serenely beautiful so far as the elements were concerned. There was no wind, the sun was warm even as it climbed in its early journey over the heavens, and the radiant blue sky looked down upon the little village of Languecuisse.
As for myself, I looked down from my little corner of repose to regard Dame Margot and her worthy benedict Guillaume wrapped in each other's arms. The sheets were awry and rumpled and profusely stained with their many offerings to Venus and Priapus the night before. It was evident that both of them were lusty lovers and that Dame Margot was sufficiently endowed with energy and zeal to give a good accounting of herself in the wine vat just as she had done in the bed of love. She had been amply fucked many times that night returning to each bout with the same frenzy she had taken to the first. Her cunt was hungry for cock, without a doubt.
I decided to attend the festival and to examine the contestants before deciding what role I should play. After having listened to the conversation of Lucille and Margot and their husbands, I was not too greatly concerned with their boasting or their wagers. Both couples had a sanguine outlook which would prevent dire deeds of dark jealousy should one or the other persuade the other wife or husband to transfer, temporarily of course, carnal allegiance. Between Lucille and Margot, there was no particular reason why I should choose to befriend one over the other. What interested me far more was this Laurette Boischamp whom Jacques Tremoulier had praised as an exemplary paragon of all the feminine virtues and of beauty. If, as I had heard, this exquisite damsel was fated to wed a doddering old fool, then perhaps it was best that I intervene on her behalf to protect her tender maidenhood from the ravages and despoilment by this detestable Monsieur Claude Villiers.
I left the cottage of the Noirceaux and moved about the little village, familiarizing myself with it and at the same time enjoying the good warm French sun. By noontime, the crowd was already gathering just outside the long, low edifice where the grapes were stored after harvest and ultimately bottled. This establishment was of course owned by the patron of the village, the same Monsieur Villiers. It stood about a quarter of a kilometer from the first vineyard, and at a considerable distance from the last of the many little cottages which made up this pleasant panorama. The foreman of the vineyard, who was a sort of overseer, a burly brute of a man with beetling eyebrows, a massive chin and beady, suspicious little eyes, was ringing a cowbell to summon all the workers to enjoy a lunch of bread and cheese and wine furnished them by their estimable and charitable patron himself. There were tables and benches, and some of the wives of the villagers acted as cupbearers, modern Hebes, so to speak, moving about with jugs of wine and filling the cups of those who sprawled on the benches ogling them. I saw many a hand reach out shyly under a skirt or into a blouse during this festivity, and it spoke well for the ardent temperament of these villagers of Provence. The warm sun and the good wind and the generous exposures of tempting female flesh began to evoke a kind of bucolic orgy. Several of the couples, after they had eaten and drunk their fill, crept away from the benches and made their way either to a large barn to one side of the storage building or boldly went into the hedges surrounding the first vineyard, where they fell on each other without more ado and coupled heartily and swiftly. And then, their tensions thus immediately alleviated, they rearranged their rumpled clothing and made their way back to the benches to await the principal ceremony.
Finally, about two in the afternoon, the foreman, whose name I had learned was Hercule Portrille, rang the bell once more to summon the attention of all the gaping spectators. He then announced in a bellowing voice that could have been heard a league around that the excellent Monsieur Villiers would speak to them all to open the contest and give it his blessing.
I had found myself a place of concealment near a discarded and emptied bottle of wine near the little platform on which this brawny overseer stood to address his subordinates. When I beheld the patron, my sympathies were immediately with Laurette, though till this moment I had not laid eyes upon her. He was easily sixty if he was a day, he was nearly bald, with a circular fringe of white hair about his bony skull which gave him a most repulsive look, and his face was cunning and without the least redeeming quality of compassion or good fellowship so far as I could tell. A sharp pointed nose, thin ascetic lips, watery blue eyes that peered suspiciously at his workers as if begrudging this brief charity of dispensing food and wine as well as working time to such a gathering at the cost of his own cashbox. In a word, Monsieur Claude Villiers was not the kind of lover whom maidens would ever praise in their orisons; he would be more likely to figure in their jeremiads.
