Jacky S

Suburban Souls, Book II

11

How now, how now? How go maidenheads? Here, you maid?

— Shakespeare

…what opinion he must have of my modesty, that he could suppose, I should so much as entertain a thought of lying with two brothers?

— Daniel Defoe

LILIAN TO JACKY.

Thursday, January 19, 1899.

My very own Jacky,

Are you? No, you are not. You do not love your little girl as she ought to be loved.

I almost had an idea of what would happen to you Thursday night, and I waited a good long time before going up to my room, supposing that if you had missed the train, you would have thought of returning here. I am truly sorry at what happened to you, without nevertheless being able to pardon you the affront you put upon me after all for next Sunday.

No, you are not a man, as you fear a few moments of bad temper or a scolding, for that is the only reason that prevents you coming on Sunday. I can plainly see that I shall never occupy anything else but the second place in everything and every way.

I thank you extremely for all the commissions which you have done deliciously well, therefore I will abuse your kindness and ask you to be so kind as to go to the Opéra Comique when you receive this note, and take the eight-franc seats you mention for Saturday evening.

We will settle up Sunday if I see you, or by letter if you do not come. I count upon your amiability for these tickets. Can you send them to me by post?

You will lose if you don't come. You would find something good, for I feel inclined for a little naughtiness. Those who wish to profit therefrom, please take notice!

I love you too much and I am unhappy.

LILY.

January 23, 1894.

I had executed all the commissions entrusted to me by Arvel's daughter, and had been able to obtain for her, or rather for her father, a very large percentage, such as he would probably not have succeeded in getting. And by the manner in which the little piece of business was done, he must have known that I had managed it. The seats for the theatre, I also bought, and sent by registered letter, to avoid the accident (?) of the preceding October, and I also wanted her to feel that I had never forgotten the lost bank-note. She was so careful not to allude to this when she saw me, that she no doubt felt the implied reproach. I have no recollection how I answered her last letter, but I think I sent her a statement of accounts, and once more impressed upon her that it was impossible for me to leave Paris on a Sunday. I added that I should come down to Sonis on Monday night, the twenty-third of January, by the usual train, with all the receipts for her Papa, and another volume of Justine, ready in an envelope, and if I did not see her, I should slip everything in the letterbox of her villa, and return the way I had come.

So I went accordingly, and found my Lilian strolling in the dark with her dogs. To my great surprise, she was extremely gracious, and had evidently given up as a bad job an idea of trying to drag me away from my dominical duties. She had enjoyed herself very much at the opera, having gone with one of her workgirls. I replied that I had intended to go myself and see her at the play, and she said I ought to have done so. I could not very well answer that perhaps she had not gone with the girl, or that if she had, the latter might have told her parents that I was there. All this proved the bidden complicity of both mother and father, and had I opened my mouth on this topic, it would have led to useless quarrels.

I told her during our walk that Lord Fontarcy was shortly coming to Paris again, and very probably he would show a desire to see her once more.

“You would have to be very kind to him this time, especially as Clara would not be there. You could not refuse giving him pleasure with your mouth, the same as you like to do with me.”

“Oh, no, I could never do that to him! I would use my hand, but nothing else. I have no idea of disgust with you. I would do anything for you!”

“We will see later how far your devotion will take you. I shall feel great excitement in forcing you into the arms of my friend, and I am sorry I do not know anybody else I can trust. You can have no idea how pleased I am to think that you love me well enough to prostitute yourself for my pleasure.”

“Yes, I do love you and all your ideas.”

She said this in a low voice, under the influence of an inward wave of voluptuousness, for I must not forget to remind the reader that our conversations, during these nocturnal rambles, were carried on to a running accompaniment of the most lewd kisses and reciprocal gropings and touchings.

“I have the vilest ideas with regard to you,” I continued, “There is nothing revolting, degrading, or horrible between man and woman but what I should like you to execute with me, and I will eventually force you to say that I have become a vile, repugnant brute in your eyes.”

“Never, never! You don't know what you say. Have I not told you over and over again that everything you do in regard to the pleasures of love is perfection, and just what I like? I have enormous delight with you.”

“I am afraid you would refuse many things when it came to a pinch. Look at all the horrors described in the book you are reading, and which no one should ever know you have perused. By the way, I have brought you down another volume. Well, you have noticed how the poor martyred heroine, Justine, is forced to go with nearly all her persecutors to the water-closet, and wait until they have evacuated, to cleanse their fundaments with her tongue. Would you do that with me?”

The answer came quickly, without hesitation:

“Certainly, I would! I'll go to the closet with you. But I won't let you go with me.”

I now made her tell me the story of Gaston's attempted rape in the train again, and I could not help excusing him. She agreed with me that she had done wrong to lead him on, having never granted him the least favor, but now, knowing what she did about men and their desires, she would never have let him kiss her and play with her to such an extent, if she had no intention of giving way.

This talk and a lot more of the same kind, that I cannot now remember, had made both of us most fearfully excited, and we must have formed a strange picture, if anyone had met us, on the dark road. Lilian's hat was all awry, her hair disarranged, and her face, neck, and throat glistened with the saliva my delighted tongue had deposited on her warm flesh. We held each other closely embraced, and her arms must have been black and blue from the way I had pinched her, always much to her delight.

I desired her greatly that evening, and in my pocket was a leather belt, which I had bought that day, as I had hoped my wayward girl might take me into her house again. Of course, I did not tell her of my peculiar purchase.

I had noticed that she was much stouter, as I held her in my arms, and I told her so. She agreed that there was a slight increase of fat.

“That is because you are no longer a virgin,” I explained. “What makes you say that? I am a virgin, I assure you.”

“You seem strangely altered in many little ways,” I answered, “and your entire bearing, which last year was that of a young girl, is now to my idea more like that of a married woman.”

She laughed. I continued:

“I can soon see if you are a virgin or not.”

“How?”

“I have only to insert my finger gently, if you will let me.”

“Certainly, I will. Why not?”

“Why not indeed? Come along, put your foot up!”

“What do you mean?” she asked, feigning surprise.

“You have only to place one of your little tootsies on yonder bench and I shall be able to tell you in a jiffy.”

She laughed and began to walk a little bit faster, getting away from the bench, and complaining that she was afraid some one might see us. Why had she not found that out before? The silly girl was utterly mistaken in me, and believed she could make me digest the most transparent falsehoods. As I walked by her side, silent for a moment, I could not help asking myself if the game I was playing was worth the candle? Should I not do better to leave her alone entirely to rot in peace, entrenched in her lager of lies, with her mother's lover? The thought of the old gentleman made me inclined to take up my position again, as I wanted to be certain of what was at present mere conjecture. And I was very curious to see what would be Lily's next maneuver. Why did she so wish to keep up the fable of her virginity? I had told her scores of times that she could do as she liked with her body. I was not jealous, nor did I expect fidelity; all I desired was a little love now and again, if she cared to grant it to me, and when she told me to leave her, I would do so without a word, and keep all my suffering to myself This evidently did not suit her, as she must have wanted me to be jealous, so as to have some feeling to work on. At present, I was impregnable. I waited for her to speak, and as I thought, she tried to punish me for my suspicions anent her maidenhead, by trying to arouse my jealousy-which did not exist.

She had been invited to dine out the evening before (Sunday), by Madame Rosenblatt and her sister, together with some gentlemen friends; cousins, brothers-in-law, or what not. If memory serves me rightly, one of them was an officer. I candidly confess that I do not recollect the story properly, as it was rather muddled. In plain words, it was a lie. The only thing that was true, was that she had had what is vulgarly called a jolly good spree, and had dined in a private room with a merry party. I only asked her quite coolly how she managed to elude the vigilance (?) of the silly old grandmother. She replied that Madame Rosenblatt had sent her a false telegram, inviting her to dine with her at her house. The dinner had taken place at the Hôtel-Restaurant Narkola, which I knew from experience to afford bedroom accommodation, as well as meals. She had been so jolly, and drank so much wine, that she had lost a silver purse which hung on the silver chatelaine I never saw. She pretended to be very much put out about this loss, as she was frightened that her Mamma would notice it and ask her awkward questions. There were twenty francs in the purse, too. I replied that there was a slight balance due to me on the commissions I had executed for her father, and I should be pleased to offer her that, and shortly I would give her a new silver purse, although it might not match the one that was gone.

“Oh! That would not matter, but I dare say you think I have told you this story to make you give me something.”

“You should not say that. I only know that you say you have lost a purse with money in it. You therefore need not repay me for the two seats I got for the Opéra Comique, nor shall I claim of you the little sum due to me on your Pa's account. As for the purse-”

“Never mind about that. I thank you for the seats, but I am afraid you will think I expected you pay for them.”

“I do not think anything. I only know that it gives me great pleasure to make you the smallest present in the world and you know very well that it would be impossible for me to accept money from you for theatre tickets.”

She thanked me briefly, and looked up to me with surprise and timidity, as if trying to read me and utterly failing to do so.

I inwardly resolved never to allow her or her people to penetrate my thoughts. The only way was to change my conduct and humour every time I saw them or the daughter. I had no chance at Sonis unless I became a perfect comedian, or walked off altogether.

So I entered on my part at once, instead of showing my suspicions about her virginity, or the absurdity of the story of her dinner with Madame Rosenblatt. I was very gay, respectful, and tender during the finish of our long walk and as we reached the door of the house I gave her the accounts and receipts for her Papa and another volume of Justine. I returned her the letter from Nice, but I kept the typewritten envelope, on which was her name and address. Without asking her to let me into the house, I made as if to go, holding out my hand to say good bye. She broached the subject herself.

“I can't take you into the villa tonight, as Granny won't let me sit up. Even now, she is waiting for me to come to bed, and I shall be scolded for stopping out so late. There is another thing too, that I hardly like to tell you. I am unwell again. I thought it was all over and now I have got what is almost a perte, or flooding, which fatigues me very much.”

“Anyhow you are not enceinte!”

“How amusing you are!” she replied, laughing.

“Poor little girl! I suppose you must suffer too from the 'whites'?”

“How strange you should have guessed that!” She spoke with feigned astonishment.

“I had some fleurs blanches for the first time in my life last Saturday. How ought I to cure them?”

“You must see a doctor and take a course of tonics, and some iron and quinine. I will make you some quinine wine. You should use a syringe with some astringent for the 'whites.'“

“You know I can't take injections!”

This was playing the game rather too strong, but I withheld a bitter laugh, as I bade her a loving farewell and saw her go into the house.

This had been an evening of revelations for me. Papa had left her at home to bring on her periodical flow by hook or by crook, and permission was granted to go with the paying friends and lovers at the accommodating Hôtel-Restaurant Narkola, where I could play the spy the next day if I wanted to know about the banquet. And there was the repeated lie of the maidenhead! Lilian little knew that in habitual liars, persistent, obstinate denigration is equivalent in many cases to an avowal.

I stopped short in my stride on the way to the station, and although it was a frosty night, a heavy sweat broke out upon my brow, as I thought of what might have been. Up to last October, I was deeply struck with Miss Arvel, and had I been rich enough, I do not know where my weakness might have taken me. To think that I might have given my name to her, introduced her into my family, and one day found old Eric in my bed! My marriage would have broken the heart of my poor, sweet, devoted invalid at home. I should have pensioned her off, and sent her to some warm climate-had I been rich. Other men have put away wives and mistresses after years and years of cohabitation; why should not I have done the same-had I been rich? I could have refused nothing to Lilian Arvel, or her parents, and so should never have allowed myself time to analyze their motives-had I been rich.

And I wonder what the few passengers waiting on the platform of the station of Sonis that wintry night, thought of a mad Englishman, who suddenly lifted his head out of the depths of the broad, warm collar of his fur-lined pelisse, and, taking his pipe from between his lips, shrieked aloud:

“Thank God, I'm poor!”

I should not have been human if I had not been extremely annoyed at Lilian's conduct towards me. I was wounded in every way, and I felt there was a lack of confidence; she would tell me nothing of her inmost feelings. I was to be an ordinary victim to her wiles, and this being entirely repugnant to me, I resolved to let her run loose. I was getting tired of her tricky ways.

These thoughts crowded into my brain, as on the twenty-forth of January, I started making her some quinine wine. It was a great success and I manufactured several quarts, which met with the approval of everybody at the villa, as I gave them to her later on.

Lord Fontarcy now reappeared in Paris, and the day after I had made the first lot of wine, we had a quiet bit of luncheon together all alone, as Clara had not accompanied him this time. Naturally, after we had discussed serious matters, the talk reverted to Lilian, and in as few words as possible I stated the case, without seeking to spare my own poor self. His face showed great preoccupation and I could see that he was, in point of fact, quite disgusted with her.

“Why can't she be frank and good to you quite simply, or else let you go in peace and never see you again?”

This was a plain, Anglo-Saxon way of putting things which a woman like Lilian was totally incapable of understanding, and had she been as he wished, this story would never have been written. I asked him if he cared to see her, adding that I knew she would be glad to join us in a little orgy, but he declined, and in a few cautiously worded sentences, led me to understand that he did not approve of her conduct in general, and having no faith or confidence in her, preferred to have nothing to do with her. He was, I think, vexed at her having broken her promise to Clara and him concerning the proposed visit to his place in London, being very sensitive on all such simple points of honor, if I may be permitted to use such a term here. What pleased me most about my good old friend was, that although inwardly disgusted with Lilian's stupid game of hide and seek, he studiously avoided saying anything that I might have construed as being against her. But I read his kindly thoughts:

“She is fooling thee, but that is your own lookout; if you like her calculating, capricious ways, who shall gainsay thee, surely not I, thy friend? But I will have nothing to do with her. She is too dishonest for me, and I fear her, and all such scheming maidens after her kind.”

All the above he did not say, but I knew him well enough, after a friendship of twenty years, to be able to know exactly his great horror of deliberately wicked women.

On leaving him late in the afternoon, I stopped mechanically in front of a jeweler's shop, and my eye fell upon a row of silver purses. I remembered how Lilian had told me that she had lost hers from off her châtelaine, and I resolved to buy her one, and send it to her as a present, which would signify: “Good bye, sweetheart, good bye!”

I chose a pretty purse, with a separation in the middle to divide the gold from the silver, and going into the nearest post-office, I sent her a letter-card, couched, as well as I can recollect, in the following terms:

JACKY TO LILIAN.

Thursday, January 26, 1899.

Little jade,

I have just had lunch with Fontarcy, who desires to be remembered to you. I have bought you a silver purse, with a separation.

“Purse-separation.” How do those words strike you?

I will send it to you shortly, and also your quinine wine, which will be ready in ten days.

I hate you!

“PIGNOUF.”

This short and rude note brought the following answer:

LILIAN TO JACKY.

(No date or place.) Received January 28, 1899.

For supreme elegance and refinement, commend me to the signature with which you have embellished the note received last night. Nevertheless, I prefer the name which I often catch myself murmuring under my breath; the name which for me possesses infinite sweetness-Jacky-and I assure you I will never answer any letter signed otherwise.

“Pignouf,” signifies a mean cad. You are one perhaps, but I would pray you to forbear carrying your love of truth so far as to use that highly decorative word as a nom de plume.

I am in bed just now. There is no danger, but I suffer greatly. I will tell you all about it when I see you.

Amuse yourself well with your friend; but do not renew the little orgy of last year with anybody else but me. I shall know it; and I assure you that all would be finished forever between us. On that subject, I do not possess your lofty and liberal ideas.

Give Lord Fontarcy a nice long kiss from little Lilian. Tell him I should love to see him and that I hope to very soon. Is he quite well and happy? I really believe I am in love with him. Are you jealous, my poor, darling Papa? I am afraid your daughter is very naughty. She feels so anyhow.

Thank you for the quinine and also for the purse; how kind you are to have thought of that!

Your little puppy, Pip, grows more and more handsome every day.

He is the pick of the litter. He has got a funny little twisted tail; quite wonderful, but not as beautiful in my idea as that of Jacky. I speak to him of his future master, and he is very satisfied with his fate. But will he always remain with you, or share the life of all your others? This last idea does not please me at all.

As for me, I do not hate you-I adore you!

LILIAN.

JACKY TO LILIAN.

Paris. January 30, 1899.

My little Lilian,

I need not explain to you the sweet joy that your last letter, received Saturday morning, has given me, since you wrote it with the firm intention to please me. That I perceive and feel completely. What has often vexed me was to see that you knew well how to make me love you when you chose, but you did not always choose.

If you would only use the tenth part of your malicious and natural cunning to bestow upon me a little of the inexhaustible kindness which is to be found, it is said, at the bottom of every woman's heart, how happy you would make me, by bringing a trifle of happiness into my life, which, already so sad, was about to become more desolate without you. For when I sent you that letter-card last Thursday, I was firmly resolved to break with you. Perhaps, as you are very intelligent, you read between the lines of silly and low joking, and, understanding my thoughts, you have had a leap of love towards me, and you wrote to me to console me and stop me in time. Is that right? No matter; the essential is that you wrote me the most beautiful letter I have received from you up to the present, I think, although you have sent me some very nice ones-especially those of Lamalou.

After leaving Lord F., I saw some silver purses, and the idea struck me to buy one for you and make you a “good bye” present. I love you too much to endure any longer your treatment of the last few months. Hideous nightmare! If you had been indifferent to me, I should not have noticed it. But the role of the suffering sweetheart, groaning, whimpering, swearing, supplicating, afflicted with the epistolary dysentery of unhappy lovers, juggling with the words: “sadness-wounded pride-broken heart,” and other commonplace phrases, is not in my repertory. I saw myself continually the toy of a little shrew, with a heart of stone, wicked, teasing, and bad-tempered, to say the least. It was too much. It was sickening, and I did not want to return to my vomit.

I wished never to see you more, and I had the intention to put off all invitations by pretexting a voyage. Two such refusals and I should never have been invited again. I should have passed for a boor, and should have felt great grief, but not much more than this winter; and time, I hope, would have closed my wound.

Am I right or wrong, my little daughter? Heaven only knows! But such was my firm intention. Ask Fontarcy.

Is he your new sweetheart? And Gaston, what will he say? How sweet you are! Oh, you are a real woman! What makes me split my sides, is that you take upon yourself the right to make me a cuckold before my eyes, or behind my back, and I must say nothing, and never stray from the path of virtue? Where is the little slave of bygone days? She has broken her chains.

But I will be avenged, and this is how: you say you want to renew the little saturnalia of last autumn? I am willing, but I condemn you to execute such horrors with your new lover, that you will be disgusted with him forever. That will be your punishment.

I begin to see now what you like, and perhaps I may be able to satisfy you in a terribly exquisite and perverse way. But it is a very delicate matter. I must talk to you quietly about it. I am accomplishing a work of seduction just now for your future enjoyment.

And you, love, work for me. Think of everything that might please me in your house at Sonis, and out of doors when you can venture to escape.

Seriously, I should like to have news of your health. Are you perhaps more ill than you like to tell me? I am very uneasy about it. You do not say what it is, but I guess. I have already guessed lots of things about you. I have to-you are so wanting in frankness.

Poor little puppy Pip! You are very amiable! Only think, he was about to become an orphan; what an escape-and for me too-and for Lilian too!

What you say about the name of Jacky delights me and tickles me agreeably. What happiness if, when I see you, you were to be as in your letter. You ought to-but no, I am not going to tell you what you ought to do to make me love you. If you have naught that is good in your soul for me, say so and let me go!

JACKY.

LILIAN TO JACKY.

Tuesday, January 31, 1899.

Can you come tomorrow night by the nine o'clock train? I shall expect you and do my very best to secure an hour's tête-à-tête in the nasty little dining-room you know.

Is Lord Fontarcy still in Paris?

My parents will be back Saturday.

Kiss and love,

LILIAN.

As I went to keep the above alluring appointment, I reflected on the mind and character of my charmer, and the result was far from being complimentary to her. I was surprised to find that she had answered a letter where I had the sinister audacity to say that “I did not wish to return to my vomit!” I was opening my eyes at last, and I did not care if she were to be offended with me or not. Still I could not have very deep love for a woman to write to her as I had just done.

Where she made her great mistake, as a trifler with men, and I beg my lady readers to make a note of this, was in not knowing her customers. She used the same bait for all her fish. It was easier for her, but such proceedings savor of narrow-mindedness. A woman is clever who alters her tactics with every lover. A true huntsman uses a different cartridge for each variety of game. Had I desired the complete favors of this hysterical, selfish creature, I should have had to pay a fearful price. And, in return for all my sacrifices, I must have suffered in the terrible bondage that would have held me-a sensitive man-tightly tied, by the links of my own lusts, to this fearful example of a wickedly neurotic female, without reason, without shame, without the slightest particle of self-respect. I was vile enough, in all conscience, and I have little right to judge her, but I had no wish to torture her; I wanted a little love, if it suited her to love me, and that was all. She could do whatever she liked, and enjoy a crowd of miscellaneous lovers, as long as she behaved honestly to me, and when she had enough of me, she was to say so, and I would walk out of her life without a murmur. But this was too simple and sincere for her. There was no money in this, nor any hold on a man. I was not jealous, I had never asked for her virginity. How could such a man be “worked”? It will also be noticed that I asked her in my letter to think of all that might please her in her house. I meant that she was to try and make her Papa like me exceedingly, so as to invite me often, and she accepted all my sly innuendoes on this subject as a matter of course. I wondered, too, why she called her dining-room: “nasty”? I had never said so, but it must have been because Papa had possessed her in that room, in the evening after dinner, when Mamma had gone up to bed. I also thought, as I sat in the train, that the principal reason for her kind invitation, was because I was bringing a little silver purse.

She was waiting for me with her dogs as I came out of the station, and greeted me kindly, affectionately, and with much rapid gossip, so as to prevent me recurring to the harsh part of my letter. I was quite satisfied to have produced my slight effect; I knew-alas! — that all my remonstrances would be soon forgotten.

After a short walk, she told me to keep a sharp eye on the dining-room window, which faced the road. When I saw the light go out, it would mean that she had gone upstairs with her lamp to Granny and would see that all was quiet for the night. I was to go for a little stroll, and when I saw the light reappear, come softly into the house, as that would mean she was back in the dining-room again, waiting for me, and supposed to be writing letters. Everything was arranged as she told me, and twenty minutes later, I was in her arms. She had nothing on but a dove-colored dressing-gown of some soft material over her chemise, petticoat, and drawers.

After a passionate bout of kissing, she sat on my knee and chatted gaily, and I frankly confess that I forgot all her wretched shilly-shallying in the joy of holding her loved form clasped in my arms.

Why she had been ill in bed was this: she had suffered agonies through toothache and after trying all the domestic remedies of her grandmother, and obtaining no relief, had fled to Paris alone, and rushed to a Dental Institute. There, a young dentist told her she had a very bad abscess of the gums and declared it must be operated at once. On her affirming that she feared suffering, he offered to administer some gas and produce insensibility. To this she had consented.

“Were you not frightened? He might have taken liberties with you and perhaps violated you? Had you no fear, as you say you were all alone with him?”

I watched her narrowly as I said this. She answered me coolly that she had no fear on that head, and I felt more certain than ever that I was right in thinking that her maidenhead had disappeared in October or November.

Duly put to sleep, she remembered nothing more, until she found herself half-undressed and quite dazed, with several windows open, and a crowd of people round her. It appears that the young doctor had administered an overdose, and as an older man who was now in the room told her, her life had been in danger. She had been accompanied to the railway station and was now, although out of bed, still under the care of a doctor.

I told her that she ought to have telegraphed for me, but I did not say how I felt inclined to disbelieve her entirely. Her troubles, to my thinking, might be connected with her womb, and I was afraid that the visit to a dentist meant some uterine exploration. There may have been an abscess as well, and I felt a movement of horror, as I thought of a contaminating contact. It is only just to say that these disgusting thoughts came into my mind later. Everything seemed to conspire against Lilian, and drive me slowly from her: her own conduct and the dread secrets of her prostituted frame.

The operation had taken place during the past week, and Charlotte had spent Sunday with her, sleeping at Sonis, before the return of Lilian's parents. While Lilian talked to me, I had my hand on her naked thighs, and toyed with the luxuriant growth of hair on her mount.

“Charlotte did like that to me the other night as I was falling off to sleep-just the same as you are doing to me now.”

“Did you spend with her finger?”

“Certainly not,” answered Lily, indignantly, “I turned over, pushed her hand away, and went to sleep.”

I have often noticed that if a woman is allowed to talk without being contradicted, she will tell a series of half-truths, relating to what occupies her mind at the time, and an attentive listener is thus often put on the track of secrets he would not otherwise be able to get at. Many men also possess this same grave defect, and lack the retentive power which should prevent them making the slightest allusion to anything they may wish to hide. So I gathered that Charlotte and Lilian had plenty of tribadic fun together.

Still I kept my own counsel, and by laughing and joking, contrived to produce upon her the impression I wanted; that I was a love-sick loon, desiring her madly, full of strange sensual longings, and ready to believe anything she might tell me.

I now began to get rather lecherous and excited, having her half-naked body on my knee, and I made her stand up, while my hands wandered all over her lithe frame. She still kept up a slight show of resistance and I felt greatly irritated and lewd, as I knew that my angel was merely shamming, being by this time expert at every caress. But I played my part, and enjoyed the idea of passing for a fool, especially as I knew that all my sayings and doings would be reported to Papa and Mamma on their return. I opened her peignoir and was astonished to find that she had grown much fatter in every way and I told her what I thought. She agreed with me, but did not seem to suspect that I noticed she was now a woman. All her girlishness was gone.

As she stood in front of me, I took off her petticoat, and she, in obedience to my wishes, at once dropped her drawers and was naked, with the exception of her loose robe, chemise, shoes, and stockings. I will not weary my reader with an account of my ecstatic caresses, lickings, and feeling of that serpentine body I loved so well, and which I had not seen naked for four months, but I must describe how I fulfilled a strange longing I had felt for some time past.

I had in my pocket the leather belt of which I have already spoken, and she graciously permitted me to clasp it round her naked waist.

I drew it in as far as it would go, and unluckily found I had forgotten my penknife, or I would have made some fresh holes, to tighten it still more, as my idea was to hurt her a little. It excited my passion to a great extent to imagine that a woman could endure a little suffering for my sake. The circumference of her naked waist was about twenty inches, and I could have easily have gained a couple more had I persevered. She complained in a sweet way that she was not at her ease, and that she did not look pretty, as her little belly jutted out in front by the pressure of the girdle. Paying no heed to her peevish complaints, I drew another strap from my pocket, and fastened her legs securely together just above the knee.

Then I forced a passage through her legs from the front, and thoroughly enjoyed the sensation of roughly pushing my hand between her smooth thighs thus drawn together. She seemed to enjoy the fun, especially as I did not forget to caress her clitoris, ever moist, on the way. Now I altered my tactics, and keeping my right hand forced against her slit, my left tried to effect a passage through the strapped thighs from behind.

Directly I began to push my hand under her bottom, she gradually let herself fall to the ground, and with many a contortion, managed to dislodge my fingers. She swore I tickled her to such an extent that she could not bear it. I desisted, having long since made up my mind that I would allow myself to be made a fool of, until I should tire of the role of victim, and so I released her legs, but left the belt still round her waist. I then asked her what I should do to her, and she asked me to provoke her orgasm with my tongue and quickly installed herself upon the little sofa for that purpose. I was in a good humor and smiled to myself, as I thought what splendid control I had over my passions. Here was a woman who swore continually that she adored me, exercising all her cunning to keep up the pretence of her virginity, and trying all she could do to present only a front view of her secret charms. She willingly stood up naked before me, but when I approached her from behind, when my fingers could have so easily slipped into an excited vagina, she artfully wriggled away. I ought perhaps have spoken, but I was curious to see what she meant, and where she was going. Did she know, poor fool that she was?

She reclined upon the couch, and I was soon on my knees, my tongue sucking and licking all her body, from her breasts to her knees.

I was very excited, albeit I never lost my presence of mind with her, and I told her I loved to lick her all over and I felt certain that at some time or another I had kissed every part of her body, except her feet.

“Oh! You kissed and licked my feet, too, once!” she exclaimed.

“Did I? When was that, darling?” I knew perfectly well that I had never done so to her.

“In August, when you slept all night with me.”

What strange illusions, and what a quantity of lovers she must have had to so mix up their caresses! I grunted an answer that might have meant anything, as my mouth and tongue were busy at work upon her lively clitoris; and I found, being perfectly cool and collected, that her private parts were quite different beneath my lips, being fatter and more open, and my tongue seemed to slip more easily within and penetrate further. I now began to caress her with my hands, while I continued sucking her in the most artistic and elaborate way I could, and I tried to get hold of her two hairy lips and, under pretence of caressing her, force a finger within. But she was too artful for me and, taking my hands in hers, drew them away. She seemed to enjoy my efforts to please her, and kept me between her legs so hard at work that I lost all desire and got quite tired. I remember now how I thought of Charlotte, and guessed she had pumped my Lilian dry on Sunday, and Monday morning too, and I grasped the difficulty of my task with Lilian, having to fight against Papa, Lolotte, and her other lovers.

And so I sucked and sucked, my penis rising and falling, according as my thoughts led me, but Lilian hid with closed eyes, enjoying the sensation caused by my industrious tongue.

Now and then, she would murmur: “Enough! Enough!” and then, of course, I went on more ardently than ever. But the best of everything must come to an end and she at last pushed me away, I must have been at least an hour between her thighs, which I consider a record time for such a young woman.

She lay panting; breathing heavily, her eyes half-closed, her legs outstretched; all in voluptuous disorder, her shift rucked up to her navel and wide open in front, showing the ruby nipples on her baby breasts.

“Now I am going to see if you are still a virgin, as you agreed to let me do.”

“All right,” she said, dreamily, raising herself a little, “How will you do it?”

“With my finger,” and I went to work and just placed my index at the entrance of her grotto. She started and drew herself up, out of my reach.

“Oh, it is so tender and sensitive so soon after spending!”

Here was yet another proof of the wrecked virginity, but I took not the slightest notice. I found this useless fencing very curious, but I wanted to ejaculate also and therefore resolved not to quarrel. I drew near to her head, as she reclined lazily on the couch, and I rubbed my weapon and my testicles all over her face for a few minutes, reveling in the fascinating contact.

“I shall spend on your face, dear.”

“Oh, don't do that!” she cried out in alarm.

“Well then, take me in your mouth.”

“I can't, I am still sore about the gums.”

She was so indolent, tired, and worn, that I could see she was quite out of sorts, and would have thought it fine fun to let me depart as I had come. But I induced her royal highness to take it in her hand, and she gripped it tightly and manipulated it cleverly enough as I stood by the side of the sofa, my breeches down, while she still lay in the same position.

“Let me see it,” she said, turning her face towards its scarlet head.

I was getting near the crisis now, under the influence of her soft hand, and I held her head up and said to her:

“Look at it! Keep your eyes on it!”

She fixed her gaze upon it for a second, and then turned her eyes away and released her hold. A tired expression came over her face; she had spent her fill and wished me to finish quickly, or not at all. How selfish she was! How she loved me!

“How shall I spend?”

“With my hand! Make haste!” And she accelerated her masturbating movements.

“Let me spend on you!” I exclaimed, panting with suppressed desire.

She laughed, but opened her peignoir and pulled up her chemise, exposing herself completely, as she guessed my wish. She gripped my bursting rod fast, and, shaking it violently to and fro, I felt the most torturing pleasure as the floodgates opened, and the seed flew in the air, to my great delight and relief. She held the red knob well over her belly, but her grasp was so convulsive that the liquor escaped with difficulty and in tiny spurts and clots. As she felt the hot drops fall rapidly, one by one, on her hairy mount and stomach, she uttered a little cry of surprise and dismay at the fall of each one:

“Oh! Oh! Oh! What a lot! Will you never be done?”

At last the shower ceased, and she let go my dart. As I recovered my self-possession, I could not help smiling as I noticed that her black bush was covered with little spots of spending, as if snow had fallen. There was some, too, on her smooth belly, and the edges of her dressing-gown were also soiled. It is astonishing how the seminal spurt goes far, and lands in all sorts of holes and corners, when allowed to escape in the open.

She arose with a sigh of relief and asked if she might take off her belt. I released her and gloated over the red marks its pressure had left upon her skin.

And now we sat down and talked awhile, as she lazily turned over the pages of Justine, and explained to me what awful pleasure that infamous book had given her. She loved the disgusting pictures, too, with which this terrible work is adorned. One character amused her greatly. She spoke quite seriously about it and I could see that this was a deep impression. I allude to Dorothée, or Madame d'Estreval, who appears in the third volume, possessing a clitoris three inches long. It was this malformation that had greatly excited the libertine imagination of my sphinx-like mistress.

Having spent, she once more began to worry about me and show signs of jealousy, which increased as I told her that I was obliged to go to London shortly for a few days on a matter of business. Indeed, it was a wild-goose chase after some money that was owed me, and which I saw a chance of getting, if I went myself. At this tale, her temper increased, and I pulled out my little parcel containing the silver purse, which she was artful enough not to have alluded to as yet, although she was no doubt waiting for it.

“Here it is,” I said, “and I had a good mind to throw it in your face and say 'good bye' forever, if you had not sent me that nice letter.”

“It is a very pretty purse,” she said, dreamily, but evading a direct reply.

“What a bad temper you are always in, directly you have spent!” I replied.

“And before, as well!”

“Yes, my darling, you are always out of sorts. You have got a devil's temper, you little whore!”

This was the first time I had ever dared to use such a word to her, or indeed to any woman. To my great surprise, she did not mind. I think she rather liked it; I was coming down to her level, she thought.

“If I am a whore, pray, sir, what are you?”

“A maquereau! Your Papa- maquereau!”

She started and looked at me strangely, as I had never spoken to her like this before, and I wondered at my own boldness, which arose from the flight of my illusions.

In obedience to her request, I explained to her what I meant when I said in my letter that I was preparing something new and terribly perverse for her special delectation. Knowing, or rather guessing, that she would like to renew the little orgy we had enjoyed with Lord Fontarcy; that is to say, allowing her to be with another man in my company, I had been casting about to find that second person, and, to attain my object, had begun to throw out hints to a gentleman in whom I had entire confidence, and whom I saw every day. Lilian was very eager to know who, and I did not tease her long. The man in question was my own brother, who I was trying to seduce for her, without telling him who she really was. This vile scheme delighted Lilian, and excited her greatly. She urged me on in my work to debauch my brother's brain for her, and there is no doubt that the idea of belonging to two brothers acted in a powerfully lascivious way upon her seething, salacious imagination.

Promising to do my best, I took a tender leave of her, and told her I would write, as soon as I knew when I left for certain and where I stopped in London. She allowed me to write openly to her from England, although my letters would bear the British stamps and postmarks, showing a difference to the preceding year, when I was not allowed to correspond direct from Lamalou. And perhaps the parents always knew all along?

12

Alors, le souvenir excitant l-'espérance,

l'attente d'être heureux devient une souffrance.

— Alfred De Musset

PUT: Fear nothing, sweetheart: what though he be your brother? Your brother's a man, I hope; and I say still, if a young wench feel the fit upon her, let her take anybody, father or brother, all is one.

ANN: I would not have it known for all the world.

PUT: Nor I, indeed, for the speech of the people: else 'twere nothing.

— John Ford

My journey to London became inevitable and I thought there was a chance for me to put my hand on a large sum of money. I dropped a line to Lily on February 4, and left the next day.

LILIAN TO JACKY.

Monday, February 6, 1899.

My adored Jacky,

I am not going to do, like you, write without scolding. I must absolutely scold you. You went off to London without warning me of your exact departure, and without asking me if I would like to go with you. I would most certainly have gone if you had asked me, and how happy we should have been and how I could have been “naughty” at my ease without any fear, or afterthought.

You never imagine any combination which would allow us to be together. It seems to me that if I were a man and as much in love as you pretend to be, I should surely have some scheme, and be happy for a few days at least, at any cost. Life is so short that we must be truly in the wrong not to take a little pleasure when we can.

My parents have returned, and it will be no longer easy for me to get out now, otherwise I should have had much pleasure in lunching or dining with you and Lord Fontarcy, if that would please you.

Frankly, this is what I think, as you know well that I cannot love him, since I am silly enough to be madly gone on you. Nevertheless, if it amuses you, you can tell his lordship that I have a great passion for him. He will believe it or not, it will not matter in the least. Above all, no debauchery in London, if you please.

This is what I beg you to bring me from London: a husband, or a

miché sériux,

of sufficiently refined taste to appreciate a good

taille de plume,

3 etc. If you wish to please Mamma, bring her a little tea. I suppose I do right to tell you everything frankly. Need I stand on any ceremony with my dirty Papa? I am no longer your slave, I am your mistress, and I shall punish you on your return as you deserve. I desire a letter of you from London. You can write in perfect safety.

Au revoir,

beloved Jacky, my dear love, my sweet little husband. My mouth is better, but Pussy frets after her little dolly. Good luck, sweetheart, and come back soon. Thanks for the quinine.

A most voluptuous kiss from

LILIAN.

P.S. -If you can imagine a combination, we can lunch and pass the afternoon together on your return. Another kiss.

My sweet Lilian, as can be seen by the above letter, was now perfectly emancipated, and Papa and Mamma must have been quite au courant. She spoke freely about going away alone on a journey with me, and told me to get tea for her mother, besides writing boldly to her house.

My journey to London turned out an utter failure, and I told Lilian as much when I answered her at length by return of post. All her “combinations” simply meant payments, and it seemed to me that her parents, finding that her maidenhead was gone, given to Papa or a stranger, allowed her to have a few subscribers, on condition that she brought home some money every time she went out.

I told her that I could offer her a nice lunch, with lots of love and nothing else, but she could come out on a Friday, which was a day of mortification, and then all would be well. That I often thought of her in London, and imagined her running about with her madcap, lustful friend, Charlotte, to all the fashionable massage shops. I said that I did not expect an answer, as I knew the fate reserved by women for men who were “stone-broke.” I added that she could understand my letters much better now, as her mind was more developed and she was more open in every way. Also, that I had focused the X-rays upon her and now saw through her plainly. I said I was off again, back to Paris on the ninth.

ERIC ARVEL TO JACKY.

Sonis-sur-Marne. February 11, 1899.

My dear Jacky,

I have been endowed with a fair share of laziness. Of this you must be convinced, since I have not written to you. I have been “going to" every day, but the sun in the South is so intimately connected with

dolce far niente,

that my good intentions have only added to the paved surface of another place. I must thank you very much indeed for your weekly installment of papers, the last of which enabled me to return home without experiencing the tedium of the journey. I must confess a weakness in favor of

Pearson's, Tit-Bits,

and

Answers.

The pups are in splendid condition, and Lilian is anxious to receive her first installment as a breeder.

When will you come down and see the dogs, so as to advise about the advertisement, putting us on a par with the dukes and princes who ask the public if they want to “buy a dawg.” How would Monday do for you? Lilian takes a holiday and would be free. With kindest regards to all at home, believe me to remain,

Yours very truly,

ERIC ARVEL.

Monday, February 13, 1899.

I was very pleased to visit the Arvel family again, but had I not still had some lingering lust for the daughter-mistress of the house, I ought to have broken off the connection there and then. The girl told me plainly enough that she wanted to be paid to come out to lunch, and when I coolly replied that I had no money for her, does not take the trouble to answer my letter, but gets me invited instead to come and see her at her house, and makes Papa write the letter and mention her name twice in it.

I arrived with all my little presents, as usual, and was cordially received, especially by Mamma, who was delighted with her tea, and was not surprised to find that I should bring her from London just the very thing she wanted!

Lilian was very gay and sprightly. She was dressed more coquettishly and with greater care than formerly, and her lips were artificially reddened, without counting a new beauty-spot on her cheek, made with a careful application of a caustic pencil. Liberal use had been made of her special musky mixture, and she perfumed the whole house with the delirious odor that now evaporated slowly from her redolent skin, puffing up mixed with her natural armpit scent. In fact, all her maiden grace had departed and she looked like a brazen strumpet. She spoke up boldly, and her mother seemed quite subdued now, albeit on good terms with her, but I may say at once, to save me alluding to it too often, that her behavior with her Papa was perfectly free and outrageous, and she never left him a moment's peace. I could see he greatly enjoyed what appeared to me to be her complete seduction of him, and I, to my shame, am obliged to confess that her coquetry with the old man had a most libidinous effect upon me, and I was in a fever of lust every time she mauled and patted and petted him in my presence. I think he liked to be cajoled in front of me. Very likely it excited him to think I was jealous, and no doubt Lilian had not yet told him that Jacky positively liked her to have as many men as it might suit her to enjoy.

Raoul was there, and he seemed to be getting on very well at Belfort, never having been punished yet. Papa was just as furious against him. They were at daggers drawn, and I was perfectly certain that if the elder man so hated him, there were some reasons connected with jealousy of the sister, for I could find no other cause for this bitter feeling against the lad.

Lilian had got into her head that she should go up to Paris with her brother the next day, and join in the riotous fun of the boulevards, watching the maskers, and reveling in confetti-throwing. She made out that her parents would not let her go alone with Raoul, and so she asked me at table if I would take care of her, and meet her and her brother in Paris, to spend the afternoon with them. Of course, I accepted, and after strong opposition by both Papa and Mamma, the motion was carried.

I did not get to speak privately with Lilian until after lunch, when she was in her workshop. Before I had hardly time to open my mouth, she explained that all was false that I had written from London. I suppose she meant that I was wrong to throw doubts on her virginity, or dare to imagine that she knocked about London “on the loose,” with Charlotte. And then she made herself so agreeable to me that I fell under the charm once more, as she informed me that she had been earnestly endeavoring to force her father to invite me often and to be great friends with me, so that we could meet more often. She also told me how I was to behave with her Mamma; how I was to praise all her cooking and above all interest myself in the welfare of her son, who the old lady adored. Lilian was so good and kind and earnest that I forgot all my grievances, and gaily accepted the situation, which seemed as if I was to be the accomplice of Papa and Lilian. This crapulous alliance suited my debauched nature, and I took the liberty to add:

“I am a virgin as far as my own sex is concerned, but if your Papa likes to violate me, he can do so. Anything to be near you!” To my surprise, Lilian took this vile proposal as a matter of course, and coolly replied with a little laugh:

“No! No! I know he would not like that, and I should not care about it either!”

We then went for a walk in the garden, accompanied by her brother, and as ever, she began to tease me. What it was about I cannot now remember, but I told her that I could not put up with wickedness from her. Then, suddenly changing her tone, she swore she was not going to alter her nature for love of me. I replied that even in that case, I should find consolation, as if she was very bad to me, I should have less regrets when the end should come, as it surely would if she did not amend her ways with Jacky. At this, as whenever I spoke of leaving her, she came round again, and in the sweetest way in the world, promised that in future she would always be good to me. I was infinitely delighted at this kind word from her, and running to the new white wall near us, I took out a pencil and wrote up the date: February 13, 1899.

We had no more words that day, with the exception that I had occasion to tell her that I knew she sometimes said she had not received letters when she had, and that the trick of

billets doux

going astray was a very old one and quite worn out. She only laughed slyly at this, and did not mind it at all. And we were all very happy together. I had never been treated so kindly by them. Papa called me his dear Jacky, and affectionately tapped me on the shoulders, asking my advice on photography, with which he was very much taken up just then, and Lilian came and praised me as much as she could in front of him, saying how useful I should be to her fond Papa, and he proposed that I should become an effectual aid. He suggested that when there were great

fêtes

in Paris-reviews, state funerals and so on-he and I should go together with his fine detective camera. After taking as many views as possible, I was to start away to Sonis with the plates, and develop them rapidly, while he stopped in Paris to write the letterpress. As soon as I could manage, I was to return to Paris with the negatives finished, and manuscript and photographs could thus be sent off to London by the night mail, and in case of need I would take everything over myself. To do all this, it was necessary that I should learn the management of all his apparatus, and the recipes of his developers, etc., and so it was agreed that I was to come to the house much more often. I was swimming in an ocean of delight, and at each project for my collaboration with Papa, my Lilian appeared with a cunning smile on her rose-pomaded lips, and a side-glance at me, as if to say: “See what I am doing for you!” In the evening, she told me plainly that she was working her Papa in an underhand way for me, and in time I should be his secretary, if I liked. Even the mother took me on one side while I was busy at the south side of the garden with some printing frames, for we were hard at work already on some views of Sonis and the house and garden, and told me that her husband had too much to do and that he ought to have somebody to help him in his writing. I replied that I had some small amount of literary talent, and should be glad to do anything he wished, and she gravely said that I should have to work with him. Can it now be wondered that I fully believed all this, and felt grateful to Lilian, as this was her doing, and all for love of me? Disinterested love, too, for she knew by this time how poor I was.

The kindness of the Arvel family and the sweet solicitude of Lilian extended all through the month of February, and I mention this fact, so as not to keep recurring to her parents' goodness or her caresses, as she never passed me without a gentle touch of her fairy hand, or she would give me a luscious kiss if there was no one in sight.

I believe the afternoon was rainy, for we passed much of our time in the drawing-room: Lilian, Raoul, and I. Papa was busy doing some press work and was shut up in his little library. Lilian was very gay, and so was I. We frolicked and belabored the piano in turn, laughing and singing like so many children. I was struck by the great love shown towards her brother by Lilian, now that for the first time I saw them together for a few hours. She would ask him to kiss her, and throw her arms round his neck, while their lips would meet in a long embrace, and Lily would heave a deep sigh of satisfaction and exclaim: “O-h-h-h, sweetheart!” I loved to see this voluptuous play between brother and sister, which confirmed all my suspicions, and the mere sight of their gamboling together in such a lewd way, quite unbefitting their consanguinity, caused me to have violent erections as I sat with them. The same madly voluptuous feeling would also overcome me when she approached her Papa, so the reader must not be astonished when I tell him that all my old desire for Lilian had returned and was stronger than ever from this moment. I think any man would have felt much the same in my place. I was in a delicious daydream of lust as I danced and waltzed with Lily that afternoon, and she gave her brother and myself a private view of some high-kicking, which was simply remarkable for a liberal display of black stockings and frilled drawers of more sober style than those she wore when she came to me in Paris. Whenever she lifted her leg, I did not fail to notice that she half turned her back to me, and Raoul had a full view of the mysteries of her lingerie, while I only saw as far as her garters. The whole concluded with a rapturous bout of osculation, as Lily threw herself on her handsome brother, and I sat by in an armchair, possibly looking as silly as any man must, when his virility threatens to continually burst through the cloth of his nether garments.

During our play, Lily spoke of tuition in dancing, and our talk drifted into speaking about lessons in deportment. Merrily taking up the suggestion, she put me through a kind of fantastical drill of her own, and made me sit down, remain motionless, with my legs apart, or joined together, and I had the greatest trouble to hide my lump of manhood from the brother's gaze, though perhaps he saw it all the same.

I am not ashamed to say that the idea of being ordered about by Lilian excited me to boiling point, and for the first time in my life I began to realize that there was really a bewitching kind of lascivious joy in becoming the slave of the woman we love, and I could now understand what was meant by Masochism.

Everybody seemed happy in that house, and the only blot upon the picture was the backbiting of Papa with regard to Raoul.

Lilian was anxious to sell her litter of pups, so I arranged to put an advertisement in a Parisian “dog paper” as soon as possible, and Papa declared that all the proceeds were to go to the fair daughter of the house.

Mamma was very gracious to me, and went so far as to consult me on the menus of the future meals I was to take at their hospitable dwelling. I begged her to be less generous in future, and not to put three rich dishes on the table at every

déjeuner,

as she had been in the habit of doing, but to treat me as a real member of the family, and cater for me in more sober style. She agreed, and, bidding me good night, left with Raoul, going up to Paris to see

Cyrano de Bergerac;

Mamma was right glad to go abroad with her handsome son, who had really improved through his military training, and looked very well in his French military uniform, although it is not very pretty.

I was in the seventh heaven of delight, and saw a great erotic future before me at Lilian's house, being pleasantly aroused from my day-dream by Lilian whispering to me:

“By and bye, ask me before Papa to put on my Japanese dress!”

Before I had time to reflect, I heard her call over the top of the staircase:

“Papa! I am going to dine with Mr. S., as a Japanese girl!”

He pretended to be annoyed, and said it was not

comme il faut,

and her mother would be vexed, but I, of course, smoothed him down, and said I had asked her, adding that we were in the thick of the carnival, and therefore a pretty disguise might be tolerated. He gave way, and I soon afterwards met Lilian on the stairs, coming out of her bedroom in full Japanese array, looking the very portrait of a fashionable “geisha.” Her robe was adorned with large scarlet flowers and set off her dark complexion to great advantage. The loose gown was largely open in front, cut in V-shape, and I could not resist thrusting my hand into her corsage, but she rudely repulsed me, with an air of defiance. Lilian was full of these whimsical changes of mood. I let the matter pass, and complimented her on her beautiful appearance; for in truth, she looked weirdly fascinating.

She told us that she had had great difficulty in finding the key that fitted her Mamma's wardrobe, so as to get out her costume, and shortly afterwards, we sat down to dinner: Papa, Lilian, Granny, and myself. The old woman does not count in this narrative.

Lilian took her Mamma's place at the head of the table, with Papa on her right; I facing him, and the grandmother at the end. I merely mention this meal to note that Lilian frequently placed her feet on mine, with many a loving pressure, and towards the end of the meal, I distinctly noticed that at one moment, withdrawing her feet, she made a decided lurch of her body towards Papa, and must have touched his boot. I saw the well-known change come over his face: a look of dumb bewilderment, which left his features without any expression, as he dropped his head in his plate, and insolent triumph lit up the bold countenance of his mistress's offspring.

After dinner the table was laid out with supper for Mamma and her boy, when they should return from the theatre, and Papa and I were seated on a broad divan, in the little vestibule giving on to the dining-room, and which was used as a kind of smoking corner. Granny had disappeared, and Lilian came and threw herself languidly on the sofa, pressed close against Papa and, placing her half-bared arm on his shoulder, she lightly caressed his shaven cheek with her fingers. He did not respond to her blandishment, but the same silly, dazed look came into his eyes and his lower jaw dropped. How ugly we are, when we are sensually excited!

Lilian said she was happy to be nice and quiet with her dear old Papa, and I asked her as usual when we three were alone together, when she was going to be married.

“Never!” she exclaimed, “I am going to be an old maid and stop with my poor dear old Papa and take care of him.”

“And quite right too!” I heartily answered as I always did when this was said.

I was in the same state of sensual longing as before dinner, and I am sorry to say that my recollection of our conversation is slightly dim and confused. Lilian did most of the talk, and I kept the ball rolling as well as I could. I was panting with lust, and Papa seemed as if under the influence of some pleasant drug. Lilian was the embodied type of the bold, black temptress, as exemplified in modern cheap fiction, and I am certain now that she was quite cool, and revelled in the idea of sitting between her two elderly lovers, perhaps laughing in her sleeve at both of us.

Our broken chatter, as we smoked lazily, drifted to Papa's recollections of his travel in Japan, and he told us how the ladies of that sweet land of immodesty wore their light flowing garments and what they carried beneath them. This was an opportunity for Lilian to tell us that she had no stays or drawers on, and she rose, tightened her dress around her, and then turned about with her draperies pulled tight over her large and well-shaped posteriors. Humming a scrap of a tune, she waltzed in front of us two men, and after a few steps, again took her place next to Papa, patting and caressing him as before.

The conversation still turned upon the delights of Japan, and Papa said with a sly laugh, that he had been very dull all alone in that faraway country.

Lilian looked at me across her Papa and put out her tongue, not as a saucy girl might, but with a salacious wriggle of its rosy point, worthy of an experienced courtesan. I did not respond, as I was frightened lest Arvel might see me.

“If you were so virtuous in Japan, what is the meaning of that photograph at your

bureau

?” And Lily assumed her most innocent air, as she put this ticklish question.

I was delighted, as I always was when I found I had guessed aright, as I had done in January, There was an awkward pause, but I tried to save the situation by saying:

“The possession of photographs of women means nothing. I can buy pictures of actresses in Paris, but it does not follow that I know the ladies.”

Papa seemed really confused and to tease him, I suppose, or to excite him before me, Lily said:

“Oh, but the photograph I mean is not the portrait of a woman alone!”

Papa did the best thing he could do under the circumstances: he got up and left us, and as he rose, Lilian put her thumb to her nose and “took a sight” at him, much to my inward disgust, as I felt sure she would also turn me into ridicule with him whenever she could, and such low cunning did not please me.

“Take care what you do. He might see you, as when you showed me your pretty tongue just now,” I whispered to her.

“Oh, he is so short-sighted!” was her sneering rejoinder.

“I see you know all about his adventures in Japan!” I exclaimed.

She looked at me with well-acted astonishment.

“I don't know what you mean!” was her icy retort, and she leant across the still warm empty place, marked by the deep impression of her stepfather's body, and gave me a most luscious kiss, interrupted by the return of Mr. Arvel. He sat down again between us, and once more Lily's hand tickled and caressed him.

It was getting late, and I began to talk about departing, and looked round for my coat, and some newspapers I had in my pockets.

“I want 'Le Journal,' I used it to wrap round the bottle of quinine I brought. There is a story in it that I have not quite finished. It is very good.”

“I've read it,” said Lily, quickly, a smile playing on her lips.

“What is it?” said Papa, with a slight yawn.

I did not answer. I felt embarrassed and I wanted to hear what Lily would say. She looked saucily at me, and thus I was forced to break a nasty pause.

“It is about a father and daughter-”

“Oh, yes!” Lily interrupted me. “A father marries his own daughter!” And she looked at me with audacity, as she moved her fingers slowly on her Pa's cheek. I could not meet her glance, and I am certain that she was the coolest of the three of us. I felt most terribly lustful and would have given much to have taken her in my arms at that moment. To hide my voluptuous emotion, I busied myself in collecting my newspapers, gloves, hat and stick, etc.

The story, Le Lien Factice, is to be found in “Le Journal” of February 13, 1899, and relates how an old gentleman marries a young girl, and on the wedding-night, respectfully informs her that he is her father, having been her mother's lover, and he gives her proofs in her mother's handwriting. The girl's legal father had always been jealous of him, and had made the daughter unhappy besides, so, fearful lest he should be forced to quarrel with the widower, and therefore never see his daughter again, he had resolved to marry her. But he only wishes to make her happy, swears he will respect her, and as soon as she finds a lover, divorce from her, to let her marry the man of her choice.

“Let us hope that we may not find him too soon, Father,” exclaims the girl, and the story ends with that remark, leaving the readers to guess what they like as a conclusion.

Papa now made as if he was very fatigued and could not rise from the divan, and Lilian told him not to move and she would go and get him some matches he required to relight his pipe. She got up, and passed her hand lightly over his large stomach, her favorite caress to him; but this time her right palm descended swiftly, rapidly, and gently, and as she rose, her fingers passed over his private parts, which were distinctly to be seen, forming a vast protuberance in his trousers, which were tight and of a very light color.

This was done quickly, her hand trailing behind her on getting slowly up from the sofa, as if it was an accident.

