account you can no longer take communion--" she interrupted him. "would you be sorry if i did not love you?" and she kissed his eyes. he squeezed her politely in his arms, but he felt her trembling, and from motives of prudence he got away. "is he so inexorable, your confessor?" "he is an incorruptible man, of the old school. i chose him expressly." "if i were a woman it seems to me i should take, on the contrary, a confessor who was pliable and caressible and who would not violently pillory my dainty little sins. i would have him indulgent, oiling the hinges of confession, enticing forth with beguiling gestures the misdeeds that hung back. it is true there would be risk of seducing a confessor who perhaps would be defenceless--" "and that would be incest, because the priest is a spiritual father, and it would also be sacrilege, because the priest is consecrated.--oh," speaking to herself, "i was mad, mad--" suddenly carried away. he observed her; sparks glinted in the myopic eyes of this extraordinary woman. evidently he had just stumbled, unwittingly, onto a guilty secret of hers. "well," and he smiled, "do you still commit infidelities to me with a false me?" "i do not understand." "do you receive, at night, the visit of the incubus which resembles me?" "no. since i have been able to possess you in the flesh i have no need to evoke your image." "what a downright satanist you are!" "maybe. i have been so constantly associated with priests." "you're a great one," he said, bowing. "now listen to me, and do me a great favour. you know canon docre?" "i should say!" "well, what in the world is this man, about whom i hear so much?" "from whom?" "gévingey and des hermies." "ah, you consult the astrologer! yes, he met the canon in my own house, but i didn't know that docre was acquainted with des hermies, who didn't attend our receptions in those days" "des hermies has never seen docre. he knows him, as i do, only by hearsay, from gévingey. now, briefly, how much truth is there in the stories of the sacrileges of which this priest is accused?" "i don't know. docre is a gentleman, learned and well bred. he was even the confessor of royalty, and he would certainly have become a bishop if he had not quitted the priesthood. i have heard a great deal of evil spoken about him, but, especially in the clerical world, people are so fond of saying all sorts of things." "but you knew him personally." "yes, i even had him for a confessor." "then it isn't possible that you don't know what to make of him?" "very possible, indeed presumable. look here, you have been beating around the bush a long time. exactly what do you want to know?" "everything you care to tell me. is he young or old, handsome or ugly, rich or poor?" "he is forty years old, very fastidious of his person, and he spends a lot of money." "do you believe that he indulges in sorcery, that he celebrates the black mass?" "it is quite possible." "pardon me for dunning you, for extorting information from you as if with forceps--suppose i were to ask you a really personal question--this faculty of incubacy ...?" "why, certainly i got it from him. i hope you are satisfied." "yes and no. thanks for your kindness in telling me--i know i am abusing your good nature--but one more question. do you know of any way whereby i may see canon docre in person?" "he is at nîmes." "pardon me. for the moment, he is in paris." "ah, you know that! well, if i knew of a way, i would not tell you, be sure. it would not be good for you to get to seeing too much of this priest." "you admit, then, that he is dangerous?" "i do not admit nor deny. i tell you simply that you have nothing to do with him." "yes i have. i want to get material for my book from him." "get it from somebody else. besides," she said, putting on her hat in front of the glass, "my husband got a bad scare and broke with that man and refuses to receive him." "that is no reason why--" "what do you mean?" "oh, nothing." he repressed the remark: "why you should not see him." she did not insist. she was poking her hair under her veil. "heavens! what a fright i look!" he took her hands and kissed them. "when shall i see you again?" "i thought i wasn't to come here any more." "oh, now, you know i love you as a good friend. tell me, when will you come again?" "tomorrow night, unless it is inconvenient for you." "not at all." "then, _au revoir_." their lips met. "and above all, don't think about canon docre," she said, turning and shaking her finger at him threateningly as she went out. "devil take you and your reticence," he said to himself, closing the door after her. chapter xvi "when i think," said durtal to himself the next morning, "that in bed, at the moment when the most pertinacious will succumbs, i held firm and refused to yield to the instances of hyacinthe wishing to establish a footing here, and that after the carnal decline, at that instant when annihilated man recovers--alas!--his reason, i supplicated her, myself, to continue her visits, why, i simply cannot understand myself. deep down, i have not got over my firm resolution of breaking with her, but i could not dismiss her like a cocotte. and," to justify his inconsistency, "i hoped to get some information about the canon. oh, on that subject i am not through with her. she's got to make up her mind to speak out and quit answering me by monosyllables and guarded phrases as she did yesterday. "indeed, what can she have been up to with that abbé who was her confessor and who, by her own admission, launched her into incubacy? she has been his mistress, that is certain. and how many other of these priests she has gone around with have been her lovers also? for she confessed, in a cry, that those are the men she loves. ah, if one went about much in the clerical world one would doubtless learn remarkable things concerning her and her husband. it is strange, all the same that chantelouve, who plays a singular rôle in that household, has acquired a deplorable reputation, and she hasn't. never have i heard anybody speak of her dodges--but, oh, what a fool i am! it isn't strange. her husband doesn't confine himself to religious and polite circles. he hobnobs with men of letters, and in consequence exposes himself to every sort of slander, while she, if she takes a lover, chooses him out of a pious society in which not one of us would ever be received. and then, abbés are discreet. but how explain her infatuation with me? by the simple fact that she is surfeited of priests and a layman serves as a change of diet. "just the same, she is quite singular, and the more i see her the less i understand her. there are in her three distinct beings. "first the woman seated or standing up, whom i knew in her drawing-room, reserved, almost haughty, who becomes a good companion in private, affectionate and even tender. "then the woman in bed, completely changed in voice and bearing, a harlot spitting mud, losing all shame. "third and last, the pitiless vixen, the thorough satanist, whom i perceived yesterday. "what is the binding-alloy that amalgamates all these beings of hers? i can't say. hypocrisy, no doubt. no. i don't think so, for she is often of a disconcerting frankness--in moments, it is true, of forgetfulness and unguardedness. seriously, what is the use of trying to understand the character of this pious harlot? and to be candid with myself, what i wish ideally will never be realized; she does not ask me to take her to swell places, does not force me to dine with her, exacts no revenue: she isn't trying to compromise and blackmail me. i shan't find a better--but, oh, lord! i now prefer to find no one at all. it suits me perfectly to entrust my carnal business to mercenary agents. for my twenty francs i shall receive more considerate treatment. there is no getting around it, only professionals know how to cook up a delicious sensual dish. "odd," he said to himself after a reflective silence, "but, all proportions duly observed, gilles de rais divides himself like her, into three different persons. "first, the brave and honest fighting man. "then the refined and artistic criminal. "finally the repentant sinner, the mystic. "he is a mass of contradictions and excesses. viewing his life as a whole one finds each of his vices compensated by a contradictory virtue, but there is no key characteristic which reconciles them. "he is of an overweening arrogance, but when contrition takes possession of him, he falls on his knees in front of the people of low estate, and has the tears, the humility of a saint. "his ferocity passes the limits of the human scale, and yet he is generous and sincerely devoted to his friends, whom he cares for like a brother when the demon has mauled them. "impetuous in his desires, and nevertheless patient; brave in battle, a coward confronting eternity; he is despotic and violent, yet he is putty in the hands of his flatterers. he is now in the clouds, now in the abyss, never on the trodden plain, the lowlands of the soul. his confessions do not throw any light on his invariable tendency to extremes. when asked who suggested to him the idea of such crimes, he answers, 'no one. the thought came to me only from myself, from my reveries, my daily pleasures, my taste for debauchery.' and he arraigns his indolence and constantly asserts that delicate repasts and strong drink have helped uncage the wild animal in him. "unresponsive to mediocre passions, he is carried away alternately by good as well as evil, and he bounds from spiritual pole to spiritual pole. he dies at the age of thirty-six, but he has completely exhausted the possibilities of joy and grief. he has adored death, loved as a vampire, kissed inimitable expressions of suffering and terror, and has, himself, been racked by implacable remorse, insatiable fear. he has nothing more to try, nothing more to learn, here below. "let's see," said durtal, running over his notes. "i left him at the moment when the expiation begins. as i had written in one of my preceding chapters, the inhabitants of the region dominated by the châteaux of the marshal know now who the inconceivable monster is who carries children off and cuts their throats. but no one dare speak. when, at a turn in the road, the tall figure of the butcher is seen approaching, all flee, huddle behind the hedges, or shut themselves up in the cottages. "and gilles passes, haughty and sombre, in the solitude of villages where no one dares venture abroad. impunity seems assured him, for what peasant would be mad enough to attack a master who could have him gibbeted at a word? "again, if the humble give up the idea of bringing gilles de rais to justice, his peers have no intention of combating him for the benefit of peasants whom they disdain, and his liege, the duke of brittany, jean v, burdens him with favours and blandishments in order to extort his lands from him at a low price. "a single power can rise and, above feudal complicities, above earthly interest, avenge the oppressed and the weak. the church. and it is the church in fact, in the person of jean de malestroit, which rises up before the monster and fells him. "jean de malestroit, bishop of nantes, belongs to an illustrious line. he is a near kinsman of jean v, and his incomparable piety, his infallible christian wisdom, and his enthusiastic charity, make him venerated, even by the duke. "the wailing of gilles's decimated flock reaches his ears. in silence he begins an investigation and, setting spies upon the marshal, waits only for an opportune moment to begin the combat. and gilles suddenly commits an inexplicable crime which permits the bishop to march forthwith upon him and smite him. "to recuperate his shattered fortune, gilles has sold his signorie of saint etienne de mer morte to a subject of jean v, guillaume le ferron, who delegates his brother, jean le ferron, to take possession of the domain. "some days later the marshal gathers the two hundred men of his military household and at their head marches on saint etienne. there, the day of pentecost, when the assembled people are hearing mass, he precipitates himself, sword in hand, into the church, sweeps aside the faithful, throwing them into tumult, and, before the dumbfounded priest, threatens to cleave jean le ferron, who is praying. the ceremony is broken off, the congregation take flight. gilles drags le ferron, pleading for mercy, to the château, orders that the drawbridge be let down, and by force occupies the place, while his prisoner is carried away to tiffauges and thrown into an underground dungeon. "gilles has, at one and the same time, violated the unwritten law of brittany forbidding any baron to raise troops without the consent of the duke, and committed double sacrilege in profaning a chapel and seizing jean le ferron, who is a tonsured clerk of the church. "the bishop learns of this outrage and prevails upon the reluctant jean v to march against the rebel. then, while one army advances on saint etienne, which gilles abandons to take refuge with his little band in the fortified manor of mâchecoul, another army lays siege to tiffauges. "during this time the priest hastens his redoubled investigations. he delegates commissioners and procurators in all the villages where children have disappeared. he himself quits his palace at nantes, travels about the countryside, and takes the depositions of the bereft. the people at last speak, and on their knees beseech the bishop to protect them. enraged by the atrocities which they reveal, he swears that justice shall be done. "it takes a month to hear all the reports. by letters-patent jean de malestroit establishes publicly the '_infamatio_' of gilles, then, when all the forms of canonic procedure have been gone through with, he launches the mandate of arrest. "in this writ of warrant, given at nantes the 13th day of september in the year of our lord 1440, the bishop notes all the crimes imputed to the marshal, then, in an energetic style, he commands his diocese to march against the assassin and dislodge him. 'thus we do enjoin you, each and all, individually, by these presents, that ye cite immediately and peremptorily, without counting any man upon his neighbor, without discharging the burden any man upon his neighbour, that ye cite before us or before the official of our cathedral church, for monday of the feast of exaltation of the holy cross, the 19th of september, gilles, noble baron de rais, subject to our puissance and to our jurisdiction; and we do ourselves cite him by these presents to appear before our bar to answer for the crimes which weigh upon him. execute these orders, and do each of you cause them to be executed.' "and the next day the captain-at-arms, jean labbé, acting in the name of the duke, and robin guillaumet, notary, acting in the name of the bishop, present themselves, escorted by a small troop, before the château of mâchecoul. "what sudden change of heart does the marshal now experience? too feeble to hold his own in the open field, he can nevertheless defend himself behind the sheltering ramparts--yet he surrenders. "roger de bricqueville and gilles de sillé, his trusted councillors, have taken flight. he remains alone with prelati, who also attempts, in vain, to escape. he, like gilles, is loaded with chains. robin guillaumet searches the fortress from top to bottom. he discovers bloody clothes, imperfectly calcinated ashes which prelati has not had time to throw into the latrines. amid universal maledictions and cries of horror gilles and his servitors are conducted to nîmes and incarcerated in the château de la tour neuve. "now this part is not very clear," said durtal to himself. "remembering what a daredevil the marshal had been, how can we reconcile ourselves to the idea that he could give himself up to certain death and torture without striking a blow? "'was he softened, weakened by his nights of debauchery, terrified by the audacity of his own sacrileges, ravaged and torn by remorse? was he tired of living as he did, and did he give himself up, as so many murderers do, because he was irresistibly attracted to punishment? nobody knows. did he think himself above the law because of his lofty rank? or did he hope to disarm the duke by playing upon his venality, offering him a ransom of manors and farm land? "one answer is as plausible as another. he may also have known how hesitant jean v had been, for fear of rousing the wrath of the nobility of his duchy, about yielding to the objurgations of the bishop and raising troops for the pursuit and arrest. "well, there is no document which answers these questions. an author can take some liberties here and set down his own conjectures. but that curious trial is going to give me some trouble. "as soon as gilles and his accomplices are incarcerated, two tribunals are organized, one ecclesiastical to judge the crimes coming under the jurisdiction of the church, the other civil to judge those on which the state must pass. "to tell the truth, the civil tribunal, which is present at the ecclesiastical hearings, effaces itself completely. as a matter of form it makes a brief cross-examination--but it pronounces the sentence of death, which the church cannot permit itself to utter, according to the old adage, '_ecclesia abhorret a sanguine_.' "the ecclesiastical trial lasts five weeks, the civil, forty-eight hours. it seems that, to hide behind the robes of the bishop, the duke of brittany has voluntarily subordinated the rôle of civil justice, which ordinarily stands up for its rights against the encroachments of the ecclesiastical court. "jean de malestroit presides over the hearings. he chooses for assistants the bishops of mans, of saint brieuc, and of saint lô, then in addition he surrounds himself with a troop of jurists who work in relays in the interminable sessions of the trial. some of the more important are guillaume de montigné, advocate of the secular court; jean blanchet, bachelor of laws; guillaume groyguet and robert de la rivière, licentiates _in utroque jure_, and hervé lévi, senescal of quimper. pierre de l'hospital, chancellor of brittany, who is to preside over the civil hearings after the canonic judgment, assists jean de malestroit. "the public prosecutor is guillaume chapeiron, curate of saint nicolas, an eloquent and subtile man. adjunct to him, to relieve him of the fatigue of the readings, are geoffroy pipraire, dean of sainte marie, and jacques de pentcoetdic, official of the church of nantes. "in connection with the episcopal jurisdiction, the church has called in the assistance of the extraordinary tribunal of the inquisition, for the repression of the crime of heresy, then comprehending perjury, blasphemy, sacrilege, all the crimes of magic. "it sits at the side of jean de malestroit in the redoubtable and learned person of jean blouyn of the order of saint dominic, delegated by the grand inquisitor of france, guillaume merici, to the functions of vice inquisitor of the city and diocese of nantes. "the tribunal constituted, the trial opens the first thing in the morning, because judges and witnesses, in accordance with the custom of the times, must proceed fasting to the giving and hearing of evidence. the testimony of the parents of the victims is heard, and robin guillaumet, acting sergeant-at-arms, the man who arrested the marshal at mâchecoul, reads the citation bidding gilles de rais appear. he is