His voice was reedy and cracked, like a broken flute, as he mounted the platform, surveyed his menials with a frosty smile, and bade them welcome to the annual harvest of the good grapes of Languecuisse. “I now declare the contest open, and I wish all of you bonne chance!” he concluded. “To the winner, as has already been announced, will go a dozen bottles of my very finest wine as well as a full month of free rental on the cottage in which she is fortunate enough to dwell.”
“The old fool,” murmured a handsome, brown haired matron who sat at the end of the bench nearest the bottle on which I perched. “He does not mention that he expects to fuck her whose comely feet press out the most wine from the grapes in her vat. If he did, I have no doubt only the greediest of wives would enter such a competition, for bedding with M'sieur Villiers would be worth much more than a month of free rental. It would be an ordeal in itself to make such a withered prick stand at attention, mark my words.”
“Have you not heard, Dame Caroline?” her neighbor across the table, a stout, pleasant-faced beldame with graying black hair but yet voluptuous curves of bosom and haunch to boast of, countered. “It is certain to be the fair Laurette, because that old fool intends to wed her. He has told Hercule to put fewer grapes into Laurette's cask than in those of all the others. Doubtless he wishes to sample his prize in advance and also accustom the unfortunate wench to her future duties.”
The matron called Caroline threw back her head and laughed, revealing strong white teeth. “Then I would say that M'selle Laurette should implore her dear maman to instruct her in the art of milking a man's prick with her lips, since assuredly that old boar, randy though he may become, will never in the world be able to manage sufficient strength to thrust it into her cunt.”
“Especially if, as I am certain she does, she still retains her hymen,” was the laughing retort.
Now everyone was in a pleasant mood and awaited the contest. There were in all fifteen contestants, including good Dame Lucille and Dame Margot. The stamping grounds, to speak literally, were placed at the eastern side of this long, low forum, so that the contestants would not have the disadvantage of having the sun in their eyes, for by now it was the full middle of this September afternoon. A long low platform had been constructed and on it stood fifteen large wide wooden casks, broader than ordinary barrels, each with its own spigot and funnel through which would flow the pressings of the purple, red and green grapes which the comely feet of these contestants from Languecuisse would tread. The platform was raised about two feet from the ground, and just in front of and under the platform were fifteen stone vats into which the liquid pressings from the casks would fall, since the spigots and funnels were connected by a kind of heavy cloth hose down into the vats. Thus the judge— who would naturally be the patron himself—might walk along and observe immediately the success or failure of each contestant.
The damsels and matrons who were to take part stood off to one side while the burly foreman assigned each to her proper cask, each of which had been numbered with red paint. Dame Margot drew the very first, and her friend and neighbor, Dame Lucille, the second.
I watched with interest as the glowering Hercule led each contestant to her properly assigned cask. Because of his fearsome size and scowling face, his position as overseer undoubtedly gleaned him not only concerted labor in the vineyard, but also, no doubt, enforced surrender to his virile cock whenever his passion demanded respite between the warm suntanned thighs of these handsome matrons. He was of the bullying sort, the kind who might accuse an industrious female worker of not having picked her quota of grapes and threaten her with dismissal or a stoppage of her wages unless, of course, she was willing to give him compensation from her own moist cunny. And when I espied the way in which he would help the contestants to clamber into her cask while cupping a breast or squeezing a buttock or even boldly passing his hand down over her crotch under pretext of assisting her in hoisting up her skirts, I vowed to bite him where he would feel it and so take his lecherous mind off the doubtless orgiastic thoughts teeming in his brutal brain. At last came Laurette, who was to have the fifteenth cask. I noticed, however, that he took her by the hand and led her as a gallant might lead a marchioness through the first measures of the waltz at a festive ball. That was because, of course, fair Laurette was the affianced of the patron, lord of all the village. He tried none of his lecherous tricks with her, I warrant you. All of the contestants showed off their flesh generously to the warm sun. All wore skirts of white cotton that lowered just to the edges of their knees, and their blouses bared the shoulders and were yawningly cut to let the spectators feast their eyes on their favorite fruits of the vine, whether they be round or pearshaped or apple-like or melon and cantaloupe-contoured juicy fruits of love. If one could foretell by the ardent glances alone from the males who watched avidly from their benches, nine
