bony chin with an equally bony hand, passed slowly along the platform, not without casting many a covert glance upwards—especially at those wenches who had been shameless enough to bare their cunts. Finally he stopped at Laurette's vat, looked upwards and forced what passed for a beaming smile to his dry lips. Then he turned to the crowd and announced in his reedy, dry voice, “I declare M'amselle Laurette Boischamp the winner, since her vat contains more wine than any of the others. Hercule will lead her to my house this night to claim her prize.”
There were jeers and hisses, but those who uttered them took care not to let the patron catch them in the act, lest they pay dearly for such contempt of him who paid their wages and collected the rents on their humble cottages. As for Margot and Lucille, they angrily burst out into a tirade, each accusing the other of coming out second best, and both called upon their husbands to adjudge. Both those worthy men, after peering at the vats, came to the conclusion that it was Dame Margot whose vat contained more juice. And so Guillaume helped Lucille down, while Jacques, grinning from ear to ear, assisted Margot out of her cask and let his hands roam over her jouncy, oval bottom cheeks. Yes, I had no doubt that there would be a change of marital partners this very night— one accomplished in full harmony and with the accord of all concerned.
As for fair Laurette, it was the brawny overseer who, at the order of the patron, aided her to emerge from her cask. He was most circumspect in handling her luscious charms, for though he was probably a terror with the women when left to his own devices and making full use of his authority, he could not risk offending his master. Laurette blushed, her eyes downcast, sensing what prospect awaited her at the patron's house this night. Her parents came forward now to congratulate her. Her father was a thin man with spectacles, who looked like a cleric, and her mother was stout and something of a virago. No doubt it was the latter's insistence that had compelled poor Laurette to accept so meager a husband.
CHAPTER SIX
The roistering had died away and the sun had set on the little village of Languecuisse. I had made my way, at the conclusion of the grape-treading contest, to the humble cottage of the Boischamps, where I crept unnoticed into the bedchamber of the fair Laurette and reposed upon the thin pillow where she was wont to lay her golden head at night without male companionship. This night was to change such circumstances. Yet you would have thought, seeing her so mournful while her mother fretted about her, that she was being prepared for execution on the guillotine. There were tears in those cerulean blue eyes which crept down the soft round cheeks of that sweet, innocent face. The red full lips trembled with woe, as her mother chided her in a most officious contralto voice, “Do you stand still, Laurette! Ventre-Saint-Gris! M'sieu Villiers will grumble if he sees your eyes red from weeping. Why, girl, it is an honor which every maiden in Languecuisse envies you this night. Imagine! To be invited to the house of the patron himself, and just think that you have won a full month of rent on our home for your industrious work in the cask this afternoon. And just think of those bottles of wine! How your dear father and I will enjoy them!”
“That is all very well, chere Maman,” Laurette sighed in as sweet and languorous a voice as I have ever heard from a maiden, “but you know very well that I detest M'sieu Villiers and I do not want to be his wife at all.”
“You exasperating minx, take care lest I box your ears,” the mother cried in great dudgeon. “Pere Mourier is to read the banns from his pulpit after High Mass next Sunday, as you well know, and you will be wed ten days later in the good Church, with your poor father and mother overcome with joy to see your ascent from the poor and cast-down to the most exalted. Why, think, child, you will be rich! You will have beautiful gowns to wear, jewels, the finest of food. You may even journey to Paris, which your father and I have never seen and never shall because we are too poor. And you complain, ungrateful girl!”
“But all those joys are for you and Father,” Laurette entreated sorrowfully, “for it is I who will have to share M'sieu Villers' bed, not you.”
Her mother slapped Laurette's soft cheek drawing a piteous cry from the unhappy maiden. “You impertinent baggage! You are not yet too old to taste the strap on your naked bottom, girl, so cease this wailing and stupidity at once, or I shall have your father attend to you this moment! And then how will it look when you go to the house of the patron with an aching bottom under your finest skirt and drawers?”