I was glad she went out of the room at once, without turning round, as I felt an extraordinary wave of lust pass through me and I went red and white by turns. I knew I should have had the greatest pleasure in the world if I could have seen them in bed together, and I had an intuitive feeling that my presence excited Papa, and he would have allowed me to join him with Lily, if she chose.

She now returned, having renewed the powder and lip-paint, and told me it was time for my train. Evidently she wanted to get rid of me, to have a long series of caresses before Mamma returned, so she told Papa to get up.

He made out as before, laughingly, that he was too tired to move, and so Lily took hold of his left hand to pull him off the couch. He being too heavy, she could not move him and asked me to help her. I did so, by grasping his right hand, and together we dragged him to his feet. This was nothing, but after an evening passed in the society of the semi-incestuous couple, the touch of his warm and moist palm had a most peculiar effect upon me. My flesh had never been in contact with his, save in the hurried conventional grip, and the knowledge that Lily held one hand, I the other, all three knowing our mutual relationships, irritated my desire to a most fearful extent. I was very thankful to my charmer for her efforts in my favor, as I thought she was endeavoring to do her best to let me into the secret of her liaison with the master of the house.

My brain was in such a whirl of lust from this day forward that I am sure I missed several signs and incidents that might have shown Eric Arvel and Adèle's daughter in closer connection perhaps, but I think anybody will now be satisfied that Papa and Lilian were lovers.

My passions were excited immensely, and cudgel my brains as I will, I cannot call to mind whether the couple accompanied me to the station or not.

If this story was a novel, it would now be my duty to say that I was hurried out of the house and left to go to the train alone and then I should say that I climbed over the wall, and, creeping up to the window, saw Papa and the Japanese beauty joined in the closest copulation.

In the excitement of desire, and while emitting freely, as only heroines of bawdy books can, she cries out: “Oh, if Jacky were only with us, Papa!” At these words, I jump through the window, and am naked at once! We join in triple voluptuousness; we are surprised by the return of Mamma and Raoul, and they are also introduced into the tableau.

Unfortunately, this is a true story, and I remember now that Papa saw me to the station alone, while Lilian went probably up to bed to get undressed and wait for him to return, while I went quietly to Paris by the train.

What is perfectly sure, however, is that the continual state of erection I had been in all day, without satisfaction, left me with excruciating pains in my testicles, and I made up my mind not to let the presence of Lilian and her sly caresses have such an effect on me in the future.

On arriving at the Eastern railway station, I met Adèle and her soldier son going to take the train home, and I stopped and chatted with them for a few moments.

The spirit of mischief moved me to tell Mamma in a careless way that she would find her daughter at home in Japanese costume and I added that Lilian had had hard work to find the key to get out the dress.

“Dear me!” replied Madame Arvel, innocently “I've got my key in my pocket. Lilian has her own costume in her bedroom wardrobe.”

After hearty thanks for their cordial reception they went to their train, and I departed thinking over Lily's fib, which was to hide the fact that the Japanese dinner disguise was a pre-arranged project between her and Papa.

Shrove Tuesday, 1899.

Lord Fontarcy was on a flying visit to Paris alone, and we breakfasted together, while I excused myself for leaving him at two o'clock, as I told him that I had to meet Lilian and her brother and join the confetti fight. I asked him to come with me and told him how he could make use of the occasion to worm himself into Raoul's good graces and get him for Clara. He refused, as he did not see the fun of waiting until Raoul had finished his year of military service in September. Nor would he accompany me to see Lilian, and I saw that my good old friend did not like her at all and appeared frightened of her and all her family. Without knowing the secret of Lilian's life, which discovery I kept to myself, his experience in matters of this kind, greater than mine, led him to go so far as to utter the sinister word, “blackmail,” but I laughed at his well-meant warning and told him that I knew how to take care of myself.

I did not tell him that I knew how Lilian, who had undoubtedly had some kind of carnal pleasure with her brother, was too jealous to let him make the acquaintance of Fontarcy and his wife. That was why she had broken off his engagement with Charlotte, meaning to keep him for herself.

He left me, and I went to the place of appointment, arranged with my Lilian of Sonis, which was at the corner of the Place de l'Opéra, near the Café de la Guerre.

I was frightened I might miss her, as the crowd had already begun to thicken, and the tiny atoms of colored paper were flying thickly, as the gay Parisians threw them into each other's faces with many a merry laugh.

Lilian now appeared, prettily dressed as usual, and powdered, scented, with her reddened lips, according to her latest fancy. Raoul had not arrived yet. She told me he had taken an earlier or later train, I forget which, as I was under the charm, and thought only of the happiness I felt at spending a whole afternoon with her. I suppose her brother had gone to see Charlotte, but it is of very little account.

Lily scolded me, as her Papa, she said, had informed her that I was not energetic, and did not try to get on in the world. As long as I could find time to get out with my dog, Smike, that was all I wanted, she said.

I told her of a certain number of projects I had formed and she gravely approved of them, but I could not help saying that I was unaware such interest was taken in me at the villa.

“Oh! we often speak of Jacky; and we want you to get on. I do all I can for you with Papa and Mamma, as I am really very fond of you.”

“Excepting in the winter.”

“You must not complain, as Gaston, poor fellow, ran after me for years, and I never granted him that!”

She clicked her thumbnail against her teeth in true Parisian style.

During the conversation, we were walking round the Opéra, until at last I took her into the Café de la Guerre, and we sat down and had a glass of champagne, her beloved beverage, keeping our eyes on the door, so as not to miss her brother.

She now made me a kind of declaration of love and completed my sense of sensual intoxication, by telling me how she loved me and how she had tried to struggle against her inclination, but unable to forget me, she had now made up her mind to throw all scruples to the winds and let herself be mine without restraint, enjoy herself with me and see as much of me as she could. Life was too short to deprive oneself of love! Did I not believe her? Was she not doing all she could for me at Sonis?

“Doubtless you love me a little. If not, I should not be here today, as there is nothing to make you seek me out, unless you choose, but you are very ambitious and in your worldliness, lose all tender feelings. I know you would like me to be better off and join me in business if possible. But what would Papa and Mamma say to you being in partnership with me, or if I provided a sum of money to start you as a bonnet-builder in Paris, could I afford it?”

I never got an answer when I introduced her parents' names into the debate, and I judged it to be more prudent not to allude to Papa, or the fun on the divan of the preceding evening. Nor did I tell her that Fontarcy was in Paris. We drifted on to other subjects, and I repeated what I had always said and believed, that the only future for a woman in France was the married state, and that if I had always been fool enough to respect her, it was because I saw her with a loving husband in all my dreams of her future. I thought it best not to allude to the least thing that might hurt her feelings.

“You will pass happy nights in the arms of a husband, and will soon forget Jacky, his filthy caresses and his mad ideas of whips and belts. Don't forget, Lilian, that husbands enjoy their wives in very sober fashion, without any fancy flourishes.”

“Then I should not like it!” she exclaimed, with a disdainful toss of her pretty head.

Raoul now appeared on the scene and joined us in a glass of champagne; Lilian told me I was to spend all day with them and return to dinner in their company at the villa, but I demurred, saying that I had already been there the day before, and such behavior would savour intrusion. Lilian told me to have confidence in her and not to prevent her bringing about our mutual happiness in her own way. I accepted, thinking in petto, she was the mistress of the house.

Raoul and his sister whispered together, and begging to be excused, both of them went off to see somebody who was employed at the American bar, which is in another part of the building, and it struck me that Lilian was well-known in the establishment. I knew it was frequented by many officers. She returned soon with Raoul, giggling and whispering foolishly with him, and we began to talk about starting on our tour down the boulevards, to join in the paper war, which had already waxed fast and furious. Lilian boldly said before her brother that she wanted to do a little “pee” first, and we waited until she came back, with a fresh dab of powder on the end of her insolent nose.

After loading ourselves with bags of confetti, we were soon lost in the fray, and I cannot now remember how much we used, but none of the ladies on the boulevards that day were more audacious than Lilian. She attacked all good-looking young men, fighting till vanquished and surrounded, as she always was, by a crowd of lusty males, who, under pretence of covering her with confetti, popped their fingers down her neck, or pinched her posteriors. I am sure she liked the rough horseplay, although she would break away from her tormentors and throw herself in my arms, hiding her head in my breast, which ostrich-like proceeding dispersed the attacking party, and she drew breath until the next onslaught. I noticed that she rushed at all soldiers in uniform, especially young and handsome officers, and, boldly making a stand in front of them, defied them, as it were, to mortal combat, and my suspicious mind, remembering her talk of Boxing-night, immediately gave her an officer as a lover.

The battle continued without interruption until nearly six o'clock, with only one or two interruptions, when, seeking the shelter of a doorway, we extracted tiny fragments of paper from Lilian's beautiful eyes.

I fully entered into the fun of the riotous public romp, and we gradually got away from the best part of the boulevards. As dusk came on, liberty degenerated into license, and I amused myself by making Lilian a little jealous by the sight of my vile behavior to ladies in the crowd. I approached them with hands outstretched, as if to throw confetti, but I only put exploring digits down their necks, or even went to the extent of pressing their breasts, when the bust of an unknown beauty looked tempting. It was a rare treat to mark their cry of stupefaction at being so imprudently outraged by a stranger, and before they could recover, I was off, seeking fresh game.

Tired out, dusty and with her luxuriant locks full of bits of colored paper, Lilian cried, “Enough!” and we made the best of our way to the Eastern railway station where, having a little time to spare, I treated the two young people to refreshment and supplied Raoul with cigars.

In due time we reached Sonis, Lilian being very tender in the train, and Raoul turning out a model of discretion.

I found Papa reading some of my magazines, and whether I was expected by him I know not; but Mamma had not been warned, as I caught her on my arrival in the kitchen, superintending the preparation of the dinner, and attired in a dirty old dressing-gown.

Everything passed off very agreeably, and everybody treated me with the utmost cordiality, while Lilian insisted on putting on her Japanese costume once more, and I made my appearance in the dining-room attired as a Jap as well, Lilian having fished out for me a man's oriental gown, in which I looked as ridiculous as possible. Mamma set her face against Lilian's masquerade, and said it was not convenable, especially before me.

At dinner, Lilian was seated next to her Papa. I was at the lower end of the table, on Lilian's right, and she pulled her clothes halfway up her leg, and threw one over mine, keeping it there during the whole of the meal, without attempting any disguise.

After dinner, all the womenfolk went away with Raoul to prepare for his departure, as he had to return to his regiment by a late train that night, and a large basket of eatables was got ready for him.

During this time, I sat and smoked a pipe with Papa, and his talk as usual took an obscene turn. I promised to bring him a small parcel of books from my little collection, and mentioned The Romance of Lust.

At this moment, he got up to fetch an ash-tray, and turned his back to the door, at which Lilian appeared and, looking at me without uttering a word, threw up her clothes, completely exposing her legs encased in black stockings, and her drawers, which, half-open in front-purposely, no doubt-showed a portion of the liberal growth of black hair which hid the mark of her sex. Papa turned round-she was gone!

Resuming our confab, Papa asked me what The Romance of Lust was about, and I told him a few of the leading incidents, as far as I could remember. He expressed surprise, and I answered him very slowly and deliberately:

“I am never surprised at anything where passion is concerned!”

He did not reply, but I saw the same dull, blank expression that always spread over his face when nonplussed, and neither of us spoke for a few seconds, until Papa rose, and making some excuse, left me alone.

Raoul now took an affectionate leave of his Mamma and Granny, who idolized him, and Lilian, covering up her Japanese costume with an ample waterproof, accompanied Raoul and me to the station, Papa following us.

On the way, she told me that she had arranged for me to be invited on Friday, to have a long day's work at photography with Papa, and suddenly in a mock whisper, said, lovingly:

“I am going to tell you a secret!”

“Proceed, your story interests me!”

“You are a dirty pig!”

“That is no secret!”

“No, but this is: I love you, just because you are an adorable dirty pig. I should hate a man, if he was not horribly naughty, as you are!”

When we reached the platform, she managed to get me into a dark corner and give me one of those delirious, long, wet kisses which she knew how to make thoroughly enjoyable. It was only interrupted by the appearance of Papa, and if I did not know he was short-sighted, I should have thought he saw us.

“Papa! Mr. S…has been telling me about a book on photography he has got for you!”

Papa did not reply, but only grunted, and Lily continued, with a merry twinkle in her eye:

“Oh, Papa, he is such an awfully naughty man, and so vicious!”

There was another awkward pause, until I laughed, and made some joke or the other, and we all said good bye, but not until Papa had forced me to accept an invitation to spend the day of Friday and have a long spell of photography.

The dog Pip was mine now. I took it to Paris either Shrove Tuesday, or the day before, as near as I can now remember, and Lilian seemed very affected at parting with the pretty little animal she had brought up with so much care for Jacky.

I concluded this eventful day for me by a long conversation in the train with Raoul, when I tried all I knew to give him good advice, so that he should not get into any scrapes at Belfort, and he seemed sensible and grateful for my counsel. I could not have said much more had he been my son, as I had been led to believe that Mr. Arvel never took the trouble to speak to him at all.

He went to catch his train to the eastern frontier, and I returned home in a state of wild delight, quite under the spell, and thoroughly convinced that Lilian loved me and was duping her satyr Papa for and with me, or else he allowed her to have me as a lover. I did not take much trouble to fathom the arrangement exactly, as I was quite content to let things be as they were and trust to Lilian.

Friday, February 17, 1899.

Laden, as usual, with quinine wine, perfumery, books, and papers for Papa, and a volume of Justine for Lilian, I was again punctual at the train, but I anticipated a good scolding from the young lady, with whom I was over head and heels in love, having quite forgotten all her past whimsical treachery and deceit in favor of the lascivious sweetness of her present attitude towards me, as she seemed to allow me to become a sharer in the secret of the passion of her stepfather; and it appeared as if I should at some near period be admitted to their sports, a consummation I am abandoned enough to confess I prayed for with all my heart.

I had shown the pretty Pip to a veterinary surgeon, who was a good friend of mine and my mistress, and he, after extolling its beauty, declared it was afflicted with a shortness of breath, which would render its bringing-up very difficult, if not impossible. My poor Lilian, who was passing through a most trying recrudescence of her old rheumatic symptoms, resolved to forgo the pleasure of keeping the little animal, especially as we had three dogs already, my particular Smike and two others; and only dog-fanciers know the trouble it takes to bring up a dog from puppyhood, Pip being, as it will be remembered, only six weeks old. So my devoted invalid covered him up in one of the little woolen shawls she knitted herself, and cried over him as she put him in my arms.

Upon the servant opening the gate of the Villa Lilian, I dropped Pip on to his paws, and he was right glad to scamper to his mother, who was disporting herself in the garden with the four other puppies of the litter, his brothers and sisters.

I went to Papa's study and gave him a parcel of books, including the four volumes of The Romance of Lust.

I had also brought down for him the copy of the first obscene work I had ever lent his daughter:- The Yellow Room — and to give it to him, I moved towards the window, under which stood a little table. I called to him to come and see this book, which I made as if I had forgotten. As I had shown him each of the others, he had made some remark on each, facetious or otherwise, and as he came towards the light, I put the book on the table and stepped back a pace or two, so that I had a good view of his face in the full noonday sun, and he could not see me. He took up the little volume, and, bending down, slowly opened its pages, holding it close to his eyes, as shortsighted people do. All expression left his face, he knit his brows, opened his mouth, and did not speak for a second or two, as, visibly embarrassed, he slowly turned over the pages.

Then he closed it without a word, and asked me to come out for a stroll, while the lunch was being prepared. I followed him, highly delighted at the success of my ruse, as I was now perfectly convinced that Lilian and he had read my bawdy books together. I may say at once that he afterwards returned me the volume without saying a word in favor of the work, or against it.

I noted that Lilian never took me to help her to lay the cloth any more, but she asked me to accompany her in longish walks on all kinds of pretexts, such as doing commissions in the village, taking out the dogs, going to the post-office, etc., and Mamma beamed on us both. She had got the habit of retiring to rest immediately after dinner, leaving Lilian with her Papa, and they were supposed to retire about midnight. Papa never got up before nine or ten o'clock, and Lilian brought him his breakfast in bed. She was not in good health and took drops of nux vomica before meals to give her an appetite. She looked far from well, in spite of her coquettish toilettes and rose lip-salve and face-powder, without counting her grain de beauté, which I could see was carefully renewed.

At the midday meal, she was in a towering rage with me for having brought back Pip, and her face was perfectly hideous, all dark and scowling, with blue lips, as was her wont when out of temper. I gave my motives, and said that I had braved her anger sooner than sell the pup, which I could easily have done, or given it away and told some lie to her. She refused to listen to my reasons, and it was only when her mother took my part, and told her not to be rude to me, that she gave way and came back to her usual manner.

The advertisement for the sale of the dogs had appeared the day before for the first time, and they were delighted at my effort to put a few pounds in Lilian's pocket. So much so, that she and her mother had ordered an ice-pudding for lunch for my special benefit.

All went merrily as a marriage bell, and Lilian, alone with me, asked for news of the gentleman I had promised to seduce for her. I told her frankly that I had proposed to my brother to join me in a miniature orgy, saying that I would introduce him to a little brunette, but, of course, without telling him her name at present. After accepting in a half-hearted way, he had cried off when I asked him to tell me the day he would be ready, and I apologized to her for raising false hopes. It was not my fault if my brother was inclined to be a little sentimental and averse to sleeping with a woman who had been with me. Lilian heaved a sigh of regret. The idea of being in the arms of a brother of mine had excited her greatly. I spoke of her plan to get to London in my company, but she did not seem to think there was anything out of the way in coming to England alone with me. It could be done by her making out that the employers of Charlotte would be supposed to send her to London on business, paying her expenses and giving four pounds a week during her stay. There was no occasion to write any forged letters, or do anything except send her a first-class return ticket. Her parents would believe her, whatever she might say. Now was the time to go, as she could say she was wanted for the fashions of the coming summer. I added that on the morning of her departure I could be at the Northern railway station, as if I were going to London alone, and, affecting surprise, offer to chaperon her as far as Charing Cross. Lilian could not guess that this was a little trap of mine to see if her Pa and Ma knew of our intrigue, and she agreed that my plan was perfectly feasible, always providing she came home after a fortnight or so with a ten-pound note of her own at least. I told her I would see about it and perhaps in a few days I might be able to afford it. But inwardly I am forced to declare that I could only think of a certain poor ailing woman in Paris, and there were old bills owing to doctors, a long score at a chemist's, and other little odds and ends.

Lilian was very excited at the thought of being alone with me for a week or so, and I told her that she would have to be my slave, and we both got ourselves into an awful state of lust by imagining what we would do together. I remember she took such a fancy to a couple of very nasty fancies of mine that she made me repeat them.

At the word of command every morning, she was to rise and, stripping naked, seat herself on a toilet pail, after having prepared a tooth-tumbler with tepid water and dentifrice. I would then rise and clean my teeth, expectorating on her body, she allowing me to rinse out my mouth and empty my throat all over her, so that the liquid would fall upon her and tickle down her breasts and belly, dripping into the receptacle. Then she would become the living chamber utensil of her beloved master-“a thing you often said you would do and never did”-she added regretfully, and I saw that she really enjoyed these filthy projects. She would then have to soap me in my bath and assist at my toilet, and when completed, Lilian having put on my boots, etc., I would go out and leave her to get dressed herself.

The rest of the day passed off in the ordinary way; Papa and I were in the dark-room most of the time and even after dinner. Lilian would escape from her workshop whenever she could, and come and pay us a visit. Then I would get a long kiss, and half of her wicked tongue would disappear down my throat, which I vastly enjoyed, although I knew I should pay for my fun in the evening by testicular pains.

Mamma was rather against the photographing craze, as Papa passed too much time in the little house, which was very damp and cold, and he had taken Lilian to assist him-I pricked up my ears at this-and the two had spent the whole of one evening shut up alone together in the famous dark-room.

It was indeed very cold, despite the large petroleum lamp that was burning, most of the printing being done by artificial light, and being in there after dinner, Lily appeared, saying her hands were cold, and boldly stuck one paw into Papa's trouser pocket, while with the other hand stretched out behind her, she caught hold of my member. I immediately unbuttoned myself. She slid her hand inside, and gently tickled the top. She thus had one hand in her Papa's trouser pocket and the other was feeling me.

“Your hands are not cold,” grunted Papa, with the dull, serious face of the lewdly excited man that I now knew so well.

“But suppose I like to say they are?”

Finding now that Lilian was always putting her hand between my legs whenever we were in the dark-room with Papa, I never went to Sonis any more without arranging my drawers in such a manner that my organ was at liberty, and I only had to undo two buttons to have it ready for her hand. Many a time, Papa would be developing, mixing, explaining, and I was not learning anything, but was caressing Lilian; and she kept her hand on my naked weapon behind Papa's back, and sometimes we were all three entirely in the dark, when a plate was being developed.

Just before dinner was served, Lilian said that I ought to sleep at Sonis one or two nights now and again. I answered that I should be delighted to do so, that very night if she liked, but I should have to be up very early so as to see my mistress in the morning, as was my habit.

“I hate her! I hate her!” she cried, clenching her little fists.

I paid no attention to these ravings, but waited patiently until the storm subsided, and than I asked her if it would do any good for me to sleep at the house.

“You would not come to my room in the night?” I said, dubiously.

“Yes, I would. I would manage to worm myself in to you!”

I asked her how it would be for me to have a false attack of giddiness after dinner, which I could ascribe afterwards to indigestion, and I showed her exactly how I would act as a man utterly unable to stand upright without assistance. It was arranged that I should play that part, and she added that Mamma would never let me go to Paris in such an apparent state of weakness. Having arranged with her not to laugh while I was acting, as I knew in that case I should laugh too, she left me and we dined shortly afterwards. But the first moment she could find to speak privately to me directly the dinner was over, she told me not to attempt my scheme of sham illness, as I looked too well and jolly after the meal. I did as she told me, but I still think that she consulted Papa and it was by his orders that she changed her mind.

I have no recollection of anything more particular taking place that day, but I find by a note in my diary that I was again a guest at the Villa Lilian on:

February 21, 1899.

Instead of taking a train at ten o'clock, as I usually did, I could not get to the station except for the 11:30, and while quietly seated in my compartment, I saw Lilian running up and down the platform, peeping into every carriage. She was looking for me, hoping that I had taken the same train as she had. She had been up to Paris to go to market and was returning with her purchases, being accompanied by one of her workgirls. We carried on our conversation in English, and we spoke of a letter I had written her, wherein I had informed her that “all the schemes on which I had built to be able to take her to London, had fallen through, and I was very unhappy, but nevertheless I counted on the love of the daughter of the Mikado, and hoped she would intercede for me with the great chief and master of the house, over whom she possessed such extraordinary influence.” I wished her to understand that I knew all that was going on between her mother's lover and herself, but that I was not jealous and could perfectly understand that a man could fall in love with a young girl with whom he was in daily contact, especially as she resembled her mother in several little ways. Here was a man of strong animal instincts, linked to a vulgar, jealous woman, albeit devoted to him as the breadwinner, and, I should think, incapable of disinterested affection. To keep him at home, she would voluntarily shut her eyes to any commerce he might have with Lilian and the task would be easier if they had already, both of them, been too free with her as a child. Lilian never took offense at this moment when I recurred to the understanding that existed evidently between Mr. Arvel and herself, while I made my allusions in a most respectful manner and never let myself be betrayed into speaking against him, although Lilian always alluded to him with a show of contempt, and I sometimes pitied him as, whatever his faults, he slaved and worked for these two women, who after all only formed his little harem. He did sleep with the girl, but was it real incest? Was he her real father, or not? The idea could only be loathsome to the lascivious lass, but as long as she herself felt no disgust at the approach of the man whose lips had pressed her mother's for twenty years, and who had dandled her on his knee and brought her up, who had a right to feel indignant? She was a woman of strong passions, and if she was to become a whore, what mattered if the little man who was her natural guardian possessed her or not? As far as I was concerned, I was rather pleased to think that now she ran no risk of being driven to ordinary professional prostitution.

Lilian was very lively and full of fun, and she got quite spoony over a handsome young officer who was seated in front of us, and who really looked very smart in his cavalry uniform. She turned red and white by turns as she furtively admired him and I chaffed her about her adoration for the military.

An exalted personage had just died in France, and all sorts of strange rumors were floating about concerning his death, as it was currently reported that he had died suddenly in a woman's arms, or rather had succumbed to the caresses of a complaisant mistress. He had died in erotic delirium, and this end, more frequent than many people might think, was only remarkable by reason of the great positions the unfortunate victim to his passions had occupied during his lifetime. His age was about sixty, and I told Lilian the peculiar story of his last moments and how he had while unconscious continually called upon his numerous concubines by name and cursed his weak organ of virility because it refused to respond to the call of lust.

On arriving at Sonis, I went for a walk with Papa, and I recited to him the wonderful end of the great statesman. I looked at him out of the corner of my eye as I walked and talked with him on the pleasant country road, and I soon saw the dull, sullen look steal over his face again as I broached erotic subjects, which I saw interested him deeply, and now I was almost certain that I could produce that expression on his features whenever I chose.

Elated with the sense of my power of reading the thoughts of Lilian's Papa, I took the liberty of asking him if it was true what I had heard concerning the genital strength of men of sixty years of age, more or less. I explained that it appeared to be a most unfortunate state of things when the desire of venereal diversion, centered in the brain, persisted years after the seminal flow had ceased, and I opined that it must be terrible for an old man to be tortured by lewd imaginations without having the natural means to gratify them, when driven by erotic dreams into a woman's arms. It was a fearful ending for a man to finish up like a mad eunuch. He pooh-poohed my theory, which I submitted to him with the greatest deference, as I always treated him with respect and politeness, and told me that desire ceased always when the virile power was dead, and though I did not believe him, I agreed with him all the same. I always enjoyed the suburban skill of the narrow-minded dwellers in villadom, as they possessed a wonderful knack of settling the most difficult problems in a moment. They always knew everything, and arranged political and social complications with a rapid coolness that would have seemed conceited in a Cavour. And they did not want a fine library, a staff of secretaries, or a lot of expensive maps; they settled things offhand in a tramcar or a railway carriage.

I envied such men as these, and Mr. Arvel was of the same kidney, for they made life easy for themselves by the adoption of certain easy formulae which did away at once with all useless discussions. With some, all women were prostitutes; another camp swore females were angels. It was the same with everything else: religion, the army, and the benighted inhabitants of any other nation. Their petty view of things in general betraying limited intelligence only inspired me with a desire to leave their society at once, but their principal fault was that, in their great desire to show their knowledge and talk at all hazards, they thought nothing of confiding to utter strangers the secrets of their wives' wombs, their daughters' constipation, and all possible sexual troubles. Arvel's pleasure was to talk against everybody, and he did not spare Lilian, her brother, or his wife.

But we were all very happy in spite of his grumbling and there was joy in the house of Arvel, and money too. All kinds of goods kept continually arriving from the big shops and stores of London and Paris during this month, and Arvel pulled out handfuls of gold to pay the bills. The garden too cost a lot of money, without counting the photographic requisites and the painting and decorating of the new part of the house, which was never done with and was sufficiently comfortable.

During the breakfast, which was most generously served in spite of Mamma's promises of moderation, Lilian's health was the topic discussed and Papa announced his intention of taking her away on a journey to give her a little change of air. Mamma did not object and Lilian said nothing. I opened my ears as wide as I could, and as I was always ready in that house to agree with everybody, gravely said that it was the very best thing that could be done for the health of Mademoiselle. Papa mentioned the name of a seaport town and asked me what I thought of it. I replied that I did not think she would care much about the sea at this time of year and that there was not much to be seen in a small French port at any time. So Papa suggested Brussels or Berlin, and after a little conversation it was decided that Lilian was to visit Brussels, where she had never been. It was on the tip of my tongue to ask Mamma if she was going too, but I thought better of it, and indeed the sprightly Lilian left me no time for reflection, but kept me thoroughly enchanted with the frequency of her most audacious caresses and never passed her good Papa without touching and tickling him, too.

I told her how excited I had been to see her in Japanese costume and asked if she could not manage, as she knew how to make a dress, to knock up a very low body and come to dinner one night in this very décolleté bodice, which I wanted to be quite low under the arms, so as to show the arm-pits, and was to be cut in the same V-shape as the Japanese costume, both front and back, as that shape suited her thin figure admirably. She replied that she dared not attempt such a thing, as Mamma had scolded her dreadfully about the Japanese disguise, and as for fancy dresses, at that moment: “She wasn't taking any!” I loved to hear her speak in English slang with her French accent.

We had a very nice long walk that afternoon together and she enchanted me by giving me a little present as a surprise. This was quite spontaneous, and formed the first and last present she ever gave me. And it was simply a little sachet about two inches square, of white silk, embroidered with the initials of our two Christian names. It smelt strongly of Lilian's aromatic scent, but the curious part of the matter was that she told me she kept the wadding it contained for two nights inside her virgin (?) furrow, in order that I should always be under the charm of the odor di femina which I loved so well, especially when I knew it was Lilian's. In spite of my blind lust for her, I am sorry to say that I did not believe her; I could not see Lilian sleeping two nights with a little bit of wool inside her crack, for anybody. Still I was very pleased to think she should take the trouble to invent such a pretty lie for me, as the intention to make me happy was clearly there. I discovered that she carried her hatred of sentimentality so far as to be very delighted when I called her by the most opprobrious epithets and, as I applied them to her, she would purr and lick her lips in a transport of delight, and, rubbing herself against me, make me repeat the words: salope, puhin, vache, etc., over and over again.

She also asked for more erotic dreams of cruelty and told me she kept most preciously the strap and the paint-brush I had left behind me at the end of August, when I had slept all night with her. I told her how I should like to spread-eagle her by tying her to the end of a bedstead, her arms and legs stretched out, forming with her body a kind of a Maltese cross, but she pulled a long face whenever I spoke of any position or diversion of passion which would force her to open her legs. I was more than ever sure that her little bird had flown, but I put on a most innocent air and asked her if she was not afraid to trust herself so much alone with me, because I might throw her down and violate her and I could do it easily here at Sonis, as she dare not cry out or make a movement that would disturb her dress.

“You need not take all that trouble, as I am keeping it for Jacky!”

I was so astounded at the coolness of her reply that I was suffocated for the moment, and she profited by my stupefaction to run on and tell me what happiness it would be for her to go on a journey with me to London and sleep with me several nights. I gathered from that proposition that she wanted to keep me from her until she could get me into a bed at night, and then she would make me believe I had seduced her. I was careful not to say too much, or she would have flown into a temper, been on her guard, and I should never have known anything.

The same fun went on as before in the dark-room just as before dinner, and once being alone with Papa, he asked me if the authorities still allowed bawdy-houses to be carried on. I replied in the affirmative, and no more was said about the matter, but I thought it was just on the cards that Papa wanted to take Lilian with him to one of those hospitable homes of free love.

Lilian reappeared and put a stop to our conversation and we soon had to go in to dinner, for which we were late, much to Mamma's disgust, and we were treated to a long lecture from her as she pretended to make out that this photography was a folly and would never bring in a penny, while he and Lilian would catch their death of rheumatism if they passed their evenings in the damp little hut together as they were now doing nightly. This diatribe did not prevent Lilian from following me to the tiny studio when I had to go in the middle of the dinner, or a plate would have been spoilt. We had a good bout of lip and tongue sucking and she put her fingers in the front of my trousers for a second, and then we returned through the dark garden as if nothing had occurred. Lilian's lips were all chapped and feverish and she kept putting on the pink pomade. Both Papa and myself must have been licking her delicious lips this month as they had never been licked before.

After dinner, Lilian and I were quickly in the drawing-room, as Mamma had stopped all photography for the night, and, getting rid of Granny, we kissed and caressed each other to such an extent that I begged her to finish me with her hand, or I should go mad. “What, really? You will enjoy in your trousers? You must not do that!”

Granny now returned and, speaking to me, drove my unsatisfied lust from my mind for a time, and then the pains came on again. I sat by her side as she tried to knock a tune out of the piano, but as her Papa said, “She couldn't play for nuts.”

I talked to her in English and told her how I was suffering from what was called a “suppressed horn” and that I wished she had made me spend in my breeches just then. She said that would be disgusting. I retorted that there was nothing to be disgusted with when it is a man we are supposed to love, and she was very happy to have me tell her that if ever she slept with me again, she would have to lick my feet and under my arms, without counting other peculiar and strongly smelling parts of a man's body, at six o'clock in the morning, when all is hot and redolent of a rutting male. She agreed, and all was arranged in her mind to try and come to the station with me and masturbate me in a secluded spot, but nothing came of it. I think she played a deep part, promising me anything, and praising all I suggested, but I could not take any notice of what she said. I always guessed she would cry off at the last moment, and despite my great desire I never believed much of all the stuff she told me, though at this moment I was ever head over heels in love with her.

Now came Papa to interrupt us, and he carefully installed his portly figure on an armchair, while Lilian, as if obeying a sudden impulse, left the piano abruptly and took a footstool, which she placed at Papa's feet and then sat on it, pushing herself hard against his legs, as I could plainly see. Papa always maintained a dignified silence when Lilian approached him in loving style before me. Mamma joined us and there was no peace until I had promised to come and spend the day on Monday, twenty-seventh of February, as Raoul was to be there, having a holiday on account of the funeral of the illustrious personage I have referred to, and there was also to be present a German friend of Mr. Arvel, of the Berlin financial papers.

February 27, 1899.

I started from Paris with a novel for Lilian, called L'Anneau, as the subject treated of a young girl who falls in love, but her sweetheart fights shy of her because she is a virgin. So she throws herself in the arms of a cool, debauched rake, who is quite surprised to find she is a maid, but he violates her speedily and, fearful of the responsibility, never sees her again, but the man for whom she has done this also discards her. Another lover now comes after her, but he is sentimental and proposes marriage. She accepts, hiding from him the fact that she is no longer intact. Through the boasting indiscretion of her seducer, as I call him out of politeness, the would-be bridegroom finds out her deceit and reproaches her bitterly. The curiosity of the novel is in the up-to date manner in which it concludes. In the old sentimental days of my youth, the author would have rushed to suicide as a wind-up; here the young man takes the heroine to be his mistress and we leave him buttoning the girl's boots after a scene of sensuality in the middle of the day. I also kept Lilian supplied with the volumes of Justine, and Papa and lynx-eyed Mamma must surely have seen the volumes sticking out of my pockets.

And another peculiar circumstance took place that very day. The advertisement about the dogs brought a number of answers and I may say at once that two were eventually sold for fifty francs each, out of the five that formed the litter; and all kinds of applicants wrote to ask about the pups. Mamma showed a post-card where most peculiar details were asked, the writer thinking that these were pedigree dogs, whose sire had won prizes at shows, etc. I told her to answer and say she did not know anything about pedigrees, but the dogs could be seen at any time.

“Sign your letter with a woman's name, and then you need not bother to give particulars. Any name will do, — Marguerite, Antoinette-”

“Or Justine!” exclaimed Mamma, interrupting me, while her beautiful black eyes pierced me through and through, as she tried to see what effect her bold mention of that name would have upon me. I was taken aback and staggered for a second, but I made no sign. Mamma and I were alone at the time, or else she would not have been so bold. I debated with myself whether I should tell Lilian or not, and after reflection decided to keep this queer answer of Mamma to myself for the nonce. It was a useful bit of information anyhow, as it enabled me to see that the mother was an accomplice to Lilian's goings-on, and as the afternoon grew towards a close, another incident confirmed my theory and this time it was of much greater importance.

We were all in the dining-room. I think the five o'clock tea was being drunk, or had been served, when a ring was heard at the gate of the villa. It was a gentleman who had come to see the puppies, from the advertisement in the newspaper. Whenever anybody called, Lilian always rushed to the garden to see who it was, and evinced great curiosity and a wish to show herself, and Arvel generally followed suit, as he also liked to know what was going on. But this time the couple never moved, and Papa told me to go after his wife, who was already in the garden, and explain about the dogs to the gentleman. I went, wondering at the attitude of Lilian and her Papa, who were standing up side by side, their backs to the buffet, and both looking embarrassed and uneasy. Lilian held her head down, and Papa looked quite shame-faced and also seemed to be studying the pattern of the carpet. The visitor was an officer in the French army, and he gave his name and address, which I carefully noted, and he also mentioned that of another officer, his friend, an amateur of the canine race, who I knew by reputation as an habitué of the Café de la Guerre, where he used to have his letters addressed. The visitor was a fine, tall, gentlemanly, handsome fellow, about thirty-five years of age, with blue eyes and a large fair moustache, but with no beard. I was very glad to note this little detail, as I knew Lilian liked shaven chins, and I wore all my beard, as I have already stated. He seemed very quiet and subdued in his manner, and was visibly either ill at ease, or very shy and nervous by nature. He asked a few unimportant questions about the little dogs and Mamma drew him away to see the rest of them and their father and mother, in another part of the garden. I turned back to the house out of discretion. As I went strolling along, I saw the officer striding towards the gate, followed by Mamma, who had to trot to keep up with him. He was very tall, and little paunchy Mamma was running by his side, talking earnestly and looking up at him, like a street-walker soliciting an unwilling stranger. She followed him out of the gate, and I went back into the dining-room, where I found Lilian and her Papa, who had not moved from their straitened position against the buffet.

Raoul, who was at home that day on a special holiday on account of the funeral I have mentioned, now came running in to the dining-room and announced that Mamma had made a present of a pup to the officer, although he had not seemed surprised at first being asked sixty francs for the one he had chosen. Everybody seemed astonished except Lilian, who asked me what I thought. I answered that I could not understand it at all. I could not tell Lilian that I fancied he was her adorer, and that she was giving each of her lovers a pup, as I was to have had one. Papa, coarsely, as was his wont, said that if he had been a man and such a thing had happened to him, he would have thought that the woman who gave the animal, to him a perfect stranger, wanted him to sleep with her. Mamma took me on one side and in a greatly excited state, her voice quite hoarse and her lips white and trembling, excused herself to me, saying that she had done this to curry favor for her son. This was laughed at later by Raoul, who explained that he was in another part of France, and naturally this officer could do nothing for him. Altogether each one acted his or her part splendidly, including myself, who listened and looked at each and every one, saying never a word, nor betraying myself in any way. This is the man who took her virginity in November, I expect, and accounts for the story of the lieutenant, the silver chatelaine, and the late newly-developed love for officers in general. I kept my own counsel.

The German friend arrived after breakfast, but left before the officer came, I think, although he has but the place of a lay-figure in this story.

Papa had fainted away as from giddiness on Saturday and Sunday and was far from well.

After lunch he had a slight fit of vertigo and it was all he could do to keep on his legs. I offered to stop with him, but he refused and went to lie down, while Lilian, who I watched narrowly, never turned a hair. She seemed very hard-hearted, for although he was nothing to me, I suffered to see my big, strong friend grow white, and stagger like a drunken man, but the boy and girl were unmoved, and as it had been decided that Raoul, Lilian, and I were to go out on bicycles, we did so, leaving Papa with his wife and Granny.

I must not forget that I had borrowed a Kodak and took everybody's portrait, but most of my films were monopolized by Lilian, and I got her in all sorts of positions, with her dogs and without, and I experienced sweet lustful emotion in ordering her to turn and twist in front of the lens, and make her pose in a variety of attitudes, merely so as to have the pleasure of commanding her to stand in such and such a way. She obeyed me with docility and was kind, loving, and tender to me all day, looking very bewitching both in front of my camera with her big red burning lips, and afterwards during our pleasant ride, in a bicycle costume with a divided skirt.

When we returned from our ride, Papa was better, and I tried to diagnose his illness and reckoned it up as the result of a long winter's indulgence in the pleasures of the table, with no exercise; and living in a confined atmosphere, breathing the poisonous emanations of a slow-combustion stove in his sleeping apartment. There were the remains of the old mysterious illness of years ago and I began to ask myself if he were not syphilitic perhaps, but all this was in a very crude state in my brain at that moment, as my faculties were dulled by Lilian's blandishments. Papa recovered enough to come and take some photographs of Lilian with Raoul and me, and I tried to get Lilian with her head pillowed on the broad breast of her handsome brother in uniform.

We dined late and Lilian was seated next to me. She pulled her clothes up so as to expose her naked left thigh and signed to me to touch it. She remained like this all through the dinner, and I felt her thighs when I chose and when I could, without counting touches of her hands and pressures of her feet. Add to this the kisses of the whole day and I think I had nothing to complain of.

The German friend had been invited to come and lunch on the first of March and go out for a bicycle ride afterwards with Miss Arvel, and I was told to come too. I consented, nothing loth, and returned to Paris with Lilian's kisses wet on my lips and thoroughly convinced that despite Lilian's many lovers she still kept a corner in her heart for me. And I was ready to forget and forgive all, Papa and the others, past, present and future, if black Miss Arvel would keep her word with me.

March 1, 1899.

Papa had experienced difficulty in getting the requisite poisonous chemicals used in photography and I brought him what he wanted, some cyanide of potassium and bichloride of mercury, one ounce of each, together with some other trifles, measuring weights, samples of photographic papers, and so on, to make myself agreeable to him, and I had, for the last year, taken subscriptions to the papers he liked and which I found inexpressibly silly: Answers, Tit-bits, Pearson's Weekly, and a more serious publication, Photography.

Soon after my arrival, and the most flattering welcome, Lilian, who was ready dressed for the bicycle, gave me back the novel, L'Anneau, and when I asked her how she liked it, merely nodded her head, and ran away, leaving me alone. I had made a hit then? Something in that book had touched her to the quick. What was it? Had the man to whom she had given her virginity last winter left her after the sacrifice, or was she disinclined to talk about the rupture of the hymen? Should I ever know? What an amusing game of hide-and-seek she was playing, and what was her motive, if indeed she had one at all?

The Berlin gentleman I had already seen came to breakfast, and he spoke German nearly all the time with Papa, while Lilian and I had it all to ourselves at the end of the table and a very pleasant meal it was, my lustful charmer being as amiable as it was possible to be.

In the middle of the repast, the wine ran short. Lilian was sent to the cellar, and asked me to accompany her, which I did with delight, and we sucked each other's lips and tongue with rapture, Lilian telling me to follow her into the dark-room immediately after breakfast, as she wanted to show me something there. We left Papa eagerly discussing the Dreyfus case in German, and as usual he was all in favor of the generals, as was the Teutonic guest. I had refused to join in the discussion, although Mamma, knowing my opinions, tried to get me to talk on the subject by telling the stranger that I held contrary views to his! I preferred to slip away with Lilian and we were no sooner inside the little cabin than after a long sweet kiss from her fevered lips, she plainly informed me that she wanted me to give her pleasure with my finger as she felt very “naughty.” Nothing loth, I put my hand up her clothes, as she stood up, leaning against the sink, and my finger immediately touched the spot. I was very surprised to see her start and draw back with a rapid movement, dislodging my hand completely. I saw at once what had happened. She knew, of course, that she was no longer a virgin, but her great preoccupation was to make me still believe in her virtue. In her excitement, she had presented herself in quite an easy position, the knees half-bent, eager to be manipulated, and I, full of lust and luncheon, had pushed my finger in too far, as I could tell by the soft warmth and moisture. I asked why she drew away from my touch.

“Oh, that is nothing. Don't be offended! Surely you can excuse an instinctive movement of shame?”

I was too clever, and at the same time too excited myself, to do anything but agree with her, and I was content to do my best to bring about the crisis, as she stood bolt upright now, her thighs pressed together. After the usual expressions of pleasure, she suddenly broke away from me, exclaiming that she had spent, and I said to myself that she had been remarkably quick about it. She now made a dive for my neglected organ, which she found quite ready to her hand, as it was all prepared, sticking out of the drawers, as I have explained. She caressed it a little, telling me to keep a sharp eye for fear any of the workgirls should come along, and, bending down, took it in her hot mouth, rolling her agile tongue round its swollen head. She had not been sucking me for two seconds when she got uneasy, and left off. I begged her to continue and finish me, as she stood by my side laughing and looking, and admiring my sign of virility, and she bent down again, once more popping it into the velvety seclusion of her warm mouth. But directly she felt that I was about to ejaculate, she left off suddenly, exclaimed that she heard footsteps, and fled rapidly from the tiny building, leaving me all alone with my stiff rod sticking up out of my trousers. The disappointment was so great that my erection soon passed off, and I was too much in love with the coquette to feel any anger with her.

With the same sensation of stupid passion, which is pleasing in its way, I started on my ride with Lilian and the German. Miss Arvel showed us the road, and she agreed to pilot us to a kind of tea-garden, about ten or twelve miles off. The German was not troublesome; he walked Miss Arvel's bicycle up all the steep hills, and there are many along the Marne, while we lagged behind and talked. I saw Lilian did not want to work too hard, so as not to perspire or tumble her hair. She wore a veil too, and was powdered, perfumed, and her lips well reddened, albeit they were swollen. Our conversation was very lewd. I showed her a lusty beggar on the road and, admiring his rustic beauty, asked her if she would like to see his staff of life, adding that he would very likely show it for a few coppers.

“He would show it me for nothing,” said Lilian, with a merry laugh. “Charlotte would go and ask him, if she was here.” And with a change of tone: “I can rub my little button in this divided dress as I walk along,” and the German being a long way off, she made all the requisite movements as far as I could see, and after a time announced that she had finished. I need not repeat how I talked to her; my readers will guess the state I was in.

“You don't think I've come like this?”

“Yes, I do! I know you are so awfully lewd. But soon you will be able to enjoy yourself immensely when you will be travelling alone with your Papa.”

She feigned surprise and pretended not to know what I was talking about, but I saw she was not offended with my allusions to her Papa's love for her.

“You are going away on a nice little journey all alone with your Papa who loves you dearly, and you are very fond of him, which is not to be wondered at, as he adores you. It is a real honeymoon. Do not think I am jealous. I have noticed his love for you for a long time. It reminds me of a beautiful novel I have got, and which I must lend you, all about a father and daughter who go away together for a pleasure trip.”

“Do you think that a daughter cannot misconduct herself with her Papa without traveling with him?”

“You are quite right, but it is much nicer to be entirely alone with the man one loves, amid fresh scenes.”

She did not answer me, but laughed the matter off and changed the conversation. I think I chaffed her a little more that day, when the hazards of our ride brought us near to each other, out of hearing of the German gentleman, and she took it all in very good part, as if I was alluding to any ordinary flirtation. I am bold enough to say that she was proud to have made the conquest of her mother's old lover. What amused me most was the part played by the woman who was known as Mrs. Arvel. Did she know? As a jealous woman of ordinary intelligence in sexual matters, she must by this time have an inkling of what was going on, if she had not connived at it already by her policy of the open (bedroom) door. That was the one blot on the salacious picture, to my thinking, for having long since made up my mind that Lilian was one of those women of passion who were destined to have many lovers, a fact that excited my passions more than anything, it was a matter of perfect indifference to me who the man was, and how many we were to share her affection. I did not know whether to feel pity or disgust, when I thought of Lilian's mother. The latter sentiment carried the day, and put her down as a selfish, calculating woman, who had given up her girl to serve her own ends. I felt a trifle horrified at that idea. All women have been tempted in their lives. Some fall, some few resist temptation, generally for the sake of the children, when there are any; and many a time I have seen and heard mothers, sometimes in a low station of life, shudder and weep at the idea that the little one who had clung to their breast when an infant, and who they had seen grow up from an unsteady, tiny toddler to a graceful girl, might one day despise and blush for the woman who had carried her nine weary months in her womb, and whose Lilliputian feet had kicked ever so gently within, as if to say: “Mummy, I am here!” How then can a woman who has ever “felt life,” as it is called, in that way, prostitute her child surpasses even my understanding, all debauched and besmirched as I am. No, there was no excuse for Adèle; any woman is free to dispose of her own body, but not to debauch her children, her own flesh and blood. It is quite bad enough when they “go wrong” themselves. Lilian's mother could not plead ignorance, as she had lived among harlots all her life and knew what went on behind the scenes in Paris and London.

I did not say very much more to Mademoiselle Arvel than is set down here. I, like all love-sick men, was afraid to put her out of temper, an easy task with willful Lilian, and I possessed a sentiment of delicacy with regard to her which was perfectly ridiculous. I hinted that she had done well to accept her Papa's love, and thus become the true mistress of the house. Her brow grew dark and serious as I spoke and she dropped into a brown study. To prevent her being too sad, I joked, and begged her not to forget poor Jacky, when she became “queen of the harem,” and she allowed me to make all these silly quips and jokes. If I had not seen with my own eyes the recent passion of Papa and Lilian's seduction of him, my conversations with her would have sufficed to fix her guilt, as no girl, however debased, could have supported the strain of my lewd talk if there had not been something between them; something more than mere playing and romping.

Laughing gaily, we reached the garden and the inn to which it belonged. I called for a bottle of champagne which we soon finished, and Lilian had her full share of her favorite wine.

We returned, and were late, getting home at dark, Lilian having slipped us on the road and we two old fools lost our way. We had no lights and I was riding a hired machine without a brake down steep hills in the dark. We struck the town at last, and I use the term advisedly, as I got my front wheel into a tramway rail and came down inelegantly. And my reader must remember that I was forty-seven years of age.

We got back to the Villa Lilian, and were received like two prodigal sons, or rather two gay old prodigal fathers, and as I told the story of how Lilian had left us in the lurch, her Papa whispered gently to me that she was “yappy”; i.e., mad. (London slang of the East End.)

Lilian wished to know what we were making a mystery about, and I told her. I tried to improvise a “Limerick,” and began:

“Miss Arvel was a pretty young Jappy,

“Who her Pa said was perfectly 'yappy'…”

And of course, I pretended to be unable to finish it.

Dinner was now served and Madame Arvel complained bitterly that she had prepared tea for all of us, including the gentleman from Berlin, and all the two big potfulls would be wasted.

“Not wasted, Mother,” said Papa, with a saturnine grin, “It will do for Lilian!”

The remark being made in English, no one understood it but the speaker, Lilian, and I, so Papa repeated it to Granny, laughing and chuckling to himself, as if he had made an excellent joke. I laughed inwardly, as by what he had said Papa had corroborated my suspicions extending over two months concerning the virginity of his daughter. For the benefit of all young unmarried men, I must explain that tea is used as an astringent in cases of the “whites,” the same as alum or walnut leaves, but such infusions are of no practical use unless taken as an injection, and as injections cannot be taken by virgins, Papa was simply telling me that his bewitching Jappy was no longer a maid, and the tranquil way in which he said it, and the matter-of-fact manner in which Mamma, Granny, and Lilian herself laughed at the witticism, proved that her maidenhead had gone some time back, sufficiently long enough ago for all her people to get used to her shame, if they knew what shame was.

I sat by as if I heard nothing, putting on the most innocent air I could assume, but nobody took any notice of me. No doubt, in years gone by I had let many strange remarks pass without notice, so wrapped up was I in my love for Lilian, and they were all quite right to continue to treat me the same. I was not displeased at finding that I was supposed to be a fool, and I made up my mind to continue to play the part of one, which was the only chance I had of finding out the truth, without counting, and I hardly knew it myself then, I had a mortal dread of quarrelling with her I still foolishly called my Lilian. So I suppose Papa thought Lilian had told me the truth, or that I had had connection with her, as he had, and she had not yet told him how I was a kind of a half-believer in her virginity.

When Papa had spoken, dinner was nearly over, and Lilian jumped up and called me to come and help her to take the dogs out, and we promised to be back in time to say “good bye” to the German and accompany him to the station.

Lilian, finding that I had paid seemingly no attention to Papa's remark, made herself most agreeable to me, and I suspect the champagne and the day's outing had made her feel a wee bit jolly.

She told me point-blank that she wanted me badly and that she had formed a plan to get out on the day of Mi-Carême, which was Thursday, the ninth of March, and spend the afternoon with me.

“What shall we do that day?” I asked, as I did not know but what I was wanted merely as an escort, as on Shrove Tuesday.

“Whatever you like, my darling, I shall be yours that day, and will go anywhere and do anything you like.”

I thanked her effusively, as I always was foolish enough to do every time she took it into her head to be like an ordinary tender woman to me, and our lips met in one of Lilian's special, long, sucking kisses. There was not a soul to be seen, and we embraced and caressed each other madly; indeed I was rampant with lust, and made use of the most bawdy language, much to the wayward girl's apparent delight.

I cannot remember how it happened exactly, but I should fancy that I alluded to our masturbation of the morning.

“I owe you one!” said Lilian, “as you made me happy and I was too frightened to finish you, but I will now if you like!”

And before I knew where I was, I was walking along the country road which led from the Villa Lilian to the Place d'Armes, with my person fully exposed, and Lilian gently manipulating me as I walked by her side. Whenever we caught sight of a rare passer-by, I drew my overcoat over my stiffened member, and Lilian, withdrawing her fairy fingers, marched by my side like a nun going to chapel. Was it my fault or Lilian's that Papa's name was mentioned? Lilian always called him: “Mr. Arvel,” when she spoke about him to me, and I talked once more about his love for her, she still pressing the sign of manhood in her warm hand, having taken off her glove for the purpose.

“It would be to your advantage to let him love you. Why don't you seduce him?”

“That would not be difficult!” was her swift rejoinder.

“I am a long time coming tonight,” I said after a few moments' silence, during which I began to enjoy the touch of her clever hand on my private parts, for I could feel she was rapidly becoming an expert. “I suppose Papa is not so long coming as me?” I asked this question in a most quiet, offhand way.

“Oh, he is much longer than you,” she replied quite naturally.

“How do you do it?” I answered, “With your hand or your mouth? Which does he like best?”

I thought I was getting on finely and had I had a proper reply this book would never have seen the light. Another moment perhaps, and I shall know all and as I spend she will confess her imposture. But I had no experience with wicked women, as Lilian dropped my weapon, which was about to go off, and ran away from me across the road. Like a fool, like a man burning to emit, I went after her, my miserable weapon sticking out in front of me at halfcock.

“What's the matter, Lilian?”

“How dare you speak to me like that?”

That is what she said, or words to that effect, as she saw she had been too far. I only knew one thing at that moment; I wanted to spend, any way she liked, so I put my pride in my pockets, especially as I did not care whether Papa used her as a toy or not, if she would toy with me. I begged her pardon, making a very pretty little speech all about people who love each other never sulking or quarrelling together, but making the necessary complaint at once, and after discussing matters, the one in the wrong should freely beg the other's pardon and all be cleared up at once. Entirely mollified, my queen deigned to take me in her soft palm once more and kissed my lips, complaining how chapped and feverish her own were, while she continued to rub my stiff shaft.

We were standing on the pavement against the railings of a beautiful villa, and I told Lilian that she was behaving like a common woman who made men spend in holes and corners at night time for a few pence.

“A common low prostitute that a man can do anything with, not like you, a wretched little cow…quicker now with your hand…who does not love me in spite of all she says!”

“Oh, don't say that! I do love you and would do anything for you!”

“Faster, love…faster, little whore!”

“Oh, yes, I am your little whore!”

