"Waste," exclaimed Mademoiselle, laughing and satisfied. "Julian," she said, "I am sorry you should have clouded a day with so bright a morning, and made yourself so sad. Get those ridiculous notions out of your head, like a good boy. He will die of love, Elise. Dear boy, no one has ever shown me such true devotion. Some day, Julian, some day!"
"Today, Mademoiselle, can never return! If some day, it would not be the same."
"How absurd you are! As if that made any real difference. It is purely fantastical of you. But, anyhow, it cannot be today, that's certain. So there. Come," she added cheerily, seeing my countenance fall yet more, "come, you are a true knight and I will kiss you. I really will! Had you told me an hour ago that I would do so, I should have jeered at you! Go, Elise, and get my toilette ready. There, Julian, I will kiss you with a real kiss of love, such as your love inspires. I do love you, my dear Julian. I do indeed, and wish I could give you your desire. I cannot however.. Marriage is a diabolical invention for persons circumstanced as we are; the embodiment of everything anti-aphrodisiac. Even married people find it so. If we were married, should we be spooning like this, par example? But we live in the world. And what could become of the brat? What would become of me?"
I was compelled to acquiesce. The divine fury had all been whipped out of me by that time. I enjoyed the kisses; sweet delicious long ones they were and they helped to heal the wound. But it was one that had truly added indelible sadness and years to my life.
I could not dispossess myself of the idea that a beautiful being had been summoned by my spirit and the co-operation of Mademoiselle's which had worked upon mine, she being at that period my feminine complement and completion. And that, having been thus summoned, it had been obliged to go weeping away, wronged and defrauded of its 90
expectations, unable to linger, unable ever to return here, back into the nothingness out of which it had been evolved only to be disappointed and cheated; never to be clothed in the red earth which had been promised it, never to live.
I felt as though I had potentially lost a child* and my spirit was grieved.
* Emasculation was prohibited among the Jews. According to Josephus, it killed beforehand children who might otherwise have been begotten. The reason is intelligible but illogical.
CHAPTER 18
It will be remembered that Mademoiselle, before there had been established between her and myself any of that sweet and intimate knowledge which had since so worked upon and so changed my disposition, had as a punishment for my rudeness to Elise condemned me to servitude under that lively young woman for three days. Whether Mademoiselle regretted it now, I do not know. She had never shown me such true tenderness or manifested such feeling towards me as on that morning; her kisses still burned upon my lips, and I could recall the sweet pressure of her recent embrace. Notwithstanding this, she did not revoke the sentence. Almost as soon as I had had my last kiss, Elise returned. She carried me off naked to her room, away from the dear presence of my Hortense-my Mademoiselle. The three days under her had commenced, and, upon that morning, resistance was futile, expostulation I abstained from, under the sway of an indescribable medley of feelings.
The three days under her had commenced, and, upon their threshold, I saw a whip fastened to Elise's waist belt, a long thong, such as with a snap on the handle is occasionally used as a leading string for dogs. My curiosity as to what was to happen at once received a rude shock, and I dared not anticipate. She led me to her room.
To its ceiling there was attached a hook. She buckled two leather straps, broad and lined with thick felt, round my wrists. In each strap was a ring, through which she passed a cord. I had to mount a pair of steps which stood directly under the hook in the ceiling of this rather low room. She swung the cord over this hook.
I demurred about mounting the steps, being fearful of her object. She whipped me until I obeyed. Then, leaving the cord fixed over the hook and to each of my wrists, I had to raise my hands over my head, and to descend the steps until the end was tight. She then dragged the ladder away, and I swung by my wrists in mid-air, some three feet from the ground.
My cries of anguish, bitter as they were, remained unheeded. She put a leather belt, a foot or more in width, round my waist, and buckled it excessively tight, and then fastened two straps round my ankles of a similar kind to those round my wrists. To their rings she attached two cords, which were slipped through two staples fixed in the floor underneath me three or four feet apart. She then drew the ends of the cords together and knotted them. To this loop she tied a third cord, and putting it through another staple which formed a triangle with the two first mentioned, she caught the cord but a very short distance from the floor. Then, with all the purchase given by the expansion of the muscles of her knees and back, contracted by her having stooped down to take hold of the rope, she strained it as tightly as her force enabled her, and fixed it with a plug of wood which fitted the staple and allowed the cord to slide only one way.
My legs were dragged apart and my body pulled down in a way which racked me excruciatingly and felt like tearing my arms from their sockets. My weight only was enough to rack me cruelly, depending as I was from my wrists. The distension of my legs, and the constant downward pull, added fearfully to my torture. I implored Elise to loosen me. I assured her that my own weight occasioned me punishment sufficient. She took no heed whatever of my talk, not even bidding me hold my tongue.
My male organ was forced into undue prominence and isolated from the usual support and covering of my thighs by their separation. It was about on a level with Elise's face, and to my surprise it grew large.
When I was fixed, Elise addressed me: "I shall counteract," she said, looking at me viciously, her eyes full of a ferocious light, "the effect of Mademoiselle's treatment of you, and restore some manly vigour to this wretched thing" (thumping, twisting, and pulling what I have spoken of). "I shall elongate your figure and compress it too-that belt will give you a nice waist, you beast-and now," grasping her dog whip, "I shall give you something to think about."
I trembled. I had already felt that terrible whip, for it had taken a great deal of its persuasion to get me into that position. She stood a little distance off, eyeing me- and resting her left arm on her hip she swung the whip to its full length, and gave me a dozen whistling lashes with it. At each lash I emitted a piercing yell, plainly causing Elise to rejoice. She smiled at my torture as she slowly and deliberately continued the wanton cruelty, lifting her arm each time sufficiently to make the whip unfold itself to its full length.
Before she had finished I had become delirious. Mad with anguish, I bit my tongue, my lips; I yelled and shrieked. Could Mademoiselle know what I was enduring? Could she permit it? I felt it would be useless to appeal to her, and dared not mention her name out of fear of further exasperating her. Besides, Mademoiselle was, I knew, inexorable. I began to feel-as long as I could feel anything but pain-deep resentment, hatred of her for her infidelity, treachery, and callousness, tormenting me, as she seemed to be doing, in every possible way by kindness as well as by cruelty. How could she give me up to this fiend? At last I could think no more. The room whirled round me; whether I yelled or screamed I did not know.
The cessation of the punishment was like Heaven. Spent and exhausted, almost fainting, I was left still hanging in a weak dreamy state, Elise having desisted to go and dress Mademoiselle. I do not know whether I fainted or slept, but I remember the strange fact that the following lines rang in my head with a vividness that frightened me. I remember too that this terrifying exaltation of my memory and other mental faculties filled me with an unspeakable dread that ere long I should find myself, in consequence of what I was undergoing, a jabbering idiot. In my anguish indeed, I almost hoped so. I felt it would serve Mademoiselle and her brutal maid but right.