
Venus In Furs


                     as the lover's pinch
               Which hurts, and is desired.

               -- Antony and Cleopatra, V, 2





                                1


     I was in charming company.

     Facing me, before the massive Renaissance fireplace, sat Venus:  not the
casual demi-mondaine who measures swords with the enemy sex under a
pseudonym -- no "Madame Phryne" or "Mademoiselle Cleopatre" -- but the real
Goddess of Love.

     She was sitting in an armchair, and had kindled a roaring fire whose
reflections ran in red flames over her pale face with its white eyes and from
time to time over her naked feet when she tried to warm them.

      Her head was magnificent in spite of the dead stony eyes, but this was
all I could see of her:  the divinity had wrapped her marble body in a great
fur and was curled up, quivering, like a cat.

     "I don't understand it, dear lady," I said. "It's not really cold now.
These past two weeks we have had perfect spring weather. It must be your
nerves."

     "My compliments on your spring," she replied in a deep stony voice, and
at once sneezed divinely, twice in succession.  "I really cannot bear it here
much longer, and I am beginning to understand --"  She paused. 

     "What, dear lady?"

     "I am beginning to believe the incredible and to understand the
incomprehensible.  Suddenly I understand the virtue of German women, and
German philosophy -- and I no longer wonder why you of the North do not know
how to love, why you have no idea of love."

     "But madam," I replied with spirit, "I at least have surely given you no
cause --"

     "Oh, not you..." The goddess smiled, then suddenly sneezed again, and
shrugged her shoulders with inimitable grace. "Not you.  Which is why I've
always been kind to you, and even visit you now and then -- though I catch
cold every time, even with all these furs.  Do you remember the first time we
met?"

     "How could I forget?  You wore your flowing hair in brown curls and you
had brown eyes and a red mouth, but I knew you at once by the curve of your
cheek and its marble pallor. And you were wearing a violet velvet jacket edged
with squirrel."

     "Yes, you were quite in love with the costume.  And how teachable you
were!"

     "You taught me what love really is -- a serene form of worship which
made me forget two thousand years."

     "And my fidelity was unequalled!"

     "Why, as for strict fidelity --" I smiled. 

     "Ungrateful man!"

     "I make no reproaches. You are a divinity, but nonetheless a woman and,
like every woman, cruel in matters of love."

     "What you call cruelty," the Goddess of Love replied with animation, "is
simply the element of passion and sensuality which is part of woman's nature,
and which makes her give herself whenever she loves, and love everything that
pleases her."

     "But can there be any greater cruelty than to make a love endure the
faithlessness of the woman he loves?"

     She shrugged, making her beautiful breasts quiver within the fur.  "We
are faithful as long as we love, but you demand that a woman be faithful when
she has ceased to love, and that she give herself without any but the most
degrading, mechanical enjoyment.  Who is cruel there, the woman or the man? 
You of the North take love too seriously.  You talk of duties, when there
should be only a question of pleasure."

     "Yes, madam, that is why our feelings are respectable and virtuous, and
our relations permanent."

     "And yet you retain a restless, unsatisfied yearning for the nudity of
paganism," she said.  "But that love which is the height of joy, that central
union of breath and limbs and feeling by which our bodies figure forth the
original divine unity of man and woman, that is not for you moderns, you
children of reflection.  In you it turns to something evil.  Whenever you wish
to be natural, you become gross.  For you, nature is something hostile; you
have made devils of the smiling gods of Greece, and of me a demon. You can
only exorcise and curse me, or immolate yourselves in a bacchantic ecstasy
before my altar.  And should one of you ever have the courage to kiss my red
mouth, he must make a barefoot pilgrimage to Rome in penitential garb and
expect flowers to grow from a withered staff, while under my very feet roses,
violets and myrtles spring up every hour -- only their fragrance does not
agree with you.  Remain here among the clouds of your northern fogs and
Christian incense; leave us pagans lying under the debris, under the lava; do
not dig us up.  Pompeii was not built for you, nor our villas, our baths, our
temples.  You do not need gods like us.  Our world was not made for you, and
we are chilled in yours."  The beautiful marble woman gave a little cough and
drew the dark sables still closer around her naked shoulders.

     "A thousand thanks for the classical lesson," I replied, "but you cannot
deny that man and woman are mortal enemies in your serene sunlit world as well
as in our foggy one.  In the act of love they merge and are reconciled for a
short time only, when they have but one thought, one sensation, one will, and
then they disunite and become greater enemies than ever.  And whichever of the
two fails to dominate will -- as you know better than I -- soon feel the
other's foot on his neck --"

     "And as a rule it is the man who feels the woman's," said lady Venus
with mocking satisfaction.  "As you know still better than I."

     "Of course.  That is why I have no illusions."

     "You mean you are now my slave without illusions?"  Her brows
contracted.  "Ah, for that I shall tread on you without mercy..."

     "Madam!"

     "You do not know me yet?  Yes, I am cruel -- since you take such delight
in the word -- and have I not the right to be?  Man is the one who desires,
woman the one who is desired:  this is her complete and decisive advantage. 
Through his passions, Nature has put man in thraldom to woman, and the woman
who does not know how to make him her subject, her slave, her toy, and now to
betray him at last with a smile, is a fool."

     "Your own principles," I said drily.

     "They are based on several thousands of years' experience," she replied
with an ironical smile as her white fingers played over the dark fur.  "The
more devotion a woman shows, the sooner the man recovers his sanity and begins
to domineer.  The more cruelly she treats him, the more faithless she is, the
more wantonly she plays with him, the less pity she shows -- by so much does
she heighten his desire and compel his love and worship.  So it has always
been, from the times of Helen and Delilah down to those of Catherine the Great
and Lola Montez."

     "I will not deny," I said, "That nothing attracts a man more than the
image of a beautiful, passionate, cruel and despotic woman, who changes her
lovers freely and without scruple according to her whim --"

     "And who in addition wears furs," the goddess struck in with a mocking
look.  "What do you mean by that, madam?"

     "I know your weakness.  Who better?"

     "Do you know," I said, "that since our last meeting you have become very
much the coquette?"

     "In what way, may I ask?"

     "In having found there is no better way of displaying your white body
than in those dark furs, and that --"

     The goddess laughed.  "You are dreaming," she cried.  "Wake up!" and she
seized my arm with her marble hand.  "Do wake up," she repeated hoarsely, her
voice dropping into the lower register.  I opened my eyes with difficulty.

     I saw the hand which was shaking me, but this hand was as brown as
tobacco, while the voice was the thick, vodka-roughened voice of my Cossack
servant who was towering over me at his full height of over six feet.

     "Do get up," the good fellow was saying.  "It is really disgraceful."

     "What is disgraceful?"

     "To fall asleep like this in your clothes, and with a book as well."

     He snuffed the candles which had burned down, and picked up the volume
which had fallen from my hand.  "With a book by --" he looked at the cover "--
by Hegel.  Besides, it's time we were starting for Herr Severin's where you're
expected for tea."


     "A curious dream," said Severin when I had finished.  He rested his arms
on his knees, holding his face in his delicate finely veined hands, and
plunged into thought.

     I knew he would remain so for a long time, hardly even breathing.  This
often happened, and by now I looked on his behaviour as in no way remarkable. 
I had been on terms of close friendship with him for nearly three years, and
was used to his peculiarities.  For it could not be denied he was peculiar,
although not quite the dangerous madman which the neighbourhood, and indeed
the entire district of Kolomea, considered him.  I found his personality not
only interesting but -- and this was why many people looked on me as a little
mad also -- highly sympathetic.

     For a Galician nobleman and landowner, and considering his age -- he was
barely over thirty -- he showed a surprising maturity of outlook, a gravity
verging on the pedantic.  He lived by a minutely elaborated,
half-philosophical, half-practical system, like a piece of clock-work; and not
by this alone, but also by the thermometer, barometer, aerometer, hydrometer,
Hippocrates, Hufeland, Plato, Kant, Knigge and Lord Chesterfield.  But at
times he had sudden attacks of violent passion, and gave the impression of
being about to run his head right through the wall.  At such times everyone
found it better to keep out of his way.

     While he remained silent the fire sang in the chimney, and the big old
samovar sang too; the ancient chair in which I sat rocking to and fro, smoking
my cigar, was also singing rather creakily, as was a cricket somewhere in the
old walls.  I let my eyes roam over the curious apparatus which crowded his
room, the skeletons of animals, stuffed birds, globes and plaster-casts, until
by chance my gaze fell on a painting which I had often seen in this room but
which today, touched by the red reflections of the fire, made a new and
indescribable impression on me.  It was a large oil painting done in the
robust, full-blooded manner of the Flemish school.  The subject was curious
enough.  A beautiful woman with a radiant smile on her lips, her luxuriant
hair tied in a classical knot, was half lying on an ottoman, supporting
herself on her left arm, quite naked in her dark furs.  Her right hand was
playing with a long-lashed whip, while her bare foot rested carelessly on a
man lying before her like a slave or a dog.  This man, in whose stark but
well-formed features there lay a brooding sadness and passionate devotion,
looked up at her with the ecstatic burning gaze of a martyr.  And this man,
this footstool for the woman's feet, was Severin, but beardless and, as it
seemed, some ten years younger.

     "Venus in Furs!" I cried, pointing to the picture.  "That is how I saw
her in my dream."

     "So did I," said Severin, his voice remote.  "Only I dreamed my dream
with open eyes."

     "Indeed?"

     "Ah, it's a tedious story..."

     "Your picture must have suggested my dream," I went on.  "Now tell me
what it means.  I can guess it played a role in your life, perhaps a decisive
one, but you alone can give me the details."

     "Look then at its model and counterpart," my strange friend replied
without heeding my request, as he gestured towards a picture hanging
opposite -- a fine copy of Titian's famous Venus with the Mirror in the
Dresden Gallery.

     "And what is its significance?"

     Severin rose and pointed at the fur in which Titian had clothed his
goddess of love.  "It too is a 'Venus in Furs'," he said with a faint smile,
"though I don't believe the old Venetian had any such ulterior motive.  He
simply painted the portrait of some fashionable Messalina, and was tactful
enough to have Cupid hold the mirror in which she appraises her majestic
allure with such cold aplomb -- though the boy looks as if his task were
rather irksome.  The title is merely a piece of flattery.  Following the
pictorial conventions of the time, the lady was given the name of Venus.  But
the imperial furs in which Titian's lovely model draped herself, probably less
from modesty than from fear of catching a chill, have become for us a symbol
of the tyranny and cruelty that are the essence and beauty of woman.  But
enough of that...  The picture, as it stands, is a pungent satire on our own
conception of love.  In this rarefied northland, this icy Christian world,
Venus must creep into a great black fur so as not to catch cold..."  He
laughed and lit a fresh cigarette.

     At that moment the door opened and a plump comely blonde girl entered;
she had wise, kindly eyes, was dressed in black silk, and had brought us eggs
and cold meat for our tea.  Severin took one of the eggs and broke it with his
knife.  "Didn't I tell you I wanted them soft-boiled?" he exclaimed with a
violence which made the young woman tremble.

     "But my dear Sevtchu --" she said timidly.

     "Sevtchu nothing!" he cried.  "You are to obey, to obey, do you
understand!"  And he seized a kantschuk from the hook where it was hanging
among his other weapons.

     The pretty girl fled from the room as swiftly and shyly as a doe.

     "Wait -- I'll deal with you later!" he called after her.

     "Severin," I said, laying a hand on his arm, "how can you treat a pretty
young woman like this?"

     "Consider this woman," he replied, his eyes twinkling mirthfully.  "If I
had made a habit of flattering her she would have put a rope around my neck
long ago.  But now, when I bring her up under the kantschuk, she adores me."

     "Nonsense!"

     "Not at all.  This is how one breaks women in."

     "Well, you can live like a pasha in your harem if you wish, but do not
lay down theories about it --"

     "Why not?" he took me up short.  "Goethe's 'you must be hammer or anvil'
applies very well to the relation between men and women, or didn't the Lady
Venus in your dream convince you?  Woman's power lies in man's passion, and
she knows how to use this power if he fails to understand it.  He has only one
choice:  to be the tyrant or the slave of woman.  No sooner does he give way
than his neck is under the yoke, and then the whip will begin to fall."

     "Odd maxims!"

     "Not maxims, but truths verified by experience," he replied, nodding his
head.  "I have actually felt the lash.  I am cured.  Would you like to know
how?"

     He rose, took a small manuscript from his massive desk and laid it
before me.

     "You have already asked me about the picture," he said, "and I have long
owed you an explanation.  Here, read..."

     He sat down by the fire with his back to me, and seemed to dream with
open eyes.  Silence had fallen once again, and once again the fire was singing
in the chimney, and the samovar and the cricket in the wall were singing too. 
I opened the manuscript and read:

                CONFESSIONS OF A SUPERSENSUAL MAN

In the margin was the epigraph, a variation of the well-known lines of
Mephistopheles in Faust:

               Thou sensual, supersensual wooer,
               A woman leads thee by the nose.

I turned the title-page and read:


     What follows has been compiled from the pages of my diary of the period. 
For it is never possible to write frankly of one's own past:  only in personal
records does everything keep the freshness of its colours, the colours of the
moment.


     Gogol, the Russian Molière, says -- where? well, somewhere -- "The true
Comic Muse is the one beneath whose mask of laughter the tears are falling."

     A wonderful saying...

     I have a curious feeling as I am writing all this down.  The air seems
full of a disturbing fragrance of flowers, an odour which overcomes me and
makes my head swim, the smoke from the fireplace curls up and shapes itself
into the figures of little gray-bearded goblins who point their fingers
mockingly at me, while little plump-cheeked amoretti ride on the arms of my
chair and on my knees -- and then I smile involuntarily, I even laugh aloud as
I record my adventures, even though I am writing not with common ink but with
the red blood that drips from my heart, for all its long-closed wounds have
reopened, throbbing and smarting, and every now and then a tear falls on the
paper.

                                o

     The days creep by sluggishly in this little Carpathian resort.  You see
no one, and no one sees you.  It is so boring one could write idylls.  I have
enough leisure here to fill an entire picture-gallery, to supply a theatre
with new plays for a whole season and a dozen virtuosos with concertos, trios
and duos, but -- what am I saying? -- the upshot of it all is that I do no
more than stretch the canvas, smooth the bow, line the scores.  For I am -- no
false modesty now, friend Severin:  you can lie to others but can't succeed in
lying to yourself any longer -- I am nothing but a dilettante, a dilettante in
painting, in poetry, in music and in several of the other so-called
unprofitable arts which, however, secure for their masters these days the
income of a cabinet minister or even of a petty princeling.  Above all, I am a
dilettante in life.

     Until now I have lived as I have painted and poetized:  that is, I have
never got beyond the preliminary work, the plan, the first act, the first
stanza.  There are people like that, who begin everything and finish nothing. 
I am one of them.

     But what am I running on about?

     To the business in hand.

     I lounge in my window-seat, and the miserable little town which fills me
with ennui really seems ineffably full of poetry.  How marvellous the prospect
of that blue wall of mountains interwoven with golden sunlight and laced with
torrents like ribbons of silver!  How clear and blue the sky into which rise
the snow-capped peaks, how fresh and green the wooded slopes and the meadows
grazed by the little knots of cattle-green all the way down to the yellow
waves of grain in which the reapers stand, bend down and rise again.

     The house where I live is in a kind of park or forest or wilderness,
whatever you care to call it, and is very secluded.

     Its only inhabitants are myself, a widow from Lemberg, and Madame
Tartakovska the landlady, a little old woman who grows older and smaller every
day.  There is also an old dog that limps on one leg, and a young cat that is
always playing with a ball of wool.  The ball of wool belongs, I believe, to
the widow.

     She is said to be really beautiful, this widow, still very young,
twenty-four at the most, and very rich.  She keeps her green jalousies always
closed, and has a balcony quite embowered with green creepers and climbing
plants.  I, down below, have a comfortable cosy arbour of honeysuckle, where I
read and write and paint and sing like a bird among the branches.  I can look
up at the balcony; sometimes I actually do, and then from time to time a white
gown gleams amid the dense green network of the leaves.

     But the beautiful woman up there doesn't really interest me, because I
am in love with someone else, and most unhappily:  far more unhappily than the
Knight of Toggenburg or the Chevalier in Manon Lescaut, because my beloved is
made of stone.

     In the park, in the little wilderness, there is a pretty meadow where a
couple of deer graze peacefully.  In this meadow is a stone statue of Venus-
the original of which, I believe, is in Florence.  This Venus is the most
beautiful woman I have seen in all my life.

     But that does not mean a great deal, for I have not seen many beautiful
women, nor indeed many women at all.  In matters of love, too, I am a
dilettante who has never gone beyond the preliminaries, the first act.  But
why make comparisons, as if anything beautiful can ever be surpassed?

     It is enough to say this Venus is beautiful; and I love her passionately
and with a morbid intensity -- madly, as one can only love a woman who never
responds to one's love save by an unchanging, an eternally calm and stony
smile.  Yes. I literally adore her.

     Often I lie reading under the leafy shelter of a young birch-tree
nearby, while the sun broods over the forest; often I visit that cold, cruel
mistress of mine by night and kneel before her, my forehead or my lips pressed
to the cold pediment on which her feet are standing -- and my prayers ascend
to her.

     The rising moon, now past its third quarter, produces an indescribable
effect:  it seems to hover among the trees, drenching the meadow in its stream
of silver, and the Goddess stands transfigured and shining, as if she were
bathing in the soft radiance.

     Once, as I was returning from my orisons by one of the paths leading to
the house, I suddenly saw a woman's moving figure, white as stone under the
moon's light and screened from me only by a row of trees.  For a moment it
seemed the beautiful marble woman had taken pity on me, had come to life and
was following me!  I was seized by a nameless fear, my heart threatened to
burst, but instead of --

     Well, I am a dilettante.  As usual, I broke down at the second stanza,
or rather I didn't break down, but on the contrary ran away as fast as I
could.


     What luck!  Through a Jew who deals in prints and engravings I have
secured a picture of my ideal.  A small reproduction of Titian's Venus with
the Mirror.  What a woman!  I would like to write a poem, but instead I take
the reproduction and write on it:

                         "VENUS IN FURS

"You are cold, even while you fan our flames.  Wrap yourself then in your
despot's furs, for there is none on whom they sit better, cruel goddess of
love and beauty!"


     After a while I add a few verses from Goethe, which I found the other
day in his Paralipomena to Faust:

                             To Amor

               "The pair of wings a fiction are,
               The arrows, they are only claws,
               The wreath conceals the little horns;
               For there's no doubt at all that he
               -- Like all the gods of ancient Greece --
               Is only a devil in disguise.


     Then I place the picture before me on my table, propping it with a book,
and gaze at it.  The cold coquetry with which this superb woman drapes her
charms in her furs of dark sable, the severity and hardness which dwell in
this marmoreal face, fill me with rapture and a strange fear.  Once more I
take up my pen and write these words:


"To love, to be loved, what happiness!  And yet how this bliss pales before
the tormenting ecstasy of worshipping a woman who makes a plaything of one, of
being the slave of a beautiful tyrant who treads one pitilessly underfoot!  So
Samson, the hero, the mighty warrior, once more gave himself into the hands of
Delilah even after she had betrayed him, and then once again she betrayed him,
and the Philistines bound him and put out his eyes which until the last he
kept fixed, drunken with rage and love, on the lovely traitress."

     I was breakfasting in my honeysuckle arbour and reading in the Book of
Judith.  I envied the grim hero Holofernes because of the queenly woman who
cut off his head with a sword, I envied him his beautiful sanguinary end.

     "The Lord hath punished him, and delivered him into the hands of a
woman."

     The verse struck me.

     How ungallant these Jews are, I thought.  And their God might have
chosen more becoming expressions when speaking of the fair sex.

     "The Lord hath punished him, and delivered him into the hands of a
woman," I repeated to myself.  What shall I do, that he may so punish me?

     Heaven preserve us!  Here comes the landlady, who has again diminished
somewhat in size overnight.  And up above, among the twining greenery and the
garlands, the white gown is gleaming again. Is it Venus, or the widow?

     This time it is the widow, for Madame Tartakovska makes a curtsey and
asks me, on her behalf, for something to read.  I run to my room and pick up a
couple of books at random.

     Later I remember that my picture of Venus is in one of them, and now
both it and my effusions are in the hands of the lady in white upstairs.  What
will she say?

     I can hear her laughing.

     Is she laughing at me?

     A full moon.  It is already peering over the tops of the low hemlocks
that fringe the park, and a silvery light fills the park, the clumps of trees,
the whole landscape as far as the eye can reach, fading gradually in the
distance like trembling waters.

     I cannot resist, I feel a strange impulse and summons; I get dressed
again and go out into the garden.  Some power draws me towards the meadow,
towards her, my goddess and my beloved.

     The night is cool.  I feel a slight chill.  The air is heavy with the
odour of flowers and of the forest, it is intoxicating.

     What solemnity!  What music all around!  A nightingale is sobbing.  The
stars quiver faintly in the pale blue transparency.  The meadow seems smooth
as a mirror, like a veil of ice on a pond.

     The statue of Venus stands out, august and luminous.

     But -- what has happened?

     From the goddess' marble shoulders a great dark fur flows down to her
heels.  I stand dumbfounded and stare at her in amazement, and once again an
indescribable fear seizes me and I take flight.

     I quicken my steps, and find I have missed the main path.  As I am about
to turn aside into one of the green alleys I see Venus sitting before me on a
stone bench:  not the beautiful woman of marble but the very Goddess of Love
herself, with warm blood and throbbing pulses!  Yes, this is really my
beloved, come to life like that statue which drew breath for its creator. 
Indeed the miracle seems only half accomplished:  her white-powdered hair
seems still to be of stone, and her white gown shimmers like moonlight -- or
is it only satin?  From her shoulders the dark fur is flowing now -- but her
lips are surely red, her cheeks have the hue of life.  Two diabolical green
rays from her eyes fall on me, and she is laughing.

     Her laughter is so strange, so -- I cannot describe it, it takes my
breath away, and I run further, and every few steps I have to pause for
breath.  And the mocking laughter pursues me through the dark leafy paths,
across the bright open spaces, through the thickets pierced by a single
moonbeam.  I can no longer see my way, I wander about in utter confusion with
cold drops of sweat on my forehead.

     At last I come to a halt, and engage in a short monologue.

     It runs -- well, one is either very polite to oneself or very rude --
like this:

     I say to myself: "Donkey!"

     The word has a remarkable effect, like a magic formula which frees me
and restores my self-possession.

     In a moment I become quite calm.

     With great pleasure I repeat: "Donkey!"

     Now my surroundings are once more clear and distinct.  There is the
fountain, there the alley of boxwood, there the house which I am approaching
slowly.

     And all at once the apparition is before me again.  Behind the green
hedge, shot through by moonlight so that it seems fretted with silver, I see
the white figure again, the woman of stone whom I adore, whom I fear and flee
from.

     With two bounds I am inside the house, and I catch my breath and
reflect.  What am I, after all -- a little dilettante or a big donkey?


     A sultry morning, the air is languid, heavily laden with odours, yet
exciting.  Again I am sitting in my arbour, reading in the Odyssey about the
beautiful witch who turned her worshippers into beasts.  A splendid picture of
antique love.

     There is a sort rustling in the leaves and branches around me, the pages
of my book are rustling, and from the terrace beside me comes a rustling too.

     A woman's dress -- 

     There she is -- Venus -- but without her furs -- no, it is the widow --
and yet -- Venus...  Oh, what a woman!

     As she stands there in her light white morning gown, looking at me, her
slender figure seems full of poetry and grace.  She is neither large nor
small; her head is alluring, piquant in the style of a French marquise rather
than beautiful -- but how enchanting, what softness, what a wayward charm
plays around her none too small mouth!  Her skin is so infinitely delicate
that the blue veins show through, even through the muslin covering her arms
and splendid breasts.  How luxuriant is her red hair -- it is red, not blond
or gold -- how diabolically and yet how tenderly it curls around her neck! 
Now her eyes meet mine like green lightning -- yes, they are green, these eyes
of hers whose power is so indescribable -- green, but like precious stones or
unfathomable mountain lakes.

     She studies my confusion, which has even made me forget myself, for I
have remained seated and still have my cap on my head.  She smiles mockingly.

     At last I rise and bow.  She comes closer and bursts into loud, almost
childlike laughter.  I stammer, as only a little dilettante or a big donkey
would at such a moment.

     That was how our acquaintance began.

