The whips are fetched out again, the two newcomers are armed with a pair of them. Sophia opens the assault by dealing me fifty rapid and powerful strokes. In the midst of her cruelty she preserved an unbelievable calm. After every ten stripes she would come around and gaze gleefully at my face, studying the effects necessarily wrought there by the ferocious pain she inflicted; once she was done she established herself in front of me, flung wide her thighs, bade her three consorts whip me as hard as she had just done, and during the ordeal she had herself frigged.
“One moment,” said she when the tally had risen nearly to two hundred lashes, “I am going to slip beneath him in order to suck him while the whipping continues; arrange yourselves in such a way that my clitoris gets a sucking in return from one of you and I have someone else’s clitoris to finger.”
The actresses take their place, the play begins … and, violently excited by the blows I was receiving, deliciously sucked by Sophia, I shall not pretend that before three minutes of this had gone by I had not filled her mouth with fuck; she swallowed it and promptly slithered out from under my belly.
“Emma,” she exclaimed, “he is charming, he discharged, I must now repay him with a fucking.”
A dildo is fitted around her loins, and here’s the whore in my ass, cunt-sucking two of her sweethearts while the third gives her cuntwardly what I am getting bumwise from her.
“You may release him now,” she said when at last she could stand no more. “Come kiss me, Borchamps,” the Messalina went on; “come express your gratitude, I have given you no end of pleasure. Nor is that all: I rarely treat a man with such forbearance. Poor child, all this that has just happened must be laid up alone to your puerile modesty. Just think of it! You have bedded I don’t know how many times with me, and always content to encunt me like any imbecile, not once has it ever seemed to enter your silly little head that I have an ass. Why, such a story would simply not be believed.”
“The desire made itself felt in me, Madame; but timidity held it in check.”
“A pity … a pity; modesty is no longer excusable at your age. But shall we let bygones be bygones? Will you make amends for your callowness, and forget my cunt a little in order to concern yourself a little with my ass? (She herewith turned around and showed it to me.) A pretty ass, is it not? See how smooth it is, how fair, and how it yearns for you—so fuck it, Borchamps. Take his prick, Emma, there’s a dear, and clap it into my ass.”
My response was to bestow a thousand kisses upon that truly superb behind; and my engine, trained by Emma upon the cunning little hole, shortly convinced Sophia of my burning eagerness to right past wrongs.
“Stay,” the Princess bade me, “’tis I who now wish to be slave to you, I shall place myself in the machine where a moment ago you were captive, now I shall be yours; exercise your rights, sultan, and take a keen revenge.” (The irons hold her wrists and ankles fast.) “Spare me not, I beseech you; punish at once the whorishness and the cruelty in me.”
“Buggeress!” I cried, divining her tastes, “it’s a lashing you want, and they shall be awful strokes you’ll get.”
“I do dearly hope so,” said she. “Touch the skin on my ass, see how it glistens, fairly cries out for the whip.”
“Aye, it is so,” said I, therewith dealing the first blow. And while I smote her with might and main the lovely Emma, kneeling before me, sucked my engine and the two girls of fifteen busied themselves about my ass. When Sophia’s was all in tatters, my furious device, bolting headlong into her anus, consoled her for my barbarity.
“Ah, fuck!” she shrieked, “how delicious to be embuggered directly after a whipping; nothing marries so happily as these two pleasures.”
Emma then advances upon her mistress, frigs her, kisses her, teats her, frigs herself, and we all three sink in a sea of delights.
“Borchamps,” the Princess said to me as we were readjusting ourselves, “there is, it seems to me, a certain community of spirit between us, and I feel less reluctant to confide myself to you.”
Upon a signal the young girls retired and we three having seated ourselves around a table, here as follows is the speech Sophia made to us the while we drank punch and genever.