brought in and declares disdainfully that he does not recognize the competence of the tribunal, but, as canonic procedure demands, the prosecutor at once 'in order that by this means the correction of sorcery be not prevented,' petitions for and obtains from the tribunal a ruling that this objection be quashed as being null in law and 'frivolous.' he begins to read to the accused the counts on which he is to be tried. gilles cries out that the prosecutor is a liar and a traitor. then guillaume chapeiron extends his hand toward the crucifix, swears that he is telling the truth, and challenges the marshal to take the same oath. but this man, who has recoiled from no sacrilege, is troubled. he refuses to perjure himself before god, and the session ends with gilles still vociferating outrageous denunciations of the prosecutor. "the preliminaries completed, a few days later, the public hearings begin. the act of indictment is read aloud to the accused, in front of an audience who shudder when chapeiron indefatigably enumerates the crimes one by one, and formally accuses the marshal of having practised sorcery and magic, of having polluted and slain little children, of having violated the immunities of holy church at saint etienne de mer morte. "then after a silence he resumes his discourse, and making no account of the murders, but dwelling only on the crimes of which the punishment, foreseen by canonic law, can be fixed by the church, he demands that gilles be smitten with double excommunication, first as an evoker of demons, a heretic, apostate and renegade, second as a sodomist and perpetrator of sacrilege. "gilles, who has listened to this incisive and scathing indictment, completely loses control of himself. he insults the judges, calls them simonists and ribalds, and refuses to answer the questions put to him. the prosecutor and advocates are unmoved; they invite him to present his defence. "again he denounces them, insults them, but when called upon to refute them he remains silent. "the bishop and vice inquisitor declare him in contempt and pronounce against him the sentence of excommunication, which is soon made public. they decide in addition that the hearing shall be continued next day--" a ring of the doorbell interrupted durtal's perusal of his notes. des hermies entered. "i have just seen carhaix. he is ill," he said. "that so? what seems to be the matter?" "nothing very serious. a slight attack of bronchitis. he'll be up in a few days if he will consent to keep quiet." "i must go see him tomorrow," said durtal. "and what are you doing?" enquired des hermies. "working hard?" "why, yes. i am digging into the trial of the noble baron de rais. it will be as tedious to read as to write!" "and you don't know yet when you will finish your volume?" "no," answered durtal, stretching. "as a matter of fact i wish it might never be finished. what will become of me when it is? i'll have to look around for another subject, and, when i find one, do all the drudgery of planning and then getting the introductory chapter written--the mean part of any literary work is getting started. i shall pass mortal hours doing nothing. really, when i think it over, literature has only one excuse for existing; it saves the person who makes it from the disgustingness of life." "and, charitably, it lessens the distress of us few who still love art." "few indeed!" "and the number keeps diminishing. the new generation no longer interests itself in anything except gambling and jockeys." "yes, you're quite right. the men can't spare from gambling the time to read, so it is only the society women who buy books and pass judgment on them. it is to the lady, as schopenhauer called her, to the little goose, as i should characterize her, that we are indebted for these shoals of lukewarm and mucilaginous novels which nowadays get puffed." "you think, then, that we are in for a pretty literature. naturally you can't please women by enunciating vigorous ideas in a crisp style." "but," durtal went on, after a silence, "it is perhaps best that the case should be as it is. the rare artists who remain have no business to be thinking about the public. the artist lives and works far from the drawing-room, far from the clamour of the little fellows who fix up the custom-made literature. the only legitimate source of vexation to an author is to see his work, when printed, exposed to the contaminating curiosity of the crowd." "that is," said des hermies, "a veritable prostitution. to advertise a thing for sale is to accept the degrading familiarities of the first comer." "but our impenitent pride--and also our need of the miserable sous--make it impossible for us to keep our manuscripts sheltered from the asses. art ought to be--like one's beloved--out of reach, out of the world. art and prayer are the only decent ejaculations of the soul. so when one of my books appears, i let go of it with horror. i get as far as possible from the environment in which it may be supposed to circulate. i care very little about a book of mine until years afterward, when it has disappeared from all the shop windows and is out of print. briefly, i am in no hurry to finish the history of gilles de rais, which, unfortunately, is getting finished in spite of me. i don't give a damn how it is received." "are you doing anything this evening?" "no. why?" "shall we dine together?" "certainly." and while durtal was putting on his shoes, des hermies remarked, "to me the striking thing about the so-called literary world of this epoch is its cheap hypocrisy. what a lot of laziness, for instance, that word dilettante has served to cover." "yes, it's a great old alibi. but it is confounding to see that the critic who today decrees himself the title of dilettante accepts it as a term of praise and does not even suspect that he is slapping himself. the whole thing can be resolved into syllogism: "the dilettante has no personal temperament, since he objects to nothing and likes everything. "whoever has no personal temperament has no talent." "then," rejoined des hermies, putting on his hat, "an author who boasts of being a dilettante, confesses by that very thing that he is no author?" "exactly." chapter xvii toward the end of the afternoon durtal quit work and went up to the towers of saint sulpice. he found carhaix in bed in a chamber connecting with the one in which they were in the habit of dining. these rooms were very similar, with their walls or unpapered stone, and with their vaulted ceilings, only, the bedroom was darker. the window opened its half-wheel not on the place saint sulpice but on the rear of the church, whose roof prevented any light from getting in. this cell was furnished with an iron bed, whose springs shrieked, with two cane chairs, and with a table that had a shabby covering of green baize. on the bare wall was a crucifix of no value, with a dry palm over it. that was all. carhaix was sitting up in bed reading, with books and papers piled all around him. his eyes were more watery and his face paler than usual. his beard, which had not been shaved for several days, grew in grey clumps on his hollow cheeks, but his poor features were radiant with an affectionate, affable smile. to durtal's questions he replied, "it is nothing. des hermies gives me permission to get up tomorrow. but what a frightful medicine!" and he showed durtal a potion of which he had to take a teaspoonful every hour. "what is it he's making you take?" but the bell-ringer did not know. doubtless to spare him the expense, des hermies himself always brought the bottle. "isn't it tiresome lying in bed?" "i should say! i am obliged to entrust my bells to an assistant who is no good. ah, if you heard him ring! it makes me shudder, it sets my teeth on edge." "now you mustn't work yourself up," said his wife. "in two days you will be able to ring your bells yourself." but he went on complaining. "you two don't understand. my bells are used to being well treated. they're like domestic animals, those instruments, and they obey only their master. now they won't harmonize, they jangle. i can hardly recognize their voices." "what are you reading?" asked durtal, wishing to change a subject which he judged to be dangerous. "books about bells! ah, monsieur durtal, i have some inscriptions here of truly rare beauty. listen," and he opened a worm-bored book, "listen to this motto printed in raised letters on the bronze robe of the great bell of schaffhausen, 'i call the living, i mourn the dead, i break the thunder.' and this other which figured on an old bell in the belfry of ghent, 'my name is roland. when i toll, there is a fire; when i peal, there is a tempest in flanders.'" "yes," durtal agreed, "there is a certain vigour about that one." "ah," said carhaix, seeming not to have heard the other's remark, "it's ridiculous. now the rich have their names and titles inscribed on the bells which they give to the churches, but they have so many qualities and titles that there is no room for a motto. truly, humility is a forgotten virtue in our day." "if that were the only forgotten virtue!" sighed durtal. "ah!" replied carhaix, not to be turned from his favourite subject, "and if this were the only abuse! but bells now rust from inactivity. the metal is no longer hammer-hardened and is not vibrant. formerly these magnificent auxiliaries of the ritual sang without cease. the canonical hours were sounded, matins and laudes before daybreak, prime at dawn, tierce at nine o'clock, sexte at noon, nones at three, and then vespers and compline. now we announce the curate's mass, ring three angeluses, morning, noon, and evening, occasionally a salute, and on certain days launch a few peals for prescribed ceremonies. and that's all. it's only in the convents where the bells do not sleep, for these, at least, the night offices are kept up." "you mustn't talk about that," said his wife, straightening the pillows at his back. "if you keep working yourself up, you will never get well." "quite right," he said, resigned, "but what would you have? i shall still be a man with a grievance, whom nothing can pacify," and he smiled at his wife who was bringing him a spoonful of the potion to swallow. the doorbell rang. mme. carhaix went to answer it and a hilarious and red-faced priest entered, crying in a great voice, "it's jacob's ladder, that stairway! i climbed and climbed and climbed, and i'm all out of breath," and he sank, puffing, into an armchair. "well, my friend," he said at last, coming into the bedroom, "i learned from the beadle that you were ill, and i came to see how you were getting on." durtal examined him. an irrepressible gaiety exuded from this sanguine, smooth-shaven face, blue from the razor. carhaix introduced them. they exchanged a look, of distrust on the priest's side, of coldness on durtal's. durtal felt embarrassed and in the way, while the honest pair were effusively and with excessive humility thanking the abbé for coming up to see them. it was evident that for this pair, who were not ignorant of the sacrileges and scandalous self-indulgences of the clergy, an ecclesiastic was a man elect, a man so superior that as soon as he arrived nobody else counted. durtal took his leave, and as he went downstairs he thought, "that jubilant priest sickens me. indeed, a gay priest, physician, or man of letters must have an infamous soul, because they are the ones who see clearly into human misery and console it, or heal it, or depict it. if after that they can act the clown--they are unspeakable! though i'll admit that thoughtless persons deplore the sadness of the novel of observation and its resemblance to the life it represents. these people would have it jovial, smart, highly coloured, aiding them, in their base selfishness, to forget the hag-ridden existences of their brothers. "truly, carhaix and his wife are peculiar. they bow under the paternal despotism of the priests--and there are moments when that same despotism must be no joke--and revere them and adore them. but then these two are simple believers, with humble, unsmirched souls. i don't know the priest who was there, but he is rotund and rubicund, he shakes in his fat and seems bursting with joy. despite the example of saint francis of assisi, who was gay--spoiling him for me--i have difficulty in persuading myself that this abbé is an elevated being. it's all right to say that the best thing for him is to be mediocre; to ask how, if he were otherwise, he would make his flock understand him; and add that if he really had superior gifts he would be hated by his colleagues and persecuted by his bishop." while conversing thus disjointedly with himself durtal had reached the base of the tower. he stopped under the porch. "i intended to stay longer up there," thought he. "it's only half-past five. i must kill at least half an hour before dinner." the weather was almost mild. the clouds had been swept away. he lighted a cigarette and strolled about the square, musing. looking up he hunted for the bell-ringer's window and recognized it. of the windows which opened over the portico it alone had a curtain. "what an abominable construction," he thought, contemplating the church. "think. that cube flanked by two towers presumes to invite comparison with the façade of notre dame. what a jumble," he continued, examining the details. "from the foundation to the first story are ionic columns with volutes, then from the base of the tower to the summit are corinthian columns with acanthus leaves. what significance can this salmagundi of pagan orders have on a christian church? and as a rebuke to the over-ornamented bell tower there stands the other tower unfinished, looking like an abandoned grain elevator, but the less hideous of the two, at that. "and it took five or six architects to erect this indigent heap of stones. yet servandoni and oppenord and their ilk were the real major prophets, the ... zekiels of building. their work is the work of seers looking beyond the eighteenth century to the day of transportation by steam. for saint sulpice is not a church, it's a railway station! "and the interior of the edifice is not more religious nor artistic than the exterior. the only thing in it that pleases me is good carhaix's aërial cave." then he looked about him. "this square is very ugly, but how provincial and homelike it is! surely nothing could equal the hideousness of that seminary, which exhales the rancid, frozen odour of a hospital. the fountain with its polygonal basins, its saucepan urns, its lion-headed spouts, its niches with prelates in them, is no masterpiece. neither is the city hall, whose administrative style is a cinder in the eye. but on this square, as in the neighbouring streets, servandoni, garancière, and ferrou, one respires an atmosphere compounded of benign silence and mild humidity. you think of a clothes-press that hasn't been open for years, and, somehow, of incense. this square is in perfect harmony with the houses in the decayed streets around here, with the shops where religious paraphernalia are sold, the image and ciborium factories, the catholic bookstores with books whose covers are the colour of apple seeds, macadam, nutmeg, bluing. "yes, it's dilapidated and quiet." the square was then almost deserted. a few women were going up the church steps, met by mendicants who murmured paternosters as they rattled their tin cups. an ecclesiastic, carrying under his arm a book bound in black cloth, saluted white-eyed women. a few dogs were running about. children were chasing each other or jumping rope. the enormous chocolate-coloured la villette omnibus and the little honey-yellow bus of the auteuil line went past, almost empty. hackmen were standing beside their hacks on the sidewalk, or in a group around a comfort station, talking. there were no crowds, no noise, and the great trees gave the square the appearance of the silent mall of a little town. "well," said durtal, considering the church again, "i really must go up to the top of the tower some clear day." then he shook his head. "what for? a bird's-eye view of paris would have been interesting in the middle ages, but now! i should see, as from a hill top, other heights, a network of grey streets, the whiter arteries of the boulevards, the green plaques of gardens and squares, and, away in the distance, files of houses like lines of dominoes stood up on end, the black dots being windows. "and then the edifices emerging from this jumble of roofs, notre dame, la sainte chapelle, saint severin, saint etienne du mont, the tour saint jacques, are put out of countenance by the deplorable mass of newer edifices. and i am not at all eager to contemplate that specimen of the art of the maker of toilet articles which l'opéra is, nor that bridge arch, l'arc de la triomphe, nor that hollow chandelier, the tour eiffel! it's enough to see them separately, from the ground, as you turn a street corner. well, i must go and dine, for i have an engagement with hyacinthe and i must be back before eight." he went to a neighbouring wine shop where the dining-room, depopulated at six o'clock, permitted one to ruminate in tranquillity, while eating fairly sanitary food and drinking not too dangerously coloured wines. he was thinking of mme. chantelouve, but more of docre. the mystery of this priest haunted him. what could be going on in the soul of a man who had had the figure of christ tattooed on his heels the better to trample him? what hate the act revealed! did docre hate god for not having given him the blessed ecstasies of a saint, or more humanly for not having raised him to the highest ecclesiastical dignities? evidently the spite of this priest was inordinate and his pride unlimited. he seemed not displeased to be an object of terror and loathing, for thus he was somebody. then, for a thorough-paced scoundrel, as this man seemed to be, what delight to make his enemies languish in slow torment by casting spells on them with perfect impunity. "and sacrilege carries one out of oneself in furious transports, in voluptuous delirium, which nothing can equal. since the middle ages it has been the coward's crime, for human justice does not prosecute it, and one can commit it with impunity, but it is the most extreme of excesses for a believer, and docre believes in christ, or he wouldn't hate him so. "a monster! and what ignoble relations he must have had with chantelouve's wife! now, how shall i make her speak up? she gave me quite clearly to understand, the other day, that she refused to explain herself on this topic. meanwhile, as i have not intention of submitting to her young girl follies tonight, i will tell her that i am not feeling well, and that absolute rest and quiet are necessary." he did so, an hour later when she came in. she proposed a cup of tea, and when he refused, she embraced him and nursed him like a baby. then withdrawing a little, "you work too hard. you need some relaxation. come now, to pass the time you might court me a little, because up to now i have done it all. no? that idea does not amuse him. let us try something else. shall we play hide-and-seek with the cat? he shrugs his shoulders. well, since there is nothing to change your grouchy expression, let us talk. what has become of your friend des hermies?" "nothing in particular." "and his experiments with mattei medicine?" "i don't know whether he continues to