                         THE SEVENTEENTH DAY

       The terrible antipathy the Prsident had for Constance was
manifest in daily outbursts: he had spent the night with her, having
made a bilateral arrangement with Durcet, to whom he returned her the
following morning with the most bitter complaints about her behavior.
       "Since because of her condition," said he, "the society seems
loath to expose her to the customary punishments for fear she be
brought to bed before the time we have appointed to pluck her fruit,
at least, by Jesus," said he, "we should find some means or other to
punish the whore when she chooses to play the fool."
       Ah, but what is that spirit of evil that inhabits libertines?
Some glimmer of it may be obtained by analyzing Constance's prodigious
fault. O reader, what do you suppose it was had waked Curval's wrath?
Even worse than you may have dreamt: she had most unfortunately turned
her front toward her master when he had called for her behind, ah yes,
and such sins are not to be forgiven. But the worst part of her error
was her denial of the fact; she declared, and there seemed some basis
to her contention, that the Prsident was calumniating her, that he
was seeking naught but her downfall, that she never lay with him but
he would invent some such untruth; but as the law was precise and
formal on this point, and as women's speeches were given no credence
whatever in that society, but one question remained posed: how in
future was this female to be chastised without risking the spoilage of
the fruit ripening in her? It was decided that for each misdemeanor
she would be obliged to eat a turd and, consequently, Curval insisted
that she begin there and then. Approbation greeted his demand. They
were at the time breakfasting in the girls' quarters, word was
dispatched, Constance was summoned, the Prsident shitted in the
center of the room, and she was enjoined to approach his creation on
hands and knees and to devour what the cruel man had just wrought. She
cast herself upon her knees, yes, but in this posture begged pardon,
and her solicitations went unheeded; Nature had put bronze in those
breasts where hearts are commonly to be found. Nothing more
entertaining than the grimaces and affected airs to which the poor
woman resorted before capitulating, and God knows how amused Messieurs
were by the scene. At last, however, decisive action had to be taken,
Constance's very soul seemed to burst before she was half done, but it
had all to be done nevertheless, and every ounce disappeared from the
tiles on the floor.
       Excited by what he was witnessing, each of our friends, while
watching, had himself frigged by a small girl; Curval, singularly
aroused by the operation and benefiting from the wondrous skill of
Augustine's enchanted fingers, feeling himself nigh to overflowing,
called to Constance, who had scarcely finished eating her mournful
breakfast.
       "Hither, come to me, whore," said he, "after having bolted some
fish one needs a little sauce, good white sauce. Come get a mouthful."
       Well, there was no escaping that ordeal either, and Curval,
who, while operating, was having Augustine shit, opened the sluices
and let fly into the mouth of the Duc's miserable wife, and at the
same time swallowed the fresh and delicate little turd the interesting
Augustine had hatched for him.
       The inspection tours were conducted, Durcet found shit in
Sophie's chamber pot. The young lady sought to excuse her error by
maintaining that she had been suffering from indigestion.
       "Not at all," Durcet observed as expertly he handled the turd,
"that is not true: indigestion produces diarrhea, soup, my dear, and
this article looks very sound to me."
       And straightway taking up his baneful notebook, he wrote down
the name of that charming creature, who did her best to hide her tears
and refrained, at Durcet's request, from deploring her situation.
Everyone else had abided by the regulations, but in the boys' chamber,
Zlamir, who had shitted the previous evening during the orgies and
who had been told not to wipe his little bum, had tidied it up none
the less, disobeying the orders. These were the crimes of the first
magnitude: Zlamir's name was inscribed. Notwithstanding the boy's
delinquency, Durcet kissed his ass and had himself sucked for a brief
moment, then Messieurs passed on to the chapel, where they beheld the
shitting of two subaltern fuckers, Aline, Fanny, Thrse, and
Champville. The Duc received Fanny's performance in his mouth, and he
ate it, the Bishop's mouth caught the two fuckers' turds, one of which
the prelate devoured, Durcet made Champville's his own, and the
Prsident, despite his discharge, gulped down Aline's with all the
avidity he had exhibited while consuming what Augustine had done for
him.
