are made by – and I will interpret for you, just as Joseph interpreted the dreams of Potiphar and then of Pharoah in those ancient days of Egypt.”
I heard a rustling of garments and a little sigh. Marisia was doubtless, the little baggage, snuggling closer to her guardian by way of promising him that tender nearness which he had asked of her. I admired his zeal, but I also admired his forbearance. He had been with her alone so many untold hours that he could have taken her maidenhead a thousand and one times ere now; yet, apart from some delightful digital dalliance, he had not really taxed her virgin estate. Did he actually mean to bring her to that seminary where fornication was the watchword if not the password, without once attempting to match his stalwart staff against the tender barrier of that membrane which mortals call the maidenhead? And since I knew him to be a man of parts and a man of hot-blooded intensity as well, under that cassock of his, (and still more out of it) I found it highly amusing to conjecture exactly how he proposed to save that jewel for his own taking once he and Marisia had crossed the threshold of St. Thaddeus. From my recollections of my sojourn (which, dear reader, you may enjoy for yourself by reading the first volume of my memoirs), I could name at least four sturdy, portly priests who would fall upon Marisia as if she were a side of fresh mutton to be devoured during a time of famine. How then, for all his vigor and casuistry, could he out-talk or out-maneuver those ravenous colleagues and be first between the shapely nubile thighs of gentle Marisia?
He was mulling over that problem, though I could not know it at the time. But after this communal prayer, he rose and bade Marisia attend to her attire, saying that he would have supper sent up to the three girls and that then they must be ready to go down to the wharf to board the ship, for he was now certain that they were upon the last stage of their long journey.
As he put on his cassock, I was rudely jounced from one end of the locket to the other, thus interrupting my own meditations. I could not understand why, with the good Father's natural curiosity, he had not deemed it advisable to pry open this locket and see what token Laurette had given her charming young cousin by her old husband's adoption. I crouched, ready to spring, waiting for that moment when the catch should be turned and the top of the locket fly open so that I might fly out. But he did not so much as delve his hand into the pocket of the black robe which announced his piety. Instead, he went down the stairs to give orders to the landlord to have a tray of viands and a pitcher of milk sent up to the two rooms, sufficient to nourish three growing young maidens. As it chanced, he met the fair Georgette, who informed him that her father, too, was taking a nap and that she would therefore take charge of fulfilling his wishes.
“Why, my daughter, you have already filled them more than I could ask,” he insinuated with a genial chuckle. “But tonight is the last time that you will see me on these shores, for with the calming of the Channel, our ship must sail upon the eventide. I shall miss you, dear Georgette, and I shall say a prayer for you when I repeat my orisons two days hence in the holy seminary of St. Thaddeus.”
“But I thought, mon Pere,” Georgette curiously observed, “that you are un Anglais. And yet the name St. Thaddeus suggests rather the name of a Pole. How did that come about, mon Pere?”
“Now that you mention it, my clever beauty,” he said thoughtfully, “I confess that I am somewhat perplexed that the Seminary was not named after a good English saint. Ah, I have it! You say that this St. Thaddeus is a Pole. Well, by my troth, each of my colleagues with whom I am shortly to be joined, so I am reliably informed, must be in truth the descendant of a Pole of good measure and good valor, since he possesses a fearsome pole between his thighs, a staff fortified with vigor enough to terrify Lucifer if it were struck upon the doors of Hell!”
This allegorical allusion left Georgette still perplexed, for she only giggled and did not pursue the topic. Or perhaps, in a different sense, she did, since I heard her voice much nearer to Father Lawrence, as if she were up against him, with a sweet and mournful expression saying: “But does this mean that I am not to see you again, mon Pere?”
“In your dreams, or in your thoughts, or, if it is so willed, my daughter, then in the flesh should I be assigned to these French shores by my superiors,” was his response.
“Oh, I would rather see you in the flesh, then, a hundred times over, mon Pere,” she murmured coquettishly. “For when you are across the Channel with all those Poles, you will not think of me at all.”
