Lo! the Queen of pleasing pains,
Linking Loves in mutual chains,
Wreathes the myrtle bowers between
Cottages of living green;
And commands her virgins gay
Through the mazy groves to stray.
Full three nights in joyous vein
Might you see the choral train,
Hand in hand promiscuous rove
Through thy love-devoted grove;
Crowned with rosy breathing flowers
Under myrtle-woven bowers.
These verses of John Dryden hammered in my head until they nearly drove me frantic. I can scarcely repeat them even now without a feeling of sickness.
My experiences under Elise were of a far more cruel description, as will already have been gathered, than anything I had yet endured, although the birching Mademoiselle had given me had caused me exquisite suffering.
A minute description of all I underwent is out of the question, but Elise's cruelty affected my animal nature only. She could not temper her inflictions with the same sweet mercies as Mademoiselle, notwithstanding that, as the sequel will show, she went further in the attempt than Mademoiselle, but ineffectually. Mercy and kindness from Elise were matters of indifference to me so far as my passions or emotions were concerned. She was undoubtedly a charming woman; her figure was very good, and I remember how she impressed herself on me with her full round bosom as she stood in her simple dark grey dress the moment before she commenced lashing me. But she was coarser and more brutal. She did not possess the ravishing spirituality of Mademoiselle. As a woman she affected me merely from an animal point of view.
In the intellectual appreciation and intelligence of her mistress I had found, even while undergoing her severest punishments, solace and consolation. Mademoiselle directed herself more to working upon the mind and the spirit and used other measures judiciously and discreetly only as they served this purpose.
Elise was purely, ingeniously, and most wantonly cruel for the sake of cruelty itself, in which she appeared to take a fiendish pleasure. I do not believe Mademoiselle would ever have strapped me up in that manner. It was essentially a maid's notion. To elongate my figure indeed!
There was no coquetry, no attempt, no suggesting of dalliance or flirtation about Elise's method. No love; it was absolutely material. She directed herself entirely to the body, not to excite sensations, but with no apparent object beyond her own gratification. In consequence, I could not even feel the satisfaction arising from obedience to a mistress. Nothing appeared to ameliorate or sweeten my fate. I had no hope, except for the termination of these three days. I was absolutely in her hands, at her mercy completely, to wreak what vengeance upon me she pleased. Why had Mademoiselle handed me over to this abomination of desolation? I saw afterwards that she had an object she herself could never have accomplished or which her endeavours to accomplish would have hindered and spoilt the effect of her other influence over me. It was a wise and economical division of labour. The lesson had to be learnt and none was so gifted for inculcating it as Elise. The animal needed taming by brute force without the aid of spiritual agencies, and of that force Elise was the priestess.
It is quite plain that the incidents of my three days purgatory cannot be set out seriatim. If the history of thirty-six hours has occupied so much time and space, and even that has not been dealt with in every detail, how much space would an equally diffuse narrative of the events of seventy-two hours require? I should never have done. Moreover, I have to relate not only the story of those three days, but of subsequent years. I should be interminable!
If any one burns for more nimble details, let him obtain a verbal account from some victim who, like myself, was forced to the sacrifice as a sheep to the slaughter. There are verily and indeed many such; the case is not rare in England nor in Scotland, less rare in Ireland, and still less rare in Germany and Austria. And it is by no means new. It is mythological and classical; it was known at Pompeii, and practised also at Rome. Such matters are in this country veiled in the closest secrecy. Many a haughty dame, respectable and so to speak irreproachable, could vouch for the truth of the assertion; the walls and closets of many a palace could, if endowed with speech, tell the same tale. In olden days this mystery was not thought necessary. But the world was pagan then. This cult, this luxury, exists only amongst the most highly educated, the most intellectual and most refined; amongst the classes vulgarly described as the "Upper Ten Thousand." The middle classes and their children are ignorant of this discipline and excess of voluptuousness.
It was on a Friday morning in the beginning of May when Elise first "tackled me," as she called it. Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, and the nights of those days! How they are stamped and burnt in my recollection! What a martyrdom I underwent!
Elise was tall and handsome, her face the most perfectly oval that I have ever seen, her teeth were white, and her lips full and cherry-coloured; her nose was a little fat, her hair dark brown, her eyebrows were heavy, her limbs admirably moulded, but her figure, notwithstanding her height, gave one the impression of being rather thick set, owing perhaps to her neck being a little short. Her hands were strong, her shoulders broad, and her muscular strength perfectly astonishing. She was always dressed with severe simplicity and was thoroughly a lady's maid in her ways, possessing vigour instead of delicacy, and just appreciably bearing a rankness of person perceptible to the nostrils, which seems inseparable from vigorous growth and life; or, at any rate, inseparable from them in a servant. This added to my punishment, for being constantly brought into the closest possible contact with her, effectually destroyed all romance and sensual gratification which I might have had.
Her bust, however, was a magnificent one, her fully developed breasts were soft, full, large, round, and white! Whatever relief or pleasure I did manage to obtain was from these warm, sensitive, substantial cushions.
Her age was seven and twenty. She had been in the service of some Princesses in France before she had come to Mademoiselle, and her experience of life, of human nature and of physical nature was limitless. The Princesses must assuredly have gone the pace, and have been as dissolute, as sensual, as indifferent to the sufferings of others as the coldest, haughtiest, and most wanton Roman ladies of the Augustan age, some of whom, indeed, they claimed to number in their ancestry.
I began to come to myself.
My physical sufferings were intense. The pain at the sockets of my arms, at my wrists, and under my shoulders was fearful. My weight and the feet forced my hands into the manacles from which I hung suspended and I got a fearful cramp in them. The belt pinched me terribly, impeding my breathing.
The accumulation of my sufferings and the sense of helplessness soon made me hysterical. I durst not cry out again, even if I had sufficient power left in me to do so. I sobbed convulsively, tears running down my face. A violent pain gradually asserted itself up the back of my head, resulting in a sense of deadly sickness; a clammy cold sweat broke out all over me; I nearly suffocated.
In a dreamy, hazy way I was conscious that there was the bed where Elise had slept, there the wash-hand-stand at which she washed and where the slops still remained. The sunlight entered at the window-a door leading into another room stood ajar.