“And you would do anything for me? Anything, no matter how dirty or disgusting?”

“Anything, as long as it is you!”

“I take you at your word! I have a little biscuit in my pocket and when I have come, I will moisten it with my spendings and you will eat it!”

“Certainly, my darling, and I am ready to do anything else you may ask me!”

“All this time she kept on with her movements to make me enjoy, and I was so greatly excited that I knew I should be a little longer than usual in attaining the height of pleasure. It was a cold night; I was tired from my ride, and the champagne and the wine and liqueurs I had drunk had got into my head, for I am a water-drinker. I wanted to be finished before anybody came along the road to interrupt us, so I called out to Lilian:

“Faster, go faster still-and grip me tight! So! Hold it as tight as you can!”

“I can't press it tighter! I can't go faster! Oh, my wrist aches! I can't keep on! I shall let you go!”

“Beware if you do, little whore! I'll pay you well! I'll give you a franc, two francs, if you do as I tell you!” She redoubled her efforts. “Now, I'm coming!”

Lilian shrieked, as if frightened, but she had sufficient sang-froid to direct the jet through the railings of the garden against which we were standing, and I lost my head in the delicious agony of this onanistic diversion in the open air.

I took the biscuit and with it wiped away the drop that remained at the urethra, walking after my sweetheart, who had moved on a pace or two. I offered it to her. She refused to keep her word, as I thought, and I was in no way disappointed. I knew my own mania, common to many other men, if they would only confess it. It is that of imagining all kinds of horrors, or impossible tricks and schemes of lust when they are under the influence of extreme sexual excitement, but once they have discharged their elixir, all is generally forgotten. Women know this, and promise anything to the male while he is in this state. Beware then, my masculine readers, of what you tell your mistress during the long-drawn-out copulation of the morning, when, steadied by the work of the night before, the erection is constant, but the end is as yet far off. Ask your mistress at the moment to give up to you all her relations, masculine and feminine, to grant you the most filthy and unheard-of favors. She will consent to all, and when you are satisfied, will laugh at your insensate longings. You, perchance, have betrayed your secrets, while talking as you lazily moved in and out of her hot gap, and now she knows that you want her sister, or would dearly love to have the little girl or boy who is asleep in the next room, in bed with you two. Perhaps the child you covet is of your own blood? So much the more voluptuous, but take heed of the awakening, when the delightful crises is passed. Thus Lilian was debauched, I venture to think, when she came into the bed of her mother, between her and her lover, in the morning early.

I threw away the biscuit, laughing inwardly at my own folly, which I take a strange pleasure in unveiling here, and we began to turn towards her home.

She explained that she intended to go up to Paris on Thursday, the ninth of March, which was the day of Mi-Carême, under the pretext of visiting Charlotte, and her parents would let her, if she took her principal workwoman with her. She would leave her at the station, which would suit the girl too, and come to me, meeting the assistant in the evening to return home with her. I was delighted and thanked her a thousand times. Then she told me what to say to each of her parents in turn when I should see them at the station. I was to evince a lively interest in Raoul, and ask Mamma how I could send him some eau de Cologne, since I myself had taught them that it was a sovereign remedy for tender feet. To Papa, I was to say that I hoped I should soon have the pleasure of a long, long day with him in his dark-room, without any gadding about, so as to become a real and efficient aid to him.

When we got to the station, the train had gone and the German, too. We were both well scolded, and after due apologies on my part, I walked on with Mamma, as there was half an hour to wait for another train. I told her that I wished to send some Cologne water to her son, and she told me to arrange it with Lilian, as Papa must not know, being too jealous of the lad.

During this, I watched Lilian, who was eagerly and excitedly whispering to her Pa. Then I said good night to him as Lilian moved away to let me recite my lesson, and he heard me out patiently. When I had finished, he frowned and grunted, as was his habit, but never answered me at all. He was no dupe of our, or rather of Lilian's, petty intrigue, nor did he take the trouble to dissimulate.

After the usual effusive compliments at the end of such an amusing day, I took my departure, and went away to dream of the charming offer that my adored Lilian had made to me, all for love of me, for that glorious Thursday in eight days' time.

13

Virgin me no virgins!

I must have you private-start not-I say, private; If thou art my true daughter.

— Philip Massinger

Then, as to what she suffers from her father,

In all this there is much exaggeration.

Old men are testy, and will have their way.

— Shelley

LILIAN TO JACKY.

Sonis-sur-Marne. March 5, 1899.

My Jacky, who is mine alone,

My sweet dream for next Thursday, day of Mi-Carême, will not be realized, as I start for Brussels Tuesday morning. I am very much annoyed. I should also have liked to have seen you before my departure, but in spite of all my insinuations, there has been no chance of arranging matters to have you invited. So I am in a rage, and I dare not insist too much for fear of exciting suspicion, which must not arise at any cost.

Tomorrow is Papa's birthday. Do not forget to telegraph your best wishes on receipt of this note, which I write in haste, and in which I make the most monstrous faults; but you will excuse me, will you not?

I must have a line from you before I start, Monday evening or Tuesday morning.

I leave you; I hear someone coming upstairs.

I kiss you where it will please you most. I love you,

LILIAN.

JACKY TO ERIC ARVEL.

Telegram. Paris. March 6, 1899.

Many happy returns of the day.

JACKY.

As it will be seen, I sent the wire of birthday congratulation to my old friend, and I was highly delighted to do so, because I had no idea when his birthday fell, or what was his exact age, but I took it as proof that Lilian was still at work for me, and in reward for my absence of jealousy, was doing all she could for me to remain in the best books of her elderly lover, for there was now no possible doubt concerning the illicit intercourse of the semi-incestuous couple, and once more the knowledge that he also knew about me from Lilian-as he could not be such a blind fool as to have ignored our connection-brought a glorious thrill of lust through my veins, as I conjured up a lascivious future at the Villa Lilian.

In obedience to my charmer's commands, I sat down and wrote her at once the letter she had ordered, which, as well as I can recollect, for I kept no copy, may be summarized as follows:

I thanked her for thoughts of me. I excused her not keeping her appointment, as it was not her fault; I told her to enjoy herself in every way and not to fret about me. She need not even trouble to write, if she could not find an opportunity. What did I care for a letter or so, more or less, since she had told me how she loved me? I was proud to be one of her troupe of marionettes, which she maneuvered with such skill, and she was so clever, I opined, that I took the liberty of calling her Mademoiselle Bismarck; and did not forget to put in a good word for the health of Papa. I told her that I should love her without stupid jealousy, and added some guarded maxims about women employing their natural cunning, talents, and beauty to entrap men for their own ends. “Seduce and give way, but propose your conditions beforehand, and remain sovereign mistress.” I told her that I had been thinking over what she had said about an instinctive movement of shame when I had touched her between the legs. I wished to cure her of that feeling, desiring her to be absolutely without shame with me, and utterly perverted, if she cared to please me. I intended to punish her for that recoil from my middle finger, by making her stand before me, and with her clothes well raised, open her drawers and masturbate herself thoroughly, remaining as long as possible in this humiliating position, until thoroughly cured of all false shame with me. I concluded with all kinds of good wishes for her health and enjoyment, and recommended her to go to the Wiertz Museum and the Zoological Gardens at Antwerp.

LILIAN TO JACKY.

Hotel des Grands Fabricants, Lille. March 8, 1899.

My best beloved,

We left yesterday morning, or rather yesterday afternoon, at 1:15 for Lille. We arrived at 5:30, took a little walk, and then had dinner. Then we went to a concert, where we assisted at a two hours' procession of the most grotesquely ugly women it is possible to imagine. After that, we returned to go quietly to bed in a large double-bedded room, as they told us there were no rooms communicating.

This morning, Papa had gone to Roubaix to see a friend. As for me, I told him that I did not care to go, so as to be able to write to my Jacky, for perhaps I shall not be able to do so before my return.

Now I am going to write to you very frankly. You are not mistaken; Mr. A. loves me and without quite knowing it himself. Nevertheless, he is and always will be respectful towards me. To begin with, I love Mamma too much to let things be otherwise and I do not love him at all! And then the bare idea disgusts me deeply, and is repugnant. Therefore, in future, I shall keep a watch over my most trifling words, and my most innocent gestures, as far as he is concerned, for I will not encourage this idiotic passion.

My dear adored one, you who are my only love, I hope that you will be able to understand completely what I am going to say. I am very unhappy here. I suffer and I should like to be home again already; firstly, to see you, to feel that you were near me, and also that you might support me by your counsel. I want to open my heart to you more than I have done up to the present. I feel so lonely and so sad. Mamma does not love me as before, and yet she has nothing to reproach me with, and I love her dearly. Mr. A. is so wicked towards my brother, that the poor woman thinks she ought to love him doubly. Note that I am not jealous, I love my brother too well for that, but I suffer to feel myself neglected by Mamma and I am too proud to let her see it.

But I fatigue you with all my lamentations; how can I help it? It seems to me that you alone understand me.

Love me well and tenderly, my beloved Jacky, my adoration. I swear to you that I require all your love and that I am worthy of it. Never have I loved any man before you, and never has any other man touched me.

I detest Mr. A., for it seems to me that it is his fault if Mamma is so changed towards me.

You…I love,

LILIAN.

I am very good and shall always be so, where you are not concerned.

If ever I felt the lack of literary training, it is now. O for the pen of a Thackeray, or the smallest modicum of his talent, to enable me to bring home to the reader in some slight degree the effect this letter had upon me. That it was entirely false from beginning to end, I was nearly inclined to believe; and although I did not mind her trying to conceal from me that she was now the official concubine of her mother's old lover, I felt a terrible pang of disgust and horror to think that Lilian had pushed the deception so far as to try and render me unhappy and extort my pity by daring to say that she was suffering. I was always ready all my life to put myself in the wrong, so I confess I did for an instant have a little remorse, as I reproached myself for having given her bad advice. Had I debauched her? Had I ruined her young life? Had I, by my famous training, nurtured those wrong ideas in her, which had driven her into the arms of a senile satyr, who had perhaps violated her, whipped her, kept her all night at work on his body, and disgusted her entirely? I got the letter in the evening. It was long; one of the longest letters I had ever had from her, and there was not an erasure in the whole of it. So, evidently, she had been at some pains to compose it and catch the post. She was fresh out of bed when she did so. I think the document may have been genuine up to a certain point, as far as the words “double-bedded room,” but from there, all branches off confusedly, and she wanders and flounders about in her desperate attempts to hide the truth from me. And why write at all? Had I not told her a hundred times that I was not jealous and that she was free to dispose of her body as she listed? I wanted but a trifle of that love which she had always offered me herself from the onset, and as I have plainly stated in this wretched story, I never asked her for any favor that could possibly interfere with her young life, now devoted to the old man who had shared her mother's bed for twenty years or more.

And why drag Adèle's jealousy into this pitiful writing, designed to trick and pain? She knew very well that her mother had naturally been jealous of her for years, and now she alone could form an idea how her mother looked and felt on the morning of her departure, and what she had said to her husband before God. There may have been some little disgust at the events of the night, although that is open to doubt, but any trace of physical repugnance would soon be gone after a nice déjeuner, when her Papa should return from Roubaix, if ever he went at all. Arvel's jealousy of Raoul I have already explained.

It is likely that the sexual act itself in its bare manifestation of penetration had no great charm for my ex-virgin, who cared much more for the preliminaries, and delicate caresses and attentions. Papa had probably never “had” her at his ease, nor quite freely, entirely naked in a bed in his arms; and the month of February had served as a sort of training for him, to get up his genital strength for this “honeymoon" trip. He was too fat and scant of breath, unable to stoop, and he would require time, warmth, and full commodity and space to enjoy a woman at his age.

It had long been arranged that she should give way to him. She had seduced him, partly from interested motives, partly through vice. She liked him; she was used to him. It was a great achievement for her to have triumphed over her mother, who in time would come round and accept the situation, if she had not done so already, and the two women would hold Papa between them and look after any money and property he might leave behind him when he died.

I took a great deal of trouble to try and analyze Lilian's feelings from her horrible letter, with its depressing undercurrent of physical repulsion, showing the disillusion she experienced at the first night completely alone with him and at his mercy. In the morning, sick, tired, disgusted, full of regret and remorse; all her daydreams of tender voluptuousness rudely dispelled by the long and painful pushing efforts of the heavy-bodied and coarse stepfather, with his teasing semi-erections; ready to vomit, the cheap champagne and bad drink and food of the provincial restaurant and café-concert having produced their effect of nausea; her thoughts go out to me, and she starts a confession, which, like those of all hysterical females, is made up of equal parts of truth and lies. Lilian is fearful lest I despise her; this tardy effort to stand well in my eyes is pitiful in the extreme, and to anyone unable to dissect the mobile brain of such abnormal creatures, the letter penned after this “first night” with Papa reads as the wailing cry of a violated, disappointed bride.

And perchance, all said and done, it may have been a vast and wicked hoax, arranged by the guilty pair to torture and trick a miserable lover, who must perforce, according to their petty ideas, be madly, wildly, jealous, and at any rate, Lilian, full of weak vanity, posing as a queen over men, and badly advised as usual by her Eric, would imagine that once a man has said, “I love you!” to a woman, he is her slave, bound by the chains of his passion forged with his own hands, and therefore in a fit state to accept whatever stupid falsehoods his mistress would have him believe.

I am convinced that women are purely instinctive beings, inexplicable; continually changing and renewing their ideas and capable even accidentally-of obstinate fidelity. They are to be pardoned or despised according to the degree of love we may feel for them. Arvel's mysterious daughter liked us both, but she wanted to keep her secret. Her treachery towards me and which she knew I had discovered, was a precise and plain fact which had upset her murky understanding.

She thought she was in duty bound to make me believe she had chosen between us two men, by saying that she must hate Arvel because she loved Jacky, not realizing that I was quite ready to grasp the fact that a woman could be just as faithful to two men as to one.

LILIAN TO JACKY.

Hôtel des Trois Pigeons, Brussels.

Wednesday, March 15, 1899.

My love,

Just a word, in the greatest haste, to announce my return to you. We leave to-morrow, Thursday.

I am delighted, firstly because I hope to see you soon, and secondly, I am dreadfully bored here.

I must have a letter from you at Sonis for Friday, without fail.

To your dear lips,

LILIAN.

The foregoing was scribbled in pencil on the paper of the hotel, with its printed heading; the letter from Lille was also on the hotel paper, but in ink.

About this time, I had received news of Lady Clara, who was traveling in the south of France, and she never forgot to ask for news of Lilian. I had told as well as I dared that the course of my true love was far from running smoothly, and, without initiating her into the mystery of Lilian's liaison with her Papa, I said enough to show her what a wicked little woman was my idol, and I told her that the history of Jacky and Lilian was as strange as a penny novelette.

“A novelette?” replied dear Clara, by return of post, “Say rather a real three-volume novel! You write very nice letters, Jacky, why don't you put your adventures into a book?” I scouted the idea at first, but now, smarting at the treachery of Lilian, who was trying to turn me into a simple, uxorious, paying customer of hers, I gradually got used to the thought of making the whole story of Lilian, as far as I knew it, in book form. I counted my puppets. There were Papa, Mamma, Raoul, Charlotte, Lilian and the author. A goodly troupe, by my faith! of which the first five formed as many links in a chain of vice; pleasant, alluring vice to a libertine like myself, but my gall was bursting to think that all was now changed, by reason of the news from Lilian. She had been talking to her Papa, and I was not to be admitted into the magic circle. The chain was stretched against me. Hence her change of attitude at present. I ought to have remembered that I was an Englishman, and have walked away quietly, without ever giving proofs of my existence down at Sonis, but long residence in France had made me as cunning as a monkey. I was tickled at the scheme of using my puppets to form a future novel, and I seemed to be doubling my personality, as I looked upon myself as an actor-author, playing the principal part in one of his own dramas. I wanted purely and simply to find out everything with regard to Lilian, not for my own curiosity, but to be able later on to take her pretty head and rub her sweet, pointed nose in her filth shoveled up by her own hands. I knew perfectly well that Lilian was no longer a virgin, but up to now, I had pretended to believe her when she kept up the fiction to the contrary; I was fully convinced that she was the mistress of her mother's old lover. I wanted to show Lilian that I knew all the lies she could invent; I should have the ferocious satisfaction of a Marquis de Sade, if I could only succeed in showing Miss Arvel that I saw through her, by placing before her eyes proof of her own villany. How was that ambitious program to be carried out?

It was a long time before I hit upon a scheme, or plan of campaign, which would enable me to show Lilian and her parents, if necessary, that I not only knew, but possessed proofs, of three things: Lilian's intimacy with Papa; the disappearance of her maidenhead; the evident complicity of all the inhabitants of the Villa Lilian to get money out of me, and let me have my sweetheart every day to myself if I would only “pay, pay, pay!”

How was I to go about my wild scheme? It did not come to my mind all at once, but when it did creep into my brain, I fully grasped the idea, and it became an obsession until I worked it out. To resume everything briefly, I intended to play Hamlet in private life, and pretend to go mad, if need be, to get Lilian and any other inhabitants of her villa off their guard. Of course, should Lilian prove true and tender to me, as she had promised before going to Brussels, I would drop my Shakespearean mask and become my ordinary self once more. I knew I could hardly fail to succeed, as they were all so self-sufficient that they would never dream that any man would sacrifice his own vanity, and coolly and calmly play the fool to try and find out a lying sweetheart's secrets.

To begin, I wrote the letter that Lilian wanted to be at her house when she arrived home, and I kept a rough copy of it, which I am thus able to give here, and now all my love being well-nigh gone, and naught but a slight, forlorn hope of future lust remaining, I began to make notes and collect material for the volumes which are now in the hands of my patient reader.

JACKY TO LILIAN

Paris. Thursday, March 16, 1899.

I love you, my Lilian, and shall always love you whatever happens. I loved you first. I love you faithful or unfaithful, good or bad. Present or absent, I shall love you the same. You are my only love; the last love of my life.

Is not this the best answer I can give to your letter from Lille-the cry of a troubled soul?

You can understand that I have great difficulty in composing this letter. I have so much to say to you; so many things which cannot be written, I think.

I have been truly full of anguish. I have worried my brain and passed through every kind of moral torture. I reproached myself many things, and felt remorse for certain advice I gave you. I accused myself of not having loved you as I ought to have done.

What greatly pained me was a sentence where you spoke of not being worthy of my love. But, little darling Lilian, if one of us is unworthy, it is certainly not you.

You spoke of lamentations? I could complain all day, and I shall only be happy when I shall have seen you and consoled you. I will not let you suffer, darling.

The love I feel for you is quite devoid of all jealousy or mean afterthought. You have only to tell me, as you do now, that you love me and I shall be the happiest man in the world. I believe in you, because I feel that you adore me truly, and that you are always trying to find out how to give me pleasure. You are always thinking of me.

Certainly, I adore your caresses, your hands, your mouth, and all your body-your childlike breast, your little black-and-pink thing, the other callipygean side, and your thighs, and all I have pressed, pinched, struck, felt, licked, sucked, and moistened with my seed. But if you were to offer me all that, giving me to understand that you love me no more, that you give yourself to me solely for my pleasure-I would refuse everything.

I appreciate with tender joy your true and entire love, with your heart coming at last to me with all your confidence. How good you are now! And I am worried, as I think that you have perhaps sacrificed yourself for your Jacky and I am responsible for the pain I cannot help seeing in your letter.

I must remind you that you promise me for the future absolute frankness; you pledge yourself to open your heart to me. You tell me that I alone understand you.

Then the mania I have for turning over every word you say in your letters, and for scrutinizing and analyzing all that comes from you does not displease you? Do I see clearly when I observe you, my angel?

There are moments when I curse my clairvoyance and I envy the grocer who is neither perverted nor vicious. But I have one consoling thought-if Jacky was not so cochon, you would not love him.

For the advice you ask I am forced to tell you at once, until I can better make you understand my thoughts by word of mouth, that we should have no pride or haughtiness with our mother. You must absolutely go to her as if you were a little girl. Do you not know that we are always little children for our mothers? And a mother is never astonished to see her children come back to her at any age, as they used to do when they were ten years old.

Already a year ago you asked me the same thing, and my counsel was identical. The beginning of the reconciliation will be hard for you perhaps, but you must persevere and make yourself caressing, tender, and full of prayer to her. I cannot develop my idea more fully here.

This letter may seem to you stupid and incoherent. You must excuse the writer. I grope in the dark.

Since the eighth, I am as a madman. Only Smike understands me. The other day he did as follows for the first time in his life. We were alone. I felt all “topsy-turvy”-your word when you put on your air of innocence. Softly, he came to me and licked my face, my eyes. Then he left me, and went and lay down sadly.

Last Friday, at three o'clock in the morning, you were with me. I felt myself seized in a close embrace and a hand seemed to touch my face. In the trouble of the dream I said to myself “Ah! 'tis Lilian-that is why Smike does not bark.” I called you and woke bathed in sweat, crying out your name.

If I let you catch sight of a little corner of my heart, so sensitive when you are concerned, you must not think that I have become a poet since your departure. No, in spite of myself, I am always thinking of some delicious follies to execute with you, my adored little woman, and I have added a few holes to your leather girdle. You will give yourself freely up to this game of teasing pain and imitation of torture, will you not? I love it so much, because I know you give way for love of me.

I mean to inflict supreme shame upon you. I will have you in front of me in your drawers, and you shall come to me, opening them yourself as I shall order you, and pushing away the chemise to show me your “pussy.” I shall leave you thus for some minutes, happy at the slight humiliation you will undergo in exposing your nakedness yourself. Next you will open your little slit yourself, with your two hands, so as to show me the inside quite fully. And I shall be quite naked, having undressed myself at once before you, so that you may judge yourself of the effect you produce upon me. It will be an extraordinary lewd delight for me to be naked as I was born, and keep you a little while with me, you being completely dressed.

I have developed the photographs I took of you and your brother, etc. There are only six good ones out of the twelve negatives. Bad work that. But at last I have a photograph of you, taken by me, for me. I have half a mind not to show it to anyone, not even to you. It is indeed my Lilian, who twisted and turned with such docility before me. I have the effrontery to adore you when you obey all my caprices at once.

One day in my life, I should like to have you quite humble and tender, saying: “Yes, Jacky-if you wish it, Jacky, certainly, Jacky, as long as it pleases you,” etc. I should like to box your ears, and you say to me: “Thank you, Jacky.” That is impossible, it is not in your nature.

I hope that the end of your journey was better than the commencement, and that your health has been good.

What would I not give for an hour or two of quiet chat with you! I will not read over these pages; if I do, I shall not have the courage to post them. But this will not prevent me when I see you from treating you like the lowest woman in the world, and covering you with insults, as I call you by the filthiest and most infamous names, once you have told me that to be insulted by Jacky makes you spend.

To both your wet mouths!

JACKY

LILIAN TO JACKY.

Sonis-sur-Marne. March 18, 1899. My Birthday.

My own Jacky,

At last here I am back again, and I find your good, long letter. Have no fear about our correspondence, as never any of my letters are opened, you can therefore rest easy on that point. I was awfully bored during the whole week we remained in Brussels; in a word, this trip has been more of a task than a pleasure. I have many things to tell you, but I cannot describe them, as it is impossible to develop my thoughts on paper. So I shall do my best to have you invited.

I love you.

LILIAN.

P.S. Mind and amuse yourself well tomorrow, Sunday. I know that it is a day that you would not sacrifice and give up to me for anything in the world. This is a pity, as I shall be free tomorrow.

In my letter, to which this was an answer, I had put a post-script expressing fears lest my letters to her might fall into the hands of her parents, which was part of my scheme to prevent her thinking that I suspected her collusion with her Papa and Mamma.

What I had said in my long epistle had evidently worried her not a little, as I plainly let her see that I suspected something, and that I pitied her not a little for having been forced (?) to give way. And it was perfectly natural that I should sympathize with her, since she had apprised me of her suffering. My tenderness for her supposed trouble annoyed her, because she was lying. She tells me that she is going to get me invited to her home, and in her little venomous P.S. teases me for devoting my Sunday to the sick woman, as I had told her. I received Lilian's note on Sunday morning early, as I was just rushing off to the country to spend the day with some relations of my poor mistress. I did not like them, but I went with the sick woman, who always thanked me for my slight sacrifice; she knew and appreciated it, as being done for her. So I sat down and nearly missed my train in scribbling a hasty word to Lilian, entirely forgetting in my temper the precious part I was playing, albeit it fitted itself in all the same. The evil intent was plain. She knew I was not free, so she said she was. She was also cognizant of the fact that at such short notice I could not come and storm her Villa, or telegraph boldly to her to meet me in Paris, in the face of her parents. I was very angry, and I told her, after the usual compliments for her birthday, of which I had hitherto ignored the date, of my rage, something after this style:

“Your P.S. was bad. I am deeply hurt. It is a useless, insulting sting. You are silly, and that makes me understand the word 'task' in your note. Beware then, lest you become too foolish; too kind; too good and easy with those who are not quite so loyal as Jacky. If you give them all the kindness that is so conspicuous by its absence in your P.S. you may just as well be dead. Do not be a slave, but try and make slaves; I will teach you how.

“Do you remember that night last winter when I missed the train, and I said to you: 'Sometime in your young life you will be crushed beneath the rank, stinking, sweating body of some brutal monster? Then you will call out for your Jacky in the horror of the night; but he will not be there!' I did not think my prophecy would come true so soon, nor that I should be such a truthful soothsayer.”

Next day I reflected how foolish I had been to write so harshly, just at this juncture when I wanted to get as near the truth as the Arvels would let me. But I soon found a means to repair my error and turn it to account, as the changes of mood that I was now going to simulate would make Lilian and her father believe that I was going mad, and nothing is so flattering for a woman as to suppose that she has such power over an infatuated male.

I am very intimate with a manufacturing jeweler, and to him I repaired without loss of time, and ordered, from my own design, a very pretty lady's ring, consisting of a turquoise with a diamond on each side, and when made up it formed a very handsome present.

I chose a turquoise, as that stone is symbolical of the month of November. Many of my readers may not know that there is a stone for each of the twelve signs of the Zodiac, and the last month but one in the year, governed by Sagittarius, has for gems the blue stone I had chosen and also the carbuncle, and in occultism they are lucky and bring inheritances, gains, and fortune to the wearer. I chose the turquoise, because I had first had Lilian in my arms in that foggy division of the calendar, and I had another reason, which the reader will see in due course, but I carefully refrained from letting her know, until it should suit my purpose to tell her.

After ordering the ring, I went to a post office, and wrote a most designedly foolish letter to my own sweet Lilian. I announced my present, and asked how I should offer it to her. Should I slip it into her hand on the quiet, or give it openly as coming from Mr. S…? If she cared to say it came from a lady-customer, she could do so, as I did not wish to show off before her parents. It was quite enough for me to know that she had it from me. I said it was merely a trifle, but that I could not unfortunately afford to give her what she really ought to have.

I was very saucy to conclude with, saying that when I saw the word “birthday” on the top of her note, I immediately thought of a present for her, but I resolved not to give her anything, because of the insulting venom of her wicked P.S., and I think I added something about her want of delicacy at such a moment as the present, when her duty was to spare my feelings and be as considerate as I was. She knew that I was condemned to the weekly agony of a sickroom, and that if she loved me, she would write one word of regret, that little word the truly loving woman utters, when she hears the voice of her sweetheart change, as his eyes grow dim, and she hastens to cry to him: “You were wrong, dear, to say those cutting things to me, but I was wrong too. Let us forgive and make it up!” I added that she would never say those words, and I did not care if she did not. I was utterly indifferent and expected nothing but evil from her.

On Wednesday, twenty-second of March, I was confined to my room with a slight attack of influenza, the prevailing epidemic at that moment, and which I had caught from my poor mistress, who was always sure to become a victim to any contagion. Having nothing to do, I continued my work of posing as a mad lover by sending the following letter to Lilian, which I devoutly hoped she would show to her Papa, and as I wrote it I fancied I could see her running up the gravel path after having taken her correspondence from the box, as I had seen her do, but this time, she would wave my letter over her head, exclaiming: “I've got him, Papa! I've got him!”

JACKY TO LILIAN.

Paris. Wednesday, March 22, 1899.

My nerves have been shattered these last few days for many reasons, but principally because you gave me to understand that you were unhappy, disappointed, and something had happened to cause you a great disillusion. I suffer, too, from pangs of remorse, as I think I am perhaps the cause.

I was about leaving for the country on Sunday, to put on a good face in front of people I loathe. The little bit of wickedness in your letter (which was otherwise delicious for me, although, poor little Lilian, you still spoke of your misfortunes), fell exactly at the proper moment and on the right day to drive me beside myself.

It was stupid, for at an ordinary time, if I had been a little gay, I should not probably have paid much attention to it.

Therefore in my stupid rage, I answered too hastily, and in a coarse, cruel, and impolite manner. I am not ashamed to confess that I bitterly regret all I said, especially as it is not my habit to write in such a manner, and above all to you, who I love more than anybody in the world.

Besides, I have not waited long to repair my wrong-doings, as my letter of Monday shows. Therein I offered you with a good heart a birthday present, proving that I tried all by myself, without waiting for a reproach from you, to mend my ridiculous ways, for which I blush.

You once said to me: “You don't know how I am worried and annoyed when I think of you!”

Fancy then, what I feel to day, my adored Lilian, and you will find a thousand excuses for me. I ask you simply to bring things back to the point they were at on Sunday morning. I ask you in the name of our love.

O this correspondence, these sterile letters! I curse the deplorable facility for writing which I possess. It always makes me say something I should have left unsaid.

Here my rough notes break off abruptly, but, if my memory serves me rightly, I terminated by an abject apology, and declared that the fear of losing Lilian had made me so ill that I could not sleep, and was obliged to take large doses of chloral, although I can truly say that I never was forced to fly to a narcotic in my life, and I added that if she would send a kind word by telegram on receipt of my letter, I felt almost sure I should regain my power of normal sleep. And I signed, “Poor Jacky.”

LILIAN TO JACKY.

Telegram. Sonis-sur-Marne.

March 23, 1899, 9:50 a.m.

Sleep well, sweetheart.

LILIAN TO JACKY.

(No date or place.)

Postmark Sonis-sur-Marne. March 23, 1899.

My very own,

You had the scent of a detective to write to me yesterday, as confess that I felt disposed to nevermore give you the slightest sign of life after your letter of Sunday.

Papa is in bed with the influenza, and I myself am only just a little better.

You are absolutely in the wrong and you do not understand what I write to you concerning Mr. A. There is positively nothing and there will never be anything between us but a great desire on his part, which manifests itself openly each time that he finds himself alone with me, which is horribly wearying in every way, and even rather more repugnant than anything else.

l suffer greatly from this state of things, but how can you fancy yourself responsible for it? It is no more your fault than it is mine, I suppose?

Thank you for the ring. I shall wear it with all the more happiness, knowing that it comes from you. It is preferable that it should be Mr. S, who gives it me openly, as one of my lady customers is going to offer me one, and two would be too many.

You will soon be invited, but the indisposition of Papa alone put off this happy moment.

I am impatient to see you, for we have a multitude of things to say to each other, and then I wish to see you for the sole pleasure of feeling that you are near me.

To your dear lips,

LILIAN.

The effect of my insane correspondence was now beginning to make itself felt; and my young lady was quite bereft of all prudence, or the atmosphere in which she lived had caused a total eclipse of all moral sense. Here was a young woman declaring coolly that her mother's old lover pursued her daily with his in-famous passion; she living under the same roof as him, and this desire manifested itself openly whenever they were alone together. Which possibly meant that he opened his trousers whenever he caught her on the stairs, or coming out of the W.C. To write so coolly concerning a stepfather, with whom she had just traveled all alone, added to her letter from Lille, would, I thought, have been sufficient circumstantial evidence in a divorce court, but I was still dissatisfied, and the more she tried to keep me off the track of her incestuous secret, the more I wanted to know.

Seriously speaking, no woman could live in the manner Lilian wanted to make out to me. The loathsome disgust she would feel at the approach of the lips of her beloved mother's paramour, at the touch of his gouty, nailless hands fumbling round her petticoats could drive her to flight or suicide, if she really was the right-minded girl she now wished to make herself out to me. Where were the dreams of collaboration and photography with Papa? How about the appointment for the day of Mi-Carême? She talked vaguely of inviting me to her house, but there were no signs of sensual longing. The ring and my show of rage, followed by an unasked-for apology, had quite fogged Lilian, and she took no trouble with me, thinking evidently that I was in a condition to digest the rawest falsehoods, and I could not divest myself of the notion that Papa was amusing himself by reading all my letters, and that he was now her lover, pander, and father-confessor rolled into one; so I locked myself up in my little den, and wrote the following extraordinary concoction destined to throw such a cloud of dust in their eyes, that in their vanity, she like all shallow, crafty, vain women believing that my love or passion for her was so great, that I could be easily rendered blind, and forget all teachings of experience and common sense; while Papa loving darkness rather than light because his deeds were evil, kept advising her to stick to the lie she had written to me in that vile elucidation from Lille, which I am almost inclined to think was composed by the pair together, or at his dictation, over the café complet in the morning, in the double-bedded room. And why double-bedded? I had only Lily's word for that. Since she had been imprudent enough to write to me, probably because I expressly told her not to, on the printed paper of the hotel at Lille, what was there to prevent me taking the train and passing one night in the same hotel, perhaps in the same room? My lust was sufficiently cooled now to enable me to shrug my shoulders, as this thought came over me. And I am sorry to say, I declared that they were not worth the trouble, and I preferred to stop at home in Paris and nurse my influenza, which was troubling me considerably. Moral: Be careful how you use the hotel note-paper. A good plan is to write at a different hotel to that you are stopping at. You can always get a sheet of their paper for the trouble of taking a cup of coffee there, and if you know how to lie glibly, an answer can easily be received there, too.

JACKY TO LILIAN.

Night of March 24/25, 1899.

Little Lily, darling,

So you have been ill? Influenza? You say that you are only just getting better?

I asked for news of your health in the long letter I wrote to you on your return. I hope that when you receive these lines you will be quite reinstated.

I am better. Sleep has come back to me, a little. Your good telegram, followed by a still better letter, comforted me and made things easier.

Then, darling, I felt myself loved by you. In 1897, you loved me only a little; in 1898, much more; and in 1899, you love me passionately. After my letter of Sunday, I might add not at all.

Frankly, that letter was too insulting. I still blush for shame of it. You have pardoned me, my love, because you are “crazy on Jacky.” You said that yourself, when you called me your little husband. A wrong done to a woman we love is only inexcusable when she no longer loves us.

I still feel the desire to excuse myself. I detest narrow-minded, obstinate, pigheaded, vain people who think themselves degraded to have to say: “Pardon me, I am wrong.”

I know some of the middle classes, decorated with the Legion of Honour, who would let themselves be cut into a thousand pieces sooner than retract anything they have once said. How stupid! I am vicious, perverted, depraved, my intelligence is below ordinary standards. I am a very ordinary, faulty, vulgar man, but I try to be delicate in my sentiments and when I have to reproach myself for having done wrong, I candidly confess it. My loyal avowal is my best justification. I know the folly of mankind, and that the loving heart is often the prey of error or weakness. I shall always acknowledge my mistakes without false shame, pride, or obstinacy, but with sincere regret.

Charming Lilian, who is about soon to call me to her side! I shall be able to touch you, to feel you near me, to enjoy your perfume, living flower that you are; read my pardon in your beautiful eyes, and depart with the satisfaction that I am still loved by you.

For the ring, spare me, I pray you, sweet love, the annoyance of having to give it to you before everybody. Be ready and dressed as soon as I come. I will give it to you when we are alone. Then you can run and show it to your parents, to know if you are allowed to accept it, etc. You know the old tune better than I. It is only a trifle, and for that reason will pass as swiftly as my tongue in your mouth. I am not rich enough to give you what you deserve. I only fear that by its style, by the stones I have chosen, it may not perhaps please you. And you are so good for me that you will always say it delights you exceedingly. I should like to put it on your finger myself. I would that it were never off your hand, that you wore it at night; especially at night.

I go mad when I sit down to write to you. It is true that I see you so seldom. My letter takes the place of a chat with you.

I feel my light little pointed perfidious whore of a pen which would like to spring from my hand, not to be “cut,” but to wander across the paper, and touch upon a burning topic to which you alluded in a bold, albeit delicate, manner in your letter. And the inkstand is there gaping wide, full of treacherous blackness.

Permit me, sweet little baby, to wait until I see you to talk to you about it. I am afraid of myself and am frightened of my own literary dysentery. I feel that in a tête-à-tête with you I could risk saying almost anything, but written words seem often hard and wounding; that is why I leave a portion of your letter without an answer.

You write well, you say much in a few words, just enough. That is rare in a woman, but I have remarked-I have told you so-that you possessed a little of the resolution and the firmness of a determined man. I think I am more tender and sensitive than you. A man has never made you cry, I am sure, and never for me-but halt! — little dirty prostitute of a pen!

I have some eau de Cologne, a pint, prepared in a tin travelling bottle. It is what I promised your mother for Raoul. I must really bring it, or else your Mamma will think that I am one of those idiots who promise heaven and earth, and never mean to keep their word.

Shall I bring another volume of that romance of sanguinary pleasure? And now, enough! I have worried you sufficiently for this once.

To my dear lips, say you? Those are charming words, and I answer: Take them, my Lilian, take the whole mouth of your

JACKY.

Although I tell you in my letter that I would not mention the burning subject you allude to in your note, I cannot prevent myself from saying that I sincerely pity your lover of Sonis. I judge him a little from myself. One vicious, depraved man is much alike to another. You have me and I live in the hope of some little compensations now and again, and yet I am very unhappy by the great longing I feel to have you all naked and palpitating in my embrace. How then must he suffer from what you tell me? For he sees you daily, hourly, and there is no hope for him. Nothing for him. That must be hell upon earth. I can understand his recent illness, his vertigo. I feel for him. I have known him over twenty years. He knew me as a youth. Now I like him more and my heart goes out towards him, as you make me realize his state of continual desire. Such is cruel suffering. In writing this, I have to make a great effort not to send you a lot of erotic stuff about the dreams of lust you cause me. I make myself ill with imagining all the things I could do with you. Alas! My poor dreams of voluptuousness are fated never to be realized.

When I write to you all these nice, lewd, mad tricks, my brain whirls round, and one of the four following disgusting things is sure to happen:

I.-I cannot sleep and if I slumber a little, I dream of you, and I ejaculate spasmodically in erotic nightmares, which fatigue and exhaust me physically and morally. Hence my nerves are unstrung by the cerebral masturbation of those erotic letters. I take chloral. I lose my temper and thus nearly lost you; to sum up: rank stupidity!

II.-Or I master myself, and then I have frightful puns in my testicles and lower down, in consequence of these erections and partial erections that I overcome and drive away. That is what happens to me when I return from Sonis after a long, but never too long, happy day, passed with Lilian. These are particularly sharp pains, especially as they begin by sweet, slow enjoyment of a teasing kind, provoked by your delicious secret touches and your stolen kisses, my beloved.

III.-Or else, being alone by day and night, thinking of you in spite of myself, and of all I could do with you, my hand slides, without my knowing it, between my thighs and with a few movements of my wrist I discharge in my fingers. It is idiotic and sickens me as soon as the brief sensation of burning pleasure (?) is passed. Thus does one become disgusted with oneself. Once I spent in the train coming back from Sonis this winter, after you had said to me: “What can we do in a dining-room?”

Miserable mankind! What a dirty bundle of rags is our poor body, when excited by our sad monkey brain, boiling over with infamous lusts.

IV.-To conclude: the sole resource of salvation for he who can still have an erection and emit, is to seek out natural, complaisant pleasure for cash on delivery, but I think that disgusts me as much as my hand. All my life I have hated mechanical delights. I never had any taste for the joys of love without some sympathy, if only for an hour, without a little reciprocal passion; or, let us say a small quantity of affectionate illusion on both sides, in default of true love.

What confessions! You will soon know the male in all his ugliness. Perhaps you will be disgusted with me?

If it pleases you to answer me in a few lines you will make me very happy. I chiefly beg news of your health, and of your Papa.

I should wish you to give serious attention to what I am going to tell you. When you announced your departure, you said to me: “I must have a letter Tuesday morning.” Then, from Brussels you wrote: “I must,” again. Those orders expressed by you gave me a new sensation, that I had never tasted or desired with any other woman up to now.

The first revealing shudder of this new form of passion which comes from you to me, because it is you, shook my frame when I was with you and your brother in the drawing-room, where, laughingly, you gave me a kind of little lesson of discipline. I have already spoken to you of the effect produced, as well as of the strange excitement caused in me by your recital of the tale of Madame Rosenblatt's pupil. You are cunning enough to guess the meaning of my new thoughts. If this is repugnant to you, if you think I am ridiculous in trying to see if we cannot both find a novel and real pleasure, I, being your slave in every way, in the true sense of the word, and you, by holding me beneath your severe yoke, to be punished when you shall judge that I deserve it-I promise never to speak to you about it.

I must confess frankly that this desire, although a little vague at present, thrills me and makes me tremble deliciously. I am agitated voluptuously by a movement that I have never yet experienced until this day. I am quite overcome by this change which has taken place in my being.

It rests with you to do with your Jacky whatever pleases you in this direction, or to forbid him to have such ideas.

In either case, this is the only indication that I shall give you. To teach you your part practically would cool me completely. I could not do it; I should not have the courage; I give you the broad lines, hoping that as I dare to say that my poupée rises at that idea, you, as you say you love me, ought to be wet as you read these words.

I will not tender you the homage of my obedience, unless you also get a glimpse of a new incarnation of sweet, loving delights.

I offer you the virginity of my humiliation. I shall understand that you accept with transport the abandonment that Jacky makes to you of himself, and of his so-called manly rights, but I should also comprehend without surprise that you would perhaps like to remain as we are, instead of reversing our positions to see what would come of it.

I tell you also frankly that, although taken up by this strange longing, ever since the day I told you, it may happen that once tried I may be the first to mock at myself. That remains to be seen.

It is an experiment to be tried, if you smile favor-ably on my ideas. With my wide tolerance for every manifestation of sexual passion, whatever it may be, I should not be surprised either to see you accept with enthusiasm, or refuse with mirth. As you please, Lily. All you do is right.

I have faith in your imagination, if you accept the command of your lover as freely as he gives it.

In the meantime, whatever you decide, I give up to you the direction of our correspondence, and will only take the liberty to write to you when you desire a letter, telling me the day, etc., as you did when travelling.

I have serious reasons for asking you to accept the entire direction of our liaison in the future.

I feel that I want to believe in you, to see events with your eyes, and feel in everything as you do, as you shall kindly direct my mind by your firm will.

You have seen, I confess it humbly, that I have dared to doubt your word, though plainly written, as I rebelled idiotically against you last Sunday, when I began to lose the faith I had in you. I actually dared to form absurd theories about your conduct, instead of dutifully and religiously believing in you as I had done up to the present.

Take me therefore quickly and knead my brain-the unbelieving brain of a man madly fond of you-as you will, so that I may look at things as you desire and direct. Let me only have the ideas that you may dictate to me. I want to believe in you blindly. You shall be my religion, my holy, persecuted virgin.

Save me from my thoughts, and come and direct my soul with my body for your caprices, for your wants.

I await the pleasure of your answer with anguish. My eyes will be dim as I shall open your letter, if you deign to write to me shortly, to signify my salvation to me, and the peace of my tortured heart brought to me by the blind worship I dedicate to you.

But directly I see that in your great kindness you accept to tutoyer me-while I shall return to the true respectful formula I ought never have abandoned-I shall know that I am at last worthy of being fashioned and molded by you, as you may wish.

I hold at your disposal all straps, belts, pins, whips, and all instruments, which I confess, to my shame, I meant to use with Lilian.

Your humble slave,

JACKY.

I felt sure that the foregoing letter would convince Lilian that I was mad with uncontrollable lust for her, and I also wanted to know if her Papa saw my letters to her. That is why I had added the paragraph concerning the unfortunate lover. The only danger I ran was that Lilian should see through my artifices, and feign indignation at my bold insinuations. But no, I had had in my life a tremendous experience of liars, and I have found that habitual falsehood-mongers are exceedingly credulous themselves, and Lilian and her father would be sure to fall into the trap I had set for them. That a man should so degrade himself as to boldly set himself down in writing as a convert to the doctrines of Sacher-Masoch, and parade his sexual inversion, proves that he is entirely under the charm of the enchantress, and by apparently throwing aside all vanity, I hoped to arouse all that of my infamous couple.

The girl would be proud to show her old man how desirable she must be to so fuddle my brain, and her elderly lover would be elated to know that he was making a fool of me.

How lucky it is that women are not truly intelligent. All they really have is their natural charm and the power to draw us in their net by reason of their possessing that which our genital instinct forces us to covet: the little furry money-box. Put a coin in the slit, and the figure will work, but as our lust is soon satisfied, to keep us enthralled, women's cunning is called into play, and their principal weapons-lying and craft-are furbished up to supplement the influence produced by their beauty and our own infatuation. If, added to their sexual sorcery, they were able to get the true range and direct their fire without exaggeration of mendacity and diabolically distorted fables, then would all men be slaves without exception.

In my case, Lilian was so sharp in her jugglery, as witness her recent letters and principally the missive sent after the night at Lille, that she would never credit that I might fathom her deceit and take to sending Machiavellic manuscript as well.

The study of this strange creature became quite absorbing, and I left myself no rest. I thought about my old flame by day and by night. It was well I did so, as I suddenly remembered that I possessed a very old friend who lived in Brussels, whither he had retired to end his days after a long and brilliant career at the English bar. He had been a criminal lawyer, and his name, Augustus Mallandyne, was well-known in the divorce-court. He would seize the situation at once, so this was what I wrote to him.

JACKY TO AUGUSTUS MALLANDYNE.

Paris. Wednesday, March 29, 1899.

My dear Mr. Mallandyne,

I want you to do something for me, which is very easy, but it is confidential, delicate work, such as only a man of the world like yourself can undertake for another man of the world like myself. Please note my subtle flattery, as I purposely refrain from speaking of your legal talent.

And after all, if you do not like the job-why, do not do it. But if you can, you will be rendering me an immense service, at no cost or trouble to yourself.

I have no time today to tell you all the ins and outs of the story, but I will, and you will be delighted, later on. It is a charming love affair, and if you can get the information I want, I may be very happy.

A lady and gentleman stopped at the Hotel des Trois Pigeons, 25 Avenue des Haricots Blancs, Brussels, for about a week, leaving Paris, I believe, on or about Tuesday, the sixteenth inst.

Description of gentleman:

Tall, any age over fifty, bald-headed, aquiline nose, wears a pince-nez, talks loudly with an English accent, dresses carelessly. A fair moustache, no beard or whiskers. Big belly.

Description of lady:

Young, about twenty-three or twenty-four, looks older. Very dark, lots of black hair, good figure, although very thin. Long nose, not pretty, but pleasant; fine Spanish eyes, swarthy complexion, nice teeth. Coquettishly dressed.

Would probably register under the name of Arvel. Try for this name first. If not Arvel, what name?

Did they travel as Mr. and Mrs.? Or as father and daughter? Or uncle and niece? Or what?

IMPORTANT-What rooms did they occupy? What number? Single-bedded; double-bedded; two rooms communicating; or two separate rooms?

Did they seem loving and happy? Was the girl sad or gay? Did they go out at night, or go to bed early?

I want you to go at once about this, as soon as you get my letter. I shall look for details by return and expect a letter Good Friday morning-if you are in Brussels.

If necessary, be generous to garçon d'hôtel or femme de chambre, and I will refund any pourboires you give. May I ask you also to send me back this letter? Not that I care much, but this is rather indiscreet what I am doing.

The whole story when I have heard from you. Be quick, and accept beforehand my heartfelt thanks.

John S.

P.S. To make things easier, I enclose a photograph of the lady, I have just got hold of. You must hurry, please, as the photograph has got to be put back in its place before its loss is discovered. So please return it with information, if you don't mind undertaking it.

To avert suspicion, go gently to work like this at first:

See visitors' book. If you find:

Arvel, Miss and Mr.

or,

Arvel, Mr. and Mrs., with dates and numbers of rooms, or number of rooms-say nothing but remember the figures, and under pretext of choosing a room for a friend who is coming, go up and find out the sleeping accommodation of the rooms occupied during their stay by the Arvel couple. Because if they registered as Arvel, I shall not want you to show portrait, or get other details, lest the servants should gossip easily.

LILIAN TO JACKY.

(No date or place.) Postmark: Sonis-sur-Marne.

Received March 30, 1899.)

My own Slave,

It is an understood thing. All you propose in your letter pleases me enormously, with but one exception. I want you to still continue to tutoyer me.

Enclosed you will find an article on fashions that you must translate literally into English, and as soon as it is done send it me with a long letter.

You will be invited for Easter Tuesday, if you do well the little work I give you now.

LILIAN.

I want a very passionate letter.

This note contained a long article on ladies' fashions, cut from a Parisian daily paper, and I was highly pleased, as I saw my vicious scheme was working well. The translation was wanted by Papa, there could be no doubt about it, and the fact of asking for a lustful letter proved that my mad effusion had amused and perhaps incited the lecherous stepfather. It is always a bad sign when a woman asks a man to write letters in a given key, and nearly in every such case, someone is waiting to laugh at the writer. It may only be female friend, but of a surety the confidential character of the correspondence is gone. It is no longer the frank communion of two hearts that beat as one; a third party has been invited. I could not refrain from heaving a deep sigh of regret, despite all my skepticism. Lilian had betrayed and sold me to her mother's lover; my letters served to make me a laughing-stock in his eyes, and I shuddered to think what a fearful fate awaited me if I had been possessed of less knowledge of the wickedness of the world.

The more I found that I was right in my awful conjectures, the more I was devoured by the feverish desire to carry on my endeavors to the bitter end and know the worst. It was only thus that I could cure myself of any love I might still feel for the traitress of the villa.

Spurred on by the spirit of deceit, I tackled the translation and got it done and posted the same day. I did not forget the letter of lust, and dashed it off so quickly that I had no time to make a copy. But I made a few notes next day, as I was still thinking, and the thought assumed firmer proportions every day, of writing my romance that was growing fast out of the festering soil of the garden at Sonis.

Some of the photographs I had taken last month were tolerably good; one, representing Lilian lifting up her skirt just a little, and smiling saucily, I had printed several times, and a copy was enclosed in my letter to Mallandyne, to aid in identifying the pretty little tourist. Another showed her reclining on her brother's breast. He was standing up in uniform and his arm encircled his sister, whose eyes were half-closed, her lips parted; and there was a smile on her features that gave her the appearance of a woman in the act of enjoyment, and there is no doubt in my mind but what she did feel a secret titillation of the vulva at that moment. I had rendered an ordinary sheet of note-paper fit to receive the impression of the negative, and I printed her head and bust on it, temporarily arranging the plate so that no other details appeared.

My letter was not very good, consisting of four pages of erotic twaddle, relating to the cruelty of women. I was careful only to speak very vaguely and I did not give her any details of what could be done to a man who might be really fond of being whipped or ill-treated by one of the weaker sex. I knew Papa was fond of books on flagellation, but I did not see my way clear to give him examples of torture. I told Lilian that she knew how disgusted I always was when I had to write lascivious letters, as the effort aroused my passions uselessly, which was my real opinion, and it was downright cruelty on her part to force me to write voluptuous manuscript, being unable to see her as I should wish. Not content with making me suffer morally, she now seemed resolved to try how to torture me physically, and I concluded by the narrative of a dream I was supposed to have had, when I saw Lilian reclining on a sofa, and as far as I could judge, enjoying the caress of an eager tongue. She was spending, and some hidden power held me back, and prevented me from rushing to her, or calling out her name. Yes, she was spending, and he murmured: “Enough! Enough!” All my lust seethed up in me; I felt I must approach her, and making one mighty effort, I awoke! I rose from my bed, to refresh my burning mouth and wipe away the trace of this “wet dream.” Before returning to my weary couch, I gathered together some sheets of paper on which I had been taking some rough notes before falling to sleep, and Lilian must judge of my surprise when I found impressed upon a fragment of white paper the beloved features of my sweetheart in the act of enjoyment. I had felt inwardly during the vision that I longed to possess her portrait as she thus appeared, and now some mighty, supernatural power had caused the dream-face to leave its impression on a leaf from the note-book of her lover and victim. I terminated with the humble wish that one day I might perhaps be allowed to produce her orgasm with my tongue.

Generally, according to Lilian's old directions, I always addressed my envelopes in my disguised female hand, and posted them at a post-office a little way away from my dwelling. This time I did not disguise my writing, and posted the bulky missive so that it bore the postmark of an office in the very next street to where I lived. I need hardly add that this was never mentioned to me later, but I noted it silently for my own satisfaction.

AUGUSTUS MALLANDYNE TO JACKY.

Telegram. Brussels. Friday, March 31, 1899.

Commission executed, writing.

AUGUSTUS MALLANDYNE TO JACKY.

Brussels. March 31, 1899.

Dear S.,

Yours to hand. I know the two Boomaens, Ghent people, brothers, who keep the Hôtel des Trois Pigeons. I saw the principal man. He very willingly gave me all particulars.

The couple took Room No. 4, composed of two rooms en suite separated by a lobby, where you could hardly see. The front room, with one or two windows, I forget now, but I think two, giving on the boulevard, is large, and with two beds.

Introduced the girl as daughter-several times-and also to gent in room when taken, who had not yet turned off. Boomaens tells me he would say, with pride: Ma fille, monsieur!

When the outgoing lodger came down to the bureau, he said: “Funny father! I almost thought he wanted me to have his daughter. Seemed to be throwing her at my head!”

They had one room with a screen as shown by the drawing enclosed.

Out every evening, theatres, etc. Very gay, apparently happy. He recognized photo. They arrived on March 8, and registered as A. pere et fille. A. has been here before and is a client of the hotel, to a certain extent. I am well known there and they have a great respect for me, as I send them customers. Of course, I gave no name as to my principal. Boomaens knows I am acting professionally. He seemed quite to understand that the mutual relations of the two visitors were assumed.

They could have used the other room if they liked, but they never touched it. They used to get up late. It appears somebody in the hotel, one or more persons, used to slip into the dark passage between the two rooms and pry and listen. They heard noises of romping, laughing, sounds of slapping, and smothered, inarticulate sounds, as plainly demonstrative as they were incompatible with the declared relationship. The bedding was always in a very tumbled state, leaving no doubt as to what took place. Also, towels, stains, etc. I fancy from what I elicited that something peculiar had been seen.

I dared not ask for more details, as it might get to my wife's ears, and she might think I was spying for myself, but it was plain, those walls, could they have spoken, would have unfolded a tale of lust as seldom reaches the public ear.

Why not come yourself and stop a few days with us as you did before? I'll take you to Boomaens. Shall all be glad to see you.

This is a cheap, quiet hotel, very well conducted, and quite respectable. My wife and a lady friend came there only a month ago in order to take an early train, next morning, to Italy.

