“My dear heart,” she said lovingly. “I really hesitate to trouble you so quickly. But your friends are downstairs, busily occupied with a bunch of frivolous soldiers. To introduce you to them would truly have bothered my conscience; they pay very badly and I have no intention of employing your abilities for free. Downstairs is a farmer who is a friend of mine. He is an old customer who brings me two louis d'or every week as sure as night follows day. And of all people, I would not want to appear unaccommodating toward him. What do you think, little girl? Two louis d'or is nothing to sneeze at, especially not when it is so easily earned.”
“It is not as easy as you think it is, Madame,” I answered. “If you had to suffer yourself what I just went through (I still felt pretty sore)…”
“Oh, but no one is as horrible as that man!” she interrupted. “What I am proposing now is just a little game, nothing else. I guarantee you that his caresses are neither long-lasting nor exhausting. With him, the whole thing is over and done with in a very short while.”
After Madame Florence had finally succeeded in getting my permission, she introduced me to the most boring tax collector type one can imagine. Just try to picture this: a huge bald head, halfway hidden between the broad shoulders of a weight lifter; staring mean-looking eyes overshadowed by bushy reddish eyebrows; a low wrinkled forehead; a fat triple chin; a heavy drinker's belly; and the whole thing supported by short, heavy bowlegs with flat feet that would do honor to a gander. All these small traits, every single one in its proper place, betrayed the revenue man. I was so surprised at the sight of this creature that I did not even notice how our hostess quietly absented herself.
“Well,” said the tax collector in a brutal tone of voice, “did we get together to stand in front of each other with our arms crossed? You are standing there as rigid as a beanpole! Come on, come on, dammit! Come here, girl! I have no time for a quiet tete-a-tete because I am due at a meeting shortly. So, let's get it over with. Where are your hands. Give them to me. Good God, what a fumbler! Quick, put your fingers around it. Now, up and down… loosely from the wrist! That's it… yes… right. a little bit stronger… Stop!.. Now, quicker… Careful! Yes… yes, that's very good …'
Suddenly my hands were covered with his sticky white tribute to my skill in following commands.
This pleasant exercise was hardly finished when he threw a few coins in my direction and disappeared as quickly as if his creditors were chasing him.
When I thought about the strange and horrible demands that are expected from a demi-mondaine, I really did not know if I could think of any service that is more miserable and loathsome. And I exclude neither the galley slave nor the courtier. Can there truly be anything more unbearable than to be forced to satisfy the lusts of any man who happens to come along? To smile lovingly at some depraved rogue whom one loathes with every fiber of one's being? To make love to the object of general repulsion? To submit continually to acts which are as strange as they are unnatural? In a word: to hide behind a mask of artistic skill and hypocrisy; to laugh, sing and drink; to commit every imaginable kind of excess and aberration, while the mind is filled with horror and deepest repulsion. How miserably informed are those who think that our lives consist of one string of uninterrupted joy and pleasure! All the crawling and despicable slaves who live in the courts of this world and who can only maintain their positions by suffering uncounted humiliations, submissive servility and continuous hypocrisy, still don't suffer half as much disappointment or undergo as many humiliations as the girls of our profession. It is not at all difficult for me to make the following statement: if our suffering were to be considered a merit and would be counted as penance for our deeds in this world, there would hardly be one among us who would not have her place in the histories of the martyrs or be worthy of canonization. Although a miserable desire for money may have been the motive for our prostitution, the oppressive general contempt, the outrageous humiliation and the insults we have to suffer are more than fair punishment for it. One must have been a whore to fully understand the terror of this trade. It is not without shuddering that I am trying to remember the hardships I had to endure during my apprenticeship. And still I must admit: how many are there who have suffered far more than I? Maybe that one who is driven around triumphantly in a golden, charmingly painted coach, laquered by Martin, that one — I dare say — who displays an almost revolting luxury matching the perverted and filthy taste of her benefactor. Who would believe that she is considered to be the meanest among the servants, that this same person is the pitiful object of the arrogance, wantonness and brutality of the meanest canaille, in short, that she may still bear the visible marks of physical punishment? I repeat: everything that seems pleasant and alluring in our profession is but illusion and far from the truth. There is nothing more humiliating, nothing more terrifying.
One cannot imagine — unless one knows from bitter experience — the excesses and aberrations of which many men are capable when they are caught in the delirium of their passions. I have known many who received their most voluptuous pleasures by being whipped, or who derived the same ecstasy from whipping another, and it has often happened that I was forced — after I had thoroughly whipped or boxed someone black and blue — to undergo similar tortures. It must seem simply amazing that there are always girls available who endure such a way of life patiently.
But it is amazing what the taste of lasciviousness, avarice, sloth and the hope of a happy future can bring about in people.
During the nearly four months that I stayed at Madame Florence's house, I may pride myself that I went through the most complete course on how to become a woman of pleasure. And when I left this excellent school I possessed all the skill and dexterity necessary to satisfy the old-fashioned and modern ways of lust, to bring about artful variations in the release of passion and to be fully conversant in every thinkable form of gymnastics in the field of lechery and fornication.
A small adventure which went beyond the limits of my endurance made me decide to start working on my own account and to live by myself. It happened as follows:
One day we were visited by an entire band of soldiers whose passions were as hot as their purses were empty. They had liberally sacrificed to Bacchus and thereupon decided to bestow their adoration upon the ladies of Venus.
Unfortunately, only two of us were at the house at that time. And to make it worse, my colleague was taking a cure with a strengthening medicine which tempered her ardor and made it temporarily impossible for her to be of any use to these visiting gentlemen. Thus I was left completely alone with them. In vain I tried to respectfully point out to them that it was absolutely impossible to properly satisfy the demands of so many people at once. But, whether I wanted to or not, I had to do whatever they desired. Finally I had to endure thirty attacks within two hours. Oh, how T wished that some devout ladies would have wanted to take my place and undergo the brutal treatment I received so they might have worked toward the redemption of their eternal souls! But as far as I, miserable sinner, am concerned, I have to admit that it was far from me to endure this entire affair patiently and to top if off with a Christian blessing for my rapists. I did not cease during this entire scene to heap the most incredible blasphemies upon their heads. After all, too much is too much. I was so gorged with sensual delights that I was no longer capable of digesting them.
CHAPTER SIX. A HOME OF MY OWN
After this vulgar and brutal visitation it was clear, even to Madame Florence, that it was useless to try and talk me into staying at the house any longer. She agreed to our separation with the condition that I would be available to render my services whenever the house needed extra help. And thus we said our farewells with mutual understanding and respect. I bought a few pieces of furniture with which I decorated a small home in the rue d'Argen-teuil and believed that I had succeeded in escaping police supervision. But what is the use of human cunning when fate has decided against us? Jealous, wrongful accusations disturbed the peace of my seclusion and disrupted my carefully laid plans just when I least expected it.