The Countess lay stretched out full length and motionless on the bed.
Florence felt half mad with excitement. She filled again the ivory jewel with milk; leant back in the easy chair, and inserted the end of the dildoe until it touched her maidenhead. But soon she perceived that in this posture she lost part of her strength; so she sought another. She placed two pillows side by side on the easy chair, on which she rested her elbow, and she began to use the jewel in a manner which gave evidence of her skill and long habit; she harmonized the motion of her loins with the progress of pleasure; then, feeling it coming, she pushed the instrument home, gave a shriek of pain and of pleasure, and, imparting to the royal jewel the necessary movements, she fell back, almost fainting away with the exquisite sensation.
The beautiful Countess sat up on the bed and looked with astonishment. The proud young woman had kept her word. She had sacrificed her virginity to herself and herself alone.
We were three days and three nights without seeing the Countess, and on the fourth day she came to say that Violette might begin her lessons with Florence. After a scene of jealousy very well acted by the Countess, Florence gave her word that she would never interfere with Violette, limiting her attention to the development of her natural talent.
The union of the two disciples of Lesbos was consecrated, and the Countess acquired a marked liking for her new relations, without, however, in any way neglecting Violette, who for a long time continued in her studies with Florence and made a very successful debut.
Our delightful life of love thus went on for a few years; then, then… Ah! it is sad to say what happened. I wished to conclude here one of the most charming episodes of my existence. But since I have begun I must go to the end.
One evening, the Countess, who was always ready to take Violette away from me, found means to keep her in her box after a reception.
The child caught cold and began to cough. This was neglected. She became seriously ill, and as she seemed more excitable since her illness we loved one another too well, in spite of the remonstrance's of the doctor and with the natural consequences.
She was very ill during the winter, lingered on through the summer, and when the autumn leaves began to strew the ground, we accompanied poor little Violette to her last resting-place.
Before expiring she had taken me in her arms, saying: "My own Christian, I love you."
I had a large glass bell placed over her grave, and underneath the Countess and myself planted some of the flowers which had given her a name. For a long time we mourned her loss. Then Florence's love on the one side, and the incidents of everyday life on the other, effaced little by little the bitter recollection of the supreme parting.
I even forgot on the anniversary of her death to go and gather the tiny flowers, the roots of which fed on the substance of my beloved little mistress.
The Countess was more faithful to the memory of poor Violette, and sometimes sent me the flowers with but one word:
"Ungrateful man!"
And now that the story of our short-lived love has come to an end, I have nothing more to do than roll up my MS., tie it up, and, happen what may, I throw it at random on the desk of some intelligent publisher who may be clever enough to catch it up.
Sweet Seventeen Sweet Seventeen: the True Story of a Daughter's Awful Whipping and its Delightful if Direful Consequence Anonymous What is there in the air of Paris which leads us all on to excesses of erotic appetite? Why is sensual gratification the be-all and end-all of the dwellers in the French capital, not dubbed the "Gay City" for nothing?
The atmosphere is transparently clear; the climate is relaxing. Most of the Parisian females are anaemic, and their nerves get the upper hand.
Is it the same with the males, perchance in a lesser degree, so that we may diffidently put forward the hypothesis that neuropaths predominate in the population of the pretty town?
There is not the slightest doubt, be the reasons what they may, that the craving for copulation takes hold of the most frigid individuals of both sexes when once they live within the Lutetian walls.
Oliver Sandcross, born and bred in London, was a splendid example of our bold sweeping theory. Here was an English gentleman, well brought up, and a noted engineer, rather pious too-that is the extraordinary part of it all-who developed the most satyr-like tastes when he settled down in Paris, with his wife and only child, a daughter. The capricious fairy, electricity, whose secrets have only been but slightly fathomed in the last few years, had tempted staid Oliver, and he became one of the most ardent seekers after the advantages to be gained in subjugating this new force. Brilliant offers, relating to lighting and tramways, had caused him to take up his residence in Paris, where, originally wealthy, he made more money than he knew what to do with.
Soon after his arrival, his religious habits dropped away from him, and after business hours he found the greatest pleasure and delight in hunting for feminine prey among venal beauties of all ranks. He admitted every specimen to the album of his fancy, from the married woman, met with at friends' houses and received in his own, to the short-skirted, twelve-year-old flower-girl of the Boulevards. Of the intermediate stages on the rungs of the ladder of lust, it would take us too long to talk, although a classification of Paris prostitution would be a tempting task for the student of psychopathy-if indeed it were possible to establish in schematic form the odds and ends of masculine and feminine humanity which go to make up the alluring and ever-changing kaleidoscope of Paris "on the loose".
Mr. Sandcross had tried everything in turns and nothing long, and his libidinous, almost insensate curiosity had led him to essay what new joys could be found in the depilated arms of effeminate, degenerate lads; some who had proposed themselves to the merry, rich Englishman in good society and others fresh from the workbench, selling their half-starved bodies for pocket-money. In justice to our sturdy Anglo-Saxon, we hasten to state that Socratic vice did not hold him long. His curiosity glutted, he returned to lavish his money on the petticoated little animals who are said to rule the world because their hands rock the cradle. But we think their domination arises from the fact of us men placing our sceptre in their adroit fingers.
Oliver Sandcross confessed to forty-seven years of age when he first came to live in France, a few years ago, and he was a fine specimen of a fifty-year-old rake. He was fair, bald, with a florid complexion and a brown beard rapidly getting white; not too tall; very stout; fine eyes, and a fleshy mouth moist with lechery and full of real sound teeth. In fact, the type of an arthritic, healthy, athletic voluptuary, full of energetic lewdness, with only room in his brain for two hobbies: electricity, with which he obtained gold, and voluptuousness which led him to scatter the yellow coins broadcast.
There was nothing to check him in his lustful career. Moral scruples he had none, remorse and repentance had been left on the threshold of the last church he had frequented, and his wife, luckily for him, never troubled him. She was a pure-minded English gentlewoman, very pretty, and full of love for her husband. She swore by him, adored him, tended him, and he comprised the whole world for her. There was plenty of jealousy in her composition, but it had never been aroused, because nothing could shake her faith in her Oliver. He was the soul of honour in her eyes, incapable of telling a lie or doing a mean action. Had Mrs. Sandcross found her lord in the arms of another woman, she would have turned away from the disgusting sight, merely marvelling at the wonderful resemblance to her husband of the man she had seen. Her good, kind female friends, following the promptings of Christian duty, had tried to perform the mischievous operation known "as opening her eyes". They had all signally failed, for the simple reason that this confiding helpmate did not really understand their perfidious innuendoes. One and all came to the ultimate conclusion that Mrs. Sandcross was either a born fool, or else she shut her eyes to her husband's "goings-on, and therefore they left her to enjoy a life of felicity in her fool's paradise. She was indeed a most happy woman, bathing in daily delight between the attentions of her kind husband, who was generous to a fault, careful, and thoughtful; grateful at not being troubled by the woman who bore his name and looked after his household, and the unceasing devotion of her handsome daughter.