     The goddess asks my name, and tells me her own.

     Her name is Wanda von Dunaiev.

     And she is really my Venus.

     "But madam, how did that strange fancy come to you?"

     "The little picture in one of your books..."

     "I had forgotten it."

     "The curious notes on the back..."

     "Curious? "

     She looked at me.  "I have always wanted to know a real dreamer -- for
the sake of novelty -- and you seemed one of the maddest of the species."

     "Dear lady -- indeed --"  Again I lapsed into a miserable asinine
stammering, and even blushed in a manner proper to a youth of sixteen but not
a man fully ten years older.

     "You were afraid of me last night."

     "Really -- well... but won't you sit down?"

     She did so, obviously enjoying my embarrassment.  And now, in the light
of day, I was still more afraid of her.  A charming expression of contempt
played over her upper lip.

     "You seem to regard love, and particularly woman," she said, "as
something hostile, something to guard yourself against, even unsuccessfully --
as if its power were a kind of pleasant torment, a piquant cruelty.  A truly
modern attitude."

     "You do not share it?"

     "I do not," she said quickly and with decision, shaking her head so that
her curls danced like red flames.  "To me the serene sensuousness of the
Greeks -- pleasure without pain -- is the ideal we should aim at.  The kind of
love preached by Christianity, by the moderns, the Knights of the Spirit -- I
don't believe in it.  Yes, look at me, I am worse than a heretic, I am a
pagan.

     Dost thou imagine long the goddess of love took counsel
     When in Ida's grove she was pleased with the hero Anchises?

Those lines of the Roman Elegy have always pleased me.

     "In Nature there is only the same love as in the heroic age, 'when gods
and goddesses loved.'  Then

     Desire followed love, and enjoyment desire.

     Everything else is artificial, affected, lying.  Christianity with its
cruel symbol of the cross has always had for me an element of the monstrous,
it has introduced something alien and hostile into Nature and her innocent
impulses.  The contest of spirit with the world of sense is the gospel of
modern man.  I will have none of it."

     "Yes, Mount Olympus would be the place for you, madam," I replied.  But
we moderns can no longer enjoy that antique serenity.  Least of all in love. 
The idea of sharing a woman repels us, even if she were an Aspasia.  We are
jealous, like our God.  For instance, we have made the name of the glorious
Phryne a term of reproach, even of abuse.  We prefer one of Holbein's meagre
pallid virgins -- as long as she is wholly ours -- to an antique Venus no
matter how divinely beautiful, who loves Anchises today, Paris tomorrow,
Adonis the day after.  And if our sensual nature so triumphs in us that we
give our complete, passionate, burning devotion to such a woman, her serene
joy in life seems to us something cruel and demonic, and we see in our own
bliss a sin we must expiate."

     She looked at me scornfully.  "So you too are one of the enthusiasts of
modern women, of those wretched hysterical females who in their somnambulistic
search for an ideal man cannot appreciate a real one, and in tears and spasms
violate the Christian ethic, cheating and being cheated, always hunting and
choosing and rejecting, never happy themselves nor giving happiness to others,
and forever accusing fate instead of quietly admitting they wish to love and
live like Helen or Aspasia.  Nature knows no permanence in the tie between man
and woman."

     "But, dear lady --"

     "Let me finish. It is only man's egoism which seeks to bury woman
like a treasure in the earth.  Every effort to impart some permanence to
love, that most fickle thing in our fickle humanity, has come to nothing
-- yes, all those holy ceremonies, solemn vows, legal sanctions.  Can
you deny that our Christian world has given itself up to license?"

     "But --"

     "But, you would say, the one who rebels against the institutions
of society is ostracized, branded, stoned.  Very well. I am willing to
take the risk, my principles are quite pagan.  I live my life as it
pleases me, I can do without your hypocritical respect, I would rather
be happy.  The inventors of Christian marriage did well to invent
immortality at the same time.  I however have no wish to live for ever. 
When with my last breath everything here below comes to an end for Wanda
von Dunaiev, what difference will it make to me whether my pure spirit
joins the choir of angels or my dust goes lo make new beings?  Shall I
belong entirely to a man I do not love, simply because I have once loved
him?  No, I renounce nothing, I will love everyone who pleases me and
make everyone who loves me happy.  Is that ugly?  No, it is far more
beautiful than cruelly to enjoy the torments which my beauty has caused,
and virtuously to reject the poor fellow who is pining away for me.  I
am young, rich and beautiful, and I live serenely for pleasure and
enjoyment."

     While she was speaking with flashing eyes, I had taken her hands
without exactly knowing what to do with them, but being a real
dilettante I now hastily let go of them.

     "Your frankness," I said, "delights me, and not only your
frankness --"  But my cursed dilettantism again choked me as if there
were a rope around my neck.

     "You were saying?"

     "I was about to say -- I was...  Excuse me, dear lady -- I
interrupted you."

     "How so?"

      A long pause.  She is doubtless engaged in a monologue which, in
my own phraseology, would be comprised in the single word, "Donkey."

     "If I may be so bold," I said at last, "how did you arrive at
these conclusions?"

     "Very simply.  My father was an intelligent man.  From my cradle I
was surrounded by reproductions of ancient art.  At the age of ten I
read Gil Blas, at twelve Voltaire's La Pucelle; where other children had
Hop-o'-my-thumb, Bluebeard and Cinderella for friends, I had Venus and
Apollo, Hercules and Laocoön.  My husband's character was full of
serenity and sunlight.  Not even the incurable illness which struck him
down soon after our marriage could cloud his spirit for long.  On the
night before his death he received me in his bed, and during the many
months when he sat dying in his wheelchair he would often ask me in
jest, 'Well, have you chosen a lover yet?', and I would blush with
shame.  'But do not hoodwink me,' he added once. 'That would be ugly.
Take an attractive lover, or preferably several.  You are an honest
woman, but still little more than a child, and you must have toys.'  I
need hardly tell you that while he lived I had no lover; but it was
thanks to him that I have become what I am, a woman of Greece..."

     "A goddess," I interjected.

     "Which?" she smiled.

     "Venus."

     She made as if to threaten me with her finger, and knitted her
brows.  "Perhaps even a Venus in furs.  Take good care, I have a great
fur which could cover you entirely, and I will catch you in it as in a
net."

     I felt myself turn pale; then recovering quickly I followed a
train of thought which for all its conventionality and triteness struck
me as very much to the point.  "Do you believe," I said, "that your
ideas of love could be realized in the present day, that Venus would be
permitted to wander with impunity among our railroads and telegraphs in
all her undraped beauty and serenity?"

     "Undraped, of course not -- but in furs, yes," she replied
laughing.  "Would you care to see mine?"

     I had a moment of daring.  "Ah, that is not all."

     "What else, then?"

     "Beautiful, free, serene and happy beings, such as the Greeks
were, can only exist where there are slaves to perform the prosaic
everyday tasks for them and above all to work for them."

     "Of course," she replied airily.  "An Olympian deity, such as I
am, would require a whole army of slaves.  Beware of me!"

     "Why?"

     I was frightened by the boldness with which I uttered this "why?" 
But it did not startle her in the least; she drew back her lips a little
so that her small white teeth became visible and then said casually, as
if she were discussing some trifling matter, "Would you like to be my
slave?"

     I caught my breath.  "There is no such thing these days," I said. 
"But even if there were, there is no equality in love.  Whenever it is a
question of ruling or being ruled, it seems to me much more satisfying
to be the slave of a beautiful woman.  But where shall I find the woman
who knows how to rule, calmly and with assurance, even with severity,
instead of trying to assert her power by a course of petty nagging?"

     "Oh, that might not be so difficult."

     "You think --"

     "I, for instance," she laughed and leaned back in her chair, "I
have a real talent for tyranny.  I have also the furs...  But last night
you were actually afraid of me!"

     "Yes, actually."

     "And now?"

     "Now -- I am more afraid of you than ever!"


     We are together every day now, I and -- Venus.  We are together a
great deal;  we have breakfast in my honeysuckle arbour, and tea in her
little sitting-room, and I have the opportunity of displaying my small,
my very small talents.  What good has been my study of all the sciences,
my playing at all the forms of art, if I'm not able, faced with a pretty
woman, to --

     But this woman is much more than pretty, in fact she impresses me
enormously.  I made a sketch of her today, feeling above all how much
the modern fashion in dress is unsuited to that cameo-like head of hers.
The configuration of her head has little of the Roman, much of the
Greek.

     Sometimes I feel I would like to paint her as Psyche, sometimes as
Astarte.  It depends on the expression of her eyes -- whether it is
vague and dreamy, or avid, or instinct with a kind of weary desire. 
She, however, insists only on a likeness.

     I would like to do her in furs.

     How could I doubt their fitness?  On whose shoulders would an
imperial fur rest better than on hers?


     I was with her last evening, reading aloud the Roman Elegies. 
Then I laid the book aside and improvised something for her. She seemed
pleased -- more than that, she actually hung on my words, and her breast
heaved.

     Or was I mistaken?

     The rain was beating sombrely on the window panes, the fire
crackled in the fireplace with an effect of wintry luxury.  I felt at
ease with her, and for a moment lost all my awe of this beautiful woman;
I kissed her hand, and she allowed it.  Then I sat at her feet and read
a poem I had written for her.

                       "VENUS IN FURS

               Place thy foot upon thy slave,
               Lovely devil, fabled woman!
               Under the myrtles and the aloes
               See, they marble body lies..."


And -- so on!  This time I really went beyond the first stanza but I
gave her the poem that night when she asked for it and kept no copy so
that today as I write this in my journal, I only recall that opening
stanza...

     I am overcome by a strange feeling.  I do not think I am in love
with Wanda, I am sure that at our first meeting I felt no lightning-
stroke of passion.  But I feel how her extraordinary, her divine beauty
has been gradually weaving a magic snare around me.  It is no spiritual
sympathy that is growing in me, it is a purely physical subjection, slow
-coming but none the less absolute.

     I am suffering more and more every day.  And she -- she merely
smiles.


     Out of a clear sky she said to me today:  "You interest me.  Most
men are so commonplace, without warmth, without poetry.  In you there is
a certain depth, a capacity for enthusiasm, a deep seriousness which
pleases me.  I might learn to love you.


     After a short heavy shower of rain we go out today to the little
meadow and the statue of Venus.  All around us the earth is steaming,
the mists floating heavenward like clouds of incense; a shattered
rainbow still hovers in the sky.  The trees are still shedding raindrops
but the sparrows and finches are already hopping from branch to branch,
twittering gaily as if highly pleased with something.  Everything is
filled with a fresh fragrance.  We cannot cross the long-grassed meadow: 
it is still too wet.  In the sunlight it looks like a little lake and
the Goddess of Love appears as if poised and riding on the undulation of
the glassy surface;  around her head a dancing swarm of gnats gilded by
the sun hovers like an aureole.

     Wanda is enjoying the lovely scene.  As all the benches on the
path are still wet she leans on my arm to rest; a tender fatigue seems
to permeate her whole being, her eyes are half closed; I feel her breath
caress my cheek.

     I take her hand and -- where I find the courage I do not know -- I
ask,

     "Could you love me?"

     "Why not?" she replies letting her calm clear gaze rest on me for
an instant.

     The next moment I am kneeling before her pressing my burning face
against the perfumed muslin of her gown.

     "Severin -- this is not seemly!" she cries.

     But I take hold of her little foot and press my lips to it.

     "Now you are even worse!" she cries and she tears herself away and
flees swiftly towards the house while her adorable slipper remains in my
hand.

     Is this an omen?


     All next day I dared not go near her.  Towards evening as I was
sitting in my arbour her piquant red head appeared suddenly amid the
greenery of her balcony.  "Why don't you come up?"  she called down
impatiently.

     I run up the stairs but at the top my courage almost failed me and
I knocked very lightly.  She didn't tell me to come in but opened the
door herself and met me on the threshold.

     "Where is my slipper?"

     "It's -- well, I've -- I'll"  I stammered.

     "Get it then we'll have tea together and talk."

     When I returned she was busy making tea.  I laid the slipper
ceremoniously on the table and stood beside it like a child awaiting
punishment.

     I noticed that her brows were slightly contracted and her lips
were compressed in a harsh and imperious way which delighted me.


     All of a sudden she broke into laughter.

     "So you are really in love with me?"

     "Yes and I am suffering more than you can imagine."

     "You are suffering?"  She laughed again.

     I was indignant, ashamed, annihilated but she did not seem to
notice.

     "Why?"  she went on.  "I like you with all my heart."  She gave me
her hand and looked at me in the most friendly manner.

     "And will you be my wife?"

     Wanda gazed at me -- ah, just how did she gaze at me?  I think
first of all with surprise, and then with a hint of scorn.

     "What has given you so much courage, all of a sudden?"

     "Courage?"

     "Yes, the courage to ask someone to be your wife, and above all
myself."  She held up the slipper. "Was it through a sudden passion for
this?  But joking aside, do you really wish to marry me?"

     "Yes."

     "Severin, this is a serious matter. I believe you love me, and I
care for you too, and what is more important we find each other
interesting.  There is no danger of us boring each other too soon --
but, you know, I am changeable, and for that very reason I take marriage
seriously.  If I assume obligations I want to be able to meet them.  But
I am afraid -- no, this will wound you..."

     "I beg you, be perfectly frank with me."

     "Well then.  In all honesty, I don't believe I could love any man
longer than --"  She put her head gracefully on one side and reflected.

     "A year?" I said.

     "What are you thinking of!  A month perhaps."

     "Not even me?"

     "Oh you -- perhaps two."

     "Two months!"  I cried.

     "Two months is a long time."

     "Madam, you surpass the ancient Greeks."

     "You see, you cannot bear the truth."

     Wanda walked across the room and leaned against the fireplace,
resting one arm on the mantel.  "What shall I do with you?"  she asked.

     "What you wish," I replied submissively.  "Whatever will give you
pleasure."

     "How illogical,"  she said. "First you want to make me your wife,
then you offer yourself to me as a toy."

     "Wanda -- I love you."

     "Now we are back where we started.  You love me, and you want to
make me your wife -- while I don't care to enter into a new marriage
because I doubt the permanence of our feelings, yours as well as mine."

     "But if I am willing to take the risk with you..."

     "It is also a question of whether I am willing to take the risk
with you," she said quietly.  "I can indeed imagine belonging to one man
for my entire life, but he would have to be a real man, a man who would
dominate me, subjugate me by his own innate strength, do you understand? 

And every man -- I know this all too well -- becomes weak when he is in
love, pliant, ridiculous, puts himself in the woman's hands, kneels
before her -- while the only man who could command my lasting love would
be one before whom I myself should have to kneel.  But I have grown to
like you so much that I'm willing to try it with you."

     I fell at her feet.

     "For heaven's sake, there you are kneeling already!"  she cried
mockingly.  "You are starting well."  But when I had risen again she
went on more seriously.  "I will give you a year's time to win me, to
convince me we are suited to each other, that we might live together. 
If you succeed, I will become your wife -- and a wife, Severin, who will
truly and faithfully play her part.  During that year we will live as if
we were married --"

     The blood rushed to my head.  In her eyes too there was a sudden
flame.  "We will live together," she went on softly, "and share each
other's daily life, to find out whether we are really suited.  I shall
grant you all the rights of a husband, of a lover, of a friend.  Are you
satisfied?"

     "I suppose -- I must be."

     "You do not have to be."

     "Well then -- I agree."

     "Splendid.  That is how a man speaks.  Here is my hand."



     For the past ten days I have been with her constantly, except at
night.  All this time I have been allowed to gaze into her eyes, hold
her hands, listen to her voice, accompany her everywhere.

     My love seems like a fathomless abyss into which I am sinking
deeper and deeper.  Nothing can save me now.

     This afternoon we were resting in the little meadow, at the feet
of the statue of Venus. I picked flowers and heaped them in her lap, and
she twined them into wreaths with which we decked our goddess.

     All at once Wanda looked at me so strangely, with such sensual
hunger that my senses became confused and a fiery passion surged through
me.  Losing control of myself I put my arm around her and pressed my
lips to hers, and she -- she drew me close to her.

     "Are you angry?"  I murmured.

     "I am never angry at anything that is natural,"  she said.  "But I
am afraid you are suffering."

     "Oh, I am suffering terribly."

     "My poor friend!"  She stroked the tousled hair back from my
forehead.  "I hope it is through no fault of mine."

     "No,"  I said, "and yet my love for you has become a kind of
madness.  The thought that I may lose you, that I might really lose you
some time, tortures me night and day."

     "But you do not yet possess me," said Wanda, and once again she
looked at me with that tremulous avid expression which had always
transported me.  Then she rose and with her small transparent hands
placed a wreath of blue anemones on the white stone curls of Venus. 
Half against my will I put my arm around her.

     "I can no longer live without you, marvellous woman,"  I said. 
"Believe me -- believe only that this time I am not making phrases, not
speaking out of a dream.  I feel in my soul that my life belongs
inalterably with yours.  If you leave me I shall die."

     "That is hardly necessary, for I love you,"  she took my chin in
her hand,  "you foolish man."

     "But you will he mine only on conditions, while I belong to you
utterly without reserve --"

     "This is not as it should be, Severin," she answered with a slight
tremor.  "Do you not know me yet, do you absolutely refuse to know me? 
I am good when I am treated seriously, reasonably, but when people
abandon themselves to me utterly, ah, I grow arrogant..."

     "Be so!  Be arrogant, despotic,"  I cried in the heat of my
exaltation.  "Only be mine, mine forever..."  I fell at her feet and
embraced her knees.

     "Ah, this will end badly, my friend," she said gravely, without
moving.

     "It will never end," I cried feverishly, almost wildly.  "Only
death shall part us.  If you cannot be mine, altogether mine and
forever, then I with to be your slave, to serve you, endure everything
from you -- everything but to be driven away."

     "Calm yourself,"  she said, bending down and kissing my forehead. 
"I am really very fond of you -- but your way, my dear, is not the way
to win and hold me."

     "I only desire everything, absolutely everything, that you
desire -- only so long as I do not lose you," I cried, "anything but
that, I cannot bear the thought."

     "Ah, do get up."

     I rose.

     "You are a strange man," she said.  "You wish to possess me at any
price?"

     "At any price."

     "But what good, for instance, would it do you if --"  She paused,
and a furtive, mysterious light came into her eyes, "-- if I no longer
loved you, and gave myself to someone else?"

     A shudder ran through me.  I saw her standing before me firm and
assured, an icy gleam in her eyes.

     "You see," she went on, "the very thought makes you afraid."  A
beautiful smile suddenly lit up her face.

     "Yes, I feel an absolute horror at the thought of the woman I
love, of the woman who has returned my love, giving herself to another
without any thought of me.  But after all, have I any choice?  If I love
such a woman, love her to madness, shall I turn my back on her love and
lose everything for the sake of vaunting my moral strength?  Shall I put
a bullet through my own brain?  I have two ideals of woman.  If I cannot
have the one which is noble and simple, the woman who will share my life
with fidelity and truth, then I do not want anything half-way or
partial!  Then I would rather be subject to a woman without virtue, 
fidelity or pity.  Such a woman in her splendid egoism is no less an
ideal.  If I cannot enjoy the happiness of love fully and wholly, then I
want to drink its pains and torments to the dregs, I want to be abused
and betrayed by the woman I love, and the more cruelly the better. This
too is a form of happiness."

     "Have you lost your senses!" she cried.

     "I love you with all my soul," I said quietly, "and with all my
senses, and I must enjoy your presence and your personality if I am to
go on living.  Choose between my two ideals.  Do with me what you will,
make me your husband or your slave."

     "Very well," said Wanda, contracting her small but strongly marked
brows.  "I think it might he amusing to have a man who interests me, and
who is moreover in love with me, completely in my power.  At least I
should not lack for pastime.  You have been so imprudent as to leave the
choice to me.  Therefore I choose:  I want you for my slave, and I will
make you my plaything."

     "Ah, do!"  I cried, trembling half with fear, half with rapture. 
"See, if marriage depends on equality and consent, it is also true that
the greatest passions arise from an opposition of extremes.  You and I
are such opposites, almost enemies.  That is why my love is part hate,
part fear.  In such a relationship one must be the hammer and the other
the anvil.  I wish to be the anvil.  I cannot be happy if I look down on
the woman I love.  I wish to worship a woman, and I can only do so when
she is cruel to me."

     "But Severin," said Wanda almost angrily, "do you think me capable
of abusing a man who loves me as you do, and whom I also I love?"

     "Why not, if I could worship you all the more for it?  One can
only truly love that which stands above one, a woman who by her beauty,
temperament, intellect and strength of will subjugates one and becomes a
tyrant."

     "Then what repels others attracts you?"

     "Yes.  This is what is strange about me."

     "Well, after all, there is nothing so unique or strange in these
passions of yours, for who does not love beautiful furs?  And everyone
knows and feels how closely love and cruelty are bound together."

     "But with me all these are raised to the highest degree."

     "In other words, reason has little power over you, and you are by
nature soft, sensual, yielding."

     "Were the martyrs also soft and sensual by nature?"

     "The martyrs?"

     "On the contrary, they were supersensual men, who found enjoyment
in suffering, who sought the most fearful tortures, even death, as
others seek joy -- and as they were, so am I, madam, supersensual."

     "Have a care then, lest you become a martyr to love, the martyr of
a woman."



     We are sitting on Wanda's little balcony in the soft fragrance of
a summer night, a twofold roof is above us, the green ceiling of
creepers and the vault of heavens sown with innumerable stars.  From the
park rises the low wailing love-call of a cat, and I am sitting on a
stool at the feet of my divinity, telling her of my childhood.

     "And so, even then, all these strange traits were apparent?"  said
Wanda.

     "I cannot recall a time when they were not.  Even in my cradle, so
my mother told me, I was supersensual, I scorned the healthy breast of
my nurse and had to be brought up on goat's milk.  As a boy I was
unaccountably shy with women, but this was only a sign of my inordinate
interest in them.  I was also oppressed by the grey vaulting and semi-
darkness of the church, and actually afraid of the glittering altars and
images of the saints.  By stealth I would creep, as to a secret vice, to
a plaster cast of Venus which stood in my father's little library, and
kneel and repeat to her the prayers I had been taught -- the
Paternoster, the Ave and the Credo.

     "Once, at night, I left my bed to visit her.  The sickle of a new
moon was my only illumination, and showed me the goddess in an icy pale-
blue light.  I threw myself before her and kissed her cold feet as I had
seen our peasants kiss those of the dead Saviour.

     "All at once an irresistible craving seized me.

     "I rose and embraced the beautiful cold body with my arms and
kissed the chilly lips, and the next moment I was convulsed by a long
exquisite tremor...  I fled, and later, in a dream, it seemed as if the
goddess herself stood by my bed, threatening me with upraised arm.

     "I was sent to school early and soon reached the gymnasium.  I
seized passionately on everything that promised to bring the world of
antiquity nearer to me.  Soon I was more familiar with the gods of
Greece than with the religion of Jesus:  I was with Paris when he gave
the fatal apple to Venus, I saw Troy burn, and I followed Ulysses on his
wanderings.  The prototypes of all that is beautiful sank deeply into my
soul, and so at an age when other boys are coarse and obscene I showed
an insurmountable aversion to everything base, vulgar and uncouth.

     "To me, then on the verge of adolescence, the love of woman seemed
something particularly base and ugly, for I saw it first in all its
grossness.  I avoided all contact with the other sex; in a word, I was
supersensual almost to madness.

     "When I was about fourteen my mother had a charming chambermaid,
young, pretty, with a figure just budding into womanhood.  I was sitting
one day studying my Tacitus and growing enthusiastic over the virtues of
the ancient Teutons while she was sweeping the room.  All at once she
paused and bent over me, still holding her broom, and the next moment a
pair of fresh, full, adorable lips was pressed to mine.  The kiss of
this amorous little she-cat sent a delicious shudder through me, but I
lifted up my Moribus Germaniae like a shield against the temptress and
fled from the room in indignation."


     Wanda broke into a merry laugh.  "It would really be hard to find
another man like you!  but go on."

     "There is another memorable incident of that period,"  I said. 
"The Countess Sobol, a distant aunt of mine by marriage, was visiting my
parents.  She was a beautiful and imposing woman with a charming smile,
but I hated her, for she was looked on by my family as a kind of
Messalina.  My conduct towards her was as rude, surly and malicious as
it could be.