A. coming there with a little Parisian prostitute, and registering her as his daughter caused a sort of excitement in the hotel. She was known as la petite femme.

Boomaens said A. was in some way connected with the Stock Exchange. I am quite sure that Boomaens is not likely to commit any indiscretion. He took me upstairs on his own invitation and explained the arrangements of No. 4, about the best in the hotel, on the first floor.

The visitors' book was blank as to departure but I would not, in fact could not, wait while he turned up his accounts. I had a heap of business to attend to, but I managed your affair all the same.

I wired you this morning: “Commission executed, writing,” which was intended to show you all was in train. Are you happy? Let her have it hot.

Yours truly,

A.M.

Very pleased to be of use to you-old friend!

I can find nothing better to write here than the well-known sentence: “Truth is stranger than fiction.” Lilian and her mother's keeper had gone to a town together where lived my friend, who “understood things,” and to whom I could write freely; and by a lucky chance, he happened to be on intimate terms with the proprietor of the hotel where they stopped. I am perfectly certain that many of my readers will smile incredulously at what they will consider the artfulness of the author of this book, and the very strange coincidence which I point out will suffice to make them doubt my veracity, a contingency which I cannot prevent in the least.

I was satisfied with the result of my enquiry, which fitted in well with my suspicions, and I felt myself fully armed to meet my darling and see what would be her next move.

Is it not extraordinary that a man known to an innkeeper should register as père et fille, and remain from the eighth to the sixteenth in a double-bedded room? Apart from the question of vice, is it not madness? Sleep with your daughter or stepdaughter if you will while on a trip, but is there not some other cleaner way of going about it for the sake of the young woman, whose reputation you are thus coolly damning, whose life you are wasting? As I write these lines, the hot blood rises to my face, I blush for shame to think that I should dare to judge this man; I, who had perhaps been as great an agent of corruption as he.

Arvel's behavior in this instance was so monstrous that even Boomaens does not believe his companion can be his daughter, and Mallandyne, who is far from squeamish, has not guessed, and cannot guess at the truth. Perhaps that is why Arvel does it? — “If I do it openly, no one will believe it.” Like the woman who goes up boldly to her husband and says: “Do you know, dear, that your friend has just had connection with me?” The newly made cuckold bursts out laughing at his wife's indecent fun, and the Jesuitical adulteress joins in his mirth. Perhaps he tells the lover in covered terms of his wife's joke and they all roar together.

The great Mallandyne had returned me the photograph and my own letter, together with a sketch of the room at the Hôtel des Trois Pigeons, from which I have prepared the plan given in this volume.

If the reader has any doubts as to the fornication of Arvel and Lily, I must beg him or her to reflect a little on what a celebrated English judge, Mr. Barnes, said when directing the jury in the suit for divorce of Sprague v. Lihme, which was decided in the spring of 1899, in London. (See Appendix C.)

JACKY TO MALLANDYNE.

Paris. Monday, April 3, 1899.

My dear Mr. Mallandyne,

It is impossible for me unless I were to write eight pages, to thank you for the clever and prompt way in which you have behaved in rendering me this signal service.

It is strangely lucky that the only person I know in Brussels, should be the very one, almost the only one, who could see through things, and guess exactly what I wanted and do what was wanted. If you had read in a novel how a man possessed a friend in a strange city, who did for him what you have done, precisely when he required his aid, you would sneer at the barefaced lameness of the invention.

I remembered your many delightful stories of the law-courts and how you had taught me some of the tricks of spies and criminals, and that is why I took the great liberty of asking you to help me.

What I have done through you is not a very clean thing, I admit. Spying is mean and I say so myself. My excuse: “All is fair in love and war.”

I have no need to tell you the whole story. It would be too long and I see by your letter that you in your worldly wisdom have guessed everything.

No doubt we shall see each other before we die and have a nice long “crack” together over a friendly glass. Then you will hear all. It is only of interest to me.

I don't think I shall give it to her “hot,” though she deserves it; I shall tuck your information away in a pigeon-hole of my brain and await developments.

Perhaps one day, I shall ask her if she has ever read a novel by Conan Doyle, called: “The Sign of Four.”

Thanks for your kind invitation, which I shall remind you of in July, if you are then in the Belgian capital and care to have me.

Please remember me to Mrs. Mallandyne.

With more thanks,

Yours very truly,

JOHN S.

14

GLORY: Look into my face. You must believe me in spite of everything.

STORM: What are you saying?

GLORY: I love you, I have always loved you, and you love me-you know you do, you love me still.

STORM: For God's sake. Glory.

GLORY: Kiss me, John.

— Hall Caine

ERIC ARVEL TO JACKY.

Sonis-sur-Marne. March 31, 1899.

My dear Jacky,

Many thanks for all the papers you have sent me. I went to see your uncle last Sunday week, and came away with a bad attack of influenza which I do not seem to be able to get rid of. I was in bed three days last week and I feel as if I could put in the same time again. Raoul is at home for his Easter holidays. If Wednesday suits you, would you come down and taste the cuisine of “our boss.” Raoul is obliged to return on Thursday morning.

If you like Tuesday better than Wednesday-“tip me the griffin.”

With every good wish for you and yours, believe me to remain,

Yours very truly,

ERIC ARVEL.

I was far from being cured of my grip, and ought not to have accepted this invitation, but I was dying to see my lying Lilian. So I sent a postcard, on which I had printed my own photograph, with my cordial acceptation.

I felt very shaky on the morning of April 5 and a peculiar accident happened to me, that troubled me still more.

I got into a fiacre to drive to the Eastern station, and the horse bolted in the rue Lafayette, dashing on to the pavement, and breaking the shafts. I jumped out and looked at my watch. I had just time to catch my train. I called another cab, and I had not been in it five minutes, when this second horse bolted also, and, shying at a handcart which stood by the curb, went headlong into a shop-front and stopped suddenly, pitching me forward, while the coachman flew bodily off his box, one of the front wheels passing over his ankle and hurting him seriously, if not dangerously. Luckily for me, directly I saw the horse become uncontrollable, I had let down all the windows of my closed conveyance, and as I fell forward, I heard the crush of glass down below in the hollow frames. No harm came to Jacky. I thought I bore a charmed life that day. I jumped out again and was confronted at once by some gentlemen who had witnessed my first accident. They defied me to get into another fiacre, but I did so, and caught my train with not a minute to spare.

Why I mention these strange narrow escapes-two bolting horses in ten minutes-is because they shook my nerves to a fearful extent, and I forgot all the calm resolutions I had made to myself. I had arranged not to mention my enquiry at Brussels, but to be quite cool and collected, and play the part of a lovesick, ignorant fool, sympathizing with a martyr. In my half-feverish state, under the effects of the influenza, these accidents made me quite unfit to struggle against the Arvels, or carry out my schemes with a view to the ulterior publication of my adventure as a novel, as I should have wished.

April 5, 1899.

When I arrived, the father was alone in the garden cleaning the bicycles of Lilian and his wife, and grumbling about the way they had neglected them during the winter. “If I object to their carelessness, they say that I ought to look after them.” Then he complained of Lilian, who had been ill all the time in Brussels, where he had taken her on a little trip, he said. She would go out to a theatre every night, and never got up until noon. He had a bad corn and was evidently worried, haggard, sick and tired of everything. He was especially bitter against Lilian's brother. Raoul wouldn't get up early. Raoul did not offer to help him to clean the bicycles. Raoul never opened his bedroom window when he got up. Raoul-he repeated an old story I had heard from the women-once asked his mother in his presence to leave the house forever. I enquired when that took place.

“Four years ago,” he said, moodily.

“Then what does it matter, what a sixteen-year-old lad has said? He is not your flesh and blood.”

I told him that I had brought up a boy, the nephew of my mistress, and that the lad had an awful temper. I went on to say that if children behaved honestly to the world, worked and got their own living, as Raoul did at the London wine firm, never got punished once at the regiment, don't thieve, drink, or get into debt, we ought to be satisfied and we do not want them to hang round our necks and pretend to love us. If children turn out to be respectable, that is about all we can expect. After this and a little more desultory talk, I went up to the house and saw the mother who told me to go upstairs and find Lilian.

I saw her with Raoul in the best bedroom. She looked only tolerably well and was highly powdered.

I gave her the sixth volume of Justine, where I had marked two paragraphs in pencil; one “Lilian,” and the other “Jacky,” with the date: April, 1899 (see Appendix D); the first volume of Gynecocracy a most clever and obscene work on the subjection of man to woman; and the scarce novel Césarée (see Appendix E). The latter work I had told her about the last time I had seen her. I also had the eau de Cologne for Raoul, more perfumes for Madame Arvel, and the quinine wine of my own manufacture for Lilian, with papers and magazines for Papa; the arrears of a month.

Lilian greeted me very coyly and strangely. She could not look me in the face and I think she had told Raoul to stop with her for a few moments.

I threw the books on the bed before her brother, and after the usual greetings, she kissed me in front of him, and gave him the volumes, which were fastened up in tissue paper, to go and hide for her.

When he had left the room I put the ring on her finger. She seemed highly pleased, and kissed me again very nicely, to my surprise showing me two others that were on her hand.

One was a sapphire, surrounded by brilliants, that Mr. Arvel had bought her in Brussels, and the other was a little pearl with a few roses. This last she refused to tell me who had given it to her, and I did not insist, as I really did not care, and I am pleased to say that I felt only friendly pleasure as I pressed my lips to hers, and I was very cool towards her.

I may declare at once that from this day forward I was able to sit at her side and feel the warmth of her body if she pressed against me, without that electric, instantaneous erection that I had always had in former days.

I praised the beauty of both her new rings, and said that mine was nothing beside them; but I can assure the reader that my gift was handsomer than any she had on her fingers, and she wore a lot of trumpery circlets on both her hands.

Lilian said that Papa was in an awful temper, and that the house was topsy-turvy with quarrels, principally through his hatred of Raoul.

“You put him in this terrible state. It is all through you.”

She did not reply. I looked round and saw that the door of communication between her mother's bedroom and hers had been put back in its place. She saw the direction of my glance and then I fastened my eyes on hers. She guessed the reason of my mute questioning gaze, and as if replying to the question that was in my mind, said:

“Yes, the door is closed now!”

More proofs of her connection with Papa. When she was only a child-toy for Arvel, Mamma let her come in and out of her bedroom, but now she was his second wife, so to speak, her mother in her first wrath, vexed by the pleasure trip, had caused the door to be fitted up, saying:

“You can have her if you like, since it is no use crying over spilt milk, but she shall not come into our sleeping apartment. Go and see her in her room, since it is to be so, and do all you desire with her, but do not let me see it. When you played with her just a little, under my eyes, before enjoying me, I did not mind, but at present, as you have her completely, it must not be in my presence.”

It might also have meant that the connection of the three being no longer innocent; their guilty conscience smote them and they had put up this apparent barrier for servants and visitors, as there was nothing to prevent them opening it in the night; but Mamma would soon get used to these Mormon-like manners, and all three would pass the greater part of the night in one bed again. It was only a matter of time, and money from Papa.

Mademoiselle said she would go and show her Pa my ring, and so we went together.

“She has begged one of you, too,” grumbled he, “I could not get her out of the jeweler's shop, until she tore the sapphire out of me. You are a fool to listen to her.”

Lilian had bought a false ring for Raoul, out of her own money. She said: “Pa was furious.”

We went in to lunch, and her mother feigned to be a little vexed that I had given the ring, but I think she was pleased all the same. Papa grumbled and quarrelled all the time of the meal. I showed my photographs and they were a great success. Raoul took them all.

Lilian opened her eyes when she saw the one where she was reclining on her brother's breast, and handed it over to Papa saying:

“Why this is obscene, Pa!”

He took it, looked gloomily at it, and said nothing.

I talked about the Brussels trip and elicited that they had been nowhere and seen nothing. The shops, the streets, and theatres and music-halls, but not a museum, nor had they visited Antwerp, as I had recommended.

After lunch, I went and sat with the father, who still talked about Lilian's laziness and Raoul's nonchalance. Apropos of nothing, he told me a story of how, when Lilian was at Myrio's, a young chap, a bookkeeper there, came and asked to marry her. He said he answered:

“Yes. Lilian will have a thousand pounds when her mother dies, but if you really want to marry her, no dangling about, but an early date for the marriage must be fixed at once. No doubt the chap only wanted to poke her (sic), as he never returned.”

Why did he tell me all this? Did he think I was going to ask for her hand?

He spoke again against his stepson, and I explained that I asked for no gratitude from the boy I had brought up.

“What I have done is for my own conscience, not for the youth. I only want him to be able to get his own living, and he can then turn his back on me if he likes. I have done my duty.”

I told him that the lad was the son of an officer or a priest, no one knew exactly, and then he suddenly burst into a great fit of anger, and to my amazement launched out into a long diatribe against all wearers of epaulettes. How he had changed in so short a time! And he showed great concern for the martyr Dreyfus, as he called him now, and from this day forward always spoke against the sword-dragging idols he had formerly revered. I immediately concluded that an officer had behaved badly to Lilian; having seduced and abandoned her? Probably the good-looking fellow who came to fetch the dog. And never more did Lilian talk of officers, she who had always spoken about handsome military men.

The ladies now appeared, and asked Papa to come out for a walk, or all go on bicycles. He refused, alleging his corn, and we four: Mamma, Raoul, Lilian and I, went for a ride to a neighboring forest, leaving Papa seated in an arbour, in his garden all alone.

Lilian and her mother asked me what I had got so excited about. They had heard my voice in the house, a most unusual thing for me. I replied that I had been explaining about bringing up children and had been taking Raoul's part by telling Mr. Arvel about my protégé.

They were quite surprised, and I repeated my story.

“You never told me you had a boy to whom you were a father!” said Lilian, astonished that I had never spoken of him before.

“I do not like to boast,” was all I answered.

The mother walked with me in the forest, and told me long stories about the bad temper and jealousy of her husband. How good the children were. How he did naught but find fault, was tight-fisted, envious of everybody far and near, and above all, hated Raoul. I said it was very strange, but if he was jealous, it may have jarred upon him to find Lilian perhaps a little too free in her manners with her brother? Mamma answered indignantly that if the children could not play together without restrictions during the brief time that Raoul was on leave, they might as well be dead. I said it was very mysterious, and I put it down to illness or influenza. We now separated and I talked to Lilian.

She, remembering my supposed desire to be a “slave,” cut a twig in the forest and began to try and play her part-poor girl-evidently wishing to curry favor with me, but I had lost all control over myself, trembling with the fever of my cold and quite unnerved, so I wrenched the impromptu whip from her hand, and before she guessed what I was about to do, I cut her severely across the shoulders.

She ran from me out of my reach, shrieking in pain, and came back to me rubbing her shoulders ruefully. Her eyes met mine and she was silent.

“Et allez donc!” I said.

“C'est pas mon père!” she retorted defiantly.

Raoul had approached us, and heard this last short colloquy. He did not speak, but smiled with the peculiar sardonic leer and scornful twist of his lips. As I had always thought, he was cognizant of his sister's secret of shame.

I must break off here to explain that the dramatic success of the year in Paris was an amusing farce called La Dame de chez Maxim, which has since been played ail over the world, and the catch-phrase of the cocotte-heroine is:

Et allez donc! T'es pas mon père! — “Go on with you! You aren't my father!” This is about the best translation I can make of this colloquial French sentence, originating from the vocabulary of the gamins of the streets, who, when reproved for bad language, etc., by a stranger, call out this phrase, meaning that they do not care for their interlocutor, as he has no parental authority over them, nor can they feel shame before him.

Lilian had used it well, guessing my thoughts by the first half I had let slip, and instead of answering: “You aren't my father!” she had said: “'Tis not my father!” And I had started this vulgar “gag,” because I knew the play was being performed in Brussels, and I felt sure she had been with her Papa to see it. I found afterwards that I was quite correct in my surmise.

I quite forgot all my determination to be cool and collected, and trembling with rage and fever, utterly unmanned, I honestly confess it; I told her I was convinced that she had slept with her father, and I did not mind that, as I had advised her to give way, she having gone so far with him, if she saw it served her interests. She was indignant and protested that it was not true.

“Then you are all the more infamous to excite him, lead him on, and not give way after all. You are equally guilty, if not worse. I am vexed with you, because you wrote me a most pitiful letter from Lille the morning after your first night out with him. It was the cry of a violated woman. And it was all lies, for you went on to Brussels and enjoyed yourself freely, although you wrote on returning how you had suffered, and had no pleasure. You are gay and happy and go to theatres and concerts every night.”

“Oh! He did not spend much money,” interrupted Lilian, with an ungrateful sneer. “The theatres are cheap there. The stalls are only two or three francs. He bought me the ring you saw and a few German aprons that I took a fancy to. That's all.”

“You never bought anything for me,” I replied. “Nothing would have pleased me more than that you should have brought me a sixpenny packet of tobacco, just to show you thought of me.”

“He never left me a second to myself. I dared not do it. It was all I could do to buy a ring for Raoul for thirty-five francs. But I assure you, you are quite at fault in what you think about Papa and me.”

“Nonsense! You pass eight days in one room with him, doing all your dirt together, dressing and undressing, using the chamber pots before each other and you want me to believe you are a martyr.

I went to Brussels and I know everything.

Two beds in No. 4 room, with a screen between, on the first floor. The Boomaens brothers from Ghent are convinced that you are only a little whore he brought from Paris, and not his daughter at all, for what father would sleep in one room with his daughter for eight or nine nights?”

“But he is not my father!”

“All the worse. If he was really your father, people might still think his instinctive pudicity could cause him to restrain his passions.”

“If Boomaens said this he shall repent it. Besides, Papa quarrelled with him before we left.”

That was a lie, as I ascertained a month or two later.

“Don't stir up any mud, is my advice. Your Papa is a monstrous madman. He could have done things cleaner, by putting you in another room, or in another hotel, or something similar, and contenting himself in the daytime only. You are compromised forever in Brussels as Arvel's little prostitute. You are a liar of the worst kind, with your lost letters and your conduct last winter. I have found out why you would not see me in November and December You had the 'whites' and God knows what other female troubles.”

I saw a look of intense surprise on her dark lowering countenance. She started. I had enough presence of mind to draw back and remember part of my original plan for the day, which was on no account to speak of the supposed virginity, or the menstrual irregularities of January. It would not do to put her too much on the defensive.

“That is nothing,” I continued, “but instead of telling me the truth, you profited by your indisposition to try and torture me, instead of telling me honestly to wait until you were better. You have been home nearly a month and have not tried to come to me, who you adore! You are frightened lest I should see the marks on your bottom, where Papa has whipped you.”

She did not answer me, but looked vacantly before her. “He has always been your lover, more or less. He used to feel your backside and then go and have your mother.”

Again she was silent. I went on:

“I feel it is all over between us and it will be for the best.”

“No! no! Don't say that-don't say all is over between us.

“Don't say that!”

“Your life is free as far as I am concerned,” I continued, “I have never told you a lie, or served you a dirty trick.”

“That is true,” she said, “you never have.”

“You think of nothing else but lies, falsity, and trickery. I will not and cannot put up with such deceit, especially as my eyes are quite open. I may be a fool with you, but I know my own folly, so that I am only half a fool after all. Infidelity I don't care a straw for- there is plenty soap to be had, but I'll have your heart and brain all truthful as well as your body, or nothing at all.”

I do not try to describe her tearful eyes, annoyance, denials, and general air of stupefaction. I think I was in a rage. I am certain this was the first time I ever was in a passion with her. I felt strangely weak and ill, and my legs seemed to go from under me-a sure sign of influenza. She begged me not to get into a passion, and seemed frightened of me, as she said that if I loved her, I ought to believe that nothing had taken place.

My answer always was:

“I am not jealous, as you know. I only complain of being made a fool of by lying grief and mockery of martyrdom.”

But she hated Arvel, she said.

“But you led him on. Remember the eve of Shrove Tuesday, when dressed as a Japanese girl, you said you would never marry, but live always with your Papa. You both talked of the story of incest in the day's paper; your hand passed over his privates, outside his pants, and then you spent hours in the photographic dark-room with him, much to your mother's annoyance, and once before me you warmed your hands in his trousers' pockets.”

“Why do you talk of that night of Shrovetide? I dressed up for you. All those caresses mean nothing. I never touched his privates. Such tickling touches mean nothing with a father. You do not know what you say when you talk of exciting a father. It is so horribly vile and repugnant to hear you say that. With you I would do anything, but his touch revolts me.”

And then, with a groan and a kind of half-sob, as if to herself, she exclaimed “Oh, that eve of Shrove Tuesday!”

“If I am wrong, why did you not get indignant with the carefully-veiled advice in the letter I sent you before you left, when I called you Mademoiselle Bismarck?”

“What letter?” she asked, with an air of affected ignorance.

“Go and look at it! You've got it still. You are a liar- that is all I can say.”

“I am not a liar. But I confess appearances are against me. About the double-bedded room, I acted without thought of guilt. Mother knows we occupied one room all the time. A gentleman and his wife, who own some property near Brussels, came and visited us in our room and saw the two beds.”

“What must they have thought!”

“There was no concealment on our part. I am innocent. How could I do it? I hate him so!”

“But it was to your interest, maybe?”

“What interest? Show me what good it would do me, if you can.”

I made no answer, but only shrugged my shoulders.

“I owe you an explanation, I confess, and I will give it. I must clear myself in your eyes. I love you, Jacky, and you are too cruel to me.”

“There is no explanation possible.”

“Yes, there is.”

“I defy you to give me one!”

“Hush! hush! Don't talk so loudly. Mother will hear us!”

She ran to her mother, being unable to carry on the argument, and we went home in a tramway. As we walked towards the starting point, I noticed that her face was blue, and her lips violet, as she talked eagerly to Raoul. She was telling him that I had spied on her in Belgium. During the ride, Lilian was tearful and sulky. I chaffed her unmercifully and bitterly, asking her what was the date of the month.

“Yesterday was April 4, I believe?” With strong emphasis on the word, “four,” alluding of course, to the number of the room at the hotel of Brussels. I added that the figure four had a great influence in my life, and I asked her brother if he had read a novel by Conan Doyle, called, The Sign of Four.

I made a lot of stupid jokes.

“How gay you are, Mr. S.!” said Adèle.

“I play the clown!” I replied. “This is but the forced gaiety of a broken heart, madam, as they say in the dramas. I am only a clown!”

And aside in English, for Lilian and Raoul: “A damned old clown!”

Then to the mother: “Laugh and the world laughs with you; weep and you weep alone!”

“That is very pretty, Mr. S., and quite true!”

Then we reached the house. The stepfather was descried on his bicycle! He had been out alone on it.

We had tea, and then I walked about with Raoul and Lilian, both of them complaining of their mad stepfather. He had gone to the wine-merchants when in London, and complained of Raoul to them, saying he was not trustworthy, etc., and one of the partners told Raoul that Arvel had been to them, but that he had taken his statements with a grain of salt. Raoul showed me a recent complimentary letter from his employers. Lilian told me that Arvel had advised one of her best clients to go to a rival milliner's.

During this, Arvel went and sulked alone in his arbour. Lilian said:

“Now you won't be invited here so often, because you are talking too much to us. He has been spending too much money on his house and garden, and he is miserable and unhappy. When Raoul's time is up in September, I am going to London to start bonnet-building there. Raoul will then earn about four pounds a week in the wine business, and I will keep house for him. I shall get all the custom of the ladies of his employers and their families to start me. Papa wants me to stop with him. He will make me his secretary at two pounds a week, and get me work for fashion papers. He gave me that article to translate that I sent you. I could not do it, but I did not want to refuse, as he would have sneered, and grumbled, and scolded, and said I knew nothing. So you did it for me. I typed it on the machine and gave it to him. It was beautifully done, but he found fault, saying there were too many French words left in it. When I am in London, you shall come and stop with me.”

She said she had wondered how I got the “dream-face” on the lustful letter I had written, and I explained how I had done it. Then, being alone with me a few minutes, she gave me her lame explanation, which she had now had time to forge, and I, worn out and careless, really ill, sick of quarrelling, said nothing to it.

“During the winter, I had been ill, and had kept the house alone while my parents were away on the Riviera. The doctor advised change of air in the spring. So the journey was arranged. The morning we started, Mr. Arvel went away quarrelling with his wife and servants. He was overpoweringly attentive, and to my surprise took seats in a first-class coupe. I was not present (!) when he retained the room at Lille. Nothing strange took place until I got into bed, when he came round the screen, for there was a screen here at Lille the same as at Brussels, and tucked me up. Then he did what he had never done in his life before (!). He kissed me full on the mouth. At that moment, all you had said, Jacky dear, flashed across me, and I had an awful feeling of disgust come over me. He saw that and left me. If I had given way to him, why should I write that letter from Lille?”

“Because you are a woman, and women often cannot help confessing half the truth of what runs in their minds, without knowing why.”

“There you are right. I know that weakness of my sex, but I wrote to you, because after feeling his vile hot lips on my mouth, I cried as I thought of my poor mother, who has lived twenty-five years with him, and I sickened at the idea of letting him touch me. And then I thought of you who I love, who had warned me, and who else could I write to, but you, for comfort? I could not write to you from Brussels. He never left me.” (In spite of her disgust she had eight more nights in the double-bedded room at Brussels.)

“I could not let my mother's lover touch me, I swear it. Nothing else transpired during the trip, although he might perhaps have got excited at seeing me dress and undress.”

How did she know that he got excited?

She protested greatly, and I said I did not care. I was sick and tired of it all.

I trembled with fever and emotion, and once more, I felt my knees give way. She ran from me into the house, glad to have got through her wretched story, and I think she went and talked to her parents, while I stopped in the garden with Raoul in the dark, for night had now come on.

He took me upstairs into the best bedroom to wash my hands before dinner, and Lilian reappeared with a lamp, got me out a clean towel, and left me again.

While drying my hands, she came in, and Raoul discreetly left us.

Now she hung round me, begged me to believe her, caressed my hands and face, and made me suck her mouth, her eyes full of tears, saying that she only lived for one man in this world-me! — and that I had driven her mad by my proposal to let her become the cruel mistress, and I her slave. She said she would soon try it. She promised me a long letter of passion, detailing what she would like to do to me, for Saturday morning, and so she changed the subject, and gave me more luscious, tonguing kisses, so that I could not do otherwise than respond to her embraces, and clasp her tightly to me, and I murmured, as I kissed her, speaking with my lips on hers:

“Lilian! My Lilian! Oh, darling Lilian!”

I was now full of lust. But they called me from below to come and dine, and she released me. I let her to go downstairs first, so as not to show that we had been together, and as I went toward the door, my head sw.am round, I staggered, and had I not caught hold of the top of the banisters, I should have fallen. I looked round and saw Lilian standing watching me, the garish flare of a petroleum lamp full on her face, as she held it up to throw a light on the stairway.

If ever I saw a fiendish look of wicked triumph on the features of a living creature, it was then. She thought she had fooled me completely and I shall long recollect how I said to myself: “I am glad I am slightly indisposed. I have the influenza. I have not said so and they will think I am mad with jealousy, and lovesick as a callow youth. I am glad I stumbled, and that Lilian saw me staggering down the stairs.”

At this moment, Papa, who was waiting for me to go down to dinner, stepped out of his little library, holding a parcel in his hand. It was my

Romance of Lust, neatly tied up. He thanked me for the loan of it, and said he enjoyed it immensely.

I took it, and now Lilian came down in her turn.

“What is that you are giving to Mr. S.?” She said this in a strange, drawling tone, looking steadfastly at her Papa the while.

“Only some books,” was his reply, and the light died out of his eyes, and the same frowning, dull expression came into his face.

I took the packet, and we all went downstairs, but I thought of the same scene last summer, when Mr. Arvel returned me The Horn Book, and I knew they had read

The Romance of Lust together.

I purposely forgot to take away the volumes when I left that evening, just to see what would happen, and always hoping that perhaps it might furnish an incident for my book.

We dined in the workshop in the garden. Everybody was dull. Papa hardly spoke. Lilian took cod liver oil before dinner. I could not eat. I told them the two carriage accidents of the morning had upset me, and I thought I had caught cold.

Then the father suddenly, coolly, spoke of the Brussels trip, and how Lilian had prevented him from sleeping by clapping her lips together all night, like a baby suckling. The mother joined in the conversation, and plainly showed that she knew of the double-bedded room arrangement. Lilian kicked me under the table, and said that anything is better than “snoring.” She meant that for me, when I slept with her last summer, as she explained to me after the meal, when we were going to the station.

While this talk was going on, I looked closely at them all. We each spoke in turn, except Raoul, who held his head down, bending over his plate, his lip curled in a devilish grin, and it suddenly dawned upon me that this was all prearranged. Mamma looked faintly at me, as if to say: “Now, sir, where is the harm you thought you knew of?”

Lilian had told Papa before dinner that I had gone to Brussels to spy upon them, and that I knew about the sojourn at the Brussels hostelry. Papa had then said: “Let us talk about it openly at dinner, as if it was the usual thing, and no secret.” It was a “bluff,” and Papa only made his case worse in my eyes, as he had shown me that they were all in the secret of his amours with Lilian-Mamma, and Raoul, the brother. Granny I never saw again. She had now been pensioned off. I suppose she was in the way, and perhaps knew too much, as she was very indiscreet.

After this joking about the double-bedded room, there was an awkward pause, and Lilian rose to get a clean plate. She left her seat, walked behind Papa, and I distinctly saw her pass her hand behind his neck, caressingly. I pretended not to see.

After dinner, Lilian, Raoul, and myself went for a short walk with the dogs, and during our stroll, Lilian, when Raoul forged once ahead, asked me if I was still angry with her. I was worn out and answered indifferently!

“You are vexed with me.”

“How can I help it, when I think of what you wrote to me. Oh! That letter from Lille!”

Hypocritically, I looked up at the moon, and, imitating Lilian, gave a kind of a sigh, which died away with a little moan. She caught my hand and pressed it convulsively.

I told her I had a girl waiting for me on my return to Paris.

“If I do not find her at home, I shall go to a brothel, and choose a thin, dark lass, as much like you as possible, and while I enjoy her, while she caresses me with patient hands, and submissive mouth, I'll call her Lilian.”

“If you do that, you'll not be a man at all, but simply a beast!”

But she said that coolly and did not seem to care. She had got tired and pale, her features were drawn. The powder, worn off, had not been renewed. She was sallow and careworn, and I felt thankful to be able to say to myself: “She looks ugly.”

When we returned to the house, we found that Mamma had kicked out the servant, the only one they had. Papa grumbled. Lilian sat down and fell to pieces, as it were.

“I'm not well and we shall have to do the housework to-morrow ourselves.”

They were all dull and miserable. I said “good night!” and Raoul and his sister saw me to the station.

They both talked against Mamma's temper now, and how she was a “servant-hater.”

I had noticed during lunch that Lilian's dog Blackamoor had a nasty wound, a piece an inch long being torn out of his cheek along the jaw, and I had said at table: “I suppose he has been fighting?” Nobody answered but Lilian, who hurriedly replied: “Oh yes, it is nothing!”

She told me now that she was frightened lest I should insist on this topic, or take up the dog and examine it, etc., as the wound really came from a tremendous kick given to the poor brute by her Papa.

She once more alluded to the slavery mania, thinking perhaps to please me. I asked her what she would do to me.

“You must not ask me, as you are my slave. The very fact of you wanting to know would make me refuse to tell you. But I know what I want to do to you and I won't say.”

“Not if I beg you most humbly to be good enough to let me know?”

“I will put it in the letter I'm going to send you. You must come and see Mamma and me and have a cup of tea, when she is certain that Papa is going to be in Paris all day. You can come on your bicycle I will make it right with Mamma and let you know the day. Papa is not to know.”

She had made friends with her mother apparently.

I got into the train and leant out of the carriage window to say a last “good-night!”

“He has been very rude to me all day,” said Lilian to her brother, looking at me.

“Rude, perhaps, but natural!” was my answer, and she nodded assent very prettily, with a kind smile, as the train moved out of the station.

The next few days, circumstances, which I shall not reveal here, added to some old suspicions and recent slips of Arvel's garrulous tongue, led me to discover the true reason of the wretched state of things at the villa.

What he earned as a financial reporter was not enough to pay for all he had been laying out lately, and he had other employment connected with his travels. This had been suddenly cut off, and not only did he feel the loss of these resources, but there was danger in the air. It was worse than a mere pecuniary loss; it was a catastrophe which I shall say no more about, except that the dark cloud passed over, but the money did not return.

I went and reconnoitred the road to Sonis on my bicycle, to get familiar with the route, and on April 8. I received the following:

LILIAN TO JACKY.

April 7, 1899.

My naughtiest and best,

At last, I have found something! After all my seeking, here is a combination which I believe will receive your sanction. Here it is: you and I will go to Belfort for the Whitsuntide holidays, if my brother does not get leave, which is highly probable.

I have already said at home here, that if my brother does not come, I should go myself to see him, and Mamma approves of my project.

Naturally, my parents think I go alone, and as to my brother, you will tell him that having heard of my journey, you wished to accompany me, as you wanted to see him, and he will find this quite natural. I will arrange with him.

Now, do not go and raise a lot of objections, for there are none to be made, and if you don't find my idea a wonderful one, I shall know you do not love me any more. What day can you manage to come on a bicycle? Find out when is the next settling day at the Bourse.

I love you,

LILIAN.

I answered “yes” for the journey to Belfort, as Whitsuntide was May 21, and things might change by then. I arranged about the bicycle visit in a rather short, cool note addressed to “my naughtiest and worst,” and had strange thoughts about Raoul and the collusion of this wonderful family.

Lilian did not want to come to Paris to me, to undress before me in the open daylight. She wanted to ward me off until she could get me into a bed with her in a month's time, and make me believe I had taken her virginity.

I felt that I had no longer any influence over her; she had no strong desire for me, as her Papa's daily caresses with mouth and fingers kept her sufficiently cool to be able to play with me at her own sweet will.

I felt rather amused to think that Lilian could offer me nothing of herself until Whitsuntide; and the pleasures of slavery and the passionate letter appertaining thereto, which she had promised me, had dropped out of her erratic mind.

I thought it time to throw a bombshell into the camp, and I sent her the following terrible letter, which was a sort of ultimatum. I did not care if she answered it or not, or how she took it. My only care was to leave the question of her maidenhead and her fausse couche of January as much as possible in the background.

When I wrote it and the following letters, I always asked myself how they would look in print. I was now working more for the gallery than myself.

JACKY TO LILIAN.

Paris. Monday, April 10, 1899.

Since I last saw you, Lilian dear, I have reflected a lot. I have been thinking of nothing but you, and I write to you this day calmly and deliberately. My health is much better. Sleep has returned to me. And without gall, without acrimony, and without temper, without feverishness, erotic or otherwise, I tell you that I am absolutely decided to break with you entirely, and therefore with all your family as well, unless you treat me with the entire frankness to which I have a right. I have chained myself to you, but I left you your liberty always. I am not jealous, nor in your way. I am greatly excited to think that men desire you. You are my adored little whore. I love you with all the strength of my soul. You are the last love of my life. And that is why I am leaving you.

When you went away on your journey, I did not ask you to write to me. On the contrary. See my letter which you received on the morning of your departure, wherein I called you: “Miss Bismarck.” I wrote in the most delicate manner possible.

It has pleased you to invent a fairy tale so stupid that, when you tell it, it comes on to rain, merely to make me wretched. Please note that I did not ask you for any details, or to tell me anything at all. You have accumulated lies upon lies in your weakness for lying. But even among lies an observer can unravel the truth, for lying women cannot always lie.

What is this idea you have for posing as a martyr before me, who can read your thoughts as if your brain was in the palm of my hand? Why play the black drama of the unfortunate girl persecuted by an infamous father?

I told you this winter that no power on earth can prevent a woman from communicating with the man she loves. I go farther:

NO POWER ON EARTH:

a) could have made you take this journey, if you did not like;

b) could have made you sleep in that room at Lille, if you did not like;

c) could have made him stop out of your bed that night. That is IMPOSSIBLE;

d) could have made you continue your connection in Brussels, if you did not like;

e) could have made you accept the ring he gave you as a reward for your kindness to him, if you did not like.

Your false allegations, your comedy of indignation disgust and sicken me!

The story of the lunch with Fontarcy and Clara-and his lordship, and all of us, are ready to begin again if you say the word-the story of my brother and his refusal to meet the unknown little brunette I proposed to him; all this proves that I am no vulgar, jealous fellow.

Suppose that I am infamously vicious-(you once called me vicious man in front of your Papa)-perverted, depraved, a sadique, like Mr. Arvel, whether he be satisfied or not (?)-anything you like-but I never laid a trap for you. I have never lied to you up to now I have showed myself to you as I am. You could have refused me, or driven me from your side.

I will not have your body, if I cannot have all your sensual confidence. I want to know all, down to the slightest detail. That will excite me enormously. If not, all is finished between us forever. I want to be your accomplice, but not your dupe. Besides, I have never been your dupe for long.

Never more shall you bring tears to my eyes. I'll have no sadness coming from Lilian. I will not let you make me suffer morally any more.

Since the month of October, I have found you out three times in flagrant lies; useless and dirty, stupid lies, and all told to me, who loves you, and who you say you love.

And you do love me, I am sure, for nothing forced you to continue your connection with your poor old Jacky.

You know pretty well all about the horrible sadness of my life; the daily sickening torture I undergo; the terrible fatality that pursues me, and 'tis you, my little Lilian darling, who offer me as a supreme consolation, a mass of stupid artifice, that the greatest goose of a coquette would not dare to use towards a schoolboy. Such mockery is too much for me to bear.

I shall suffer from this breaking-off of our connection, I confess. I do not play at being strong-minded with you.

But I must and will suffer alone. I am free to inflict upon myself what moral torture I like, but I refuse you the right to make me suffer by lying manoeuvres and stories, supported by lame reasoning.

In answer to this letter, I absolutely order you to send me a wire at once, no matter what other letters, etc., may be on the way. In this telegram you must tell me if you consent to the complete breaking-off, or send me a word of tenderness to make me understand that you give way to my reasoning.

If you desire no more of me, of my caresses, of my virility, of my mouth, of my inventions of passion, slavery, and other exquisite follies, I want my ring back, and I can manage to get it without putting your honor in danger. In my poor eyes, burned with the tears you have made me shed, that ring has a sacred character, and I will not allow it to remain on the fingers of a lying woman, such as you are.

I love you, and shall always love you whatever happens. I kiss you over and over again, perhaps for the last time.

JOHN S.

At the same time, I enclosed a sort of commentary of Lilian's letters, from the one sent from Lille, down to that ordering the translation of the article on ladies' fashions.

I copied her letters, and the comments were made in red ink. I do not repeat them here, as they were simply the criticisms that I have given already in the preceding chapter.

I began by saying that I wanted her to be as depraved as she liked, but with frankness with me.

I alluded to the villainous character of the Lille letter, and how I had wept on receiving it, and believed she was a martyr, until I reflected upon the cruelty of her postscript on her return, when she said she was free on that Sunday.

I pictured her drinking champagne with Papa, and I wanted to know why he should be jealous of the brother, when he loved the sister?

I told her I should have married her long ago, had I been rich enough, and I asked her if that infamous letter, written after her “first night,” was not a vast mystification. I informed her that certain things had transpired between her and her mother's lover at Nice in 1898, and that they had both conspired in the past winter to cheat Charlotte out of marriage with Raoul. That they had read my bawdy books together.

I alluded to the falsity of one of her letters where she accepts my ring, and says not a word about the one Papa had given her in Brussels. How could you, I went on to say, since you talked of how he worried you with his open manifestations of passion, which do not prevent you accepting jewelery from him. And on April 5, after speaking against him all day, you caress him furtively at dinner.

I made no copy of this strange document, but I have just discovered the last page in the rough, and so I give it here:

Then comes the article to be translated, and I write the ironical and erotic rubbish about the man who suffers from unsatisfied desire! The whining letter of Lille is forgotten, or is naught but a lie.

And so I depart for Brussels, thinking that Lilian, her eyes open at last, had shut her door against him at night. I shall find that they have had two separate rooms when I make my little inquiry. I start off, like the idiot that I am, saying to myself that if everything has taken place as I fancy, the gift of my poor little ring may have a deeper meaning.

(Here I drew a rapid sketch of the famous No. 4 room.)

Why then this false story of martyrdom; why pose as a victim when it is she who causes pain, and wants to make all men suffer, or rather those who cannot save themselves by reasoning or common sense?

At Brussels, I am told of her gaiety; her happy life; she goes out every night and sleeps until noon. Why not? But why this eternal desire to lie?

Then there is the noise of her childish romping with Papa like puppies playing, as they were heard in the hotel; and the state of the bedding, the sly hints of the lookers-on about the little Parisian whore of Mr. Arvel, who pretends she is his daughter, and introduces her to the outgoing lodger, saying

“Ma fille, monsieur!”

All this is nothing to me. I knew it, pointed it all out, and prophesied it long ago; but why always this fearful craving for muddy lies to me, when I am so liberal in my ideas, and to whom Lilian has spontaneously said ten times this year: “I love you?”

To my great surprise I got a reply by return of post, she having received my awful letter and “commentary” in the morning. She answered it at once, and I read the following at dinner time:

LILIAN TO JACKY.

Sonis-sur-Marne. April 11, 1899.

Your letter, as mean and as unworthy of you as it is of me, will nevertheless not make me confess a thing, which is even still more infamous than your conduct toward a woman who has only one reproach to make herself, that she loves you. All the proofs that you seem to have accumulated against me leave me absolutely full of disgust for the littleness of your principles and your judgments. I believed you had larger ideas, and I supposed that at your age, you had enough knowledge of the world to know that even when appearances are against a person, it does not always result therefore that she be guilty. But enough talk of this sort; all I could tell you would not convince you, since you seek a motive to break with me. Let us note by the way, that the one you have found is simply idiotic and won't hold water.

Certainly I will give you back your ring, but in a thousand fragments. Then you will have to work your brains, as you were obliged to do when you ordered this one, so as to have another made for your half-sister. Choose it of louder taste; this one would be too simple for the daughter of Madame X. It was useless to threaten me with means to make me give it back; do you think I would wear it now? I have no wish for it. But know that your threats do not frighten me. Now: adieu! Remain with the people who love you, and know not how to lie. Cherish such worthy folk, and above all do not neglect your half-sister. She may be useful to you.

LILIAN.

I was delighted at the success of my manoeuvre. Her letter with its allusions to the “accumulations of proofs,” and her acknowledgement that “appearances were against a person,” were precious, and constituted as near an approach to an avowal as anyone could expect from a perverted female of her class.

It will be noted that she calls herself a “woman.” In her letters of the autumn and before, she always spoke of herself as a “young girl.”

My mother had married again, and my half-sister by my late stepfather, was now a very handsome young girl. Mr. Arvel knew her, and had seen her often in Paris. So I am almost sure that he was reading all my letters now, and had helped Lilian to write the foregoing one.

These allusions to a female member of my family, her vile show of jealousy, shows us how her brain had been warped when young. Incestuous herself, she doubtless believed with a faith cunningly fostered by Papa and Mamma for their own ends, and to stifle eventual remorse, repentance, or disgust in their daughter prostitute, that promiscuous intercourse was a regular thing in all families.

I recollected too the story of Pa's hot kiss at Lille and compared it with what a woman had done to her, as the reader will note she told me when first we talked freely together. What a trumpery machine is a female's magic lantern of lies and how few are the slides!

JACKY TO LILIAN.

Paris. April 12, 1899.

Excuse me if I write to you again today, but I wish to rectify that part of my letter relating to the ring, which you were good enough to accept from me.

It was wrong on my part to have asked for it back. I ought not to have spoken about it. It was a gift: that was enough. I do not quite remember what I said that seemed to be threats, but in any case, believe me that nothing was farther from my thoughts.

For all words that might have wounded you concerning my poor little ring, kindly accept my sincere apologies. Sincerely, I ask your pardon.

To show my good faith, only on this head, I beg you, not without a little emotion, to be amiable enough, on the contrary, to keep it always, as a souvenir of the few nice moments we passed together, trying to forget all bad ones.

Do not wear it unless you like; but keep it in a corner of your wardrobe, with the old letters, bits of ribbon, locks of hair, and other trifles that women hide jealously from all eyes. Now and then, the ring will come under your notice, and it will be very pleasant for me to suppose that you will then think of him, who was-not for long-your

JACKY.

Once more: I retract with frank regret all I said about the ring I gave you, which was made for you, which belongs to you, and no one else, and that you, ought-dare I say it? — that I order you, to keep forever.

LILIAN TO JACKY.

Sonis-sur-Marne. April 13, 1899.

No, a thousand times no, I'll not keep your ring. If all is to be at an end between us, it has no longer any value for me, and will only be a source of grief and regret. I have been frank with you, but I ought not to have been so. Please let me know how I can send you the ring, as well as the books I now have of yours.

This Whitsuntide voyage, which seemed to please you, is the reason that caused you to seek a rupture, I am convinced. You dared not refuse me, and yet you did not wish to make this trip, for many reasons that I know as well as you. And I was building so joyously on the idea of passing a few delightful days all alone with you.

Indeed, when I reflect upon your conduct, I detest you.

LILIAN.

JACKY TO LILIAN.

Paris. April 14, 1899.

My Lilian,

You say that my poor little ring would have no value for you and would be a source of grief and regret if all is to be over between us? As I do not wish anything coming from me to give you trouble and woe, I prefer to tell you at once, that nothing is over between us. There now! Are you pleased?

Tell me frankly that you are happy, and that you detest me. Write me at once a very long, very passionate letter, brimming over with love and hate. I understand that you detest me now. I have done all I could for that, it seems. I am “mean, unworthy, infamous” I disgust you by the littleness of my principles and my judgments. I threaten a poor woman, who has only one reproach to make herself-that she loves me-and I seek for enjoyment in incest!

Chuck nothing more, please. There's no room for the rest! In spite of all these faults, in spite of Jacky being the most crapulous and cynical being; in spite of his having insulted, vilified, and dragged you in the mire; as no other woman has ever been mortified since the world has been a world, you still have the courage to want to travel and remain alone several days with this criminal; this scoundrel, this wretched insulter of women; this incestuous beast?

So be it, your perversity shall be satisfied. I swear to you, little Lilian, that you shall take this journey with me, but I will make you cruelly expiate all the wrong you have done me, by the shameful erotic humiliations you will have to submit to, to make me spend, by all the ways I shall order, without troubling about your pleasure, and you shall hate me as much as you like. You will have to work hard all the same. I shall have a whip. You are warned. Don't come unless you decide to be the docile slave of a hard and severe master; as you were last summer my bitch, my slut, my toy.

I feel you love me and that you can't do without me. I won't let you be unhappy. If you only want my love and my caresses to be completely happy, come and I'll take you, sweet little monster.

Besides, why should I deprive myself of the soft pleasure that this connection gives me, because I believe that you like to juggle with my heart, excite my jealousy(?), and get up tricks for me generally! Since I see clearly through all your little manoeuvres, your malice and finessing-what matters it to me, after all? Run along, my love, my passion, do as you like. You act on my flesh, and I excite you. Let us forget the rest.

But you are not going to let me long for your dirty little body up to Whitsuntide, I hope? Have you no longer any desire to strip naked before your master? I offer you my mouth, and a bottle of champagne when you choose. I'd like to lunch alone with you. I want to see you and quarrel with you, if you like. To bite your lips, spend in your mouth without the least shame, clutching your head until I hurt you, between my thighs, and saying roughly: “Go on-suck away!” And you would swallow all my disgusting spendings, so hot and thick, that I should spurt into the back of your throat. If you write me a nice long letter, very erotic, very loving, and very dirty, I will tell you in my next, how I spent with a little trollop I met at the Eastern station, when I left you on the fifth.

Come quick, or arrange something. Keep me from spending with a lot of females who disgust me.

Shall I be your slave? If you care about it, you will remember that you owe me a long letter, where you said you would tell me how you would spend by the cruelty you would show to me, if I was at your disposal, resolved to obey you for an hour.

Write then. When you go to bed, take some paper and a pencil, and any book you like, to serve as a desk, and write to me at length and voluptuously-in bed.

Sunday, I made a reconnaissance to find a good road from here to your place on my bike. I find I can do it in about an hour. I was within three miles of you.

Take it and suck it.

JACKY.

Please lend me for a few days, that “commentary” I sent you-the extracts of your letters, with the red ink notes. I will give it back to you. I want to look at something.4 I lent an obscene work in four volumes to your Papa: The Romance of Lust.

He made up a parcel to give it back to me. I forgot to take it. Will you open your eyes and see if the packet has not been lost or mislaid? The book is rare and worth a trifle.

The journey that I can easily take with you has nothing to do with the motive of my breaking-off, I swear it.

Where is the true motive? I explain once more, although I believe I have already made you understand in my letter and the “commentary.”

You write from Lille, that you are unhappy. I take that awfully to heart. At the end of the month: you back again, I begin to suspect that you are not unhappy at all,

on the contrary, and that your story of martyrdom has only been imagined to torture me by jealousy(?) and malice aforethought. It didn't take, dear, because I'm never jealous. To find out the truth, I go to Brussels, where you have “suffered” from the “task,” etc. I arrive and hear you have been going the whole hog.

What am I to believe? You say yourself “that appearances are against me.” I won't insist. I only note that you possess a peculiar frame of mind, that I have not yet seen in any woman up to now, and I've known a few. You say to yourself: “I love him, what can I invent to tease him?” Generally, who a woman loves, she says: “I love him, Let me try to please him in every possible shape and way.”

Now I know you. I shall finish up by laughing at your wickedness. I know all your tricks!

JACKY.

LILIAN TO JACKY.

(Undated.) Received April 7, 1899.

No sir, you shall not have a long and loving letter from your Lilian, since when you felt inclined to be “naughty,” you let the first “trollop” you meet, profit by it; a girl picked up I know not where. How clean and how appetising for me!

You are cynical with your ideas, and the cheek you have to tell me of your dirty pranks, me who you love and who loves you so madly, so sincerely. I forbid you, do you hear, to tell me of all these horrors. You will make me believe that the love you feel for me is bestial. Please note that I wish also for that love, but as I am very greedy, I want the other love as well. You understand me, do you not, since you read all my thoughts so well?

It is evident that you cannot always burn yourself up with simple desire, but when you let yourself go, keep the news to yourself. I wish to fancy always that you only love me, in thought as well as otherwise. I am as one crazy at the idea of being able to be entirely alone with you for a few days, and above all a few nights.

I do not for a moment wish to make you languish until Whitsuntide, and I ruminate over a host of projects, so as to be able to slip off and lunch, and remain a few moments with you, but it is awfully difficult. Why don't you come down on your bicycle? At least, I should see you, and feel you near me, and then I have to make you expiate all the pain you have made me feel for the last fortnight.

You are not jealous, say you? So much the better for you. I am jealous enough for two, and I am very unhappy now and again, when I think that there are people who see you every day; who form an essential part of your life, whereas I?…

Come then next Thursday on your bicycle. It will seem quite natural. You will arrive after lunch, and you will certainly be invited to dinner. Is that settled?

If you have been well disinfected since April 5, I kiss you with a long, long kiss, as I should wish to do in reality.

LILIAN.

JACKY TO LILIAN.

Paris. Monday, April 17, 1899.

Little Lilian,

Your nice letter, to hand this morning, only confirms what I have known for a long time, that you would be an exquisite woman, if you would only behave towards me with simplicity, truth, and straightforwardness, without your roguish maneuvers in such bad faith. Perhaps after all, it is better that you should be as you are for it is certain that if you added to your qualities of adorable 'prentice-whore, frankness and true faith in me, I should be madly, absolutely madly in love with you.

For the moment, I shall always feel this consolation, that if we were now separated, and it was nearly coming to that the other day-I should say to myself: “So much the worse, but after all, I'll not cry over my broken toys. Here lies Lilian; she had an atrocious temper!”

What you say about the “other love,” is exactly copied on what I have explained to you a thousand times, but-exquisite oddity!-

you have done all that a woman could imagine, to destroy in me that very love you describe!

I'll not tell you of my orgies. If I “side-slip,” I'll keep it to myself. But do you know that I should adore you to narrate to me your escapades. When you told me of the attempt of Gaston in the train, it produced an unimaginable effect upon me. When I saw you assailed by Lord Fontarcy, I was transported with lust; otherwise, why should I have done it?

And in other circumstances…in your house…how many times…I have seen…I have felt…it was lascivious …too nice…delicious!

You know what you have to do, if you wish to please me. Read between the lines, and for the love of God, and the love of Jacky, do not be a silly goose next Thursday.

Don't tell me that you are crazy at the thought of being alone with me for a few days, a few nights, for according to the loyal manner in which I have always treated you, and which I want to keep up, I feel that I should have a terrible desire to possess you properly. Oh! to stretch you wide, to rape you entirely, to feel myself inside you, burning, panting, bruised, wounded, crushed beneath me, and me buried in my Lilian!..

No, I'll hurry to finish this letter. I'll only write a few lines in future.

Take all your precautions-beware of me-don't come if you are still a virgin; if you want to remain a virgin. Beware of a brutal embrace on my part.

Thanks for your plans for lunch with me. I hope you write in good faith; we'll talk it over.

I will come for certain on Thursday, if the weather is anything like fine. I must think of appearances. If the roads are not practicable-if it rains-what excuse could I make? I pray for fine weather.

I have no need to be disinfected.

I am curious to know what you will do to make me expiate all the harm I have done you for the last fortnight, in one single afternoon and that in the rare intervals when I shall be alone with you! What saves me is that you know you are ugly when you sulk, or are in a bad temper.

I'll wind up this letter gaily with a little bit of English poetry. I'll no longer worry myself about you.

The first time I saw you in your Japanese costume, I began this little poem; at the table, openly, if you remember. I have been two months finishing it. That's a long time, but the result is extraordinary. 'Tis a masterpiece-sweet, charming and very dirty:

Lily Arvel's a lewd little Jappy,

Fond of Jacky-her poor silly chappie.

With her tongue she loves to lick,

His red sugar-stick;

And when he comes in her mouth-she is happy!

(To be learned by heart for Thursday.)

My sweet tongue in your dirty little pussy,

JACKY.

This day I have sent your Papa a big packet of English papers and magazines. There are three large fashion papers for you, with a band round them: Pour Mlle. Lilian.

If you want them, look after them.

15

MARGARET: When to his lust I have given up my honor, He must and will forsake me.

— Philip Massinger

I wonder why the chaster of your sex

Should think this pretty toy called maidenhead

So strange a loss, when, being lost, 'tis nothing

And you are still the same.

— John Ford

Thursday, April 20, 1899.

