quite naked, without a rag left on your body, and put on the belt I'll give you.”
She pulled out a drawer in a chiffonier and soon put her hand on a strange sort of girdle, fashioned in black elastic silk.
“Now, I'll leave you to yourself. I shall be back in five minutes. Mind you're ready.”
I was not long stripping until I was in the same state as Adam before he was tempted. I examined the most original black belt. I had never seen anything like it before.
It was a narrow elastic ribbon, encircling the loins like an ordinary belt, closing in front by means of a buckle. When it was on, a second elastic band dropped down vertically. This strip of material was wider in the middle, forming a kind of pocket; and then it gradually grew more narrow until it was finished off by another buckle. I understood that this last ribbon had to be passed between the thighs, and its extremity brought up on the belly to rejoin the waist-buckle.
This invention, like all other Yankee notions, was excessively ingenious. The weird girdle fulfilled a twofold purpose. A man wearing it could stand naked before a woman without putting her to the blush, because his private parts were packed away, hidden in the rounded pocket. On the other hand certain delicate manly organs were sheltered from the contact of the rod, and the vertical ribbon separating the two posterior gloves, enhanced those hinder portions of the masculine frame specially destined to receive the cutting caress of the painful twigs.
I could do naught else than inwardly congratulate the unknown inventor of this most practical belt, of great service to birching-or rather birched-amateurs.
Thus armoured, I bravely showed myself to the young servant-girl who paid no more attention to me than if I had been in evening dress.
She stood on a chair, and released a rope hanging over a pulley that I had not hitherto remarked in the centre of the ceiling. She then took two leathern bracelets garnished with eyelet holes and laces, such as are use by athletes. Each of these cuffs was finished off with a metal ring. Fastening these gauntlets tightly round my wrists, she passed the end of the cord dangling over my head through the two iron circlets, and hauled me up. I was hanging with my arms in the air and my feet just off the ground, in such a way that I could turn about in every direction, but without being able to stoop or get away.
“Miss Florence will attend to you in a moment,” was the stereotyped remark of the lovely little creature, as she disappeared with a frisky step.
CHAPTER VIII
There was a large mirror in the room of punishment. I could see myself from head to foot, suspended by the arms; quite naked, with the exception of the peculiar belt, tracing deep black lines on my body; splitting my hind quarters into two well-defined halves. I must have looked like an acrobat hanging from his trapeze apparatus. Turning slowly round to inspect myself on all sides, I saw that my freshly-birched, dark red buttocks stood out in deep contrast to the dead-white tint of the rest of my skin. Nevertheless, I hungered still for the burning smart that I had not fully experienced, and I gloated over the sight of two new, grand rods that the pretty girl had placed on a chair, side by side with a riding-whip.
The door opened. The superb female executioner came in, again attired in her tight black dress which clung so deliciously to her perfect frame.
“I am about to prepare you for punishment! Look out!”
So saying, she came near to me with a firm step, holding a martinet in each hand.
Scarcely were the words out of her mouth, when I felt myself enwrapped with a shower of hot blows. The heavy lashing of the two martinets was bestowed upon my flesh with unparalleled velocity, sweeping all over me with their numerous thongs, from shoulders to loins; then thighs to feet, on which I hopped despairingly, first on the right then on the left.
I twisted round and round like a mad dervish, under the rain of the white-hot serpents that stung me with their painful darts on all sides, and the clever whipping creature laid on her blows with mathematical precision, cut following cut with scarcely an interval. Every part of my body was inflamed, with the sole exception of the very spot where I wished to feel the fustigation.
In vain I turned toward the cruel flogging female those hinder parts of mine that palpitated with the desire to be assaulted. She cunningly avoided striking my backside. Both her martinets were plied above and below, so as to cause my suffering to increase. I stamped and howled, in a sudden fit of real rage, trying to place myself in such a way as to receive a stroke of relief on my poor bottom. I never succeeded, and my fury thus grew more frenzied.
All of a sudden, my flagellating lady threw her martinets from her, and left the room without speaking. I felt stupefied, not knowing what to think. The young chambermaid now appeared. Climbing on a chair, she freed my arms.
“Lie down-flat on your face-on that bench,” she told me.
By this I guessed at last that the whipping woman was coming back to quench the feverish thirst that tortured and devoured me. This long interval was infinitely terrible. I could hardly put up with it. While waiting, it seemed as if every inch of my skin was burning with flames even more ardent than when Miss Florence had flogged me with her martinets. The parts she had spared felt swollen, like big balloons. Every pore was open-a thousand tiny mouths seeking for breath.
The pretty minx had concluded her work of tying me down. She made as if about to go. Feeling myself under the spell of insensate desire, I begged the obliging maid to take pity on me and give me a few stout cuts with a whip before leaving the room.
“I'm sorry, sir” she said dryly, “but that's not my business.”
Sketching a stiff curtsey, she flew out of the chamber.
When finally the door did open, I saw the irreproachable mistress of the house again. I thought that the archangel Gabriel had arrived in person, to save me from hell, and take me straight into paradise.
“I'm now going to apply one hundred strokes of the birch, and twenty cuts with my whip,” she said.
Her words fell on my ears like celestial music.
“Look out!”
The first blows, rained down with her usual firmness, cutting and lacerating my buttocks, were a sublime relief. I arched my loins, enjoying the heavenly dew of birching blows that refreshed my body athirst for flagellation. Oh, what a beautiful birch-rod it was! How divinely did it beat me, wounding me with its incandescent points and bounding off again, like a storm of boiling raindrops.
The beautiful flogging woman kept on castigating me, beating time to some unknown measure in her mind; dealing me the fifty blows, the barbarous, beautiful creature took a few moments' well-earned rest. She was impassible and calm; her eyes full of a faraway expression as she appeared to be plunged in some profound reverie of remembrance.
She then drew herself up to her full height, and passed round to the other side of my prostrate body. The regular swishing of the second rod tingled my bottom in its turn, torturing me with its sharp ends. It was terrible and delicious, at one and the same time. Maddening pain, mingled with ineffable sensual joy, made my flesh throb and beat with strange lewd pulsations.
I yelled, and twisted myself about, thousands of incandescent sparks sinking deep into the skin of my stern, while the rod never ceased slashing away at me with its harmonious and inflexible rhythm.
When Miss Florence dropped her second rod, I was on fire. My body was contorted like that of a sufferer of epilepsy. She seized the whip. I heard it hiss through the air and then with a sonorous, slashing sound, it came down dealing terrible cuts on my bruised bum. I writhed under the awful avalanche of blows. Every one of my joints ached. The rigid queen of flagellation, crossing over to the other side of the bench, let me have the remaining ten cuts, dealt with unchanging vigour. The last put an end to all the straining efforts of my tormented body. I lay inert, after one superhuman bounding effort, casing the bench to rock like a boat in a storm.
The moment after, my awe-inspiring mistress of the martinet had disappeared. The young girl came in, and liberated me from my bonds. She begged me not to get up, as she wished to attend to my a little.
Fetching tepid water and a sponge, she wiped away the flow of blood that stood out in ruby beads on my