     "One day my parents had driven to the capital of the district.  My
aunt determined to profit by their absence and execute judgment on me. 
She entered suddenly in her fur-lined Russian jacket, followed by the
cook, the kitchenmaid and the cat of a chambermaid whom I had scorned. 
Without any questions or parley they seized and stripped me, bound me
hand and foot in spite of my violent resistance, and then my aunt, with
an evil smile, rolled up her sleeve and began whipping my naked loins
with a stout switch.  She whipped so hard that she drew blood, and at
last, in spite of all my heroic resolve to remain silent, I howled and
wept and begged for mercy.  She then had me unbound, but I had to go on
my knees, thank her for the punishment, and kiss her hand.

     "Now you understand the supersensual fool!  Under the lash of a
beautiful haughty woman, looking in her fur jacket like a wrathful
sovereign, I felt my senses first awake to the meaning of woman, and
from that moment my aunt became the most desirable woman on earth.

     "My Catonian austerity, my shyness with women were simply an
excessive feeling for beauty.  In the furnace of my imagination
sensuality assumed the rank of an aesthetic, and I swore to myself that
I would not squander its stores on any ordinary woman but would preserve
them for an ideal one, and if possible for an avatar of the goddess of
love herself.

     "I went to the university at a very early age.  It was in the
capital, where my aunt lived.  My room there looked like Doctor
Faustus'.  Everything was in utter confusion, there were great closets
stuffed with books~ I had bought for a song from a Jewish dealer in the
Servanica, globes, atlases, retorts, celestial charts, skeletons of
animals, skulls, busts of eminent men.  At any moment Mephistopheles,
dressed as a peripatetic schoolman, might have stepped out from behind
the big green stove.

     "I studied everything pell-mell, without system or selection --
chemistry, alchemy, history, astronomy, philosophy, law, anatomy and
literature;  I read Homer, Virgil, Ossian, Schiller, Goethe,
Shakespeare, Cervantes, Molière, the Koran, the Kosmos, Casanova's
memoirs.  I grew more confused every day, more fantastic, more
supersensual.  And all the time a beautiful female ideal was hovering in
my imagination, every now and then appearing before me like a vision
among my leather-bound books and dead bones, lying on a bed of roses,
her body encircled by cupids;  sometime she appeared gowned like the
Olympians and with the stern white face of the statue of Venus,
sometimes blue-eyed, with her hair in rich brown braids and wearing my
aunt's red velvet jacket trimmed with ermine.  You can imagine the
culmination of my solitary meditations at this time..."

     Wanda frowned swiftly, but her lovely mouth did not lose its
indulgent smile as she listened.

     "One morning, however, when this ideal creature had been floating
before me all night long in her smiling beauty, I went to see the
Countess Sobol, who received me in a friendly and even cordial manner; 
she gave me a kiss of welcome, which put all my senses in a turmoil. 
She was perhaps forty years old at this time, but like most society
women she was now at the height of her beauty.  She was still wearing a
fur-edged jacket, this time one of green velvet trimmed with marten, but
none of the sternness which had once so delighted me was now discernible
in her face;  on the contrary, there was so little cruelty in her that
without any ado she let me adore her.

     "Only too soon did she discover my supersensual folly and
innocence, and she was pleased to grant me her favours.  And I -- I was
as happy as a young god.  What ecstasy it was to be allowed to lie at
her feet and to kiss her hands, those hands which had scourged me!  What
marvellous hands they were -- beautifully shaped, delicate, rounded and
white, with rose-tinted nails.  I was really in love only with her
hands;  I played with them, let them submerge and reappear in the dark
fur, held them against the light, and was unable to glut my eyes with
them."

     Wanda involuntarily glanced at her own hands;  I noticed it and
had to smile.

     "From the extent to which I was governed by supersensuality in
those days, you can see I was in love only with the cruel lashes I had
received from my aunt;  it was the same later on, when I made love to a
young actress only in the role and costume in which she had attracted
me.  Still later, I lost my head over a highly respectable woman who
played the part of virtue to admiration and deceived me with a wealthy
Jew -- since when, having been betrayed by a woman who feigned the
strictest principles and the highest ideals, I have hated all that kind
of sentimental poetic virtue.  Give me a woman who is honest enough to
say, 'I am a Pompadour, a Lucrezia Borgia,' and I am ready to adore
her."

     Wanda rose and went to the window.  "You have a strange way of
rousing one's imagination,"  she said,  "of playing on one's nerves and
making one's pulse beat faster.  You place a halo on vice, provided only
it is honest.  Your ideal is simply a bold and gifted courtesan.  Oh,
you are a man who would corrupt a woman to her depths!"



     In the middle of the night there was a knock at my window;  I got
up, opened it and was startled.  Outside stood Venus in Furs, as she had
appeared to me the first time.

     "You have unsettled me with your talk," she said.  "I have been
tossing in bed, unable to sleep.  You must come up and keep me company."

     "At once."

     When I entered Wanda was kneeling before the fireplace where she
had kindled a small fire.

     "Autumn is coming on," she said, "already the nights are quite
cold.  I am afraid you may not like it, but I must keep my furs on until
the room warms up."

     "Not like it! You are joking --"  I put my arm around her and
kissed her.

     "Of course I know your weakness," she said smiling.  "But why this
excessive fondness for furs?"

     "I was born with it," I replied.  "I had it as a child.  Moreover,
furs have a stimulating effect on all highly-strung natures, due to
certain general and natural laws.  They possess a physical stimulus
which sets one a-tingle, and no one can wholly escape it.  Science has
recently shown a connection between electricity and warmth;  at any
rate, their effects on the human organism are closely related.  The
torrid zone produces more passionate people through the influence of the
warmer atmosphere.  It is the same with electricity.  This is why the
presence of cats has such a magical and salutary influence on all
highly-strung men of intellect, and why these long-tailed Graces of the
animal world, these adorable spark-engendering electric batteries, have
been the favorite animals of men like Mohammed, Cardinal Richelieu,
Crébillon, Rousseau, Wieland."

     "A woman wearing furs, then," cried Wanda, "is nothing more than a
large cat, an amplified electric battery?"

     "Exactly," I said.  "That is my explanation of the symbolic
meaning which fur has acquired as an attribute of power and beauty.  In
former times monarchs and the higher nobility made it, as such, their
privileged costume;  great painters used it only for sovereign beauty. 
The most fitting frame which Raphael could find for the divine form of
La Fornarina, and Titian for the rosy body of his beloved, was one of
dark furs."

     "I thank you for the learned discourse on eroticism,"  said Wanda, 
"but you have not told me everything.  You associate with furs something
entirely personal to yourself."

     "Certainly," I said.  "I have already told you that suffering has
a peculiar attraction for me, and that nothing can heighten my passion
more than the idea of tyranny, of cruelty, and above all of a woman's
faithlessness.  And for some reason I cannot picture this woman -- this
ideal beauty strangely derived from an aesthetic of ugliness, this soul
of a Nero in the body of a Phryne -- except in furs."

     "l understand," said Wanda.  "They give a woman a dominant and
imposing air."

     "It is more than that.  You know I am supersensual, that for me
everything has its roots in fantasy and receives its whole nourishment
from the fantastic.  Well, I was already precocious and highly sensitive
when at about the age of ten the legends of the Christian martyrs fell
into my hands;  I remember reading with a kind of horror, which was
actually rapture, of how they languished in dungeons, were laid on
gridirons, were pierced with arrows, boiled in pitch, thrown to wild
beasts, nailed to the cross, and how they suffered the most atrocious
torments with a kind of joy.  From then on, to undergo cruel torture
seemed to me an exquisite delight, especially when it was inflicted by a
beautiful woman -- for ever since I can remember all poetry and
everything demonic were for me combined and concentrated in the idea of
woman.

     "Thus I felt there was something sacred in sensuality, that indeed
sensuality was the only sacred thing;  in woman and her beauty I saw
something divine, because the most important function of woman -- the
continuation of the species -- was her vocation and her mission.  To me
woman represented the very personification of nature, the goddess Isis,
and man was no more than her priest, her instrument, her slave;  in
contrast to him she was cruel, like Nature herself who throws aside
whatever has served her purpose as soon as she needs it no longer --
while to him her cruelties, even death itself, were still sensual
raptures.

     "I envied King Gunther whom the mighty Brünnhilde fettered on his
bridal night, and the poor troubadour whom his capricious mistress
ordered to be sewn in the skins of wolves and hunted like a wild beast; 
I envied the knight Ctirad whom the bold Amazon Scharka cunningly
ensnared in the forests of Prague and carried off to her Castle Divine
where, after amusing herself with him for a while, she had slowly broken
on the wheel --"

     "Revolting!" cried Wanda.  "Ah, I almost wish you could fall into
the hands of such a savage woman.  In the wolf's skin, under the teeth
of the dogs or on the wheel, you would lose the taste for your kind of
poetry."

     "Do you think so?  I do not."

     "You are really out of your senses."

     "Possibly.  But let me go on.  I developed a perfect passion for
stories where the worst cruelties were described, and I especially liked
to look at pictures and prints which portrayed all the bloody tyrants
who have ever occupied a throne, the Inquisitors who had the heretics
tortured, roasted, racked and whipped, and above all the women whom the
pages of history have recorded as lustful, beautiful, violent --
Libussa, Lucrezia Borgia, Agnes of Hungary, Queen Margot, Isabeau, the
Sultana Roxolana, the Russian Czarinas of the last century -- all these
women I saw in furs bordered with ermine."

     "And so furs now rouse strange fancies in you," said Wanda, and
she began draping her magnificent fur cloak temptingly about her, making
the shining sable play around her breast and arms.  "So -- how do you
feel now, half broken on the wheel?"  Her piercing green eyes rested on
me with a peculiar mocking pleasure.

     Overcome by desire I fell at her feet and threw my arms about her.

     "Yes, you have brought my dearest dream to life!" I cried.  "It
has slept long enough."

     "And that dream is -- ?"  She laid her hand on my neck.

     The pressure of her warm hand, and the tender searching gaze she
bent on me through half-closed eyes, filled me with a delicious vertigo.

     "To be the slave of a woman, a beautiful woman whom I live, whom I
worship!"

     "And who maltreats you in return," added Wanda laughing.

     "Yes, who binds me and whips me, treads me underfoot, while she
gives herself to another."

     "And who in her wantonness will go so far as to make a present of
you to your successful rival when, maddened by jealousy, you meet him
face to face -- a female demon who will hand you over entirely to his
mercy.  Why not?"   She gazed at me intently.  "This last tableau
doesn't please you quite so well?"

     I looked at Wanda with awe.  "You surpass my dreams."

     "Yes, we women are inventive," she said.  "Be careful, when you
find your ideal:  she might well treat you more cruelly than you
expect."

     "I fear I have already found my ideal," I cried, burying my
burning face in her lap.

     "Surely it is not l?" she cried, throwing off her furs and moving
about the room laughing.  She was still laughing when I went downstairs,
and as I stood musing in the courtyard I could still hear her laughter
ringing from above.



     "Do you really expect me, then, to embody your ideal?"  Wanda
asked quizzically when we met in the park today.

     At first I could find no answer;  the most contradictory feelings
were warring within me.  Meanwhile she had sat down on one of the stone
benches and was playing with a flower.

     "Well," she said, "do you?"

     I knelt and took her hands.  "Once more, Wanda, I beg you to be my
wife, my true and loyal wife...  But if you cannot, then become my
ideal, entirely, without restraint or compunction."

     She surveyed me with a level gaze.  "You know I am still ready to
give you my hand at the end of a year, if by that time you prove to be
the man I am looking for,"  she said gravely.  "But I think you would
you would be really more grateful to me if I realized your fantasies. 
Well, which do you prefer?"

     "I believe that everything my imagination has dreamed lies latent
in your personality."

     "You are mistaken."

     "I believe," I continued, "that you would enjoy having a man
wholly in your power, torturing him --"

     "No, no," she exclaimed quickly.  "Or -- or perhaps --" she
paused.  "I understand myself no longer, but I have a confession to
make.  You have corrupted my imagination and inflamed my blood.  I am
beginning to like the things you speak of.  The enthusiasm with which
you speak of a Pompadour, a Catherine, of all those other selfish,
frivolous, cruel women has carried me away and taken possession of my
soul.  It tempts, it incites me to become like those women who for all
their vileness were slavishly worshipped during their own lifetimes and
who still exert a miraculous power from the grave.  Ah, you will end by
making me a despot in miniature, a domestic Pompadour!"

     "Then if this is latent in you," I said with animation, "yield to
this tendency of your nature!  I want no half-commitment.  If you cannot
be a true, loyal wife to me, be a demon."

     I was nervous and exhausted from lack of sleep, and the nearness
of the beautiful woman had put me in a kind of delirium;  I no longer
remember what I said, but only that I kissed her feet and finally raised
her foot and placed it on my neck, when she withdrew it hurriedly and
rose almost in anger.

     "If you love me, Severin," she said quickly, and her voice was
sharp with command, "never speak to me of these things again.  Do you
understand, never!  Otherwise -- I might really --"  She smiled and sat
down again.

     "I am completely serious," I exclaimed, scarcely knowing what I
was saying.  "I adore you so infinitely that I will endure anything from
you for the sake of spending my whole life at your side."

     "Severin, once more I warn you."

     "Your warning is in vain.  Do with me as you will, only do not
drive me away."

     "Severin," she replied, "I am a frivolous woman, it is dangerous
to put yourself completely in my power;  you will end by really becoming
my plaything.  What makes you sure I will not abuse this mad love of
yours?"

     "Your own nobility of character."

     "But absolute power makes one unfeeling, arrogant."

     "Be so, then," I cried, "tread me underfoot!"

     Wanda threw her arms around my neck, gazed into my eyes and shook
her head.  "I am afraid I cannot.  But I will try, for your sake -- for
I love you, Severin, as I have never loved another man."



     Today she suddenly appeared in street-costume, and made me go
shopping with her.  She looked at whips, long-lashed whips of the kind
used on dogs.

     "Are these what you require, madam?" asked the shopman.

     "No, they are too small," said Wanda judicially, with a side
glance at me.  "I need something heavier --"

     "For a bulldog, perhaps?" he suggested.

     "Why yes," she exclaimed.  "The kind used in Russia for
intractable serfs."

     She looked further and at last picked out a heavy whip made of
braided leather, the sight of which gave me a strange, shrinking
sensation.

     "Now goodbye, Severin," she said. "I have other purchases to make
for which I shan't need you."

     I took my leave of her and went for a walk.  Coming back I saw
Wanda leaving a furrier's;  she beckoned to me.

     "Consider, my dear," she began pleasantly, "I have never made a
secret of the fascination your fantastic character holds for me.  The
idea of having such a serious man altogether in my power, actually lying
at my feet in ecstasy, stirs me -- but will this attraction last?  A
woman loves a man, but she abuses a slave and ends by kicking him
aside."

     "Very well then," I replied.  "Kick me aside when you are tired of
me.  I wish only to be your slave."

     "Ah, Severin, dangerous forces lie within me," said Wanda after we
had gone a few steps further.  "You are awakening them, and to no good
to yourself.  You know how to paint pleasure, cruelty, arrogance, in
glowing colours, -- but what you would say if I really tried my hand at
them and made you the first subject of the trial?  I should be like the
tyrant Dionysius who had the inventor of the brazen ox roasted in it, to
see whether his groans and death-rattle really resembled an ox's
bellowing.  Perhaps I am a she-Dionysius..."

     "Be so," I cried, "and my dreams will be realized!  I am yours for
good or ill, as you see fit.  The destiny I feel within my breast is
driving me on -- demoniacally, relentlessly."


     "Beloved,
          I do not even care to see you today or tomorrow:  not until
          the day after tomorrow, and then as my slave.
                                             Your Mistress,
                                                  Wanda."

     "As my slave" was underlined.  I read the note, which I received
early in the morning, once more;  then I had a donkey saddled -- an
animal symbolic of learning -- and rode into the mountains;  I was
trying to dull the pain of my desire and longing with the magnificent
scenery of the Carpathians.


     I return tired, hungry, thirsty and more in love than ever.  I
change my clothes quickly, and a few moments later knock at her door.

     "Come in!"

     I enter.  She is standing in the middle of the room, wearing a
gown of white satin which flows over her body like liquid light;  over
it she wears a scarlet Russian jacket richly edged with ermine, and on
her powdered snowy hair is a small diamond tiara.  She stands with her
arms folded, her brows contracted.

     "Wanda!"

     I run forward and am about to throw my arms around her when she
draws back, measuring me with her gaze from head to foot.

     "Slave!"

     "Mistress!"  I kneel, and kiss the hem of her gown.

     "That is better."

     "Oh, how beautiful you are."

     "Do I please you?"  She stepped before the mirror and looked at
herself with proud satisfaction.

     "I shall go mad..."  I murmured.  Her lips twitched in derision,
and she looked at me mockingly from between half-closed lids.  "Give me
the whip."

     I looked around the room.

     "No," she cried, "stay as you are, on your knees!"  She went to
the fireplace, took the whip from the mantelpiece and then, looking at
me with a meaningful smile, made it whistle in the air; then, slowly,
she rolled up the sleeve of her jacket.

     "Marvellous woman!"  I cried.

     "Silence, slave!"  Her mouth suddenly twisted with beautiful
savagery, and she lashed me with the whip;  the next moment she threw
one arm around me and bent down with a tender look.  "Did I hurt you?" 
She asked with a mixture of shyness and timidity.

     "No," I said, "and even if you had, the pain that comes from you
is a joy.  Strike again, if it gives you any pleasure."

     "Ah, it does not..."

     But once again I was seized by that strange intoxication.  "Whip
me," I begged, "whip me without mercy!"

     Wanda raised the whip and struck me twice.

     "Now, are you satisfied?"

     "No."

     "No?  Seriously?"

     "Whip me, I beg you -- it is a joy to me."

     "Yes, because you know it is not in earnest, and that I could not
find it in my heart to hurt you.  And you are right:  for me this brutal
game goes against the grain.  If I were really the kind of woman who
whips her slaves you would be horrified."

     "No, Wanda," I replied, "I love you more than myself, I am devoted
to you, for life or death.  You can literally do with mc whatever you
wish, whatever your whim suggests."

     "Severin!"

     "Tread me underfoot!" I cried, throwing myself down before her.

     "I hate all this play-acting," she said impatiently.

     "Then abuse me in earnest..."

     An uncanny pause.

     "Severin, I am warning you -- for the last time," said Wanda.

     "If you love me," I begged with upraised eyes, "be cruel." 

     "If I love you," she repeated slowly.  "Very well!"  She stepped
back and looked down at me with an evil smile:  standing there with the
long-lashed whip doubled in her hand, she was marvellously beautiful. 
"Be my slave then, and know what it means to be given into the hands of
a woman." At the same moment she thrust me away from her with her foot.

     "How do you like the sound of this, slave?"  she said, and cut the
air with the whip.  "Get up!"

     I made to rise.

     "Not like that," she ordered. "on your knees."

     I obeyed, and she began to apply the lash.

     The blows fell rapidly and with stinging force, each one cutting
into my flesh and burning, but the pain was rapturous -- for it came
from her whom I adored and for whom I was ready to lay down my life...

     At last she ceased.  "I am really beginning to enjoy this," she
said, "but enough for tonight.  I have a diabolical curiosity to see how
much you can stand, I find a cruel pleasure in seeing you quiver and
writhe under this whip, in hearing your moans and cries, I want to keep
on whipping until you beg for mercy, until you are senseless.  You have
roused a dangerous creature in me...  But now, get up."

     I seized her hand to press it to my lips.

     "What insolence!"  She thrust me away with her foot.  "Out of my
sight, slave!"



     I awoke after a feverish night filled with confused dreams.  Dawn
was just breaking.

     How much of what was still floating in my memory was true?  What
was experience, and what was dream?  That I have been whipped is
certain, I can still feel each stroke, can count the burning red stripes
on my body.  And she whipped me.  Yes, now I know.

     My dream has been realized.  What is it like?  Am I disappointed
with the truth of my dream?

     No, I am only a little tired -- but her cruelty has enraptured me. 
Oh, how I love her, how I adore her!  Anything I write here could not
express a tithe of my feeling for her, my utter devotion.  What
happiness, to be her slave.



     She calls to me from her balcony.  I hasten up.  She is standing
on the threshold, holding out her hand in a comradely manner.

     "I am ashamed of myself," she says as I embrace her;  and she
hides her head on my breast.

     "Why?"

     "Try to forget that ugly scene last night,"  she said in a
quavering voice.  "I have satisfied your insane wish, now let us be
sensible and happy and loving, and in a year I will be your wife."

     "Mistress,"  I cried,  "and I your slave!"

     "Not another word of slavery, cruelty or the whip," she
interrupted.  "I will grant you no such favours -- nothing except
wearing my fur jacket.  Come, help me into it."

                              o

     The little bronze clock, crowned with a cupid who has just shot
his arrow, struck the hour of midnight.

     I rose and made to leave.

     Wanda said nothing, but she embraced me and drew me back on the
ottoman;  she began kissing me again, and this speechless language was
so clear, so convincing --

     It told me more than I dared comprehend;  a languorous abandon
seemed to pervade Wanda's entire being:  what voluptuous softness there
was in the twilight of her half-closed eyes, in the red torrent of her
hair shimmering faintly under its white powder, in the red and white
satin which crackled around her with every movement, in the heaving
ermine of the jacket which swathed her so negligently!

     "Please..." I stammered, "-- but no, you will be angry with me."

     "Do with me what you will," she whispered.

     "Well then, whip me, or I shall go mad."

     "Have I not forbidden all that!" she said sharply.  "You are
incorrigible."

     "Ah, I am so terribly in love..."  I had sunk to my knees, burying
my burning face in her lap.

     "I really believe," she said thoughtfully, "that your madness is
nothing but the rage of unsatisfied desire.  Our unnatural way of life
must produce such illness.  If you were less chaste, you would be quite
sane."

     "Then make me sane," I murmured.  My hands were running through
her hair and playing tremulously with the gleaming fur which threw all
my senses into disorder as it rose and fell like a moonlit wave on her
heaving breast.

     And I kissed her -- no, it was she who kissed me, fiercely,
mercilessly, as if she wanted to murder me with her kisses.  I was as if
in a delirium, I had long since lost my reason, and now I was as
breathless as she.  I sought to free myself.

     "What is the matter?" she asked.

     "I am suffering agonies..."

     "You are suffering?"  She burst into bitter, mocking laughter.

     "You laugh!" I groaned.  "Have you no idea --"

     All of a sudden she became serious.  She took my head between her
hands and with a violent movement drew me to her breast.

     "Wanda..."

     "Yes, but you enjoy suffering," she said, and laughed again. 
"Come now, let me bring you to your senses."

     "Yes," I cried, "I no longer care whether you will belong to me
for ever or only for a moment of ecstasy, I wish only to drink my
happiness to the full.  You are mine now -- and it is better to lose you
than never possess you."

     "Now you are sensible," she said.  She kissed me again with her
murderous lips;  I tore the ermine and the film of lace aside, and her
naked breast surged against mine.

     Then my senses left me --

     The first thing I remember is the instant when I saw blood
dripping from my hand, and I asked, with all the languor of satiety,
"Did you scratch me?"

     "No, I think I have bitten you."



     Strange, how every relationship assumes a different aspect as soon
as a third person steps in.

     We have spent marvellous days together;  we have visited the
mountains and lakes, have read together, and I have finished Wanda's
portrait.  And how well we loved each other all that time, how well
attuned was our flesh, how beautiful her smiling face!

     Now a friend of hers has arrived, a woman living apart from her
husband, somewhat older, more experienced and less scrupulous than
Wanda;  her influence is already making itself felt at every turn.

     Wanda wrinkles her brows, shows a certain impatience with me.  Has
she ceased to love me?



     For nearly a fortnight this intolerable restraint has weighed on
us.  Her friend lives with her;  we are never alone.  A circle of men
now surrounds the two young women.  With my serious and melancholy air I
am playing an absurd role as lover.  Wanda treats me like a stranger.

     Today, while we were all out walking, she lingered behind with me. 
I saw this was done intentionally, and I rejoiced.  But then, what she
said to me!

     "My friend," she said, "does not see how I can love you.  She
thinks you neither handsome nor otherwise specially attractive, and she
keeps telling me from morning to night about the charm of the gay life
in the capital, she hints at the advantages I could enjoy there, the
brilliant parties I could go to, the handsome and distinguished admirers
I could have.  But what good is all that to me, since I happen to be in
love with you."