       Constance's scene had heated the company's imagination, for it
had been a long time since Messieurs had indulged themselves in such
extravagances so early in the morning. Dinner conversation dealt with
moral science. The Duc declared he could not understand why in France
the law smote so heavily against libertinage, since libertinage, by
keeping the citizens busy, kept them clear of cabals and plots and
revolutions; the Bishop observed that, no, the laws did not exactly
aim at the suppression of libertinage, but at its excesses. Whereupon
the latter were analyzed, and the Duc proved that there was nothing
dangerous in excess, no excess which could justly arouse the
government's suspicion, and that, these facts being clear, the
official attitude was not only cruel but absurd; what other word was
there to describe bringing artillery to bear upon mosquitoes?
       From remarks they progressed to effects, the Duc, half-drunk,
abandoned himself in Zephyr's arms, and for thirty long minutes sucked
that lovely child's mouth while Hercule, exploiting the situation,
buried his enormous engine in the Duc's anus. Blangis was all
complacency, and without stirring, without the flicker of an eyelash,
went on with his kissing as, virtually without noticing it, he changed
sex. His companions all gave themselves over to other infamies, and
then they sallied forth to coffee. As they had just played a multitude
of silly little pranks, the atmosphere was calm, and this was perhaps
the one coffee hour during the entire four months' outing when no fuck
was shed. Duclos was already upon the tribune, awaiting the company;
when everyone had taken his place, she addressed her auditors in this
wise:

       I had recently suffered a loss in my house, and it had a deep
effect upon me in every sense. Eugnie, whom I loved with a passion
and who, thanks to her most extraordinary complaisance in whatever was
connected with the possibility of earning me money, had been
especially useful to me, Eugnie, I say, had just been spirited away.
It happened in the strangest fashion: a domestic, having first paid
the price settled upon, came to conduct her, so he said, to a supper
that was to be held outside the city; her participation in the affair
would be worth seven or eight louis. I was not at the house at the
time the transaction took place, for I should never have allowed her
to leave with someone I didn't know, but the domestic applied directly
to her and she agreed to go. . . . I have never seen her since.

       "Nor shall you ever again," said Desgranges. "The party
proposed was her last one, and it will be my agreeable task to add the
denouement to that lovely girl's history."
       "Great God!" cried Duclos. "She was so beautiful, that girl . .
. only twenty, her face was so sweet, she was so delicate. . . ."
       "And, one might add, her body was the most superb in Paris,"
Desgranges said. "All those charms conspired to her undoing, but go on
with what you were saying, let's not become mired down in
circumstances."

       Lucile was the girl who took her place, Duclos continued, both
in my heart and in my bed, but not in the household's activities, for
she had not by any means Eugnie's submissive temper nor her great
understanding.
       All the same, it was to her hands I entrusted, not long
afterward, that certain Benedictine prior who used to pay me a visit
now and again, and who had in past times been wont to frolic with
Eugnie. After the good father had warmed her cunt with his tongue and
thoroughly sucked her mouth, the major phase of the process began:
Lucile took the whip and plied it lightly over his prick and balls,
and he discharged from a limp machine; the gentle rubbing, the mere
application of the lash produced his orgasm. His greatest pleasure
used to consist in watching the girl slash with her whip at the drops
of fuck as they spattered from his prick.
       The next day, I myself took charge of a gentleman upon whose
bare behind one had to lay one hundred carefully counted whip strokes;
before his beating he prepared himself by kissing one's behind and
while being lashed he frigged himself.
       A third, with whom I had dealings some time later, had even
heavier demands to satisfy; he also gilded each detail with additional
ceremony: I received notice of his intended arrival a week in advance,
and during that time I had to avoid washing any part of my body, and
above all was to spare my cunt, my ass, my mouth; and furthermore, as
soon as I learned he was to come, I selected three cat-o'-nine-tails
and immersed them in a pot full of mixed urine and shit, and kept the
whips soaking there until he presented himself. He was an elderly
collector of the salt tax, a man of considerable means, a widower,
without children, and he treated himself to such parties all the time.