prosecute them or not." "well, i see that the conversational possibilities of that topic are exhausted. you know your replies are not very encouraging, dear." "but," he said, "everybody sometimes gets so he doesn't answer questions at great length. i even know a young woman who becomes excessively laconic when interrogated on a certain subject." "of a canon, for instance." "precisely." she crossed her legs, very coolly. "that young woman undoubtedly had reasons for keeping still. but perhaps that young woman is really eager to oblige the person who cross-examines her; perhaps, since she last saw him, she has gone to a great deal of trouble to satisfy his curiosity." "look here, hyacinthe darling, explain yourself," he said, squeezing her hands, an expression of joy on his face. "if i have made your mouth water so as not to have a grouchy face in front of my eyes, i have succeeded remarkably." he kept still, wondering whether she was making fun of him or whether she really was ready to tell him what he wanted to know. "listen," she said. "i hold firmly by my decision of the other night. i will not permit you to become acquainted with canon docre. but at a settled time i can arrange, without your forming any relations with him, to have you be present at the ceremony you most desire to know about." "the black mass?" "yes. within a week docre will have left paris. if once, in my company, you see him, you will never see him afterward. keep your evenings free all this week. when the time comes i will notify you. but you may thank me, dear, because to be useful to you i am disobeying the commands of my confessor, whom i dare not see now, so i am damning myself." he kissed her, then, "seriously, that man is really a monster?" "i fear so. in any case i would not wish anybody the misfortune of having him for an enemy." "i should say not, if he poisons people by magic, as he seems to have done gévingey." "and he probably has. i should not like to be in the astrologer's shoes." "you believe in docre's potency, then. tell me, how does he operate, with the blood of mice, with broths, or with oil?" "so you know about that! he does employ these substances. in fact, he is one of the very few persons who know how to manage them without poisoning themselves. it's as dangerous as working with explosives. frequently, though, when attacking defenceless persons, he uses simpler recipes. he distils extracts of poison and adds sulphuric acid to fester the wound, then he dips in this compound the point of a lancet with which he has his victim pricked by a flying spirit or a larva. it is ordinary, well-known magic, that of rosicrucians and tyros." durtal burst out laughing. "but, my dear, to hear you, one would think death could be sent to a distance like a letter." "well, isn't cholera transmitted by letters? ask the sanitary corps. don't they disinfect all mail in the time of epidemics?" "i don't contradict that, but the case is not the same." "it is too, because it is the question of transmission, invisibility, distance, which astonishes you." "what astonishes me more than that is to hear of the rosicrucians actively satanizing. i confess that i had never considered them as anything more than harmless suckers and funereal fakes." "but all societies are composed of suckers and the wily leaders who exploit them. that's the case of the rosicrucians. yes, their leaders privately attempt crime. one does not need to be erudite or intelligent to practise the ritual of spells. at any rate, and i affirm this, there is among them a former man of letters whom i know. he lives with a married woman, and they pass the time, he and she, trying to kill the husband by sorcery." "well, it has its advantages over divorce, that system has." she pouted. "i shan't say another word. i think you are making fun of me. you don't believe in anything--" "indeed. i was not laughing at you. i haven't very precise ideas on this subject. i admit that at first blush all this seems improbable, to say the least. but when i think that all the efforts of modern science do but confirm the discoveries of the magic of other days, i keep my mouth shut. it is true," he went on after a silence,--"to cite only one fact--that people can no longer laugh at the stories of women being changed into cats in the middle ages. recently there was brought to m. charcot a little girl who suddenly got down on her hands and knees and ran and jumped around, scratching and spitting and arching her back. so that metamorphosis is possible. no, one cannot too often repeat it, the truth is that we know nothing and have no right to deny anything. but to return to your rosicrucians. using purely chemical formulæ, they get along without sacrilege?" "that is as much as to say that their venefices--supposing they know how to prepare them well enough to accomplish their purpose, though i doubt that--are easy to defeat. yet i don't mean to say that this group, one member of which is an ordained priest, does not make use of contaminated eucharists at need." "another nice priest! but since you are so well informed, do you know how spells are conjured away?" "yes and no. i know that when the poisons are sealed by sacrilege, when the operation is performed by a master, docre or one of the princes of magic at rome, it is not at all easy--nor healthy--to attempt to apply an antidote. though i have heard of a certain abbé at lyons who, practically alone, is succeeding right now in these difficult cures." "dr. johannès!" "you know him!" "no. but gévingey, who has gone to seek his medical aid, has told me of him." "well, i don't know how he goes about it, but i know that spells which are not complicated with sacrilege are usually evaded by the law of return. the blow is sent back to him who struck it. there are, at the present time, two churches, one in belgium, the other in france, where, when one prays before a statue of the virgin, the spell which has been cast on one flies off and goes and strikes one's adversary." "rats!" "one of these churches is at tougres, eighteen kilometres from liége, and the name of it is notre dame de retour. the other is the church of l'epine, 'the thorn,' a little village near châlons. this church was built long ago to conjure away the spells produced with the aid of the thorns which grew in that country and served to pierce images cut in the shape of hearts." "near châlons," said durtal, digging in his memory, "it does seem to me now that des hermies, speaking of bewitchment by the blood of white mice, pointed out that village as the habitation of certain diabolic circles." "yes, that country in all times has been a hotbed of satanism." "you are mighty well up on these matters. is it docre who transmitted this knowledge to you?" "yes, i owe him the little i am able to pass on to you. he took a fancy to me and even wanted to make me his pupil. i refused, and am glad now i did, for i am much more wary than i was then of being constantly in a state of mortal sin." "have you ever attended the black mass?" "yes. and i warn you in advance that you will regret having seen such terrible things. it is a memory that persists and horrifies, even--especially--when one does not personally take part in the offices." he looked at her. she was pale, and her filmed eyes blinked rapidly. "it's your own wish," she continued. "you will have no complaint if the spectacle terrifies you or wrings your heart." he was almost dumbfounded to see how sad she was and with what difficulty she spoke. "really. this docre, where did he come from, what did he do formerly, how did he happen to become a master satanist?" "i don't know very much about him. i know he was a supply priest in paris, then confessor of a queen in exile. there were terrible stories about him, which, thanks to his influential patronage, were hushed up under the empire. he was interned at la trappe, then driven out of the priesthood, excommunicated by rome. i learned in addition that he had several times been accused of poisoning, but had always been acquitted because the tribunals had never been able to get any evidence. today he lives i don't know how, but at ease, and he travels a good deal with a woman who serves as voyant. to all the world he is a scoundrel, but he is learned and perverse, and then he is so charming." "oh," he said, "how changed your eyes and voice are! admit that you are in love with him." "no, not now. but why should i not tell you that we were mad about each other at one time?" "and now?" "it is over. i swear it is. we have remained friends and nothing more." "but then you often went to see him. what kind of a place did he have? at least it was curious and heterodoxically arranged?" "no, it was quite ordinary, but very comfortable and clean. he had a chemical laboratory and an immense library. the only curious book he showed me was an office of the black mass on parchment. there were admirable illuminations, and the binding was made of the tanned skin of a child who had died unbaptized. stamped into the cover, in the shape of a fleuron, was a great host consecrated in a black mass." "what did the manuscript say?" "i did not read it." they were silent. then she took his hands. "now you are yourself again. i knew i should cure you of your bad humour. admit that i am awfully good-natured not to have got angry at you." "got angry? what about?" "because it is not very flattering to a woman to be able to entertain a man only by telling him about another one." "oh, no, it isn't that way at all," he said, kissing her eyes tenderly. "let me go now," she said, very low, "this enervates me, and i must get home. it's late." she sighed and fled, leaving him amazed and wondering in what weird activities the life of that woman had been passed. chapter xviii the day after that on which he had spewed such furious vituperation over the tribunal, gilles de rais appeared again before his judges. he presented himself with bowed head and clasped hands. he had once more jumped from one extreme to the other. a few hours had sufficed to break the spirit of the energumen, who now declared that he recognized the authority of the magistrates and begged forgiveness for having insulted them. they affirmed that for the love of our lord they forgot his imprecations, and, at his prayer, the bishop and the inquisitor revoked the sentence of excommunication which they had passed on him the day before. this hearing was, in addition, taken up with the arraignment of prelati and his accomplices. then, authorized by the ecclesiastical text which says that a confession cannot be regarded as sufficient if it is "dubia, vaga, generalis illativa, jocosa," the prosecutor asserted that to certify the sincerity of his confessions gilles must be subjected to the "canonic question," that is, to torture. the marshal besought the bishop to wait until the next day, and claiming the right of confessing immediately to such judges as the tribunal were pleased to designate, he swore that he would thereafter repeat his confession before the public and the court. jean de malestroit granted this request, and the bishop of saint brieuc and pierre de l'hospital were appointed to hear gilles in his cell. when he had finished the recital of his debauches and murders they ordered prelati to be brought to them. at sight of him gilles burst into tears and when, after the interrogatory, preparations were made to conduct the italian back to his dungeon, gilles embraced him, saying, "farewell, francis my friend, we shall never see each other again in this world. i pray god to give you good patience and i hope in him that we may meet again in great joy in paradise. pray god for me and i shall pray for you." and gilles was left alone to meditate on his crimes which he was to confess publicly at the hearing next day. that day was the impressive day of the trial. the room in which the tribunal sat was crammed, and there were multitudes sitting on the stairs, standing in the corridors, filling the neighbouring courts, blocking the streets and lanes. from twenty miles around the peasants were come to see the memorable beast whose very name, before his capture, had served to close the doors those evenings when in universal trembling the women dared not weep aloud. this meeting of the tribunal was to be conducted with the most minute observance of all the forms. all the assize judges, who in a long hearing generally had their places filled by proxies, were present. the courtroom, massive, obscure, upheld by heavy roman pillars, had been rejuvenated. the wall, ogival, threw to cathedral height the arches of its vaulted ceiling, which were joined together, like the sides of an abbatial mitre, in a point. the room was lighted by sickly daylight which was filtered through small panes between heavy leads. the azure of the ceiling was darkened to navy blue, and the golden stars, at that height, were as the heads of steel pins. in the shadows of the vaults appeared the ermine of the ducal arms, dimly seen in escutcheons which were like great dice with black dots. suddenly the trumpets blared, the room was lighted up, and the bishops entered. their mitres of cloth of gold flamed like the lightning. about their necks were brilliant collars with orphreys crusted, as were the robes, with carbuncles. in silent processional the bishops advanced, weighted down by their rigid copes, which fell in a flare from their shoulders and were like golden bells split in the back. in their hands they carried the crozier from which hung the maniple, a sort of green veil. at each step they glowed like coals blown upon. themselves were sufficient to light the room, as they reanimated with their jewels the pale sun of a rainy october day and scattered a new lustre to all parts of the room, over the mute audience. outshone by the shimmer of the orphreys and the stones, the costumes of the other judges appeared darker and discordant. the black vestments of secular justice, the white and black robe of jean blouyn, the silk symars, the red woollen mantles, the scarlet chaperons lined with fur, seemed faded and common. the bishops seated themselves in the front row, surrounding jean de malestroit, who from a raised seat dominated the court. under the escort of the men-at-arms gilles entered. he was broken and haggard and had aged twenty years in one night. his eyes burned behind seared lids. his cheeks shook. upon injunction he began the recital of his crimes. in a laboured voice, choked by tears, he recounted his abductions of children, his hideous tactics, his infernal stimulations, his impetuous murders, his implacable violations. obsessed by the vision of his victims, he described their agonies drawn out or hastened, their cries, the rattle in their throats. he confessed to having wallowed in the elastic warmth of their intestines. he confessed that he had ripped out their hearts through wounds enlarged and opening like ripe fruit. and with the eyes of a somnambulist he looked down at his fingers and shook them as if blood were dripping from them. the thunder-struck audience kept a mournful silence which was lacerated suddenly by a few short cries, and the attendants, at a run, carried out fainting women, mad with horror. he seemed to see nothing, to hear nothing. he continued to tell off the frightful rosary of his crimes. then his voice became raucous. he was coming to the sepulchral violations, and now to the torture of the little children whom he had cajoled in order to cut their throats as he kissed them. he divulged every detail. the account was so formidable, so atrocious, that beneath their golden caps the bishops blanched. these priests, tempered in the fires of confessional, these judges who in that time of demonomania and murder had never heard more terrifying confessions, these prelates whom no depravity had ever astonished, made the sign of the cross, and jean de malestroit rose and for very shame veiled the face of the christ. then all lowered their heads, and without a word they listened. the marshal, bathed in sweat, his face downcast, looked now at the crucifix whose invisible head and bristling crown of thorns gave their shapes to the veil. he finished his narrative and broke down completely. till now he had stood erect, speaking as if in a daze, recounting to himself, aloud, the memory of his ineradicable crimes. but at the end of the story his forces abandoned him. he fell on his knees and, shaken by terrific sobs, he cried, "o god, o my redeemer, i beseech mercy and pardon!" then the ferocious and haughty baron, the first of his caste no doubt, humiliated himself. he turned toward the people and said, weeping, "ye, the parents of those whom i have so cruelly put to death, give, ah give me, the succour of your pious prayers!" then in its white splendour the soul of the middle ages burst forth radiant. jean de malestroit left his seat and raised the accused, who was beating the flagstones with his despairing forehead. the judge in de malestroit disappeared, the priest alone remained. he embraced the sinner who was repenting and lamenting his fault. a shudder overran the audience when jean de malestroit, with gilles's head on his breast, said to him, "pray that the just and rightful wrath of the most high be averted, weep that your tears may wash out the blood lust from your being!" and with one accord everybody in the room knelt down and prayed for the assassin. when the orisons were hushed there was an instant of wild terror and commotion. driven beyond human limits of horror and pity, the crowd tossed and surged. the judges of the tribunal, silent, enervated, reconquered themselves. with a gesture, brushing away his tears, the prosecutor arrested the proceedings. he said that the crimes were "clear and apparent," that the proofs were manifest, that the court would now "in its conscience and soul" chastise the culprit, and he demanded that the day of passing judgment be fixed. the tribunal designated the day after the next. and that day the official of the church of nantes, jacques de pentcoetdic, read in succession the two sentences. the first, passed by the bishop and the inquisitor for the acts coming under their common jurisdiction, began thus: "the holy name of christ invoked, we, jean, bishop of nantes, and brother jean blouyn, bachelor in our holy scriptures, of the order of the preaching friars of nantes, and delegate of the inquisitor of heresies for the city and diocese of nantes, in session of the tribunal and having before our eyes god alone--" and after enumerating the crimes it concluded: "we pronounce, decide, and declare, that thou, gilles de rais, cited unto our tribunal, art heinously guilty of heresy, apostasy, and evocation of demons; that for these crimes thou hast incurred the sentence of excommunication and all other penalties determined by the law." the second judgment, rendered by the bishop alone, on the crimes of sodomy, sacrilege, and violation of the immunities of the church, which more particularly concerned his authority, ended in the same conclusions and in the pronunciation, in almost identical form, of the same penalty. gilles listened with bowed head to the reading of these judgments. when it was over the bishop and the inquisitor said to him, "will you, now that you detest your errors, your evocations, and your crimes, be reincorporated into the church our mother?" and upon the ardent prayers of