I rode down on my bicycle, as arranged, arriving at 2:15, and found the mother and stepfather in the garden. Mamma was neatly dressed and tightly laced, not being in a dirty peignoir, and evidently expecting me. She wore a large pair of false pearl earrings, which if real, would have been worth a thousand pounds. They feigned surprise. Lilian appeared at once, also neatly got-up. She wore a bodice of black velvet, with large strass buttons, her black hair nicely done, her face fully powdered, and her lips reddened. After the usual compliments, inspection of my bicycle, which they had never seen, etc., Lilian look me away to show me a dress of which she was superintending the making for her mother, who it will be remembered, is a little, dark woman. It was a flaming red foulard that they were having made at home, and Lilian made game of it and her mother. Being in the workshop with her girls, Lilian talked in English. It may be guessed that our conversation only ran on one topic-the so-called incestuous trip-and Lilian, who I watched narrowly, flushed up deeply at each remark of mine.

She stood up, leaning over her work-table, and I sat beside her I saw her only in profile and she did all she could not to let her eyes meet mine. At each remark I made, I noticed a red spot mount in her neck from the arteries, and spreading itself out from the hand of her collarette, gradually rise until it gained her check and all her face. Then it would die away, and as surely come up again at any fresh remark I made concerning her Papa.

She refused to make anything like a confession, but when I plainly told her: “Whatever you do, I forbid you to 'put me away' with him,” she suddenly turned round and looked me full in the face, her eyes dilated with a look of intense and horrified astonishment. She was quite dismayed and did not reply. “Do not force us to quarrel, or make bad blood between us.” And as she turned her head away from me, without a word, I felt sure that she had done all she could to prevent us two men ever being friendly together again, as we were in February. She wanted to “work” each one separately, and I was now perfectly certain he knew all, or what was worse for me, Lily's pet version.

Mr. Arvel had to go up to Paris on business in the afternoon, as he did every Thursday, which accounted for me being invited that day, and I was practically alone all the time with Lilian. I tried her all ways. My principal argument was: “I don't care what you do if you are good to me. I love you, but why tell such useless lies continually? Look at that letter I sent you in October. Why stick to the lie that you never got it?”

“You never sent it!” she answered with a scowl.

And then she kept putting forth her great love for me. At last, worn out, she said:

“To amuse you, I'll allow you to think that it is true, on the condition that you never talk about it.”

I agreed, exclaiming “Hurrah! That is a confession!” and she immediately started off again herself on the same subject. I sum up here our principal remarks as far as I can remember them:

JACKY. “If your disgust was true, you could not remain under the same roof with him.”

LILIAN. “But I go to London in September.”

JACKY. “He will never let you.”

LILIAN. “I hate him and discourage him all I can. For the last fortnight, he has left me alone.”

I guessed from this statement that he could manage to ejaculate about twice a month, and the rest of the time his mouth and hands would be kept busy.

JACKY. “Then why did you caress him on the sly at dinner on April 5?”

LILIAN. “I did not.”

JACKY. “If you say that, I'll never speak to you again, for I saw you do it with my own eyes.”

LILIAN. “Then I did! Why should I not caress him if I like?”

I told her of a woman I had known who could never sulk with me, but when she thought she was vexed and met me, resolved to scold and be angry, she would laugh, and put her hands in mine, give me a kiss, and say: “I cannot quarrel with you!”

I explained the folly of lying to me, who knew as much about female mendacity as a male fool could. I added: “A woman like you has no chance with a man like me.”

JACKY. “If you tell me all, I can advise you. All conversation between us is impossible now. Imagine a drunkard consulting a doctor, who would say to him: 'Don't drink!' The slave to alcohol replies indignantly 'I never touch spirits.' And he expects the medical man to cure him.” Lilian liked that little allegory.

She spoke of the novel Césarée.

“I think it is a lovely book, but when I read it, I see myself with you; not with Mr. Arvel. I should like to do all that with you. I am always thinking of you. When a young man, named François G., who is always running after me, and who lives down here, is speaking to me, I keep thinking what you would say in his place and how you would look.”

“I like your smell. People smell differently. I don't like the smell of my brother, nor of François.”

LILIAN. “Why don't you leave me alone on that subject? You have lost half the day, instead of spooning nicely with me. You might have had lots of kisses, instead of talking like this to me. I won't kiss you now. You made me very ill on April 5.”

JACKY. “Well, I'll have pity. You have been on the gridiron long enough. You are cooked now.” At the word “pity,” she fired up dreadfully, and said:

LILIAN. “If we quarrel, it is because you don't see me often enough. Why don't you come down more frequently?”

JACKY. “Oh, Lilian, how can you say that? You know I can't come here unless it is arranged beforehand.”

LILIAN. “Oh yes, that is true, perhaps!”

She meant that if I would give money, I might come there when I liked.

She spoke of her maidenhead: “I am still a virgin and you may do as you like with me. I don't care a bit about it, but I have always seen that when a man 'has' a virgin, he soon leaves her afterwards. That is what I fear with you.”

I made no answer, but I supposed that this is what had happened to her, and will account for her returning me the novel L'Anneau without a word.

She wanted me to be a “woman.” In this way: I was to have a meal with her. She was to order what she liked, as a man, and I was to be a “virgin,” very docile and obedient, eating and drinking as she directed. She wanted to treat me as if I were of the weaker sex. She would perhaps remain dressed, and I was to be naked. She would undress me herself, as it pleased her.

“I would fasten your hands with that strap you left in my room last summer. I have kept it carefully.”

This struck me as being strange, but conclusive. Evidently, she had been keeping off me, not being a virgin, and this scheme would prevent me finding out her condition.

I told her how Papa had given me the story of her suitor, “who only wanted to poke her.”

JACKY. “Why did he speak so coarsely about you to me, who never mentions your name to him?”

LILIAN. “He doubtless wants to lower me in your eyes. He is little-minded. That is the story of Teddy, who was bookkeeper at Myrio's. I did not know you than, so I can tell you without making you jealous, that Teddy made great love to me and I used to get awfully wet. I did not know what that meant then, and it used to frighten me.”

She forgot she once told me that I was the first man who produced that effect upon her. I never spoke a word, as she dashed another of my illusions to pieces.

I explained that if he was little-minded, she had become imbued with Pa's doctrines, as she was like the daughter of a pettifogging lawyer.

I asked her too, ironically, how she managed to restrain her passions, having nothing but flirtations to feed upon.

“Oh, I am waiting for you, and I manage to get on by masturbating myself now and again.”

Her cool impudence made me laugh, and I felt sufficiently indifferent not to contradict her in any way.

“If you do that, you'll be sure to have the 'whites' again. Masturbation brings them on.”

“I never had the 'whites'!”

“Not last winter, in January?”

“That was not the 'whites.'“

“Let us say the 'reds,' if you like!”

She gave a little false laugh, making no reply, which caused me to be certain of the fausse couche that ushered in the New Year.

Alone with the mother, after tea, I asked her whose daughter Lilian was. She did not seem astonished at my query and gave the following story of her life.

“Mr. Arvel was my suitor as a young girl. I did not like him. I got married to please my family to a man I did not love. I had two children, a boy and a girl, Raoul and Lilian. My name is Adèle-Lilian and that is why the house is called Villa Lilian. Then Mr. Arvel turned up again and used to meet me out with the babies. He would run after Lilian when she was but two years old. My husband died. I was penniless. Arvel helped me with money, and then was intimate with me, and I began to get over my dislike to him out of gratitude. We have lived together ever since. He never touches me now. I don't care. I never loved him. It was only habit with me. His temper was always bad, and he is very difficult to get on with. He is jealous, and envious, and full of curiosity.”

Lilian now appeared.

“How happy he ought to be between you two, both devoted to him. You, the mother, superintending the 'tit-bits' of the table he likes so much, and Mademoiselle waiting on him hand and foot.”

Adèle got cross at this remark of mine, and flushing, her eyes sparkling with rage, declared he was not to be envied at all!

While concluding this conversation, Lilian stood bolt upright behind her mother's chair, staring at me, but without speaking.

I afterwards told her that I had been pumping Mamma about her past life. Miss Arvel made no reply. She never even asked what her mother had said. Mamma knew all, and Lilian's position in the house was secure, so she did not care.

When washing my hands before dinner, I was alone, and Mamma came and sought me out, a thing she had never done before, and said:

“Lilian is not happy. Her business is too limited here, that is why she is going to London with her brother. What will the two poor children do in that great town? Suppose she does not succeed? She is too proud ever to confess a failure and come back home, and what would become of my little girl then? I want to let this place, which costs too much to keep up, and all of us would go to Paris and set up a millinery business. I would help her but Mr. Arvel won't leave the country, where he is so comfortable.”

“But he could stop here.” I replied. “And she could work up a business in Paris. you being with her as much as possible. It only wants a little money. Mr. Arvel could advance it.”

“He won't give a penny. He says she is to stop here at home, and he will look after her, if she likes to be his secretary.”

“Alas!” I answered, “I know what it is to want money. Look at my position now. I am forty-seven and I have got to begin life all over again, as I have no money.”

My frank confession of poverty put an end to our conversation, but the mother, and Lilian, and even the father, shutting his eyes, wanted me to offer money to set her up in business.

At dinner, Lilian spoke in English of a woman near them, who had just died. It was rumoured that her husband had beaten her to death.

“Perhaps she liked being beaten,” I said.

Lilian affected surprise, and Papa and I agreed that it did women good to be beaten. Pa finished up as usual by telling Lilian he would try it on her. No doubt he used to slap her dear posteriors a little. We were interrupted by Mamma, or I had intended pushing on the topic. That was why he liked me to be with him and Lilian. But Lilian was too jealous ever to let things go too far. She will always be between two people to put them at loggerheads. No doubt that was how she got her brother away from Lolotte.

Mr. Arvel, chattering privately to me, said that Lolotte's breasts hung down to her waist. I suppose he had reasons to know. He also told me that Charlotte's virginity being too heavy for her, some few years ago, she went to an oyster bar where she was known, and asked the young man who opened the bivalves to open her, and he did so. He also wanted to know if it was possible that Raoul could marry a girl who earned no money and who wore silk chemises and drawers to match? He forgot Lilian's beautiful batiste shifts and knickers that covered her slight frame and limbs when she was “on the job.” At home, she wore a thick flannel-like material for her drawers. I have had my hands there many a time. Her mother must know that now and then she would put on her soft pants of the spidery material you could blow away. They wash at home.

Now the day wears on, and the mother gets colics, and Lilian and I go to the chemist, who orders paregoric elixir, i.e., tincture of opium. We also drop in at the post-office and Lilian registers a letter. The postal clerk is old and keeps us waiting. I tell my sweet companion that old men are always rather long.

We return home and Mamma takes a dose of the medicine. She dines on top of it, which is foolish, with neat Bordeaux wine, and a small glass of rum to top up with. Lilian tells her boldly to go to bed. She evidently wished to be alone with Papa and me, perhaps not forgetting what I had hinted in my letter, as to her behavior with her stepfather-lover, but Adèle gets quite jolly and will not stir. We-Lilian, Papa and I-are to take the dogs out for a walk, before I go to the station, when suddenly Mamma spins round like a top and faints away. Lilian never turns a hair. She does not love her mother; she is only disgusted at not being able to go out with us. Pa don't care either-he goes out with me, leaving Lilian with her sick mother half undressed on the sofa.

There was no real love or tenderness in that house, nothing but appetites-sensual longing, gluttony, and cupidity, with quarrels betweenwhiles. That was how they lived. The master of the house cared for two things only in this world: cooking and copulation.

I had explained in the afternoon to Lilian that life was impossible without genuine affection. We cannot be always spending.

“Oh! How truly you talk! I am very unhappy!” she exclaimed.

“You must not say that!” I quickly retorted. “It is not true. It is very wicked to pretend to be unfortunate, so as to make me miserable, thinking you are not happy. That is wrong of you, Miss Clever.”

“Oh, Jacky! I'm not clever! I am foolish in many ways!”

“Not so foolish but what you try all you can to make me jealous although you see how you fail. I wish you had a hundred men, so as to know what I am worth.”

She was obliged to laugh at this fatuous outburst of mine but would not explain what she meant by saying she was foolish. I was getting fatigued at Sonis now. This continual fencing was not to my taste, and only the thought of my book made me think of returning there. The idea that I was living a future volume and building up my novel kept me buoyant.

This new experience tickled my fancy and I had no sensual longings for Miss Arvel now.

Papa and I go out. I advise cutting off his wife's two daily glasses of rum. He does not appear to listen to what I say, but starts off again talking against Raoul and Lilian.

Raoul had said that he would not come to see his mother at Whitsuntide. (Pa probably knew that Lilian would not let him, and Lilian had told me that day that she had made it all right with her brother for our journey to Belfort.)

“If he don't come and see his mother, I've got influence with the military and I'll look after him. He shall come out from England next year and do his twenty-eight days-the second service of reserve men in France, although I can get him off if I choose. My arm is long enough. Because he earns five pounds a week in the wine business, he thinks the world is his own. They only keep him on because they know I could make it hot for them, as they robbed me with some shares in their concern, but as I held my tongue and did not prosecute, they gave the lad the berth. He is lazy, and speaks English with a Whitechapel accent. He wouldn't help me to clean the bicycles! (Again!) Lilian wants to go to England. She shall have no money of me. Let him keep her. She is lazy, and vain, and fond of new clothes and jewelry. All her profits go on her own back. She wants us to live in Paris and set her up as a modiste. She would never be in until midnight and I should soon be known as her maquereau. Not for me! She was very ill in Brussels, but directly I popped in with a theatre ticket, she was off all right again. I tried to get her to learn writing for English fashion papers. I gave her a French article to translate (the one I arranged!) but she did it dreadfully badly. She would want a lot of practice.”

“It was full of mistakes, I suppose?”

“Yes, indeed!”

He must have known I did it. I put in sentences on purpose which it was not possible she could ever have written. Spangles, I called: “dainty little dazzling discs.” A grey cloth became: “a fabric of a cloudy, pearl white, akin to the grayish tint of a fleeting morning mist.” He must have known she could not knock off that stuff. A doll's tea service, I worked up as follows: “Those tiny cups, lilliputian saucers and wee plates, etc.” He also feigned intense hatred for Lilian's pet dog, Blackamoor. But winding up, he said:

“One thing in her flavor is that she is very intelligent.”

All this was said for me. He did not intend to let her go to Belfort.

We returned; Mamma was in bed. I told Lilian some bits of his conversation. She was not astonished and showed no curiosity, which convinced me of their complicity.

“He hates your mother!”

Lilian pretended to be surprised.

“You watch it. He hates everybody and everything but you, and for you he shows false scorn to me, feigns to despise you perhaps for me to share that feeling.”

I did not say: “You hate your mother too.” And in point of fact, all hated or despised each other. Papa despises Lilian for being his plaything and yet wants her ever between his thighs to feel and kiss him. He scorns his mistress for having sold him her daughter and prizes her as a servant and cook. Raoul hates his mother's lover for having debauched him and his sister, and Lilian has no respect for any of them, nor for herself.

She then kissed me deliriously, and at the end of a long drawn-out, sucking, tonguing bout, she exclaimed with a loud sigh: “Oh, sweetheart!” as she had done to her brother in my presence on the eve of Shrove Tuesday.

She felt my sign of manhood outside my trousers to see if I stiffened by dint of her ghoulish mouth, as she had been doing on and off all day.

Then we went to the station, she kissing me behind Papa's back all the way in the dark. She “took sights” at him continually, behind his back. But that was only to please me, as she is very fond of him, I fancy. But is she fond of anybody? She showed intense passion for me. Too much of it, I thought. She protested too much. I was getting very cool.

I showed her a photograph of my half-sister, with “yours lovingly, March 1899,” on the back. She said nothing at the moment, but later on pretended to be angry at my having connection with women! Then she was rude about my half-sister.

“How your thoughts run on incest, Lilian!” I replied, and that silenced her.

Before wishing them a cordial good night, Lilian told me that she would very likely try and get to Paris Sunday evening and dine with me. A visit to Lolotte was to be the pretext. She was almost sure to be able to manage it.

I smelt a rat about this visit on a Sunday night to Paris. so the next day I wrote her a few lines, saying: “That if Sunday was to be for her dinner with me, I should not be at liberty until 8 p.m. But if that evening she was passing through Paris. I should be pleased to see her, if only for an hour.”

That was a trap, as I thought that if she had an appointment in Paris. I might meet her and learn something.

I also said: “I have had a conversation with Papa concerning your brother and his Whitsuntide holidays, which I had not time to tell you the other night.” I may say at once that she never recurred to this important topic, showing that she would ask Papa when I left: “What did you tell Mr. S.?” And he answered and narrated what I had said to him. The fact of her evincing no curiosity when I put forward conversations I had with him plainly showed that they were as one to deceive me.

LILIAN TO JACKY.

(Undated.)

Received Sunday morning, April 23, 1899.

My Jacky

For tomorrow night-impossible, therefore we are obliged to put off our meeting until a fortnight, or three weeks hence perhaps. I am very vexed about this, as I confess that I have a mad desire-oh! but really an extraordinary wish to have you all alone mine own for several hours; therefore- (Here we come to the bottom of the page, and turning over, the letter changes agreeably) — if thou art free the day after tomorrow, Monday, April 24, say so, and be at the Square Montholon at 11:45. I will come and fetch thee and we will go and lunch together. Then we will see.

Wilt thou come?

I adore thee,

LILIAN.

I answered and accepted. She would have got my letter by the first post on Monday morning. I wrote as if she were a man, and I was the woman. I had also been calling her in my recent writings, “my wife,” or “all my little wifie.” And all this scribbling, and my apparent stupidity and calm on my last visit had thrown all of them off their guard. I was a fool, madly in love with their daughter.

I could not understand that Papa would let her dine out one evening and not lunch at home the next day. It was too good to be true.

Sunday evening, during dinner, I got this wire:

LILIAN TO JACKY.

Telegram.

Tonight at the American bar, near the Opéra. Nine o'clock.

LILIAN.

I went and found my charmer in a new flaming dress, made entirely of vivid red cloth. She had white kid gloves, with a nice hat and looked very well being very red in the face, too. She had with her the Lesbian Lolotte; ex-mistress and ex-betrothed of her brother Raoul. They were both very jolly. I had never seen Lolotte before, but she knew me by name from Lilian. I chaff them about their sexless kisses when alone together, and want to know who is the man of the two. It is the stereotyped stuff that is always poured out to a tribadic couple. Lolotte is a pretty, plump blonde. She was very free and charming; about Lilian's age, twenty-two or thereabouts. We are soon very comfortable together in the back saloon of the bar, where, it seems to me, Lilian is well-known. It was near the Café de la Guerre, and she went there with her brother on Shrove Tuesday.

Directly I saw Lilian, I exclaimed: “Hullo, all up for our luncheon to-morrow!”

“How do you mean?”

“Why, you fetching me out in Paris to-night proves it is off.”

“But that would not prevent us lunching tomorrow, although I can't come for the following reasons. How strange you should have guessed it! I had to take some hats to a customer in Paris on Monday, so I profited by that to get to you. This morning comes a postcard, which Mother sees, to say that the lady prefers to come down to the country. So I can't get out to Paris. My excuse is destroyed. If it had been a letter, I could have suppressed it, and seen the lady today, so as to stop her coming down. Thus our lunch is knocked on the head!”

“Lies!” I thought, but I said nothing. I should have liked have seen that postcard.

“I have finished Césarée, ” said Lilian. “It is beautiful. You have marked it well, and scored the best bits, but you are all wrong in one instance.”

“About the bedrooms at the Swiss hotel, I suppose?”

“Yes. You know you are quite mistaken in your ideas about me!” She said this slowly and dreamily, not looking straight at me.

“I am absolutely convinced of the truth of my conjectures and stick to every word I have ever said or written on the subject!” I say this firmly, loudly, and impressively.

Charlotte was listening to the conversation, and Lilian spoke quite openly, showing that her fair friend knew the secrets of Sonis. I told her that Lilian was a liar, and had an awful temper. She knew it, and replied that all women were liars, out of necessity.

Lilian's friend talked about London and declared that she would like to go there during the season. I offered, jokingly, to take her. She replied with emphasis, that it would be very nice, and people would take her for a daughter traveling with her Papa!

And she looked fixedly and archly at me. I had enough presence of mind to pay no apparent heed to her bold words, but felt I had scored again. She knew.

I said I was impotent. Lilian cried out: “No, he isn't!”

Lolotte said she was sentimental, and Lilian was not. Nevertheless, the blonde confessed that she liked something stiff and rather long. I could see by the way she spoke that Lilian was now like herself; a common, ordinary, middle-class, half-and-half kind of whore, always on the look-out for a man with money, and had I told her the story of her friend's virginity, she would have been quite surprised. It was a great pity that I knew Lilian's stepfather-lover and all his connections and history so well. Under ordinary circumstances, they would never have thought of hatching these intricate and silly plots against me.

I spoke of Raoul, but both the girls begged me never to tell him of the meeting of the two beauties in Paris at night.

Lilian told us the story of her day:

“I got up at nine, had a bath, lunched; then went on my bicycle, came home, dressed again; came to Paris. fetched Charlotte, and we both went to Narkola's to dine, us two girls alone (!!). We had lots of nice things- bisque soup and fine wine.”

“In a cabinet particulier, both alone together?”

“Oh, no, in the public room!”

All lies, but I say nothing.

“How dry you must both be now!”

They roar with laughter, and whisper together, and giggle; and again our conversation about the sexes becomes lewd and stupid. They have two American drinks each. I have a soda and Scotch whisky. Lilian amuses herself dropping her saliva in my half-emptied glass, making me drink her spittle mixed with my beverage. She tells me that Gaston taught her that clean manner of showing affection. Lolotte gets on well with me and wants me to take her to London more than ever.

To lull Lilian into security I thank her for having sent for me and she alludes to how I said she sickened me, when she sent me a sudden summons by wire last September. She also spoke of my birthday, and remembered the date well. I merely quote these two facts to show that her brain was clear on technical points, and although she was artful enough to give no sign, all I had ever written to her all I had ever said, had always gone right home to the mark, remained in her memory. No doubt she read my letters over and over again. Poor, miserable Lilian!

The girls kiss and say good night. We put Charlotte in a cab, and off she goes to her home, somewhere beyond the Bastille. Lilian has a little jealous scene about my freedom with her friend, as Lolotte had taken off her glove and held my hand and tickled it. We go for a ride to the Eastern station, to catch the 10:30 to Sonis. I am not to get out of the cab at the station, so as not to be seen by the neighbors who might be taking this train, or anybody, or somebody.

“When shall we meet again?” I ask.

“I don't know. You are aware how difficult it is for me to get to Paris.”

“It used to be difficult. It ought not to be difficult now.”

No answer.

I tell her I shall masturbate her in the cab. We get in. We exchange hot and luscious kisses, as we have been doing all the evening, more or less. After a lot of resistance, with cries of: “People will see us! Oh! They are looking, etc.,” I get my hand up her clothes. I pull down the blinds. She pulls them up. At last, I overcome her feigned resistance and begin to excite her with my finger.

She has on her best drawers, and to my surprise, her cleft, generally smelling strong of the wonderful odor peculiar to the sex, is quite inodorous. It has evidently been freshly washed after dinner. My fingers afterwards were entirely without any feminine perfume. I knew also that a virgin's vulva is always more fragrant than that of a woman used to coition. I remembered that when her people were at Nice at January, she had a dinner at Narkola's, with Madame Rosenblatt and her male relations, who had purposely sent a false telegram to her Granny. Of course that was a cock-and-bull story. Here is Narkola's again! Had I chosen, I could have gone there the next day, and inquired about an imaginary earring dropped by the young lady in the red dress, but I really was now quite indifferent, and would not have walked twenty yards to find out anything about her. I had spied upon her in Brussels-that was enough.

Suddenly, while gently caressing her clitoris, I turned half round, so as to get almost facing her, and placing my right forearm under her chin, on her throat, I drive her backwards into her corner of the cab, and while she is thus pressed there, unable to move, thrust the middle finger of my left hand as far up her vagina as I can, until it is stopped by the knuckles.

I measure my finger next day finding 2 inches, and my hand is small.

The 2 inches of medius go up easily. I move my finger about inside, with a slight corkscrew motion. Within all is soft and damp, but not wet from randiness, only from the drink. She has not left me to void her urine since 9 p.m. She shrieks loudly and says:

“You hurt me! You hurt me!”

She struggles, but I have her tightly jammed in the corner. I find that her grotto is strangely altered. The outer lips were always very fleshy, but inside all was small, and the skin tightly drawn together, as on a thin hand. Now it is very fat, mellow, and as I said, not wet, as she was not feeling “naughty.” My finger went in as in butter, and she has now evidently what I should call a large, fat gap, which has been properly stroked, doubtless by big, manly tools. But then, having been used that evening, it might be a little puffed up, as women's parts are after connection.

I cried out: “You are no longer a virgin! No longer a maid! Now I shall be able to have complete intercourse with you!”

I took my finger out and released her. She made a wry face, as she put down her clothes, saying:

“Oh, you did hurt me! But I'm still a virgin. Your finger went in because it was not in the right place. You were between the two!”

Possibly meaning just under the clitoris and above the hymen. I need not stop to point out the absurdity of this anatomical statement.

“You are a virgin? Bosh!”

“I swear I am! On my mother's life, I swear I am still intact!”

I was so delighted at having attained my object, that I did not realize the contemptible horror of the situation. It was only afterwards, when I was alone, that I gauged the depths of Lilian's baseness. At the moment, curiously enough, I thought of how I should describe the scene in my book. I saw it all in print, and it seemed comic and unreal, as if it was happening to someone else, and I was but the spectator of my own disgusted self. But there was a glorious warmth of triumph thrilling through my veins. I felt like a detective who, after many months, has run his man down, and at last got the handcuffs on a criminal. I do believe that if I had found she really was a virgin, I should have been disappointed to find a maidenhead. It would have seemed like a monstrosity. Never did a surgeon operating on some special case of hidden cancer feel more awful, intense joy than I did at that critical juncture.

“Come,” said I, laughing, “and I'll finish you gently.”

She was now quiet and subdued, and expected likely enough a storm of reproaches. She kissed me and let me put my hand up her clothes without any show of revolt. I began again to manipulate her rosebud, but naturally enough, she had no enjoyment. Then I got very stiff, but not too much, as I had been indulging that afternoon, and I got it out and put her hand on it.

She caressed and agitated it a little. Seeing we were getting near the station and having a sudden desire for her hot mouth, which I knew would make me ejaculate in a jiffy, better than her awkward pulling at me with her gloved hand, I said:

“Give me your mouth, Lilian!”

She shook her head, and kept on with the movements of her fingers. I take her hand away and say:

“I must have your lips and tongue, Lilian!”

She sulks and turns her back to me, looking out of the window.

“Well, I'll masturbate myself!”

“Oh, no, don't do that!”

“I will! I'll spend alone! And you can go to the man with no fingernails!”

At this rude remark, which called up the vision of the hands of her mother's lover, to my astonishment she turns round and kisses me. She was so pleased to find I showed jealousy of the wrong person. She was waiting for a scene about the people she had dined with. Out comes her hand again. I push it away, and rub my member a little, like a schoolboy. She turns her head away again, and to give her a chance, I say:

“I suppose your stays prevent you stooping down?”

She, the fool, cannot take my handsome hint, but has turned her back once more entirely towards me, and does not answer.

So I, in despair, cover myself up and button my pants. At this moment, we are just nearing the station.

Seeing this, she is evidently delighted that all is over for the evening, and turning, draws me towards her, gently patting my cheek with her hand, her arm resting on my shoulder, as I had often seen her with her Papa. At this Judas-like caress, I confess that I felt myself boiling over with rage.

She has disdainfully refused me her lips, without a word of excuse, although I have not spent with her since the first of March, and have not had her mouth since the first of October.

If she had said: “I am tired. How can I suck you in my tight stays, new dress, jacket and hat?” I would willingly have excused her, especially as I was not very lustful just then. But she had not even taken off a glove. Her stroke on my cheek meant: “Now that it is too late to suck him, I'll make it up with the idiot.”

My blood boiled at this thought, and I repulsed her, pushing her from me by the shoulder. She was on my right hand. I felt like a brute and behaved like one. I dashed out my right arm and caught her a fearful backhander on the lower part of the left cheek and jaw.

She gasped for breath, and said slowly and quietly in a low tone:

“How brutal!”

“I am mad,” I replied, “go and spend when you get home.”

This was foolish, as she had freely emitted in Paris and was not ready for me after her dinner, frolic, and two American champagne mixtures. She had had her enjoyment, and was not yet whore enough to play the proper part with another man at two hours' interval. Besides, her temper would not allow her to do so.

She was on the proper side to leave the cab, as it was now stopped, so she stepped out without a word, and I saw her go slowly and shakily along the station frontage, not boldly entering the first door in front of her, as she ought to have done, but sneaking along slowly, evidently thinking I was going to come after her, or perhaps tipsy, or crying, or mad with rage at being outwitted. Or going to the ladies' W.C. at the end of the building.

I slowly paid the cabman, watching her the while. I dared not follow her, for I knew that if I did-God help me! — I should have struck her again. So I turned away and walked home. How I got along and what streets I took, I do not know. I am surprised I was not run over. I found myself in front of my door, that is all I can say. It was about 11:30 or 11:45. I got into bed and smoked until 2 a.m. I could not settle to read. I could only smoke and stare at nothing. I was very much upset, although I had known the truth all along by intuition.

Then I found that the knuckles of the second and third fingers of my right hand were torn and bleeding. I did not think I could have burst the skin with the force of the blow on her face. I do not suppose I hurt her much, as I had no room to swing my arm in the cab, and she did not put her hand up to her face after the blow. I hoped that I had torn my knuckles on her brooch, or neck pins, or earrings, or garters, or something of the same kind, while struggling with her, and these slight abrasions were only coincidences.

Strange to say, but it is the truth, I had no regret for having struck her and feel none now. When I wrote her that insulting letter about the Belgian trip, and sent the analysis of her own letters, I felt strangely delighted, and was surprised when she was silly enough to answer.

It was the first time in my life that I had ever lifted my hand to a woman in anger.

The next day I was quite calm again, and hugely pleased to find how well I had succeeded.

I had quite deceived the infamous trinity at Sonis and I had proved to Lilian that I knew she was no longer a virgin.

I had set myself a threefold task: to prove that Lilian was Papa's mistress, by exposing the lies from Lille; that her maidenhead was gone, despite her assertions to the contrary; and that they were all in league to conspire against me.

All I had to do now was to bide my time to taunt her with her complicity, and then I could go away.

I wrote and sent the following letter, but it was not meant specially for her. It was for Papa-and a little for my book which was rapidly taking a practical form in my brain-and I composed the details of the famous ride, just as I have given it here, and leisurely prepared notes for the rest.

When I posted the letter I now give, I thought she would not answer me, and that I should never see her more. Anyhow, I made up my mind that she would never come to my arms again. I did not see how she could.

JACKY TO LILIAN.

Paris. April 27, 1899.

You arrive with Charlotte Sunday night, and tell me that the appointment arranged for the next day has fallen through. I say nothing but I find the story suspicious. I should like to see the postcard of Sunday. But I pass that over. I don't care.

I hear that the two young ladies have dined alone. I venture to say they are “dry.” They laugh, not understanding that I am mocking them. Lolotte must think me stupid. I say nothing. I don't care.

I make the following remark: in January, Lilian also went to dine at Narkola's with Madame Rosenblatt. Put the two things together. Had I curiosity, nothing would have been easier for me than to have gone on Monday to Narkola's to find out about the lady dressed in red. I have not done so. Neither shall I. What better proof can I give that I don't care?

We get in a cab. I discover that she is no longer a virgin, in spite of all the stuff she has recently told me. I had already my suspicions when I did minette to her in January. Then I found her parts absolutely changed beneath my tongue. When a maid, she was rather thin down there, the skin tight over the bones, as with all virgins. Now all is fat. It is soft, as if swollen, but she is rather large I find. Evidently she has met a strong sexual partner. It is true that she had just been enjoyed by a man, and at such a moment, directly after connection, the parts are always a little puffy. But she is too fat in the lips for such a young woman and I repeat-rather vast. But my examination was necessarily superficial. Her “pussy” was excessively clean, without any special smell. Therefore, there had been private, recent ablutions. Injection? After dinner, I think. The men were all married, as she was not perfumed.

I pushed my finger in freely as if in butter-six centimeters. The entrance was easy, all being open. She was not excited by me. There was only a little moisture through the drinks. The reason is simple; she had just spent a lot. Nevertheless, she swore on her mother's life that she was still a virgin, and that I had put my finger “between the two.” Comedy! I said nothing. I did not care.

She did not try to caress me. She never even took off her glove. I did not care. (She used to say: “To you I would do anything.”)

I ask for her mouth. She turns away without a word. I did not care. I give her a hint, telling her that perhaps her stays were too tight. I wanted her to excuse herself prettily. She did not understand. I did not care.

Then a wonderful thing took place, that I really did care about. Seeing that we were nearing the station, she left off sulking, and turned round to me, caressing my cheek. This is how I understand this Judas-like caress: “Fortunately, we are at the station. He can't ask me for anything now, the idiot! I have eluded the task. Now to coax him to get away.”

In a twinkling, I understood the horror of this idea, and I made you feel severely the weight of my opinion. I struck you in the face-movement of brutal impulse. But whose fault was it?

She has dragged me down to the level of the brute- or would like to do so.

Do I regret what I did? I do not believe so. I don't care.

But what I do care about are the rude words I uttered concerning a poor man, victim of Lilian, who I pity with all my heart. How he must suffer! How he will regret having let himself be seduced-if he does not regret it already. I understand the kick given to the dog. I understand everything, and from the bottom of my heart I ask his pardon for the insults I addressed to him by insulting the infamous Lilian. If I could only make him understand the compassion and sympathy I fed for him, victim of Lilian!

I, at least, possess common sense; I can reason, and I finish by regaining full mastery over myself. Then again, I do not live with her. Sincerely, I pity him. What a sad existence she will make for him-she does make for him! Poor man!

Why, Lilian, this accumulation of lies, to enable you to play continually and solely for me, this part of the perpetual virgin, letting no one touch her but me, and yet always in somebody's arms? You are immaculate, of course. Jacky and you masturbate, or suck, six times year, and that is all.

Are you mad? Do you take me for a madman? Or are we all mad, and you alone sane?

It is laughable. But I don't care. When in a rage we say: “I don't care a damn; what does it matter to me?” generally we feel quite the contrary. I believe that I prove, and I have sufficiently proved lately, the appearance of a slight commencement of indifference. And if you do not believe me, I do not care.

A few guesses:

Lilian was certainly a virgin in October last. January she was so no longer, nor in December either. (“Don't be silly, darling!”)

When sucking her in the dining-room in January, I felt the difference. I ask to be allowed to try with my finger. She consented, and cunningly put me off: “It is so tender now I've come!”

When did she lose her maidenhead?

In London in October? I think not. I saw her at the beginning of November, when she forged the hideous lie of the lost letter. At that moment, she wanted to be my wife. I still believe in her relative honesty, and she would not have wished to marry me if she had not been physically intact. You see, Lilian, that I have still a little illusion. You are surprised? I do not care.

I think that the thing happened in November. With whom? After November, there is no talk of marriage.

I have two ideas: Mr. Arvel or a stranger. I put aside the first-named, I don't know why, and from some signs that I have no time to set out here-especially as all this is very vague in my brain; I grope in darkness now-I lean towards a stranger, who, either because he feared the consequences, or else because he bored of her after once or twice, has not set eyes on her since. Or he is perhaps absent momentarily. And I believe he is an officer.

I suppose he abandoned her. Out of spite, she threw herself into the arms of those whom she thought she loved a little: Mr. Arvel, who, on second thoughts, I think she loves a great deal, whom she seduced; and Jacky, whom she don't much care about, except to make him suffer and excite Mr. Arvel. Nevertheless, she is always telling Jacky and writing to him how she loves him. I do not speak of the parties carrées with her Lesbian Charlotte.

A woman who truly loves cannot live without the man she has chosen. She only knows one thing; to see him as often as possible, although she may have to dig up the earth with her nails to get to him. In a word-'tis love. And when she sees her lover, she only knows one other thing: to get into bed, to open her thighs, to give herself up, and let herself be taken, virgin or not. Does a woman really in love think of her virginity? She loves. That is all.

Lilian the liar does nothing of this with me. She loves not, neither Jacky nor anybody. Mr. Arvel a little, and the remembrance of her first real lover-that is all. She loves nothing. She fetched me out Sunday night through vanity, to show Lolotte that after having copulated in her society, she had yet another man waiting for her. I do not care.

Excuse all faults of French of your old foreign snob. I have a copy of this letter. Shall I make a few extracts for Lolotte, or do you prefer to read this to her when you see her?

This is a calm and sensible letter, without empty phrases; without tears, flowers, birds, or music. You like novels. This is better-here you have a living romance, of which you are the heroine.

You love voluptuous letters that you can show. Show this one, I'm not ashamed of it. I set forth my weakness, I allow, but I've no vanity. I boast of nothing. The part of victim does not displease me. And to prove that I should not blush if it be shown to who you like, I write it on paper stamped with my die, and I sign my name in full,

JOHN S.

But I have wagered with myself that you will not answer me. You are in a tight corner.

What lying bubbles I have burst since you became a neat little Césarée! I kiss you, and conclude-at last!

From a sensible point of view, it doubtless seems a silly thing to have sent the foregoing letter. The reason why I did it was because I was afraid that Lilian, perhaps half tipsy-she must have been so, or she would never have opened her thighs so wide-would not, or could not see my motives. Also, that I did not wish to spare her; I felt a savage pleasure in rubbing her nose in her filth. I wanted to drive her to give me up herself. I wanted to see how far she would go; whether she had any pride left; whether she was utterly debased and abandoned or not; and lastly, I was now certain that Papa knew all our story, and had eagerly devoured my letters, just as Lilian and he had read all my obscene books together, I told her so; I told her I found his big black thumbmarks in one of them. She never answered; she never did, when I guessed rightly I thought he was putting her up to most of her tricks. In their narrow-mindedness, they cannot believe that I have always been truthful, and in spite of all I have said, think I am a miser and that there is still something to be got out of me; never mind how little-it is all profit. They were trying to “work” me. Pa, Ma, and Lilian were all conspiring. They were accomplices, more or less, and I was to be the fool. Where they were all wrong, was that according to my mad letters and my still madder talk and ideas, they suppose and hope that I am absolutely gone crazy on Lilian and that she can do whatever she likes with me. Habitual liars are the easiest people in the world to deceive. They believe everybody. But you must never lie to them. Tell them the truth or nothing, and they will be as children in your hands.

I had now to make a most dreadful sacrifice, with only the voice of my conscience to applaud me-the sacrifice of my passion; of my sensual enjoyment; of my thirst for lust with Lilian, which I could have still assuaged had I chosen to be a weak coward towards myself. This holocaust, perhaps I am too vain in saying so, seemed to elevate me in my own sight, and I felt like a hero, in thus conquering my concupiscence in solitude, between four walls, all alone with my thoughts.

16

…Go, call my daughter;

And if she comes not, tell her that I come.

What sufferings? I will drag her, step by step,

Through infamies unheard of among men,

She shall become (for what she most abhors

Shall have a fascination to entrap

Her loathing will), to her own conscious self

All she appears to others.

…I will make

Body and soul a monstrous lump of ruin.

— Shelley

ERIC ARVEL TO JACKY.

Sonis-sur-Marne. May 1, 1899.

My dear Jacky,

If you have nothing better to do on Wednesday, will you bring down your bike and come for a ride? We will breakfast at 11:30, sans façon, and see you get home safely at night. Raoul has written, and desires to be kindly remembered to you. I was very much obliged to you for the papers you sent.

Hoping you are all well at home, believe me to remain,

Yours very truly,

ERIC ARVEL.

P.S. -Look at the enclosed photo, and tell us what you think about “Mount Calvary”?

Wednesday, May 3, 1899.

This postscript and the photograph, representing Lilian between her brother and myself-taken by Papa in February-confirmed me in my opinion that Papa knew all, and so did Lolotte, for Lilian never troubled about my threat of writing to her Sapphic friend. I sent a wire, accepting the invitation, and went down on my bicycle; my hands full, as usual.

I had made up my mind to be calm, cool, collected and merry, and not to say a word to Lilian on the subject of our secret (?) relations, unless she spoke first. I half expected she would not be there. How could it be possible that any woman, even the lowest of the low, could sit unmoved in front of the man who, in the right or in the wrong, had sent her such a vile, horrible, loathsome letter, without counting his brutal assault on her? But knowing her petty thoughts, I guessed she would say: “How he must love me to write such things! How vexed he is!” And she would be proud to think she had got me in such a mad state. So Pa and Lilian invited me to gloat over my supposed sufferings and make me suffer more. The best reason of all was, perhaps, that Papa did not want to quarrel openly with me, as I knew now too much about him.

I arrive. The servant tells me that Madame has gone to Paris early, and Mademoiselle will receive me. Not a soul to be seen, which was most impolite in a villa when you are expected as the only guest. When the garden gate shuts to, somebody should run out to meet you, I think. At least, such was always the case with me, but not this time. I am ushered into the house and am left to wait five minutes alone. A cool reception. Papa comes downstairs at last and we go out for a walk to meet his wife at the station. We return, all three of us, and he talks of his “Calvary” joke, while I see Lilian, peering at me from the summer-house workshop.

“That was your invention,” I reply, “because she is between two thieves?”

“No. She mentioned it first. Where is she? Lilian! Lilian!” And he bawls out her name. She will not answer. She does not appear until lunch, fully an hour and a half after my arrival, and greets me coldly. I am, I am pleased to say, perfectly indifferent and quite self-possessed. She does not excite me as she used to do. She has on an old dress, and no powder, or red on her lips. The beauty spot on her cheek is gone.

We lunch. During the meal, she has to get up and pass behind my chair. She puts one hand heavily on my shoulder, near my neck, boldly in front of her two parents. The lunch is a poor one, compared to what they used generally to put on the table for me. They are all dull. The duller they get, the gayer I am. I actually go so far as to imitate Sarah Bernhardt!!

“You do well in mentioning the name of the actress,” says Lilian.

“I always do when I give an imitation. It avoids all discussion.” Then I add: “Today is an anniversary! Four years ago, in May, I forget the day exactly, I brought the little fox-terrier, Lili, here. That was the first time I ever came into this house. How time flies, and what changes take place in four years!”

This with a little emotion, half real, half feigned, but I felt I had acted it well. I don't think they liked the little speech. There was no response, except from Lilian, who saucily but angrily, sniffing, snorting, replies:

“I thought you meant her birthday, when you said anniversary!”

I notice that Papa treats Lilian with mock gravity, and calls her Madame, all through the meal. Ever since the return from Brussels there has never been any romping between the pair as in olden days, but they treat each other with great seriousness. They have no need to play with each other in the daytime now. Perhaps too, Mamma's susceptibilities have to be reckoned with.

When the coffee comes on, the beautiful porcelain cups and saucers, which Papa brought from China, are no longer put on the table, as they used to be for me. Lilian asks me how I will have my coffee-in a cup or in a glass. I see no cups on the table, so I reply that I will have it in the same way as Mr. Arvel. She says that Papa takes it in a glass, and she pours it in his, on top of the dregs of his white wine, and serves me in the same way.

It is impossible that Pa and Ma did not notice these little shades indicating my disgrace in their house, and they must also see the way Lilian treated me. Their collusion was glaring.

While we are drinking the coffee, Mamma goes and has an awful row in the kitchen, and kicks out one of her two female servants. The same thing occurred on April 5.

Papa and Lilian remain at table with me unmoved, and I feel dreadfully ill at ease to hear Adèle shrieking in the kitchen and the vulgar howling of the domestic replying to her. My interesting pair tell me that Madame Arvel is mad and can't keep a servant. They are like husband and wife, and Mamma is the housekeeper: Lilian sneers at the muffled sounds of the dispute, and Papa swears and growls.

Mamma returns, very red in the face, and apologizes to me for her outburst of passion. She must tell servants all she thinks of them, and give them a bit of her mind. This one had been talking against her in the village.

“Dear Madam,” I say, “why get in a passion with hired menials, and expect devotion from them, when you see so often in families that even blood relations betray each other. You expect too much of servants.”

Of course, Adèle never answered, and the guilty couple was silent too.

Lilian stuck with Papa and me. I followed Papa about all day: like a little dog and would not be left alone with Lilian. She now began to look wistfully at me. She could not make me out, and was waiting for some advance on my part. I noticed her in the glass.

She talked about a new photographic lens and said to her Papa:

“Papa, you must photograph me as a Japanese girl and in all sorts of costumes.”

And she looked at him with her sweetest smile, and her nostrils quivered nervously.

“Papa, I am going up to Paris at 2:37.”

But she did not go. She never left us hardly a minute.

“Here's the postman,” says Lilian, and she rushes down to the gate. She returns with a letter for Pa, and cries out: “One from him!”

As she ran back into the house, Pa tapped her posteriors, where her pocket was, and said to me:

“She has got it in her pocket!”

I made no remark.

“Lilian is not going to London in September to live with her brother,” he suddenly broke out. “She has found out that she would probably have to keep him.”

“What is she going to do then?” I say. This is the first and last time that I ever asked him anything about her.

“She will stop here with me.”

Afterwards, he speaks very affectionately to her in front of me, as he has never done before, and while he is talking, I wink facetiously at Lilian. I am certain that he is trying to tease me on behalf of his stepdaughter and secret wife, even as a mother might do, who would be the procuress of her own girl.

Finally, she manages to get me alone and chaffs me about being too thin. I retort that I look after myself, as the doctors advise me that if I get too fat, I shall be in bed again with rheumatism.

“I do not spare myself,” I say quietly. “You find fault with my personal appearance, because you have no longer any feeling of desire for me. Qu'importe le flacon, pourvu qu'on ait l'ivresse!”

She throws up her head and snorts, but says: “No! No!” as I stroll away from her, back to the side of Papa.

She makes us two men take her out for a walk. She does not try to go out alone with me and never does again. Surely Pa and Ma can see the change?

She chatters about a certain fashionable actor, and turns very red; crimson are her cheeks, as I tell her tales of his amours. She says she does not like him any more, as although he looked beautiful on the stage, she would prefer him to be less of a rake. Lilian declares that actors and actresses have strange ideas, but she adds with a sigh that lots of other people have strange ideas, too. Papa smokes in silence. I play the clown, and they are both obliged to laugh at my foolish antics.

I ask her if she is rich-if she has not a few hundred francs saved up in a corner of her wardrobe, under her clean drawers. She cannot help smiling as she wonders at my astuteness in feminine matters; that is exactly how her Mamma hides her money. Lilian's pocket money is limited. She got one hundred francs for a pair of puppies, thanks to my advertisement. In spite of my advice, they did not advertise again, but the other three pups were given away-one to the officer; one to a friend of mine, the jeweler, who made the ring; and the last to a brother-journalist, a friend of Papa's.

Lilian wore no rings that day. I never saw my poor ring on her hand again.

We return to tea. Then Lilian stands in a doorway, waiting for me to speak to her. I repeat my movement of retreat, walking away in the garden, after Papa, and she looks so wild; frowning and black under the eyes, that I turn round, and thoroughly happy to feel myself so free in front of her-for perhaps I feared I might weaken-actually laugh outright at her. She goes in, but not at once. Then later, she complains of a headache. Alone with me, for I continually find her at my heels, I gravely advise castor-oil.

Papa and I go out for a ride on our bicycles. He is very slow, careful, and nervous. He does nothing but talk of Lilian and how well and fearlessly she rides. He confides to me that his member shrivels up on a bike, and asks me if mine does! What does he mean? Does he want me to ask to look at it? I answer that I have never noticed this phenomenon in myself.

When we return, Lilian's head is worse. She has got a face as black as a Negress. She comes to me and says:

“I have left all the books I have of you at the station. Here is the ticket!”

After my laugh, while we were out on our bicycles, she had evidently made up her parcel, and had gone to the cloakroom of the little station of Sonis.

Unmoved, I take it.

“Thank you,” I reply. “I have got a couple of novels ready for you. One is on the same subject as Cèsarèe but much stronger.”

“Where are they? Have you brought them with you?”

“No, but I will leave them at the cloakroom of the Eastern station and send you the ticket.”

That was all. She got more sulky, and I gayer than ever. She calls her Papa.

“Pa, will you come down to the cellar with me?”

I used to do that. Papa puts on his gloomy look and is delighted to go with her, while I, all alone, recline on the famous divan, where we sat at Shrovetide.

I think they exchanged notes down below. Papa sent her up alone, and kept out of the way, to give her an opportunity to make me say something.

She rushes through the room, on her way to the kitchen, where her mother is, and says to me, in a voice choked with passion:

“Rest yourself; take things easy!”

“Thank you, Mademoiselle.”

“Make yourself at home, quite at home!” She flounces out. In few minutes, she returns and sits down. After a pause, while I watch her frowning, she again complains of her head, and in answer to my coldly polite sympathy, hints that she often suffers in this way-every month. She wants me to talk.

“Sexual causes, I suppose, and not the stomach?” Another pause. Then I add:

“When I got home that Sunday night, I found my fingers torn and bleeding. How was that? Do you know?”

“Of course I do. It is not surprising!”

“How did I manage to tear my skin?”

“Let us talk of whatever you like, but not of that evening. I will not talk about it at all.”

Aghast at her impudence, I hold my tongue, and a few seconds afterwards:

“I don't think I shall come here again.”

“I don't force you to come,” she replies quickly, black with rage.

“There is no question of force.”

Then another long pause, as neither of us speak, until Papa arrives, and I am asked to go and wash my hands in the best bedroom as I always do. I have stated that Lilian used to accompany me, get me hot water, a clean towel, and kiss me. This time Pa takes me, apologizes for a black residue in the cold rain-water of the ewer, tells me to pick out any dirty towel off the horse, and sits on a sofa, while I wash my hands. He never did this before. I take a long while purposely, as I like to see him seated, waiting for me. He is leaning forward, his joined hands passed between his thighs. I cannot prevent myself comparing him to an old bawd, and there is something womanish about him, as I think that he has espoused the quarrels of Lilian with a lover. The day has been instructive for me, and I ask myself who has been the most ridiculous of us all? I vote for Papa, and fancy he would look well with a double-bordered cap, à la Sairey Gamp.

We dine and he starts the Calvary story again.

“Has Mademoiselle really suffered so much?” say I. “This is the first time I hear of a female Christ.”

“She has a crown of thorns,” replies Papa.

“The crown of thorns of a young lady can only be tight boots and tight stays.”

He still calls her Madame all through the meal, as he did at lunch, and says, looking at her and me:

“Bitter! Bitter!”

She seems very worried, and I exult, as I am so self-possessed. I can see that Papa is resolved to draw words out of me, and create some scene for his diversion, and the more he tries to tease me the more jolly I get. Nothing could have vexed me that day, or caused me to lose my temper that night, and as I watched Lilian's bluish lips and Papa's snarling grin, I thought of my little growing manuscript at home and wondered if the great masters of the art of novel-writing had ever lived their stories in advance.

I was aroused from my reverie by Papa's loud voice, saying:

“Pass the sauce, Satan!”

I do not even start at this new jibe, but say very quietly, with a pleasant smile “I did not quite catch what you said. Did you call me Satan?”

“Oh! I meant that for Lilian. I ought to have said satin. ”

I am satisfied with his retreat and say no more.

Lilian now wakes up, and she talks of a new red dress she has-meaning the one she wore when she dined at Narkola's-and says it is too conspicuous, she will never wear it again.

“Wear it as a dinner dress,” I answer. Pa knows she dined in it on Sunday.

“It is cloth and tailor-made,” she explains.

She wants to know what are masks to be worn at night for the skin. I explain that they are pieces of kid with holes cut in them, smeared with creams for the complexion. And I add that women not only wear masks at night, but very often in the daytime as well. All our talk is in English. Mamma does not speak English. She is a cypher. Now and then she joins in and wants to know what we are talking about. So we change to French.

“Women are fools,” says Lilian, “to bother so much about their skins.”

“There is no such thing as a foolish woman,” I answer, “I have asked several and they all told me they were very clever.”

I get a laugh for this, but Papa for the sixth time murmurs his catchword of the evening: “Bitter! Bitter!”

Lilian says she has been suffering from a swollen nose, big and red. It is only just better. Can it have been my blow? No, she is anemic, and strumous. I remember a disabled hand from the bite of a mosquito; a sty in the eye; an abscess in the mouth. She caught cold in Paris. coming out of the hot restaurant or bar, insufficiently clad in the courtesan's cambric underwear, after the thick and comfortable everyday Cinderella combinations.

“Mademoiselle has had what we call in English-a nose…gay!”5

The dinner is over. Mamma goes up to bed and leaves us three.

Arvel talks about the Dreyfus affair, being against the officers now, and I tell the story how an old Jew of eighty years of age, seeing the hecatomb of corrupt officers, had exclaimed:

“It is the justice of Jehovah! They tried to tease Jehovah! Never tease Jehovah!”

Lilian asks what Jehovah means. Papa harshly interrupts her, telling her that she would not understand, and so I see how for years he has carefully diverted her understanding from all that was good and noble. Her life is wasted.

Her foot gently touches mine. I do not respond. Mr. Arvel asks me if I have ever been to Italy. I answer in the affirmative, and I tell how I took lessons, so as to acquire a little Italian before starting. To try my new knowledge, being in London, I went into a penny ice-shop, and said to a swarthy, mustachioed foreigner behind the counter:

“Parlate Italiano, signor?”

He lifted a cover off a zinc pail, and stirring up its contents with a wooden spoon, replied in a business-like way:

“Shtrawberry or cream-a?”

Lilian laughed immoderately at this, until the tears came into her eyes.

“I am glad I have at last made you laugh, Mademoiselle, but I am sorry to inform you that this little story, which I am flattered to see has had the good fortune to so excite your mirth, is not true. I made it up myself. It is a lie, although as a rule, I do not tell lies. Do I, Mr. Arvel?”

And I turned to Papa. He smiled grimly, but did not answer, while Lilian, perfectly black and sulky at hearing the word Lies! seemingly very vexed, left the chair close to me on my right, on which she had been seated, and went off to recline on the divan with her dog, leaving Papa and me to cap each other's stories and smoke without her. She never took her eyes off me.

I make much of my bitch Lili, as I have been doing an day, and all my sentiment with the animal is met with icy coldness on their part.

Lilian is in a complete fit of the sulks, seeing me so indifferent and the time for my departure approaching, without my having said anything at all.

No doubt after my letter, which Lilian never alluded to from that day to this, they expected I should forget myself in some way, or show some wretched weakness. That is why they sent for me. The whole of the day, Papa never left me, and instead of doing photography, he walked round and round his garden, and took care to keep near the house. I followed him.

Lilian, at one time brought some work into the dining-room, so as to be near to us; but I made no sign, and they both circled round me as if watching an epileptic patient. I suppose they thought I might burst into tears, or faint away, or better than all, beg Lilian's pardon and make a substantial peace-offering.

Do wicked women bleed foolish men's purses by excess of ill-treatment? Probably they do, or else Lilian and her Pa would have behaved in a different manner.

I look at my watch. It is time to go.

“We'll take the dogs out, come back and fetch your bike, and take you to the station,” said Papa.