The first thing that interested him was to determine whether I had
scrupulously abstained from ablutions, as he had enjoined me; I
assured him I had followed his instructions to the letter; he wished
proof, and began by applying a kiss to my lips. This experience must
have convinced him, for he then suggested we go up to the room, and I
realized that had he, upon kissing me, discovered I had cleansed my
mouth in any way at all, he would not have wished to continue with the
party. We go up together, as I say, he regards the whips steeping in
the pot, then, bidding me undress, he sets to sniffing every part of
my body, above all the orifices he had expressly forbidden me to wash;
as I had honored his prescription in perfect faith and in every
article, he doubtless discovered the aroma he desired to be there, for
I saw him grow restless, appear anxious to be off, and heard him
exclaim: "Ah, by fuck, that's what I want, that's just what I want!" I
proceeded to fondle his ass: it was sheathed in what positively
resembled boiled leather in color, texture, and toughness. After
having spent a minute caressing, handling, poking about those gnarled,
storm-beaten hindquarters, I seized a cat-o'-nine-tails and, without
drying it, I gave him ten stinging cuts, putting all my strength into
the blows; but this beginning produced not a tremor, he not only
remained impassive, but my blows put not so much as the faintest
scratch upon that unshakable citadel. Having opened with this
prologue, I sank three of my fingers into his anus, took firm hold,
and began to rattle him with might and main, but our man was
insensible to the same degree here as elsewhere; my struggles failed
to be acknowledged by so much as a sigh. These two initial ceremonies
completed, his turn came to act; I lay belly down upon the bed, he
knelt, spread my buttocks, and alternately shot his pilgrim tongue
into this hole and into the other, and they, one may be sure, were, in
keeping with his instructions, not entirely unaromatic. After he had
done considerable sucking, I took up another whip, laid on a second
time and socratized him again, he knelt as before and returned to his
licking, and so it went, each of us doing his part at least fifteen
times over. Finally, giving me further instructions and bidding me
guide my movements in consonance with the state of his prick, which I
was to observe carefully but which I was not to touch, when next he
knelt I unleashed my turd. It shot squarely into his face, he fell
back, exclaimed that I was an insolent creature, and discharged while
frigging himself and while uttering cries that might have been heard
in the street had I not taken the precaution of drawing the shutters.
But the turd fell to the floor, he did naught but stare at and smell
it, neither putting it in his mouth nor even touching it; he had
received at least two hundred lashes, and I may assure you . . . his
body bore not a trace of what it had sustained, his horny ass,
fortified by years of rude usage, betrayed not the least mark.

       "Well, by God's bum button!" chortled the Duc, "there's an ass,
Prsident, worth as much as the curiosity you drag about."
       "Oh yes, yes," said Curval, a stammer in his voice, for Aline
was frigging him, "yes indeed, that fellow seems to have both my
buttocks and my tastes, for, you know, I am infinitely opposed to the
use of the bidet, but I prefer a longer abstinence: I usually set the
period at a minimum of three months."
       "Prsident, your prick's stiff," the Duc said.
       "Do you think so?" Curval replied. "Faith, you'd best consult
Aline here, she'll be able to tell you what's what, as for myself, you
know, I'm so accustomed to that particular state of affairs that I
rarely notice when it ends or when it begins. There is only one thing
I can tell you with complete confidence, and that is that at this very
moment I'd hugely like to have my hands upon a very impure whore; I'd
like her to present me with a bucketful of shit, fill a bowl to above
the rim, I'd like her ass to stink from shit, I'd like her cunt to
smell like a beach covered with dead fish. But hold! Thrse, O thou
whose filth is as old as the hills, thou who since baptism hast not
wiped thine ass, and whose infamous cunt breeds a pestilence three
leagues on every side, come bring all that to my nose's delectation, I
beg thee, and to that put a fine wet turd,  if 'twould please thee."
       Thrse approaches, with foul and evil charms, with parts
disgusting and withered and wounded she rubs the magistrate's face,
upon his nose she excretes the desired turd, Aline does frig amain,
the libertine discharges, and Duclos therewith resumes the story she
has to tell.

       An elderly rascal, who used to receive a new girl every day for
the operation I am going to describe, besought one of my friends to
persuade me to visit him, and at the same time I was given information
about the ceremony regularly performed at the lecher's home. I arrive,
he examines me with a phlegmatic glance, the kind of glance one
encounters among habitual libertines, and which in an instant arrives
at an infallible estimate of the object under scrutiny.
       "I have been told you have a fine ass," said he in a drawling
tone, "and as for the past sixty years I have had a decided weakness
for fine cheeks, I should like to see whether there is any foundation
to your reputation . . . lift your skirts."