     For a moment my breath failed me, then I said, "I would not, for
the world, stand in the way of your happiness, Wanda.  Do not consider
me, I beg you."  I raised my hat and allowed her to walk ahead.  She
looked at me in surprise, but did not say a word.

     When I happened to be beside her on the way back, she pressed my
hand by stealth, and her glance was so radiant, so full of the promise
of bliss, that in a moment all the torments of these past days were
forgotten and all my wounds were healed. Now I know how much I love her.

     "My friend has complained of you," Wanda told me today.

     "Perhaps she feels that I despise her."

     "But why do you despise her, you foolish young man?"  she cried,
pulling my ears with both hands.

     "Because she is a hypocrite," I said.  "I respect only a woman who
is really virtuous or one who lives openly for pleasure."

     "Like myself, for example," Wanda replied merrily.  "But you see,
my child, a woman cannot do that very often.  She can be neither as
gaily sensual nor as emotionally free as a man.  While in her heart she
wishes to enslave one man for good, she herself is the creature of her
own desire for change.  The result is a conflict, and thus -- usually
against her will -- falsehood and deception enter into her behaviour and
corrupt her whole character."

     "That is quite true," I said.  "It is the transcendental quality
with which women wish to invest love that leads them into deception."

     "But the world also demands such deception of them," Wanda
retorted.  "Look at my friend, she has a husband as well as a lover in
Lemberg, and has found a new admirer here;  and she deceives all three,
yet is cherished by them all, and respected by the world into the
bargain."

     "That is no concern of mine," I exclaimed.  "But she should leave
you alone.  She is treating you like an article of commerce --"

     "And why not?" my beautiful mistress interrupted.  "Every woman
has the impulse or desire to draw some advantage from her attractions --
and there is a good deal to be said for giving oneself without either
love or pleasure, because by doing so in cold blood one can reap the
greatest profit."

     "Wanda, what are you saying?"

     "Why not?" she said.  "And now, mark well what I am telling you. 
Never feel secure with the woman you love, for there are more dangerous
elements in a woman's nature than you imagine.  Women are neither as
good as their admirers and defenders claim they are, nor as bad as their
detractors make them out.  Woman's character is the want of character. 
The best woman will on occasion descend into the mire, and the worst
will unexpectedly rise to deeds of greatness and goodness and put to
shame those who despise her.  No woman is so good, or so bad, but that
at some moment she may be capable of the most diabolical and divine, the
filthiest and the purest of thoughts, sentiments and actions.  Despite
the march of civilisation, woman remains the same as when she came from
the shaping hand of nature, she has the nature of a savage, -- faithful
or faithless, magnanimous or cruel, according to the impulse which sways
her at the moment.  At all times it is the depth and force of culture
which has produced moral character;  man, even at his most selfish and
evil, always follows principles; woman never obeys anything but impulse. 
Never forget that, my dear Severin, and never feel secure with the woman
you love."



     Her friend has gone.  Once again, at last, an evening alone with
her.  It seems as if she has hoarded for this exquisite evening all the
love so long denied us;  never has she been so kind, so close to me, so
full of tenderness.

     What happiness to cling to her lips, to expire in transports in
her arms!  Relaxed, entirely mine, she rests her head on my breast, and
in a drunken rapture our eyes seek each other.

     I still cannot believe or comprehend that this woman is mine,
entirely mine...

     "But she is right on one point,"  Wanda began, neither moving nor
opening her eyes, as if she were talking in her sleep.

     "Who?"

     She was silent.

     "Your friend?"

     She nodded.  "Yes, she is right.  You are not a man, you are a
dreamer, a charming cavalier, and you would make a marvellous slave --
but I cannot imagine you as a husband."

     I was struck with terror.

     "What is the matter?  You are trembling?"

     "I am trembling at the thought of how easily I might lose you."

     "Does that lessen your happiness at this moment?  Does it rob you
of your joy to think I have belonged to others before you, and will
belong to others afterward?  And would your enjoyment be less if I
yielded to someone else at the same time?"

      "Wanda!"

     "You see," she went on quietly, "that would be a way out.  You
would never lose me then;  you are very dear to me, we are one in
spirit, and I would like to live with you always -- if, as well as you,
I might have -- others --"

     "What!" I cried.  "You fill me with a kind of horror."

     "Do you love me any the less?"

     "On the contrary..."

     Wanda had raised herself on her left arm.  "I believe," she said,
"that to hold a man for good, one must not be faithful to him.  What
virtuous woman has ever been as well loved as a hetaira?"

     "There is," I said slowly, "a painful spur to love in the
faithlessness of one's beloved, for some men it is the highest form of
ecstasy..."

     "For you also?"  She asked quickly.

     "For me also."

     "And if I were to give you that ecstasy?" she asked mockingly.

     "I would suffer fearful agony, but I should adore you all the
more,"  I replied.  "But you, you would never lie to me, you would have

the greatness of soul to say, 'I will love no one but you, but I will
give myself to whoever pleases me.'"

     She shook her head.  "Indeed, I do not like lies, I am honest --
but what man could endure the burden of such a truth?  Were I to say to
you, 'that serene and sensual existence, that paganism is my ideal,'
would you be strong enough to bear it?"

     "I would.  I could bear anything as long as I did not lose you.  I
already know how little I mean to you."

     "But, Severin --"

     "That is the truth," I said, "and for that very reason --"

     "For that reason you would --" she smiled slyly:  "have I guessed
it"

     "Yes, I would be your slave!" I cried, "your absolute property,
with no will of my own, something you could dispose of as you wished,
and which would thus never be a burden to you.  While you drink of life
to the full, surrounded by luxury, enjoying the serene happiness of
Olympian love, I would be simply the servant who puts on and takes off
your shoes."

     "You are not so far from the literal truth there," Wanda replied,
"for only as my slave could you endure the torment of my other loves: 
yes, the freedom of enjoyment of the ancient world is unthinkable
without slavery.  Ah, it must give one a godlike feeling to see a man
kneeling before one, and trembling.  I want a slave, do you hear,
Severin?"

     "Am I not your slave?"

     "Then listen," said Wanda tensely, seizing my hand.  "I will be
yours -- for as long as I love you..."

     "A month?"

     "Perhaps even two."

     "And then?"

     "Then you become my slave."

     "And you?"

     "I?  How can you even speak?  I am a goddess:  only sometimes I
descend softly, very softly and secretly, from my Olympus to visit
you..."

     I gazed at her in adoration.

     "But what is all this," Wanda was murmuring, her head propped in
her hands and her gaze lost in the distance.  "A golden dream  which can
never come true."  A strange, brooding sadness seemed to have fallen
over her whole being:  I had never seen her like this before.

     "Why can it not come true?" I began. "Because slavery no longer
exists."

     "Then we will go to a country where it does exist -- to the
orient, to Turkey --"

     "You would go there with me, Severin -- seriously!"  Her eyes were
burning.

     "Yes, I wish to be your slave in earnest," I said, "I wish your
power over me to be sanctioned by law, I want my very life to be in your
hands, with nothing to protect or save me from you.  Oh, what a
voluptuous ecstasy to feel myself utterly dependent on your sovereign
will, your whim, to be a creature at your beck and call!  And then, what
happiness when at some time you deign to be gracious, when the slave may
kiss the lips which command his life and death."  I knelt before her and
pressed my burning forehead to her knee.

     "You are in a fever," said Wanda, trembling also.  "And so -- so
you love me so boundlessly?"  She clasped me to her breast and covered
me with kisses.  "Is that what you really desire?"

     "I swear to you,"  I cried, barely master of myself, "now, by my
God and my honour, that I will be your slave, wherever and whenever you
wish, as soon as you bid me."

     "And if I should take you at your word?"

     "Do so."

     She was silent for a moment. "All this has an appeal to me," she
said gravely.  "It is unlike anything I have ever known -- to feel a man
who worships me and whom I love with all my heart is completely mine,
subject to my will and caprice, my property and my slave, while --" she
broke off and looked at me strangely.  "If I should become really
wanton," she went on, "the fault would be yours;  it is almost as if you
already feared it.  But you have sworn."

     "And I will keep my word."

     "I will see to that," she replied calmly.  "I am beginning to
enjoy the situation and, by heaven, we will not stick to dreams now. 
You shall become my slave, and I, I shall be your Venus in Furs."


     I thought that I knew this woman, that I understood her, and now I
see I must begin all over again.  Only a short time ago she had reacted
to my dreams with violent hostility, and now she is seriously trying to
put them into effect.

     She has drawn up a contract in which I pledge my honour and give
my oath to be her slave for as long as she wishes.  With her arm around
my neck she reads this document aloud to me, punctuating each clause
with a kiss.

     "But the obligations are all on my side," I said quizzically.

     "Of course," she replied with the utmost seriousness.  "You are
ceasing to be my lover, and therefore I am released from all duties and
obligations towards you.  You must now regard any bestowal of my favours
as an act of grace, for you no longer have any rights and can claim
none:  there is no limit to my power over you.  Bear in mind, sir, you
will be little better than a dog or a lifeless object, you will be mine,
my plaything which I can break in pieces whenever I am inclined for an
hour's amusement.  You are nothing, I am everything.  Do you
understand?"

     She laughed and kissed me again, but something like a shiver ran
through me.

     "Will you not grant me a few conditions --" I began.

     "Conditions?"  Her brows contracted.  "Ah, you are already afraid,
or perhaps you regret that -- No, it is too late now, you have sworn, I
have your word of honour.  But let me hear these conditions of yours."

     "First of all, I would like it stated in our contract that you
will never abandon me entirely, and then, that you will never hand me
over to the mercies of your lovers --"

     "But, Severin," cried Wanda, her voice full of emotion and with
tears in her eyes, "how could you, a man who loves me so boundlessly,
who puts himself so absolutely in my power, how  could you imagine that
I --"  She broke off.

     "No, no!" I said, covering her hands with kisses.  "I fear no
dishonour from you, forgive that ugly thought."

     Wanda smiled happily, leaned her cheek against mine and seemed to
reflect.

     "You have forgotten something," she whispered coquettishly, "the
most important thing..."

     "A condition?"

     "Yes, that I must always wear my furs."  She smiled.  "But I
promise to do that in any case, because they give me a feeling of power,
of despotism -- and I will be very cruel to you, do you understand?"

     "Shall I sign the contract now?" I asked.

     "Not yet," said Wanda.  "I  will first add your conditions, and
the actual signing need only take place at the proper time and place."

     "In Constantinople?"

     "No. I have thought of something better.  What distinction would
there be in owning a slave where everyone owns them?  What I wish is to
have a slave, I myself alone, here in our sober, civilized, Philistine
world -- and a slave who is subject to my power simply because of my
beauty and character, not through any law, right of ownership or
sanction.  This is what attracts me.  But in any case we will go to a
country where no one knows us and you can appear as my servant without
embarrassment.  Perhaps to Italy, to Rome or Naples."



     We were sitting on Wanda's ottoman.  She wore her ermine jacket,
her hair was unbound and fell like a lion's mane down her back, and she
was clinging to my lips, drawing my soul from my body.  My head was
swimming, my blood began to seethe, my heart was beating violently
against hers.

     "I wish to be utterly in your power, Wanda," I cried suddenly
seized by that frenzy of passion which scarcely allows me to think
clearly or decide freely.  "I wish to be absolutely at your mercy, for
good or ill, without conditions, with no limit to your authority."  As I
said this I slipped from the ottoman and lay at her feet, looking up at
her ecstatically.

     "How beautiful you are now!" she said breathlessly.  "Your eyes,
half drowned in rapture, fill me with joy -- they ravish me...  How
exquisite that gaze of yours would be if you were being whipped to
death, in the last agony.  You have the eyes of a martyr."



     At times, nevertheless, I am uneasy about putting myself so
absolutely, so unconditionally, in a woman's hands.  What if she should
abuse her power?  Well then, I would simply experience what has filled
my dreams since childhood, what has always brought me a sweet sense of
dread.  -- But no, this is only a foolish apprehension!  She will play a
wanton's game with me, nothing more.  She loves me and she is good; 
hers is a noble character, incapable of a breach of faith.  But the
decision rests in her hands -- if she wants to betray me, she can.  What
charm there is in this doubt of her goodness, in this fear of her
wickedness!

     Now I understand Manon Lescaut and the poor Chevalier who, even in
prison and while she was the mistress of another, still adored her. 
Love makes no account of virtue, seeks no advantage;  it loves and
forgives and suffers everything, because it must.  It is not our
judgment which governs us in matters of love, it is neither the beauties
nor the faults we find in the beloved which cause our infatuation or
repulsion.

     It is a sweet, soft, mysterious power which drives us on.  We
cease to think, to feel, to will;  we let ourselves be carried away by
it, and care not whither.



     A Russian prince made his first appearance today on the promenade; 
with his athlete's frame, his handsome features and splendid bearing, he
drew everyone's attention.  The women especially gaped at him, as if he
were a wild animal.  But he went his way gloomily, oblivious of
everyone, attended by two servants one of whom was a negro dressed
entirely in red satin and the other a Circassian in full glittering
uniform.  All at once he saw Wanda, and fixed his cold piercing gaze on
her;  he even turned his head to look after her, and when she had passed
he stood still and followed her with his eyes.

     And she, she positively devoured him with her glittering green
eyes, and did all she could to encounter him again.  The crafty coquetry
with which she walked, moved, swayed her hips and looked at him, almost
stifled me.  On our way home I remarked on it. She knit her brows.

     "What would you?" she said.  "The prince is a man who might please
me, who even dazzles me, and I am free, I can do as I please..."

     "Do you love me no longer --"  I stammered in my fright.

     "I love no one but you," she replied.  "But I shall make the
prince pay his court to me."

     "Wanda!"

     "Are you not my slave?" she said calmly.  "Am I not Venus, the
cruel northern Venus in furs?"

     I said nothing;  I was crushed by her words, her icy gaze had
pierced my heart like a dagger.

     "You will find out the prince's name, residence and circumstances
at once," she went on.  "Do you hear?"

     "But --"

     "Do not argue, but obey!" she exclaimed, more harshly than I would
have thought possible.  "And do not dare to enter my sight until you
have this information."

     It was afternoon before I could obtain the details for Wanda.  She
let me stand before her like a servant, while she leaned back in her
armchair and listened with a smile.  Then she nodded, apparently
satisfied.

     "Now bring me my footstool," she said shortly.

     I obeyed, and having placed it before her and put her feet on it,
I remained on my knees.

     "How will this all end?" I asked sadly after a pause.

     She broke into mocking laughter.  "Why, it has not even begun."

     "You are more heartless than I imagined."

     "Severin," Wanda said, suddenly grave, "I have done nothing yet,
nothing at all, and already you call me heartless.  What will happen
when I begin to realize your dreams, when I shall lead a gay, free life
and gather a circle of lovers around me, when I shall actually fulfil
your ideal, trample you underfoot, take the whip to you?"

     "You take my dreams too seriously."

     "Too seriously? I cannot stop at make-believe, once I have begun. 
You know how I hate all playacting, all comedy.  This is what you
wanted.  Was it my idea or yours?  Did I seduce you, or did you inflame
my imagination?  I am in earnest now."

     "Wanda," I said softly, "listen calmly to me.  We love each other
boundlessly, we are very happy -- will you sacrifice our whole future to
caprice?"

     "It is no longer a caprice."

     "What is it then?" I asked fearfully.

     "Something that was probably latent in me," she said quietly and
thoughtfully.  "Perhaps it would never have awakened if you had not
aroused it and made it grow.  Now that it has become a powerful impulse,
filling my whole being, now that I enjoy it, now that I cannot and will
not run counter to it -- now you wish to turn back -- you -- are you a
man?"

     "Dear, sweet Wanda!"  I began to caress and kiss her.

     "Don't -- you are not a man --"

     "And you?" I burst out.

     "I am obstinate," she said.  "You know that.  I have not a strong
imagination, and like you I am weak in execution, but once I decide on
something I carry it through -- and the more grimly the more I am
opposed.  Let me alone!"

     She pushed me away and stood up.

     "Wanda!" I rose too, and stood facing her.

     "Now you know what I am," she went on, "and once again I am
warning you.  You can still choose.  I am not forcing you to be my
slave."

     "Wanda," I replied brokenly, tears filling my eyes, "do you not
know how much I love you?"

     Her lips quivered with scorn.

     "You wrong yourself," I said.  "You make yourself out worse than
you are, you are good and noble by nature --"

     "What do you know of my nature?" she interrupted passionately. 
"You must know me as I really am."

     "Wanda!"

     "Decide.  Will you submit unconditionally?"

     "And if I will not..."

     "Then --"  She moved close to me, cold and contemptuous, and stood
before me, her arms folded across her breast, an evil smile on her
lips -- in truth the despotic woman of my dreams, with harsh, unyielding
expression and eyes devoid of kindness or mercy.

     "Well?" she said at last.

     "You are angry," I said, "you will punish me..."

     "Oh no," she replied calmly.  "I shall simply let you go.  You are
free, I am not holding you."

     "Wanda -- I, who love you so much --"

     "Yes, you, my dear sir, you who adore me," she said
contemptuously, "but who are a coward, a liar, a breaker of your word. 
Leave me at once!"

     "Wanda!"

     "Wretch!"  The blood rushed to my heart.  I threw myself at her
feet and began to weep.

     "Tears too!"  She began to laugh, and her laughter was frightful.

     "Leave me -- I wish never to see you again."

     "Ah my God," I cried, beside myself with agony, "I will do
whatever you command, be your slave, a mere object of your desire --
only do not send me away -- I cannot bear that -- cannot live without
you..."  I embraced her knees and covered her hand with kisses.

     "Yes," she said calmly, "you must be a slave and feel the whip,
for you are not a man."  She said this with perfect composure, not
angrily, not even with emotion and this wounded me most of all.  "Now I
know you, with your nature of a dog which worships when it is kicked,
and loves the more, the more it is  abused.  Now I know you, and you
shall know me."

     She walked up and down with rapid strides, while I remained
wretchedly on my knees;  my head was bowed, tears were falling from my
eyes.

     "Come here," Wanda ordered harshly, sitting down on the ottoman. 
I obeyed and sat down beside her.  She looked at me sombrely, then a
light suddenly kindled in the depths of her eyes;  smiling, she drew me
to her breast and began kissing the tears from my eyes.



     The curious thing about my situation is that I am like the bear in
Lily's park.  I can escape and do not want to, I am ready to endure
anything as soon as she threatens to set me free.

     If only she would take the whip in hand again!  There is something
uncanny in the kindness she is showing me.  I feel like a little
captured mouse, prettily played with by a beautiful she-cat;  she is
ready to tear it in pieces at any moment -- and my own mouse's-heart is
threatening to burst.

     What are her intentions?  What does she mean to do with me?



     She appears to have forgotten all about the contract of my
slavery;  or was it only her obstinacy, and she dropped the project as
soon as I ceased opposing her and submitted to her sovereign whim?

     How kind she is, how tender, how loving!  We are spending days of
perfect bliss.



     Today she had me read her the scene between Faust and
Mephistopheles, where the latter appears as a wandering scholar.  Her
gaze dwelt on me with a blend of pleasure and wonder.

     "I do not understand," she said when I had finished, "how a man
who can read such great and beautiful lines with such expression, and
can explain them so clearly, briefly and intelligently, can at the same
time be such a visionary as you are, such a supersensual ninny."

     "You liked them, then," I said, and kissed her hand.  She stroked
my forehead gently.  "I love you, Severin," she whispered.  "I do not
think I could ever love anyone more than you.  Let us be sensible then,
shall we?"

     Without replying I took her in my arms;  a deep and melancholy
happiness filled my breast, my eyes grew moist, and a tear fell on her
hand.

     "What, crying!" she exclaimed.  "You are a child."



     On our drive today we met the Russian prince in his carriage.  He
seemed unpleasantly surprised to see me at Wanda's side, and looked as
if he would pierce her through with his electric gray eyes;  but -- and
at that instant I felt like kneeling and kissing her feet -- she
appeared not to notice him, but let her glance glide over him with
indifference, as if he were a lifeless object or a tree, and turned back
to me with her gracious smile.



     When I bade her goodnight this evening she seemed suddenly,
unaccountably distracted and out of humour.  What was troubling her?

     "I am sorry you are going," she said as I reached the door.

     "It is entirely in your hands to shorten the hard period of my
trial,"  I pleaded, "to put an end to my torments of uncertainty --"

     "Do you imagine it is not a torment for me also?" she asked.

     "Then end it!" I cried, embracing her.  "Be my wife."

     "Never, Severin," she said gently but with great firmness.

     "What do you mean?"  I was terrified to the depths of my being.

     "You are not the man for me."  I looked at her, and slowly
withdrew my arm which was still around her waist;  then I left the room,
and she -- she did not call to me to return.



     A sleepless night.  I made countless decisions, only to abandon
each of them in turn.  In the morning I wrote her a letter declaring our
relationship was finished.  My hand trembled as I affixed the seal, and
I burned my fingers.

     Going upstairs to give it to her maid, I felt my knees about to
give way.  The door was opened and Wanda's head appeared, still en
papillotes.

     "I haven't had my hair dressed yet," she said with a smile.  "What
have you got there?"

     "A letter --"

     "For me?"

     I nodded.  "Ah, you want to break with me," she exclaimed
mockingly.

     "Did you not tell me yesterday I was not the man for you?"

     "And I repeat it now," she said.

     "Very well, then."  My whole body was shaking, my voice failed me,
and I simply proffered the letter.

     "Keep it," she said, her glance measuring me coldly.  "You forget
it is no longer a question of whether you satisfy me as a man; as a
slave, however, you will do well enough."

     "Madam!" I exclaimed, taken aback.

     "Yes, that is how you will address me from now on," said Wanda,
throwing her head back with a movement of unutterable scorn.  "Put your
affairs in order within the next twenty-four hours.  The day after
tomorrow I leave for Italy, and you will go with me as my servant."

     "Wanda --"

     "I forbid all familiarity," she said, cutting me short.  "Nor are
you to come up here unless I call or ring for you.  Furthermore, you are
not to speak to me until you are spoken to.  From now on your name is no
longer Severin, but Gregor."

     I was trembling with rage, and yet -- I cannot deny it -- I felt a
strange pleasure and excitement.

     "But madam," I began in confusion, "you know my circumstances.  I
am dependent on my father, and I doubt if he will give me the large sum
of money which such a journey will require --"

     "Therefore, you have no money, Gregor," said Wanda. "So much the
better.  This means you are quite dependent on me -- in actual fact my
slave."

     "You do not consider," I tried to object, "that as a man of honour
I cannot accept --"

     "I have indeed considered it," she replied in a tone of authority. 
"As a man of honour you are bound first to keep your word and carry out
your promise to follow me as a slave wherever I go, and to obey whatever
commands I lay on you.  Now leave me, Gregor!"

     I turned towards the door.  "Not yet.  First, you may kiss my
hand."  She held out her hand with a kind of haughty indifference, and I
-- the dilettante, the donkey, the miserable slave -- pressed it with
ardent tenderness to my lips which were now hot and dry with excitement.

     There was another gracious nod of the head.

     I was dismissed.



     Though it was late at night my light was still burning, and the
fire was glowing in the big green stove;  there were still many things
to be put in order among my letters and papers.  Autumn, as it usually
does in the North, had suddenly arrived in all its rigour.

     Suddenly she knocked at my window with the handle of her whip.

     I opened and saw her standing outside in her ermine-lined jacket
and high round cap of the kind assumed by Catherine the Great.

     "Are you ready, Gregor?" she asked coldly.

     "Not yet, Mistress," I replied.

     "I like that word," she said.  "You are always to call me
Mistress, do you understand?  We leave here tomorrow morning at nine
o'clock.  As far as the district capital you will be my companion and
equal, but from the moment we enter the railway-coach you will be my
servant.  Now close this window, and open the door."

     When I had done as she ordered and she had come in, she turned to
me and asked, her brows contracting sharply, "Well, how do you like me?"

     "Wanda, you --"

     "You forget yourself, Gregor!"  She struck me a blow with the
whip.

     "You are very beautiful, Mistress."

     She smiled and sat down in the armchair.  "Kneel down now. Here,
beside my chair."

     I obeyed.

     "Kiss my hand."

     I took her small cold hand and kissed it.

     "And my mouth..."

     In an excess of passion I threw my arms around the cruel,
beautiful woman and covered her face, her arms and her breast with
burning kisses.  She returned them with equal fire, her eyelids closing
as if in voluptuous dream...

     It was after midnight when she left.