Lilian, who generally went with us, or alone with me, very dull and black, begs to be excused. She goes to Pa, says “good-night” to him, and putting up her face to be kissed, he salutes her on both cheeks. She never did this before. Papa looks surprised, and the light fades out of his eyes, as it always does when stirred by the power of his passion for Lilian. It stirs me too, and I feel very lewd, as this is the first time I ever saw them kiss before me. I may say that I never saw Lilian kiss her mother all the time I had known her, and it will be noted that Mamma was not present when Papa kissed Lilian. She knew I liked to see her playing with Papa. Was she doing this to pander to my vile mania; or to excite my jealousy; or to please Mr. Arvel, by telling him that I was jealous of him?

I never knew. Had I been on good terms enough with Lilian to ask her, she would have only told me some lie, so when the pleasant quarter-of-an-erection sensation it created in me had worn off, I forgot all about it, and it is only as I strike the keys of my typewriter nearly a year afterwards that I see the girl and the old man kissing so chastely before me, both trying to get at the little brains and money I may have had. I bear no malice, as I led them on to believe I was malleable.

Lilian says: “Bonsoir, monsieur!” to me very coldly. We go out. She goes with us into the hall, standing behind us, still hoping for a word, or a sly caress perhaps. I take off my hat and say very softly and nicely: “Bonsoir, mademoiselle!”

She answers, really hissing it through her teeth: “Bonsoir!” Quite curtly, and there is no “monsieur!” with it, which is very rude.

The sibilant sound of her last word betrayed the rage she felt, after a useless day of simulation in the face of my unfeigned indifference. And Papa would taunt her, and ask her what had become of the boasted power she had over me.

I go out with Papa, who must have noticed the change in his girl's manner to me.

He talks smut.

“Girls nowadays don't seem to care about real copulation-they like being 'messed about' better.”

This was a bold thrust at me. I answer quite indifferently and insignificantly.

I let him keep up the conversation, and he gets on to sleep and sleeping draughts, in order to be able to say:

“Lilian sleeps well. When we were in Brussels, she would get to bed after the theatre at midnight, and never wake until eleven the next day. As she was away for her health, I never disturbed her, but let her have her sleep out. We had a fine, big, double-bedded room. There was a large screen and I rigged it up across the room, fixing it against the washstand.6

A month ago, he had told me that Lilian was lazy and would not get up. But that was nothing. He was a man who said just what came into his head, as it suited him. But what did he want me to reply that night? What was I to answer?

I felt inclined to be smutty, and chaff him about Lilian, and her love for her Pa, and so on. But I would not take the trouble and after all it might have been a trap. I simply said nothing I expect he was pursuing his same old “bluffing” tactics. But there was an undercurrent of fear of me. He was too clever. It would have been much more simple to have said nothing, as I did in answer to him. There was now a very long silence between us, more significant than any reply I could have given. He broke it by talking of bawdy-houses. I explained that they were not much good. Some fellows, I said, liked to take a green girl there with them. But it is generally a bad move. He replied that possibly it was wrong to go with anybody you might care about. I put an end to this debate, by declaring that as a general rule it was not a wise thing to do.

He evidently had the idea of seeing Lilian with him in a brothel, among its abandoned denizens, a favorite pastime among fast Parisians. Had she been with him; did he long to take her; or had she gone to one with a miché? This was the second time he had spoken to me of lupanars. He had got them prominently in his mind.

There is nothing new under the sun of sexuality, and nearly all old debauchees, when they get hold of a young woman, new to depravity, or who they fancy is not quite corrupt, feel a great delight in going to a brothel with her. Each one thinks he has been the first to be so diabolically lecherous. What fools we old voluptuaries are!

I thought he would have liked me to speak out and go about Paris with him and Lilian. I hardly knew what to think. Lilian had stopped all friendship between Arvel and Jacky, by her lies. It was a very difficult position for me to be in, especially as I got no help from the wretched young woman. Suppose I had begun to talk lightly about her to the father and he had turned round on me? So I said nothing. By this time, we had returned to the house.

A light was burning in Lilian's room. Immediately, Arvel's head goes up, looking at the bright window like a boy of twenty. He puts up the dogs for the night, and conducts me to the station. He is very cordial and says he will soon have me down again. He wants me to go and visit some ground he has bought on the Western line. I promise him some special photographic printing paper-which I send him a day or two after-and we part.

I get my parcel of books at the station. There is Césarée; the first volume of Gynecocracy, and volumes two to six, inclusively, of Justine.

In volume 6, I had marked the paragraph about the pleasure of seeing one's mistress in another man's arms. I had asked Lilian if she had noticed and read it. She swore she had seen no marks. I attached no importance to this, thinking that perhaps after all I had penciled some later volume that she had not seen yet.

That idea did not suit Lilian's plans at this juncture, as she wanted me to become jealous, so she told this lie; as when she pretended to ignore the Mademoiselle Bismarck missive. How I discovered her prevarication again, was by looking through the books in the train, when I found, not only my underscoring and marginal lines, but the place in the sixth volume was marked with a long strip of orange photographic paper, such as I had seen plenty of at Sonis, but I possessed none of that kind. This made me more sure than ever that Papa had read the book, and that he would have been more free and genuine with me, shutting his eyes to my connection, had she not worked him against me, as he was, to a certain extent, a puppet in the hands of Lilian and her Mamma. The two women can kill him by inches, if they choose. The mother has but to tempt him with her choice cooking, which he cannot resist, and Lilian will follow suit with her cunning caresses. To regain fresh strength daily, he will eat heavily, and drink rich wines, followed by fiery, cheap whiskies. No man, especially at his age, can burn the candle at both ends with impunity.

I give here, out of curiosity, the odd notes I jotted down the day after my visit, just to show the state of my mind, with all my doubts and contradictions.

It is all over now. I cannot visit there again, unless Lilian was to come forward and go down on her knees to me. This she will never do. She is too hard. I know her. What will the next move be? An invitation from Papa? If so, I shall probably decline it. I must do so. Besides, I am tired. If I go, it will only be to tell her of the fact which is now perfectly clear to my eyes: that every hand at Sonis is against me.

Papa behaved all day like an old procuress, trying to put two lovers together. I remember how silly he looked at her side, the day the officer arrived to see the puppies. Papa has spoken since about the two that were sold; and of that presented to his colleague; while Lilian has oft recurred to the fate of the one my jeweler had, but there has not been the slightest reference ever made to the animal that was given to the soft-eyed soldier, whose appearance and bearing pleased me so much. He was a man any woman would have been pleased to be seen with.

She cannot come near me now. Even her Whitsuntide journey must now be knocked on the head, if ever it was sincere, as Papa will not hear speak of the brother spending his holidays away from home, and she is going to live always at the villa now.

She depends on Papa for everything, even to her food, and I know he is very kind to her. She too, evidently likes him very much. He is not married to her mother, but he will have to do so now, so as to reward her for the sacrifice. The two are firmly bound together by their material wants and pecuniary interests. Mamma's “courses” are leaving her, and she has no more feeling. She hinted as much to me. So what chance have I in such a household? With Lilian's obstinate lies and her desire for money against me too. She has spoilt everything, and I must retire.

I now know all I want. She is the mistress of her mother's old lover and her maidenhead has been gone some months.

She only cares for me for what she thinks she can tear out of me. If I was wrong in this surmise, she would simply try to see more of me, or work for me with her Papa, as she seemed to do so nicely before she left for Brussels with him.

May 3, 1899.

I took to the Eastern railway station, two novels, as I had promised, and left them in a parcel at the cloak-room, sending the ticket to Lilian in an envelope, without a word. I wrote on the fly-leaf of one of them that I did not want them back, as they were of no value, except for reading.

One was Suzanne, by Léon A. Daudet (Paris. Charpentier, 1897), and the subject was the incest of a bad girl, a liar and a hypocrite, who glories in her wrongful lust for her own father. He takes her away on a trip to Spain; her health being the pretext, and both alone together, they put up at a hotel, when he gives her a ring, just as Papa did in Brussels. It is one of the most powerful works of the kind. I underscored all the erotic passages, with any remark which seemed to touch on Lilian's case, and there were many.

The second novel was La Femme et le Pantin, by Pierre Louys (Paris. Société du Mercure de France, 1898), which is a pretty little story of a wicked woman and a weak man, who continually returns to his torturing mistress, in spite of her vile treatment of him.

I think that Lilian was egged on me for marriage from the very first, and flirting was allowed, but perhaps her visits to me in Paris were added by herself? Or they knew she came to me, but she would tell them at home that I walked her about the parks and squares and sighed over her.

Another proof that Papa knows all, and had read my last disgusting letter, where I spoke of the kick to Blackamoor: this time, in front of me, he feigned to get in an awful rage with Lilian's dog, and took a big stick, pretending to hit him. Lilian seemed (?) distressed. Then he brought the cudgel softly down on the crouching body of the trembling pet and burst out laughing, caressing the animal. That was clearly an answer to my allusion to his cruelty to Blackmoor.

Papa had asked me if I knew the price of nickel saucepans in Paris. intending to replace all his kitchen utensils by that new metal. I got him some tariffs and catalogues of these goods, with the offer of a very late discount, on account of my efforts. But I soon suspected that he would have liked me to make him a present of these utensils, and when he spoke of a new photographic stand camera, as he only had a fine detective apparatus, or of chemicals and requisites, of which I got him some catalogues, it was only mendacity in disguise, and I was required as a dupe to feed them all.

Lilian was contemptible. She was capable of everything that was bad, and why? For nothing through that invincible force which drove her alternatively from good to evil, from evil to good, in the same irresponsible way.

Her absence of all moral sense was unimaginable. She had no idea of rectitude or honesty, nor of what was allowed or forbidden. She had no conscience of her acts. She felt she was despised, even by those she pleased, and those who were the most indulgent towards her would judge her as eccentric and lacking brain equilibrium. She realized the impression she created, but did not try to overcome it. Subtle, loving, caressing, kind; full of curiosity; crafty, and above all perfidious; adoring intrigue; stopping at nothing; obstinate, bad-tempered, and sly. She was full of coquetry and false pride, with the low tastes and bad language of a prostitute although not vulgar. Yet without animosity, I should be insane to take any interest in her, despite her evident perversity.

Lilian belonged to the category of hysterical unfortunates. I am certain that she had a certain instinct of sincerity. She would have liked to have been loyal, but she could not. She lied, in spite of herself, without knowing it, and always for the sole reason that the one simple characteristic of hysteria is the madness of mendacity.

Like the tongue of the fable of Aesop, Lilian was, or could be good or bad. Doing evil as suggested by the stronger will of Papa, she loved good actions, and passed long hours teaching one of her illiterate workgirls to read and write. To another, she advanced money when in trouble and was never repaid, and I felt certain that if she obtained gold by her prostitution or her millinery, she would freely give her earnings for her family. Strange mixture of qualities leading to vices; of vices conducting to virtue; all these contradictions were united in her.

Perfidious, she was clumsy; cunning, she was credulous; courageous, she was cowardly; a young lady, she liked the company of paid hirelings; indefatigable, she was lazy; perverted, she was devoted; vain, she was humble; witty, she was silly; and ugly, she was very pretty at times.

She inspired disgust and excited desire; in a word she troubled the brain of whosoever took an interest in her.

17

Un amant qui perd tout n'a plus de complaisance,

Dans un tel entretien il suit sa passion

Et ne pousse qu'injure et qu'imprécation.

Son devoir m'a trahi, mon malheur et son père.

— Corneille

Thou think'st I am mad for a maidenhead, thou art cozened…

— Beaumont and Fletcher

ERIC ARVEL TO JACKY.

Sonis-sur-Marne. May 28, 1899.

My dear Jacky,

I have been so busy of late that I have had no time to call my own. I had intended asking you down last Monday, as Raoul had got forty-eight hours leave, but I am under the impression that you were in the midst of a family fête, so I was afraid to disturb you.

I just had time to take a photograph of Lilian and Raoul, copy of which I send you.

We still are as badly off as ever, as far as servants are concerned, but if you will come down and take pot-luck, bicycle and all, with us on Tuesday, we shall be very pleased indeed to see you, and do our best to entertain you.

With kindest regards from all, believe me to remain,

Yours very truly,

ERIC ARVEL.

May 28, 1899.

I sent a polite wire in answer and some of my perfumery for the mother and daughter, and went on my bicycle, arriving in the morning.

The photograph represented Lilian in her Japanese costume, standing up, her head reclining on the left breast of her handsome brother, who is swathed in the Japanese robe I had once put on. His arm is round her waist; he holds one of her hands in his, and presses it on his shoulder, while his cheek touches her hair, and she looks out of the picture with a wicked smile on her naughty face. Raoul seems sly, sardonic, and serious, as was his wont.

This group had been shown to my brother at the Bourse a a few days before I got mine, much to his surprise. He asked Mr. Arvel what it meant.

“It is a brother and sister,” was the answer. My brother found this very funny, as he thought it was slightly lewd.

When I got in, Papa was in his little photographic dark-room near the garden gate, and he was evidently quite gone with admiration on this Japanese group. I extolled it, and said it was very voluptuous, giving an impression of indecency, by reason of the flowing drapery of the girl, as one could see she had no stays on.

“You mean the backside!” he replied, coarsely.

I said it was very beautiful, and continued:

“Why don't you get photographed with her? I should like to see you two together.”

He did not answer, but I saw the usual change in his face, and he began arranging some bottles.

He told me he would photograph me that afternoon with my bicycle, and I could take him, as I expressed the wish to have his likeness I said I wanted him, as I had already got Lilian and Raoul, and he gave me some more copies of the Japanese couple on other papers, as there were several hanging up to dry.

I had brought a fancy little trick photograph, representing Lilian as a ballet girl. They sell in Paris cards without heads to print photographs upon, and if you have a negative you can get your friends' faces on comic bodies. Arvel liked the joke.

After some conversation, Lilian appeared to invite us in to breakfast, and greeted me with marked and studied coolness, still playing a part for her Papa. She looked old, worn, and seemed to get uglier every time I saw her. Her skin was dark and sallow, and a moustache was coming. She was black under the eyes. She was dressed without any care, and had no powder, or lip coloring. There were no rings on her hands.

I was very gay and quite self-possessed. I chaffed her about the Japanese photograph. I told her that her brother looked sly and devilish: as satanic as myself.

“My brother says it is indecent. He has seen it. Your Papa showed it to him at the Bourse. He is now quite gone on the little Japanese girl.”

“Pa,” said she, “you are mad to have shown that at the Bourse. I suppose everybody has seen it?”

And I persuaded him to have it enlarged and colored. We now went in to breakfast, and I told her quite loudly before her Papa, not to be sulky that day.

“Don't put on your black face, and show those ugly, violet, distorted lips. Last time I saw you, you looked like a Christy minstrel.”

She walked rapidly away in front of me, turning her back to both of us, quite surprised, and he, of course, said nothing.

I had on for the first time at Sonis, bicycle breeches and Scotch stockings, and I began to make fun of my own calves, as we sat down to table. I said that all the ladies were in love with me, since my relations and my half-sister had forced me to put on cycling costume.

“Oh, your love! That must be very precious!” exclaimed Lilian, sneeringly and loudly, so that both her mother and father could not fail to hear her.

“Precious or not, once tasted, women always return for it,” was my quick rejoinder.

She made no reply to this vain boast. The rest of the talk at déjeuner, although I made as many jokes as I could, and caused them all to laugh, does not concern our narrative.

I said that I had been to London just before Whitsuntide.

“I wish I had known,” said Papa, “you could have brought me over a camera. There is no duty on it.”

“I should have been very pleased to do so. I went to see some friends, had some clothes made, and I purchased this bicycle rig-out.”

I said, which was perfectly true, that every Sunday I had been coming to Sonis to lunch in the pretty village with a party of cycling friends, but that the weather had been too cold. They were astonished. I said I should come down next Sunday. They told me they were all going to the races in Paris. I expect Lilian got me invited, after nearly a month's silence, to tell me she was going to the races. They evidently thought I should go too, and walk them about, give her and her Mamma drinks, and gamble a little for them. Instead of which, I said I was coming to Sonis with some ladies. I, of course, did not tell the principal lady of the party-no other than my Lily at home-that the Arvels would all be absent on Sunday. So that was all smoothed over. And my artful puss of a “missus” who thought I dared not go to Sonis with her, was now thoroughly mystified. At the end of the lunch, Lilian broke out with her old lie:

“I must go to Paris this afternoon to get some cottons, etc.”

“You can't go now that Mr. S. is here!” said Papa.

This was her usual comedy. I said nothing, but it will be seen later in the afternoon, that it was only a fib to tease me and hide the fact that my invitation had been deliberately planned by the pair.

Now comes a big parcel from the Louvre, with household goods, brooms, etc. Papa will not pay and flies into a passion. He does not pull out handfuls of gold, as he did in February.

Ma runs out in a huff. Lilian chides Papa for getting in a rage, just as if he were a little boy: “Temper, Pa, temper!” she says.

“Let her go mad if she likes and tear her hair and grit her teeth, as she did the other day,” snarls Arvel.

They must quarrel horribly at times.

“She has no money left,” says Lilian quietly, “and she will only send the things back. It is silly of you.”

Papa reflects, and then relents, with a heavy sigh.

“Well, go and pay it out of your money.”

Lilian goes and gets the money upstairs and he is alone with me. He groans about the two women's extravagance.

The meal is finished and I am to go out on my bike with Papa. Lilian refuses to accompany us. I do not ask her. She has customers coming. She also takes piano lessons now. She says she has a new bicycling costume.

Papa starts his parrot-cry again: “Bitter! Bitter!” And then he says, apropos of nothing:

“Raoul spells 'bitter' with one 't.'“ He chuckles at this.

“Ah, that makes 'biter,'“ I reply. “The biter bit!”

His laugh stops suddenly and there is a pause, enabling me to add:

“Sometimes people try to trick you, but you see through them and they lose the game.”

“In that case,”-and Papa spoke with some warmth- “the loser retires, and don't go into mourning for so little.”

“How can people try to trick you, when there is not any interested motive to be seen?” broke in Lilian, as she rolled up the napkins and put them in the drawer of the buffet.

“But if the motive is hidden?” quoth I.

No answer came, and Papa and I go and work at photography. He takes me in two positions. I take him in two others. He is a handsome man, or was. Lilian comes now and again to see us at work, and once in a fit of rage, she tears up her photograph as the ballet-dancer, which has been shown to Mamma and all the work-girls. I could see that they had still some lingering idea that I was a jealous lover, full of agony at Lilian's coldness, and she hated to see me so natural and undramatic.

I tell her in front of Papa that I am cleverer than he is.

“He does you, Mademoiselle, as a Japanese girl, because he has got you in front of him, but I transformed you into a ballet-girl without seeing you!”

I inform her that I have got her negative and shall make a dozen more dancing girls, and send her one every week. With her black face, she goes off in a huff to see her customers, who now arrive.

Papa remarks that Lilian has a devil's temper and he coolly adds that she is wicked, and a liar.

My photograph is now finished, and I say that I shall go and show it to Lilian and dare her to tear it up. Arvel tells me to be careful as she very likely will. She appears again, and I tell her that I will not show her my picture unless she kisses me. This is all before Papa. I never spoke so freely to her before in the presence of her parents. She is really quite surprised and is obliged to say:

“What is the matter with you to-day? I have never seen you like this!”

I now feel I am master of the situation, and I become more of a wag than ever. I chaff her about having a husband soon, and tell her that Papa will get her a nice little man and she shall have twins. They glance at each other. I continue to play the clown.

The negatives are now finished and dry, and I go and find Mamma in the kitchen to get a petroleum lamp for printing purposes.

I joke with her, too, and tell her that my calves are such a success that a lady in Paris makes me put on a pair of her black silk stockings every time I go to see her. Mamma says I am very gay. I ask her if her daughter always tries on hats and bonnets on her customers' heads down in the country, or sometimes goes to Paris to do so.

“I suppose now and again they countermand her by postcard, or so on?”

“I never saw a postcard countermanding anything,” she answers, and then adds sadly:

“My daughter don't tell me everything!”

All mothers who know their daughters are foolish virgins pretend never to know what is going on under their noses. Adèle, I think, shuts her eyes to everything, puts up with anything, waiting for her old man to marry her. He told me again he would at the end of the year, Raoul having only one year's soldiering to do as the only son of a widow. If his mother was married, he would have to serve three years.

Back with my lamp. Lilian says Papa is too fat. She makes me pinch his ribs. We talk of women's bellies. Lilian says she has none and what little she has, she keeps down by wearing suspenders instead of garters. I say that a woman with a belly does not exist for me.

“Hush!” exclaims Lilian, “Ma may hear you!”

Adèle was quite near, having come into the garden unobserved by us. Papa hears all this loose talk, but is dumb.

“You should be very nice to Mamma,” says Lilian to me, after she has left us. “You ought to try and make love to her.”

What does she mean? I dare not guess. Papa is right beside us, but he is mute.

I now go after Lilian alone in the garden, as the customers are gone and she has had her piano lesson besides. How about the visit to Paris now?

I ask her how she liked the novel of Suzanne I sent her. Not as much as Césarée it appears.

“That is because Césarée is a good little virgin and Suzanne is vile. How did you like La Femme et le Pantin?”

“Not at all!”

“No, because it shows up women like you. Come here, I want to talk to you for the sake of old times.”

And we go away behind some trees, she looking very happy, thinking I am going to be very nice, from my opening words. As we walk together, I say to myself: is it really to be believed that by sheer strength of false letters and lies, the truth, the whole truth can be entombed? It cannot, shall not be. She has lied enough. It is impossible to lie more. The strength of lying is doubtless enormous, but it finishes by being exhausted. She has tried to build a very wall of falsehood round her house and fabricate with forged sentiment, supported by lies, a monstrous idol of seeming truth, before which I am, forsooth, to stupidly kneel.

Now I have been all round the circle of lies. I know, I understand, I judge, and that gave me the tone of authority which ought to have impressed her greatly, had she loved me.

I felt myself soaring above all humane consideration. I forgot my book. I was no longer myself. I was the impersonal mouth of truth, and the grandeur of the part I played gave me simple, strong, and luminous facility with which to speak; and ample demonstration gushed forth abundantly.

I told the facts and classified them, unrolling the chain link by link before my victim. I explained all, and showed all. Each hypothesis became a reality, accompanied by a procession of proofs, without any Jesuitical insinuations, or sneaking blows in the back.

“I very much enjoyed my last visit here, when after that Sunday night in Paris. you thought I was going to come round again and humble myself. You waited all day for me to speak. I said nothing and have held my tongue for a month, until it pleased you to send for me. And I am not asking for anything now-not even a kiss — as you are the vilest creature that ever breathed. I am not the weak hero of “The Woman and the Puppet.”

I pass over her denials, and her false laugh of scorn, which she puts on, trying to show me that she did not care what I said to her, but will continue with as much as I can remember of all I forced her to listen to. I was quite calm. She did not excite my lust as she once did, and I found a peculiar pleasure in insulting her and dragging her through the ordure she kept on shoveling up herself, until she should get tired of trying to drive me silly by her stupid wickedness. I think that is all she wanted to do. Did she really know what she was about?

“I gave you a turquoise ring. Strange, I have just found that 'turquoise' means November. I 'had' you first November 26, 1897, and in November 1898, you got deflowered.”

“It's a lie! I'm still a virgin! Oh, that month of November!” she added, with the half-groan, half-sob, that I had already heard when I taunted her with the remembrance of Shrovetide.

“A virgin of three inches of finger! I don't care if you are a virgin or not. What made me angry was your imposture, extending over three months, when you kept me from touching you between the thighs, as much as you could, and told me”-here I could not help sneering-“how you were keeping your maidenhead for Jacky, and how you would like me alone to have it.”

She was silent. Her jerky, imitation laugh stopped, and she bent her head.

“You were free to do as you liked, but not to try and trick me who never did you any harm. You invented that lie about the unregistered letter; how you suffered at Lille and Brussels; and how you were always a poor, persecuted virgin, adoring me. You are worse than any woman I ever met. How much do you get, when you dine out with Lolotte? A hundred francs between you?”

“You talk to me as if I were a common prostitute. I want no money. I have plenty.”

“You are lucky. I have none. I want to tell you that you have been trying to trick me, and I never was your marionette. You invented a cheating dodge that I never heard of before. You give rendez-vous by letter, knowing you cannot keep it, and then you countermand it, and if reproached, say: 'But I meant to see you and could not. It is not my fault. Did I not make the appointment?' The last one made by you and stopped by a customer's postcard that your mother saw, was a fine cheating joke. You Ma has just told me that she never knows what you do. Your letter with the appointment for Mi-Carême was a lie. Your Papa, as a man of business, knew in advance the date of his departure. It was a slack time with him in Paris and the Carnival was on in Brussels. And your 'monthlies' were just over, for you went out cycling with me on the first of March.”

I paused for a reply. None came, and even her spasmodic laugh was hushed.

“And I hear no more about your trip with me to Belfort. You knew it was impossible.”

She turned her head from me. I could not see her face.

“I never went to Brussels. I sent there, and I have got a long report all about you and your Papa in the double-bedded room, in writing. That is better than if I had gone myself. All my letters since were got up to lead you on in your cheating lies. You have shown them all to your father, and both of you have been trying to work me, and exploit me, and trick me for some base and mercenary motive. You have both fallen into my traps. Your mother even knows all about the books I lent you, Justine. ”

She had been silent, but this last blow went home, and she was mad with rage, as with flashing eyes and curling lips, showing her gleaming teeth, she exclaimed:

“How can you be so wicked? How can you imagine such horrors? Ma knows nothing. You think and think until you do not know where you are. You know nothing. You guess all wrong. I'm a virgin. Pa has never touched me. Now let me tell you once for all that he knows nothing about all you and I have done together and he must never know. That I ask of your loyalty.”

Not all, certainly, but as much as she had cooked up for him.

“Then why does he always talk dirt about you to me?”

“Perhaps he is jealous of you.” She said this very slowly, and with averted gaze.

“I never answer him about you.”

“That is good of you and quite right.”

“No, no! You are accomplices here in this house to cheat and harm me!”

“Say that again, and I will never invite you here any more!”

“I don't want to come. You have always run after me. I still say you are all in league to play with me and against me, but you have not got the best of me yet. I am too clever for you. And you yourself are not cunning enough to beat me. That article I translated and the 'passionate' letter of lust, written by your order, were all for his amusement.”

“You are awfully bad. You must be very wicked yourself, or else you could not imagine that such horrors could exist in others. I will go to Papa with you now and tell him all.”

“Come on,” I answered, and I stepped towards the studio. She did not move, but remained still, trying to laugh sarcastically at what she called my “stupid imagination.”

“I don't care what you say,” I continued, “I now know all I want to know about you. I could have gone to Narkola's and found out more. I could, if I chose, go and sleep with Charlotte.”

“Why don't you?”

“Because I won't take the trouble. I know enough. You are a common whore, dining, and letting all men enjoy your body in cabinets particuliers for a few louis, and without the excuse of a poor prostitute who does it for bread. You have got all you want and your Papa as a lover. You dined at Narkola's regularly last winter with your subscribers.”

She was not offended. She did not feel my insults. Never had I so insulted a woman. The hot blood comes in my face as I copy it out now, months afterwards, and she was able to find the following lie to clear herself. It is true that she had had three weeks to concoct it.

“I will explain about that,” she now replied. “Lolotte was going to marry Raoul. We broke that off. Pa won't let her come here and I won't go to her place. She has a big brother, and I want to keep him from doing harm to mine. To talk with her we dined alone together at Narkola's. Papa must never know I went there, or that I was out with Charlotte. You must not betray me.”

“You put on cambric drawers to dine alone with Lolotte?”

“I had no cambric drawers!”

“You had no drawers on at all perhaps? And where do you wash them? What does Ma say to you putting them on, when you go up to Paris alone at night? You are a nice, amusing, incestuous little viper!”

“Now let me be! Go away! I want to work! I won't listen to, any more of your ravings.”

“You must. You shall. I enjoy telling you all this. I have lots more to tell you.”

She ran from me, but I followed her into the workshop, continuing my vile talk in English.

“I'll slap your face, if you say more!” cried Lilian, through her clenched teeth.

“Do so!”

She slapped one side, half-angry, half-laughing. I offered the other cheek and she slapped it too. She did not hurt. This was in front of her workgirls, and she told them in French that I was teasing her and would not let her work.

“You can work.” I speak now in English, as she takes up her needle and a hat. “See, your hand does not tremble; you don't make a stitch wrong. You don't care.”

“I do. You hurt my feelings terribly. I never knew you were such a bad man. But now I will go and sleep with my Papa, although I have never done so yet, just to spite you.”

“That lie I expected. I know that old trick-one lie to cover another! You will say: 'When I wrote to you from Lille, I resisted him. It was true what I wrote then, but now I am his mistress!' And as for being a virgin, you will declare: 'When I swore on my mother's life in the cab that I was a maid, the night you slapped my face, I told the truth, but I was so disgusted with you, for whom I was keeping my maidenhead, that I immediately went and gave myself up to somebody else!' You will have to invent some new lie.-Now tell me, Lilian, who had it? Was it not in November, just when I wrote to you after your lie of the lost letter, in which I enclosed the fifty-franc note, that Lilian was dead?”

“You never sent that letter.”

“Then why, when I told you I had done so in November last, did you at once write back wanting to marry such a scoundrel?”

“Because I was very fond of you then, and would have done anything for you.”

“Yes, because you thought I was rich. That night in the cab, you must have been tipsy, else you would never have opened your thighs as far as you did. In January and February, you always gripped them close together.”

No reply came, so I tried the following little artifice upon her:

“Look here; I'll tell you something that will astonish you. If you will come with me to a doctor, not chosen by you, but somebody I'll take you to, and let him examine you; if he says you are a virgin, I declare, without swearing on mothers' lives, that I'll marry you.”

“I am a virgin and I'll go to any doctor you like, but I'll not marry you now!”

“Because you think I've got no money.”

“I know you haven't. Pa always told me so.”

Then, after a pause, as I take breath, turning her face from me; not daring to look at me, she says slowly, in a low and tremulous voice:

“I think you would marry me without caring if I was a virgin or not.”

“No, I would not. After all, the least I could ask for as a husband, when I think over what passed between us last year, would be your virginity.”

“Last year I had somebody else as well as you.”

“What do I care? — Your Pa tells me you prefer feeling and sucking to proper coition.”

She was too surprised to answer, and she waited for more. I had gathered this from his statement that modern girls preferred superficial caresses.

“How about the Mount Calvary? That proves he knows all.”

“He only meant that I was between two thieves.”

“Then why did he add a remark about your crown of thorns?”

She was strangely mute.

“He meant that you had suffered, going up the mountain. And why does he call me Satan? He will tell me all in time, if I like. I ought not to say so much to you, as you will now stop his mouth. I can imagine you talking to him, in your bedroom, just after I went away last time:

“'Well, Pa, what did he say to you?'

“'Nothing! But what did he say to you, Lilian?'

“'Nothing, Pa!' What fun for me you both are! It is grand to be able to read you all here, wanting for nothing, caring for nothing, and telling you all I think of you. I am going to put our adventure into a novel. I have already written a lot of it. I shall call it Suburban Souls. I shall alter the names and places.”

“That is the least you can do! — Now, will you go away! Leave off, I say. You do not know what nonsense you are talking and how you are mistaken in every way.”

“If I am wrong, I am an utter rogue. You have never yet called me a liar, because you know I am not one. But say so now; spit in my face, and tell me to go!”

She turned away without a word, and her mother appeared.

“Don't say any more, as Ma can catch up a few English words she may know,” whispered Lilian, hurriedly.

So I saluted the workgirls and retired.

It was always the same. She could not tell the truth. Driven in a corner, she covered up the first lie with a second one; then if wanted, placed a third one over them, and so on as long as necessary. It is true that she deceives no one, as she must always be detected sooner or later; but she gives herself the satisfaction of believing that she has blinded her victim for the nonce.

I went back to the dark-room. Papa was hard at work, finishing my second photograph, and his own. I help him a little, as it is too late to go out cycling.

I now make up my mind to do what I have never done before: to “work” him a little, and talk to him, as he has tried to talk to me. If he knows all, as I think, it will not matter, and if he does not-I shall see what comes of it. So I begin to talk smut. That soon draws him out, and I boldly tell him about virgins, and how girls swear you out that they have never been penetrated by a man.

“You can't tell,” he says, looking at me with a puzzled expression.

“Can't you? You've only got to put your finger up.”

“That is not a test. But still if you thrust in four inches or so, they can't be virgins. My fingers are no use. They are too short.”

And he stared at me with increasing uneasiness.

“Then I am right. You agree with me. My experience has proved this.”

“But then, there is no certainty. The hymen gives!”

What a splendid, strange remark for him to make! An elastic maidenhead! Surely he knew all, and was trying to make me believe that Lilian's membrane still closed up the vaginal passage, and was like a bit of india-rubber!

“You can't tell,” he continues. “They can make a virgin cleft with alum water.”

“That is no use against the medical exploration with the finger.”

“Ah, you've never tried to get into an alum girl!”

I cannot help shrugging my shoulders disdainfully, and keep on:

“What is really difficult is not to have children. To get them is easy, but to enjoy a woman and not impregnate, is hard work.”

“To get children,” he answers, evading my proposition, “the best way is to have connection dog-fashion, and not let the woman empty her bladder for twenty-four hours afterwards.”

I can hardly keep from laughing at this new cure for female sterility, and we prepare for a walk before dinner, when Lilian appears from the kitchen. She looks so ill so black, dull, and rancorous-that even Papa notices it, and asks her what is the matter. It is the effect of my talk, and she has been having a little explanation with her mother about what I had said. She chaffs me and I retaliate gaily, all before Papa. I tell her how rude she was, never to thank me for some English fashion papers I put in Papa's parcels. She curtsies down to the ground with ironical politeness, saying:

“I thank you, sir! — Are you satisfied now?”

“Hardly. You are not over polite as a rule.”

“I shan't take lessons from you.”

“You might do worse.”

She tells her Papa that she is going to Paris the next day, and she says:

“I must have a little check: fifty francs will do!”

And she pirouettes in front of us, lifting up her skirts slightly, but turning her head away. When in a fix, she hides her face. Papa does not answer, but looks at her with his most gloomy air, showing how strongly she stirred him then. This is also to vex me, and show me what money she can have of him! With this she runs indoors, still with averted face. Shortly afterwards, I am alone for few moments, while Papa has gone up to his room, and I hand her the preface (see Appendix B), and the first eighty pages of The Double Life, a rough proof; with all the incestuous passage marked, and some newspaper cuttings: “An Infamous Father” (see Appendix F) and “The Tête-à-tête" (see Appendix G). I give her to understand that I have arranged this preface. She seems very pleased and is evidently delighted that I do not sulk after the blowing-up. Her lips twitch, her eyes laugh, and her nostrils quiver, exactly as when she used to get “wet.” Can she make her nostril palpitate at will? Yes-women can do it.

“Don't spend!” I say, and she runs away laughing.

Papa and I go out with the dogs. We talk more smut and I tell him:

THE TALE OF TRIXIE.

A few years ago, I was carrying on an intrigue, to use a polite team, with a married lady, and she used to give me a rendezvous somewhere in Paris. during the afternoon. Her lord and master was rather jealous and she was obliged to take great precautions, frequently changing the place of appointment. One quiet spot I had found out was the Terrasse de l'Orangerie, in the garden of the Tuileries, where one might have thought oneself to be in a dull provincial town, had it not been for the roar of the distant traffic. My sweet adulteress very often never appeared at all, as a whim of her master might stop her many a time from going out.

At least, so she told me. One fine day in June, I was at my post, under the trees, and I knew by the time I had been there that she would not come that day. I felt rather glad than otherwise, and was debating with myself whether it would not be better to give up such an unsatisfactory liaison altogether, as I lazily smoked a cigar, and fell to idly watching the movements of a trim-built little lady who was impatiently trotting up and down, all alone, with a bunch of roses stuck in her waistband. She was simply, but neatly dressed, and it was easy for a man used to the ways of a big city, to see that she was not a common wench, seeking the acquaintance of the first man who would accost her.

She passed in front of me, and went to the stone parapet that borders the terrace, and like Sister Ann, looked out afar, but nothing was to be seen. With a gesture of impatience, she tore the roses from her girdle and flung them away. Then she looked at a tiny watch and made as if to leave the garden. I got up and followed her, and although repulsed at first, I managed to make her conquest, and finally, after a deal of trouble, she told me that she was seeking an adventure, and had answered an advertisement in the Ruy Blas newspaper, where, under the cloak of matrimony, kindred souls poured out their desire to find fitting mates, and restless spirits sought for their affinities. Trixie, for thus I shall call my new friend, was fresh to Paris and its ways, and she had answered one of these announcements, when she had been directed to come to the Tuileries, with the bunch of roses as a signal, so as to make herself known. The correspondent had not kept his appointment and so she made my acquaintance.

I may say at once that, after two or three appointments, she let me do what I chose with her and I found her to be a most charming little woman, and possessing all the qualities that I always sought for in a mistress: strong sensuality and no squeamishness or false prudery.

Before giving way to me, she told me that she had already been seduced and abandoned by her lover. Her parents had got to know all about this intrigue, and although they let her live at home with them, they made her life very unhappy, reminding her daily of her fall, and she was naturally never allowed out after dinner. She was exceedingly well educated, and spoke English, French, German, and Spanish, writing all the four languages without faults. She could play the piano and seemed domesticated. Trixie spoke vaguely about giving lessons to earn a little, albeit she confessed to not being in want of money.

She was not of a mercenary disposition and soon got to be very fond of me. Being of a passionate nature, she was delighted to fall across a man who was not jealous, and who taught her, or thought he taught her, a few new tricks and turns of vice. She dubbed me her “professor,” and in truth she was an apt pupil in my hands.

Trixie was fond of her own sex, and frequently asked me to introduce her to some nice girl, promising me that I should join in the fun. We made up our minds we would try all sorts of strange games together, and taste of all the fruit that the orchard of passion could possibly contain.

I had not known her a month, and none of our projects of lust had as yet been put into practice, when one morning, the Ruy Blas contained an advertisement, stating that a young couple desired to meet with a lady and gentleman with a view to friendly intercourse.

I showed this to Trixie and asked if I should answer it. She demurred at first, but finally consented, and I entered into correspondence with a person who turned out to be a tall, handsome gentleman of about thirty years of age.

He came to a meeting that I gave him on the terrace of the Tuileries, and I saw he was perfectly sincere and acting as I was, without any base motive. He told me that he was married, and had taught his wife that the heart and the senses were two distinct things. He was far from being jealous and left her entire liberty, although he preferred that when she took a lover, she should do all with him and without concealment.

The idea of a partie carrée pleased him greatly, as I told him we were both perfectly free to keep our names to ourselves. I had no curiosity, and wanted nothing but pleasure.

I let him know at once that I was not married, but that I had a little mistress, named Trixie, whose story I told him, and it was agreed between us that the two ladies should meet. If they liked each other, as we two men did, we would arrange to dine or lunch together and change partners, besides letting our companions enjoy themselves in Lesbian fashion, as he confessed that his wife was not averse to playing the part generally ascribed to the poetess Sappho. This, I knew, would suit Trixie.

We arranged to tell our ladies of the result of our interview and I said it would be best for us all to meet on the terrace, and as soon as I could see Trixie, who could only come out in the afternoon, I would let him know.

The next time I enjoyed my new sweetheart, I told the story to her and drew a highly colored sketch of the cultured young married man I had met, but she did not seem enthusiastic. I was myself very hot on the scent of this honest rake's wife, as he had offered her to me in exchange for my Trixie, and no doubt he felt the same towards me.

At last, my lustful little woman promised to come to the Tuileries at three o'clock on a certain day, and after the exchange of a few notes and telegrams with the young husband, an appointment was made by me and accepted by Trixie, who was to meet her “Professor” in the public garden, where she and I would await the coming of the advertising couple, when the two men would introduce their brace of beauties to each other.

I was punctual, but Trixie did not turn up, which annoyed me not a little, as I thought that if the young fellow appeared with his spouse and found me alone, he might reasonably suppose that no Trixie existed and that I had invented my story with the sole object of getting to see his wife.

While fretting and fuming up and down the terrace, my new friend made his appearance and he too was alone.

I told him at once that Trixie had not come, in spite of her promise, and that I was very vexed. He replied that his wife had been taken ill just before getting dressed to go out with him, and had gone to bed, refusing to accompany him that afternoon to meet Trixie and myself, although he had told her everything, described me to her, and had extorted from his wife a promise to go on with the adventure.

I begged him to excuse me, and I could only say it was not my fault. Trixie had promised, too, and Trixie had not come to me.

We adjourned to a café and he once more expounded his free-love doctrines. It suited me admirably to agree with him. I promised to let him know directly I heard from Trixie, as I did not possess her real address, but only wrote to her at a post-office, as I was doing with him, and he with me.

A few days later, I was called to London, and wrote to the disappointed gentleman that he should hear from me on my return. I dropped a line to Trixie, too, giving an address where a friend would receive the answer for me, informing her that I had not met the young wife I ought to have seen, and I scolded her slightly for not having kept the important appointment.

I had not been a week in the British capital before I received a long letter from Trixie in reply, covering about eight sides of notepaper. She seemed to be in dire trouble lest I forgot her, or would be eventually disgusted with her, after what she considered it was her duty to write to me.

My Trixie and the free-love gentleman's wife was one and the same person!

He had drawn up the advertisement and put it in the paper, without consulting her, as she was in the habit of obeying his strangest behests.

When my letter arrived, she knew the writing, but kept her own counsel and let everything go on until the day came for the meeting of the two men and the two (!) women, and then she got out of it at the last minute, exactly as her husband had told me.

She concluded with a piteous appeal to her “Professor,” not to abandon her, and added that if now, knowing all, I cared to see her naked in the arms of her husband, she would try and do it for me.

I had nothing to be offended about, and had I felt sore at her little trick, her frank avowal would have disarmed me entirely.

On my return to Paris. we met again and I tranquilized her. I informed her that I had no curiosity, nor any wish to see, or know her husband, and I was perfectly content to enjoy her, in any way she liked.

She was delighted at what she called my generous magnanimity and we became fast friends, as well as eager lovers.

Anything I wanted, she said she would always try to do for me, and would even consent to introduce me to her husband officially, but she plainly showed that she would not care for him to enjoy her in my presence. She would go with delight from my arms to those of any man I chose, but not her husband, unless I desired it, and would be resigned to any sacrifice of her body or her affections, sooner than lose me.

The idea of witnessing her conjugal copulation was not a tempting one for me, and I put her completely at her ease, by petting the poor little woman and informing her that she could do precisely as she chose.

Trixie had married very young, and had two children, a boy and a girl, although no one would have guessed it to look at her, with her clothes on or without.

She was petite, very slightly built, with no breasts to speak of. Pretty features; fine grey eyes; beautiful mouth and good teeth; long black hair, and every other charm in proportion.

Trixie was a woman among a thousand, as she was a perfect female rake, and at the same time perfectly honest, truthful, and sincere, ready to do anything and join me in any extraordinary caprice and freak of lasciviousness, whether men or women, or both were concerned.

Her husband had debauched her, soon after the birth of her second child. He had often propounded his theories of love and liberty on both sides, and that husband and wife should be partners in passion with mutual confidence, and no jealousy; but she had repulsed him with horror, having been brought up strictly, and married to him when in her teens, very soon after leaving school. Her parents were in trade, and her mother and father of different nationalities had lived in various countries not being those they were born in, which accounts for her polyglot talents. Her husband was, like myself, an Englishman, who had passed his life on the continent.

He had made the acquaintance of a young cavalry officer, who I will call Achille. He was married, too, and with his wife visited Trixie and her husband, and a slight cordial friendship sprung up between the two couples, with mutual pleasant intercourse; dinners out and at home; visits and return visits; theatre parties and so forth.

Achille and Trixie's lord and master seemed to be, strangely enough, of the same opinion as regards sexual liberty, and Madame Achille had given herself freely to the latter gentleman, with full permission of her husband, and the two men had been together in the same bed with her.

Trixie was quite unconscious of this trifling intrigue, and, busy with her two pretty dolls of children, refused to listen to the theories of her spouse, which seemed loathsome to her.

But he was resolved to drag her down to his level and corrupt her entirely, for such was his mania and a conspiracy was formed and carried out in the following cold-blooded way.

Achille and his wife came to dine with Trixie and her lord and master at the latter's house, and champagne was freely drunk. After dinner, the conversations turned on the subject of female sexual inversion, or the love of women for women, and in front of the two men, Madame Achille made love to Trixie, as a man would have done. The young mother was horrified, and at last, out of patience at the bold advances of the half-tipsy officer's wife who dared to approach her with audacious fumbling fingers and mannish kisses, disgusted with the applauding leer of her wine-flushed husband, and the brazen words that Achille, excited at the scene, let fall without restraint, she rose to leave the table, pretending a headache, which she ascribed to the champagne.

Seeing the quarry about to escape, her husband rushed towards her, and seizing her hands, called to Achille to help him. In an instant, the military voluptuary full of lust was upon her, and despite her struggles, shrieks of shame, and appeals for mercy, the two men bore her slight frame, as light as a feather, more like a pretty boy than a mother, to an armchair, and threw her backwards in it. Her husband held her hands and kept her seated against her will, while Achille on his knees, threw up her skirts, and roughly separated her well-built little legs.

She kicked about as well as she could, struggling and calling out, until she was quite exhausted, and Achille, with the consent of her husband, exhibited a magnificent weapon, which Trixie could not look at and closed her eyes not to see. Madame Achille now came forward, threw herself madly on the panting victim, and began to undress her, or rather undo her clothes as well as she could, considering the position she was in, held down in the chair. Achille, with coarse jokes and worse than rude remarks, clumsily assisted his wife, and between the two, they tore her garments off, and left her nothing but a few shreds of torn linen.

Achille's wife, telling her husband to pull the outraged mother's legs well apart, then applied her mouth to Trixie's secret spot, and despite her shame, notwithstanding the horror of her position, the tongue of the Lesbian was so cleverly worked, that finally she succumbed and emitted into the mouth of the sly, sucking woman. At first, the feeling that a strange woman's mouth was kissing that part of her body, which no one save her husband and a doctor had hitherto seen, filled her with disgust, and she so violently upbraided her treacherous female friend that Madame Achille seemed inclined to relinquish her purpose, had not Trixie's husband forced her to continue.

It was only by dint of sticking to her task that the continued lingual onanism of Madame Achille produced its effect, and when that was evident by the change that came over poor bruised and outraged Trixie, a roar of triumph was started by the two men, who relaxed their hold and left the young novice to be finished off by a last few rapid touches of the tricky tongue of the officer's wife.

She rolled to the ground exhausted, and Achille boldly plunged his perforator into the palpitating body of Trixie, and emitted freely in the vagina, all moist with his wife's saliva, while the father of her children gloated over what was for him a delightful spectacle-to see his wife ravished by his friend, after being outraged by a woman in his presence.

Directly he saw that Achille had finished and was forcing his tongue between Trixie's lips, he turned to Madame Achille, and she responded to his mute and significant appeal by boldly unbuttoning his trousers, and searching for the staff of life, which was as familiar to her as that of her husband.

She was soon riding over him, while Achille tried to pacify Trixie, who had begun to cry, and to the sound of Trixie's tears and sobs her husband ejaculated close to the neck of the greedy womb of his friend's wife.

Trixie recovered from the shock, and for the sake of peace yielded now to her husband, and soon finding the forbidden, but juicy fruit, sufficiently palatable, she threw all scruples to the winds, with the idea that if she did not help her husband in his salacious pastimes, he would get other women to help him. Her passions being now thoroughly roused by the efforts of her husband, she plunged into the vortex of depravity, and fell into my hands, just as she was ripe for any devilment.

Puritans will shake their heads sadly as they read this story, and say that such a life could not last; that the laws of divorce would be called into play; and that such a lustful couple would soon separate, with talk of the mutual respect necessary between husband and wife. They are entirely wrong, as Trixie and her spouse lived perfectly happy together, devoted to each other, and bringing up their children with the utmost care.

Trixie visited all the secret haunts of Paris in my company, and the history of what this darling little woman did with her “Professor,” would fill a stout volume.

Suffice it to say, that although she loved her husband more than anything in the world, she had a great deal of affection for me, and she proved it, because she never told me a lie. I mean that no doubt she may now and then have uttered a fib or two, but she did not invent mean or wicked falsehoods to tease and worry me. On the contrary, she told me all about her lovers, always kept her appointments, and never quarreled with me.

I was very fond of seeing her in the arms of another woman and I gave her orders to entrap and entice young girls whenever she could, and we used to enjoy them together.

She was always ready to obey my bidding, and, my dear Mr. Arvel, if I had asked you to dine with her and me, and after the meal, had told her to go away with you, she would have done so cheerfully, if I had desired it. We had many parties carrées together, although I must confess I did not care about them. I liked to possess her with another woman.

The foregoing rapid sketch was an enormous success with Mr. Arvel. He constantly kept recurring to it. I told him I had lots more to tell him. I also consulted him about a married woman I was just then trying to get hold of, and I asked him if it was honest to try and debauch a friend's wife? My conscience pricked me. He advised me to get her if I could.

“If you don't, someone else will!”

“Alas!” I say, “there's no honesty when our desires are aroused!”

He concurs, and tells me some of his experiences. They are silly, schoolboy yarns. I continue to astonish him with some of my adventures. I want him to retail all this to Lilian.

Then he talks of the books he likes. Miss Braddon is his favorite author. He does not like French novels, as a rule, but he wants to read that celebrated book on the vice of masturbation, Charlot s'amuse. I promise to get him a copy. He does not like Fanny Hill. I tell him it is good, and written in good English, too. He hates reading philosophy. He prefers Tit-Bits and Answers. He has read the book I lent him- The Romance of Lust — twice since February! He is going to send it back to me. I shall then go through it and see why he liked it so much. He gossips anent flagellation, and tells me how much he likes books on that subject, especially The Mysteries of Verbena House, which he had from me, and which I passed on to Lilian.

I narrate to him some recollections of Trixie's birching experiences with me. I have never been like this before with him. He listens with open mouth, and his pipe goes out. I cannot now remember all I told him. A huge budget of stories of the same kind I unpacked for him after dinner.

I begged him never to sneer at novels, except very farfetched stories of travel and murder, because authors simply hear of strange doings in private life and write them up, when by practice we can, as we read, pick the truth even out of a mass of lies in a three-volume love-story.

I confide to him that a gentleman friend of mine had written a vile book, and having gone away traveling, had left me to correct the proofs. I promise him a copy when done, in a few months.

“What is it about?” he asks.

“I dare not tell you. It is so awful. You shall see it when finished.”

“I should like a copy, but I must not keep it. I will return it when read, as I am frightened of the girl getting hold of it!”

Of course, I am alluding to The Double Life, the proofs or which he got from Lilian soon after I left his house, I expect.

We return to dinner; he still saying, as he opens the door:

“That story of Trixie is wonderful!”

I must remark that they had cut off the afternoon tea, and I have not washed my hands since the morning. It will be remembered that they used to take me into the best bedroom, which communicates with Lilian's. Have they altered their sleeping arrangements? I walked behind my man, chuckling as we go in to the evening meal. Trixie has kept us out late. It is eight o'clock. Mamma and Lilian are awaiting us impatiently. We sit down talking “dog,” and I say:

“Mr. Arvel and myself disagree on one point. I will not allow that in-breeding is good. All your dogs will have faults, unless you get some outside cross.”

He has just had another brother and sister put together. They are also by a brother and sister.

I notice that Lilian and her Papa have not yet been able to meet that day. I have never left one or the other, so I know I can continue to try and talk to Papa again after dinner, before she has time to tell him that I have declared they are accomplices in every way against me. He is charming to me all through dinner and until I leave; quite different from last time, when he was probably under the influence of Lilian's story to him of the little drama of the cab, told in her own way, of course, as she has a certain set of lies for him, no doubt. Perhaps he is glad I am no longer friends with her?

I am certain he is quite bewitched by her and she likes him very much. But still I fancy she has not yet found the man who can influence her. Will she ever? I think not.

How a young woman of twenty-three can allow a man to talk and write to her as I have done, surpasses my comprehension. And still she sends for me. The lowest street whore, or brothel wench, would have shown some little pride of some sort ere this; or would have fled from my awful talk; or shed one or two tears, if only of vexation. She must be hysterically mad. She is lustful, but coldhearted, in spite of her heated centre of love, which is like a fire on an iceberg.

I am forced to come to the conclusion that she no longer cares for me-if she ever did-and I make up my mind that this shall be my last visit. I have a scheme for closing the doors of this House of Lies against myself, so as to guard against any future weakness on my own part.

We sit down to dinner. Lilian gets up occasionally, and once she stands over her Papa, and plunges her eyes in his as if she were fascinating a dumb animal. He looks at her for a few seconds, and then, quite confused, unable to bear her glance any longer, drops his head sheepishly into his plate, like a boy sick with passion.

We talk of legs and calves again. Lilian says she has no calves. Mine are false, I say. She determines to see if what I declare is true, and feels them under the table, finishing up with a sly pinch.

She passes me the salt, with the remark that she is helping me to sorrow.

“Dost hate me then so greatly?” I exclaim, in the exaggerated, gruff tone of the stage villain. She does not like that remark and says so.

There are asparagus which Mamma tells me Lilian went and got specially for me. I ask her to mix me some sauce of oil and vinegar, as she is doing for herself. She consents, and when finished, puts her finger in it to taste it. Mamma chides her. I say I will be revenged, and when she is beginning to eat her asparagus, I put my finger in her plate and taste her sauce. She offers me more asparagus. I take some from her hand and say:

“Thank you, Madam-Mademoiselle, I mean!”

At this, which I say loudly and boldly, her face shows true temper; the black cloud comes over her features, and her lips are blue and distorted.

“I hate being called madame!” she cries angrily. Both Mamma and Papa are curiously silent during my encounter with Lilian.

We talk of types of character. I tell them that if the negatives of the photographs of the illustrious personage who died in February in a woman's arms, of Papa, and of myself, were all super-imposed and drawn off together, the features would mix and melt into one face, as we were of the same race, tastes, and temperament. No one replies to me. I do not think they understand, or else they have read my thoughts. I add that I really think my host is a Jew, and appeal to my hostess. She answers coolly: “I know he is not!”

“No one knows better than you, madam!”

She does not turn a hair, nor does Lilian. They make as if they did not know what I am talking about. Of course, Papa is silent.

Dinner is over. Papa leaves me alone with Mamma and Lilian.