       That last phrase, energetically spoken, sufficed as an order;
not only did I offer a view of the treasure, but I moved it as near as
possible to his connoisseur's nose. At first I stand erect, then
little by little I bend forward and exhibit the object of his devotion
in every form and aspect most apt to please him. With each movement, I
feel the old scoundrel's hands wander over the surface, scouting the
terrain, probing the geography, sometimes creating a more consolidated
effect, sometimes attempting to give it a more generous cast,
compressing here, broadening there.
       "The hole is ample, very ample," says he, "appearances attest a
furious sodomistical prostitution."
       "Alas, Monsieur," I concede, "we are living in an age when men
are so capricious that in order to please them, one must indeed be
prepared for virtually anything, and consent to it all."
       Whereupon I feel his mouth glue itself hermetically to my
asshole, and his tongue strive to penetrate into the chasm; I seize my
opportunity, as I have been advised, and profiting from my situation,
slide out, directly upon his probing tongue, the warmest, most humid,
densest eructation. The maneuver displeases him not at all, but on the
other hand does little to animate him; finally, after I have unleashed
half a dozen winds, he gets to his feet, leads me to his bed, and
points to an earthenware crock in which four cat-o'-nine-tails are
marinating. Above the crock hang several whips suspended from gilded
hooks.
       "Arm yourself," murmurs the rou, "take a cat-o'-nine-tails and
one of those other weapons, here is my ass. As you observe, it is dry,
lean, and exceedingly well seasoned. Touch it."
       I do so; he continues:
       "You notice," says he, "that it's old, toughened by severe
treatment, and it's not to be warmed save by the most incredibly
excessive attacks. I am going to keep myself in this posture," and
while speaking he stretched out upon the bed and rested his knees on
the floor. "Employ those instruments, first one, then the other, now
the cat-o'-nine-tails, now the whip. This is going to take a little
time, but you will receive an unequivocal sign when the climax
approaches. As soon as you see something out of the ordinary happening
to this ass of mine, hold yourself in readiness to imitate what you
see it doing; we will then exchange places, I shall kneel down before
your splendid buttocks, you shall do what you shall have observed me
do, and I'll discharge. But above all do not become impatient; I warn
you once again: this business is not to be accomplished in haste."
       I begin, I alternate weapons in accordance with the
prescription. But, my God! what nonchalance, what stoicism! I was
drenched in sweat; that my strokes be more freely applied he had
suggested I roll my sleeves to above the elbow. Three-quarters of an
hour went by and I was still beating him, putting every ounce of
strength into my blows, sometimes tearing at his stubborn flesh with
the cat-o'-nine-tails, sometimes with the steel-tipped thongs,
three-quarters of an hour, I say, and it seemed as if I had got
nowhere. Still, silent, our lecher was as quiet as death; one might
say he was mutely savoring the interior stirrings of delight quickened
by this ordeal, but there was no outward sign of pleasure, not a
single indication of pleasure's influence even upon his skin. I
proceeded. By and by I heard a clock strike two and realized I had
been at work three whole hours; then all of a sudden I see his rump
rise, his buttocks part, I slash and send my thongs whistling between
certain crevices; a turd emerges, falls, I whip away, my blows send
the shit flying to the floor.
       "Courage," I say to him, "we're within sight of port."
       And then my man gets up in a rage; his prick, hard and in
fierce revolt, is glued to his belly.
       "Do what I did," says he, "imitate me, I need nothing now but
shit and you'll have my fuck."
       I promptly adopt the position he has just abandoned, he kneels
as he said he would, and into his mouth I lay an egg which I have been
holding in store for him for three days. As he receives it his fuck
leaps, and he flings himself backward, shouting with joy, but without
swallowing, and indeed without keeping the turd in his mouth for more
than a second. In conclusion let me say, Messieurs, that, your
Lordships excepted, for you are without doubt superior examples of
this species, I have seen few men convulse more frantically, few who
have manifested a more trenchant delight; he came nigh to swooning as
he gave vent to his fuck. That sance was worth two louis.