“To ordinary souls, to small minds it will perhaps appear odd that as my device for sounding your character I choose lubricity. Surprise at that is ridiculous; if by misfortune this be your case, let me then tell you, my dear, that I never judge of what a man is in the course of life, save by his passions in libertinage. He whose fiery spirit displays energetic tastes is indubitably susceptible of resolute action where interest or ambition is the concern: you are hot-blooded and no dullard. Say, Borchamps, what are your politics regarding human life?”
“Princess,” I answered, “of what price was it in the eyes of the Duke of Alba when he undertook to subdue these provinces?”
“Delicious man,” said my ardent interlocutress, “such is the reply I wanted from you; I count upon your courage,” she added, squeezing my hand, “now listen to what remains for me to propose to you.
“Niece of Europe’s hero, sprung from the line of a man made to reign over the entire world, I bring to these Low Countries his soul, his vision, and his vigor; I presume that you recognize, Borchamps, that I am fitted for better than to be wife to a republican doge, and this soft, mercantile, and craven people, born to wear irons, ought to be honored by mine. I am nothing loath to reign over the Dutch, but the throne raised upon these humid plains must be wet also with their tears and built by their gold. One hundred armed battalions assure my project; Frederick is sending them from Königsberg. This revolution does not doom my husband’s head; he is worthy of me, and Batavia’s blood, shed in great floods, will cement the throne to which I pretend. It is therefore not the scepter I offer you; I simply propose to you the place of him who is to defend my keeping of it: you shall be our counselor, our minister, our strong right arm; the proscriptions will be dictated, executed by you: the post requires boldness; have you that quality in suitable measure? Answer as you are of a mind.”
“Madame,” said I after taking thought for a moment, “before fixing upon this startling act of power and authority, did it occur to you to inquire how this revolution might be viewed by the neighboring powers? The French, the English, the Spanish, the northern States also, who see in you mere courtiers and tradesmen, shall they sit calmly by and watch you become rivals and vanquishers?”
“We are sure of France’s attitude; we don’t care a fig for the rest. Once sovereign in the United Provinces we shall take the field against the three major kingdoms and perhaps bring them very quickly to their knees. Everyone trembles before a warlike nation; such shall ours become. One great man is enough to subject the world: there is that greatness in my soul, I have it from mighty Frederick. We here are weary of belonging to whoever bothers to invade us and of being the easy prize with which every European conqueror’s career begins.”
“Once given arms to repulse the cruelties of Spain, will the Dutch surrender them and suffer your tyranny?”
“Courts shall be set up, as they were by Alba. There is no other way to bring a people to heel.”
“Your subjects will flee the land.”
“I’ll have the property they leave behind. From the flight of rebels I stand only to gain; it will simplify the matter of maintaining my grip upon those who stay. My aim is not to become the quaking monarch of many, but to rule despotically, if need be over a few.”
“Sophia, I believe you cruel, and it is nought, I fear, but lust2 that fires you in this ambition.”
“Nearly all the vices in the heart of man have the same cause: all proceed from his more or less marked propensity to lubricity. This propensity, ferocious in a strong spirit, leads the solitary mortal, lost and alone in Nature’s wilderness, to perpetrate a thousand furtive horrors, and him who governs others, to perpetrate a thousand political crimes.”
“Oh, Sophia, I understand what it is you seek; ambition in you
is nothing else than the desire to lose your fuck with somewhat greater warmth.”
“Little does it matter what sentiment engenders ambition once it exists and is confirmed by a crown. But, my friend, if you reason thereupon, you waver; waver, and you tremble; and for him who trembles I have no use at all.”
Singularly aroused by Sophia’s propositions, taking a view analogous to hers in seeing herein sure means for exercising my native ferocity, I promised everything. Sophia embraced me, had me repeat the most solemn oaths to absolute secrecy, and we took leave of each other.