the marshal they relieved him of all excommunication and admitted him to participate in the sacraments. the justice of god was satisfied, the crime was recognized, punished, but effaced by contrition and penitence. only human justice remained. the bishop and the inquisitor remanded the culprit to the secular court, which, holding against him the abductions and the murders, pronounced the penalty of death and attainder. prelati and the other accomplices were at the same time condemned to be hanged and burned alive. "cry to god mercy," said pierre de l'hospital, who presided over the civil hearings, "and dispose yourself to die in good state with a great repentance for having committed such crimes." the recommendation was unnecessary. gilles now faced death without fear. he hoped, humbly, avidly, in the mercy of the saviour. he cried out fervently for the terrestrial expiation, the stake, to redeem him from the eternal flames after his death. far from his châteaux, in his dungeon, alone, he had opened himself and viewed the cloaca which had so long been fed by the residual waters escaped from the abattoirs of tiffauges and mâchecoul. he had sobbed in despair of ever draining this stagnant pool. and thunder-smitten by grace, in a cry of horror and joy, he had suddenly seen his soul overflow and sweep away the dank fen before a torrential current of prayer and ecstasy. the butcher of sodom had destroyed himself, the companion of jeanne d'arc had reappeared, the mystic whose soul poured out to god, in bursts of adoration, in floods of tears. then he thought of his friends and wished that they also might die in a state of grace. he asked the bishop of nantes that they might be executed not before nor after him, but at the same time. he carried his point that he was the most guilty and that he must instruct them in saving their souls and assist them at the moment when they should mount the scaffold. jean de malestroit granted the supplication. "what is curious," said durtal, interrupting his writing to light a cigarette, "is that--" a gentle ring. mme. chantelouve entered. she declared that she could stay only two minutes. she had a carriage waiting below. "tonight," she said, "i will call for you at nine. first write me a letter in practically these terms," and she handed him a paper. he unfolded it and read this declaration: "i certify that all that i have said and written about the black mass, about the priest who celebrated it, about the place where i claimed to have witnessed it, about the persons alleged to have been there, is pure invention. i affirm that i imagined all these incidents, that, in consequence, all that i have narrated is false." "docre's?" he asked, studying the handwriting, minute, pointed, twisted, aggressive. "yes, and he wants this declaration, not dated, to be made in the form of a letter from you to a person consulting you on the subject." "your canon distrusts me." "of course. you write books." "it doesn't please me infinitely to sign that," murmured durtal. "what if i refuse?" "you will not go to the black mass." his curiosity overcame his reluctance. he wrote and signed the letter and mme. chantelouve put it in her card-case. "and in what street is the ceremony to take place?" "in the rue olivier de serres." "where is that?" "near the rue de vaugirard, away up." "is that where docre lives?" "no, we are going to a private house which belongs to a lady he knows. now, if you'll be so good, put off your cross-examination to some other time, because i am in an awful hurry. at nine o'clock. don't forget. be all ready." he had hardly time to kiss her and she was gone. "well," said he, "i already had data on incubacy and poisoning by spells. there remained only the black mass, to make me thoroughly acquainted with satanism as it is practised in our day. and i am to see it! i'll be damned if i thought there were such undercurrents in paris. and how circumstances hang together and lead to each other! i had to occupy myself with gilles de rais and the diabolism of the middle ages to get contemporary diabolism revealed to me." and he thought of docre again. "what a sharper that priest is! among the occultists who maunder today in the universal decomposition of ideas he is the only one who interests me. "the others, the mages, the theosophists, the cabalists, the spiritists, the hermetics, the rosicrucians, remind me, when they are not mere thieves, of children playing and scuffling in a cellar. and if one descend lower yet, into the hole-in-the-wall places of the pythonesses, clairvoyants, and mediums, what does one find except agencies of prostitution and gambling? all these pretended peddlers of the future are extremely nasty; that's the only thing in the occult of which one can be sure." des hermies interrupted the course of these reflections by ringing and walking in. he came to announce that gévingey had returned and that they were all to dine at carhaix's the night after next. "is carhaix's bronchitis cured?" "yes, completely." preoccupied with the idea of the black mass, durtal could not keep silent. he let out the fact that he was to witness the ceremony--and, confronted by des hermies's stare of stupefaction, he added that he had promised secrecy and that he could not, for the present, tell him more. "you're the lucky one!" said des hermies. "is it too much to ask you the name of the abbé who is to officiate?" "not at all. canon docre." "ah!" and the other was silent. he was evidently trying to divine by what manipulations his friend had been able to get in touch with the renegade. "some time ago you told me," durtal said, "that in the middle ages the black mass was said on the naked buttocks of a woman, that in the seventeenth century it was celebrated on the abdomen, and now?" "i believe that it takes place before an altar as in church. indeed it was sometimes celebrated thus at the end of the fifteenth century in biscay. it is true that the devil then officiated in person. clothed in rent and soiled episcopal habits, he gave communion with round pieces of shoe leather for hosts, saying, 'this is my body.' and he gave these disgusting wafers to the faithful to eat after they had kissed his left hand and his breech. i hope that you will not be obliged to render such base homage to your canon." durtal laughed. "no, i don't think he requires a pretend like that. but look here, aren't you of the decided opinion that the creatures who so piously, infamously, follow these offices are a bit mad?" "mad? why? the cult of the demon is no more insane than that of god. one is rotten and the other resplendent, that is all. by your reckoning all people who worship any god whatever would be demented. no. the affiliates of satanism are mystics of a vile order, but they are mystics. now, it is highly probable that their exaltations into the extra-terrestrial of evil coincide with the rages of their frenzied senses, for lechery is the wet nurse of demonism. medicine classes, rightly or wrongly, the hunger for ordure in the unknown categories of neurosis, and well it may, for nobody knows anything about neuroses except that everybody has them. it is quite certain that in this, more than in any previous century, the nerves quiver at the least shock. for instance, recall the newspaper accounts of executions of criminals. we learn that the executioner goes about his work timidly, that he is on the point of fainting, that he has nervous prostration when he decapitates a man. then compare this nervous wreck with the invincible torturers of the olden time. they would thrust your arm into a sleeve of moistened parchment which when set on fire would draw up and in a leisurely fashion reduce your flesh to dust. or they would drive wedges into your thighs and split the bones. they would crush your thumbs in the thumbscrew. or they would singe all the hair off your epidermis with a poker, or roll up the skin from your abdomen and leave you with a kind of apron. they would drag you at the cart's tail, give you the strappado, roast you, drench you with ignited alcohol, and through it all preserve an impassive countenance and tranquil nerves not to be shaken by any cry or plaint. only, as these exercises were somewhat fatiguing, the torturers, after the operation, were ravenously hungry and required a deal of drink. they were sanguinaries of a mental stability not to be shaken, while now! but to return to your companions in sacrilege. this evening, if they are not maniacs, you will find them--doubt it not--repulsive lechers. observe them closely. i am sure that to them the invocation of beelzebub is a prelibation of carnality. don't be afraid, because, lord! in this group there won't be any to make you imitate the martyr of whom jacques de voragine speaks in his history of saint paul the eremite. you know that legend?" "no." "well, to refresh your soul i will tell you. this martyr, who was very young, was stretched out, his hands and feet bound, on a bed, then a superb specimen of femininity was brought in, who tried to force him. as he was burning and was about to sin, he bit off his tongue and spat it in the face of the woman, "and thus pain drove out temptation," says the good de voragine." "my heroism would not carry me so far as that, i confess. but must you go so soon?" "yes, i have a pressing engagement." "what a queer age," said durtal, conducting him to the door. "it is just at the moment when positivism is at its zenith that mysticism rises again and the follies of the occult begin." "oh, but it's always been that way. the tail ends of all centuries are alike. they're always periods of vacillation and uncertainty. when materialism is rotten-ripe magic takes root. this phenomenon reappears every hundred years. not to go further back, look at the decline of the last century. alongside of the rationalists and atheists you find saint-germain, cagliostro, saint-martin, gabalis, cazotte, the rosicrucian societies, the infernal circles, as now. with that, good-bye and good luck." "yes," said durtal, closing the door, "but cagliostro and his ilk had a certain audacity, and perhaps a little knowledge, while the mages of our time--what inept fakes!" chapter xix in a fiacre they went up the rue de vaugirard. mme. chantelouve was as in a shell and spoke not a word. durtal looked closely at her when, as they passed a street lamp, a shaft of light played over her veil a moment, then winked out. she seemed agitated and nervous beneath her reserve. he took her hand. she did not withdraw it. he could feel the chill of it through her glove, and her blonde hair tonight seemed disordered, dry, and not so fine as usual. "nearly there?" but in a low voice full of anguish she said, "do not speak." bored by this taciturn, almost hostile tête-à-tête, he began to examine the route through the windows of the cab. the street stretched out interminable, already deserted, so badly paved that at every step the cab springs creaked. the lamp-posts were beginning to be further and further apart. the cab was approaching the ramparts. "singular itinerary," he murmured, troubled by the woman's cold, inscrutable reserve. abruptly the vehicle turned up a dark street, swung around, and stopped. hyacinthe got out. waiting for the cabman to give him his change, durtal inspected the lay of the land. they were in a sort of blind alley. low houses, in which there was not a sign of life, bordered a lane that had no sidewalk. the pavement was like billows. turning around, when the cab drove away, he found himself confronted by a long high wall above which dry leaves rustled in the shadows. a little door with a square grating in it was cut into the thick unlighted wall, which was seamed with fissures. suddenly, further away, a ray of light shot out of a show window, and, doubtless attracted by the sound of the cab wheels, a man wearing the black apron of a wineshop keeper lounged through the shop door and spat on the threshold. "this is the place," said mme. chantelouve. she rang. the grating opened. she raised her veil. a shaft of lantern light struck her full in the face, the door opened noiselessly, and they penetrated into a garden. "good evening, madame." "good evening, marie. in the chapel?" "yes. does madame wish me to guide her?" "no, thanks." the woman with the lantern scrutinized durtal. he perceived, beneath a hood, wisps of grey hair falling in disorder over a wrinkled old face, but she did not give him time to examine her and returned to a tent beside the wall serving her as a lodge. he followed hyacinthe, who traversed the dark lanes, between rows of palms, to the entrance of a building. she opened the doors as if she were quite at home, and her heels clicked resolutely on the flagstones. "be careful," she said, going through a vestibule. "there are three steps." they came out into a court and stopped before an old house. she rang. a little man advanced, hiding his features, and greeted her in an affected, sing-song voice. she passed, saluting him, and durtal brushed a fly-blown face, the eyes liquid, gummy, the cheeks plastered with cosmetics, the lips painted. "i have stumbled into a lair of sodomists.--you didn't tell me that i was to be thrown into such company," he said to hyacinthe, overtaking her at the turning of a corridor lighted by a lamp. "did you expect to meet saints here?" she shrugged her shoulders and opened a door. they were in a chapel with a low ceiling crossed by beams gaudily painted with coal-tar pigment. the windows were hidden by great curtains. the walls were cracked and dingy. durtal recoiled after a few steps. gusts of humid, mouldy air and of that indescribable new-stove acridity poured out of the registers to mingle with an irritating odour of alkali, resin, and burnt herbs. he was choking, his temples throbbing. he advanced groping, attempting to accustom his eyes to the half-darkness. the chapel was vaguely lighted by sanctuary lamps suspended from chandeliers of gilded bronze with pink glass pendants. hyacinthe made him a sign to sit down, then she went over to a group of people sitting on divans in a dark corner. rather vexed at being left here, away from the centre of activity, durtal noticed that there were many women and few men present, but his efforts to discover their features were unavailing. as here and there a lamp swayed, he occasionally caught sight of a junonian brunette, then of a smooth-shaven, melancholy man. he observed that the women were not chattering to each other. their conversation seemed awed and grave. not a laugh, not a raised voice, was heard, but an irresolute, furtive whispering, unaccompanied by gesture. "hmm," he said to himself. "it doesn't look as if satan made his faithful happy." a choir boy, clad in red, advanced to the end of the chapel and lighted a stand of candles. then the altar became visible. it was an ordinary church altar on a tabernacle above which stood an infamous, derisive christ. the head had been raised and the neck lengthened, and wrinkles, painted in the cheeks, transformed the grieving face to a bestial one twisted into a mean laugh. he was naked, and where the loincloth should have been, there was a virile member projecting from a bush of horsehair. in front of the tabernacle the chalice, covered with a pall, was placed. the choir boy folded the altar cloth, wiggled his haunches, stood tiptoe on one foot and flipped his arms as if to fly away like a cherub, on pretext of reaching up to light the black tapers whose odour of coal tar and pitch was now added to the pestilential smell of the stuffy room. durtal recognized beneath the red robe the "fairy" who had guarded the chapel entrance, and he understood the rôle reserved for this man, whose sacrilegious nastiness was substituted for the purity of childhood acceptable to the church. then another choir boy, more hideous yet, exhibited himself. hollow chested, racked by coughs, withered, made up with white grease paint and vivid carmine, he hobbled about humming. he approached the tripods flanking the altar, stirred the smouldering incense pots and threw in leaves and chunks of resin. durtal was beginning to feel uncomfortable when hyacinthe rejoined him. she excused herself for having left him by himself so long, invited him to change his place, and conducted him to a seat far in the rear, behind all the rows of chairs. "this is a real chapel, isn't it?" he asked. "yes. this house, this church, the garden that we crossed, are the remains of an old ursuline convent. for a long time this chapel was used to store hay. the house belonged to a livery-stable keeper, who sold it to that woman," and she pointed out a stout brunette of whom durtal before had caught a fleeting glimpse. "is she married?" "no. she is a former nun who was debauched long ago by docre." "ah. and those gentlemen who seem to be hiding in the darkest places?" "they are satanists. there is one of them who was a professor in the school of medicine. in his home he has an oratorium where he prays to a statue of venus astarte mounted on an altar." "no!" "i mean it. he is getting old, and his demoniac orisons increase tenfold his forces, which he is using up with creatures of that sort," and with a gesture she indicated the choir boys. "you guarantee the truth of this story?" "you will find it narrated at great length in a religious journal. _les annales de la sainteté_. and though his identity was made pretty patent in the article, the man did not dare prosecute the editors.