       But no sooner did I return to the house than I found Lucile
come to grips with another old chap who, without having laid a finger
upon her, without any preliminaries, had simply ordered her to
fustigate him from the small of the back to just above the knees;
Lucile was using a cat-o'-nine-tails soaked in vinegar, was endowing
her blows with all the force she could muster, and this individual
ended his ritual by having her suck him. The girl knelt before him
when he gave her the signal and, adjusting his old weary balls so that
they dangled upon her teats, she took the flabby engine in her mouth
whereinto the chastened sinner hastened to weep for his
transgressions.

       And Duclos having therewith put a period to what she had to
relate that day, and the supper hour not yet having arrived, Messieurs
delivered themselves of a few smutty comments while waiting.
       "You must be done up, Prsident," gibed the Duc. "I've seen you
discharge twice today, and you're hardly accustomed to such feats of
liberality."
       "Let's wager on a third," replied Curval, who was pawing
Duclos' buttocks.
       "Why, certainly, as much as you like and as often," the Duc
returned.
       "And I ask for only one condition," Curval said, "and that is
to be allowed to do whatever I like."
       "Oh, I'm afraid not," the Duc answered, "for you know very well
that there are certain things we have mutually promised not to do
before the appointed time indicated on our schedules: having ourselves
fucked was one of them - before proceeding to that we were, according
to prior agreement, to wait until some example of that passion were
cited to us, but by your common request, gentlemen, we ceded on that
point and suspended the restriction. There are many other pleasures
and modes of taking them we ought to have forbidden ourselves until
the moment they were embodied in story, and which we have instead
tolerated, provided the experiments are conducted in privacy - in,
that is to say, either our closets or our bedchambers. You, Prsident,
surrendered yourself to one with Aline just a short while ago; did she
utter that piercing scream for no reason at all? and has she no motive
for keeping her breast covered now? Very well then, choose from
amongst those mysterious modes, or from one of those we permit in
public, and I'll wager one hundred louis you'll not be able to derive
your third from one of those legitimate sources."
       The Prsident then asked whether he might be allowed to repair
to the boudoir at the end of the corridor and to take along the
subjects he deemed necessary to success; his request was granted,
although it was stipulated that Duclos would have to be witness to the
goings on, and that her word would be accepted upon the existence of
the discharge or upon Curval's failure to produce it.
       "Agreed," said the Prsident, "I accept the conditions."
       And by way of a preliminary, he had Duclos give him five
hundred lashes within view of the assembly; that accomplished, he led
away his dear and devoted friend Constance, in whose behalf his
colleagues besought Curval to do nothing which might damage her
pregnancy; the Prsident also took with him his daughter Adelaide,
Augustine, Zelmire, Cladon, Zphyr, Thrse, Fanchon, Champville,
Desgranges, Duclos, of course, and three fuckers besides.
       "Why fuck my eyes!" exclaimed the Duc, "there was nothing in
the bargain that said he could recruit an army."
       But the Bishop and Durcet took the Prsident's side in the
matter of manpower and firmly reminded Blangis that the terms of the
wager included no limitation upon numbers. The Prsident led his band
away, and at the end of thirty minutes, an interval the Bishop,
Durcet, and the Duc, with the few subjects remaining to them, did not
pass in holy orison, thirty minutes later, I say, Constance and
Zelmire returned in tears, and the Prsident reappeared soon afterward
with the rest of his force; Duclos then related the mighty things he
had done, paid homage to his vigor, and certified that in all fairness
and justice he merited the crown of myrtle. The reader will kindly
allow us to suppress the text of Duclos' report, for the architecture
of our novel bids us conceal the precise circumstances of what
transpired in that remote boudoir; but Curval had won his wager, and
that, we consider, is the essential point.
       "These hundred louis," he remarked upon receiving them from the
Duc, "will be useful in paying a fine which, I fear, shall soon be
levied upon me."
       And here is still another thing the explanation of which we
pray the reader will permit us to postpone until the appropriate
moment arrives; for the time being he need but observe how that rascal
Curval would anticipate his misdeeds well in advance, and how, with
unruffled calm, he would accept the fact that they would bring down
upon him certain and merited punishment, a fatal necessity he faced
unflinchingly and with a proud smile.
       Between that time and the opening of the next day's narrations
absolutely nothing out of the ordinary transpired, and therefore we
propose to conduct the reader to the auditorium at once.