I went thoughtfully homeward; by the time I reached my lodgings I was beginning to sense the full danger of the engagements I had just contracted, and noticing that the risks involved in breaking them hardly outweighed those in keeping them, I spent the night in dreadful perplexity. There’s nothing for it, I said to myself, I am done for either way, the only solution lies in flight. Oh, Sophia, had you but proposed some private crimes, I’d gladly have committed them all, for with you as my accomplice I could have laughed at the law. But to expose myself to every imaginable risk only to be the agent of your despotism! No, woman, count not upon me. Ready I am and very willing to commit crimes for my passions’ sake, not one will I do to benefit the passions of others. When my refusal comes to your knowledge, tax Borchamps not so much with faintheartedness as with greatness of soul….
I stole out of the city that very night and made in all haste for the port nearest England. En route I was momentarily assailed by regrets: what with my profound liking for crime, it was hard for me to think I had declined Sophia’s offer of the political means for committing a lot of it. But I reminded myself that her projects had been rather too uncertain; and, in addition, that I would be happier operating for my own advantage than for that of some crowned individual.
Upon reaching London I took apartments in Piccadilly, where I had the misfortune, the very next day, of being robbed of every penny I had about me; this was a serious loss, since the previous week, in The Hague, I had cashed all my letters of credit. There was nothing else for me to do than set straight out with the letters of recommendation I had to various London notables, and to beg some aid at least for the short time it would take me to obtain funds from my sister.
From what I had heard tell of Lord Burlington I decided that this was the man to see first. When he had finished reading my letters, I recounted my woes; the good Englishman was prepared to do me every sort of service. Although Burlington was not very rich, one thousand guineas were his immediate offer, and he simply would not hear of my lodging anywhere except under his own roof. I accepted his invitation all the more readily for having already taken stock of this honest family and detected there a quantity of possibilities for repaying, in the form of crimes, the debt of gratitude I owed my benefactor.
Before entering into the details of the little infamies with which I was about to occupy myself, it is essential that I give you an idea of the persons in whose midst I had landed.
Burlington, the kindliest and most ingenuous of men, must have been nearing fifty-five; blithe, guileless, void of penetration, at once generous and a fool, such was my Lord’s portrait. A son-in-law and two daughters composed the rest of the household. Tilson, but twenty-three, had just wedded the elder of the girls, who was about the same age as he. They were a delicious couple the like of which Nature affords us only rare examples; charms, graces, naïveté, candor, piety, gentility, good breeding, nothing was lacking, and this personification of all the virtues assembled consoled Burlington for the wild conduct of Miss Cleontine, the younger of his daughters, at most eighteen years of age, and the loveliest creature you have ever clapped eyes on. But mischievousness, nay, downright wickedness, black whorishness carried to extreme lengths, those were Cleontine’s incorrigible vices; wherein she had the audacity to assert she was a thousand times happier than ever was Clotilda in her dull and tedious virtues.
Upon perceiving the girl’s delicious character I became straightway enamored of her, to the extent a man so corrupt as I could be enamored of anyone; but her father having confided to me all the heartaches this young person caused him, I found myself obliged to proceed with utmost circumspection.
Over and beyond the tumultuous impressions Cleontine was producing in my soul, Tilson’s pretty face and the graces of his charming wife remained ever clear in my eye, and if Cleontine inspired the more libertine desires in me, her brother-in-law and sister quickened the more sensual. I imagined Tilson’s ass as a masterpiece, and the desire to fuck him burned just as keenly in me as the idea of doing the same to his voluptuous partner. Set upon by all these various passions, it seemed to me that the proper way to satisfy them was to begin with Cleontine. Everything which can conspire to a woman’s downfall being already contained in the soul of her whom I was attacking as well as in my means for seduction, the dear child was quickly mine.
Nothing so fresh, nothing so plump, nothing so pretty as all the parts of that charming thing’s body, nothing so eloquent as the voice of her passions, nothing so lewd as her mind. There was a moment when, truly, I wondered whether I was not better behaved than she; whereupon, as you may readily imagine, there was no restriction to the pleasures we tasted; and Cleontine avowed to me that the more a delight seemed in conflict with the laws of Nature, the more it stimulated her lubricity.
“Alas!” she said one day, “I have come to the point where I find none strong enough to satisfy me.”