                              2


     Punctually at nine o'clock next morning everything was ready for
our departure, as she had ordered.  Travelling in a comfortable light
carriage, we left the little Carpathian town where the most important
drama of my life had reached a stage of development whose denouement it
was then impossible to foresee.

     Everything was still going well.  I sat beside Wanda who conversed
with grace and intelligence, as if to a good friend, about Italy,
Pisemsky's latest novel, Wagner's music.  She wore a kind of Amazonian
travelling costume of black cloth -- the skirt cut like a riding habit,
the short jacket edged with sable -- which fitted closely and displayed
her figure to advantage;  over it she wore her dark travelling-furs. 
Her hair, tied in a classic knot, lay beneath a small fur hat from which
hung a black veil.  She was in good humour;  she fed me bonbons, played
with my hair, untied my neckcloth and wound it into pretty shapes,
spread her furs over my knees and furtively pressed my fingers beneath
them;  whenever our Jewish driver began nodding sleepily she gave me a
kiss -- and her cold lips had the fresh frosty fragrance of a young
autumnal rose blooming among bare stalks and yellow leaves, a rose upon
whose calyx the first frost has hung tiny diamonds of ice.



     We reach the district capital and get down at the railway station. 
Wanda slips out of her furs, throws them over my arm and goes off to buy
the tickets.

     When she comes back her manner has changed completely.

     "Here is your ticket, Gregor," she says in the haughty tone ladies
use to their servants.

     "A third-class ticket!" I exclaim in mock horror.

     "Of course," she replies.  "Now pay attention.  You are not to get
on the train until I am settled in my compartment and have no further
need of you.  At every stopping-place you will come to my carriage and
ask for orders.  Do not forget!  Now give me my furs."

     When I had helped her into them -- humbly, like a servant -- she
went to find an empty first-class compartment while I followed her. 
Leaning on my arm, she got in;  I wrapped her feet in bear skins and
placed them on the warming-bottle.

     Then she dismissed me with a nod.  I climbed slowly into a third-
class carriage which was filled with abominable tobacco-smoke like the
fumes of Acheron at the entrance to Hades, where I now had leisure to
meditate on the riddle of human existence and on that greatest riddle of
all -- woman.



     Whenever the train stops I jump down, run to her carriage and
await her orders, cap in hand.  Now she wants coffee, now a glass of
water, now something to eat, now again a basin of warm water to wash her
hands -- and so on.  She lets the gentlemen in her compartment pay court
to her;  I am consumed by jealousy, and must leap about like an antelope
in order to get what she wants and then not miss the train myself.  The
night goes by in the same way.  I have not time to eat a mouthful, and I
cannot sleep while breathing the onionladen air along with Polish
peasants, Jewish pedlars and common soldiers.  When I climb the steps of
her carriage she is lying stretched out on the cushions in her luxurious
furs, covered with the skins of animals;  she is like an Oriental
despot, and the men sit like Indian deities, upright against the wall,
hardly daring to breathe.

     She stops in Vienna for a day's shopping, mainly to buy a
collection of magnificent gowns;  she continues to treat me as her
servant.  I follow her at the respectful distance of ten paces, she
hands me her packages without even deigning to look at me, and laden
down like a donkey I pant along behind her.

     Before we leave she tells me she has taken away all my clothes and
given them to the hotel waiters, and I am ordered to put on her livery -
- a Cracovian costume in her colours, light blue with red facings, and a
square red cap ornamented with peacock feathers -- which is rather
becoming to me.

     The silver buttons bear her coat-of-arms.  I have the  feeling of
being sold, or of having sold myself, to the devil.



     My fair devil leads me from Vienna to Florence.  Instead of
Mazovians in homespun linen and greasy-haired Jews, my companions are
now curly-haired contadini, a magnificent sergeant of the Italian
Grenadiers and a poor German painter;  the tobacco-smoke no longer
smells of onions, but of salami and cheese.

     It is night once more.  I lie on the wooden seat as if on a rack; 
my arms and legs seem broken.  But there is an element of poetry in the
situation.  The stars are sparkling all around, the Italian sergeant has
a face like the Apollo Belvedere, and the painter sings an exquisite
German song:

          Now all the shadows gather
          And star on star grows bright,
          Deep longing falls upon me
          And softly falls the night.

          Through the sea of dreams,
          Sailing endlessly,
          Sailing onward goes my soul
          In its search for thee.


     And I think of the beautiful woman who is sleeping in queenly
comfort among her soft furs.



     Florence!  Crowds, cries, importunate porters and cabdrivers. 
Wanda picks out a carriage and dismisses the porters.

     "What else have I a servant for?" she says.  "Gregor, here is the
ticket.  Fetch the luggage."

     She wraps herself in her furs and sits calmly in the carriage
while I drag the heavy trunks to it, one after the other.  I stagger and
almost collapse under the last one;  a good-natured carabiniere with an
intelligent face comes to my help.  Wanda laughs.

     "It must be heavy," she says.  "All my furs are inside."

     I climb to the driver's seat, wiping drops of sweat from my
forehead.  She gives the name of the hotel, and the driver urges on his
horse.  In a few minutes we stop at the brilliantly lit entrance.

     "You have rooms?" she asks the clerk.

     "Yes, madame."

     "Two for me, one for my servant, all with fires."

     "Two first-class rooms for Madame," he says to a valet who has
hurried up, "and one without heat for her servant."

     "Show them to me," she says.

     We mount to the first floor.  She looks at the rooms for her own
use, and says shortly, "They will do.  Have fires built at once.  My
servant will sleep in the unheated room."

     I merely look at her.

     "Bring up the trunks, Gregor," she orders, ignoring my look.  "In
the meantime I shall dress before going down to the dining-room, and you
can have something for your own dinner."

     While she is in the adjoining room I drag the trunks upstairs and
help the valet build a fire in her bedroom, while he tries to question
me in bad French about my mistress;  I take in with a brief glance the
blazing fire, the delicate white fourposter bed and the rugs which cover
the floor.  Then, tired and hungry, I go downstairs and ask for
something to eat.  A good-natured waiter who used to be in the Austrian
army and makes a great effort to converse with me in German, takes me to
the dining-room and waits on me.  I have just had my first fresh drink
in thirty-six hours and have the first piece of hot food on my fork,
when Wanda comes in.

     I rise.

     "What do you mean by bringing me to a room where my servant is
eating!" she says angrily to the waiter.  She turns and leaves.

     In the meantime I thank heaven I am allowed to go on eating. 
Later, I climb the four flights of stairs to my room;  my own small
trunk is there already, and a miserable little oil-lamp is burning.  It
is a narrow room without a window, only a small ventilator;  if it were
not so hideously cold it would remind me of one of the Venetian piombi. 
I have to laugh aloud, and I am startled by the sound of my own
laughter.

     Suddenly the door is pulled open and the valet, with a theatrical
Italian gesture, cries out, "You are to come down to Madame at once!"  I
pick up my cap, stumble down the first few steps and manage to arrive at
her door on the first floor and knock.

     "Come in!"



     I enter, close the door and stand at attention.  Wanda has made
herself comfortable.  Wearing a negligee of white muslin and lace, she
is seated on a small red divan with her feet on a footstool.  She has
thrown her fur cape about her;  it is the same cape in which she first
appeared before me, as the Goddess of Love.

     The yellow lights of the candelabra in wall-brackets, their
reflections in the large mirrors, and the red flames from the open
fireplace, all play beautifully on the green velvet and dark sable of
her cape, on her smooth white skin and flaming red hair;  her face,
clear but cold, is turned towards me, and her icy green eyes rest on me.

     "I am satisfied with you, Gregor," she began.

     I bowed.

     "Come closer."

     I obeyed.

     "Closer still."  She let her gaze drop, and stroked the sables
with her hand.  "Venus in Furs is pleased with her servant.  I can see
you are something more than a common dreamer, you yourself keep pace
with your dreams;  you are the kind of man who is prepared to see them
realized, no matter how mad they are.  I like this trait, I admit;  it
impresses me, there is strength in it, and strength is the only thing
worthy of regard.  I think that under special conditions, in an age of
great deeds, your apparent weakness would show up as extraordinary
strength...  Under the early Caesars you would have been a martyr,
during the Reformation an Anabaptist, in the French Revolution one of
those inspired Girondists who mounted the guillotine with the
Marseillaise on their lips.  And you, you are my slave, mine --"

     All at once she sprang up, her furs slipped from her and she threw
her arms with a soft pressure around my neck.

     "My beloved slave, my Severin -- Oh how I love you, how I adore
you, how handsome you are in that costume!  But you will be cold tonight
up there in your wretched room without a fire -- shall I give you one of
my furs, dear heart -- the big one there --"

     She picked it up quickly, throwing it over my shoulders, and
before I could resist I was completely enveloped in it.

     "How wonderfully becoming furs are to your face, how they bring
out its distinction!  When you are no longer my slave you must wear a
black velvet coat trimed with sable, do you hear?  If you don't, I shall
never wear my fur-jacket again..."

     Once more she began kissing and caressing me, and at last drew me
down on the small velvet divan.

     "I really think you are pleased with yourself in furs," she said. 
"Quick, quick, give them back to me, or I will lose all my feeling of
authority."

     I wrapped the furs around her, and she slipped her right arm into
the sleeve and sank back.

     "There," she said, "That is the pose of Titian's picture, isn't
it?  But enough of playacting.  Don't look so solemn all the time, you
make me sad.  In the world's eyes you are still simply my servant, you
are not yet my slave, for you still have not signed the contract.  You
are still free, you can leave me at any time;  you have played your part
magnificently.  I am delighted, but aren't you tired of it by now, don't
you think me hateful? -- Tell me now, I order you."

     "Wanda, must I confess the truth?"

     "You must."

     "Then I must tell you -- even though you may take advantage of
it -- that I shall love you only the more deeply, adore you with only a
greater frenzy, the worse you treat me.  What you have done so far has
set my blood on fire and intoxicated all my senses."  I held her close,
clinging for several moments to her moist lips.  "Oh, you beautiful
woman!" I exclaimed as I gazed at her, and in my ecstasy I tore the
sables from her shoulders and pressed my mouth to one of her breasts.

     "So you love me, even when I am cruel?" she said.  "Ah, go away! 
You bore me, do you understand?"

     She slapped my face so hard I saw stars and bells rang in my ears.

     "Help me into my furs, slave."

     Still giddy, I helped her as well as I could.

     "How clumsy you are!"  she exclaimed, and had scarcely resumed her
cape before she slapped my face again.  I felt myself turning pale.

     "Did I hurt you?" she asked, touching my cheek softly.

     "No, no," I cried.

     "At any rate you have no cause to complain, this is the way you
wanted things.  Now, kiss me again."

     I threw my arms around her, and her lips clung closely to mine. 
As she lay on my breast in her heavy trailing furs, I had for a moment a
strangely oppressive sensation:  it was as if a wild-beast, a she-bear,
were embracing me, and I was about to feel her claws in my flesh.  But
this time the she-bear spared me...

     Full of pleasant anticipations, I went up to my wretched servant's
room and threw myself on the hard couch.

     "Life is really amazingly droll," I thought.  "A few minutes ago a
woman of surpassing beauty, Venus herself, rested against your breast,
and now you have an opportunity of studying the Chinese hell -- for
unlike us, the Chinese don't hurl the damned into the flames, they have
devils to chase them out into fields of ice.  Well, the founders of
their religions probably slept in unheated rooms too."



     That night I started from my sleep with a scream;  I had been
dreaming of an ice-field where I had lost my way, vainly seeking a way
out, when suddenly an Eskimo drove up in a sleigh drawn by reindeer;  he
had the face of the valet who had shown me to my unheated room.

     "What are you looking for here, monsieur?" he cried.  "This is the
North Pole."

     The next moment he had vanished, and Wanda was flying towards me
over the smooth ice on tiny skates.  Her white satin skirt fluttered and
crackled;  the ermine of her jacket and cap, and especially her face
itself, gleamed whiter than the snow as she shot towards me, folded me
in her arms and began kissing me;  suddenly I felt warm blood running
down my side.

     "What are you doing?" I cried in horror.  She laughed, and as I
looked at her she was no longer Wanda but a huge white she-bear which
was digging its claws into my flesh.  I uttered a cry of desperation,
and could still hear her diabolical laughter as I awoke and looked
around the room in astonishment.



     Early next morning I was standing outside Wanda's door when the
valet brought her coffee;  I took it from him and waited on my beautiful
mistress.  She was already dressed and looked superb, all fresh and
rosy;  she gave me a gracious smile, and called me back when I was about
to withdraw respectfully.

     "Now, Gregor, have your own breakfast at once," she said.  "Then
we will look for a house.  I don't wish to stay any longer in this hotel
than is necessary, it is most embarrassing here;  if I speak to you for
more than a minute the people will say, 'Look, the fair Russian is
having an affair with her servant!  You see, the race of Catherine is
not yet extinct.'"

     Half an hour later we went out.  Wanda was wearing her suit of
black cloth with the Russian cap, and I my Cracovian costume.  We caused
quite a stir -- I walking about ten paces behind her, looking very
solemn but expecting every moment to have to explode with laughter. 
There was hardly a street in which one or other of the attractive houses
did not bear the sign Appartamento ammobiliato;  in each case Wanda made
me go upstairs first, and only when the quarters seemed to answer her
needs did she herself ascend.  By noon I was as tired as a stag-hound
after the chase.

     We entered another house and left it, still without having found
suitable accommodation.  By this time Wanda seemed somewhat out of
humour;  all at once she turned to me.

     "Severin, you are playing your part so seriously, it is
enchanting!  But this masquerade is really tiresome, I cannot stand it
any longer -- I love you, I must have you!  Let us go into one of these
houses..."

     "But, Mistress --" I protested.

     "Gregor!"  She entered the next building and mounted a few steps
of the dark stairway;  then she threw her arms around me with passionate
abandon and kissed me.



     "Ah, Severin," she said some time later, stroking my hair, "you
were very wise, you are much more dangerous as a slave than I would have
imagined, you are quite irresistible!  I'm afraid I shall have to fall m
love with you all over again."

     "Do you love me no longer?" I said, seized by a sudden fright.

     She shook her head solemnly, but kissed me again with her swelling
adorable lips.

     We returned to the hotel.  Wanda ordered luncheon, and told me to
find something to eat also.  I was not, of course, served as quickly as
she -- and so, just as I was carrying the second piece of beefsteak to
my mouth, the valet entered and called out in his theatrical way,
"Madame wants you immediately!"

     I took a rapid and rueful leave of my luncheon, and then, still
tired and hungry, hastened out to join Wanda who was already in the
street.

     "I did not think you could be so cruel, Mistress," I said
reproachfully.  "With all my fatiguing duties, you do not even allow me
time to eat in peace."

     Wanda laughed happily.  "I thought you had finished," she said. 
"But never mind:  man was born to suffer, and you especially.  The
martyrs had no beefsteaks either."

     I listened to her with some pique, still gnawed by hunger.

     "I have given up the idea of finding a place in the city itself,"
Wanda went on, "and in any case it would be impossible to find a whole
floor so isolated that one could do as one pleased.  In such a strange,
mad relationship as ours there must be no jarring note.  I am going to
rent a whole villa -- and then, see how you will be surprised!  In the
meantime you have my permission to satisfy your hunger and to look
around Florence.  I will not be home until evening.  If I should need
you then, I will have you called."

     I looked at the Duomo, the Palazzo Vecchio, the Loggia de' Lanzi,
and stood for a long time on the banks of the Arno.  Time and again I
let my gaze rove over the magnificent old city of Florence, whose round
cupolas and towers were drawn with such soft lines against the cloudless
blue sky;  I surveyed the splendid bridges beneath whose wide arches
flowed the dancing waves of the beautiful yellow river, and the green
hills encircling the city, with their slender cypresses and spacious
buildings, palaces and monasteries...

     It is another world we are in now, a gay, smiling, sensuous world; 
the landscape also has none of the gravity and sombreness of ours.  The
eye must travel a long way to reach the last white villas scattered amid
the pale green of the mountains, but it can find no space that is not
bathed in sunlight.  The people here are less serious than we are;
perhaps they think less, but they all look as if they were happy.

     It is also claimed that death is easier in the South.

     At this moment I have a vague feeling that beauty without a sting,
and sensual love without suffering, do exist after all.



     Wanda has found a delightful villa and taken it for the winter. 
It stands on one of the hills on the left bank of the Arno opposite the
Cascine, set in the middle of a little park with fine lawns, paths and
magnificent beds of camellias, only two storeys high and quadrangular in
the Italian style.  An open gallery, a kind of loggia furnished with
casts of antique statues, runs along one side;  stone steps lead down
into the garden.  From the gallery you enter a great bathing-room, with
a splendid marble bath, from which a winding stairway leads to my
mistress' bedroom.

     Wanda has the first floor all to herself.  My room is on the
ground floor;  it is very attractive, and even boasts a fireplace.

     I have been wandering through the gardens, and on a round knoll
have discovered a little temple whose door is locked -- but there is a
chink in the door and when I put my eye to it I can see the Goddess of
Love standing on a white pedestal.

     A faint shiver goes through me.  She seems to be smiling at me and
saying, "So there you are... I have been waiting for you."

     Evening.  A pretty maid brings me an order from my mistress to
wait on her.  I climb the wide marble stairs and pass through the
anteroom, a large salon extravagantly furnished, and knock at the door
of her bedroom.  I knock very softly, for all this luxury is rather
intimidating:  no one hears me, and I stand for some time before the
door.  I feel as if I were waiting outside the bedroom of Catherine the
Great, and at any moment the Empress herself might appear in her
sleeping-furs, the red ribbon and decorations on her half-bared breast,
her little curls white with powder. 

     I knock again.  Wanda opens the door brusquely.  "Why are you .so
late?" she says.

     "I was outside, you didn't hear me knock," I explain timidly.

     She smiles, closes the door, and leaning on my arm leads me to the
red damask ottoman where she has been lying.  The whole decoration of
the room is in red damask -- walls, curtains, portieres, bedhangings;  a
magnificent painting of Samson and Delilah forms the ceiling.

     Wanda is receiving me in an intoxicating dishabille;  the folds of
white satin flow softly down her slender body, her arms are bare, her
naked breasts are couched in a nest of green velvet.  Her red hair,
confined only by strings of black pearls, streams down her back to her
hips.

     "Venus in furs," I whisper as she draws me to her and almost
stifles me with kisses.  I am incapable of either speech or thought, my
head is swimming, everything is drowned in an ocean of unimaginable
bliss.

     At last Wanda drew away gently, and leaning on one arm seemed
plunged in thought.  I was kneeling at her feet, and she was playing
with my hair.

     "And do you still love me?" she asked, her gaze melting in a
passion of tenderness.

     "Can you ask?"

     "You remember your oath then?" she said with a seductive smile. 
"Now that everything is in order, and everything ready, once again I ask
you -- are you still prepared to be my slave?"

     "Have I not sworn it?"

     "You have not yet signed the papers."

     "Papers?  What papers?"

     "Oh, I see, you wish to withdraw," she said.  "Very well, we will
say no more."

     "But Wanda, you know all my happiness lies in serving you, in
being your slave!  I would do anything to put myself wholly in your
power -- yes, give you my life itself --"

     "How beautiful you are like that," she sighed, "when you speak so
ardently, so passionately!  I am more in love with you than ever...  And
you, you want me to be domineering, harsh, cruel -- I fear I cannot."

     "I am not afraid," I replied with a smile.  "Where are these
papers?"

     A pause.  Her expression had altered slightly.

     "So you may know what it means to be entirely in my power," she
said evenly, "in addition to our contract of servitude I have drafted a
statement declaring your decision to kill yourself.  This is so I can
even kill you myself, if I wish."

     "Show me these papers..."

     As I was unfolding and reading them Wanda fetched pen and ink,
then sat down beside me, and passing her bare arm around my neck she
looked over my shoulder at the first document.


"Agreement between Madame von Dunaiev
and Severin von Kusiemski

     "From this day forward Severin von Kusiemski ceases to be the
affianced husband of Madame von Dunaiev, and surrenders all the rights
thereto appertaining;  on his own behalf he binds himself, on his honour
as a gentleman and nobleman, henceforth to be her slave until such time
as she restores him his liberty.

     "As the slave of Madame von Dunaiev he shall take the name of
Gregor, and shall comply unconditionally with all her demands and obey
all her orders;  he shall be at all times subject to his mistress, and
shall regard any sign of her favour as an extraordinary act of grace.

     "Madame von Dunaiev shall be entitled not only to punish her slave
as she thinks fit, even for the least fault or misdemeanour, but is
moreover granted the right to torture him whenever the mood may seize
her or simply as a pastime.  Should she so desire, she may kill him when
she wishes;  in effect, he shall be her property without restriction.

     "Should Madame von Duniaev ever set her slave at liberty, Severin
von Kusiemski undertakes to forget all that he has undergone or suffered
as her slave, and solemnly promises never under any circumstances to
perform any act of requital or retaliation.

     "For her part, Madame von Dunaiev, as his mistress, agrees to
appear as often as possible in her furs, and especially when she intends
any cruelty on the person of her slave."



     The agreement was dated as of that day.

The second document contained only a few words:

     "Having been for some years weary of existence and its illusions,
I have of my own accord put an end to my worthless life."

     I was filled with a sense of dread when I had finished reading. 
There is still time, I thought, I can still withdraw...  But the madness
of passion, and the sight of the beautiful woman pressed voluptuously
against my shoulder, carried me away.

     "This you will have to copy, Severin," said Wanda, pointing to the
second document.  "It must be all in your handwriting.  For the
agreement, of course, that is not necessary."

     I swiftly copied the few lines declaring myself a suicide and
handed them to Wanda. She read them and laid the paper on the table
beside the agreement.

     "And now," she said with a mocking smile, "have you the courage to
sign?"

     I picked up the pen.

     "Let me sign first," she said.  "Your hand is trembling -- are you
afraid of the happiness in store for you?"

     She took the pen from me and drew the agreement towards her, while
I, still a prey to my own inner conflict, cast my eyes upward for a
moment.  As I did so it struck me that the painting on the ceiling, like
many of the Italian and Dutch schools, was quite unhistorical, and that
this very fact gave it a strange air which had an uncanny effect on me. 
Delilah, an opulent woman with flaming red hair, half nude in a dark fur
cloak, was lying prone on a divan, bent with a smile over the captured
and bound Samson.  Her smile, with its mocking affectation of love, was
full of diabolical cruelty;  her eyes, half-closed, were fixed on
Samson's, and his own gaze was clinging to hers with a last look of
besotted adoration, for already one of his Philistine captors was
kneeling on his breast and holding the red-hot iron to blind him.

     "Now-" Wanda was saying, when she turned and looked at me.  "But
you are far away!  What is the matter?  Everything will be the same when
you have signed.  Don't you know me yet, dear heart?"

     I looked at the agreement.  Her name was written there in bold
letters.  Once again I looked into those eyes filled with such potent
magic, then I took the pen and quickly signed the first document.

     "You are still trembling," said Wanda coolly.  "Shall I help you?"

     She took my hand gently in her own to guide the pen, and my name
appeared at the bottom of the second paper.  Wanda looked once again at
the two documents, then turned and locked them in the desk beside the
ottoman where we were sitting.

     "Good -- now give me your passport and money."

     I took out my pocketbook and handed it to her;  she cast a glance
through it, nodded, and locked it with the papers -- while I, lost in a
kind of blissful trance, knelt before her with my head pressed against
her breast.

     All at once she thrust me away with her foot, sprang up and pulled
the bell-rope, at whose summons three slender young negresses appeared,
looking as if carved from ebony, dressed from head to foot in red satin
and each carrying a noosed cord.

     Grasping the situation, I am about to rise;  but Wanda, already
standing over me like a mistress, her contracted brows and cold gaze
bent on me, signs with her hand, and before I know what is happening the
negresses have borne me to the ground and bound me hand and foot, tying
my arms behind my back like a condemned criminal, so that I can hardly
move.

     "Give me the whip, Haidée," says Wanda with a kind of supernatural
calm.

     Kneeling, the negress hands it to her mistress.

     "And now take this heavy fur of mine.  It is in my way."

     The negress obeyed.

     "The jacket there!" said Wanda.

     Haidée quickly brought her the short jacket trimmed with ermine
that was lying on the bed, and Wanda slipped into it with two inimitably
graceful movements.

     "Now tie him to the post here."

     The negresses lifted me, and passing a heavy cord around my waist
they fastened me standing against one of the massive posts supporting
the canopy of the great Italian bed.