--what's the matter with you?" she asked, looking at him closely. "i'm strangling. the odour from those incense burners is unbearable." "you will get used to it in a few seconds." "but what do they burn that smells like that?" "asphalt from the street, leaves of henbane, datura, dried nightshade, and myrrh. these are perfumes delightful to satan, our master." she spoke in that changed, guttural voice which had been hers at times when in bed with him. he looked her squarely in the face. she was pale, the lips pressed tight, the pluvious eyes blinking rapidly. "here he comes!" she murmured suddenly, while women in front of them scurried about or knelt in front of the chairs. preceded by the two choir boys the canon entered, wearing a scarlet bonnet from which two buffalo horns of red cloth protruded. durtal examined him as he marched toward the altar. he was tall, but not well built, his bulging chest being out of proportion to the rest of his body. his peeled forehead made one continuous line with his straight nose. the lips and cheeks bristled with that kind of hard, clumpy beard which old priests have who have always shaved themselves. the features were round and insinuating, the eyes, like apple pips, close together, phosphorescent. as a whole his face was evil and sly, but energetic, and the hard, fixed eyes were not the furtive, shifty orbs that durtal had imagined. the canon solemnly knelt before the altar, then mounted the steps and began to say mass. durtal saw then that he had nothing on beneath his sacrificial habit. his black socks and his flesh bulging over the garters, attached high up on his legs, were plainly visible. the chasuble had the shape of an ordinary chasuble but was of the dark red colour of dried blood, and in the middle, in a triangle around which was an embroidered border of colchicum, savin, sorrel, and spurge, was the figure of a black billy-goat presenting his horns. docre made the genuflexions, the full-or half-length inclinations specified by the ritual. the kneeling choir boys sang the latin responses in a crystalline voice which trilled on the ultimate syllables of the words. "but it's a simple low mass," said durtal to mme. chantelouve. she shook her head. indeed, at that moment the choir boys passed behind the altar and one of them brought back copper chafing-dishes, the other, censers, which they distributed to the congregation. all the women enveloped themselves in the smoke. some held their heads right over the chafing-dishes and inhaled deeply, then, fainting, unlaced themselves, heaving raucous sighs. the sacrifice ceased. the priest descended the steps backward, knelt on the last one, and in a sharp, tripidant voice cried: "master of slanders, dispenser of the benefits of crime, administrator of sumptuous sins and great vices, satan, thee we adore, reasonable god, just god! "superadmirable legate of false trances, thou receivest our beseeching tears; thou savest the honour of families by aborting wombs impregnated in the forgetfulness of the good orgasm; thou dost suggest to the mother the hastening of untimely birth, and thine obstetrics spares the still-born children the anguish of maturity, the contamination of original sin. "mainstay of the despairing poor, cordial of the vanquished, it is thou who endowest them with hypocrisy, ingratitude, and stiff-neckedness, that they may defend themselves against the children of god, the rich. "suzerain of resentment, accountant of humiliations, treasurer of old hatreds, thou alone dost fertilize the brain of man whom injustice has crushed; thou breathest into him the idea of meditated vengeance, sure misdeeds; thou incitest him to murder; thou givest him the abundant joy of accomplished reprisals and permittest him to taste the intoxicating draught of the tears of which he is the cause. "hope of virility, anguish of the empty womb, thou dost not demand the bootless offering of chaste loins, thou dost not sing the praises of lenten follies; thou alone receivest the carnal supplications and petitions of poor and avaricious families. thou determinest the mother to sell her daughter, to give her son; thou aidest sterile and reprobate loves; guardian of strident neuroses, leaden tower of hysteria, bloody vase of rape! "master, thy faithful servants, on their knees, implore thee and supplicate thee to satisfy them when they wish the torture of all those who love them and aid them; they supplicate thee to assure them the joy of delectable misdeeds unknown to justice, spells whose unknown origin baffles the reason of man; they ask, finally, glory, riches, power, of thee, king of the disinherited, son who art to overthrow the inexorable father!" then docre rose, and erect, with arms outstretched, vociferated in a ringing voice of hate: "and thou, thou whom, in my quality of priest, i force, whether thou wilt or no, to descend into this host, to incarnate thyself in this bread, jesus, artisan of hoaxes, bandit of homage, robber of affection, hear! since the day when thou didst issue from the complaisant bowels of a virgin, thou hast failed all thine engagements, belied all thy promises. centuries have wept, awaiting thee, fugitive god, mute god! thou wast to redeem man and thou hast not, thou wast to appear in thy glory, and thou sleepest. go, lie, say to the wretch who appeals to thee, 'hope, be patient, suffer; the hospital of souls will receive thee; the angels will assist thee; heaven opens to thee.' impostor! thou knowest well that the angels, disgusted at thine inertness, abandon thee! thou wast to be the interpreter of our plaints, the chamberlain of our tears; thou wast to convey them to the father and thou hast not done so, for this intercession would disturb thine eternal sleep of happy satiety. "thou hast forgotten the poverty thou didst preach, enamoured vassal of banks! thou hast seen the weak crushed beneath the press of profit; thou hast heard the death rattle of the timid, paralyzed by famine, of women disembowelled for a bit of bread, and thou hast caused the chancery of thy simoniacs, thy commercial representatives, thy popes, to answer by dilatory excuses and evasive promises, sacristy shyster, huckster god! "master, whose inconceivable ferocity engenders life and inflicts it on the innocent whom thou darest damn--in the name of what original sin?--whom thou darest punish--by the virtue of what covenants?--we would have thee confess thine impudent cheats, thine inexpiable crimes! we would drive deeper the nails into thy hands, press down the crown of thorns upon thy brow, bring blood and water from the dry wounds of thy sides. "and that we can and will do by violating the quietude of thy body, profaner of ample vices, abstractor of stupid purities, cursed nazarene, do-nothing king, coward god!" "amen!" trilled the soprano voices of the choir boys. durtal listened in amazement to this torrent of blasphemies and insults. the foulness of the priest stupefied him. a silence succeeded the litany. the chapel was foggy with the smoke of the censers. the women, hitherto taciturn, flustered now, as, remounting the altar, the canon turned toward them and blessed them with his left hand in a sweeping gesture. and suddenly the choir boys tinkled the prayer bells. it was a signal. the women fell to the carpet and writhed. one of them seemed to be worked by a spring. she threw herself prone and waved her legs in the air. another, suddenly struck by a hideous strabism, clucked, then becoming tongue-tied stood with her mouth open, the tongue turned back, the tip cleaving to the palate. another, inflated, livid, her pupils dilated, lolled her head back over her shoulders, then jerked it brusquely erect and belaboured herself, tearing her breast with her nails. another, sprawling on her back, undid her skirts, drew forth a rag, enormous, meteorized; then her face twisted into a horrible grimace, and her tongue, which she could not control, stuck out, bitten at the edges, harrowed by red teeth, from a bloody mouth. suddenly durtal rose, and now he heard and saw docre distinctly. docre contemplated the christ surmounting the tabernacle, and with arms spread wide apart he spewed forth frightful insults, and, at the end of his forces, muttered the billingsgate of a drunken cabman. one of the choir boys knelt before him with his back toward the altar. a shudder ran around the priest's spine. in a solemn but jerky voice he said, "_hoc est enim corpus meum_," then, instead of kneeling, after the consecration, before the precious body, he faced the congregation, and appeared tumefied, haggard, dripping with sweat. he staggered between the two choir boys, who, raising the chasuble, displayed his naked belly. docre made a few passes and the host sailed, tainted and soiled, over the steps. durtal felt himself shudder. a whirlwind of hysteria shook the room. while the choir boys sprinkled holy water on the pontiff's nakedness, women rushed upon the eucharist and, grovelling in front of the altar, clawed from the bread humid particles and drank and ate divine ordure. another woman, curled up over a crucifix, emitted a rending laugh, then cried to docre, "father, father!" a crone tore her hair, leapt, whirled around and around as on a pivot and fell over beside a young girl who, huddled to the wall, was writhing in convulsions, frothing at the mouth, weeping, and spitting out frightful blasphemies. and durtal, terrified, saw through the fog the red horns of docre, who, seated now, frothing with rage, was chewing up sacramental wafers, taking them out of his mouth, wiping himself with them, and distributing them to the women, who ground them underfoot, howling, or fell over each other struggling to get hold of them and violate them. the place was simply a madhouse, a monstrous pandemonium of prostitutes and maniacs. now, while the choir boys gave themselves to the men, and while the woman who owned the chapel, mounted the altar caught hold of the phallus of the christ with one hand and with the other held a chalice between "his" naked legs, a little girl, who hitherto had not budged, suddenly bent over forward and howled, howled like a dog. overcome with disgust, nearly asphyxiated, durtal wanted to flee. he looked for hyacinthe. she was no longer at his side. he finally caught sight of her close to the canon and, stepping over the writhing bodies on the floor, he went to her. with quivering nostrils she was inhaling the effluvia of the perfumes and of the couples. "the sabbatic odour!" she said to him between clenched teeth, in a strangled voice. "here, let's get out of this!" she seemed to wake, hesitated a moment, then without answering she followed him. he elbowed his way through the crowd, jostling women whose protruding teeth were ready to bite. he pushed mme. chantelouve to the door, crossed the court, traversed the vestibule, and, finding the portress' lodge empty, he drew the cord and found himself in the street. there he stopped and drew the fresh air deep into his lungs. hyacinthe, motionless, dizzy, huddled to the wall away from him. he looked at her. "confess that you would like to go in there again." "no," she said with an effort. "these scenes shatter me. i am in a daze. i must have a glass of water." and she went up the street, leaning on him, straight to the wine shop, which was open. it was an ignoble lair, a little room with tables and wooden benches, a zinc counter, cheap bar fixtures, and blue-stained wooden pitchers; in the ceiling a u-shaped gas bracket. two pick-and-shovel labourers were playing cards. they turned around and laughed. the proprietor took the excessively short-stemmed pipe from his mouth and spat into the sawdust. he seemed not at all surprised to see this fashionably gowned woman in his dive. durtal, who was watching him, thought he surprised an understanding look exchanged by the proprietor and the woman. the proprietor lighted a candle and mumbled into durtal's ear, "monsieur, you can't drink here with these people watching. i'll take you to a room where you can be alone." "hmmm," said durtal to hyacinthe, who was penetrating the mysteries of a spiral staircase, "a lot of fuss for a glass of water!" but she had already entered a musty room. the paper was peeling from the walls, which were nearly covered with pictures torn out of illustrated weeklies and tacked up with hairpins. the floor was all in pieces. there were a wooden bed without any curtains, a chamber pot with a piece broken out of the side, a wash bowl and two chairs. the man brought a decanter of gin, a large one of water, some sugar, and glasses, then went downstairs. her eyes were sombre, mad. she enlaced durtal. "no!" he shouted, furious at having fallen into this trap. "i've had enough of that. it's late. your husband is waiting for you. it's time for you to go back to him--" she did not even hear him. "i want you," she said, and she took him treacherously and obliged him to desire her. she disrobed, threw her skirts on the floor, opened wide the abominable couch, and raising her chemise in the back she rubbed her spine up and down over the coarse grain of the sheets. a look of swooning ecstasy was in her eyes and a smile of joy on her lips. she seized him, and, with ghoulish fury, dragged him into obscenities of whose existence he had never dreamed. suddenly, when he was able to escape, he shuddered, for he perceived that the bed was strewn with fragments of hosts. "oh, you fill me with horror! dress, and let's get out of here." while, with a faraway look in her eyes, she was silently putting on her clothes, he sat down on a chair. the fetidness of the room nauseated him. then, too--he was not absolutely convinced of transubstantiation--he did not believe very firmly that the saviour resided in that soiled bread--but--in spite of himself, the sacrilege he had involuntarily participated in saddened him. "suppose it were true," he said to himself, "that the presence were real, as hyacinthe and that miserable priest attest--no, decidedly, i have had enough. i am through. the occasion is timely for me to break with this creature whom from our very first interview i have only tolerated, and i'm going to seize the opportunity." below, in the dive, he had to face the knowing smiles of the labourers. he paid, and without waiting for his change, he fled. they reached the rue de vaugirard and he hailed a cab. as they were whirled along they sat lost in their thoughts, not looking at each other. "soon?" asked mme. chantelouve, in an almost timid tone when he left her at her door. "no," he answered. "we have nothing in common. you wish everything and i wish nothing. better break. we might drag out our relation, but it would finally terminate in recrimination and bitterness. oh, and then--after what happened this evening, no! understand me? no!" and he gave the cabman his address and huddled himself into the furthest corner of the fiacre. chapter xx "he doesn't lead a humdrum life, that canon!" said des hermies, when durtal had related to him the details of the black mass. "it's a veritable seraglio of hystero-epileptics and erotomaniacs that he has formed for himself. but his vices lack warmth. certainly, in the matter of contumelious blasphemies, of sacrilegious atrocities, and sensual excitation, this priest may seem to have exceeded the limits, to be almost unique. but the bloody and investuous side of the old sabbats is wanting. docre is, we must admit, greatly inferior to gilles de rais. his works are incomplete, insipid; weak, if i may say so." "i like that. you know it isn't easy to procure children whom one may disembowel with impunity. the parents would raise a row and the police would interfere." "yes, and it is to difficulties of this sort that we must evidently attribute the bloodless celebration of the black mass. but i am thinking just now of the women you described, the ones that put their heads over the chafing-dishes to drink in the smoke of the burning resin. they employ the procedure of the aissaouas, who hold their heads over the braseros whenever the catalepsy necessary to their orgies is slow in coming. as for the other phenomena you cite, they are known in the hospitals, and except as symptoms of the demoniac effluence they teach us nothing new. now another thing. not a word of this to carhaix, because he would be quite capable of closing his door in your face if he knew you had been present at an office in honour of satan." they went downstairs from durtal's apartment and walked along toward the tower of saint sulpice. "i didn't bring anything to eat, because you said you would look after that," said durtal, "but this morning i sent mme. carhaix--in lieu of desserts and wine--some real dutch gingerbread, and a couple of rather surprising liqueurs, an elixir of life which we shall take, by way of appetizer, before the repast, and a flask of crême de céléri. i have discovered an honest distiller." "impossible!" "you shall see. this elixir of life is manufactured from socotra aloes, little cardamom, saffron, myrrh, and a heap of other aromatics. it's inhumanly bitter, but it's exquisite." "i am anxious to taste it. the least we can do is fête gévingey a little on his deliverance." "have you seen him?" "yes. he's looking fine. we'll make him tell us about his cure." "i keep wondering what he lives on." "on what his astrological skill brings him." "then there are rich people who have their horoscopes cast?" "we must hope so. to tell you the truth, i think gévingey is not in very easy circumstances. under the empire he was astrologer to the empress, who was very superstitious and had faith--as did napoleon, for that matter--in predictions and fortune telling, but since the fall of the empire i think gévingey's situation has changed a good deal for the worse. nevertheless he passes for being the only man in france who has preserved the secrets of cornelius agrippa, cremona, ruggieri, gauric, sinibald the swordsman, and tritemius." while discoursing they had climbed the stair and arrived at the bell-ringer's door. the astrologer was already there and the table was set. all grimaced a bit as they tasted the black and active liqueur which durtal poured. joyous to have all her family about her, mama carhaix brought the rich soup. she filled the plates. when a dish of vegetables was passed and durtal chose a leek, des hermies said, laughing, "look out! porta, a thaumaturge of the late sixteenth century, informs us that this plant, long considered an emblem of virility, perturbs the quietude of the most chaste." "don't listen to him," said the bell-ringer's wife. "and you, monsieur gévingey, some carrots?" durtal looked at the astrologer. his head still looked like a sugar-loaf, his hair was the same faded, dirty brown of hydroquinine or ipecac powders, his bird eyes had the same startled look, his enormous hands were covered with the same phalanx of rings, he had the same obsequious and imposing manner, and sacerdotal tone, but he was freshened up considerably, the wrinkles had gone out of his skin, and his eyes were brighter, since his visit to lyons. durtal congratulated him on the happy result of the treatment. "it was high time, monsieur, i was putting myself under the care of dr. johannès, for i was nearly gone. not possessing a shred of the gift of voyance and knowing no extralucid cataleptic who could inform me of the clandestine preparations of canon docre, i could not possibly defend myself by using the laws of countersign and of the shock in return." "but," said des hermies, "admitting that you could, through the intermediation of a flying spirit, have been aware of the operations of the priest, how could you have parried them?" "the law of countersigns consists, when you know in advance the day and hour of the attack, in going away from home, thus throwing the spell off the track and neutralizing it, or in saying an hour beforehand, 'here i am. strike!' the last method is calculated to scatter the fluids to the wind and paralyze the powers of the assailant. in magic, any act known and made public is lost. as for the shock in return, one must also know beforehand of the attempt if one is to cast back the spells on the person sending them before one is struck by them. "i was certain to perish. a day had passed since i was bewitched. two days more and i should have been ready for the cemetery." "how's that?" "every individual struck by magic has three days in which to take measures. that time past, the ill is incurable. so when docre announced to me that he condemned me to death by his own authority and when, two hours later, on returning home, i felt desperately ill, i lost no time packing my grip and starting for lyons." "and there?" asked durtal. "there i saw dr. johannès. i told him of docre's threat and of my illness. he said to me simply. 