Mamma tells me about Raoul as a soldier. I had told him that if ever he got into trouble privately, and there was anything he did not want his mother or sister to know, he was to write to me. This I now told to his mother and she thanked me. An officer has taken a dislike to him and he is being persecuted. He is unhappy. I say that there is perhaps a petticoat in the case. They agree with me. Raoul has never been punished. Both the women say that it is thanks to the good advice I have given him. I do not quite understand. Lilian tells me that he never forgot how I instructed him to behave at the regiment last November, and if he has got on so well, it is all on account of my counsel. And that was eight months ago. She never told me this before. Ma informs me that Lilian is not going to London with her brother in September, but is going to give up bonnet-building, as her health will not permit her to remain the long necessary hours in the workroom, and that it is a fearful trade unless you have a very good connection. She requires plenty of exercise in the open air, and to live in a pure atmosphere, not inhaling the rebreathed air of the stifling workshop, with a stove in it.

Here Lilian grips her lips with her hand and hides her mouth; her elbows resting on the table.

Mamma continues: “She is not going to take any fresh customers, but gradually drop the old ones. I want her to shut up at once, but she wishes to wait until September, when the season here is over. She will become her Papa's secretary (I kick Lilian under the table), he will give her a salary (a kick), and teach her the business (a kick); so that she will become a lady journalist (a kick); and remain comfortably at home with her Papa!” (Kick, kick, kick!) I agree heartily with Mamma. “Certainly, she cannot do better than always remain with her Papa!”

Lilian holds her lips tight and does not move. Papa returns and says that she does not help him. She retorts that the other day she prepared a lot of newspaper cuttings. Papa says:

“You were to have worked a day with me, but you never turned up.”

She takes some medicine, which I opine is for cramps of the stomach, a well-known symptom of poor-blooded hysteria, and the dogs come in.

One bitch licks my ears. Lilian pretends to be disgusted. Mamma not being present, I say that ear-licking is nice and that lovers lick each other's ears.

“When you are married, you will be glad to lick your husband's ears!”

“Horrible!” she exclaims. Papa smokes in silence.

Mamma returns and the talk turns on theatres. Lilian tells Mamma to go to bed. Lilian has a pleasant, cool way of saying curtly:

“Go to bed, Mamma!”

Her replaceable parent refuses. Lilian talks of the plays she saw in Brussels.

“You went to a theatre every night?”

“Not every night,” answers Papa, “as she was ill part of the time. She caught cold during a drive in the Bois de la Cambre, and went to bed early.7 I wanted to go out and leave her. She would not allow me to do so.”

“No, certainly not!” protests Lilian. “Pa wanted to see the Carnival. I wasn't going to let him gad about alone.”

Mamma laughs and looks at me with sparkling, aggressive eyes.

“She only let me go from her side once the whole time we were there, and that was for ten minutes,” said Papa.

And he then held down his head and looked quite silly and delighted. And so did Lilian. They were really, without exaggeration, like a newly-married couple talking of their honeymoon. Mamma beamed on the guilty pair, and glared defiance at me, with glittering glance, as if to show me that she was on guard, to defend the happiness of Papa and Lilian against a wicked stranger. Poor foolish mother! She too, was trying to torture Jacky.

“How about taking the dogs out?” asks Papa.

“Lilian! Why don't you go out with Mr. Arvel and Mr. S.?” says Mamma.

“I don't like three people walking together,” retorts her daughter.

This was a hint for me, but I refused to take it.

Lilian thanks me for some of my own make of eau de Cologne that I have brought her. She is going to be rubbed with it, as I have advised her. She says that Mamma does not know how to “friction” her. Ma declares that she is a bad nurse. Lilian replied freely before her mother that Pa alone knows how to rub her properly. Papa says he will come and wake her up early as usual, and rub her with eau de Cologne. Lilian answers that she will not be woke by him any more, and forbids him to come into her room in the morning. So Mamma goes to bed, looking at me with a triumphant air, and Papa and I go out together, leaving Lilian alone. There is no more strolling for me alone with her. They are punishing me.

We walk and I talk. Again Papa recurs to Trixie. He asks what has become of her. I reply that she had a slight illness. That I lost sight of her, and during the Easter holidays I saw her husband in deep mourning with the children.

If a husband walks out in black at Easter with his little family and no mother, it is a sure sign that their Mamma is dead. I often caught sight of him since, but always in mourning, and never with Trixie. He cannot get over the fact of her having procured women for me. I explain to him that a woman who really adores a man will do almost anything, and suffer a martyrdom; or go through the most disgusting vicissitudes, enduring what seems sometimes beyond human strength. (He ought not to be surprised, for has not Adèle given him her daughter?) I quote wife-beaters, and how they refuse to charge their husbands. It is all love.

“Lust, you mean!” he adds, with a snarl of deep scorn. He is a man who despises women, and hates them because he cannot do without them in the kitchen and in bed.

We speak of jealousy. I tell him that Trixie was always ready to go with any man or woman I told her. Jealousy is a ridiculous feeling. He declares that he is jealous and that he could not care for a woman if he thought she had anybody else. He could not enjoy a partie carrée. This interesting talk takes up so much time that when we return, I have missed a train. There is none now until 12:20. He will sit with me another hour.

Lilian is alone, reading one of my magazines. Papa leaves us.

“Well what do you think of me?” I say. “You did not imagine I was so clever with women? I should like to have your frank opinion of Jacky.”

“I think you are not clever. You are very bad. I could never have supposed you would have had such horrible thoughts of me.”

I laugh disdainfully.

She then says, slowly and sadly, with a sigh:

“I am very wicked sometimes.”

This is the nearest approach to remorse or regret that I have ever heard from her.

I do not reply, and a moment later, Papa returns, and she shortly afterwards touches his cheek with her lips, chastely, and he salutes her on both cheeks as on the occasion of my last visit, and she bids us both “good night.” After this kissing comedy, she says “Good night,” softly and kindly to me specially, and gives me her hand. She is sad. Still she does not go at once, but hovers round Papa and strokes him gently on the head with her book. At last, she goes, gliding away gravely, bidding me good night for the third time, gently and warmly, as if regretfully. I rise respectfully from my chair, touched in spite of myself by the misery of her tone, and return her good night as she goes by, and she begs me to be seated and not derange myself.

Thus she passes out of my life. I have heard her speak to me for the last time and her last words were: “I am very wicked sometimes!”

Could a novel-writer find a better exit for his heroine than that?

Papa and I are once more alone together. Still more bawdy chat. I say that I had a demi-vierge all the year before and that I respected her virginity. Did I do wrong or not? Am I not a fool?

“No,” says Pa, “you acted properly.”

“But she went afterwards and gave herself up to somebody else.”

“You can't help that. You did your duty.”

He would like to meet a woman with an elongated clitoris. I talk to him of hermaphroditism. I am getting tired and sleepy. I remember that in January, Lilian was greatly struck by that character in Justine, called Dorothée, who possessed a penis-like clitoris. Miss Arvel frequently mentioned it. The idea tickled her fancy. And now Papa talks of the same anomaly! How they must have enjoyed my bawdy books together!

Again he says that girls nowadays prefer being “messed about” to honest coition.

“Ah! They tell you that to please you,” I reply, “when you don't have connection with them nicely; or when they don't like you; or when you can't.”

He pauses and reflects, and I think that masturbation and prolonged and unnatural caresses, when practiced before the age of puberty, or shortly afterwards, at the dawn of woman's sexual career, lead to an aversion for normal coition in later life. In such cases, some abnormal stimulus trains the sensual desires to respond to an appeal which has nothing to do with the fascination normally excited by the opposite sex. Anything will therefore serve to produce the orgasm: man, woman, or child; an obscene book, or their own finger, without counting purely mechanical means. There is no warmth or tenderness: one man being as good as another to them. Indeed, once their venereal sluices opened and shut, the presence of the male, or the active agent, becomes more wearisome than otherwise, and they evince no desire to return in kind. The organs are quickly excited and as quickly dormant again. The private parts, thus so early brought into use, and subjected to such sudden strain, revolt against the repeated unnatural shocks, and becoming flaccid, lose their tone. All is soft, stretched, and open, and lovers are bewildered to find a young face on the body of a woman whose soft flesh seems to be dropping from the bone, while they go away wondering how such a darling little chit should carry between her thighs the yawning gulf of an older mother of a family.

Love, in its essence, becomes distasteful, and the feeling of natural lust, engendered by real affection, being entirely foreign to their nature, all sentiment forms the object of their mockery; they fall back on the pleasures of the table, or think of nothing but money, jewelry, and dress.

But I do not take the trouble to tell him all this, so I explain succinctly how girls learn to practice onanism with the hand or the mouth, alone or with their lovers, in countries like France or North America, where conjugal frauds are practiced. They learn such tricks from their mothers, who teach them early how to satisfy men without getting enceinte. All this, he pretends is new to him. I can see he is surprised to find me speaking so freely.

I tell him of some of my amours in tropical lands, for I have been round the world. I can see he is quite astonished. He tells me that all girls having Spanish blood in their veins are largely made; their private parts seem to spread out early in life. Here is another part of my last letter answered by Papa. But why does he systematically try to always lower Lilian in my eyes?

lt is time to go. I promise him more bawdy experiences for later on, and he sees me to the gate. He excuses himself for not accompanying me to the station. He does not talk of any future visit. He is evidently displeased at my free and easy attitude and is in a hurry to go and ask questions of Lilian, and tell her my stories, and my hints and innuendoes. This is the first time I have been left to go to the railway alone. I know too, that I have kept them apart all day.

I cannot find my gloves. He promises them to me with the negatives of my photographs, so that I can print them of myself, and to return me The Romance of Lust shortly, and so I go away.

I should like to hear what Papa said to Lilian as he went up to her room, after my departure, and how much of my scathing diatribes she retailed to Pa and Ma.

I am now heartily sick of the whole lot of them, and I resolve never to put my foot in Lilian's house again. And there is my own smoldering weakness for Lilian Arvel to be guarded against. I have been patient, but can be so no longer, and have carried out my scheme to the bitter end. I now resolve to do what I think few men would be capable of. I am going to “put myself away” with the family, and at the same time calm my mistress's growing jealousy, and make a neat finish for my romance.

I really think that Papa and Mamma have been pushing Lilian on to me for “the good of the house.” In order to get anything out of me, it was necessary to forge these elaborate lies with Papa's help. If Lilian confessed that she was merely the easy, satisfied mistress of her mother's lover, she could have no hold on me. If she tells the truth, she would be saying: “I want for nothing. Papa keeps me in idleness. I am no longer a virgin. You can possess me now without fear or remorse.” There is no money hanging to the truth in her case.

Sunday, June 4, 1899.

My mistress is tolerably well. I dress her up in her best, with all her diamonds and jewelry, and a friend and I go on our bicycles to Sonis, meeting my lady, who takes the train, at the restaurant I told Papa, Mamma and Lilian I should choose, and we sit in the open air at a table on a low terrace giving on the road to Paris.

MENU.

Hors-d'oeuvre.

Truite saumonnée, sauce verte.

Entrecôtes grillées, pommes sautées.

Poulet rôti.

Salade.

Fromage.

Fruits.

Café.

Liqueurs.

At 12:45, a hired victoria appears in sight. On the box, next to the coachman, is Pa, in a large Tyrolean straw hat. He frowns and looks straight before him. Ma, in the red foulard, turns her head away. I touch my cap. Lilian looks up defiantly, tosses her head, and snorting, laughs scornfully. They roll by. They are silly. They should all have returned my salute, as the lady who is with me for aught they knew to the contrary, might have been with my friend. They have never seen and do not know my mistress. I have never spoken about her to anybody except Lilian. And if they had pulled up a moment and let me run and speak to them, it would have been cleverer still, and would have quite damped my rocket. It must also be noted that Lilian's mother is not married either.

Ten minutes afterwards, one of the workgirls appears on the road, and inspects us carefully. Then she goes back again, having turned up her nose at us and sniffed, as if we were a parcel of bloaters. She had evidently been left a roving commission to go and see whether I was at the restaurant, and who I was with, as I might not have had a table giving on the road, and Lilian might have gone to the races without seeing me. She must have given her orders before leaving.

After lunch, we stroll past the house. The workgirl is at the window. She sees us three. She glares.

At the window of a neighboring villa is the sister of François. She visits at Mr. Arvel's and knows me well.

June 6, 1899.

No doubt my offence is great. But my great desire for bringing about my own downfall is not yet satisfied. I want it to go home to the hilt. I want to show Lilian that I have really done it purposely and that I do not want her any more. I write the following letter, so that it is impossible for any of them to fathom my conduct, and know whether I am a fool, a madman, or a cold-blooded joker.

The worst they can say is: “How he must be gone on Lilian to take all this trouble!” Even that I do not mind. But I think the Queen of Liars cannot like it. And my poor mistress looked really very nice, being in one of her best days. Woman-like, she brightened up at the idea that she was playing a trick on two females she was jealous of. She is pleased, poor thing, at what I did. So I have killed two birds with one stone. My poor ailing girl! So devoted to me, really fond of me, rich or poor. If she could only have her health again! But that is impossible.

What I did, flaunting my mistress in front of the Arvels, was silly and bombastic, but it pleased her, and teased Lilian, for whom I have no more consideration.

Papa writes an article in a London magazine for June, and alludes to men touting English visitors on the boulevards for bawdy houses. It is very unusual and in very bad taste. (See Appendix H.) It shows what his mind was running on.

I post this letter to Lilian, addressing the envelope boldly in my own handwriting, and underlining the word: “Mademoiselle.”

JACKY TO LILIAN.

Paris. Tuesday, June 6, 1894.

I think, perhaps wrongly, that I owe you a slight explanation of my lunch at Sonis on Sunday. This hasty letter is useless, but I write it principally for my own self, for conscience sake.

The poor woman, formerly divinely handsome, who is my faithful, devoted, and disinterested mistress since 1880, has become very jealous and sour-tempered, knowing that she is suffering from a mortal malady which declared itself about four years ago. Her rare beauty is gone, and she feels that she no longer possesses any influence over me. She had long since asked to visit Sonis, where she had never been. That was out of jealousy. And then she has been “worked up.” Of course, she believes herself to be in a position of inferiority, despised by my friends of Sonis, who she knows are legitimately married. She is only the mistress of a common Englishman, formerly a “runner” at the Bourse.

Envy, vanity, jealousy, curiosity-you know what I mean.

Is not life sad, with these terrible ironies? Is not all this petty and vile? Such is the punishment of social irregularity.

I constantly refused to take her to Sonis. But a month ago, in the face of the welcome of my last visit but one-after the scene in the cab-I gave way, and granted the trip. I was happy to know you were all going to Paris. That is all the story. Must I excuse myself? I hardly know. Put yourself in my place. Should I show any delicacy or have any regard for you?

I have nothing more to say. It would be too easy to overwhelm the Japanese girl. I have had enough of rummaging in your heaped-up mess of disgusting lies. All this is adulteration, fabrication, sophistication. Anyhow, I have left the game easy for you to finish- Suzanne-Césarée, false virgin; falsely incestuous; falsely cunning. Your “Papa-lover" told me you were a liar and wicked. Strange woman! Must then all your lovers scorn and despise you? What will become of you in a few years? Soon you will tire of the unnatural life you lead. Will you become a Miss Pawlee or worse?

Here is your pretext for closing the doors of your house against me. A few words thrown out about the audacity of S. coming to your town with his whore, and you are all well rid of me. Am I not a good fellow? I take all the wrong-doing over to myself. Such is my last act of delicacy. Final coquetry of your ex-lover, the son of Satan. That devil Jacky! — one never knows if he is mocking or no.

So, adieu! Keep a good recollection of me. That should be easy for you, as I am the man to whom you gave the least. Do not hate me too much. You will never more help me to salt. Only say this to yourself:

“Of all my lovers, both beneath my roof and out of doors, this one never did me any harm.”

With the remembrance of the last lingering kiss of your lying lips,

JACKY.

P.S. -I shall always send the papers to your “Papa,” as I have done for years.

I enclosed two newspaper cuttings. They were, “Divorce Among the People,” (See Appendix I.) and, “The Alleged Offence under the Criminal Law Amendment Act.” (See Appendix J.)

June 14, 1899.

Lilian sends me back the two novels: Suzanne, and La Femme et le Pantin, together with the proofs of The Double Life, and the newspaper cutting: “ Tête-à-Tête,” but she did rot return the two paragraphs I had enclosed in my letter of rupture.

I had expressly told her I did not want the books to be returned and I had so written on the flyleaf of one of them. Nevertheless she sent the whole lot by post. This was for me to write, I think but I did not reply.

June 20, 1899.

No acknowledgement being received by Lilian, she consults Papa, I suppose; because I receive, six days after the novels, a parcel containing my gloves, the negatives of my likeness as a cyclist, in two positions, and all the books he had of mine, including The Romance of Lust, which had been in his possession since February.

I examine this obscene work and find that the corners of several pages have been turned down, and one which has been so treated with very dirty fingers-page 72, vol. II. On that page is the description of a young woman named Lizzie, with a little clitoris sticking out like a boy's penis.

In January, Lilian talks incessantly of the character in Justine with the elongated clitoris. In April and May, Papa mentions this deformity twice to me. He returns me The Romance of Lust, marked at the page where such a thing is described. Comment needless.

I do not acknowledge the parcel.

In my letter of adieu, as in all my others since the return from Brussels, I had not put everything that I exactly thought. I always tried to “keep a little bit up my sleeve,” for a future time, or until I could find more evidence on certain points. It will be seen that I never alluded to her frolics with Raoul, nor did I ever write, or even speak about the visit of the officer.

I also pretended that I thought an officer had been the first to possess her entirely. It was prettier and more romantic. Whoever it might have been: Papa, or a man who paid, it is not of the slightest consequence, but the work was done before the eleventh of November 1899.

After the lunch with Lord Fontarcy, at the end of September, I did not see her until that latter date, and then she was full of grief; denied receiving my letter, with the money in it; was behind-hand with her “courses,” and had a fit of hysterical weeping. She then asked me to marry her for the last time, believing me to have more money than I actually possessed.

No doubt she was already hymenless at that juncture, and this was her last desperate move to regain her lost position. Had I accepted, she would have kept me from getting into a bed with her until after the ceremony, with the aid of Papa and Mamma, who would have taught her how to bring me an alum-made virginity on the wedding night. To fully cheat me, she wanted a night in a bedroom. It could not be done otherwise, and this accounts for her strange behavior ever since, and her continual plans for traveling with me to London and Belfort. She feared the free play of the rue de Leipzig, when she would fling herself unrestrainedly about, stark naked, outside a bed in the open light of day.

That is why she dared not confess the slightest thing to me, as the comparison of dates with what she had written, and which she hardly remembered herself, would have damned her in my eyes. At least, so she thought in her petty way, little knowing that a frank avowal at any period would have disarmed me at once. And so she had gone on from falsehood to falsehood, until she had piled up such a scaffolding of lies about her, that if she had made the slightest move towards the truth, the tottering fabric would have fallen down and crushed her.

When I lifted my mask of stupidity in her pretty garden, she had to choose between my love and her lies. She elected to remain nothing in her silly infamy, especially as I had plainly made her understand that my pockets were empty. That last thought would be her supreme consolation.

Finding that her daughter's young life was spoilt, her mother-poor, tactless, ignorant, avaricious creature- preferred her to become a prostitute at home, sooner than drive her out into the gutter. It was also to her advantage for Lilian to lend her body for her keeper's lusts.

There are many other strange little secrets in this peculiar and patriarchal family, but it would be useless to say all here, and I do not wish to drag on the tiny stage of my theatre of living marionettes a variety of characters who were more sinned against than sinning. The figures passing like frightened shadows through the crude confessions of my worst passions and vices, are vile enough in all conscience, including the wretched writer, but he has had moments of remorse, and has not made many of his actors half as bad as they really were. He has done penance publicly and without stint, but he has handled his old friend Eric Arvel with comparative discretion and tenderness, and has let him off easily, suppressing much that he knows about him, because he sleeps with step-daughter Lilian, who formerly played at being Jacky's incestuous half-virginal offspring.

18

Je l'ai forcée d'adorer mon mérite, j'ai pris mille plaisirs avec elle, et je l'ai quittée en confondant son amour-propre.

-“Le Grelot,” Londres, 1781

And thus I clothe my naked villainy

With old odd ends, stol'n out of holy writ,

And seem a saint, when most I play the Devil.

— Shakespeare

I had no news of the Arvels, and carefully avoided Sonis-sur-Marne, devoting myself to my invalid mistress, whose health seemed to get worse and worse.

I still sent Papa his bundles of newspapers and magazines, and suddenly I got the following extraordinary note:

ERIC ARVEL TO JACKY.

Sonis-sur-Marne. July 13, 1899.

My dear Jacky,

I have been going to write to you over and over again to thank you for all the papers which you have sent me, but I have been upon the shelf for nearly a month from the effects of some violent poisoning with bichloride of mercury.

You know what you gave me was put away in my cartonnier. It got all over my papers, and when sorting them I got a full dose, and only just managed to scrape out with violent salivation.

I am going over to London tomorrow for a few days and then to Ireland for a change.

Can I do anything for you when in the little village?

With best wishes, in which all join, believe me to remain,

Yours very truly,

ERIC ARVEL.

I answered as follows:

JACKY TO ERIC ARVEL.

Paris. July 14, 1899.

Dear Mr. Arvel,

I am very sorry to hear you have been so ill. I hope you will soon pull round and will profit by your trip.

I ought to be away myself, for fear of fresh rheumatics next winter but all my people have been ill. And so I stick in Paris.

I got the negatives quite safety, and the prints thereof have been a great success wherever shown. For which many thanks.

I am grateful for your offer to be of use to me in London, but I have nothing I can worry you with this journey.

Renewed health, pleasant journey, and a happy return home-that is all the harm I wish you.

Yours faithfully,

JACKY.

I was, rightly or wrongly, so disgusted at his letter, that I hesitated a few hours about answering it, and at last sent him the foregoing, out of common politeness, but I took good care not to mention Adèle or her daughter: his two concubines.

The story of the “violent salivation” seemed diabolically fantastic, if true.

Salivation by inhalation is possible, but rare. I feared to think that the shadow of syphilis was hovering over the villa of Sonis, and that my quondam host had simply been taking mercurial frictions, thus accounting for the malady of years ago.

Anyhow the lips of Lilian, that I once thirsted for, were at the disposal of a salivated man. She was the mistress of her mother's old lover, with rotting gums and fetid breath; sore lips, and ulcerated mouth and tongue.

I prefer not to write more on this subject, and hope that his letter was strictly true.

Although he had only spoken of the British Isles in his letter, I heard afterwards that he was seen in Brussels. I did not verify the statement. I could have written to Mallandyne again, but I resolved to try and forget. I cared very little. I was a subscriber to a newspaper where Arvel contributed articles regularly, and he would date them from different places he used to visit, so that would have been a slight indication of his movements, and the whereabouts of Lilian. My subscription was up, and I did not renew it.

This peculiar mania for writing half the truth to me suddenly and without cause or reason, betrayed a strange hysterical frame of mind in a man of his age, and made me think that most of Lilian's later letters, including the famous one from Lille, were suggested and dictated by him. It was not nice to say: “the bichloride you gave me” I got it at his request.

This poison story made me very angry and as I still continued to send Mr. Arvel his bundles of newspapers, I resolved to tease him a little, as he was trying to do with me, and at the same time to offend him thoroughly.

I amused myself by marking with a red pencil all paragraphs that seemed to have a bearing on illicit connections between fathers and daughters, or brothers and sisters; and cuttings from periodicals, together with any matter that seemed to allude to my amours with Lilian.

I found a number of stories, scandals, police cases and gossip in society papers, which had a special meaning for him and me, but I will only mention a few of the most remarkable ones.

There was a small article in a number of Answers, called: “That Wonderful Number Four,” and I did not fail to frame it with crimson dashes.

In Society, during this month, I marked a few lines about Napoleon the First. (See Appendix K.) I took the paper regularly and Papa had it as soon as I had read it.

July 28, 1899.

Here are a few specimens of what I sent him:

A prospectus of a new work on sexual anomalies, entitled: The Ethnology of the Sixth Sense.

I wrote on the first page in pencil:

“I have a copy of this book, which I can lend you, if you like to say the word.”

The second page gave a table of contents, and following the mention, “Monstrous clitoris,” I added:

“Compare with Dorothée. (Justine.) Conversations in January.

“Compare conversations on the same topic in May.

“Compare Romance of Lust, vol. II, p. 72: Lizzie.”

What could he think of the month of January being mentioned by me? At that time he was away in the South, and the allusion was plain to the fact of Lilian and him being in complicity, by the mention of the two books, one lent to him, and one to her.

I also added two cuttings, one relating to the crime of Bordes, an incestuous murderer, and the other headed: “A Horrible Crime.” (See Appendix L and M.)

ERIC ARVEL TO JACKY.

Sonis-sur-Marne. August 2, 1899.

Dear Jacky,

If you have not anything better to do, will you come down tomorrow Thursday, and have lunch with us? We shall all be delighted to have you. Raoul is here just now, but is going back on Friday.

Hoping to see you and have a good chat with you,

I remain,

Yours very truly,

ERIC ARVEL.

I was greatly surprised at getting the above invitation, after the mercury missive and my selection of insulting paragraphs. What made me smile bitterly was that the invitation arrived Wednesday evening, August 2, and I was to go the next day.

Most of the letters from Sonis were typewritten, and I could nearly always tell whether the father or the girl had used the machine to write to me, as there were slight differences in the writings.

It would be too long to describe how I arrived at the knowledge by comparison, but I was certain that the above had been composed and typed by Lilian and signed by her Papa.

Besides, it was the beginning of the month and she would be under the influence of her “menses.” Immediately before and immediately after the flow, there would be a heightening of actual desire and she would think of me, for such is the effect of menstruation on unbalanced individuals.

The time I saw her, after I searched for her maidenhead in the cab, was May 3, and she is complaining that she is about to be unwell.

She gets me invited again for May 28. I am not sent for again until August 3.

I felt a little pity for her, as I thought of her monthly martyrdom, and I asked myself if she were not perhaps only a miserable victim of the workings of her womb.

When we think of the debased, mercenary whore, who counts upon the weakness of man to feather her nest, we must keep her image distinct from that of the normally healthy woman, with true equilibrium of the reasoning faculties, who has nothing in common with poor-blooded neuropaths hardly responsible for their actions every twenty-eight days, and who pass half their lives seated on a cold custard.

A woman to keep her secrets should never let her male victim know her diaper days.

During the menstrual period of these hysterical women, we find falsehood united to wickedness and craft; cowardly slander; calumnious denunciations; the setting of perfidious snares, and the invention of satanic fables and even robberies, while they cleverly arrange things, so that suspicions shall fall on innocent parties.

My reader has only to run through the dates set down in this book and he will see that all the principal events take place between the twentieth of one month and the eighth of the next; except when there is an irregularity, as when Miss Arvel denied receiving the money I had sent her, and during the fausse couche of January.

No doubt all her life was controlled by her “flowers,” being a hereditarily neurotic subject, and on such a morbid soil, early masturbation and the tantalizing practices peculiar to half-virgins, and women who refuse to have children, would produce neurasthenia with its manifest symptoms.

I made up my mind that if Lilian wanted me, she would have to come forward herself, and I sent off the following telegram at once, so as to stop Mamma going to market and providing for me:

JACKY TO ARVEL.

Telegram. August 2, 1899.

Thanks for amiable invitation, but regret, impossible to leave Paris at present. Very busy.

So they had to pass the day without me. I suppose they thought I should appear at once at Lilian's beck and call, with presents for the Mamma and girl, and cigars for the boy; papers, books, gossip, news and smut for Papa, and he and Lilian could tease me at their ease and so get him an erection for when I was gone.

And I should have had to play clown all day to make them laugh, when I was full of worry, and trouble and grief in Paris! Not that I mind acting a part in society; I am very good at it, and would go splendidly through it, if the girl had been sweet and tender and I knew a rendez-vous would follow the visit.

It must be remembered too that it was my birthday on the nineteenth of July, and Lilian knew it well. She had also made me send a wire to her Papa on his anniversary. I got nothing from them, and I wanted nothing, expected nothing; but why invite me suddenly?

Lilian Arvel would never forgive me this refusal to see her, as both Papa and Raoul would sneer at her, and her vanity would be wounded to find her power was gone.”

August 16, 1899.

In that lively London weekly, Society, since the month of April a serial story had been running, entitled: “The Confessions of Nemesis Hunt,” giving the history of a clergyman's daughter, who becomes an actress, going through the most extraordinary experiences and cynically talking of her various loves and lovers.

She becomes the mistress of an actor, who is a member of the same traveling troupe, and in the number of August 12, 1899, this tale took such a strange turn that I am certain Papa would think I had a hand in it to annoy him and Lilian. (See Appendix N.)

It was simply a strange coincidence. I also sent him a cutting relating to another incestuous father, condemned at Troyes. (See Appendix 0.)

The prospectus of The Double Life, which was now announced as soon ready, went to him as well, and I penciled the following note on it.

JACKY TO ERIC ARVEL.

Note.

Dear Mr. Arvel,

This is the prospectus of the book of which you saw a few rough proofs in the early days of June.

I shall send you my own copy, as I have been foolish enough to subscribe, as soon as I get it, probably in September.

You will read it, enjoy it, just the same as the others I lent to the Villa Lilian, and return to

Yours faithfully,

JACKY.

I was now finishing the revision of The Double Life, and I had inserted the two following paragraphs- Vanderpunk did not know English-and I do not think my additions spoilt that otherwise extraordinary work:

Page 237. -“Her nostrils quivered with fresh rising lust; her lips were moist. She clung to me, murmuring:

“'Papa! Papa! Don't be silly, darling! F… me last. Just one little tiny spend of your poupée. Tiny! Tiny!'“

Page 419. -“1 have a vision, papa! I dream that we are living in a pretty cottage in the country amid trees and flowers! We are happy there with poor dead mamma come to life again. All three we play together. Our bedrooms communicate. Sometimes you take me traveling alone with thee to foreign climes. I shall have a beautiful, tall brother. He shall have a sweetheart, and we will all enjoy her. He shall frig and suck with me, and thou shalt be jealous. Thou wilt make me cheat and deceive all men, and I will rob them for thee and mamma. And I will hoodwink them, telling that I am a virgin, and how papa teases me with his infamous love, and they will take pity and give me gold for my dress and the house. And I will try and never get the pox, so as not to give it to my darling old papa sweetheart!”

It was sweet after having been something like a puppet to turn round and make a marionette of the showman.

It was rather bold to mention that “you saw a few rough proofs,” especially as they had only been lent in secret to the girl, his daughter-mistress, and he always told me what wonderful precautions he took so that “the girl should not get hold of any book you may lend me.”

I had picked up an original edition of Charlot s'amuse, which I sent him in a packet of magazines on the last day of August; and on September 5, a number of The Illustrated Police Budget, containing the “Awful Story of a Daughter's Shame,” heavily marked by me. (See Appendix P)

On the sixteenth of September, I forwarded to him by registered bookpost, a clean, fresh, and uncut copy of The Double Life, which had arrived the same day from Rotterdam, and I received the following letter:

ERIC ARVEL TO JACKY.

Sonis-sur-Marne. September 18, 1899.

My dear Jacky,

I am half ashamed to write to you. It is so long since I was “going to” do so. When I went away to Coblenz a month ago, I made up my mind I would write to you during my travels, but I have such a lot of work to do manipulating the promotions of these new Anglo-German companies for the English market when I am in Germany that I have hardly time to eat.

We went down the Rhine to Cologne, and then from Cologne by train to Brussels, to Blankenberghe and Ostend, returning to Paris in time to spend Sunday, the tenth, quietly at home.

l cannot tell you how much I am obliged for all the papers I found waiting for me at the rue Vissot, and also for the loan of Charlot, and of The Double Life, both of which I am returning to you tomorrow with many thanks.

I think the last is very erotic reading, but there is nothing real about it, as there was about the four little volumes- The Romance of Lust — which you lent me previously.

They were really good as such things go, but what I should like to find would be a book written really by a woman, giving us the contre-partie, and probably convincing us that the act of copulation which plays such a large part among human pleasures is simply based on the vanity of men who “kid” to themselves, while the women are simply relieving themselves of a more or less troublesome itching, and simply regard the male as a parfait jobard.

This idea no doubt came to you when you were out in Samoa?

Can we ever think we hold a woman by her senses? I do not think so, and I have an ideal that the mere act of copulation without a love which has been mutually ripened by long acquaintance is not worth “twopennorth of gin.”

I have not had time to work at my photography, but I hope to get into full blast when some relations, who are going to stop with us, have concluded their visit.

I saw your brother at the Bourse yesterday. You never come there now.

I hope all your people are well.

I am very, very much obliged to you for all the papers, although I do not think much of Nemesis Hunt, who is rather too much of a whale for my swallow.

Yours very truly,

ERIC ARVEL.

JACKY TO ERIC ARVEL.

Paris. September 22, 1899.

My dear Mr. Arvel,

I am very pleased you like the papers I send you. All the magazines that come into the house are always put on my desk after perusal by the different members of our family, as they all know they go to you. And when the pile gets troublesome, I send it off. Therefore I deserve no thanks.

I am afraid you do not approach erotic tales in a proper spirit. Of course Nemesis Hunt, and The Double Life are unreal, but still here and there are incidents relating to passions, natural and unnatural which are such as take place every day. I prove my words by enclosed cutting. (See Appendix Q.)

Work up the amusements of Mademoiselle Vial into a little story and everybody will say it is all lies, the outcome of the writer's diseased imagination.

Your idea about a woman writing her own double life is a very good one. But as there exist no really truthful autobiographies or confessions written by men, how can you expect women to have less vanity and more veracity than we have? Nevertheless, women are always confessing, if you only take the trouble to listen to them. They are so cunning and clever-not intelligent, for malice and craftiness do not betoken intelligence-that they continually overreach themselves, and if you coolly think over all a woman has said and written to you, you ought to get very near the truth. A man who can't do that, is of no use with women. But all are not daughters of Judas. There do exist loving, tender, truthful women. Sensible people know how rare they are. Their lives would be uninteresting, so we could only get revelations from wicked creatures.

A man need not take much trouble to “hold a woman by her senses,” or otherwise. Be natural, straightforward, and patient, and if she loves you, she will hold you herself. But she must feel something with you which she feels with no other. She must prefer you.

I have a pet theory, although in these matters there are no hard and fast rules to be laid down. It is this: a man may love many times in his life; a woman loves but once. If you could get at a woman's heart, you would only find one name deeply engraved upon it, even though she may have had countless lovers. Some women meet that one man at the outset of their career, others later, and many never.

Some have come across the one man they could have loved and have kept their secret. They have never been “had” by him and he never knows how he was loved. If you have fallen across that genuine, disinterested tenderness during your life, you are all right. If not, you have never known the real love of a woman.

I am most happy to hear you have been enjoying good health and been taking pleasant journeys.

Since June we have left off subscribing to The Stock Exchange Review, so I do not see your articles, which I suppose you still contribute and send from the different continental towns you visit?

All my family, you will be pleased to hear, are very well indeed, “as it leaves me at present.”

Yours faithfully,

JACKY.

P.S. -I didn't have Nemesis Hunt last week.

There was a slight retard. Not surprising when we think of what she gets up to-and down, to, as well.

It's a far cry indeed from Mord Emly to my sweetheart Fanny Hunt.

The Double Life got into Mr. Arvel's hands on the seventeenth of September. On the eighteenth, he wrote the letter saying he would send me back the books “tomorrow.”

It is a stout volume of 446 pages! He and Lilian were reading it together, no doubt, and he wanted to lead me to believe that he could get through it in two days! In point of fact, he sent it to me back a week afterwards, on the twenty-fourth, after he had received my answer to his letter. When he wrote on the eighteenth, prompted by Lilian, they had not got to page 417, where I talked about the daughter hoodwinking men by pretending to be a virgin, whose Papa teases her with his infamous love, while she gets money out of her lovers for her dress and the house and is masturbated by her own brother, etc.

All this, however, is only to lead up to this concluding and amusing result:

The book came back entirely cut open for reading, with but one exception: one page of the preface-the one containing the lament over the daughter's death-of which I had lent the proof to the girl only, in May, was not cut. This was a damning oversight.

October 8, 1899.

During the whole of the month of August and the best part of September, my faithful mistress had been in the country and had not been well at all.

She returned about the twenty-second of September, and went to bed.

It was her last struggle. The doctors gave me no hope, and this morning she is gone from me, after suffering such agony that to stand by the bedside of a loved one, and see her hellishly racked fighting for life, as each essential organ gave way, would make an atheist of the most fervent believer and he would ask himself as I did: Is this the work of the Almighty? Is God a cruel Chinese mandarin or a torturing Torquemada?

In repose at last, on a bright Sunday morning. How beautiful she looked! During her illness I could not recognize her as the handsome, strong lass who had footed it merrily with me over peak, crag, and glacier but a few short years before in Switzerland.

Many a time she would fatigue our guide and he would drag himself slowly from the valley, while I, in despair, would lie down panting by the side of the steep path and looking up, admire my devoted companion's perfect frame, profiled against the clear sky, as alpenstock in hand, she stood triumphantly perched on some projecting rock.

And now she is gone. After death, the pristine beauty came back to the loving face, as if the mocking devils who had torn at her poor heart for years with the red-hot pincers of disease, had relented, and pleased to have finished their horrible task at last, satiated with her sufferings, had allowed her to look her best to show us poor mortals what fragile, feeble shadows we are.

And so she sleeps. Her big blue eyes will never more brighten at my footfall. I shall never see their laughing light again.

I kissed her still-warm cheek passionately and lengthily. I could have kept my lips to her face for an hour, but my tears fell upon her and that I did not like.

I am sorry I did not send for a photographer. I thought of that too late.

And so she sleeps. For the first time in my life I have seen a cherished being die and gazed at my love after death.

Up to now, I think I must have feared the end of all things. At present, the skeleton may come with his scythe, because I saw on the peaceful features of the white figure on the bed, who had been my girlish sweetheart, my wife without the priests, my devoted woman who lived for me alone, that she was at rest, and I really grasp the fact that death is the only true release.

And so she sleeps.

My fair Lilian is dead. She knew of naught but her love for me. The black Lilian lives, and she hates me by now. She will never forgive me for having seen through her tricks and wiles, aided in her natural cunning by the artificial villany of her salacious step-father, and her selfish mother.

The fathers are generally responsible in these cases, but when the mothers are weak, and sacrifice their daughters to keep the man at home and get all his money for the house, we must pity the young lass whose flower of virginity is torn from her by those who should be its most vigilant sentinels.

Corruptio optimi pessima, the corruption of the best is the worst-is not only true for the victim, but also for the seducer. Women who have been debauched in their teens, or earlier, under ordinary circumstances, often rise again. But those who have been led astray by their fathers, who have known a villainous priest, as it sometimes happens, never succeed in getting out of the mire. As criminals of olden days were marked with a branding iron, it would seem as if the defiling culprit seared his youthful living plaything with an indelible mark of shame.

At the same time, the unnatural parent, who may have shown an honest face up till then, acquires in his features an expression of savage hatred. He becomes quarrelsome and morose, and like Mr. Arvel, his soul torn by his unholy passions, knowing that the slightest whisper may render him a thing to be scorned by friends and neighbors, he hurries to snarl at everybody, as if preparing an everlasting defense of his conduct; as if he found an excuse for himself in vilifying his wife and speaking with scorn of the daughter-prostitute, whose caresses he would go and humbly beg for a moment after he had traduced her.

Women of infamy, like Lilian Arvel, are seldom perfect types of beauty. Our passions are printed on our features, and wicked thoughts make wicked faces.

Sensual women are sad, until aroused. Their development of breast is rudimentary, as was the case with Lilian, who in male attire might have been easily taken for a young lad. Her maternal grandmother, I have already said, was more than eccentric, and her mother flew into tremendous passions when put out, and was unreasonably jealous. Lilian had always a very bad temper; she was a liar, vicious, and thought of nothing but men, jewelry, and dresses. I fancy that she suffered from chronic inflammation of the intestines and that would account for the peculiar bluish tint that overspread her features whenever put out. But I am no doctor. Her menstruation was tolerably regular. There were nervous troubles, spasms, cramps of the stomach, stifling, but never a complete hysterical fit with me. Her nerves troubled her during her monthly derangements. She had been some time at a convent-school, and in answer to my inquiries told me that she had never witnessed, or been invited to take part in any acts of sapphism. I remember on one occasion, before I was unduly intimate with her, that some young women from Myrio's dined at the villa while I was there. One of them was called “Mahogany,” in allusion to the color of her hair, and she was supposed to be married, but she had all the freedom of manner of the kept mistress. After the meal, Lilian went and sat on a garden bench with her, and by the way in which she sprawled on her friend's shoulders, I felt sure they were all disciples of Sappho.

Lilian's conduct was lax and provoking with all the young men she met, and some elderly financiers, from the London Stock Exchange, who had been invited to dinner by Arvel, came away with the conviction that the daughter of their host was a dangerous flirt, if nothing worse. Four years ago, she ran away from home and took refuge with her grandmother.

Lilian Arvel is a neuropath, who has unfortunately not found in her dwelling, between her mother and her mother's lover, the advice and examples that might have had a happy influence, so as to modify any bad instincts she may have had within her. She has much false pride; extraordinary ambition; her tastes lead her towards dress and debauchery; she hates her mother, and she surely despises her Papa, although she accepts his caresses. He serves as a machine to calm her lust. But she can reason perfectly well on all subjects which have nothing to do with the satisfaction of her passions. The manner in which her mother lived, combined with the conversations of her customers, all professional harlots, adulteresses, or kept women, showed plainly that there was little chance of her moral sentiments being nurtured, or of her receiving the good advice and education which might have changed in some slight measure the disposition and tendencies of a young woman of uncontrollable imagination. She is endowed with very lively intelligence; her repartees are pointed and prompt; her memory is surprisingly precise. But I perceive a great change when I proceed to analyze her feelings and nature. Here I find enormous gaps, and I note the excessive development of egotistical feelings, vanity, and a yearning to be talked about and always play the principal part. If I call to mind her childhood, when she served as an aphrodisiacal plaything, in the bed of her mother; afterwards toying with her brother; then eagerly drinking in the bawdy chatter and risky songs of the milliner's workshop; her dangerous flirtations with Gaston, Ted, François, and all the others I know not of; her connection with Madame Rosenblatt and Charlotte; without counting officers, actors, and myself, I can only reconstitute a type of character much more often to be met with than many people think. The principal characteristic of this style of person is the complete absence of all idea of morality. Such individuals are quite capable of saying what they ought or ought not to do, but all moral notions are abstract for them, and have no bearing on their determinations. Lusts, appetites, and instincts predominate and their perverted impulses carry an intellectual activity, which is often intact, towards the goal of selfish satisfaction only. Acts entirely at variance with all moral and social laws do not excite their horror, but are quietly accepted by these curious unmoral people, who are as those suffering from color-blindness.

They are afflicted with moral cecity, and do evil deeds with complete indifference. And as their intelligence, seemingly without a flaw, is only superficial; as the versatility of their feelings is as great as that of their ideas, they have no remorse. They may suffer slightly from an annoying obsession, when they cannot have their own way, but never from the remembrance of a bad action.

My poor dead Lily had a great liking and esteem for the Arvels. She was proud to find that they invited me so often and delighted to know that her Jacky should be so sought after.

It proved her own good taste. She would see that I was well-dressed to go to Sonis and would wake me early so that I might not miss my train, after having chosen my cravat herself.

She had respect for them too and never thought of herself on the same footing, for were they not married, whereas she was but my concubine? I never deceived her. During the last year of her life, she began to get jealous of them all at Sonis and suspected me of being in love with one or the other of the women of the villa.

When I had been preparing a new chemical product in 1897, Lilian Arvel had done some typewriting for me. My poor girl knew of this and was always grateful to the young lady who was so kind to Jacky. She was sure the good wishes of a pure maiden would bring luck to my new invention.

On her deathbed, although her approaching end had been carefully concealed from her, she had forebodings and said to me:

“Jacky, I am dying. I know I am. You will marry Miss Arvel. You know-the young lady who typed your prospectus two years ago. I am not jealous of her now. I can't be jealous if she loves you. Don't sleep with her in this bed. We two have passed every night in it for well-nigh fifteen years… You made fools of us both this summer.”

November 8, 1899.

In my packets of newspapers for Mr. Arvel towards the end of October I enclosed a curious cutting from the Figaro (see Appendix R.) and an extract from Zola's latest novel that was just out (see Appendix S) copied on the typewriter, as, to change the current of my sad thoughts, I had bought a machine and was beginning to practise with it.

Then Papa wrote to me and the following correspondence took place. I was evasive and elusive. He was incomprehensible and bitter.

I only note a sort of rage and hate to think I had got to know his secrets, had read him and his daughter-whore through and through, and had walked away when I was tired of their intrigues.

If the girl was still at home, living quietly with him and Ma, and “getting her own living”-this was Arvel's pet phrase as applied to women-by carefully moulding the weak brains of moneyed lechers; there was no excuse for him to write as he did, and drag his own concubine in the mud, to “bluff” an ex-lover, trying to convince him that he had never played at the game of incest with her. Surely I should never believe that he would so vilify his own mistress?

If she had left him, disappointment might be a motive.

Be that as it may, his long and prosy letters did not trouble me much, as will be seen by my vague answers, and my mind was perfectly at rest as regarded the triumvirate of Sonis-sur-Marne. I never asked anybody about them. I knew nothing of their movements.

ERIC ARVEL TO JACKY.

Sonis-sur-Marne. November 7, 1899.

My dear Jacky,

I ought to have written to you some time ago to thank you for your long and philosophical letter. I do not want to argue, or I could show you that you are sanguine on points which, picked to pieces, would show but a bare canvas, to be covered by the daydreams and fancies of the man who has forgotten the grand truth that all is vanity.

Women keep their secrets well, and they know how much they are pandering to the vanity of men, a knowledge which prevents them from disclosing the secrets of the charnel house. Men may write such tales as Nemesis Hunt, and give spice to the commonplace adventures of a gay woman, by introducing the incestuous intercourse between her and the lover of her mother, supposed to be her father, for the amusement of those who are fond of gutter literature.

I must confess that the idea of any save platonic intercourse with the wife or relation of any friend has always been very distasteful to me, and I have often thought, when running my eye over the legends in the Old Testament referring to the chronicles of the Jews, that the low system of enlightenment remarkable among whole colonies of Jews in Southern Russia, is fostered by those intermarriages, which to my mind, are as incestuous as the coupling up of Nemesis Hunt and Jean Messal.

Among the early Jews, and no doubt among many of the present day, incestuous connection is no crime and quite a matter of course.

I can understand that every one has his opinions on the subject, and I know that I had to pay very dearly once for expressing mine, whether the son of a twin sister married the daughter of his mother's twin. I am told this was according to the Jewish rite. Naturally the object was to keep the money in the family.

l do not want to inflict any long sermon on you as to the virtue and vices of Nemesis Hunt. The book will take, but it will not come up to my standard of “blue” books, according to the samples you have so kindly placed at my disposition from time to time, and while there may be some excuse for the lover, who was not sure the woman who offered him such rapturous embraces was in any way related to him there was none for the woman who suspected the truth, from the time she met her father on the steamer.

I owe you so many thanks for the papers you send me with such charming regularity that I am ashamed to say I look forward to them as a right.

By the way, I was very much entertained with the volume: The Scarlet City, which I will return to you next week, as I want to read it over again for the references it contains to men I have known.

I see you have taken to typewriting. I am sending off this by twilight, as I can only just see the letters on my machine. I am sure you will never feel inclined to take your pen up again, once you get into the swing of typewriting, and though you may often strike a wrong letter, the thing is so easy that you would never be persuaded to mess about with pen and ink for any consideration.

My dear Jacky, will you let me offer my most heartfelt sympathy for the loss you have so recently sustained. I only heard of it recently and if you were thinking of the person whom it has pleased a higher power to remove from this earth when you last wrote to me, and so ably championed the affection of woman, then your loss must have been severe indeed, and I might say irreparable.

Yours very truly,

ERIC ARVEL.

JACKY TO ERIC ARVEL.

Paris. November 9, 1899.

My dear Mr. Arvel,

I am always flattered and honored to hear from you, but more so today, as I am deeply touched by your kindly expression of sympathy.

There were lettres de faire part. I did not send you one. I did not want anyone to see me that day, nor did I wish to see anybody.

I begin to think you are right in all you say. You have evidently had a greater and more varied experience with women than I. I see that I have been spoilt. I never had to make love…at least, not much.

Now, I suppose, I must swell the ranks of the michés (Le Miché malgré lui, Molière …slightly altered), or else go and “listen to the band,” instead of joining the merry maze of mercenary, menstruating Messalinas!

Glad you like the papers and books. When you send back The Scarlet City, I will lend you another of the same sort: A Pelican and Pink 'Un. Also, an “indigo” novelty: Dolly Morton, the true (?) confessions of a lady fair. And lots more.

I have only taken to typing since the twenty-sixth ult., plus two lessons with a fairy-fingered maiden. I had some work to do which necessitated it. I thought I would try myself and have hired a “Nonpareil” for a month. I am a rare cuckoo at it! (Sounds like a fable: “The Cuckoo and the Typewriter.”) Thought I should save money with it, but am spending a small fortune in erasers. There the love of gold, from my Bourse education and frequenting the Jews, peeps out again!

And yet a lady-authoress told me the other evening that she “had never met such a sensitive Christian.”

I should like to know how long it takes to get to real speed on this clattering monster? I must stop at home with it a night or two, and have a real tussle with it.

Faithfully yours,

JACKY.

ERIC ARVEL TO JACKY.

Sonis-sur-Marne. November 10, 1899.

My dear Jacky,

Many thanks for your letter, but I am afraid you are a sad flatterer. I am finishing The Scarlet City, for the second time, and I will send it to you on Monday. I shall be very pleased to read the Pelican and the Pink 'Un, as also the “blue” volume, purporting to be the confessions of a lady fair, although I am afraid the mother of most of the ladies fair and frail was Moll Flanders, and that the supposed petticoated authoress wore bluchers and smoked a short pipe. By the way, talking of what is “blue,” you said you would lend me a “blue” book, the prospectus of which you sent me, relating to various mal-conformations of certain organs.

(The rest of the letter was about the art of type writing.)

About the twentieth, I shall be going to England, where I shall remain possibly three weeks, trying to get something to do, as times have not been over brilliant with me of late, and the expenses of my Bourse telegrams have increased so much, that working for the financial press has become bare bread and cheese.

Whenever you have any idea of taking a lesson on your typewriter think of me, and remember that I shall always be glad to have your news, which I hope will always be good and couched in your usual happy strain of mind.

Very faithfully yours,

ERIC ARVEL.

I wrote a very short note in answer to the above, thanking him for his kind offer of tuition on the typewriter, and announcing that I was sending him the books he asked for.

I noted that Papa did not bear malice, as he coolly demanded the volume of which I had annotated the prospectus in such a vile manner a few months before. This is the first time he alludes to any of what may be called my obscene innuendoes. So he got Dolly Morton, The Pelican, and The Ethnology of the Sixth Sense. This last work I took the liberty of marking here and there in the following manner:

“The first shape of the hymen, almost invariable in infancy, and which is sometimes prolonged beyond puberty, consists in a liabial arrangement of the membrane, the edges of which, separated by a vertical opening and facing one another, make a projection at the entrance of the vagina, which it closes, if I may say so, like a fowl's anus.” (P. 275.)

“…we often see tall and strong women showing a small vulva, and a mount of Venus without hairs, while little dwarfs display a largely developed vulva, followed by a vagina capable of satisfying an enormous penis.” (P. 291.)

“…an abundance of hair under the armpits, and…a slight moustache on the lips. Most frequently brunettes alone have this advantage.” (P. 292.).

EXAGGERATED AMPLITUDE OF THE VAGINA.

“In certain women, the vagina may acquire a considerable amplitude. If it is congenital, and the woman is salacious, and indulges beyond measure in the pleasure of love with men who have a large member, her vagina may become a veritable gulf, in which a penis of ordinary dimensions finds itself quite lost. There is no remedy for this deformity, except to endeavor to palliate it with tonics and astringents within the limits of possibility.” (P. 311.)

“…If a woman has a small one, she makes no difficulty in showing it, and displaying the neatness of her receptacle. But if she has a large one, she never permits it to be seen, for fear of revealing her disgrace.” (P. 313.)

It will be noticed that mention is made in this last letter of Mr. Arvel to the well-known romance of Daniel Defoe, Moll Flanders.

Papa was always alluding to this book, which had evidently made a deep impression on him. It will be remembered that the heroine unwittingly marries her brother. So whichever way we turn with the master of the Villa Lilian, the incubus of incest must always seemingly oppress us.

There was now a desire to see me again at Sonis. The lessons of typewriting were a pretext, and there was the hint of his departure to London, showing that the coast was clear for me in his absence.

ERIC ARVEL TO JACKY.

Sonis-sur-Marne. November 21, 1899.

My dear Jacky,

I am returning your three volumes, which I have read with much interest and I tender you my very best thanks for the loan of them.

The “indigo” one reads like a true story, as it might fall from the lips of a woman who had given herself up to circumstances, and set perhaps the correct value of a “jewel,” which is simply a marketable commodity, appraised by the vanity of man, held up to him as a temptation to commit all kinds of follies, in the hopes of obtaining a primary from a source, which has, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, been tapped in a moment of curiosity by the demi-vierge, who wanted to go one better, having learned from friends of her own sex, that there is still a resource in the sonde of the angel purveyor.

The interesting young lady who relates her adventures, bears out my theory that the “Sixth Sense” does exist, not as the outcome of Love or Affection, but as that of lust, played on and developed by the art and wiles of woman, the past mistress in converting vain man to the worship of Priapus, whose altar reposes on a solid foundation of rosserie.

When some ten or fifteen years have passed over your head, and your shoulders get bowed with age, and your whitened hair cries out: “Ichabod!” to show that some of the glory of your house has departed, you will find that Youth looks on you with smiling eyes, and that the tempting morsels are offered you, with the hope that they will be as the Dead Sea fruit to you, and with the determination to give you nothing better than the husks which have fallen from the trough of the swine.

Go on the boulevards and see the vieux marcheur, who can but limp, and watch the play around him, as he stops at the shop of the modiste or the jeweler, and then exclaim with Hamlet: “To what base uses may we return!”

There are a few exceptions to the general rule, and the endeavor of the woman seems to be to compromise actually or morally the weak, vain mind of man.

The husband of “Mademoiselle Giraud” would marry, and the comedy she played to disarm the man who thought he was on the point of possessing the woman he had yearned for, has been copied over and over again. The woman often throws herself into the arms of a man, decided that he shall, even with a show of a complete abandonment of herself; enjoy no more than the petites privautés, into which she has been initiated by her comrades.

You see I am drifting into the zone of platonic friendships, and getting by experience to know how to discount that mendacious exclamation: Je t'aime, which seems to warm the cockles of our hearts. All is vanity. It is given to some of us to learn that woman is capable of pure devotion, and that at times she can abandon herself to a kindred soul, but as a rule, woman is the author of such a book of follies in a man, that as Bulwer said: “all the tears of angels could not blot them out.”

