Elise, without answering, redoubled her efforts. To cover the condition of the bed, by making it worse, was, I believe, her real intention; but, ostensibly for the purpose of getting me into position, she scrambled on to the top of me and slipped off at the other side, leaning heavily over my shoulders and holding my arms with all her strength.
'Put his head between your knees, Elise,' ordered Mademoiselle, striking me with the whip.
Elise tried to catch my head between them, outside her petticoats. 'No,' reiterated Mademoiselle, 'underneath your skirts.'
Elise dived with one hand for the ends of her garments, slipped my head under them, and soon had it fast between her warm legs higher up than her knees.
As I have before had occasion to remark, a woman's whole strength lies in her thighs. Elise needed all hers to hold me as probably Mademoiselle knew.
'Now for being found naked in a young lady's bedroom you shall receive twenty-five lashes, Miss Julia.'
'Yah, yah, yell, yell!' I turned and twisted. I writhed and tried to bite Elise. Like red hot iron over my bottom, my legs, and my back, Mademoiselle rained the blows with slow even regularity and merciless force.
'Keep your seat, Elise,' she cried, as mad with pain I almost struggled free, and Elise then sat close, holding on like grim death, my head well down under her bottom. My struggles must have given her extreme pleasure.
I heard Mademoiselle say to Elise towards the end, 'Outside your petticoats, indeed-you idiot. You would not have had the enjoyment.'
I became almost senseless from agony.
'Twenty-five,' at last exclaimed Mademoiselle. 'There he is well waled. Let him go. He won't sit comfortable for a week or more.'
I rolled on the floor, sobbing and writhing with agony.
'Now, Maud,' said Mademoiselle, 'it will do Miss Julia good to see you whipped. I warrant she will forget her pangs and ridiculous contortions, which are quite indecent, in order to see you catch it. Take off your drawers, Miss. Where is the coverlet, Elise?' asked Mademoiselle, tapping the blanket with her whip; but noticing Maud standing still, she did not wait for the answer, Maud's obstinacy attracting her attention.
'Take off your drawers, I tell you,' she repeated in a higher tone for the third time-on this occasion with a cut of the cruel whip across her shoulders, at which Maud screamed.
'Oh, I can't, I can't; oh, let me off this once!' said Maud in despair.
When Elise seconded this appeal, Mademoiselle began to smell a rat.
'Why can't you?' she asked suspiciously and sharply. Maud did not reply but trembling like an aspen leaf began to fumble about her dress. Mademoiselle watched her narrowly.
'Why, what have you got on your drawers and on your chemise, too? Tumble her over the bed.' Maud, sobbing and terrified, was powerless. 'Blood, I declare!' screamed Mademoiselle as Maud was thrown over and her petticoats turned up to her waist. 'Where is the coverlet?' she demanded at the top of her voice.
Elise raked it out. Mademoiselle eagerly spread it open and examined it with a horror-struck look. Elise mournfully shook her head. 'It is evident what has happened. He has seduced her. Mon Dieu! How long have they been alone? I have been in twenty minutes-these stains are not dry. Run, Elise, I will settle with you another time- run for a syringe.'
Mademoiselle threw down her whip and tore Maud's clothes off. Elise rushed off and speedily returned. They held Maud down and squirted into her with warm water and alum violently for ten minutes. They
turned her over and lashed her until she bled. More dead than alive, they strapped us back to back on the floor.
'What's done cannot be undone. You will remain so until I consider what is to be done with you. In the meantime, Elise, come with me,' said Mademoiselle, leaving the room and banging the door behind her.
With this catastrophe, a turning point in my career, I will close my first volume.
VOLUME TWO
CHAPTER 1
When Heracles in consequence of the murder of Iphitus was ill of a serious disease, and received the oracle that he could not be released unless he served some one for wages for the space of three years, Hermes accordingly sold Heracles to Omphale… [By whom he became the father of several children!]
Yes; this I very well recollect, for, no doubt, as the Reader has observed, the adventures, or perhaps this adventure, of Hercules made a solemn impression upon me; and excited exceeding interest in my breast. I always thought Hercules exceedingly fortunate in his punishment, and you may observe the corroboration of the justice of my view in the apologetical, parenthetical, and, as it were, quite irrelevant statement that by her he became the father of several children. Happy man! We all know the torso of Omphale; I have never met with a full length representation. What a coquettish little head and piquant nose-what a resolute and yet voluptuous chin-what large eyes, in which lays a glorious light; eyes which, if she was put out or vexed, or found Hercules hurt her, while she administered those stripes for his clumsiness in the workroom, would swim and look like blue water lilies in a clear transparent lake. How withering the first reproachful glances, how rapid the transition from the melting mood to the fiery gaze, portending vengeance. How promptly Hercules would find his corset inconveniently tightened by the united efforts of all the Lydian hand maidens and he himself transported by the same means to the Queen's dressing room, where, no doubt, fastened down upon his back (he would otherwise have been altogether unmanageable), he paid the penalty of his misdemeanours to that charming woman, completely by divine appointment as well as by her own charms, his sovereign mistress.
It is remarkable how this story has been tabooed by an apparently universal (male) consensus of opinion. There are few, if any, 130
representations of this period of Hercules' life. Venuses beating Cupids abound; in the Salon a few years ago was a canvas depicting Psyche lashed by the fair goddess' orders; Circe, too, reposes in her chair naked, her foot upon the head of the armed and prostrate Ulysses. Where do you find Hercules beaten by Omphale, or even, excepting the statue in the Borghese Casino, in petticoats?
Omphale ruled like Mademoiselle by force and love, not like Beatrice by the last alone. I have come to the conclusion that women rule all men; why is the subject, the truth, ignored? It would be some help, some consolation to me, as I continue this narrative of my own subjugation to the petticoat, if it were not. I am conscious of the existence and encouraged by the knowledge of many fellow victims, but can obtain no openly expressed sympathy. A club of hen-pecked husbands, if started, would find but one member, myself, and I doubt whether even I would venture to send in an application to join unless-unless she compelled me to do so; and it is exceedingly likely she would.
'Several children.' Happy man-yes, undoubtedly, Hercules must have been fastened down by force or held down by love and devotion, and Omphale, reversing what I suppose is the usual order of things, must have lain on the top of him, until he was exhausted. Exhausted as the individual mentioned by Brantome, who awoke his wife. The story is well known. She placed him underneath her upon the bed. She made him perform and discharge the primary obligation of matrimony once, twice, thrice, even a fourth time, and left him fainting there, 'Hein! you will not wake me again, I dare say-I think I have given you a lesson!'
Mademoiselle Hortense de Chambonnard had now such a hold upon me that I dared not resist in the slightest anything whatsoever that she might take it into her pretty little head to do with me, and I feared greatly, and quaked and trembled exceedingly, as I wondered and marvelled what that would be. My fate, my destinies, my fortune, were now completely in her hands, and hopelessly at her mercy, as formerly my unfortunate body had been.
Formerly there was necessarily some limit, for she had no hold upon me. But now, by my own act, with Maud's assistance, I was at her mercy and my future, I felt, was in her hands.
Dire were the threats she used that evening when she had me brought down to her bedroom. I quailed