'that priest can dress the most virulent poisons in the most frightful sacrileges. the fight will be bitter, but i shall conquer,' and he immediately called in a woman who lives in his house, a voyant. "he hypnotized her and she, at his injunction, explained the nature of the sorcery of which i was the victim. she reconstructed the scene. she literally saw me being poisoned by food and drink mixed with menstrual fluid that had been reinforced with macerated sacramental wafers and drugs skilfully dosed. that sort of spell is so terrible that aside from dr. johannès no thaumaturge in france dare try to cure it. "so the doctor finally said to me, 'your cure can be obtained only through an invincible power. we must lose no time. we must at once sacrifice to the glory of melchisedek.' "he raised an altar, composed of a table and a wooden tabernacle. it was shaped like a little house surmounted by a cross and encircled, under the pediment, by the dial-like figure of the tetragram. he brought the silver chalice, the unleavened bread and the wine. he donned his sacerdotal habits, put on his finger the ring which has received the supreme benedictions, then he began to read from a special missal the prayers of the sacrifice. "almost at once the voyant cried, 'here are the spirits evoked for the spell. these are they which have carried the venefice, obedient to the command of the master of black magic, canon docre!' "i was sitting beside the altar. dr. johannès placed his left hand on my head and raising toward heaven his right he besought the archangel michael to assist him, and adjured the glorious legions of the invincible seraphim to dominate, to enchain, the spirits of evil. "i was already feeling greatly relieved. the sensation of internal gnawing which tortured me in paris was diminishing. dr. johannès continued to recite his orisons, then when the moment came for the deprecatory prayer, he took my hand, laid it on the altar, and three times chanted: "'may the projects and the designs of the worker of iniquity, who has made enchantment against you, be brought to naught; may any influence obtained by satanic means, any attack directed against you, be null and void of effect; may all the maledictions of your enemy be transformed into benedictions from the highest summits of the eternal hills; may his fluids of death be transmuted into ferments of life; finally, may the archangels of judgment and chastisement decide the fate of the miserable priest who has put his trust in the works of darkness and evil.' "'you,' he said to me, 'are delivered. heaven has cured you. may your heart therefore repay the living god and jesus christ, through the glorious mary, with the most ardent devotion.' "he offered me unleavened bread and wine. i was saved. you who are a physician, monsieur des hermies, can bear witness that human science was impotent to aid me--and now look at me!" "yes," des hermies replied, "without discussing the means, i certify the cure, and, i admit, it is not the first time that to my knowledge similar results have been obtained.--no thanks," to mme. carhaix, who was inviting him to take another helping from a plate of sausages with horseradish in creamed peas. "but," said durtal, "permit me to ask you several questions. certain details interest me. what were the sacerdotal ornaments of dr. johannès?" "his costume was a long robe of vermilion cashmere caught up at the waist by a red and white sash. above this robe he had a white mantle of the same stuff, cut, over the chest, in the form of a cross upside down." "cross upside down?" "yes, this cross, reversed like the figure of the hanged man in the old-fashioned tarot card deck, signifies that the priest melchisedek must die in the old man--that is, man affected by original sin--and live again the christ, to be powerful with the power of the incarnate word which died for us." carhaix seemed ill at ease. his fanatical and suspicious catholicism refused to countenance any save the prescribed ceremonies. he made no further contribution to the conversation, and in significant silence filled the glasses, seasoned the salad, and passed the plates. "what sort of a ring was that you spoke of?" "it is a symbolic ring of pure gold. it has the image of a serpent, whose head, in relief, set with a ruby, is connected by a fine chain with a tiny circlet which fastens the jaws of the reptile." "what i should like awfully to know is the origin and the aim of this sacrifice. what has melchisedek to do with your affair?" "ah," said the astrologer, "melchisedek is one of the most mysterious of all the figures in the holy bible. he was king of salem, sacrificer to the most high god. he blessed abraham and abraham gave him tithes of the spoil of the vanquished kings of sodom and gomorrah. that is the story in genesis 14:18-20. but saint paul cites him also, in hebrews 7, and in the third verse of that chapter says that melchisedek, 'without father, without mother, without descent, having neither beginning of day, nor end of life, but made like unto the son of god, abideth, a priest continually.' in hebrews 5:6 paul, quoting psalm 110:4, says jesus is called 'a priest forever after the order of melchisedek.' "all this, you see, is obscure enough. some exegetes recognize in him the prophetic figure of the saviour, others, that of saint joseph, and all admit that the sacrifice of melchisedek offering to abraham the blood and wine of which he had first made oblation to the lord prefigures, to follow the expression of isidore of damietta, the archetype of the divine mysteries, otherwise known as the holy mass." "very well," said des hermies, "but all that scripture does not explain the alexipharmacal virtues which dr. johannès attributes to the sacrifice." "you are asking more than i can answer. only dr. johannès could tell you. this much i can say. theology teaches us that the mass, as it is celebrated, is the re-enaction of the sacrifice of calvary, but the sacrifice to the glory of melchisedek is not that. it is, in some sort, the future mass, the glorious office which will be known during the earthly reign of the divine paraclete. this sacrifice is offered to god by man regenerated, redeemed by the infusion of the love of the holy ghost. now, the hominal being whose heart has thus been purified and sanctified is invincible, and the enchantments of hell cannot prevail against him if he makes use of this sacrifice to dissipate the spirits of evil. that explains to you the potency of dr. johannès, whose heart unites, in this ceremony, with the divine heart of jesus." "your exposition is not very clear," carhaix mildly objected. "then it must be supposed that johannès is a man amended ahead of time, an apostle animated by the holy ghost?" "and so he is," said the astrologer, firmly assured. "will you please pass the gingerbread?" carhaix requested. "here's the way to fix it," said durtal. "first cut a slice very thin, then take a slice of ordinary bread, equally thin, butter them and put them together. now tell me if this sandwich hasn't the exquisite taste of fresh walnuts." "well," said des hermies, pursuing his cross-examination, "aside from that, what has dr. johannès been doing in this long time since i last saw him?" "he leads what ought to be a peaceful life. he lives with friends who revere and adore him. with them he rests from the tribulations of all sorts--save one--that he has been subjected to. he would be perfectly happy if he did not have to repulse the attacks launched at him almost daily by the tonsured magicians of rome." "why do they attack him?" "a thorough explanation would take a long time. johannès is commissioned by heaven to break up the venomous practises of satanism and to preach the coming of the glorified christ and the divine paraclete. now the diabolical curia which holds the vatican in its clutches has every reason of self-interest for putting out of the way a man whose prayers fetter their conjurements and neutralize their spells." "ah!" exclaimed durtal, "and would it be too much to ask you how this former priest foresees and checks these astonishing assaults?" "no indeed. the doctor can tell by the flight and cry of certain birds. falcons and male sparrow-hawks are his sentinels. if they fly toward him or away from him, to east or west, whether they emit a single cry or many; these are omens, letting him know the hour of the combat so that he can be on guard. thus he told me one day, the sparrow-hawks are easily influenced by the spirits, and he uses them as the hypnotist makes use of somnambulism, as the spiritist makes use of tables and slates." "they are the telegraph wires for magic despatches." "yes. and of course you know that the method is not new. indeed, its origin is lost in the darkness of the ages. ornithomancy is world-old. one finds traces of it in the holy bible, and the zohar asserts that one may receive numerous notifications if one knows how to observe the flight and distinguish the cries of birds." "but," said durtal, "why is the sparrow-hawk chosen in preference to other birds?" "well, it has always been, since remotest antiquity, the harbinger of charms. in egypt the god with the head of a hawk was the one who possessed the science of the hieroglyphics. formerly in that country the hierogrammatists swallowed the heart and blood of the hawk to prepare themselves for the magic rites. even today african chiefs put a hawk feather in their hair, and this bird is sacred in india." "how does your friend go about it," asked mme. carhaix, "raising and housing birds of prey?--because that is what they are." "he does not raise them nor house them. they nest in the high bluffs along the saône, near lyons. they come and see him in time of need." durtal, looking around this cozy dining-room and recalling the extraordinary conversations which had been held here, was thinking, "how far we are from the language and the ideas of modern times.--all that takes us back to the middle ages," he said, finishing his thought aloud. "happily!" exclaimed carhaix, who was rising to go and ring his bells. "yes," said des hermies, "and what is mighty strange in this day of crass materialism is the idea of battles fought in space, over the cities, between a priest of lyons and prelates of rome." "and between this priest and the rosicrusians and canon docre." durtal remembered that mme. chantelouve had assured him that the chiefs of the rosicrucians were making frantic efforts to establish connections with the devil and prepare spells. "you think that the rosicrucians are satanizing?" "they would like to, but they don't know how. they are limited to reproducing, mechanically, the few fluidic and veniniferous operations revealed to them by the three brahmins who visited paris a few years ago." "i am thankful, myself," said mme. carhaix, as she took leave of the company, "that i am not mixed up in any of this frightful business, and that i can pray and live in peace." then while des hermies, as usual, prepared the coffee and durtal brought the liqueur glasses, gévingey filled his pipe, and when the sound of the bells died away--dispersed and as if absorbed by the pores of the wall--he blew out a great cloud of smoke and said, "i passed some delightful days with the family with whom dr. johannès is living. after the shocks which i had received, it was a privilege without equal to complete my convalescence in that sweet atmosphere of christian love. and, too, johannès is of all men i have ever met the most learned in the occult sciences. no one, except his antithesis, the abominable docre, has penetrated so far into the arcana of satanism. one may even say that in france these two are the only ones who have crossed the terrestrial threshold and obtained, each in his field, sure results. but in addition to the charm of his conversation and the scope of his knowledge--for even on the subject in which i excel, that of astrology, he surprised me--johannès delighted me with the beauty of his vision of the future transformation of peoples. he is really, i swear, the prophet whose earthly mission of suffering and glory has been authorized by the most high." "i don't doubt it," said durtal, smiling, "but his theory of the paraclete is, if i am not mistaken, the very ancient heresy of montanus which the church has formally condemned." "all depends on the manner in which the coming of the paraclete is conceived," interjected the bell-ringer, returning at that moment. "it is also the orthodox doctrine of saint irenæus, saint justin, scotus erigena, amaury of chartres, saint doucine, and that admirable mystic, joachim of floris. this was the belief throughout the middle ages, and i admit that it obsesses me and fills me with joy, that it responds to the most ardent of my yearnings. indeed," he said, sitting down and crossing his legs, "if the third kingdom is an illusion, what consolation is left for christians in face of the general disintegration of a world which charity requires us not to hate?" "i am furthermore obliged to admit," said des hermies, "that in spite of the blood shed on golgotha, i personally feel as if my ransom had not been quite effected." "there are three kingdoms," the astrologer resumed, pressing down the ashes of his pipe with his finger. "of the old testament, that of the father, the kingdom of fear. of the new testament, that of the son, the kingdom of expiation. of the johannite gospel, that of the holy ghost, the kingdom of redemption and love. they are the past, present and future; winter, spring and summer. the first, says joachim of floris, gives us the blade, the second, the leaf, and the third, the ear. two of the persons of the trinity have shown themselves. logically the third must appear." "yes, and the biblical texts abound, conclusive, explicit, irrefutable," said carhaix. "all the prophets, isaiah, ezekiel, daniel, zachariah, malachi, speak of it.' the acts of the apostles is very precise on this point. in the first chapter you will read these lines, 'this same jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven.' saint john also announces the tidings in the apocalypse, which is the gospel of the second coming of christ, 'christ shall come and reign a thousand years.' saint paul is inexhaustible in revelations of this nature. in the epistle to timothy he invokes the lord 'who shall judge the quick and the dead at his appearance and his kingdom.' in the second epistle to the thessalonians he writes, 'and then shall that wicked be revealed, whom the lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming.' now, he declares that the antichrist is not yet, so the coming which he prophesies is not that already realized by the birth of the saviour at bethlehem. in the gospel according to saint matthew, jesus responds to caiaphas, who asks him if he is the christ, son of god, 'thou hast said, and nevertheless i say unto you, hereafter shall ye see the son of man sitting on the right hand of power and coming in the clouds of heaven.' and in another verse he says to his apostles, 'watch, therefore, for ye know not what hour your lord doth come.' "and there are other texts i could put my finger on. no, there is no use in talking, the partisans of the glorious kingdom are supported with certitude by inspired passages, and can, under certain conditions and without fear of heresy, uphold this doctrine, which, saint jerome attests, was in the fourth century a dogma of faith recognized by all. but what say we taste a bit of this crême de céléri which monsieur durtal praises so highly?" it was a thick liqueur, sirupy like anisette, but even sweeter and more feminine, only, when one had swallowed this inert semi-liquid, there lingered in the roots of the papillæ a faint taste of celery. "it isn't bad," said the astrologer, "but there's no life to it," and he poured into his glass a stiff tot of rum. "come to think of it," said durtal, "the third kingdom is also announced in the words of the paternoster, 'thy kingdom come.'" "certainly," said the bell-ringer. "but you see," interjected gévingey, "heresy would gain the upper hand and the whole belief would be turned into nonsense and absurdity if we admitted, as certain paracletists do, an authentic fleshly incarnation. for instance, remember fareinism, which has been rife, since the eighteenth century, in fareins, a village of the doubs, where jansenism took refuge when driven out of paris after the closing of the cemetery of saint médard. there a priest, françois bonjour, reproduced the 'convulsionist' orgies which, under the regency, desecrated the tomb of deacon paris. then bonjour had an affair with a woman and she claimed to be big with the prophet elijah, who, according to the apocalypse, is to precede the last arrival of christ. this child came into the world, then there was a second who was none other than the paraclete. the latter did business as a woolen merchant in paris, was a colonel in the national guard under louis-philippe, and died in easy circumstances in 1866. a tradesman paraclete, a redeemer with epaulettes and gold braid! "in 1886 one dame brochard of vouvray affirmed to whoever would listen that jesus was reincarnate in her. in 1889 a pious madman named david published at angers a brochure entitled _the voice of god_, in which he assumed the modest appellation of 'only messiah of the creator holy ghost,' and informed the world that he was a sewer contractor and wore a beard a yard and a half long. at the present moment his throne is not empty for want of successors. an engineer named pierre jean rode all over the mediterranean provinces on horseback announcing that he was the holy ghost. in paris, bérard, an omnibus conductor on the panthéon-courcelles line, likewise asserts that he incorporates the paraclete, while a magazine article avers that the hope of redemption has dawned in the person of the poet jhouney. finally, in america, from time to time, women claim to be messiahs, and they recruit adherents among persons worked up to fever pitch by advent revivals." "they are no worse than the people who deny god and creation," said carhaix. "god is immanent in his creatures. he is their life principle, the source of movement, the foundation of existence, says saint paul. he has his personal existence, being the 'i am,' as moses says. "the holy ghost, through christ in glory, will be immanent in all beings. he will be the principle which transforms and regenerates them, but there is no need for him to be incarnate. the holy ghost proceeds from the father through the son. he is sent to act, not to materialize himself. it is downright madness to maintain the contrary, thus falling into the heresies of the gnostics and the fratricelli, into the errors of dulcin de novare and his wife marguerite, into the filth of abbé beccarelli, and the abominations of segarelli of parma, who, on pretext of becoming a child the better to symbolize the simple, naïf love of the paraclete, had himself diapered and slept on the breast of a nurse." "but," said durtal, "you haven't made yourself quite clear to me. if i understand you, the holy ghost will act by an infusion into us. he will transmute us, renovate our souls by a sort of 'passive purgation'--to drop into the theological vernacular." "yes, he will purify us soul and body." "how will he purify our bodies?" "the action of the paraclete," the astrologer struck in, "will extend to the principle of generation. the divine life will sanctify the organs which henceforth can procreate only elect creatures, exempt from original sin, creatures whom it will not be necessary to test in the fires of humiliation, as the holy bible says. this was the doctrine of the prophet vintras, that extraordinary unlettered man who wrote such impressive and ardent pages. the doctrine has been continued and amplified, since vintras's death, by his successor, dr. johannès." "then there is to be paradise on earth," said