Mabel

'Mercy, Mistress,' she cried, 'I haven't done anything wrong!'

'I know you haven't done anything wrong,' Dorothea said sarcastically. 'This seat is not a punishment. I only want your bottom to submit to a continual discipline until you are completely educated. The pain produced by the horsehair will make you forget the pleasures of the meals. Besides, you should realize that you are under continual penance to atone for your past faults.'

While she was speaking, she tied Mabel on the chair by means of a leather strap which passed under the seat and crossed over the girl's lap. She tightened this strap so that the horsehair bristles drove still more deeply into the girl's flesh.

'What's the menu, Bridget?' the governess asked.

'Hors d'ouevres, ma'am, then trout, roast chicken, salad, cheese and chocolate cakes.'

Mabel, who was very fond of eating, was feeling very glad at the announcement of such delicacies and even forgot her pain a little.

'And for Mabel?'

'For Mabel, the cook has prepared what you ordered her to: a maize porridge, a little veal with mashed potatoes and some whey.'

'Perfect!' Dorothea said.

She turned towards her pupil.

'You see how I take good care of your health. I've decided to put you on a diet so that your bowels should keep in an excellent state. It is also normal that a girl being re-educated should not eat the same menu as her mistress, isn't it?'

Mabel lowered her head in shame. She did not experience any surprise now for she knew that from now on her life would be nothing but sufferings and humiliation.

Bat she was nevertheless surprised that they should have left her hands tied. She soon understood the reason why. Bridget, after having waited upon Miss von Berner, laid before the slave a plate brimful of maize porridge and, sitting beside her, she started giving her to eat out of a spoon as one does to a baby. With her hands tied and being strapped to the horsehair seat, Mabel was obliged to obey. The porridge tasted awful. Bridget shored into her mouth great big spoonfuls of it and the girl swallowed with a grimace of disgust.

'Pinch her nose, Bridget!' Dorothea ordered. 'She doesn't open her mouth wide enough. And slap her face if she doesn't hurry more!'

The maid complied with those orders with relish. She seized rudely the delicate nose of the English girl between her fingers, obliging her to open her mouth in order to breathe. Thus Mabel swallowed willy-nilly the fulsome porridge. Three times she was slapped by Bridget for not hurrying enough.

A huge portion of puree followed the porridge. Mabel felt her stomach swell up under the corset that was squeezing her painfully. She tried to turn her head aside in spite of the slaps she was now being dealt very often on her pretty face.

'If you don't eat all there is on your plate,' Miss von Berner said, 'you will be whipped till blood runs! The meat now… But you'd better not swallow the pieces without masticating them, it wouldn't be good for your health. Bridget, do masticate them yourself and then spit them out from your mouth into hers — that will teach her to eat better!'

Mabel's whole body was convulsed with a shudder of distaste but Bridget was pinching her nose so strongly that she had to open her mouth to breathe and thus submit to the fulsome treatment. The maid put the pieces of meat one after the other in her own mouth, masticated them a long time, then she drew her face near Mabel's and spat out the pieces into her mouth.

At last that torture was over. The girl ended her meal with two, platefuls of whey accompanied by a glass of water.

Meanwhile, Dorothea von Berner had partaken of all the succulent titbits, washing them down with Burgundy wine.

'Take the girl to her room, Bridget!' she ordered. 'There, you will button up hear panties miming, and you'll wash her face and fix her and strap, then you will blow her nose as it's, running, and you'll wash her face and fix her make up, then you'll send her to me in the drawing-room.

Dorothea's orders were duly carried out. A quarter of an hour later, Mabel, made up freshly, re-buttoned and strapped, presented herself before the implacable governess who was having coffee in the drawing-room.

'Kneel down in front of me,' she ordered, 'and don't move!'

Miss Sunway obeyed. A long half hour elapsed without a word from the governess. She was sipping her coffee, smoking cigarettes and nonchalantly leafing through magazines. Mabel hardly dared to breathe. She looked up fearfully into the magnificent face of Dorothea, her fine: rumps sprawling on the couch and her bare legs, white hands with ruby-red nails, her insolent revealing their shapes under the hitched up skirt. And she could not help admiring this splendid creature whose iron will was weighing upon her as a law. And yet, who exactly was this Dorothea? A mere governess hired by Lord Kelingson — a subaltern indeed… and there she was, happy, carefree and enjoying a luxury she was not entitled to, while Mabel, a young girl of nobility and good breeding, an heir to a great fortune, was obliged to kneel like a slave with her hands tied up. The young English girl realized how that situation made the social classes topsy-turvy and she was appalled. But then she thought of the punishments she had received and understood that the Whip is a great Master and all-powerful magician, to be able to bring about such social upheavals.

The governess looked at her wrist-watch.

'Your time-table for the afternoon is about to begin, Mabel! You know you will have to submit to it whether you like it or not, for if you refused the worst punishments would await you and would bring you back to the straight path. Until further notice, your schedule will be divided into three parts: from two to three you will have a lesson, for I suppose that your education is far from perfect in spite of your eighteen years of age. From three to six you'll do some housework as I intend to make you my chambermaid and you'll have to get prepared for it. Then, from six to seven, I'll give you a rather special lesson which I'll name 'a lesson of humiliation' in order to make you obey better and to teach you to be a passive thing submitting to all my whims and happy with your degrading situation. Now, follow me to the office which I've transformed into a study-room!'

She stood up and led Mabel to Lord Kelingson's office. There, to the girl's great surprise she untied her hands and indicated a heavy armchair in front of the desk.

'You're going to sit here,' she ordered, 'and I want you to lift up your skirts before sitting down, for I want the seat always to be in direct contact with your bare flesh or your thin panties. Execution!:

She punctuated her order with a alight stoke of the horsewhip on the pupil's, calves. So Mabel hitched up her skirt up to the waist and sat down on the armchair. Then the governess took two small chains, each supplied with a padlock, and chained up the girl's ankles to the two forelegs of the armchair.

'I keep the key to the padlocks!' she said with a mocking smile. 'So, even though your hands are free, you will remain attached to your seat!'

She gave a large book to Mabel.

'Here's your study book. I won't make you study history or literature or such things that have no more interest for you. As I want you to become a perfect slave, only one thing must interest you from now on — the story of the slaves, their ways of life and submission to their masters, as well as the punishments they are inflicted when they don't obey. So this is 'a Treatise on Bondage' which dates from the earliest periods of our times until now. Every day you will have to read ten pages and learn by heart two pages. Work and beware if you don't know your lesson when I come back. Understood?'

'Yes, Mistress,' Mabel sighed mournfully.

When the governess had left the room the girt started reading. The first chapter described the treatments given to the slaves of ancient Rome by the demanding patricians and their wives. It seemed to Mabel as if her own brethren were telling her their lives.

She read about ten pages and started learning the first two by heart. Luckily enough she was gifted with an excellent memory, so that when Dorothea came back, the girl told her humiliating lesson without a single mistake.

'Not bad,' the governess said condescendingly, 'I give you eight marks out of a possible ten. And you can call yourself lucky for a seven or a six are punished with a whipping with birch twigs, a five or a four deserve a horsewhipping on the breasts and an inferior note the dog whip on the buttocks. Remember that for the next