He was far from imagining that Choisy and Lisette were going to spring a trap on him into which he was about to fall as easily as a naive youngster.
Lisette had been busy trying to find a replacement for Choisy, one who would not suffer unduly from the gigantic size of d'Haucourt's limb. She had noticed in the neighborhood a laundress whose mouth looked like a sabre gash, which was a promising sign. Besides, her body was rough-hewn and course, Lisette hired her as a laundress, and, after a few days work, she deemed the moment ripe to ask her the burning question. Zoe (that was the laundress's name) laughed lasciviously and said:
— I nearly married the valet of a curator once, but I had to give him up for he was… sort of lost inside, if you see what I mean.
— Quite, said Lisette.
And a bargain was concluded there and then. And d'Haucourt fell into the trap with the ingenuousness of a man who thinks that because he has a sword dangling from his side, he is invulnerable.
Choisy, having invited d'Haucourt to supper, showed herself so coquettish with him, and “she” was so attractively dressed and perfumed that evening, that d'Haucourt became pressing, which is what Choisy wanted. He gave a successful parody of carnal emotion and, as soon as the other guests had left, he kept d'Haucourt aside and told him:
— They're talking a lot about ourselves. I think we should have at last a frank explanation, don't you?
— What kind of a trap are you preparing for me this time? asked d'Haucourt.
— I wanted to see what stuff you were made of, Choisy replied with an incendiary look, you see, you had drawn me to that village — Meudon?
— I'm prepared to forget it, but my pride made me fix up myself the moment when-need I say more?
Choisy lowered her head (I mean his head. Oh dear, it's confusing!) looking troubled, which made the knight blush and become all agog.
— My dear, please forgive me. All I did was dictated by the interest I have in you, you see-He was getting more and more muddled in his unnecessary explanations, nervous as he was with his sexual desire. At last he exclaimed:
— Please don't keep me waiting any longer!
Choisy got up from his chair and, pressing a handkerchief to his lips to hide his incipient laughter, whispered:
— This will be our Eden.
And he indicated his room to his suitor. As d'Haucourt went in he saw a bed with the curtains drawn and the sheets open.
— At last! he sighed.
D'Haucourt quickly undressed and slipped into the tempting bed and waited patiently, but not for long. A feminine silhouette appeared, wrapped in a dressing gown, her face concealed behind a timid hand, the candles were extinguished and d'Haucourt received in his arms a body dressed only in a thin night-gown. A greedy mouth met his.
He wondered a bit that his hands should encircle a plumper shape than he would have imagined, but he soon stopped thinking when he felt a hand seizing his sex and caressing it boldly. Then he thought that the way women dressed was deceptive and they were often quite different when they were naked. Nevertheless he ventured:
— You don't seem to be the same…
But Zoe did not answer. Instead she caressed him into oblivion of anything else but the matter in hand (and a very big matter it was, too!). She rolled on to her back and drew him to her. He carefully approached, knowing that his beloved would suffer from the forceful entry of his ugly rod. But Zoe was drawing him to her so insistently that he went in and was surprised to see that he needn't have worried-she seemed to like it, and it wasn't unduly narrow inside. Then he stopped thinking, for, after only a few thrusts, he came in gigantic spurts.
He remained a moment too dazed to think or move, then, when he had gradually recovered, he whispered with gratitude:
— Really, darling, I was far from imagining that we were so suited to each other.
Zoe, well-rehearsed, contented by herself with murmuring in a voice that was low enough not to betray her:
— Hush, you're making me blush.
And immediately she started exciting d'Haucourt again in such a way that he gave up solving the mystery. This Mrs. de Sancy, who knew so expertly how to handle a sword, and who had kept him waiting so long, was now revealed as a very hot female indeed, and so expert-all that was too complicated for him. Wasn't it better to give up trying to understand and concentrate on the singularly good fortune that had suddenly befallen him?
And he did just that. He continued making love with that hot woman until she had drawn from him every ounce of his virility. After which, he slept like a log and Zoe left him in bed, while she went to get the monetary reward which she had well earned.
The same joke was played on d'Haucourt several times, but with variations. For instance, Lisette would wait for him at the door and lead him mysteriously to the room where Zoe, in complete darkness, was waiting for him in bed.
The readers (if they are still with us, that is), may wonder indeed how foolish men are to pursue and worry about some woman, when, to satisfy their passion, any other woman would do, provided they didn't see her in the dark and imagined she was the woman they loved. It's a bit like butter and margarine. We all say that there is so much difference between the two that it is impossible to take one for the other, and yet, in all experiments conducted on that subject, it is found that less than ten percent can distinguish between one and the other. Another experiment is to blindfold a man and make him smoke a lighted cigarette for a few seconds, then an unlighted one, then alternate one and the other and tell him to name which is lit and which is not: believe it or not-he's fooled most of the time.
For a woman, though, we should imagine it would be more difficult to fool a man into taking a woman for another in bed in complete darkness. But perhaps not after all, particularly if the other woman resembles the genuine one in size and if the man has never before made love to her, and provided she wears the same perfume and doesn't speak. I wonder, have any of you readers tried it with a friend? And was he fooled?
Farces of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are full of these deceptions of a man or a woman taking the place of another in bed with the other party getting wise to the substitution.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
But the shortest jokes are the best, we all know that. So, Choisy wished to find a way of ending his would- be liaison with the knight of d'Haucourt who was now beginning to become openly familiar with him in public and talked about his conquest to one and all.
Choisy did not hesitate-Mrs. de Sancy would have to disappear. There was also another motive: Mrs. de Sancy had accumulated a good deal of debts what with her luxurious life and her numerous invitations to her salon, and the creditors were becoming impatient.
Her disappearance was facilitated by the death of the Pope.
That might seem strange but then Choisy had a protector who was the Cardinal of Bouillon, duke of Albret and nephew of the great Turenne. The cardinal had to go to Rome to take part in the conclave which was going to assemble in order to elect the successor of Clement X, the deceased pope. He offered Choisy to take him as a secretary and it was a heaven-sent opportunity for Choisy who accepted readily. He donned again his abbot clothes, for, as we have already mentioned, Choisy was an abbot by his being an heir to the ground of an abbey, that of Saint-Rene in Burgundy.
One morning, the creditors found Mrs. De Sancy's house closed. The rumour ran that she had retired to a convent. In reality Choisy was travelling with the cardinal in the direction of Rome.
He left behind two victims: Lisette, who could not decently accompany a man of church in such a mission, and the knight D'Haucourt who was very sorry to lose a mistress made to measure for him.