des hermies. "yes, the kingdom of liberty, goodness, and love." "you've got me all mixed up," said durtal. "now you announce the arrival of the holy ghost, now the glorious advent of christ. are these kingdoms identical or is one to follow the other?" "there is a distinction," answered gévingey, "between the coming of the paraclete and the victorious return of christ. they occur in the order named. first a society must be recreated, embraced by the third hypostasis, by love, in order that jesus may descend, as he has promised, from the clouds and reign over the people formed in his image." "what rôle is the pope to play?" "ah, that is one of the most curious points of the johannite doctrine. time, since the first appearance of the messiah, is divided, as you know, into two periods, the period of the victim, of the expiant saviour, the period in which we now are, and the other, that which we await, the period of christ bathed in the spittle of mockery but radiant with the superadorable splendour of his person. well, there is a different pope for each of these eras. the scriptures announce these two sovereign pontificates--and so do my horoscopes, for that matter. "it is an axiom of theology that the spirit of peter lives in his successors. it will live in them, more or less hidden, until the longed-for expansion of the holy ghost. then john, who has been held in reserve, as the gospel says, will begin his ministry of love and will live in the souls of the new popes." "i don't understand the utility of a pope when jesus is to be visible," said des hermies. "to tell the truth, there is no use in having one, and the papacy is to exist only during the epoch reserved for the effluence of the divine paraclete. the day on which, in a shower of meteors, jesus appears, the pontificate of rome ceases." "without going more deeply into questions which we could discuss the rest of our lives," said durtal, "i marvel at the placidity of the utopian who imagines that man is perfectible. there is no denying that the human creature is born selfish, abusive, vile. just look around you and see. society cynical and ferocious, the humble heckled and pillaged by the rich traffickers in necessities. everywhere the triumph of the mediocre and unscrupulous, everywhere the apotheosis of crooked politics and finance. and you think you can make any progress against a stream like that? no, man has never changed. his soul was corrupt in the days of genesis and is not less rotten at present. only the form of his sins varies. progress is the hypocrisy which refines the vices." "all the more reason," carhaix rejoined, "why society--if it is as you have described it--should fall to pieces. i, too, think it is putrefied, its bones ulcerated, its flesh dropping off. it can neither be poulticed nor cured, it must be interred and a new one born. and who but god can accomplish such a miracle?" "if we admit," said des hermies, "that the infamousness of the times is transitory, it is self-evident that only the intervention of a god can wash it away; for neither socialism nor any other chimera of the ignorant and hate-filled workers will modify human nature and reform the peoples. these tasks are above human forces." "and the time awaited by johannès is at hand," gévingey proclaimed. "here are some of the manifest proofs. raymond lully asserted that the end of the old world would be announced by the diffusion of the doctrines of antichrist. he defined these doctrines. they are materialism and the monstrous revival of magic. this prediction applies to our age, i think. on the other hand, the good tidings was to be realized, according to our lord, as reported by saint matthew, 'when ye shall see the abomination of desolation ... stand in the holy place.' and isn't it standing in the holy place now? look at our timorous, skeptical pope, lukewarm and politic, our episcopate of simonists and cowards, our flabby, indulgent clergy. see how they are ravaged by satanism, then tell me if the church can fall any lower." "the promises are explicit and cannot fail," and with his elbows on the table, his chin in his hands, and his eyes to heaven, the bell-ringer murmured, "our father--thy kingdom come!" "it's getting late," said des hermies, "time we were going." while they were putting on their coats, carhaix questioned durtal. "what do you hope for if you have no faith in the coming of christ?" "i hope for nothing at all." "i pity you. really, you believe in no future amelioration?" "i believe, alas, that a dotard heaven maunders over an exhausted earth." the bell-ringer raised his hands and sadly shook his head. when they had left gévingey, des hermies, after walking in silence for some time, said, "you are not astonished that all the events spoken of tonight happened at lyons." and as durtal looked at him inquiringly, he continued, "you see i am well acquainted with lyons. people's brains there are as foggy as the streets when the morning mists roll up from the rhone. that city looks magnificent to travellers who like the long avenues, wide boulevards, green grass, and penitentiary architecture of modern cities. but lyons is also the refuge of mysticism, the haven of preternatural ideas and doubtful creeds. that's where vintras died, the one in whom, it seems, the soul of the prophet elijah was incarnate. that's where naundorff found his last partisans. that is where enchantment is rampant, because in the suburb of la guillotière you can have a person bewitched for a louis. add that it is likewise, in spite of its swarms of radicals and anarchists, an opulent market for a dour protestant catholicism; a jansenist factory, richly productive of bourgeois bigotry. "lyons is celebrated for delicatessen, silk, and churches. at the top of every hill--and there's a hill every block--is a chapel or a convent, and notre dame de fourvière dominates them all. from a distance this pile looks like an eighteenth century dresser turned upside down, but the interior, which is in process of completion, is amazing. you ought to go and take a look at it some day. you will see the most extraordinary jumble of assyrian, roman, gothic, and god knows what, jacked together by bossan, the only architect for a century who has known how to create a cathedral interior. the nave glitters with inlays and marble, with bronze and gold. statues of angels diversify the rows of columns and break up, with impressive grace, the known harmonies of line. it's asiatic and barbarous, and reminds one of the architecture shown in gustave moreau's hérodiade. "and there is an endless stream of pilgrims. they strike bargains with our lady. they pray for an extension of markets, new outlets for sausages and silks. they consult her on ways and means of getting rid of spoiled vegetables and pushing off their shoddy. in the centre of the city, in the church of saint boniface, i found a placard requesting the faithful, out of respect for the holy place, not to give alms. it was not seemly, you see, that the commercial orisons be disturbed by the ridiculous plaints of the indigent." "well," said durtal, "it's a strange thing, but democracy is the most implacable of the enemies of the poor. the revolution, which, you would think, ought to have protected them, proved for them the most cruel of régimes. i will show you some day a decree of the year ii, pronouncing penalties not only for those who begged but for those who gave." "and yet democracy is the panacea which is going to cure every ill," said des hermies, laughing. and he pointed to enormous posters everywhere in which general boulanger peremptorily demanded that the people of paris vote for him in the coming election. durtal shrugged his shoulders. "quite true. the people are very sick. carhaix and gévingey are perhaps right in maintaining that no human agency is powerful enough to effect a cure." chapter xxi durtal had resolved not to answer mme. chantelouve's letters. every day, since their rupture, she had sent him an inflamed missive, but, as he soon noticed, her mænad cries were subsiding into plaints and reproaches. she now accused him of ingratitude, and repented having listened to him and having permitted him to participate in sacrileges for which she would have to answer before the heavenly tribunal. she pleaded to see him once more. then she was silent for a while week. finally, tired, no doubt, of writing unanswered letters, she admitted, in a last epistle, that all was over. after agreeing with him that their temperaments were incompatible, she ended: "thanks for the trig little love, ruled like music-paper, that you gave me. my heart cannot be so straitly measured, it requires more latitude--" "her heart!" he laughed, then he continued to read: "i understand that it is not your earthly mission to satisfy my heart but you might at least have conceded me a frank comradeship which would have permitted me to leave my sex at home and to come and spend an evening with you now and then. this, seemingly, so simple, you have rendered impossible. farewell forever. i have only to renew my pact with solitude, to which i have tried to be unfaithful--" "with solitude! and that complaisant and paternal cuckold, her husband! well, he is the one most to be pitied now. thanks to me, he had evenings of quiet. i restored his wife, pliant and satisfied. he profited by my fatigues, that sacristan. ah, when i think of it, his sly, hypocritical eyes, when he looked at me, told me a great deal. "well, the little romance is over. it's a good thing to have your heart on strike. in my brain i still have a house of ill fame, which sometimes catches fire, but the hired myrmidons will stamp out the blaze in a hurry. "when i was young and ardent the women laughed at me. now that i am old and stale i laugh at them. that's more in my character, old fellow," he said to the cat, which, with ears pricked up, was listening to the soliloquy. "truly, gilles de rais is a great deal more interesting than mme. chantelouve. unfortunately, my relations with him are also drawing to a close. only a few more pages and the book is done. oh, lord! here comes rateau to knock my house to pieces." sure enough, the concierge entered, made an excuse for being late, took off his vest, and cast a look of defiance at the furniture. then he hurled himself at the bed, grappled with the mattress, got a half-nelson on it, and balancing himself, turning half around, hurled it onto the springs. durtal, followed by his cat, went into the other room, but suddenly rateau ceased wrestling and came and stood before durtal. "monsieur, do you know what has happened?" he blubbered. "why, no." "my wife has left me." "left you! but she must be over sixty." rateau raised his eyes to heaven. "and she ran off with another man?" rateau, disconsolate, let the feather duster fall from his listless hand. "the devil! then, in spite of her age, your wife had needs which you were unable to satisfy?" the concierge shook his head and finally succeeded in saying, "it was the other way around." "oh," said durtal, considering the old caricature, shrivelled by bad air and "three-six," "but if she is tired of that sort of thing, why did she run off with a man?" rateau made a grimace of pitying contempt, "oh, he's impotent. good for nothing--" "ah!" "it's my job i'm sore about. the landlord won't keep a concierge that hasn't a wife." "dear lord," thought durtal, "how hast thou answered my prayers!--come on, let's go over to your place," he said to des hermies, who, finding rateau's key in the door, had walked in. "righto! since your housecleaning isn't done yet, descend like a god from your clouds of dust, and come on over to the house." on the way durtal recounted his concierge's conjugal misadventure. "oh!" said des hermies, "many a woman would be happy to wreathe with laurel the occiput of so combustible a sexagenarian.--look at that! isn't it revolting?" pointing to the walls covered with posters. it was a veritable debauch of placards. everywhere on lurid coloured paper in box car letters were the names of boulanger and jacques. "thank god, this will be over tomorrow." "there is one resource left," said des hermies. "to escape the horrors of present day life never raise your eyes. look down at the sidewalk always, preserving the attitude of timid modesty. when you look only at the pavement you see the reflections of the sky signs in all sorts of fantastic shapes; alchemic symbols, talismanic characters, bizarre pantacles with suns, hammers, and anchors, and you can imagine yourself right in the midst of the middle ages." "yes, but to keep from seeing the disenchanting crowd you would have to wear a long-vizored cap like a jockey and blinkers like a horse." des hermies sighed. "come in," he said, opening the door. they went in and sitting down in easy chairs they lighted their cigarettes. "i haven't got over that conversation we had with gévingey the other night at carhaix's," said durtal. "strange man, that dr. johannès. i can't keep from thinking about him. look here, do you sincerely believe in his miraculous cures?" "i am obliged to. i didn't tell you all about him, for a physician can't lightly make these dangerous admissions. but you may as well know that this priest heals hopeless cases. "i got acquainted with him when he was still a member of the parisian clergy. it came about by one of those miracles of his which i don't pretend to understand. "my mother's maid had a granddaughter who was paralyzed in her arms and legs and suffered death and destruction in her chest and howled when you touched her there. she had been in this condition two years. it had come on in one night, how produced nobody knows. she was sent away from the lyons hospitals as incurable. she came to paris, underwent treatment at la salpêtrière, and was discharged when nobody could find out what was the matter with her nor what medication would give her any relief. one day she spoke to me of this abbé johannès, who, she said, had cured persons in as bad shape as she. i did not believe a word, but hearing that the priest refused to take any money for his services i did not dissuade her from visiting him, and out of curiosity i went along. "they placed her in a chair. the ecclesiastic, little, active, energetic, took her hand and applied to it, one after the other, three precious stones. then he said coolly, 'mademoiselle, you are the victim of consanguineal sorcery.' "i could hardly keep from laughing. "'remember,' he said,'two years back, for that is when your paralytic stroke came on. you must have had a quarrel with a kinsman or kinswoman?' "it was true. poor marie had been unjustly accused of the theft of a watch which was an heirloom belonging to an aunt of hers. the aunt had sworn vengeance. "'your aunt lives in lyons?' "she nodded. "'nothing astonishing about that,' continued the priest. 'in lyons, among the lower orders, there are witch doctors who know a little about the witchcraft practised in the country. but be reassured. these people are not powerful. they know little more than the a b c's of the art. then, mademoiselle, you wish to be cured?' "and after she replied that she did, he said gently, 'that is all. you may go.' "he did not touch her, did not prescribe any remedy. i came away persuaded that he was a mountebank. but when, three days later, the girl was able to raise her arms, and all her pain had left her, and when, at the end of a week, she could walk, i had to yield in face of the evidence. i went back to see him, had occasion to do him a service; and thus our relations began." "but what are his methods?" "he opens, like the curate of ars, with prayer. then he evokes the militant archangels, then he breaks the magic circles and chases--'classes,' as he says--the spirits of evil. i know very well that this is confounding. whenever i speak of this man's potency to my confrères they smile with a superior air or serve up to me the specious arguments which they have fabricated to explain the cures wrought by christ and the virgin. the method they have imagined consists in striking the patient's imagination, suggesting to him the will to be cured, persuading him that he is well, hypnotizing him in a waking state--so to speak. this done--say they--the twisted legs straighten, the sores disappear, the consumption-torn lungs are patched up, the cancers become benign pimples, and the blind eyes see. this procedure they attribute to miracle workers to explain away the supernatural--why don't they use the method themselves if it is so simple?" "but haven't they tried?" "after a fashion. i was present myself at an experiment attempted by dr. luys. ah, it was inspiring! at the charity hospital there was a poor girl paralyzed in both legs. she was put to sleep and commanded to rise. she struggled in vain. then two interns held her up in a standing posture, but her lifeless legs bent useless under her weight. need i tell you that she could not walk, and that after they had held her up and pushed her along a few steps, they put her to bed again, having obtained no result whatever." "but dr. johannès does not cure all sufferers, without discrimination?" "no. he will not meddle with any ailments which are not the result of spells. he says he can do nothing with natural ills, which are the province of the physician. he is a specialist in satanic affections. he has most to do with the possessed whose neuroses have proved obdurate to hydrotherapeutic treatment." "what does he do with the precious stones you mentioned?" "first, before answering your question, i must explain the significance and virtue of these stones. i shall be telling you nothing new when i say that aristotle, pliny, all the sages of antiquity, attributed medical and divine virtues to them. according to the pagans, agate and carnelian stimulate, topaz consoles, jasper cures languor, hyacinth drives away insomnia, turquoise prevents falls or lightens the shock, amethyst combats drunkenness. "catholic symbolism, in its turn, takes over the precious stones and sees in them emblems of the christian virtues. then, sapphire represents the lofty aspirations of the soul, chalcedony charity, sard and onyx candor, beryl allegorizes theological science, hyacinthe humility, while the ruby appeases wrath, and emerald 'lapidifies' incorruptible faith. "now in magic," des hermies rose and took from a shelf a very small volume bound like a prayer book. he showed durtal the title: _natural magic, or: the secrets and miracles of nature, in four volumes, by giambattista porta of naples. paris. nicolas bonjour, rue neuve nostre dame at the sign saint nicolas_. 