FANNY:
“I have arrived at my fifteenth year very innocent, I swear to you; I had not even stopped to think about what might be the difference in the sexes.”
“I lived careless and happy, without a doubt, until one very hot day, being alone in the house, I felt something like a need to expand myself, to put myself at ease.
“I undressed and extended myself almost naked, upon a divan. . Oh! I am ashamed to tell you. . I stretched myself out, spread my thighs and agitated myself in every manner. All, alone, I formed the most indecent postures.
“The cover of the divan felt cool. Its freshness caused an agreeable sensation, a voluptuous con' tact all over my body. Oh! how freely I breathed, surrounded by that warm atmosphere, softly penetrating. What a sweet and ravishing voluptuousness. I was in a delicious ecstasy. It seemed to me that new life inundate my entire being, that I was stronger, larger, and that I inspired a divine breath, that I expanded in the rays of a beautiful sun.
ALCIDE:
“You are poetic, Fanny.”
FANNY:
“Oh! I describe my sensations exactly to you. My eyes erred complacently over myself, my hands fluttered- about my neck, my breasts. Still lower, they stopped, and I fell, despite myself into a strange reverie.
“The words 'love' and 'lover' repeated themselves incessantly, in an unexplained sense. “I finished by feeling myself alone. I forgot that I had parents and friends, I. felt an awful emptiness. I got up, looking sadly about me.
“I remained for some time pensive, the head drooping in a melancholy manner, the hands joined, arms hanging.
“Then I examined myself anew, touching myself and asking myself if all this did not have a purpose, and end. “Instinctively I understood that I lacked something that I could not define, but I wanted it, I desired it, with all my soul.
I must have looked wild, for sometimes I laughed frenziedly; my arms opened as if to seize the unknown object of my desires; I went so far as to embrace myself. I enlaced myself, caressed myself; I felt the need of something absolutely real, some body to seize, to press; in my strange hallucination I hugged myself, believing it to be another.
“Through the windows I could see, in the distance, the trees and fields and I was tempted to go out and roll on the ground, to loose myself, airily, in the leaves. I contemplated the heavens and desired to fly in the air, to melt into the azure, to mix myself with the clouds, the heavens, the angels. I think I went crazy; my blood flew, burning to my head.
“Distracted, transported, I threw myself upon the cushions. I held one pressed between my thighs, I clasped another in my arms; I kissed it crazily, I embraced it passionately, I believe I even smiled at it in my intoxication, I was so dominated by my feelings. All at once I stopped, trembling; it seemed that I melted, flowed away. Ah! I cried, My God! Ah, .! and I got up, suddenly frightened.
“I found that I was all wet.”
“Being unable to understand what had happened to me, I believed that I was wounded, I was afraid. I threw myself on my knees, supplicating God to grant me pardon if I had done anything wrong.
ALCIDE:
“Amiable innocent! Have you never told any one what so badly frightened you?”
FANNY:
“No! Never! I could not. I was still ignorant till just when you revealed to me the secret of the enigma.”
ALCIDE:
“Oh, Fanny! that avowal fills me with happiness. My friend, receive again that proof of my love! Gamiani, excite me so that I can inundate this young flower with the celestial dew.”
GAMIANI:
“What fire! What ardor! Fanny! you faint already? Oh!. . she spends!. . She spends!”
FANNY:
“Alcide! Alcide! I die. . I. .”
And the sweet voluptuousness swallowed us in an intoxication that bore us to the heavens. After a few moments of repose to calm the senses I began to speak in these terms:
“I was born of young and robust parents. My infancy was happy, exempt from tears or illness; and so at the age of thirteen years I was already a man, The thorns of the flesh already began to make themselves vividly felt.”
“Destined to the church, raised in all the rigors of the principals of chastity, I combated with all my strength the first desires of my senses. My flesh was awakened, irritant, powerful, imperious, and I macerated it pitilessly.”
“I condemned myself to the most rigorous fasting. But at night, in my sleep, Nature obtained her relief, and I frightened myself, thinking I had been guilty of bringing some disorder upon myself. I redoubled my fasting, and gave particular attention to putting all baneful thoughts out of my mind. This opposition, this interior combat, finished by making me dull and stupid. My enforced continence gave to all my senses a sensibility, or rather an irritation that I had never before known.”
“I often suffered from vertigo. It seemed that all objects were turning around, and I with them. If, by hazard, I chanced to see a young woman, she appeared to me to be vividly illuminated and surrounded with a fire like electric sparks.”
“The humor, more and more heated and too abundant, was carried to my head, and the particles of fire with which it was filled struck vividly against the lenses of my eyes, causing there a sort of shining mirage.” “This lasted during several months, when, one morning, I suddenly felt a shock in all my members, a contraction and violent tension, followed by fearful and convulsive movements like those that ordinarily accompany an epileptic fit. The dazzling lights returned with greater brilliance than ever. . I saw at first a black circle turning rapidly before me, then enlarge and become immense; a light, lively and intense escaped from the axis of the circle and illuminated the whole space.”
“I discovered a horizon without bounds, a vast, inflamed heaven transversed by a thousand floating flames that all fell resplendent in a rain of gold, shining with sapphire, emerald and azure.”
“The fire died out; a dawn, blue and vaulted came to replace it; I seemed to swim in a soft, limpid light, soft as the pale reflection of the moon on a summer's night, when behold, from the far distance hastened toward me, vaporous, aerial, like a. flock of golden butterflies, infinite myriads of naked young girls, shining and fresh, transparent as alabaster statues.” “I threw myself before these sylphs, but they escaped me, laughing and playful; their delicious groups melting for a moment into the azure and then again reappearing, more lively, more joyous; charming bouquets of ravishing figures, each of which gave me a winning smile, a malicious look.”
“Little by little the young girls were eclipsed; then came to me fair women of the age of love and tender passions. Some, lively and animated, with ardent eyes and palpitating bosoms; others, pale and drooping the virgins of Ossian. Their bodies, slender, voluptuous, covered with gauze. They seemed to be dying of languor and waiting; they opened their arms to rile, but escaped me always.”
“I agitated myself lubriciously on my couch; I raised myself on my knees and my hands shook my glorious priapus. I spoke of love, of pleasure, in the most indecent terms; memories of the classics were, for instance, mixed with my dreams, I saw Jupiter on fire, Juno handling his thunder: I saw all Olympus in rut, in disorder, pell-mell strange; afterward I witnessed an orgy, a hellish bacchanal; in a deep and somber cavern, lighted by stinking torches with a reddish glow, with blue and green tints reflected hideously on the bodies of a hundred devils, shaped like goats with forms grotesquely lubricious.”
“Some, thrown from a spring-board, fell on a woman, penetrating her suddenly with their whole dart and causing her the sudden convulsion of a rapid, unexpected spending. Other, more wanton, upset a prude headforemost, and all, amid insane laughter, with the aid of a mallet, forced into her a large priapus of fire, martyring her with an excess of lustful pleasure. Again I saw others who, match in hand, lighted frightful members that were received unflinchingly between the out spread thighs of frenzied she-devils.”
“The most evil of the band attacked a Messalin by her four members, and gave himself up, before her, to all the joys, to the most expressive pleasures. The unfortunate one twisted herself, furious, foaming at the mouth