Some of these days I must try and write my life, with all the follies I have committed “writ large,” but perhaps before the idea is carried out, I may have gone over to the other side, and buried a long record in the silent grave, where the wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at rest.

Yours very truly,

ERIC ARVEL.

P.S. -Many thanks for the budget of papers, which have just been brought down to me and will accompany me to London to read on the way.

My address will be Potteton's Family Hotel, Trafalgar Square, W.C., for the next three weeks, so that if you want anything from London, you will know where a letter will find me.

At last, Papa began to show a little temper. He preached me a sermon to let me see what a silly man I was, and how badly the “half-virgin" had treated me.

I suppose the couple was annoyed at my indifference to their timid overtures, and the marked passages in the Ethnology, to which book Papa took care not to allude, must have shown them sufficiently that I did not wish to renew with Lilian.

His position was a strange one between Lilian and me, her old lover, with whom he corresponded, never mentioning her name, and I never asked after her. And now he suddenly breaks out m the foregoing letter, to my great delight.

A few days afterwards I replied evasively. I was resolved not to say anything that would compromise me in any way, or enable him or her to have the least idea what my real feelings were.

As I read this over, correcting the proofs, I cannot help thinking from the outburst in the foregoing letter and the allusions to female vice and treachery in the following ones that Lilian had gone away. The month of November was always a fatal one for her. It is not possible that a man could so write if the wretched girl was at his elbow, as in former days.

Not that the quarrels of such people mean anything. They may hurl the vilest insults at each other, and even come to blows, but like dogs, it does not prevent them licking each other afterwards.

Even had Lilian departed, whenever she met Papa again she would be at his disposal, if he so willed it, until death should part them.

But in the meanwhile she had exhausted his two purses and was no longer at Sonis.

The unbreakable chain that united Lilian and Eric was no heartfelt attachment. It was a double heavy yoke of dissimulated interests. Their Liaison was a commercial partnership.

JACKY TO ERIC ARVEL.

Paris. November 29, 1899.

My dear Mr. Arvel,

I received the books and was glad to see you liked them. I too fancied that Dolly Morton sounded as if half true, perhaps in part told to a man who knew how to listen. I did not like to say so, for fear of being wrong.

I sent you to London three newspapers that ought to have gone in the last bundle, and would have been too stale if kept three weeks longer. I shall collect your papers and not send any until three weeks, counting from the twenty-first.

I did not flatter you when I said that you had greater experience than I with the fair sex. Your letter of the twenty-first. proves it beyond a doubt, and what is more strange, you seem to have the power of reading my thoughts to a certain extent. I have not your knowledge. I am all theories, and that is not much good, I know. It would take me a long time to explain all I mean and to answer your clever and deep-thinking letter properly. In September and before, I could write; now I cannot.

So you must forgive me if I do not reply to you as you deserve. I will try later on if I can, but I shall never be able to discriminate and reckon things up as wonderfully as you do.

I have read your letter over and over again, each time with more absorbing interest.

I would be ungracious not to thank you for your offer to try and render me any little service in London, but I have absolutely nothing that I can ask you to do for me.

Before writing any of your erotic recollections, you must read the Memoirs of Casanova.

If you have never done so, I will lend you the work in French or English.

Faithfully yours,

JACKY.

December 8, 1899.

I liked the above letter, because it was a masterpiece of emptiness. I sent it to his hotel in London, but I knew he would not answer until he had seen Lilian. I fancied too, that Lilian had told him how I spoke about publishing the story of my intrigue with her, and that is why he wrote concerning his own autobiography. But I was not to be drawn.

I was musing on these things, on a dark evening about half-past five, as I was slowly going home, passing the St. Lazare railway station, when suddenly I thought I saw a ghost.

It was Trixie tripping gently along, her eyes bent on the ground.

She might not have been alone. Her husband, or a lover, might have been just behind her. I cared not; nothing could have stopped me from speaking to her just then.

I rushed towards her, and I refuse to write the sweet joy of our meeting.

Trixie cried a little, but I soon petted and soothed her, and we had a cup of tea together in a fashionable resort behind the Opéra.

And how she did talk and tell me all that had happened to her since I had last seen her!

Her husband and children had been in mourning for a near relation, and she herself had been in bed with pleurisy all through March and April; and afterwards, she had been away from Paris. during a long convalescence.

Achille was dying. His brain had given way under the strain he had put upon it by his unnatural cravings and curious practices for years, and I began to think that we have to pay dearly for all our excesses in life; be it the bed, the bottle; or even common gluttony.

Over-indulgence with women and the searching after extraordinary pleasures and uncommon delights in the higher grades of sensuality, will lead us eventually to the padded room, while the masturbating Lesbian-a menstruating fiend-who makes such inordinate use of her tender organs; sucking, injecting, checking conception, washing with all kinds of lotions, teasing and tickling, without counting natural coition, must in due course fall beneath the surgeon's knife. The medical Jack the Ripper removes ovaries and the womb itself, and leaves a female eunuch, and thereby partly demented. Lucky will she be, if only the operation is needed and succeeds, and she does not have to sojourn for a short or long period in a private asylum; her plump arms hidden in a straight waistcoat and her luxuriant tresses ruthlessly cut off.

ERIC ARVEL TO JACKY.

Sonis-sur-Marne. December 22, 1899.

My dear Jacky,

When I was over in London, they sent me such a dreadful machine that I had no inclination to sit down and write. Otherwise it would have been my duty to thank you for the papers which followed me to London and your interesting letter of the twenty-ninth ult. which afforded me pleasant reading. I have never read the Memoirs of Casanova, in fact as you may hardly credit, the first obscene book in print ever read by me were the poems ascribed to the Earl of Rochester, among the State Papers in the British Museum, and then after perusing the Ecole des Biches, and Fanny Hill, I have been permitted to fall back on your well-stocked library. Would the Memoirs of Casanova aid me in jotting down from the tablets of memory the old, old story of how man is caught in the snare, like the bird in the net of the fowler, and how neither experience nor age can prevent him imperiling all that he otherwise held most dear and sacred, for what? For what the veriest courtesan in the street can sell him for a mere song, as part of her daily business. Analyze the whole thing and the absolute sameness sickens one from a rational point of view. When the heart beats, and the innermost soul is moved, who can say that the feeling we conjure up under the name of love is reciprocated or exists in either the passionate woman, seeking relief from the heat of animal passion, or in the man who is offering a tribute to his amour-propre by taking possession of a woman, who draws her calculations from the vanity of the man to whom she offers herself, not with the unreserved franchise of the courtesan, but with the mock modesty of the demi-vierge of the XIXth century, decided to take advantage of his weakness. What more can I say than others have said before me in writing their memoirs? I can plead that plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose, and the only difference is to be defined by the student of the sense of lust. That calculating philosophy and logic which makes a man in close contact with a woman recoil from actual sexual intercourse might be described by those who argue in favor of platonic love. The world taxes all such hesitation with a less polite term and Brown Sequard is advised. This may be correct when we are judged by the standard of youthful desire, but there are few of those over-ardent temperaments, who have not often wished afterwards that they had possessed the same dose of philosophy as the older man, who seeks out the courtesan, and opines that Love has very little to do with the mere connection of two bodies. I might write for a whole year without changing anything or without being able to fathom the depth of the feminine deceit. In woman there lies no truth at the bottom of the well. There are however, close friendships, and women have surrendered themselves to men to whom they have shown the deepest devotion, and for whom they are ready to give up their lives; and when you find such a one, tie her to you with every a reciprocated affection can forge. Were I to write my “erotic” recollections, the cry of “Chestnuts” and “Rats" would be raised, as I wandered through the list of clergymen's daughters, and offspring of officers who have ministered to me carnally, and gradually come to more recent experiences, proving perhaps that “There's no fool like an old fool,” and that however philosophically a man may be inclined, there is the old leaven of vanity which bright eyes, a smile, and youth know how to turn to advantage. Eve was the tempter, and her daughters have been armed to give battle successfully to man.

My dissertation is long and wearying, no doubt, so I will end it and turn to another theme more interesting, by wishing you and all yours a very merry Christmas, and renewed health and prosperity for the coming year, with plenty of health to enjoy everything Providence may send you.

Truly and sincerely yours,

ERIC ARVEL.

This letter contained a lettre de faire part, printed in silver, setting forth that Eric Arvel had married his mistress, Adèle, and had written the word, “Private” upon it.

JACKY TO ERIC ARVEL.

Paris. December 26, 1899.

My dear Mr. Arvel,

That you should enclose in your last letter the announcement of your union, causes a variety of conflicting emotions in me; the principal being the thought that you consider me worthy of being apprised of such a delicate piece of news. I am vain enough to suppose therefore, that you count me among a privileged set of intimes, and if so, I fully appreciate the honor you do me. May I say you both do me? I have learned by my own experience that a mere ceremony, or writing down of signatures, does not constitute a real marriage, and some of the unconsecrated associations are several degrees more perfect than the legitimate ones, because the man, if he is a man at all, tries by untiring devotion and continual solicitude, to make the woman he has chosen to share his joys and troubles, forget the loss of worldly consideration, which she sees vouchsafed to others, who are often wicked shrews or worse, but they are called “respectable” because they have gone through a legal process.

I should not dare to speak so freely and boldly on this matter, were it not that I look back ever so sadly, and see nineteen years-nearly half my life-of the same companionship. But I was not fated to find the rest and peace that you will now enjoy, combined with the sweet sense of gratitude, of which you will reap the benefit.

I always envied you, I confess that fault, every time I saw you in your pretty villa, and now I envy you still more, as I think of what might have been, and how I lived for years, trembling lest the secret confided to me by the doctors should reach the ears of my Lilian, and powerless to arrest the sure progress of a relentless malady.

Nobody ever knew. But I purposely cease writing on this subject, as I do not possess the necessary talent to describe my sad existence, and even if I did, I do not think I could summon up courage to put my thoughts on paper. And besides, why should I come and throw a shadow of gloom over your happy household just at this festive period of the year?

I thank you for your good wishes expressed for Xmas, and am deputed by all my family to wish you the same, continued far into the next century. To make us quits, I personally return your Xmas greetings with my best hopes for your felicity, good health and prosperity during the new year: “00,” which I hope will not turn out a “naughty” one for you. You terminated your beautiful letter by saying that you feared to weary me, but I wished it had been much longer, as I can learn from you. I have met no man knowing the wiles of women as you do, and you have also the power to set forth your ideas in polished style, which I try in vain to imitate.

You must not be offended if I now take the liberty to put a question to you; and I tell you frankly that I shall not mind if you do not answer it. Do as you think best; whatever you do will be well done.

You write that “your more recent experiences prove that there is no fool like an old fool,” and I fully agree with you, taking the lesson for myself, and accepting it as I have accepted other deserved strictures, with the pleasant thought that you take a kindly, friendly interest in me and are writing to me for my good. But it seems to me, and perhaps I am wrong, that you reproach yourself, and one or two sentences are ambiguous and might apply to the writer as well as to the receiver.

To sum up: what are those recent experiences? That is my audacious question.

I now give you my humble opinion of erotic recollections in print, but I fear this letter is far too long. I must ask you, if you take in Le Journal, to cast your eye over the feuilleton: Le Partage du Coeur, 9 where you will find a good model of psychological writing, where the author seeks to penetrate into the innermost souls of his sensual characters and show the motives, desires, jealousies, etc., that sway them. The adventures should be presented so as to demonstrate the peculiarities of passion, and the downright filthy part only becomes readable when it falls naturally into its place as the outcome of circumstances previously sketched, and which should be out of the common, as rapid sordid encounters and swiftly-ended passages with prostitutes are not of the slightest value. Mere meetings of men and women and descriptions of what they do, even if true, are of no use. Those who can throw a light upon the workings of the female mind, when under the influence of lust, real or feigned; or show us what a man feels, thinks, and does when “in the net of the fowler”; or becomes crafty, fights, escapes; or mayhap enjoys the humiliation of his captivity; will be rendering a service to all students of sexuality, surfeited with impossible tales of artificial amours, written to order.

I have just left at your bureau, rue Vissot, a litre of my best eau de Cologne, as a most trifling wedding present for Madame, and also to prove that whatever my faults, I possess, at least, the reconnaissance de l'estomac.

Faithfully yours,

JACKY.

ERIC ARVEL TO JACKY.

Sonis-sur-Marne. December 27, 1899.

My dear Jacky,

Many thanks for your nice long letter and for all the good wishes which I most heartily reciprocate. I hope that the year about to commence will be a happy and prosperous one for you and yours, and that the healing hand of time will efface from your memory all those pains and sorrows which weigh at the moment so heavily upon you.

Mrs. Grundy still holds a certain sway in society, and compelled us both to legitimize those ties which have bound us so close for many years past. Each act is weighed in a certain social balance, and though bell, candle, and book were not required to cast any halo about a union based on mutual inclination, we thought it best to place things on their proper social footing, so that when I have passed over the river on to the other shore, what I may leave will rightly be claimed by the woman who gave herself to me. What I have done was due to the woman who gave up her fair name for me. I am deputed by Mrs. Arvel to offer you her sincere thanks for your present, and to tell you that she has no faults to bring to your door, save the one that you are more happy in the giving than in the getting.

Now to your “audacious query.” I do not read any feuilleton. I lack the necessary patience to await the suite à demain. I told you that any attempt to write the biography of any man as you would have it with the heart laid bare, and the “Sixth Sense” analyzed, would raise the cry of “Rats” and “Chestnuts.” Every line written would come home to you, and the words inscribed upon the wall at the feast of Belshazzar would haunt your eye for ever more. The recent experiences I allude to are those of later years, the outcome of observation, and of the sayings and doings of those we find on every side, in a world where women discount the vanity and self-assurance of the man, who is about to double the cape of platonic affection. Surely you have analyzed the furtive glances of the trottin, and the frôlements of the woman by your side as you gazed in the shop of jeweler and bonnet-maker? You have not been without knowing how with looks and implied promises the “Sixth Sense” has been cultivated to the highest degree of tension, and then how bitter has seemed the deception which has followed. You may have found the “Sixth Sense” so over strung by doubts and apprehensions that even when the promised fruit falls ripe to your lips, you close them, not to give admission to the foul thing which will be more sorrowful to the heart and more bitter to the taste than the apple which drove Adam from Paradise. Is there anything new under the sun? Is it not always the old, old story, and what divine hands will ever weave the crown of golden myrtle, which shall adorn the head of the man who can conquer himself, who in the burst of youth can control his passions, and remember how Solomon warned us against the lips of the strange woman and that end which was bitter as wormwood and sharp as a two-edged sword? Have you never studied the philosophy in the old German ballad “Die Handschuh,” where the knight courts death to please his lady-love, and then indignant at the peril he has been exposed to at the mere whim of a woman, refuses the reward the proud Cunegonde had in store for him.

Have you been at the cockles?” Why do you see any stricture in what I write of past and present experience? You do not know what each year will bring forth, and how the human mind becomes more and more as an open book, as age creeps on and desire is fanned to sleep. The time will come for you when each day will bring its lesson, and then you will say with me, not from the experience of the hour, that there is “no fool like the old fool,” but from the experience brought about by that spirit of comparison which never deserts us? Who has not been fooled has never sought. The seeking is mere lust; a simple satisfaction of the amour-propre, aroused by the wiles of woman, who is in her heart of hearts a much better judge of humanity than you or I are inclined to believe. How she delights in bringing out the weaknesses of the “idiot” who calls her “the weaker vessel,” as though her capacity for giving pleasure did not long outlast that of the man for imparting it. The older the man the more susceptible he becomes to the charms of a sex, which has given him so many pleasant souvenirs in the store-room of his mind. He is easier beguiled; he thinks that Spring and Autumn can be linked together, and when the “Sixth Sense" has been roused, prudence and most of the other virtues are cast to the winds so that the passion of the hour may be indulged in.

“Have you been at the cockles?” Why try to fit the cap of generalities? Experience bitter as wormwood and sharper than a two-edged sword has taught me, not to-day but long since, how readily we embark on the journey to Cythera “as the bird hasteth to the snare knowing not that it is for his life.” Will my experience benefit you? If so, you should have it, but the only experience of value is that bought with tears and lamentations, when in the solitude of our chamber we open our hearts and say: “I have sinned.”

Recent experiences have I none. I have sunk to anchor in my haven of rest, with plenty of time for reflection, for examining the past, and making the general confession a man makes to himself, when he feels that the time is approaching for him to turn his face to the wall. I have not offered myself as a candidate for the crown of gold and myrtle, and I am as full of those faults and imperfections as any man who is human, and God alone knows if I can affect the same indifference as the good Saint Anthony, when the temptress comes across my path. Perhaps age will by that time have conquered the folie érotique which warps our best intentions, and I shall have sang-froid enough left to ask myself the why and the wherefore of the wiles of her who seeks to ensnare me. Possibly prudence and caution may cause me to ask myself why the appât has been so tempting, and Passion tempered with Age will enable me to see through the plot made against happiness or honor. Many have succumbed, and if I follow their example I shall only be one of the few who have sacrificed so much to gain so little. Human resolves are as the words which are written on the sand of the seashore, and yet there are men cowardly enough to say with their first parent: “The woman who thou gavest to be with me she gave me of the tree and I did eat. When the cup comes to your lips, will you dash it aside and say that there was the warning in the words that “there's no fool like the old fool”? Believe me, it is hard even to aspire to friendships with the young, when a certain period of life is attained, and women have the instinctive desire, the unhealthy curiosity, to see how far they can arouse the old Adam. What are the peculiarities of Passion? Sordid motives on the one part, and vanity on the other. Passion is not devotion, and in my opinion Love only comes when the man has learned to appreciate the sterling qualities of a woman, apart from the carnal pleasure she can afford him.

I hope my sermon has been long enough, and that you are convinced that when I wrote to you, there was no secret sorrow gnawing at my heart, and no desire to throw stones in the glass house inhabited by my neighbor. Age enables me to philosophize, and when I have time to sit quiet in my own room and review the past, analyzing my own feelings, wondering whether I could withstand the smiling promises of the temptress, I am impressed with the wisdom of the man who said there was “no fool like the old fool.”

Here on let me again thank you for all your kindness, and good wishes, and hope that the new year may bring you and yours the realization of every wish.

Yours very truly,

ERIC ARVEL.

I wrote no more to Mr. Arvel, and ceased sending any papers. I gave no sign of life.

January 1, 1900.

As I awoke on the first morning of the New Year, I received the following from Trixie, and I cannot refrain from giving it here, as it is such a triumph for my theory of true love and affection, which Papa affects to sneer at.

TRIXIE TO JACKY.

Paris. December 31, 1899

My dearest friend,

For the last few days I have not had a moment to myself. I wish that all these holidays were passed; they do not amuse me.

Thank you for the pretty paper, it is quite in good taste, like everything that comes from you, and when I use it I shall often think of you, and that will prevent me from gathering my ideas together.

For the year 1900, I send you, with all my heart, my most sincere and best wishes. May it be luckier for you than the one that is gone. For myself, I ask you to keep me a little corner in your heart, for you know that I love you very much.

I want also to tell you once for all, that I will no longer let you put on your little sardonical look, when I say that I love you for yourself-or, if you like, for myself-without any desire for money.

I will not let you compare me to other women. I am almost happy that you are hard-up just now, as that gives me the opportunity to show you that I wish to abandon myself to you, entirely, for love, without any other thought than that of making you happy and so becoming myself at the same time the happiest of women.

I have been deprived of your caresses too long; you must never leave me again-do you hear me, darling? Be good to me, dearest, and let me love you. I will overwhelm you with so many caresses; I will be for you such a perfect sweetheart, that you will be forced to succumb beneath the weight of evidence, and you, who are so straightforward, possessing such perfect common sense; knowing so well how to judge men and women, I want to force you to say to yourself and to me also, that if I have faults, as is only natural, I have no idea of lucre with you.

So see how I am dragged hither and thither: I would that you remain poor, so that you should have the proof that I love you for yourself alone, and at the same time I wish that you were rich and independent. I hope that you may become immensely rich, and yet if that was to happen, I should live under the eternal apprehension of seeing later on that you have the idea that I have only loved you in the hope of being enriched by you. After all, you are only a man…. Pardon me if I foresee that you may become like all other men.

Tomorrow, on returning from your walk, come and wish me “Good morning,” at the post-office, Place Victor Hugo, about one o'clock, if you can; I so much wish to see you.

Can you see us on our bicycles this weather? It would be a great success. And your dear muddy, dirty dog I was forgetting! I want to see him too.

A thousand tender things and as many clever and voluptuous kisses,

TRIXIE.

And now, Mr. Prompter, please ring down the curtain. This drama is finished.

The actors wash off their paint; the brown holland is put over the boxes. We go home, and all is dark until the next night.

So it is on the mimic stage, but in life there is no ending to the long succession of comedy and tragedy which is played out in many acts, and is never ended.

Death now and then calls at the stage-door, and one of the players: poor, painted, false villain, or roguish clown; tragedy queen, or meretricious dancing girl; is carried away in the black hearse, but the universal spectacle of love and hate goes on all the same.

Thus with my most vile story. I must break off here, but there is no finish to a real book, such as this is.

When the novel is a mere fantasy, it is easy to dispose of the characters. But this tale being a true one, I can only bow and go, making way for some fresh actor, who is waiting in the wings to caper in the light, when I shall have disappeared, whether I will or no; for I am, and so are you, Reader, in the hands of the Great Scene-Shifter.

July 1899-January 1900.

Appendices

Appendix A

PLEASURES OF CRUELTY.

ACCOUNT OF A SCENE WITNESSED IN A WOOD, BY A GENTLEMAN, WHO HAPPENED TO BE UNSEEN BY THE ACTORS

(Evidently father and daughter.)

FATHER.-“Come, my dear, this is a beautifully quiet spot, let me look at your legs.”

DAUGHTER.-“Oh! Papa! Papa! What do you mean, you can always see my feet and ankles?”

FATHER.-“That's nothing, I must see more, and teach you to obey me in everything I order; now, lift up your skirts.”

DAUGHTER, all blushes.-“Well, then, Papa; there's my legs,” drawing up her clothes so as fully to expose beautiful well-filled stockings and the ends of finely embroidered drawers: “Is that what you require?”

FATHER.-“Only a little portion of what I want to see,” handling her calves and putting his hand up her drawers, “you have sweetly proportioned legs and beautifully firm flesh, my dear; up higher with your skirts, please.”

DAUGHTER, scarlet with shame.-“Oh! Oh! Papa! How can you; there only a little higher, that's all I can do: it's so indelicate,” drawing her skirts half-way up her thighs.

FATHER, in a rage.-“Do as I tell you, Miss, do you think I can't examine my own child without her pretending to tell me it's improper! I will look you all over if I choose to do so, and whip you soundly into the bargain, Miss Prude!”

DAUGHTER, with tears of shame running down her crimson face.-“Oh! Papa, Papa, pity me, I never showed so much to anyone before!” lifting her clothes, so as now to show all her drawers, well up to her waist, but she stands with her legs so close that nothing is visible.

FATHER.-“That's how you dress, is it? It's time I looked after your underclothing a little, your chemise is too long,” putting his hand between her legs and pulling out the tail of her undermost garment, “What a pretty little pussy you have, my dear little Miss Bashful, I suppose you won't let your husband even look at or touch that; why how beautifully it's covered with this soft hair!” caressing and tickling the pouting lips with his fingers; “And you're only just over sixteen, you must have been rubbing your belly against something hairy.”

DAUGHTER, in still greater confusion, turns away from him to hide her mortification, sobbing hysterically.-“Oh! Oh! Papa, Papa. Have mercy, how can you talk so?”

FATHER, taking out his knife.-“Stand still, Miss Prude, I'm going to make this chemise the proper length, so as to be a pattern of what you ought to wear.” Then cuts a great piece off back and front so as to leave her quite exposed where the drawers are a little open, as he purposely leaves them. “You have a fine plump bottom, is it tender? Do you feel that?” giving her a loud slap. “Oh! you can feel, can you; does it hurt you much?” as she starts with the sudden smart.

DAUGHTER.-“Oh! Oh! Papa! Pray don't, you humiliate me so!” bursting into fresh hysterical tones.

FATHER.-“Kneel down, and beg my pardon and own that all I do is proper; there, this place will do very well.”

DAUGHTER.-“But that's all mud, I can't kneel there!” (Sobbing.)

FATHER.-“Can't again; will you never do as you're told? Down on your knees this instant, or I will kill you.”

Daughter, in trembling confusion, kneels in the mud crying and hiding her face in her hands.

FATHER.-“Now, get up, your drawers are only a little soiled,” laughing at the great patch of mud on her knees; “take my knife and cut me some of those nice long thin twigs, and ask me to correct you with them.”

She complies, being too frightened and confused not to obey; the twigs are handed to her father, who ties them up into a nice little switch; then orders her to kneel on the ground with her bottom towards him; makes her, with her own hands, hold her drawers well open behind for him to inspect her posterior beauties, then makes her pin them back so as they will not close over the exposed rump.

FATHER.-“Now, my dear, you would like me to correct you, would you not, Miss Bashful?”

DAUGHTER.-“Oh! Oh! No. No. Box my ears, anything but that. I've done nothing!”

FATHER.-“You must be made to see your own conduct in the right light: ask me to whip you properly,” switching her bottom smartly, and making long red marks at each stroke. “Tell me you wish it or I'd tickle you more and more with this.”

DAUGHTER, screaming with pain.-“Oh! Oh! Ah! Papa! I can't bear it, indeed I can't. Oh! Oh! Yes, correct me properly, dear Papa. Oh! Oh! Have mercy,” as he cuts harder and harder, drawing little drops of blood from the tender flesh.

FATHER.-“That's right, my dear, you are just beginning to take it in a proper spirit. Oh yes! you can bear it, shriek out, it will do you good,” switching away vigorously, and enjoying the wriggling of her rosy-colored bottom, as each stroke tells its tale: “Confound it! these twigs are not strong enough, they are all breaking to pieces; get up and cut me some better ones, mind you select them well; or I will punish you more and more for it.”

The poor girl is almost ready to faint, her bottom smeared with blood from the broken weals. She wants to let down her clothes, but he makes her crawl just as she is to the bushes and cut another birch, enjoying every movement; then when she presents the twigs to him, he makes her kiss them, and tell him, “she hopes he will flog her well for his pleasure and her own good.”

FATHER.-“That's right, my dear, I must cut that prudishness out of you; now open your legs well as you kneel, a little more dear,” Switching her gently at first: “It hurts me as much as it does you, poor dear,” cutting harder and raising more weals on her devoted bum.

DAUGHTER.-“Oh! Oh! Papa. Have, have mercy: you're hurting me so! Oh! Oh! I shall die!” as he gives another harder switch, then, “Ah-r-r-r-r-re,” as he cuts under between her legs.

FATHER.-“Does that hurt you so much, dear? I think you had better drop you drawers quite down. I must hurt you a little more, for your good; that's right, it will do you good,” as she screams frantically for “Mercy, Mercy! Oh! Spare me now, Papa.”

DAUGHTER, sobbing and crying in most humiliated distress.-“Oh, Papa! Oh, Papa! I've done everything; you do hurt so, you are so cruel! Ah-r-r-r-re!” as he gives a sharp undercut on her pussy.

FATHER.-“That's right; scream loudly; I couldn't help touching up your poor little pussy,” cutting again and again, in the same place, and all over her poor naked bottom, till it is quite covered with weals and blood-stained all over.

The poor daughter writhes and wriggles with the pain, her sobs and cries get weaker, till at last she fairly faints.

The sight of her inanimate form seems to bring him back to his natural feeling, for he caresses and kisses her, calling her “his darling victim of a daughter, poor thing, poor thing,” etc., and as soon as she revives a little, conducts her from the scene.

The Pleasures of Cruelty.

Constantinople (London), 1896, 8 vols.

Appendix B

THE DOUBLE LIFE.

(My additions to the preface.)

…That I was an incestuous father, I admit, but I shall go to my grave happy in the knowledge that I made my daughter's life a happy one. Her last words of love were for her father. She died in my arms and when I lay down my pen in a few moments as the sun sets, I'll take my hat and stick, and slowly climb the hill that leads to the little shady churchyard where Innocent sleeps her last sweet childlike sleep.

I am very old and racked with pains of gout, but I'll rest myself upon a neighboring tomb and gaze at her grave until the light falls, and as I read and read her name cut in the stone, I feel once more as I do at each daily pilgrimage that our incest is forgiven because our great and veracious love had nothing base about it.

When I can no longer climb up to the resting place of my child, my own daughter, my flesh and blood that was sweetheart, wife, concubine, and devoted whore to me, her father, I shall be ready to stand before my Maker who will pardon me in his infinite clemency. And you must fain forgive me, reader, for she forgave me long ago and felt no remorse or shame.

May I live to finish this book and join my girl for all eternity. Amen.

CUTHBERT COCKERTON,

Attorney-at-law.

Brighthelmston, July 1798.

Appendix C

SPRAGUE v. LIHME.

London, 1899.

(Divorce case.)

Mr. Justice Barnes, in directing the jury, said that the case was a difficult one for them to determine, because of the relations which for many years had existed between the parties. It was for the petitioner to satisfy them that the case had been made out.

It was not necessary to give direct evidence of misconduct, because it was not often that the accused parties were caught in flagrante delicto; but if familiarity, opportunity, and other circumstances were shown, they might legitimately be asked to draw the inference that adultery had been committed.

They must not, however, act upon surmise or suspicion, but must have evidence upon which to draw their inference, at the same time considering the relationship of the parties which had existed for many years, because, had it not been for that earlier intimacy, the case might have assumed a very different aspect.

Appendix D

“In the infidelities that Saint-Fond allows, there is a feeling of debauchery…. Saint-Fond enjoys the idea of knowing that you are in the arms of another; he puts you there himself and has an erection so to see you; you multiply his delights by the extension you give to your own, and you will be always more loved by Saint-Fond, when you do to the utmost that which would arouse the hatred of another.”

The heroine replies:

“Saint-Fond will like my tastes, my wit, my humour, and will not be jealous of my body! Oh! how that thought consoles me; for I confess to you, my friend, that continence would be impossible for me. My nature must be satiated at all costs; with my impetuous blood…with the imagination you know of, how can I resist these passions which are irritated and inflamed by everything!”

— La Nouvelle Justine ou les Malheurs de la vertu, suivie de l'Histoire de Juliette, sa soeur. En Hollande, 1797. 10 vols. 18 mo. (Pp. 82–83, Vol. 6.)

Appendix E

CÉSARÉE.

This is the simple title of a novel by Edmond Tarbé, a successful author and journalist, turning upon the reciprocal passion of a father and daughter, as embodied in the diary of the former. It is carefully and delicately worked out and the style is perfect. The book was never published. While the first edition was in the press, in 1891, the publishers-the well-known house of Levy, Paris-were informed that the subject was one totally unsuited to their clientele. The work of printing was put a stop to, and the author tore up his contract and took the few copies that were finished. These he gave away to his friends and none were ever sold. It is now very rare.

The daughter-heroine, Césarée, is twenty, and her father forty, when they go away on a little trip to Switzerland. They have never lived together, the father having left her when a baby.

The writer describes the pleasure the girl feels at being all alone with her adored father, when they are taken for husband and wife.

The first night they are alone together, they have two bedrooms, communicating, and Césarée begs her Pa to do his writing in her chamber, while she is in bed, reading. He obeys her, and when all is quiet, she gets up and forces him to let her read his diary, where she sees to her delight that he loves her madly. He declares that he fears his passion and she answers:

“There is a barrier which we must never pass. To break it down would be the signal of certain remorse and shame that neither you nor I could resign ourselves to support. But in front of this barrier, we find all liberty of love, and I invite you fearlessly to feasts where our hearts will find satisfactions, which are quite great enough….

“ I am your daughter … that is to say, you cannot renew with me the work that brought me into the world. I am your daughter!..

“But if, because I am your daughter, the consummation of our passion is forbidden to us both; on the other hand, because I am your daughter, I belong entirely to your sterile embraces. I am your thing, created by you, animated by you…

“Believe in that love and give yourself up to it, father, with complete joy, as I abandon myself to it, proudly and without remorse.”

He takes her in his arms and thus describes what he does:

“With a single caress, my hands and my lips at the same time covered her shuddering flesh with one long kiss, embracing her whole soul at once. Passive and silent, as if nearly dead, she thus received in a few ardently-lived moments, the reward of her two years of secret adoration. From the moisture of her outstretched limbs, the perfume that I found twice more, mounted to my brain and penetrated it, in intoxicating emanations. Now I drank it, as it were.”

After a variety of charming episodes, poor little Césarée commits suicide and dies a virgin.

Appendix F

AN INFAMOUS FATHER.

Victor Blanvillain, a workman, thirty-eight, living at Chatenay, 22, rue des Prés-Hauts, is the father of ten children, of whom seven are girls. A few days ago, M. Cuvillier, commissary of police at Sceaux, received an anonymous letter informing him that Blanvillain had inflicted horrible treatment on five of his daughters, of the ages of sixteen, thirteen, twelve, ten, and nine.

After a rapid enquiry, which confirmed the accusation of the letter, the commissary informed the justices in Paris, who ordered a supplementary investigation and charged M. Joly, judge of instruction, to follow up the affair.

This magistrate, after hearing a certain number of witnesses, and having no longer the least doubt of the guilt of Blanvillain, who, besides, had made a partial confession, issued a warrant against the unworthy father.

The workman was at once arrested and taken to the Dépôt; but nevertheless his capture had been made as discreetly as possible, as it was feared that the indignant population of Chatenay might lynch the scoundrel.

Blanvillain's wife is mad with grief, and finds herself with her children in the most cruel position, having nothing to live on but the meagre earnings of her vile husband.

The wretched woman seems in despair and only the advice of the magistrates and the promise of assistance have given her a little energy.

Le Petit Journal, Paris, April 9, 1899.

Appendix G

TÊTE-À-TÊTE.

…One evening, Monsieur Le Hardeur, who up till then had shown himself almost like a father, frightened me and disgusted me with him to such an extent that I was very nearly calling for the help of the servant-girls of the restaurant where we were dining tête-à-tête; or else I should have foolishly jumped out of a window.

…It was fearfully hot. I had taken off my hat and slightly opened my surah blouse.

I forgot to eat or drink as I gazed upon the summer sky…. I must have been quite lost. I am sure I had the eyes of a little girl examining pretty colored pictures, one by one.

And I perceived too late that my godfather had emptied two bottles of sparkling Asti, one after the other, and for the last few seconds had been examining me and looking me up and down with the fixed stare of a drunken horse-dealer.

“Hullo there! It's no fun to dine in front of one's napkin,” cried he, suddenly. “Do you go in for the beauties of nature?”

I turned round in a fright and I thought he was going to have a fit.

With half-closed eyelids, his checks shining and pimply, he stammered out:

“You mustn't leave a poor man all by himself…a poor man who has never done anybody any harm; especially as-as-”

He interrupted himself to breathe noisily, as if invisible hands had tightened his high, starched collar.

“Especially as you are superior to your mamma in every way. 'Pon my word, that madcap Fripette never had such a complexion. Roses in milk. And that head of hair! Silken rings, and so light, so golden, so well planted!”

I imitated in spite of myself his husky tone of voice, and replied with effrontery:

“And what's the next article, sir?”

He was not put out for so little.

“And she has already got hips, the little minx, and love-apples in her basket. First prize for beauty: Mademoiselle Jeannine Margelle? Ninette for her godfather, her excellent little godfather. Drop a nice curtsey to the gentleman, before you get your prize and a kiss.”

He had jumped up and thrown himself on me so treacherously that I had not had time to avoid the odious embrace of his arms, and the caress of his wine-bedewed lips.

I struggled against him; I tried to scratch him; I insulted him; vexed, humiliated, trembling with rage and emotion, he let me go at last as if come back to his senses, and half-sobered, growled:

“Confound it! I'm only a juggins, a jay! The jay of jays, to put myself in this state for nothing at all. Yes, I say so, for nothing. Not that you are too young. After all, at seventeen, your confirmation has been over long ago. It's the age when you could take an excursion ticket without fear of accidents.”

He took his seat at table again, threw himself back on the chair, quite cheerful, the thumbs in the armholes of his waistcoat of white pique with blue spots.

“Oh, don't think I'm not inclined to start the game! Unfortunately, its impossible-the danger signal is up; the line's blocked; I'm condemned for life. People would talk, and there would be too much gossip about the respectable Monsieur Le Hardeur. At the next elections, I should be left alone in my glory. And all that because a lot of people imagine that I worked at your existence; that you are probably my daughter. Yes, Ninette, my own offspring of the left hand. What silly tales get about! And yet there's not a word of truth in it all!”

I was leaning against the window sill, with the impression that I was listening to the ravings of a fool.

“I've compared dates, I've turned over dirty linen like a detective. There were a pair of us, Flochet and I; two masters, each with the key, slippers and toothbrush. Flochet was only there for show. I had the best of it. But Fripette betrayed us both by the job, hour, day and week, with a fine soldier, an officer of the Cent Gardes, or the Empress's lancers, I don't remember exactly. How could a simple civilian fight, in those days, with the prestige of the sabre, or struggle against the points of waxed moustaches. Ferrum est quod amant. You don't understand? No matter, it's Latin for men. So I heard the cry of the cuckoo, and I was a cuckold, as no man has ever been before or since. I am sure of it; I'll show you the letters. Sad recollections; grief, wounds received in action. Q.E.D. that you are the daughter of the handsome soldier and not mine. If it was not that everybody thought the contrary at my club, the little business might have been brought off in the bosom of one's family, but Monsieur Le Hardeur does not possess the right to brave the world's opinion. That's as clear as clean water!”

I was silent; I felt more inclined to cry than to laugh.

Le Journal, Paris, May 17, 1899.

(This episode is from a novel by René Maizeroy, which was begun in the columns of the Parisian daily paper I have stated and was left unfinished.

It was the story of a “cocotte's” bastard daughter, who eventually is destined by her two fathers to practice for the stage and is introduced to a crowd of Lesbians and courtesans. The story broke off at that juncture but was afterwards published under the title of Amuseuse, Paris, Nilsonn, 1900, 12 mo, illustrated with photographs.)

Appendix H

NOTES FROM THE GAY CITY, by ERIC ARVEL.

(Extract from the London Stock

Exchange Magazine, June 1899.)

“…a steady tide of visitors sets in towards the 'City of Pleasure,' the Mecca of the man whose imagination has been fired by the songs and gestures of the Parisian singers and dancers, but who too often on his arrival at the goal of his desire finds everything as flat and dull as the proverbial ditch water, for I know no more prosaic place than Paris under the Republic. The old animation of the boulevards is like the ball at the Opéra during the Carnival-existing simply in the minds of those who have read the memoirs published by man prior to the days of Nestor Roqueplan. The Jardin de Paris, although Oller is always up to date in his attempts to cater for the visitors, is but a very modernized imitation of Cremorne, and the old Jardin Mabille, where Rigolboche and Finette preceded the ladies who delight in such names as 'Grille de'Egout.'

“'Nini Patte en l'Air,' and 'La Goulue,' has disappeared for want of patronage. Tradition seems to impress English tourists with the legend of Paris; but small wonder that most of them declare on their return that they prefer London to Paris for everything: cooking, drinking, and all the comforts money should purchase when the Briton is on his travels or bound for enjoyment. The summer holidays are the harvest time of those shameless individuals: the touts for all that is bad and vile in a city where men avow deeds so carefully hidden by Pharisees on the other side of the Channel. The police are too busy hunting up small political conspirators to think of arresting thieves, much less these men; who are the purveyors of clandestine places resorted to by foreigners, who often carry their lives in their hands, and owe their safety to the generosity to which they are prompted by the surroundings.”

Appendix I

DIVORCE AMONG THE PEOPLE.

“And now with regard to girls:

“You know in what conditions of deplorable promiscuity the little people of Paris live. The whole family sleeps in two beds in the same room.

As long as the real father is there, we may hope that some remains of instinctive shame will prevent him from showing his children certain sights, from which we turn away our thoughts.

“But what happens when the mother, who cannot live on her own earnings, has started housekeeping with a second husband or a lover? What examples do you think will than be given to the little girls?

“They may think themselves lucky if, one day when the mother has gone out to market, the drunkard, as yet bewildered by the debauch of the preceding evening, does not violate them.

“I know what I am talking about. In the very poor working classes, there is no physical virginity after the age of fourteen.

— Le Bilan du Divorce, by Hugues Le Roux.

Le Figaro, Paris, April 28, 1899.

(Since published in book form.)

Appendix J

THE ALLEGED OFFENCE.

UNDER THE CRIMINAL LAW AMENDMENT ACT.

At the Wimbledon Police-Court, a clerk, thirty-three years of age, now living at 132, Arngask Road, Catford, but formerly of 153, Hartfield Road, was charged on remand with unlawfully and carnally knowing his step-daughter, Maud Frances Lacey, on various dates between March 1898 and March 1899.

Prisoner has been remanded from time to time for the appearance of his wife. That lady now appeared and denied that she had made any statement to the police beyond saying she was of a nervous and jealous disposition, and very much annoyed at certain things that had occurred between prisoner and her daughter. On many occasions she had caught the pair kissing, once surreptitiously, and this made her extremely jealous, as she thought the girl received attentions which ought to have been paid to herself, and actuated by this she communicated with the police with the idea of getting them separated. Witness gave a direct denial to the most essential points of the girl's evidence.

The girl also want into the box, and denied some of her previous evidence.

Mr. Matthews pointed out that no jury would convict on such evidence.

Mr. Meates said he did not feel disposed to take the responsibility on himself of allowing the case to drop through.

Mr. Matthews, after arguing the legal points of the case at some length, said there was absolutely no corroboration. Prisoner's wife was a jealous woman, who would not suffer her husband to kiss his step-daughter, and that jealousy was her motive for acting as she had was apparent from the fact that she had contradicted all the most vital points of the girl's evidence. If the case was sent for trial it would involve a repetition of a most unsavory story, which must already have become indelibly impressed on the young girl's mind. Besides, no public advantage would be gained by such a course, and therefore, in the interests of public morality, he ventured to suggest that the case should be dismissed.

Mr. Meates said that a man in the position of father and husband, such as prisoner was, must be able to bring an enormous influence to bear on the witnesses, traces of which there had been all through the hearing. He must, therefore, adhere to what he had already said, and prisoner would be committed for trial at the Central Criminal Court.

The Illustrated Police Budget, London, May 27, 1899.

Appendix K

“The Bonapartes have been very much in view lately on account of a book, recently published, consisting of reports of Louis XVIII's secret agents in Paris during the Consulate in 1802 and 1803. This period is one of the most interesting in French history. Napoleon was in the very prime of his vigor and genius. His power was felt by the whole of Europe, while at home he was rebuilding what the Revolution had overthrown.

Napoleon's private character is painted in the blackest colors, in a way that only certain pages of the press with regard to Dreyfus today can equal. Hortense Bonaparte, wife of Louis, and stepdaughter of Napoleon, forms the subject of a report, her child being said to be the son of her stepfather. Talleyrand's marriage is related very spiritedly.”

Society, July 22, 1899.

(See Relation Secrète des Agents

de Louis XVIII. Paris, Plon, 1899.)

Appendix L

CONDEMNED TO DEATH.

Montbrison, 18 June.

Bordes, a workman in a foundry, has been condemned to death by the assize-court of the Loire. He murdered his daughter aged ten, and his wife. Bordes had incestuous intimacy with the little girl and unnatural connection with his wife. The assassin lived sixty-five days alone with the corpses of his victims, and it has been plainly shown that he slept on the dead body of his daughter.

The culprit feigned not to know what impulse he had obeyed killing his wife and child, but the medical testimony was unanimous to his entire responsibility.

Les Droits de l'Homme, June 19, 1899.

(For the benefit of my readers I may add that this revolting criminal was beheaded on the morning of August 7, and he died with great courage. He asked for a mass to be performed, confessed his crimes; asked for pardon; had a cup of coffee; lit a cigar, and boldly ascended the scaffold of the guillotine.)

Appendix M

A HORRIBLE CRIME.

Charleroi, July 3.

(From our own correspondent.)

Charles Lechien, a tinker, living at Jumet, was the father of six children, three being girls.

For several years past he had indulged in criminal intimacy with the eldest of his daughters, Marie, nineteen years of age.

Yesterday Lechien met his daughter at the fair of Gesselies, in the company of a young man. This caused him to be terribly jealous.

Last night, all the family were asleep in three beds, in the same room.

Lechien got up and fired three shots of a revolver at his eldest daughter, wounding her in the temple. Marie was killed instantaneously in her sleep and died without making a movement.

Her mother and the other children jumped out of bed and tried to disarm the father, but Lechien had had the time to put two bullets in his head and he then shot his last cartridge at his wife, but missed her.

The pistol now being empty, the murderer, covered in blood, wished to force one of his sons to give him some more cartridges, but he, on the contrary, got the weapon away from him.

Lechien had strength enough left to take to flight; he went and threw himself in the canal of Sars-les-Moines. His corpse was recovered this morning.

Le Petit Journal, Paris, July 4, 1899.

Appendix N

“Jean had been a master at Rocton, my father's school; he had left suddenly, and rumour said because he had been over-attentive to my mother. Jean Messel, my lover, had been, according to the gossip, my mother's lover also. Possibly it was only an idle tale, but as I watched the urbane Mr. Osborne placidly smoking his cigarette, I could not think that he was the man to speak lightly and at random on so serious a subject. Then again, Jean's hitherto inexplicable terror of my father; everything seemed to fit in. It was all very horrible, and my brain reeled as the thoughts rushed through it. I tried hard to disbelieve, but more and more surely the conviction became strong in me that it was true, and that this man, whose kisses had been so sweet upon my lips, had, twenty years ago, kissed the lips of my mother, the mother whose remembrance I cherished, through all my wickedness, beyond anything else on earth. The image of Jean, smiling, debonnaire, and handsome, swam in the misty curtain that hung before my eyes, and a great loathing for him rose up in my heart.

“The vision of the old red schoolhouse at Rocton, and the sundial garden, with its carven hedges, where I used always to imagine my mother walking, was continually with me; but now there was another figure in the garden-Jean, as I imagined him to have been twenty years ago, as handsome as a man could be. And then his arm came to be about my mother's waist; but, oh! the picture was too dreadful, and ran about the room in despairing efforts to distract my mind.”

“The Confessions of Nemesis Hunt.”

Society, London, August 12, 1899.

Appendix O

At the assizes of Troyes, Carlier, for indecently assaulting daughter who he had forced to be his mistress for nearly six years was condemned to twelve years penal servitude.

Le Journal, Paris, August 12, 1899.

Appendix P

AWFUL STORY OF A DAUGHTER'S SHAME.

One of the most horrible stories of immorality that could possibly be conceived was unfolded at the village of Cleasby, before Dr. J. S. Walton, coroner, Northallerton. It appears that a young woman named Margaret Eleanor Stott, aged twenty-three, was delivered of twins a fortnight ago, alleging the paternity of them to her father, a decrepit-looking old man of seventy-four years. Whether they were born dead or alive was open to question, but it seems that they didn't live long, for they were in the first instance placed in a box under the bed, then removed to an outhouse, and finally the whole circumstances revealed owing to the mother going to the vicar to ascertain if they could be properly buried in the church-yard. A sister, who should have proved an important witness as to the disposal of the bodies, and in fact as to whether the children were born alive, died the previous day. How it was the police were so long in obtaining information is rather strange, seeing that the affair has been the common gossip of the village for nearly a fortnight; in fact, the strange doings of the family have frequently been the cause of a good deal of gossip.

After briefly stating the facts to the jury, the coroner called:

Margaret Eleanor Stott, who stated that the children were hers by her father. They were born a fortnight ago that day, and at the birth the only person present was her sister Martha, who had died the day previously, and with whom she was sleeping. Witness had had another child two years ago, and it was still living, but the father of that was a young man at Darlington. Witness sent another sister for Mrs. Tumbull, but she was too busy to come, and no one else was sent for. This last sister referred to was but fourteen year of age, and she was sleeping with her father at the time. There were two rooms in the house, with beds in each of them. The occupants of the house were her father, herself, and two sisters and two boys. The sister who had died was nineteen, whilst the boys were aged four and two respectively. As the newly-born children did not move, her deceased sister picked them up, and put them in a little box under the bed, where they remained a day or two, after which her father buried them. Witness did not see him, but the sister who is dead told her. Witness dug them up last Monday night, and put them in a little house. In the afternoon of the same day Mrs. Smedley warned her that she would get wrong, and she then went to the vicar and asked if she could bury them in the churchyard. In reply to the coroner, she said she did not think the churchyard was the proper place at first. The boy in the house two years of age was hers, whilst the other boy belonged to an unmarried sister, Mary, aged twenty-one.

The Rev. T. Churchyard, vicar of Cleasby, stated that the first witness came to him at seven o'clock last Monday evening, and wanted to bury a “still-born child.” Witness asked her a few questions, as he had heard rumors in the village about the girl's father's conduct with her. He communicated with Dr. Johnson, of Darlington, who had attended the family, but he was from home. In the meantime he communicated with the guardian for the village, stating that he could not bury the child, and asked what he was to do. The guardian communicated with the police.

Dr. Walker, of Aldbrough, spoke to having seen the bodies that morning; but they were in such a decomposed state that he could not tell whether they had been born dead or alive.

After Jennie Stott, aged fourteen, had stated that she did not know the children were buried in the garden.

The jury expressed a desire to hear what the father had to say.

A police constable having requisitioned him, he replied, in answer to the coroner, that he “knew nothing about 'em, but he was blamed for being the father of the children.” Continuing, he said he first heard of it between ten and twelve o'clock on the day they were born. Martha, the deceased daughter, told him that Maggie was confined, and she said there were two children, both dead. He saw them the same morning, when they were put in a box in the bedroom where the daughter was. He next saw them in an outhouse three days afterwards, and in a callous, laughing manner, he exclaimed that he “took a look after them to see that the cats didn't get at them.” They were taken through the garden into the house. He had nothing to do with them, and they were never buried by anyone. He certainly never saw anyone bury them. Again assuming a laughing air, he said: “I took blame for them myself; they might be mine. I am blamed for it, but don't know.”

The Coroner, intervening, said he was not asking the witness what he was blamed for. He was a disgrace, and a good horsewhipping about his back would do him good. (Witness laughingly assented.) You are a disgrace to be their father, and your conduct here today is a disgrace also. I have done with you, you can go.

As the witness seemed in no hurry to go, he was removed from the court, the Coroner observing that the man had become such a sinner that he did not know what sin was.

The Foreman observed that it was generally understood in the village that all the children belonged to the old man.

The Coroner: For over forty years I have fulfilled the duties of coroner over this district, and during that time I have had many singular and serious cases in hand, but never during the whole course of my career have I heard of one to be compared with the rascality of that old villain. It is a wonder that the old women in the village did not take him and put him in the water. He added that he had intended to send a memorial to the Home Office on the subject, and it would be advisable for the jury to back him up. The old man was not worth talking to. He was nothing but a brute, and it was strange that in this country a man could seduce his own children without being punished, and there was no means of getting at him. A law for such offences did exist about 1650, but it had been repealed. He would write to the Home Secretary on the subject.

A verdict was then returned in accordance with the medical evidence to the effect that there was nothing to show whether the children had had a separate existence or not.

Subsequently the old man was brought back and severely lectured by the Coroner, who told him that in the whole course of his career he had never met with a bigger brute, or a more thorough old rascal. If the old women had tossed him into the Tees they would only have done their duty. (Applause.)

The Illustrated Police Budget,

London, August 26, 1899.

Appendix Q

INFAMOUS ACTS.

LA FERTÉ.-Recently we announced the arrest and condemnation of a young girl of fifteen, named Vial, living in the hamlet of Courcelles, charged with indecent exposure. It will be remembered that this girl had shown herself in a complete state of nudity.

The gendarmes, continuing their enquiry, have found against the girl Vial facts of such gravity and of such odious obscenity that we cannot give the details here.

The girl Vial and one of her friends, Jeanne Mahé, used two children nine years old to satisfy their mad passions; they had Lesbian habits, and the evidence of Louis Gabriel Vial and his sister Alice is frightful.

Gabriel Vial is own brother to the condemned girl!

Journal de Seine-et-Marne, September 14, 1899.

Appendix R

Monsieur Coudol has had a lucky escape! Monsieur Coudol, from Nantes, is fifty-six. In 1885, he got legitimately mated, but, inconstant and changeable, he soon abandoned his wife, who obtained a separation.

Monsieur Coudol then came to Paris. He was employed at the Montagnes Russes, then at the Moulin Rouge. Monsieur Coudol likes gaiety.

In this latter establishment lived a female dresser. Pretty? History is dumb on that point. Young? Still blooming, albeit she had a daughter of nineteen.

Monsieur Coudol fell in love with the dresser, madly in love. And when he leant that the young girl had no father, he offered to legitimize her by marrying her mamma.

The household lived peaceably.

Nevertheless, one fine day, the dresser got tired. Her husband had become insupportable. And did she not engage her affections elsewhere too? But what pretext could be invented to obtain a fine divorce?

Allow me to draw a gauzy veil.

The dresser confided her wish to her daughter.

The daughter made it her duty to help her mother. Together, they organized the indispensable little flagrant délit. The legitimized girl consented to play the principal part.

Monsieur Coudol fell into the trap. Two coachmen, taken as witnesses, bore testimony to the affair.

A demand for divorce was registered by Madame Coudol, of Paris, and during the suit the discovery of Madame Coudol, of Nantes, was made.

The bigamist of the Moulin Rouge has just been tried. But he pleaded with such good faith his ignorance of the difference that exists between separation and divorce that he benefited by a verdict of acquittal.

He won't be caught again!

Le Figaro, Paris, October 21, 1899.

Appendix S

“As for the adventure of Mademoiselle Rosine, of whom I spoke to you and which I got from being intimate with Victoire, it is far from being funny. Imagine that she is the daughter of a very rich jeweler. Naturally, we do not know the name, nor even in which quarter is the shop.

“She is just turned eighteen, and the father is a man of forty-four. I tell you the age, you shall see why by and bye. Well, then, the jeweler's wife dies and do you know how he arranged matters to replace her? Two months after the burial, one fine night, he goes and seeks his daughter Rosine. He quietly sleeps with her. That's a bit thick anyhow, isn't it? Such goings on are not uncommon among poor people, I know more than one at Grenelle who has been through the same thing, but among middle-class folks who have got money enough to treat themselves to all the women they want! And what sticks in my gizzard more than anything is not that the fathers ask for it, but that the daughters consent to it.

“Now Mademoiselle is so sweet, so amiable, that doubtless she did not wish to let her Papa suffer. Never mind, here they are both nicely trapped. They have placed her here as if in a prison. Nobody comes to see her, and you may well think that orders are given to juggle the child away. A fine bastard who will be able to show off in society!”

Fécondité, by Emile Zola, Paris,

Fasquelle, 1899, 12 mo. (P. 181).

Content

Jacky S
Suburban Souls, Book II

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Appendices