1584. "natural magic," said des hermies, "which was merely the medicine of the time, ascribes a new meaning to gems. listen to this. after first celebrating an unknown stone, the alectorius, which renders its possessor invincible if it has been taken out of the stomach of a cock caponized four years before or if it has been ripped out of the ventricle of a hen, porta informs us that chalcedony wins law suits, that carnelian stops bloody flux 'and is exceeding useful to women who are sick of their flower,' that hyacinth protects against lightning and keeps away pestilence and poison, that topaz quells 'lunatic' passions, that turquoise is of advantage against melancholy, quartan fever, and heart failure. he attests finally that sapphire preserves courage and keeps the members vigorous, while emerald, hung about one's neck, keeps away saint john's evil and breaks when the wearer is unchaste. "you see, antique philosophy, mediæval christianity, and sixteenth century magic do not agree on the specific virtues of every stone. almost in every case the significations, more or less far-fetched, differ. dr. johannès has revised these beliefs, adopted and rejected great numbers of them, finally he has, on his own authority, admitted new acceptations. according to him, amethyst does cure drunkenness; but moral drunkenness, pride; ruby relieves sex pressure; beryl fortifies the will; sapphire elevates the thoughts and turns them toward god. "in brief, he believes that every stone corresponds to a species of malady, and also to a class of sins; and he affirms that when we have chemically got possession of the active principle of gems we shall have not only antidotes but preventatives. while waiting for this chimerical dream to be realized and for our medicine to become the mock of lapidary chemists, he uses precious stones to formulate diagnoses of illnesses produced by sorcery." "how?" "he claims that when such or such a stone is placed in the hand or on the affected part of the bewitched a fluid escapes from the stone into his hands, and that by examining this fluid he can tell what is the matter. in this connection he told me that a woman whom he did not know came to him one day to consult him about a malady, pronounced incurable, from which she had suffered since childhood. he could not get any precise answers to his questions. he saw no signs of venefice. after trying out his whole array of stones he placed in her hand lapis lazuli, which, he says, corresponds to the sin of incest. he examined the stone. "'your malady,' he said, 'is the consequence of an act of incest.' "'well,' she said, 'i did not come here to confessional,' but she finally admitted that her father had violated her before she attained the age of puberty. "that, of course, is against reason and contrary to all accepted ideas, but there is no getting around the fact that this priest cures patients whom we physicians have given up for lost." "such as the only astrologer paris now can boast, the astounding gévingey, who would have been dead without his aid. i wonder how gévingey came to cast the empress eugenie's horoscope." "oh, i told you. under the empire the tuileries was a hotbed of magic. home, the american, was revered as the equal of a god. in addition to spiritualistic séances he evoked demons at court. one evocation had fatal consequences. a certain marquis, whose wife had died, implored home to let him see her again. home took him to a room, put him in bed, and left him. what ensued? what dreadful phantom rose from the tomb? was the story of ligeia re-enacted? at any rate, the marquis was found dead at the foot of the bed. this story has recently been reported by le figaro from unimpeachable documents. "you see it won't do to play with the world spirits of evil. i used to know a rich bachelor who had a mania for the occult sciences. he was president of a theosophic society and he even wrote a little book on the esoteric doctrine, in the isis series. well, he could not, like the péladan and papus tribe, be content with knowing nothing, so he went to scotland, where diabolism is rampant. there he got in touch with the man who, if you stake him, will initiate you into the satanic arcana. my friend made the experiment. did he see him whom bulwer lytton in _zanoni_ calls 'the dweller of the threshold'? i don't know, but certain it is that he fainted from horror and returned to france exhausted, half dead." "evidently all is not rosy in that line of work," said durtal. "but it is only spirits of evil that can be evoked?" "do you suppose that the angels, who, of earth, obey only the saints, would ever consent to take orders from the first comer?" "but there must be an intermediate order of angels, who are neither celestial nor infernal, who, for instance, commit the well-known asininities in the spiritist séances." "a priest told me one day that the neuter larvæ inhabit an invisible, neutral territory, something like a little island, which is beseiged on all sides by the good and evil spirits. the larvæ cannot long hold out and are soon forced into one or the other camp. now, because it is these larvæ they evoke, the occultists, who cannot, of course, draw down the angels, always get the ones who have joined the party of evil, so unconsciously and probably involuntarily the spiritist is always diabolizing." "yes, and if one admits the disgusting idea that an imbecile medium can bring back the dead, one must, in reason, recognize the stamp of satan on these practises." "however viewed, spiritism is an abomination." "so you don't believe in theurgy, white magic?" "it's a joke. only a rosicrucian who wants to hide his more repulsive essays at black magic ever hints at such a thing. no one dare confess that he satanizes. the church, not duped by these hair-splitting distinctions, condemns black and white magic indifferently." "well," said durtal, lighting a cigarette, after a silence, "this is a better topic of conversation than politics or the races, but where does it get us? half of these doctrines are absurd, the other half so mysterious as to produce only bewilderment. shall we grant satanism? well, gross as it is, it seems a sure thing. and if it is, and one is consistent, one must also grant catholicism--for buddhism and the like are not big enough to be substituted for the religion of christ." "all right. believe." "i can't. there are so many discouraging and revolting dogmas in christianity--" "i am uncertain about a good many things, myself," said des hermies, "and yet there are moments when i feel that the obstacles are giving way, that i almost believe. of one thing i _am_ sure. the supernatural does exist, christian or not. to deny it is to deny evidence--and who wants to be a materialist, one of these silly freethinkers?" "it is mighty tiresome to be vacillating forever. how i envy carhaix his robust faith!" "you don't want much!" said des hermies. "faith is the breakwater of the soul, affording the only haven in which dismasted man can glide along in peace." chapter xxii "you like that?" asked mme. carhaix. "for a change i served the broth yesterday and kept the beef for tonight. so we'll have vermicelli soup, a salad of cold meat with pickled herring and celery, some nice mashed potatoes _au gratin_, and a dessert. and then you shall taste the new cider we just got." "oh!" and "ah!" exclaimed des hermies and durtal, who, while waiting for dinner, were sipping the elixir of life. "do you know, mme. carhaix, your cooking tempts us to the sin of gluttony--if you keep on you will make perfect pigs of us." "oh, you are joking. i wonder what is keeping louis." "somebody is coming upstairs," said durtal, hearing the creaking of shoes in the tower. "no, it isn't his step," and she went and opened the door. "it's monsieur gévingey." and indeed, clad in his blue cape, with his soft black hat on his head, the astrologer entered, made a bow, like an actor taking a curtain call, nibbed his great knuckles against his massive rings, and asked where the bell-ringer was. "he is at the carpenter's. the oak beams holding up the big bell are cracked and louis is afraid they will break down." "any news of the election?" and gévingey took out his pipe and filled it. "no. in this quarter we shan't know the results until nearly ten o'clock. there's no doubt about the outcome, though, because paris is strong for this democratic stuff. general boulanger will win hands down." "this certainly is the age of universal imbecility." carhaix entered and apologized for being so late. while his wife brought in the soup he took off his goloshes and said, in answer to his friends' questions, "yes; the dampness had rusted the frets and warped the beams. it was time for the carpenter to intervene. he finally promised that he would be here tomorrow and bring his men without fail. well, i am mighty glad to get back. in the streets everything whirls in front of my eyes. i am dizzy. i don't know what to do. the only places where i am at home are the belfry and this room. here, wife, let me do that," and he pushed her aside and began to stir the salad. "how good it smells!" said durtal, drinking in the incisive tang of the herring. "do you know what this perfume suggests? a basket funnelled fireplace, twigs of juniper snapping in it, in a ground-floor room opening on to a great harbour. it seems to me there is a sort of salt water halo around these little rings of gold and rusted iron.--exquisite," he said as he tasted the salad. "we'll make it again for you, monsieur durtal," said mme. carhaix, "you are not hard to please." "alas!" said her husband, "his palate isn't, but his soul is. when i think of his despairing aphorisms of the other night! however, we are praying god to enlighten him. i'll tell you," he said to his wife, "we will invoke saint nolasque and saint theodulus, who are always represented with bells. they sort of belong to the family, and they will certainly be glad to intercede for people who revere them and their emblems." "it would take a stunning miracle to convince durtal," said des hermies. "bells have been known to perform them," said the astrologer. "i remember to have read, though i forget where, that angels tolled the knell when saint isidro of madrid was dying." "and there are many other cases," said carhaix. "of their own accord the bells chimed when saint sigisbert chanted the de profundis over the corpse of the martyr placidus, and when the body of saint ennemond, bishop of lyons, was thrown by his murderers into a boat without oars or sails, the bells rang out, though nobody set them in motion, as the boat passed down the saône." "do you know what i think?" asked des hermies, looking at carhaix. "i think you ought to prepare a compendium of hagiography or a really informative work on heraldry." "what makes you think that?" "well, you are, thank god, remote from this epoch and fond of things which it knows nothing about or execrates, and a work of that kind would take you still further away. my good friend, you are the man forever unintelligible to the coming generations. to ring bells because you love them, to give yourself over to the abandoned study of feudal art or monasticism would make you complete--take you clear out of paris, out of the world, back into the middle ages." "alas," said carhaix, "i am only a poor ignorant man. but the type you speak of does exist. in switzerland, i believe, a bell-ringer has for years been collecting material for a heraldic memorial. i should think," he continued, laughing, "that his avocation would interfere with his vocation." "and do you think," said gévingey bitterly, "that the profession of astrologer is less decried, less neglected?" "how do you like our cider?" asked the bell-ringer's wife. "do you find it a bit raw?" "no, it's tart if you sip it, but sweet if you take a good mouthful," answered durtal. "wife, serve the potatoes. don't wait for me. i delayed so long getting my business done that it's time for the angelus. don't bother about me. go on eating. i shall catch up with you when i get back." and as her husband lighted his lantern and left the room the woman brought in on a plate what looked to be a cake covered with golden brown caramel icing. "mashed potatoes, i thought you said!" "_au gratin_. browned in the oven. taste it. i put in everything that ought to make it very good." all exclaimed over it. then it became impossible to hear oneself. tonight the bell boomed out with unusual clarity and power. durtal tried to analyze the sound which seemed to rock the room. there was a sort of flux and reflux of sound. first, the formidable shock of the clapper against the vase, then a sort of crushing and scattering of the sounds as if ground fine with the pestle, then a rounding of the reverberation; then the recoil of the clapper, adding, in the bronze mortar, other sonorous vibrations which it ground up and cast out and dispersed through the sounding shutters. then the bell strokes came further apart. now there was only the whirring as of a spinning wheel; a few crumbs were slow about falling. and now carhaix returned. "it's a two-sided age," said gévingey, pensive. "people believe nothing, yet gobble everything. every day a new science is invented. nobody reads that admirable paracelsus who rediscovered all that had ever been found and created everything that had not. say now to your congress of scientists that, according to this great master, life is a drop of the essence of the stars, that each of our organs corresponds to a planet and depends upon it; that we are, in consequence, a foreshortening of the divine sphere. tell them--and this, experience attests--that every man born under the sign of saturn is melancholy and pituitous, taciturn and solitary, poor and vain; that that sluggish star predisposes to superstition and fraud, directs epilepsies and varices, hemorrhoids and leprosies; that it is, alas! the great purveyor to hospital and prison--and the scientists will shrug their shoulders and laugh at you. the glorified pedants and homiletic asses!" "paracelsus," said des hermies, "was one of the most extraordinary practitioners of occult medicine. he knew the now forgotten mysteries of the blood, the still unknown medical effects of light. professing--as did also the cabalists, for that matter--that the human being is composed of three parts, a material body, a soul, and a perispirit called also an astral body, he attended this last especially and produced reactions on the carnal envelope by procedures which are either incomprehensible or fallen into disuse. he cared for wounds by treating not the tissues, but the blood which came out of them. however, we are assured that he healed certain ailments." "thanks to his profound knowledge of astrology," said gévingey. "but if the study of the sidereal influence is so important," said durtal, "why don't you take pupils?" "i can't get them. where will you unearth people willing to study twenty years without glory or profit? because, to be able to establish a horoscope one must be an astronomer of the first order, know mathematics from top to bottom, and one must have put in long hours tussling with the obscure latin of the old masters. besides, you must have the vocation and the faith, and they are lost." "just the way it is with bell ringing," said carhaix. "no, you see, messieurs," gévingey went on, "the day when the grand sciences of the middle ages fell foul of the systematic and hostile indifference of an impious people was the death-day of the soul in france. all we can do now is fold our arms and listen to the wild vagaries of society, which by turns shrieks with farcical joy and bitter grief." "we must not despair. a better time is coming," said mme. carhaix in a conciliating tone, and before she retired she shook hands with all her guests. "the people," said des hermies, pouring the water into the coffee-pot, "instead of being ameliorated with time, grow, from century to century, more avaricious, abject, and stupid. remember the siege, the commune; the unreasonable infatuations, the tumultuous hatreds, all the dementia of a deteriorated, malnourished people in arms. they certainly cannot compare with the naïf and tender-hearted plebes of the middle ages. tell us, durtal, how the people acted when gilles de rais was conducted to the stake." "yes, tell us," said carhaix, his great eyes made watery by the smoke of his pipe. "well, you know, as a consequence of unheard-of crimes, the marshal de rais was condemned to be hanged and burned alive. after the sentence was passed, when he was brought back to his dungeon, he addressed a last appeal to the bishop, jean de malestroit, beseeching the bishop to intercede for him with the fathers and mothers of the children gilles had so ferociously violated and put to death, to be present when he suffered. "the people whose hearts he had lacerated wept with pity. they now saw in this demoniac noble only a poor man who lamented his crimes and was about to confront the divine wrath. the day of execution, by nine o'clock they were marching through the city in processional. they chanted psalms in the streets and took vows in the churches to fast three days in order to help assure the repose of the marshal's soul." "pretty far, as you see, from american lynch law," said des hermies. "then," resumed durtal, "at eleven they went to the prison to get gilles de rais and accompanied him to the prairie of las biesse, where tall stakes stood, surmounted by gibbets. "the marshal supported his accomplices, embraced them, adjured them to have 'great displeasure and contrition of their ill deeds' and, beating his breast, he supplicated the virgin to spare them, while the clergy, the peasants, and the people joined in the psalmody, intoning the sinister and imploring strophes of the chant for the departed: "'nos timemus diem judicii quia mali et nobis conscii. sed tu, mater summi concilii, para nobis locum refugii, o maria. "'tunc iratus judex--'" "hurrah for boulanger!" the noise as of a stormy sea mounted from the place saint sulpice, and a hubbub of cries floated up to the tower room. "boulange--lange--" then an enormous, raucous voice, the voice of an oyster woman, a push-cart peddler, rose, dominating all others, howling, "hurrah for boulanger!" "the people are cheering the election returns in front of the city hall," said carhaix disdainfully. they looked at each other. "the people of today!" exclaimed des hermies. "ah," grumbled gévingey, "they wouldn't acclaim a sage, an artist, that way, even--if such were conceivable now--a saint." "and they did in the middle ages." "well, they were more naïf and not so stupid then," said des hermies. "and as gévingey says, where now are the saints who directed them? you cannot too often repeat it, the spiritual councillors of today have tainted hearts, dysenteric souls, and slovenly minds. or they are worse. they corrupt their flock. they are of the docre order and satanize." "to think that a century of positivism and atheism has been able to overthrow everything but satanism, and it cannot make satanism yield an inch." "easily explained!" cried carhaix. "satan is forgotten by the great majority. now it was father ravignan, i believe, who proved that the wiliest thing the devil can do is to get people to deny his existence." "oh, god!" murmured durtal forlornly, "what whirlwinds of ordure i see on the horizon!" "no," said carhaix, "don't say that. on earth all is dead and decomposed. but in heaven! ah, i admit that the paraclete is keeping us waiting. but the texts announcing his coming are inspired. the future is certain. there will be light," and with bowed head he prayed fervently. des hermies rose and paced the room. "all that is very well," he groaned, "but this century laughs the glorified christ to scorn. it contaminates the supernatural and vomits on the beyond. well, how can we hope that in the future the offspring of the fetid tradesmen of today will be decent? brought up as they are, what will they do in life?" "they will do," replied durtal, "as their fathers and mothers do now. they will stuff their guts and crowd out their souls through their alimentary canals." finis 