     Then they suddenly disappeared as if the earth had swallowed them.

     Wanda stepped swiftly towards me, her white satin gown flowing
behind her in a long sinuous train like silver, like moonlight, her hair
glinting like flame against the white fur of her jacket;  now she stood
before me with one hand resting insolently on her hip, while in the
other she held the whip.  She gave a short laugh."

     "The play is over between us now," she said coldly, "now we are in
earnest.  You fool, I can deride and despise you now, who in your silly
infatuation have given yourself to me as a toy!  You are no longer the
man I love, but a slave whose life and death are in my hand.

     "Now you will see what kind of woman I am!"

     "To begin with, you shall have a taste of the whip in good earnest
-- not for anything you've done, but simply to show you what you can
expect whenever you are awkward, disobedient or rebellious."

     With savage grace she drew back her fur-lined sleeve and lashed me
across the back.  I winced, for the whip cut into my flesh like a knife.

     "How do you like that?" she asked.

     I said nothing.

     "Only wait, I will soon make you howl like a dog under the whip,"
she promised, and began whipping me again.

     The blows fell swiftly and with biting force on my back, my arms,
my shoulders, and I had to grit my teeth not to cry out.  Then she
struck me in the face, the warm blood ran down -- but she laughed and
whipped on.

     "Now I understand you," she cried between the blows. "It is a real
joy to have someone utterly at my mercy -- and a man too, a man who
loves me!  You do love me!  No?  Ah, then I'll cut you to ribbons, and
every blow will give me more pleasure, so writhe your body -- twist like
a worm -- yes!  And scream, gasp, whine -- like that, yes!  Ah, what
good sport this is!"

     At last she seemed to tire.

     She threw the whip aside, stretched out on the ottoman and rang. 
The negresses entered.

     "Unfasten him."

     As they unfastened the cord I fell to the floor like a log.  The
black girls grinned, showing their white teeth.

     "Loosen the cord on his ankles."

     They did so, but I could not rise.

     "Come here.  To me, Gregor."

     I dragged myself to the beautiful woman;  never had she seemed
more desirable than at this moment when she breathed nothing but cruelty
and contempt.

     "A little closer," she ordered.  "Now kneel and kiss my foot."

     She held out her foot from beneath the flowing white satin, and I,
the supersensual fool, I pressed my lips to it.

     "Now you will not see me for a whole month, Gregor," she said
gravely.  "I wish to become a stranger to you, so that you will get used
to our new relationship.  In the meantime you will work in the garden
and await my orders.  Now go, slave!"



     A month has gone by -- a monotonous succession of days, of hard
work and wistful desire for her who is inflicting all these torments on
me.  I am under the gardener's orders:  I help him prune the trees and
trim the hedges, transplant the flowers, spade the flower-beds, rake the
gravel paths;  I share his coarse food, I rise and go to bed with the
birds;  now and then I can hear our mistress amusing herself among her
circle of admirers, and once, down here in the garden, I even hear her
gay laughter.

     I seem to be growing quite stupid.  Is this the result of my
present life, or was I always so?  The month is drawing to a close --
the day after tomorrow.  What will she do with me then?  Or has she
forgotten me and simply left me to trim hedges and make up bouquets till
my dying day?



A written order.

"The slave Gregor is hereby ordered to my personal service.
                                                  Wanda
Dunaiev."



     The next morning, with a beating heart I draw aside the heavy
damask curtain and enter the bedroom of my divinity;  it is still in a
pleasant semi-darkness.

     "Is that you, Gregor?" she asks as I kneel before the fireplace
and begin building a fire.  I tremble at the sound of the beloved voice. 
I cannot see her, she is invisible behind the curtains of the great bed.

     "Yes, Mistress."

     "How late is it?"

     "After nine o'clock."

     " Breakfast!"

     I hasten to bring it, and kneel beside her bed with the tray.

     "Here is the breakfast, Mistress."

     Wanda draws the bed-curtains, and at first sight, lying among the
pillows and with her hair flowing loose, she seems a complete stranger,
simply a beautiful woman;  but the beloved soft lines of her features
are gone:  this face is hard and has an expression of weariness and
satiety.

     Or had I no eyes for this before?

     She fixes her green eyes on me, with more curiosity than menace,
perhaps with a certain pity, and lazily draws the dark sleeping-fur over
her naked shoulder.

     At this moment she is so seductive, so maddening that I feel the
blood mount to my temples and the tray I am holding begins to sway.  She
notices this and reaches for the whip on the bedside table.

     "You are awkward, slave," she says, knitting her brows.

     I lower my gaze and hold the tray as steadily as I can;  she
finishes her breakfast, yawns, and stretches her opulent limbs in the
magnificent furs.



     She has rung.  I enter.

     "Take this letter to Prince Corsini."

     I hurry into the city and hand the letter to the Prince, a
handsome young man with glowing black eyes, and then, consumed with
jealousy, I take his answer back to my mistress.

     "What is the matter?" she asks with covert malice.  "You are very
pale."

     "It is nothing, mistress. I merely walked too fast."



     At luncheon the Prince sits beside her, and I am obliged to wait
on both of them, while they converse gaily as if I did not exist. For an
instant a blackness comes before my eyes, and as I am pouring some
Bordeaux in his glass I spill it on the tablecloth and on her gown.

     "Clumsy!" Wanda exclaims, and slaps my face;  the Prince laughs,
and then she laughs too, and I feel the blood coming into my cheeks.



     After luncheon she drives in the Cascine.  She has a small
carriage with a pair of handsome English bays, and takes the reins
herself;  I sit in the boot behind, and observe the coquetry of her mien
and the smiling nods she gives the fashionable gentlemen who bow to her.

     As I hand her from the carriage, she leans lightly on my arm:  the
contact is like an electric shock.  Ah, she is a marvellous woman, and I
love her more than ever.

                              o

     She has invited a small mixed party for dinner.  I wait on table, 
but this time I do not spill any wine on the cloth.  A slap in one's
face is more effective than ten reprimands;  it makes an immediate
impression on one's understanding, especially when the instruction comes
by way of a woman's little hand.




     After dinner she goes to the Teatro della Pergola;  I am bidden to
drive her there.  As she descends the stairs of the villa in her black
velvet evening wrap with its great ermine collar, and with a wreath of
white roses on her hair, she is breathtakingly lovely.  I open the
carriage door and help her in.  In front of the theatre I leap down from
the driver's seat, and as she gets out she leans once again on my arm
which trembles under the sweet burden.  I open the door of her box, and
then wait in the corridor.  The performance lasts four hours;  during
the entr'actes she receives visits from her admirers, while I clench my
teeth with rage.

     It is long past midnight when my mistress' bell sounds for the
last time.

     "Fire," she orders brusquely -- and, when the fire is crackling,
"Tea!"

     When I come back with the samovar she has already been undressed
and Haidée is helping her into a white negligee.

     The negress is dismissed.

     "Give me my sleeping-furs," says Wanda, sleepily stretching her
beautiful limbs.  I take them from the armchair and hold them while she
slips her arms, slowly and lazily, into the sleeves.  Then she sinks
down on the cushions of the ottoman.

     "Take off my shoes, and put on my velvet slippers."

     I kneel before her and pull at the little shoe, which resists my
efforts.  "Hurry, hurry!" she exclaims.  "Oh, now you are hurting me! 
Wait, I will teach you..."  She lashes me with the whip, and the shoe is
already off!

     "Now off with you!"  She gives me a kick -- and now I can go to
bed.



     Tonight I attended her to an evening party.  In the entrance-hall
she ordered me to take her furs;  then with a proud smile, certain of
conquest, she entered the brilliantly illuminated drawing-room.  Once
again I waited for her, full of gloomy and tedious thoughts, watching
hour after hour go by;  from time to time, whenever the door opened,
snatches of music came to me.  A couple of the other servants tried to
start a conversation, but soon desisted on finding I knew only a few
words of Italian.

     At last I fell asleep, and dreamed I had murdered Wanda in a
violent fit of jealousy and was condemned to death;  I saw myself
strapped down on the plank, the knife fell, I felt it on my neck, but I
was still alive --

     Then the executioner slapped my face.

     No, it was not the executioner, it was Wanda -- standing angrily
before me and demanding her furs.  I sprang to her side in a moment, and
helped her into them.

     There is a profound pleasure in wrapping a beautiful, voluptuous
woman in her furs, in seeing and feeling how her neck and superb limbs
nestle amid the soft rich fur, in lifting her flowing hair over the
collar -- and then, when she throws them off, a sweet warmth and a faint
fragrance of her body still clings to the ends of the hairs of sable: 
it is enough to drive one mad!



     At last a day when there are no guests, no theatre or evening
reception.  I breathe a sigh.  Wanda is sitting in the loggia, reading,
and has no orders for me.  At dusk, when the silvery mists of evening
begin to gather, she goes inside.  I serve her at dinner;  she is alone
at the table, but has not a look or a syllable for me, not even a slap
in the face.

     Oh, I even crave a blow from her hand.

     Tears come to my eyes, and I feel I have sunk so low in her regard
that she does not even think it worth while to torment or illtreat me...

     Before she retires, her bell summons me.

     "You will sleep here tonight," she says.  "I had fearful dreams
last night and I am afraid to be alone.  Take one of the cushions from
the ottoman, and lie down on the bearskin at my feet."

     Then she blew out the light, so that the only illumination came
from a small lamp hanging from the ceiling, and got into bed.  "Do not
stir, or you will keep me awake."

     I did as she ordered, but I could not fall asleep for a long time; 
I saw the beautiful woman, beautiful as a goddess, lying among her dark
furs, her arms behind her head and buried in the flood of her red hair; 
I heard the movement of her superb breast as it rose and fell with the
deep regular swell of her breathing, and whenever she moved, though ever
so slightly, I opened my eyes and listened for some sign that she had
need of me.

     But she had no need.

     No task was required of me;  I meant no more to her than a
night-light or a revolver kept by the bedside.




     Am I mad, or is she?  Does all this spring from the invention of a
wanton woman who wishes to outdo my supersensual fantasies -- or is this
woman really one of those Neronian characters who take a diabolical
pleasure in treading human beings underfoot as if they were worms --
human beings who think and feel and desire like themselves?

     What I have gone through!

     As I knelt beside her bed with her morning coffee, Wanda suddenly
laid her hand on my shoulder and her eyes plunged deeply into mine.

     "What beautiful eyes you have," she said softly.  "Above all now
that you are suffering.  Are you very unhappy?"

     I bowed my head and was silent.

     "Severin!  Do you still love me?" she suddenly cried with passion,
"can you still love me?"  And she drew me to her with such violence that
the tray was overturned, the pot and cups fell to the floor and the
coffee ran over the carpet.

     "Wanda -- my Wanda," I cried and pressed her passionately to me,
covering her mouth, face and breasts with kisses, "it is my misery to
love you even more madly the worse you treat me, the more you deceive
and betray me!  Oh, I shall die of pain and love and jealousy..."

     "But I have not betrayed you, Severin -- not yet," she retorted
with a smile.

     "You have not?  Wanda!  Do not play so mercilessly with me," I
cried.  "Did I not take your letter to the Prince --"

     "Certainly.  It was an invitation to luncheon."

     "Since we have been in Florence, you have --"

     "I have been absolutely faithful to you," she said.  "I swear it
by all that is holy to me.  Everything I have done has been simply to
bring your dreams to life -- for your own sake."

     She paused, looking at me, and then went on calmly. "However, I
shall take a lover, or else the programme would be incomplete and in the
end you would reproach me for not having treated you cruelly enough, my
dear handsome slave!  But today you shall be Severin again, the only man
I love.  I did not really give away your clothes, they are here in the
big wardrobe.  Go and dress as you used to in that little Carpathian
town, when our love was so fresh and intimate.  Forget everything that
has happened since then!  Ah, you will soon forget it in my arms, when I
will kiss away all your sorrows!"

     She began to fondle me tenderly, kissing and caressing me like a
child.  At last she said with a gracious smile, "Go and dress now, and I
will get dressed too.  Shall I wear my fur jacket?  Oh yes, I know.  Run
along now!"

     When I came back she was standing in the middle of the room in her
white satin gown and red fur-jacket edged with ermine, her hair white
with powder and on her head a small diamond tiara.  Once again for an
instant she reminded me strangely of Catherine the Great, but she gave
me no time to indulge such recollections, drawing me down to the ottoman
beside her where we enjoyed two hours of bliss.  She was no longer the
severe, capricious mistress, she was now the gracious lady, the tender
beloved.  She showed me photographs and books which had just appeared,
and spoke of them with such intelligence, clarity and taste that more
than once I carried her hand to my lips with rapture.  Then she made me
recite several poems of Lermontov, and when I was on fire with
enthusiasm she laid her little hand gently on mine with a tender
expression, her eyes filled with a soft and exquisite joy.

     "Are you happy?" she asked.

     "Not yet."

     She sank back on the cushions, and slowly opened her fur-jacket. 
But I swiftly covered the half-bared breast with the ermine.

     "You are driving me mad," I stammered.

     "Come..."

     I was lying in her arms and she was kissing my lips with her
tongue, like a serpent, when she whispered once again, "Are you happy?"

     "Infinitely!" I cried.

     She gave a laugh -- a shrill, evil laugh which sent cold shivers
down my back.

     "You used to dream of being the slave, the plaything of a
beautiful woman, and now, now you think you are a free human being, a
man, my lover!  You fool.  A sign from me, and you are a slave again. 
Down on your knees!"

     I slipped from the ottoman to her feet, but my gaze still clung
uncertainly to hers.

     "You do not believe it," she said, looking down at me, her arms
folded on her breast.  "Well, I am bored, and now you are going to serve
me as a plaything, to while away an hour or two.  Do not look at me like
that --"

     She thrust me away with her foot.

     "Yes, you are just what I want -- a creature, a thing, an
animal..."

     She rang.  The three negresses entered.

     "Tie his hands behind his back."

     I remained on my knees and submitted without protest.  Then they
led me to the garden and into the little vineyard at the southern
boundary of the grounds.  Corn had been planted between the espaliers,
and here and there a few dead stalks were still standing.  To one side
was a plough.

     The negresses tied me to a post, and amused themselves by pricking
me with their gilt hairpins, but this game ceased as soon as Wanda
appeared, wearing her ermine cap and with her hands in the pockets of
her jacket;  she had me unfastened from the post and my arms strapped
more tightly together, a yoke put on my neck and the plough harnessed to
me.

     Then the black devils drove me into the cornfield;  one of them
held the plough-handles, another led me by a line, the third applied the
whip, while Venus in Furs stood and looked on.



     As I was serving at dinner the next evening Wanda said suddenly,
"Lay another place, I want you to dine with me today." And when I was
about to lay the cover opposite her she added, "No:  over here beside
me."

     She is in the best of humours, serves me from her own plate, feeds
me with her fork, puts her head on the table like a playful kitten, and
flirts with me.  I am so unfortunate as to look at Haidée, who is now
waiting on table, a little longer than is called for:  for the first
time I notice her noble, almost European features and her magnificent
bare breasts which are as if sculptured in black marble.  The beautiful
she-devil notices that she pleases me, and shows her teeth in a flashing
grin.  She has hardly left the room before Wanda springs up in a rage.

     "What, you dare look at another woman!  Perhaps you prefer her to
me, you find her more devilish!"

     I am frightened, I have never seen her like this before -- she has
suddenly gone white to the lips, her whole body is trembling.  Venus in
Furs is jealous of her slave -- she tears the whip from the wall and
lashes me across the face with it, then she calls her black servants and
has them bind me and carry me down to the cellar where they throne into
a dark, damp, underground room, a regular prison cell.

     The lock on the door clicks, the bolts slide home, the key grates
in the lock.  I am imprisoned, buried.



     I lie there for I don't know how long, bound like a calf about to
be dragged to the slaughter, on a bundle of damp straw, without food or
drink, without sleep -- she is capable of letting me starve here, if I
do not freeze to death first.  I am shivering with cold.  Or is it
fever?  I believe I am beginning to hate this woman.



     A streak of light, red as blood, streams across the dark floor --
it is coming through the door which has just been thrown open.

     Wanda appears on the threshold, wrapped in her sables and holding
a lighted torch.

     "Are you still alive?" she asks.

     "Have you come to kill me?" I reply in a hoarse, feeble voice.

     In two swift strides Wanda reaches me, kneels down, takes my head
in her lap.  "Are you ill -- your eyes are burning...  do you love me? 
I want you to love me."

     She pulls out a short dagger;  I stiffen with terror as the blade
gleams before my eyes, I really believe she is going to kill me...  But
she laughs, and cuts the ropes that bind me.



     Every evening now, after dinner, she sends for me, has me read to
her, and discusses with me all kinds of interesting topics and subjects. 
She seems transformed:  it is as if she were ashamed of the savagery she
has displayed and of the cruelty she has shown me.  A melting tenderness
illuminates her whole person, and when we bid each other goodnight, as
she gives me her hand, an ineffable power of goodness and love beams
from her eyes -- the kind which calls forth one's tears and makes one
forget all the miseries of existence and all the terrors of death.



I am reading Manon Lescaut to her.  She feels the association and utters
no word, but every now and then she smiles;  at last she leans forward
and closes the little book.

     "Don't you wish to continue reading?" I ask.

     "Not today.  Today we arc going to play Manon Lescaut ourselves. 
I have a rendez-vous in the Cascine, and you, my dear Chevalier, will
accompany me.  I know you will do so, won't you?"

     "You order me."

     "I do not order you, I beg you," she said with irresistible charm; 
then she rose, put her hands on my shoulders and gazed at me.  "Your
eyes!" she exclaimed.  "I love you, Severin, you do not know how much I
love you!"

     "Indeed I do," I replied bitterly.  "You love me so much you have
made an appointment with someone else."

     "Only to allure you the more," she said gaily.  "I must have
admirers, lest I lose you, and I do not wish to lose you -- ever, do you
hear -- for I love you only, no one but you."

     She kissed me, clinging passionately to my lips.

     "Oh," she murmured, "if I could only give you my whole soul in a
kiss, as I would -- like this -- but now come."

     She slipped into a plain black velvet coat and put a dark Russian
cap on her head.  Then she went quickly along the gallery and got into
the carriage which was already waiting.

     "Gregor will drive," she called to the coachman who drew back in
surprise.

     I mounted the driver's seat and angrily whipped up the horses.

     In the Cascine, where the road at last becomes a leafy path, Wanda
got out.  It was night, only a few stars shone now and then through the
iron-grey clouds that fled across the sky.  By the bank of the Arno
stood a man in a dark cloak and a kind of brigand's hat, looking at the
yellow waves.  Wanda walked swiftly through the shrubbery and tapped him
on the shoulder.  I saw him turn and seize her hand -- then they
disappeared behind the green wall of leaves.

     An hour full of torment.  At last there was a rustling in the
bushes to one side, and they reappeared.

     The man went with her to the carriage, and handed her in.  The
light of the driving-lamp fell full on an intensely youthful, soft and
dreamy face which I had never seen before, and played on his long fair
curls.

     She held out her hand to him, which he kissed with profound
respect;  then she signed to me, and at once the carriage flew back
alongside the wall of foliage which follows the river like a long green
tapestry.



     The bell at the garden-gate sounds.  I see a familiar face.  It is
the man from the Cascine.

     "Whom shall I announce?" I ask in French.

     He shakes his head timidly.  "Do you, perhaps, understand any
German?"

     "Yes.  Your name, please."

     "Oh, I have none yet..." he replies in confusion.  "Tell your
mistress it is the German painter -- from the Cascine -- and that he
would like -- Oh, but there she is herself."

     Wanda had appeared on the balcony;  she nodded to the stranger.

     "Gregor, show the gentleman up," she said.

     I motioned him towards the stairs.

     "Thank you," he stammered, "I shall find her now -- thank you,
thank you very much..."  He ran up the stairs.  I remained standing
below, looking with profound pity at the poor German.

     Venus in Furs has caught him in the red snare of her hair.  He
will paint her, and be lost.



     A sunny winter day:  a golden haze gilds the leaves of the clump
of trees beside the green expanse of the cornfield;  the camellias at
the foot of the loggia are glorious with their swelling buds.  Wanda is
sitting in the gallery, drawing, and the German painter stands opposite
her, his hands clasped as if in adoration, gazing at her -- no, rather
he has fixed his eyes on her face, absorbed, enraptured by the sight.

     But she does not look at him, any more than she looks at me who
keep turning a flower-bed with the spade, over and over, only so that I
may see her and feel her nearness which affects me like poetry, like
music.



     The painter has gone.  It is a bold thing to do, but I take the
risk.  I go up to the gallery, approach Wanda and ask, "Are you in love
with the painter, Mistress?"

     She looks at me without any sign of anger, shakes her head, and at
last even smiles.

     "I am sorry for him," she replies, "but I do not love him.  I love
no one.  I used to love you -- as warmly, as passionately, as deeply as
I can love anyone, but now I do not even love you anymore.  My heart is
empty, dead -- and this is what makes me sad."

     "Wanda!" I exclaimed, deeply moved.

     "Soon you too will cease to love me," she went on.  "Tell me, I
beg you, when you have reached that stage, and l will give you back yo
freedom."

     "Then I shall remain your slave forever, all my life long -- for I
adore you and shall always adore you," I cried, overcome by that
absolute frenzy of love which had conquered me so many times before.

     Wanda looked at me with a curious pleasure.  "Think well what you
are doing" she said.  "I have loved you deeply, and have tyrannized over
you so that your dream might be realized, and something of my early
feeling, a sort of gentle affinity for you, is still lingering in my
heart;  but when that also has gone, who knows whether I shall then set
you at liberty, or whether I shall become really cruel, merciless, even
brutal, whether I shall not take a diabolical pleasure in torturing the
man who loves me to idolatry while I myself am either indifferent or
love someone else, and perhaps shall even enjoy the sight of him dying
for love of me.  Consider this well."

     "I have long since considered all this,"  I replied fervently.  "I
cannot live, cannot breathe without you;  I will die if you set me
free -- let me remain your slave...  Kill me, but do not drive me away."

     "Very well then, remain my slave," she replied.  "But do not
forget that I no longer love you, that your love means no more to me
than a dog's, and that dogs are meant to be kicked."



     Today I went to see the Venus de' Medici.  It was still early in
the morning, and the little octagonal room in the Tribuna was filled
with a half-light like that of a sanctuary or a shrine, and with clasped
hands I stood in profound adoration before the silent image of the
goddess.

     But I did not remain standing for long...

     Not a soul was in the gallery, not even an Englishman, and in a
moment I fell on my knees and gazed up at the lovely slender body, the
budding breasts, the virginal but voluptuous face with its half-closed
eyes, the flower-like curls which seemed to be hiding tiny horns at each
side of the brow.



     My mistress' bell.  It is midday.  But she is still in bed, her
arms locked behind her head.

     "I wish to bathe," she says.  "You will wait on me while I do.
Lock the door."

     I obey.

     "Now go down and make sure the lower door is locked also."

     I went down the winding stairs that led from her bedroom to the
bath;  my knees were shaking and I had to cling to the iron stair-rail. 
Having made sure the door leading to the loggia and the garden was
locked, I returned.  Wanda was now sitting on the bed with her hair
loose, wrapped in her fur-trimmed robe of green velvet.  When she made a
sudden movement I could see she was naked beneath her furs, and this
sent a terrible shudder through me.  I could not say why, but I felt
like a condemned man who knows he is being led to the scaffold and yet
begins to tremble as soon as he sees it.

     "Come, Gregor, take me in your arms."

     "Mistress, you mean --"

     "You are to carry me, do you understand?"

     I lifted her so that she lay across my arms, and her own arm
twined around my neck;  then, slowly, step by step, I went down the
stairs, her hair brushing against my cheek, her foot braced  against my
knee, while I trembled under the lovely burden, thinking every moment I
might crumple beneath it.

     The bathing room was a wide lofty rotunda which received a soft,
diffused light from a cupola of red glass overhead.  Two palm trees
extended their broad leaves, like a roof, over a couch spread with
velvet cushions, from which steps covered with Turkish rugs led down to
the wide marble basin in the centre of the room.

     "There is a green ribbon on my toilet-table upstairs," said Wanda
as I laid her on the couch.  "Go and get it, and bring the whip also."