Her pretty ass was attacked on the spot, and the pleasures she gave me in that style were so piquant, so poignant, so thoroughly shared by her, that we came to the mutual agreement not to bother with any other sort.
So taken up was I over that beautiful girl’s charms that a year elapsed and I had still not dared communicate my projects to her, or at least had not thought to, so busily was I occupied with our affair. Burlington and I were quits, and for the better carrying out of my plans I had left his house and taken quarters nearby. He, his family, his children would pay me daily visits, and our intimacy became so great that my marriage to Cleontine was soon being rumored about town. Oh, but I was far from such a piece of folly! I was willing enough to amuse myself with that interesting creature, but marry her! ah no, never; only Lady Tilson excited that desire in me.
A wife, said I to myself, a wife can answer no purpose save that of serving us as a victim, and the more her beauty is of the romantic type, the better she is equipped for this role. And here is Clotilda. To see her in my clutches, ah, how it stiffens my prick; how marvelous she must be in tears! How delightful it must be to cause them to flow from such heavenly eyes. Oh, Clotilda, what an unhappy woman you shall be if ever you become mine.
These designs once formulated, it was henceforth only to help achieve them that I continued to cultivate Cleontine. To that end I could think of nothing better than to kindle in her a fancy for her brother-in-law and then to arouse his young wife’s jealousy. Cleontine admitted that she had now and then felt an urge for Tilson, but that the thought of his stupidity and virtuousness had always dashed cold water on her desires.
“But what does intelligence matter!” I replied. “Once beauty decorates an individual, there’s enough to warrant having him. Even as you see me now, Cleontine, I am dreaming of the world’s most wonderful ass, Tilson is its proprietor, and I am sweating from eagerness to fuck it.”
This idea diverted my mistress, and she was won over—put a few nasty thoughts in a woman’s head and there is nothing you cannot get out of her. A pang of jealousy, however, made her pause; she wondered if, taken by the husband, I might not perhaps become too fond of his wife; she questioned me.
“Come, come,” said I, feeling that prudence was needed here, “you are being extravagant. My eye alights on a pretty boy, the sentiment is purely material; but where it comes to women, my love for you, Cleontine, is not something from which I can swerve.”
My insipid compliments, the irregularity of my caprices, everything seduced Cleontine,
she served me; that was all I wanted of her. Before a month had passed my beloved Tilson was in my mistress’ arms; I watched him as he lay there, caressed him as he lay there, fucked him as he lay there; such scenes of libertinage occupied another month and then, the illusion gone and I having had my fill of them both, I began to dwell on schemes for undoing them, for including my benefactor in the holocaust, and for spiriting Clotilda away, taking her to the farthermost ends of the world to glut myself on the divine pleasures I awaited from her.
As the young woman positively worshiped her husband it was easy for me to strike sparks of jealousy into her soul: Lady Tilson listened to me, believed me, and when all I had left to do was convince her, the means stood ready to hand.
“Cleontine,” I said one day to my voluptuous whore, “shall I confess it to you, my love? I am fairly dying to marry you. The similarity between our two characters, our two temperaments, leads me to feel that we would be very happy together. But you are penniless, I am rich … and unless I am wholly mistaken, delicacy would forbid you from entering into a marriage unprovided with the blessings of fortune. There is a way, Cleontine, whereby you could swing this capricious fortune into your favor and hasten its gifts. Between you and wealth I see no more than three lives standing in the way.”
And noticing Cleontine wax drunk on the poison I was distilling into her soul, I bravely doubled the dose.
“Nothing simpler,” I went on, “than to get rid of Tilson. His wife is willful, headstrong, extremely jealous; she will not learn of her husband’s guilty dealings with you without furiously desiring to be revenged upon him; I will counsel her, I will furnish her what she needs; I see Tilson in his forefathers’ tomb before a week is out.”
“My sister is virtuous.”
“She is vindictive; her upright soul would not all by itself hatch the plot I shall suggest to her, but when warmly proposed by me she will seize what I offer her, be sure of it.”