“But I don't love him, Maman,” Laurette again uselessly protested, wringing her hands in despair. “Didn't you love papa when you married him?”
“It is the duty of a wife to attend her husband in all circumstances of sickness and health,” her mother piously enjoined. “As to your father, I learned to love him after we were wed, and as a consequence you came from my womb. Tell yourself that you are fortunate in providing comfort for your parents in their old age after all the labor and the many sous they have expended upon you during your childhood. You have won redemption in the heavens for this good deed. As for love, bah—what is that? All men are alike in the dark betwen the sheets, as are all women. You will soon find this out, but I do not need to tell you your duties, for Pere Mourier who is your confessor will remind you with what obligations a young bride must be burdened when she accepts the holy state of matrimony. Yet by accepting them, Laurette you are guaranteed a happy future. Come now, let me see you smile again. Things are not so bad. Old M'sieu Villiers will not live forever, and if you are discreet, there are ways of having your pleasure with another lover. But mind you do not disgrace your married name or bring shame upon your parents.”
“But I would rather marry Pierre,” Laurette insisted a last time and earned herself a slap on the other cheek, which left roses amongst the lilies and drew yet another woeful cry.
“That no-account bastard! What future could you have with him, except to bring forth a parcel of brats into this cruel world?” her mother indignantly ranted. “It is simply by the goodness of his heart that the patron gives that miserable young wretch employment. He lollygags about, hardly does a good day's work, and I am told he spends his time actually trying to write sonnets to his lady love. If ever I hear that your name appears in those sonnets, Laurette, bride though you may be of the good patron, I shall bid him thrash you well for sullying our good name and his. Now, get a bit of powder on your cheeks. I have some rice powder, saved from my own wedding years ago, and it will do well for this occasion. And then Hercule will escort you to the patron's house.”
But at this moment, as happy fortune would have it, there was a knock on the door of the Boischamp cottage, and when Laurette's mother opened it, she found a little boy as harbinger of tidings from the patron himself. It appeared that the overseer had been taken ill of a sudden and was confined to his bed, and therefore the charming M'amselle Laurette would go unattended to the house of the patron at her earliest convenience so that he might accord to her the prize she had so gloriously carried off this afternoon. Laurette's mother's frown showed that this news was not especially welcome. She had hoped for greater honor for her daughter by being escorted by the overseer himself. But since this was not possible, it was important only that Laurette reach the patron's house so that the ceremonial and prize might be accorded her, this being the first real step towards the eventual marriage on which she had set all her mercenary hopes. She therefore sharply instructed Laurette to waste no time in going across the field, but make straight for the house of the patron at the top of the hill, and there to be dutiful, obedient and humbly grateful in all things. “And I wish you to mark well what I say—in all things, you obstinate minx. For the patron will doubtless report to me on the morrow of your behavior this night in his luxurious abode, and woe betide your naked bottom, Laurette, if the report does not do you justice. Now go and do not loiter!”
Laurette had been dressed in her prettiest gown, a camisole, and blue drawers, but her legs were deliciously bare and her dainty feet were shod in the rough shoes which were all that peasants could afford. She set forth valiantly across the rolling vineyards. Her parents sat themselves down to a celebration collation of wine and sardines to congratulate themselves on the excellent match they had brought off for their only, beautiful and virginal daughter. They were too greedy in their anticipation of profiting from this ill-matched union to consider that their virginal child might encounter grave dangers as she went alone through the vineyard under a darkened sky. I decided to accompany her as a kind of guardian angel, because I had already determined that if she should be closeted with the senile patron and he should attempt to fuck her, I would prevent fruition of his perfidious scheme, at least until they were legally united. Remembering what I had read in history of the ancient custom of the droit de seigneur, I thought it not unlikely that a man of his unsavory and lecherous character might attempt to pluck the flower and then send her back to her parents and say she was spoiled and not worthy of being his bride.
Laurette walked along slowly, head bowed, her slim little fingers clasped together as if in prayer and meditation. The wind was soft and gentle and it caressed the hem of her gown and the sweet white flesh of her