     I ran upstairs and back again, and then, kneeling, placed both in
the hands of my mistress, who made me twist her heavy, electrically
charged hair into a large knot and tie it with the green ribbon.  I then
prepared her bath, which I did most awkwardly, for my hands and feet
almost refused to do my bidding;  again and again I had to look at the
beautiful woman lying on the red velvet cushions, with her wonderful
flesh gleaming here and there beneath the dark furs.  It was some
magnetic power beyond my conscious will which drew my gaze;  I had
always felt that all sensuality and lust is awakened by what is either
half hidden or intentionally revealed -- and I recognized the truth of
this when, the basin being full, Wanda threw off her furs with a single
gesture and stood before me like the goddess in the Tribuna.

     At that instant, in all her unveiled beauty, she seemed as sacred
and inviolable as the ancient goddess herself;  I fell on my knees
before her, and devoutly pressed my lips to her foot.

     My soul only recently a prey to stress and confusion all at once
became perfectly calm:  I could now discern no element of cruelty in
Wanda.

     Slowly she descended the marble steps;  and I could watch her with
a serenity unalloyed by any atom of torment or desire as she dipped,
plunged and emerged in the crystalline water while the little waves
which she raised played about her as if enamoured of her marmoreal
flesh.

     Our nihilist aesthetician is right when he says:  A real apple is
more beautiful than a painted one, and a living woman more beautiful
than a Venus of stone.

     And when she left the bath and the silvery drops streamed down her
body in the rosy light I was seized by a wordless ecstasy.  I wrapped
the linen towels about her, drying her splendid body, and the same calm
bliss still filled me even when, placing one foot on me as if on a
footstool she sank back among the cushions in her heavy velvet robe, the
springing sables nestling desirously against the cool marble of her
body, leaning on her left arm which lay like a sleeping swan in the dark
fur of her sleeve, while with her right hand she played idly with the
whip.

     At that moment my gaze happened to light on the great mirror on
the opposite wall, and I cried out:  I saw us both as if in a picture in
a golden frame and this picture was so wonderfully beautiful, so
strange, so fantastic, that I was filled with a sudden sharp sorrow that
its outlines and colours must soon dissolve like a mirage.

     "What is it?"  Wanda demanded.

     I pointed to the mirror.

     "Ah that is really beautiful," she exclaimed.  "What a pity this
moment can not be caught and held..."

     "And why not?" I asked.  "Is there no artist, even the most
famous, who would not be proud to be allowed to paint you so, and make
you immortal by his brush?"  I paused.  "The very thought that this
extraordinary beauty should be lost to the world is horrible -- this
glorious countenance, those mysterious eyes filled with green fire, this
demonic hair, this sumptuous body -- it fills me with a horror of death
and annihilation.  No, the hand of an artist shall snatch you from such
a death, you shall not vanish absolutely and forever like the rest of
mankind, without leaving a trace behind -- your picture must live and
breathe even when you yourself have crumbled into dust, your beauty must
triumph over death!

     Wanda smiled.

     "It is a pity," she said, "that modern Italy has no Titian or
Raphael, but perhaps love may make amends for genius -- who knows?  Our
little German might do..."   She pondered.

     "Yes," she said, "he shall paint me, and I shall see to it that
the god of love mixes his colours."



     The young painter has set up his atelier in the villa;  he is
completely in her toils.  He has even proposed a Madonna -- a Madonna
with red hair and green eyes!  Only the idealism of a German would
conceive of such a high-bred woman as a model for the Virgin.  The poor
fellow is really almost a bigger donkey than I am.  Our misfortune is
that Titania has discovered our ass's ears too soon.

     Now she is laughing at us -- and how she laughs!  From where I am
standing, listening jealously under the window, I hear her insolent
melodious laughter coming from the studio.

     "Are you mad?  I -- oh it's unbelievable -- I, as the Mother of
God!" she is crying.  "Wait, I will show you another picture of myself,
one that I have myself composed -- and you shall copy it."

     Her head appears in the window shining like a red flame in the
sunlight.

     "Gregor!"

     I hurried up the stairs, through the gallery and into the studio.

     "Take him to the bathing-room," she ordered, and disappeared.

     I beckoned to the painter, and led him downstairs.

     In a few moments Wanda appeared, wearing nothing but her sables
and carrying the whip;  she descended the stairs and once again
stretched out on the velvet cushions, while I crouched before her and
she set her naked foot on me, her right hand caressing the whip.

     "Look at me, Gregor," she said, "with your deep, fanatical
expression -- yes -- like that."

     The painter had turned terribly pale;  he devoured the pose with
his beautiful dreamy blue eyes;  his lips opened but he remained
speechless.

     "Well how do you find the pose?"

     "Yes -- that is how I will paint you," said the German, but it was
not so much the language of speech as an eloquent moaning, the weeping
of a soul sick almost to death.



     The charcoal outline of the picture is done, the heads and flesh
portions are painted in, her diabolical face has already emerged in a
few bold strokes, and life is flashing from her green eyes.

     Wanda stands before the canvas with her arms folded.

     "This picture, like those of the Venetian school, is at once a
portrait and tells a story," explained the painter, once again pale as
death.

     "And what will you call it?" she asked.  "But what is the matter
with you?  Are you ill?"

     "I am afraid --" he began, fixing a devouring look on the
beautiful woman in furs, "but no -- let us talk of the picture."

     "Yes, let us talk of the picture."

     "I imagine, then, the goddess of love who has descended from Mount
Olympus for the sake of some mortal man and who, shivering in this
modern world, must wrap her sublime body in great heavy furs and warm
her feet in the lap of her lover;  I imagine too the favourite of a
beautiful despot who whips him when she has grown tired of kissing him,
and the more she treads him underfoot the more madly he loves her...  I
shall call the picture Venus in Furs."



     The painter works slowly, but his passion mounts more and more
rapidly.  I am afraid he will end by taking his own life.  She plays
with him and asks him riddles he cannot answer, while all the time he
feels his blood turning to ice -- but this amuses her.

     During the sittings she nibbles at candies and rolls the paper
wrappings into little pellets with which she bombards him.

     "I am glad you are in such good humour, Madam," he says, "but --
your face has lost the expression I need for my picture."

     "The expression you need," she replied, smiling.  "Wait!"

     She rose, and struck me a blow with the whip.  The painter looked
at her in stupefaction;  a childlike surprise showed in his face -- a
blend of revulsion and admiration.

     She struck me again and again, while her face gradually acquired
the cruel, contemptuous expression which so haunts and intoxicates me.

     "Is this the expression you need?" she cried, turning to face him. 
The painter lowered his eyes in confusion before her cold stare.

     "It is the expression --" he stammered, "but -- I cannot paint now
--"

     "Indeed?" she said scornfully.  "Perhaps I can help you?"

     "Yes," cried the German, as if suddenly gripped by madness, "whip
me -- whip me too..."

     "Oh, with pleasure," she replied, shrugging her shoulders.  "But
if I am to whip you, I must whip you in earnest."

     "Whip me to death!" he cried.

     "Then I will tie you," she said smiling.

     "Yes?"

     "Yes..."

     She left the room for a moment, and returned with the cords.

      "Well, have you still the courage to put yourself in the power of
Venus in Furs?" she asked quizzically, "in the power of the fair tyrant,
for better or worse?"

     "Yes, tie me," the painter replied dully.  She fastened his hands
behind his back, passed a cord around his arms and another around his
waist, and lashed him to the crossbars of the window;  then she threw
back the fur from her naked body, grasped the whip and stepped back.

     The scene held a grim attraction for me which I cannot describe; 
I felt my heart pounding as, with a smile, she raised her arm for the
first stroke and the whip whistled through the air;  he winced
slightly -- and then she rained blow after blow on him, her mouth half
open, her teeth shining between her red lips, until at last he seemed to
be begging for mercy with his piteous blue eyes.

     It was indescribable...



     She is sitting in her room now, alone with him.  He is working on
her head.  She has stationed me in the adjoining room behind a heavy
curtain, where I can see everything without being seen.

     What is in her mind now?

     Is she afraid of him?  She has driven him mad enough, to be sure -
- or is she devising some new torment for me?  My knees are trembling.

     They are talking.  He has lowered his voice so that I cannot catch
a word, and she replies in the same tone.  What does it mean?  Have they
come to an understanding?

     I am suffering agonies;  my heart seems about to burst.

     He is kneeling before her now, embracing her, pressing his head to
her breast -- and she -- in her cruelty -- she is laughing -- and now I
can hear her speaking.

     "Ah," she says, "you need another taste of the whip."

     "Woman! Goddess!  Have you no heart -- are you incapable of love?"
he cried.  "Don't you even know what it is to love, to be devoured by
desire and longing, can't you even imagine what I am suffering?  Have
you no pity for me?"

     "No," she replied proudly, mockingly, "but I have the whip --"

     She drew it swiftly from the sleeve of her fur cloak and struck
him across the face with the handle.  He stumbled to his feet and fell
back a few steps.

     "Now, are you ready to paint again?" she said.  He made no reply,
but went back to his easel and took up his brush and palette...

     The painting is wonderfully successful.  As a portrait the
likeness could not be better;  but at the same time it has a purely
ideal quality -- so glowing, so supernatural, I might say so diabolical,
are the colours.

     The painter has put all his suffering, adoration and execration
into the picture.



     Now he is painting me;  we are alone for several hours every day. 
Today he suddenly turned to me and said in his vibrant voice:

     "You love this woman?"

     "Yes."

     "I also love her."  His eyes were full of tears.  He remained
silent for a while as he continued to paint.

     "We have a mountain at home, in Germany, where she lives," he
murmured to himself.  "She is a demon."



     The picture is finished.  She wanted to pay him generously,
royally, like a queen.

     "Oh, you have already paid me," he said, refusing with a painful
smile.

     Before leaving, he opened his portfolio secretively and let me
look at the sketch inside.  I was stupefied.  Her head was looking out
at me as if from a mirror, as if it were alive.

     "I shall take it with me," he said, "it is mine, she cannot take
it from me;  I have paid for it with my heart's blood."



     "I am really sorry for the poor painter," she said to me today. 
"It is quite absurd to be as virtuous as I am.  Don't you think so?"

     I did not dare reply.

     "Oh, I forgot I was speaking to a slave.  I must go out, I want to
amuse myself, to forget...  Quick, the carriage!"



     Her new costume is wildly extravagant:  Russian half-boots of
mauve velvet edged with ermine, and a skirt of the same material trimmed
with narrow bands and rosettes of fur;  over it she wears a jacket to
match, close-fitting and also richly trimmed and lined with ermine;  on
her head is a tall cap in the style of Catherine the Great, with a small
aigrette secured by a diamond clip;  her red hair hangs loose on her
back.  She mounts the driver's seat and takes the reins herself, while I
take my place in the boot.  How she whips the horses!  The carriage
flies along madly.

     Apparently she means to attract attention today, to make
conquests, and she succeeds.  She is the lioness of the Cascine.  People
bow to her from their carriages, others gather in groups on the
Promenade to talk about her.  She pays no attention to anyone, except
now and then to acknowledge with a slight nod the salutations of the
older men.

     Suddenly a young man on a spirited black horse dashes towards her
at full speed;  as soon as he sees Wanda he reins in his horse to a walk
-- they are already passing each other -- and he stops altogether to let
her go by.  And she sees him too:  the lioness beholds the lion.  Their
eyes meet -- she drives on recklessly, but cannot escape the magic of
his gaze;  she turns her head to look back.

     My heart stops as I see the half-astonished, half-enraptured look
with which she devours him;  but he is worthy of it.

     God, what a beautiful man!  No, he is rather a man whose like I
have never yet seen among the living.  He is in the Belvedere, chiselled
in marble, with the same slender but steely musculature, the same face,
the same wavy locks, and what makes him so peculiarly beautiful is that
he is beardless.  Were his lips not so thin one might take him for a
woman in masquerade, while the strange set of his mouth, the curled and
leonine lip which just reveals his teeth below, gives a lambent tinge of
cruelty to his beautiful face --

     Apollo flaying Marsyas...

     He wears high black boots, closely fitting breeches of white
leather, a short coat of black cloth like those worn by Italian cavalry
officers but richly frogged and trimmed with astrakhan; on his black
locks is a red fez.

     I now understand the masculine Eros, and I marvel at Socrates for
having remained virtuous before such an Alcibiades.



     I have never seen my lioness so excited.  Her cheeks were flaming
as she sprang from the carriage to the steps of the villa and hastened
upstairs, bidding me follow with an imperious gesture.

     Pacing up and down the room with rapid strides, she began speaking
so swiftly that I was alarmed.

     "You are to find out who the man in the Cascine is, today, at once
-- Oh, what a man!  Did you see him?  What do you think of him?  Tell
me."

     "The man is beautiful," I said dully.

     "He is so beautiful --" she paused, steadying herself on the arm
of a chair, " -- he has taken my breath away."

     "I understand the impression he has made on you," I replied,
carried away by the violence of my own imagination.  "I am beside myself
-- I can imagine --"

     "You may imagine," she said with a laugh, "that this man is my
lover -- that he will take the whip to you, and that you will enjoy
being whipped by him...  But now, go!"



     Before nightfall I had the desired information.  Wanda was still
fully dressed when I came back;  she was lying on the ottoman, her face
framed in her hands and her hair in wild disarray like the red mane of a
lioness.

     "What is his name?" she asked with a curious calm.

     "Alexis Papadopolis."

     "A Greek, then."

     I nodded.

     "He is very young?"

     "Barely older than yourself.  They say he was educated in Paris,
and that he is an atheist.  He fought against the Turks in Candia, and
is said to have distinguished himself as much by his race-hatred and
cruelty as by his courage."

     "All in all, then -- a man!" she cried with flashing eyes.

     "At present he is living in Florence," I went on.  "He is said to
be enormously rich --"

     "I did not ask about that," she said sharply.  "The man is
dangerous.  Aren't you afraid of him?  I am.  Has he a wife?"

     "No."

     "A mistress?"

     "No."

     "What theatres does he go to?"

     "Tonight he will be at the Nicolini, where Virginia Marini and
Salvini are playing -- they are the greatest living artists in Italy,
perhaps in Europe..."

     "See that you get a box.  Quickly, quickly!"

     "But, Mistress-"

     "Would you like a taste of the whip?"



     "You will wait in the foyer," she said after I had placed her
programme and opera-glasses on the edge of her box and arranged her
footstool.

     I stood there for a moment, obliged to lean for support against
the wall in order not to faint with envy and rage -- no, rage is not the
right word -- with mortal anguish...

     I saw her in her box, dressed in blue moire with a great ermine
cloak around her bare shoulders;  he was sitting opposite.  I saw them
devour each other with their eyes:  for neither of them did the stage,
Goldoni's Pamela, Salvini, Marini, the audience, the whole world,
exist -- and as for me, what was I at that moment?



     This evening she is attending the ball given by the Greek
ambassador.  Does she know she will meet him there?

     In any event she is dressed as if she did.  A heavy seagreen silk
dress closely moulds her divine form, leaving her breast and arms bare; 
in her hair, tied in a single flaming knot, blooms a white water-lily
whose reedy leaves, interwoven with a few loose strands, fall on her
neck.  There is no longer any trace of agitation or trembling in her
demeanour;  she is calm, so calm that I feel my blood congeal and my
heart grow cold beneath her glance.  Slowly, with a weary, indolent
majesty, she ascends the marble staircase, lets her wrap slip from her
shoulders and listlessly enters the great hall where the fumes of a
hundred candles have formed a silvery mist.

     For a few moments I watch her forlornly, then I pick up her furs
which I have let fall unawares from my hands.  They are still warm from
her shoulders.

     I kiss the place, and my eyes fill with tears.



     He arrives.

     In his black velvet coat extravagantly trimmed with sable, he is
the beautiful haughty tyrant who plays with the lives and souls of men. 
He stands in the anteroom gazing proudly around him, and his eyes rest
on me for a curiously long time.

     Beneath his icy gaze I am once more seized by a mortal anguish, by
a presentiment that this man can enslave her, captivate and subjugate
her -- and, feeling how my weakness contrasts with his savage
masculinity, I am filled with envy and jealousy.

     How much I feel myself a feeble, twisted intellectual!  What is
most humiliating is that I would like to hate him, but cannot.  And why,
among all the crowd of servants, does he single me out?

     With an inimitably aristocratic lift of the head he summons me to
him, and I -- I obey the summons in spite of myself.

     "Take my furs," he says sharply.

     My whole frame trembles with resentment, but I obey -- abjectly
like a slave.



     All evening long I waited in the anteroom, a prey to feverish
fancies.  Strange images passed before my inward eye:  I saw their
meeting, their long exchange of glances, I saw her floating through the
great salon in his arms, drunken with passion, lying with half-closed
eyes against his breast -- I saw him in the very sanctuary of love,
lying on the ottoman not as slave but as master, with her at his feet --
I saw myself serving them on my knees, the tray trembling in my hands
and his own arm reaching for the whip...  Now the servants are talking
about him.

     He is a man who is like a woman;  he knows how beautiful he is,
and behaves accordingly;  he changes his fancy clothes four or five
times a day, like a courtesan.

     In Paris he appeared first in woman's clothing, and the men
showered him with love letters.  An Italian singer, famous alike for his
art and his passions, even penetrated his house and falling on his knees
before him threatened to commit suicide if he would not surrender.

     "I am sorry," the Greek replied, smiling.  "I should like to
oblige you, but you will have to carry out your threat -- for I am a
man."



     The crush in the rooms has already thinned considerably -- but she
has apparently no thought of leaving.

     Dawn is already peering through the blinds.

     At last I hear the rustling of her heavy gown as it floats behind
her like a green wave;  she comes forward, step by step, deep in
conversation with him.

     I barely exist for her;  she does not even trouble to give me her
orders.

     "The cloak for madame," he says.  He, of course, does not think of
waiting on her himself.

     While I am putting her furs about her he stands aloof, his arms
folded.  As I am on my knees putting on her fur boots, she supports
herself lightly with her hand on his shoulder.  She asks:

     "And the lioness?"

     "When the lion she has chosen, and with whom she pairs, is
attacked by another," the Greek continued his story, "the lioness lies
down quietly and watches the contest, and if her mate is worsted she
does not go to his aid -- she looks on indifferently while he bleeds to
death under his opponent's claws, and then follows the victor, the
stronger:  that is the female's nature."

     At that moment my lioness looked swiftly and searchingly at me. 
Her look made me shudder, though I hardly knew why -- and the red dawn
bathed all three of us as if in blood.



     She did not retire at once, but only slipped off her ballgown and
let down her hair;  then she ordered me to build a fire, and sat down by
the fireplace, staring into the flames.

     "Do you need me further, Mistress?" I asked, my voice failing me
on the last word.

     Wanda shook her head.

     I left the room, passed through the gallery and sat down on one of
the steps leading to the garden.  A soft north wind brought a fresh,
moist coolness from the Arno, the green hills were lost in a distant
rosy mist and a golden haze hovered above the city and over the round
cupola of the Duomo.

     A few stars were still trembling in the pale blue sky.

     I tore open my coat and pressed my burning forehead against the
marble balustrade.  Everything that had happened until now seemed a mere
childish game;  now matters were becoming serious, terribly serious.

     I foresaw a catastrophe, I visualized it, I could even grasp it in
my hands, but I lacked the courage to meet it;  my strength failed me. 
And, to speak truly, neither the pain nor the suffering that threatened
me, nor the humiliations to come, were what frightened me.

     I merely felt a fear, the fear of losing her whom I loved with a
kind of fanatical devotion, but this fear was so overwhelming that I
suddenly began to sob like a child.



     All next day she remained locked in her room, served only by the
negress.  When the evening star rose glowing in the blue sky, I saw her
pass through the garden;  following her at a distance, I watched her as
she entered the shrine of Venus.  I crept after her and peered through a
chink in the door.

     She stood before the image of the goddess, her hands clasped as if
in prayer, while the sacred light of the star of love cast its blue rays
over her.



     That night in my own bed, my fear of losing her, and my despair
seized me so powerfully that they made of me a hero and a libertine.  I
lit the little red oil-lamp which hangs under the holy image in the
passage, and entered her bedroom, shielding the light with one hand.

     The lioness had been hunted and driven to exhaustion, she had
fallen asleep among her pillows, lying on her back, her hands clenched,
breathing heavily.  A dream seemed to be oppressing her.  I slowly
raised my hand, and let the red light fall on her beautiful face.

     She did not awake.

     I placed the lamp quietly on the floor, sank down beside the bed
and laid my head on her soft glowing arm.

     She stirred slightly, but still did not waken.  I do not know how
long I lay thus, in the middle of the night, as if turned to stone by my
horrible anguish.

     At last a violent tremor seized me, and I was able to weep -- my
tears bathed her arm.  She quivered once or twice and then sat up,
passed her hand over her eyes and looked at me.

     "Severin," she exclaimed, more alarmed than angry.

     I was unable to reply.

     "Severin," she continued gently, "what is the matter?  Are you
ill?"

     Her voice was so melting, so kind, so full of love, that it seemed
to take hold of my heart like red-hot tongs, and I began to sob aloud.

     "Severin," she said again.  "My poor unhappy friend."  Her hand
stroked my hair softly.  "I am sorry, very sorry for you...   But I
cannot help you -- with all the will in the world, I know of no way to
cure you."

     "Oh, Wanda -- must it be so?" I murmured in agony.

     "What, Severin?  What do you mean?"

     "Do you love me no longer?  Have you not even a shred of pity for
me?  Has the beautiful stranger so taken possession of you?"

     "I cannot lie," she said gently after a short pause.  "He affects
me in a way I cannot yet grasp, except that it makes me tremble and
suffer, -- in a way I have so far only known at second hand, in poetry
or on the stage -- with a feeling I have always regarded as a figment of
the imagination.  Oh, he is a man like a lion, strong and beautiful and
proud -- and yet gentle too, not like the brutal men of our northern
world...  I am sorry for you, Severin, indeed I am -- but I must possess
him -- what am I saying?  I must give myself to him, if he will have
me."

     "Think of your reputation, Wanda, which is so far unspotted," I
exclaimed, "even if I no longer mean anything to you."

     "I am thinking of it," she replied.  "I intend to be strong, to
resist him as long as I am able --" she hid her face in the pillows, " -
- I wish to become his wife, if he will have me."

     "Wanda!" I cried, gripped once again by that mortal terror which
robs me of my breath and takes away all my control, "you with to be his
wife, to belong to him forever...  Oh, do not drive me away!  He does
not love you --"

     "Who says so?" she exclaimed hotly.

     "He does not love you," I went on in a passion of despair and
entreaty.  "It is I who love you, who adore you, I am the slave who lets
you tread him underfoot, who desires to carry you in his arms forever --
"

     "Who says he does not love me?" she broke in harshly.

     "Oh, be mine!" I cried.  "Only be mine!  I cannot exist, I cannot
live without you.  Have pity on me, Wanda -- have pity!"

     She looked at me again, and now her face assumed the familiar
cold, heartless expression, the old evil smile.

     "So you say he does not love me," she said contemptuously.  "Very
well then, take what consolation you can from that."  And with these
words she turned on her side and scornfully showed me her back.

     "My God, are you a woman of flesh and blood?  Have you no heart at
all?" I cried, my breast heaving convulsively.

     "You know what I am," she answered coldly.  "I am the woman of
stone, Venus in Furs, your ideal.  Kneel down, and pray to me."

     "Wanda!" I implored.  "Pity!"

     She began to laugh.  I buried my face in the pillows;  pain had
dissolved my grief, and I let my tears flow.

     For a long time there was silence in the room;  then Wanda slowly
raised herself on her arm.

     "You are boring me," she said.

     "Wanda!"

     "I am tired, let me go to sleep."

     "Pity," I begged.  "Do not drive me away -- no man, no one, will
love you as I do."

     "Let me sleep."  She turned her back again.

     I sprang up, unsheathed the dagger which hung beside her bed, and
placed its point against my breast.

     "I will kill myself, here before your eyes," I whispered.

     "Do as you please," Wanda replied with absolute indifference. 
"Only let me go to sleep." She yawned. "I am tired."

     For a moment I stood as if petrified;  then I began to laugh and
cry at the same time -- at last I put the dagger in my belt, and fell on
my knees before her again.

     "Wanda -- only listen to me for a few moments," I begged.

     "I want to sleep!  Don't you understand!" she cried, springing
from the bed and pushing me away with her foot.  "Have you forgotten I
am your mistress?"

     When I did not move she seized the whip and struck me.  I got  up,
and she struck me again -- this time in the face.

     "Wretch!  Slave!"