“Why, my daughter, that is not true in the least. Indeed, the more I am forced to think of my pole, the more often both it and I will remember the charming hospitality you accorded both of us so recently. And I think that there is still a little time before I must depart from this cordial inn, which I would use in the sweet employment of saying au revoir to you, dear Georgette.”
“Why, whatever do you mean, mon Pere?” she tittered.
“I mean that I will explain to you the riddle of the Pole as against a pole, so that the two are often one, but the one is not necessarily the other, depending on geography as well as birth.”
“I am only a poor honest girl who aids her ailing father to run this meager little inn, mon Pere. But I would gladly listen to you without heeding the time if it were not that I should fear a drubbing for neglecting my tasks. And you do not wish your three young wards to go unfed?”
“Not at all, my daughter, but there is ample time. And if they fast for a quarter of an hour or more past their usual suppertime, it will teach them fortitude and patience, both goodly qualities to be reckoned with in the hereafter when they are come to final judgment. As for myself, I should like nothing better than to be able to chose a bottle of wine with which to toast the health of both you and your father. Could we not descend again to this estimable wine cellar of yours, my dear Georgette?”
Oh, now I saw the scheming logic of this sly, English ecclesiastic! His play on words had so bemused me that I had not quite ascertained his purpose in remarking it to this simple wench. But it was plain now: the 'pole' to which he referred was nothing more nor less than his prick. I should not really say nothing less, for it was surely substantially more than most men are given to boast of between aspiring female thighs!
Simple tavern wench or not, Georgette perceived his drift at once, once he had mentioned the wine cellar. With a little trill of laughter, he gave him a resounding kiss, melting into his arms as a pound of butter would melt upon a high plateau under the scorching sun of the Sahara. I heard the most effusive sighs and gasps, and the rustling of garments and the little moans and finally the sucking sounds of lips put together in exquisite conjunction. And when the Father spoke at last, it was in a tone that trembled and was edged with huskiness, which I ascribed to the most tender of all emotions that can be shared between male and female, even if they be sanctimonious ecclesiastic and humble peasant wench.
“Oh, quickly, man Pere,” Georgette gasped, and her voice also shared this same eloquent tremolo of excitement which I had just heard from her vigorous male partner, “I am sure that I can find one of Papa's finest bottles of Anjou or Chablis for so important an occasion! But we cannot tarry very long, mon Pere, because my father will be down certainly before another half hour has made the sun sink closer to its bed in the western sky.”
It was amusing to me, as well as a source of grudging admiration, that whenever any susceptible female came into Father Lawrence's presence, he infallibly was afflicted with the most romantic and poetic diction. Now whether she partook of it by osmosis or by inspiration of his presence and person or by humility which sought for self-improvement to be worthy of so articulate and artful a male, I cannot really tell. But from what I know of Father Lawrence's endeavors to sow the seed wherever it would find good planting, I am rather more inclined toward the process of osmosis: that osmosis which involves the soft receptive cunt of the female and its inordinate capacity for accepting the offertory of spunk of which substance Father Lawrence seemed to be blessed in super- abundant quantity.
“I must sample the Anjou,” he decided after another series of sucking kisses and cooing sighs proffered by his fair accomplice. “But do you know that, after having serenely taken my ease in that little village of Provence, I have the bucolic yearning to tap the good wine out of a barrel rather than to take it from a bottle, for bottle- feeding is more fitting for babes. And the only thing I have to do with babes, apart from baptizing them, is in the conception of them which, I need not tell you, my daughter, is forbidden by Mother Church in my estate.”
“Oh, I will eagerly tap your barrel for you, mon Pere,” Georgette passionately vouchsafed. And I knew precisely what barrel she referred to and what sweet instrument would be the tapper. It was fitted most deliriously between her satiny thighs, but I did not think that within so short a time as half an hour it could tap the full barrel of Father Lawrence's spunk.
At last they broke asunder, and Georgette led the way to the little staircase that led down to the dark wine cellar. She told him that she would take a candle with her to lighten their way; and then the naughty baggage preferred a remark which certainly showed that she had been remiss in making her usual confessions at whatever church she attended in Calais.