     With a clenched fist raised heavenwards, I turned to the door with
a sudden resolve and left her bedroom.  She threw the whip aside and
burst into sparkling laughter -- and I can imagine my theatrical gesture
must have been extremely droll.



     I have resolved to free myself from this heartless woman who has
treated me so cruelly and is now about to reward my slavish devotion and
suffering with betrayal and infidelity;  I have packed my few belongings
in a bundle, and written her the following note:

     "Madam,
          I have loved you to madness, I have given myself to you as
     no man has ever given himself to a woman -- but you have abused my
     most sacred feelings and played a shameless and wanton game with
     me.  While you were cruel and merciless, I could still love you --
     but now you are about to become cheap.  I am no longer the slave
     whom you can kick and beat.  You yourself have set me free and I
     am leaving a woman I can only hate and despise.
                              Severin Kusiemski."


     I give these lines to the negress, and hasten away as fast as I
can.  I reach the railway-station out of breath, and all at once I feel
a sharp pain at my heart -- I stop -- I begin to weep -- oh, it is
shameful! -- I want to run away, and cannot.  I turn back to -- where? 
To her whom I abominate and adore at the same time.

     Once more I pause.  I cannot go back.  I dare not.

     And how am I to leave Florence?  I remember I have no money, not a
penny.  Well then, on foot:  better to be an honest beggar than eat the
bread of a courtesan.

     But I cannot leave:  she has my word, my word of honour.  I must
go back.  Perhaps she will release me from it.

     After a few rapid steps I stop again.

     She has my word of honour, my pledge to remain her slave as long
as she wishes -- until she herself sets me free;  but I am still free to
kill myself.

     I go through the Cascine and down to the Arno, whose yellow waters
ripple monotonously around a few stray willows.  I sit down and cast up
my last accounts with existence -- I pass my whole life in review:  a
wretched business on the whole -- a few joys, an endless number of
futile and worthless experiences, and between these a rich harvest of
suffering, misery, fear, disappointment, blighted hopes, afflictions,
sadness and grief.

     I thought of my mother whom I had loved so deeply, and whom I had
to watch as she was slowly devoured by a terrible illness;  of my
brother, who died in the prime of his youth, full of joy and happiness,
without ever raising the cup of life to his lips;  of my dead nurse, my
childhood comrades, the friends who had striven and studied with me --
all, all now covered by the cold, unfeeling earth;  I thought of my pet
turtle-dove, who so often paid her cooing addresses to me instead of his
mate -- all had returned, dust to dust.

     I laugh, and plunge into the water -- but at the same instant I
seized one of the willow branches hanging above the yellow waves -- and
I see, as if in a vision, the woman who has caused all my suffering,
hovering over the surface, luminous in the sunlight as though
transparent, with red flames circling her head and shoulders, and she
turns her face towards me and smiles.



     I have come back, dripping, soaked through, burning with shame and
fever.  The negress has delivered my letter;  I am undone, lost, in the
power of a heartless  woman I have affronted.

     Well then, let her kill me -- I cannot do it myself, and I have no
desire to go on living.

     As I pass the corner of the house she is standing in the gallery,
leaning on the railing, her face in full sunlight, her green eyes
sparkling.

     "You are still alive?" she asked, without moving.

     I said nothing, my head bowed.

     "At least give me back my dagger," she went on.  "It's no use to
you.  You haven't even the courage to take your own life."

     "I lost it," I replied, trembling, shaken by chills.

     She looked me up and down with her haughty, scornful air.  "I
suppose you lost it in the Arno?"  She shrugged her shoulders.  "No
matter...  Well, why didn't you leave?"

     I muttered something which neither of us could understand.

     "Oh, you have no money!" she cried.  "Here!"  With an ineffably
disdainful gesture she tossed me her purse.

     I did not pick it up.

     We were silent for a while.

     "You don't want to leave then?" she said.

     "I cannot."



     Wanda drives in the Cascine without me, she goes to the theatre
without me;  she receives company, and the negresses wait on her.  No
one pays me any attention.  I wander about the garden, irresolutely,
like an animal that has lost its master.

     Lying in the shrubbery, I watch a pair of sparrows fighting over a
seed...

     Suddenly, the rustle of a woman's dress.

     Wanda approaches, wearing a dark silk gown modestly closed Up to
the throat;  the Greek is with her.  They are in animated talk, but I
cannot hear a word they are saying.  He stamps his foot, scattering the
gravel in all directions, and cuts the air with his riding-whip.  Wanda
starts back.

     Is she afraid he will strike her?

     Have things gone as far as that?



     He has left her;  she calls to him, but he does not hear her, does
not wish to hear.

     Wanda lets her head droop sadly, then sinks down on a stone bench; 
she sits there for a long time, lost in thought.  I watch her with a
kind of bitter joy, and at last I summon up my strength and approach her
with an ironical expression.  She gives a start, and trembles from head
to foot.

     "I come to wish you happiness," I say, bowing.  "I see, dear lady,
that you have found a master in your turn."

     "Yes, thank God!" she cried.  "Not another slave -- I have had
enough of that.  A master.  Woman needs a master, and I adore mine."

     "You adore this man, Wanda?" I cried.  "This brutal person --"

     "I love him as I have never loved any other man."

     "Wanda!"  I clenched my fist -- but tears already filled my eyes,
and I was seized by a delirium of passion, a sweet madness.  "Very well,
take him as your husband, let him be your master -- but I, I want to
remain your slave as long as I live."

     "You would remain my slave even then?" she said.  "That would be
piquant, but I am afraid he would not allow it."

     "He?"

     "Yes, he is already jealous of you," she cried. "He, of you!  He
ordered me to dismiss you, and when I told him who you were --"

     "You told him --"  I repeated, thunderstruck.

     "I have told him everything," she replied, "our whole story, all
your eccentricity, everything -- and he -- instead of being amused --
became angry and stamped his foot."

     "And threatened to strike you?"

     Wanda looked at the ground and remained silent.

     "Yes, yes," I said with bitter mockery, "you are afraid of him,
Wanda!"  I threw myself at her feet, and in my distress embraced her
knees.  "I desire nothing from you but to be your slave, to be near you
always!  I will be your dog --"

     "Do you know, you are boring me?" she said carelessly.

     I leapt to my feet.  The blood was seething in my veins.

     "You are no longer cruel, madam, but cheap," I said, stressing
every syllable.

     "You have already said that in your letter," she replied with a
haughty shrug.  "An intelligent man never repeats himself."

     "The way you are treating me," I burst out, "how else would you
describe it?"

     She looked at me quizzically.  "See now," she said,  "I might
punish you for your insolence, but I prefer to answer you with reasons
instead of blows.  You have no right to accuse me.  Have I not always
been honest with you, did I not warn you more than once?  Did I not love
you with all my heart and senses, and did I ever conceal from you the
danger of putting yourself in my power, of abasing yourself before me  -
- or that I myself wished to be mastered?  But you wanted to be my
plaything, my slave!  You found your greatest pleasure in feeling the
foot and the whip of a cruel and arrogant woman.  What else could you
expect?"

     She paused, and threw back her head.

     "Dangerous forces were slumbering in me," she went on, "but you
were the first to awaken them.  If I now enjoy torturing and abusing
you, the fault is your own; you made me what I am, and now you are so
weak, unmanly and wretched as to blame me."

     "Yes, I am at fault," I said, "but have I not suffered enough on
that account?  Let us put an end to this cruel game."

     "With all my heart," she replied with a curious, veiled look.

     "Wanda!" I cried wildly, "do not drive me to extremes -- you see,
I am a man once more."

     "A man?  A fire of straw, rather, which makes a great stir for a
moment and goes out as quickly as it flared up.  You think you can
frighten me, and you only make yourself ridiculous.  If you had been the
man I first thought you were -- serious, composed, stern -- I would have
loved you faithfully and become your wife.  A woman needs to look up to
a man -- but a man like you, who wilfully puts his neck beneath her
foot, she treats him like an amusing toy and tosses him aside when she
is tired of him."

     "Try to toss me aside now," I said scornfully.  "Some toys are
dangerous."

     "Do not defy me," exclaimed Wanda, her cheeks flushing, her eyes
beginning to flash.

     "If you will not be mine," I said, my voice stifled with rage, "no
one else shall have you."

     "What play is this from?" she cried scornfully, seizing me by the
breast;  she was suddenly white with anger.  "Do not stand in my way!  I
am not cruel, but I don't know whether I might not become so -- nor, if
I do, how far I might go."

     "How much farther can you go," I exclaimed, my rage mounting,
"than to take your lover for a husband?"

     "Why, I might make you his slave," she said quickly.  "Are you not
in my power?  Have I not the contract?  But that, of course, would
merely give you pleasure -- if I were to have you bound and tell him, Do
with this creature as you please."

     "Woman, are you mad?"

     "I am quite sane," she said calmly, "and I am warning you for the
last time -- do not stand in my way.  One who has gone as far as I have
can well go further...  I feel a kind of hatred for you -- yes, hatred! 
I would take a genuine pleasure in seeing him whip you to death -- I am
still restraining myself, but-"

     Losing all control at last, I seized her by the waist and thrust
her to the ground so that she was on her knees before me.

     "Severin!" she cried, rage and terror painted on her face.

     "If you marry him, I will kill you," I said, the words coming
hoarsely and dully from my throat.  "You are mine, I will not let you go
-- I love you too much," and I gripped her, pulling her closely to me
while my fingers involuntarily closed on the dagger which was still in
my belt.

     Wanda fixed me with a wide, calm, incomprehensible gaze.

     "I like you this way," she said quietly.  "Now you are a man.  At
this moment I know that I still love you."

     "Wanda..."  I burst into tears of rapture and bent down to cover
her dear face with kisses -- and she, suddenly breaking into a gay,
ringing laugh, said, "Have you had enough of your ideal now?  Are you
satisfied with me?"

     "You mean-" I stammered, "-- you were not serious?"

     "Oh no, l am quite serious," she continued gaily.  "I love you,
you only -- and you, you foolish little man, didn't know it was all only
make-believe and playacting!  How hard it was, often and often, to
strike you with the whip -- when all I wanted was to take your head and
cover it with kisses.  But now we are finished with all that, aren't we? 
I have played my cruel part even better than you expected, and now you
must be satisfied with me as a good little wife who isn't, after all,
too unattractive -- no?  We will live together like sane, sensible
people --"

     "You will marry me!" I cried in a burst of happiness.

     "Yes marry you -- my dear darling man," she whispered, kissing my
hands.

     I drew her to my breast.

     "Now you are no longer my slave, Gregor," she said, "you are
Severin, the dear man I love --"

     "And he -- you do not love him?" I asked in agitation.

     "How could you think of my loving such a brute?  You were blind to
everything, I was really afraid for you..."

     "I almost killed myself for your sake."

     "Really?" she cried.  "Ah, I still shudder at the thought --that
you were actually in the Arno..."

     "Ah, but you saved me," I replied tenderly, "your image hovered
over the water, and your smile recalled me to life."



     I have a strange feeling now when I hold her in my arms, when she
lies silently against my breast and receives my kisses with a smile I
feel as if I had suddenly awakened from the delirium of fever, I feel
like a shipwrecked man who has for many days battled with the waves that
threatened to swallow him at any moment and then has come safe to shore
at last.



     "I hate this Florence, where you have been so unhappy," she
announced as I was saying goodnight to her.  "I want to leave at once
tomorrow.  Will you please write one or two letters for me -- and while
you're doing so I will drive into the city and pay a few farewell calls. 
Is that agreeable to you?"

     "Of course -- my dear, good beautiful one."



     Early this morning she knocked at my door and asked how I had
slept.  Her kindness is positively wonderful, I could never have
believed she could be so tender.



     She has been gone now for over four hours;  I have long since
finished the letters and am sitting in the gallery looking down the
street and waiting for her carriage to appear in the distance.  I am a
little worried about her, and yet I know there is no reason under heaven
why I should doubt or fear;  but a feeling of oppression weighs on me, I
cannot shake it off.  It is probably the suffering of the past few days
which is still casting its shadow over my spirit.

     She is back, radiant with happiness and satisfaction.

     "Well, did everything go as you wished?" I asked, kissing her hand
tenderly.

     "Yes indeed, dear heart," she replied smiling.  "We shall leave
tonight.  Help me to pack my trunks."



     Towards evening she asked me to go to the post office and mail her
letters myself.  I took her carriage, and was back within an hour.

     "Mistress has been asking for you," said Haidée, with a grin as I
mounted the wide marble stairs.

     "Has anyone been here?"

     "No one," she replied, crouching down on the steps like a black
cat.

     I passed slowly through the drawing room, and then stood before
the door of her bedroom...

     Why does my heart beat so?  Am I not perfectly happy?  Opening the
door softly, I draw back the portière.  Wanda, lying on the ottoman,
appears not to see me.  How beautiful she looks, in a close-fitting
silver-grey dress which frankly reveals all the lines of her superb body
while leaving bare her dazzling neck and shoulders.  Her hair is
threaded and caught up with a ribbon of black velvet.  A great fire is
burning in the fireplace, the hanging lamp casts a reddish glow, and the
whole room seems swimming in blood.

     "Wanda!" I said at last.

     "O Severin!" she cried joyfully, "I have been waiting for you so
impatiently."  She sprang up and clasped me in her arms, and then sank
back on the luxurious cushions, trying to draw me with her -- but I
slipped gently to her feet and laid my head on her lap.

     "Do you know, I am very much in love with you tonight?" she
whispered, and stroked a few loose strands of my hair from my forehead
and kissed my eyes.

     "How beautiful your eyes are!" she exclaimed.  "I have always
loved them as your finest feature, but tonight they fairly intoxicate
me.  I am, oh entirely --" and she stretched her magnificent limbs and
looked at me voluptuously through her dark-red lashes.  "And you -- you
are cold -- you hold me as if I were a block of wood!  But wait, I'll
stir you!" she cried, and clung to my lips with a fawning caress...

     "I no longer please you," she murmured, "I'll have to be cruel to
you again, I've been too kind to you today -- do you know, you little
goose, I'd like to whip you a little --"

     "But, my child --"

     "I want to."

     "Wanda!"

     "Come, let me tie you," she went on, and ran gaily across the
room.  "I want to make you very much in love, do you understand?  See,
here are the cords.  I wonder if I can tie you myself..."

     She began by binding my ankles, and then fastened my hands firmly
behind my back and lashed my arms together like a convict's.

     "There," she said gaily.  "Can you move now?"

     "No."

     "Good..."

     She made a running noose in a length of whipcord, threw it over my
head and let it slip down to my hips;  then, drawing it tight, she roped
me to the pillar in the centre of the room.

     At that moment a strange shudder went through me.

     "I feel as if I had been sentenced..." I said in a low voice.

     "At any rate you shall have a good whipping today, I promise you!"
laughed Wanda.

     "Only put on your fur jacket," I said.  "I beg you..."

     "With great pleasure," she replied.  She picked up the jacket and
slipped into it, then stood before me with her arms folded, looking at
me from half-closed eyes.

     "Do you recall the story of the Ox of Dionysius?" she asked.

     "I  remember it, vaguely.  What was it?"

     "A man invented a new and amusing instrument of torture for the
Tyrant of Syracuse;  it was an iron ox in which men condemned to death
were to be shut, and the ox then placed in a great open furnace.

     "As soon as the iron ox began to heat, and the condemned creature
to cry out in his agony, his shrieks would sound like the bellowing of
an ox.

     "Dionysius nodded graciously to the inventor and then, in order to
test his invention at once, ordered him to be shut up in it.

     "It is a very instructive story."

     "It was you who instilled selfishness, pride and cruelty in me,
and you shall be the first victim.  Now I find a real pleasure in having
in my power a human being who thinks and feels and desires as I do, in
torturing a man who is my superior in brains and bodily strength --
above all a man who is in love with me."

     "Do you still love me?"

     "Madly!" I cried.

     "So much the better," she replied.  "And so much more will you
enjoy what I am going to do to you."

     "What do you mean?" I said.  "I do not understand you -- today
there's a gleam of terrible cruelty in your eyes, and you are so
strangely beautiful, so entirely Venus in Furs..."

     Without replying Wanda put her arms around my neck and kissed me. 
Once more I was seized by my mad supersensual passion.

     "Ah, where is the whip?" I asked.

     Wanda laughed, and drew back a few steps.

     "You really wish to be whipped?" she cried, lifting her head
arrogantly.

     "Yes."

     All at once Wanda's face was completely transformed, as if
disfigured by rage -- for an instant she seemed even ugly.

     "Then you whip him!" she cried.

     At that moment the handsome Greek thrust his black curly head
through the curtains of the four-poster bed.  I was speechless,
petrified.  There was a horribly comic element in the situation -- I
could have laughed aloud, had not my position been so cruel and
humiliating.

     This surpassed all I had imagined.  A cold shiver ran down my back
as my rival stepped from the bed in his riding-boots, close-fitting
white breeches and short velvet jacket, and I saw his athletic limbs.

     "You are indeed cruel," he said, turning to Wanda.

     "Only fond of pleasure," she replied with a kind of mad humour. 
"Pleasure alone gives a value to existence -- whoever enjoys life clings
to it, only the sufferer and the pauper look on death as a friend."

     Her tone suddenly became imbued with a mocking, didactic quality
as she went on.  "Whoever seeks enjoyment must take life serenely, in
the manner of the ancient world;  he will not scruple to enjoy himself
at the expense of others;  he must never feel pity;  he must be ready to
harness others, like animals, to his car or plough.  He must know how to
make slaves of the men who feel and enjoy as he himself does, and bend
them to his will and pleasure without remorse -- it does not matter to
him whether they like it or whether they are ground in pieces.  He must
always remember that if they had him in their power, as he has them in
his, they would behave in the same way, and force him to pay for their
pleasure with his sweat and blood and soul.  This was the code of the
ancient world:  pleasure and cruelty, absolute liberty and absolute
slavery, went hand in hand -- for those who would live like the gods of
Olympus must have slaves to toss in their fishponds and gladiators to
fight while they are luxuriously banqueting, and must not care if a few
drops of blood should happen to spatter them."

     Her words brought me to myself.

     "Unfasten me!" I cried angrily.

     "Aren't you my slave, my chattel?" she replied.  "Shall I show you
the contract?"

     "Unfasten me!" I threatened hoarsely, "or else --" I tugged at the
cords.

     "Can he get free?" she asked.  "He has threatened to kill me."

     "Have no fear," said the Greek, testing my bonds.

     "I will call for help --" I began.

     "No one will hear you," replied Wanda.  "No one can prevent me
from abusing your most sacred emotions or playing a wanton game with
you," she went on, repeating with satanic mockery the phrases of my
letter.  "Do you find me now merely cruel or merciless, or am I about to
become 'cheap'?  Well?  Do you still love me, or do you not 'hate and
despise' me? -- Here is the whip," and she handed it to the Greek who
stepped quickly forward.

     "Do not dare!" I cried, trembling with indignation.  "I will not
allow you --"

     "Ah, because I am not wearing furs," the Greek replied with an
insolent smile, and took his short sable coat from the bed.

     "You are delicious!" exclaimed Wanda, kissing him and helping him
into his furs.

     "May I really whip him?" he asked.

     "Do with him as you please," replied Wanda.

     "Beast!" I shouted furiously.

     The Greek fixed his cold tigerish gaze on me and tried out the
whip, his muscles swelling as he raised his arm and made it whistle
through the air -- and I was bound like Marsyas, forced to look on while
Apollo was preparing to flay me.

     My eyes roved around the room and then fixed on the ceiling where
Samson, lying at Delilah's feet, was waiting for the Philistines to put
out his eyes.  At that moment the picture seemed a symbol, an eternal
parable of passion and lust, of the love of man for woman.  "Each of us
in the end is a Samson," I thought, "and in the end, willingly or not,
is betrayed by the woman he loves, whether she wears a coat of cloth or
of sables."

     "Now watch me break him in," said the Greek.  He bared his teeth,
and his face assumed the bloodthirsty expression which had struck me the
first time I saw him.

     And he began to whip me -- so mercilessly and with such terrible
force that I leapt under each blow and writhed in agony from head to
foot while the tears ran down my cheeks -- while Wanda lay in her fur
jacket on the ottoman, leaning on one arm, looking on with cruel
curiosity and shaking with laughter.

     The sensation of being whipped by a successful rival before the
eyes of the woman one adores is not to be described -- I was almost
fainting with shame and desperation.

     And the most shameful thing of all was that to begin with I still
felt a certain mad, supersensual stimulation under the lash of Apollo's
whip and the cruel laughter of my Venus -- but Apollo whipped the poetry
out of me, with blow after blow, until at last I simply clenched my
teeth in helpless rage and called down curses on my voluptuous fancies,
on woman and on love.

     I now saw all at once and with horrible clarity where blind
passion and lust have led men ever since Holofernes and Agamemnon --
into the toils, into the net of woman's treachery, into misery, slavery
and death.

     For me, it was like the awakening from a dream.

     My blood was already flowing under the whip, I was writhing like a
trodden worm, but he whipped on without mercy, and Wanda kept laughing
while she locked her packed trunk and slipped into her travelling-furs -
- she was still laughing as she went downstairs on his arm and got into
the carriage.

     There was a moment of silence.  I listened breathlessly.  Then the
carriage-door slammed -- the horses' hooves -- for a short time the
sound of the carriage-wheels -- and everything was over.



     For a moment I thought of taking vengeance, of killing him, but I
was bound by the abominable contract, I could do nothing but keep my
pledged word and grit my teeth in silence.



     My first resolve after this cruellest disaster of my life was to
seek out painful tasks, dangers and privations.  I wanted to become a
soldier and go to Asia or Algeria, but my father was old and ill and
needed me.

     So I returned home quietly and for two years helped him to bear
his burdens, learning how to look after the estate for the first time --
and I found that to labour and do my duty was as comforting as a draught
of fresh water.  Then my father died and I came into the estate, but
everything went on as before.  I had put on the harness, and went on
living just as sensibly as if the old man were standing behind me,
looking over my shoulder with his great wise eyes.

     One day a large box arrived, accompanied by a letter.  I
recognized Wanda's handwriting.

     Strangely moved, I opened the letter and read it.

"Sir

     "Now that over three years have passed since that night in
Florence, let me confess that I loved you deeply.  It was you yourself
who smothered my love with your fantastic devotion and senseless
passion.  From the moment you became my slave I knew you could never be
my husband, but I found it piquant to see you realize your ideal in my
person, and -- while amusing myself in the most delightful way --
perhaps to cure you.

     "I found the strong man I needed, and I was as happy with him as,
I suppose, anyone can be on this funny ball of clay.

     "But my happiness, like all mortal things, did not last long. 
About a year ago he fell in a duel, and since then I have been living
here in Paris, like an Aspasia.

     "And you? -- Surely your life is not without its sunshine, if you
have gained the upper hand of your imagination and have cultivated and
developed those qualities which first drew me to you:  your clarity of
intellect, kindness of heart, and above all -- your moral seriousness.

     "I hope you were cured under my whip:  the cure was harsh, but
radical.  As a souvenir of those days and of a woman who loved you
passionately, I am sending you the picture by the poor German.
                                   Venus in Furs"



     I could not help smiling, and as I fell to musing the beautiful
woman suddenly stood before me once again, in her velvet ermine-trimmed
jacket, the whip in her hand -- and I continued to smile at this woman I
had once loved so madly, at the fur jacket which had once so enchanted
me, at the whip, and ended by smiling at my own suffering and saying to
myself the cure was harsh, but radical, and the main point is -- I have
been cured.



     "And the moral of the story?" I said to Severin as I laid the
manuscript on the table.

     "That I was a donkey," he exclaimed without turning around -- he
seemed embarrassed.  "If only I had beaten her myself!"

     "A curious remedy," I said.  "It might answer with your peasant
women, but --"

     "Oh, they are used to it," he said with a smile, "but think of the
excellent effect it would have on one of our nervous, hysterical fine
ladies..."

     "But the moral?"

     "That woman, as nature has made her and as man is now educating
her, is bound to be his enemy, to be either his slave or his tyrant --
never his companion.  This is something she can become only when she has
the same rights, when she is his equal in upbringing and occupation.

     "At present, we men have only the choice of being either hammer or
anvil -- and I was the kind of donkey who allowed a woman to make a
slave of him, do you understand?"

     "The moral of the story?  That whoever lets himself be whipped,
deserves to be whipped."

     "The blows, as you see, have done me good -- the rosy,
supersensual mist has dissolved, and no one can ever again persuade me
that either the 'sacred apes of Benares' or the roosters of Plato are
images of God."


