                          THE EIGHTEENTH DAY

       Beautiful, radiant, bejeweled, grown more brilliant with each
passing day, Duclos thus started the eighteenth session's stories:

       A tall and stoutly constructed creature named Justine had just
been added to my entourage; she was twenty-five, five feet six inches
tall, with the husky arms and solid legs of a barmaid, but her
features were fine all the same, her skin was clear and smooth, and
she had as splendid a body as one might wish. As my establishment used
to be swarming with a crowd of those old rakehells who are incapable
of experiencing the faintest pleasure save when heated by the lash or
torture, I thought that a pensionnaire like Justine, furnished as she
was with the forearm of a blacksmith, could be nothing but a very real
asset. The day following her arrival, I decided to put her fustigatory
talents to the test; I had been given to understand she wielded a whip
with prodigious skill, and hence matched her against an old commissar
of the quarter whom she was to flog from chest to shin and then, on
the other side, from the middle of his back to his calves. The
operation over with, the libertine simply hoisted the girl's skirts
and planted his load upon her buttocks. Justine comported herself like
a true heroine of Cythera, and our good old martyr avowed to me
afterward that I had got my hands on a treasure, and that in all his
days no one had ever whipped him as that rascal had.
       To demonstrate how much I counted upon her contribution to our
little community, a few days later I arranged a meeting between
Justine and an old veteran of many a campaign on the fields of love;
her required a round thousand strokes all over his body, he would have
no part of himself spared, and when he was afire and nicely bloodied,
the girl had to piss into her cupped hand and smear her urine over
those areas of his body which looked to be most seriously molested.
This lotion rubbed on, the heavy labor had to be begun again, then he
would discharge, the girl would carefully collect his fuck, once again
using her cupped hand, and she would give him a second massage, this
time employing the balm wrung from his prick. Another triumph for my
new colleague, and every succeeding day brought her further and more
impassioned acclaim; but it was impossible to exercise her arm on the
champion who presented himself this time.
       This extraordinary man would have nothing of the feminine but
womanish dress: the wearer of the costume had to be a man; in other
words, the rou wanted to be spanked by a man got up as a girl. And
what was the instrument she had to use on him? Don't think for a
moment he was content with a birch ferule or even a cat, no, he
demanded a bundle of osier switches wherewith very barbarously one had
to tear his buttocks. Actually, this particular affair seeming to have
somewhat of the flavor of sodomy, I felt I ought not become too deeply
involved in it; but as he was one of Fournier's former and most
reliable clients, a man who had been truly attached to our house in
fair weather and in foul, and who, furthermore, might, thanks to his
position, be able to render us some service, I raised no objections
and, having prettily disguised a young lad of eighteen who sometimes
availed us of his services and who had a very attractive face, I
presented him, armed with a handful of switches, to his opponent.
       And a very entertaining contest it was - you may well imagine
how eager I was to observe it. He began with a careful study of his
pretended maiden, and having found him, evidently, much to his liking,
he opened with five or six kisses upon the youth's mouth: those kisses
would have looked peculiar from three miles away; next, he exhibited
his cheeks, and in all his behavior and words seeming to take the
young man for a girl, he told him to fondle his buttocks and knead
them just a little rigorously; the lad, whom I had told exactly what
to expect, did everything asked of him.
       "Well, let's be off," said the bawd, "ply those switches, spare
not to strike hard."
       The youth catches up the bundle of withes and therewith,
swinging right merrily, lays fifty slashing blows upon a pair of
buttocks which seem only to thirst for more; already definitely marked
by those two score and ten stripes, the libertine hurls himself upon
his masculine flagellatrice, draws up her petticoats, one hand
verifies her sex, the other fervently clutches her buttocks, he knows
not which altar to bow down before first, the ass finally captures his
primary attentions, he glues his mouth to its hole, much ardor in his
expression. Ah, what a difference between the worship Nature is said
to prescribe and that other which is said to outrage her! O God of
certain justice, were this truly an outrage, would the homage be paid
with such great emotion? Never was woman's ass kissed as was that
lad's; three or four times over his lover's tongue entirely
disappeared into the anus; returning to his former position at last,
"O dear child," cried he, "resume your operation."
       Further flagellation ensued, but as it was livelier, the
patient met this new assault with far more courage and intrepidity.
Blood makes its appearance, another stroke brings his prick bounding
up, and he engages the young object of his transports to seize it
without an instant's delay. While the latter manipulates him, he
wishes to render the youth the same service, lifts up the boy's skirts
again, but it's a prick he's now gone in quest of; he touches it,
grasps, shakes, pulls it, and soon introduces it into his mouth. After
these initial caresses, he calls for a third round of blows and
receives a storm of them. This latest experience puts him in a perfect
tumult; he flings his Adonis upon the bed, lies down upon him,
simultaneously toys with his own prick and his companion's, then
presses one upon the other, glues his lips to the boy's mouth and,
having succeeded in warming him by means of these caresses, he
procures him the divine pleasure at the same moment he is overwhelmed
himself: both discharge in harmony. Enchanted by the scene, our
libertine sought to placate my risen indignation, and at last coaxed a
promise from me to arrange for further delights in the same kind, both
with that young fellow and with any others I could find for him. I
attempted to work at his conversion, I assured him I had some charming
girls who would be happy to flog him and who could do so quite as
well; no, said he, none of that, he would not so much as look at what
I had to offer him.

       "Oh, I can readily believe it," said the Bishop. "When one has
a decided taste for men, there's no changing, the difference between
boy and girl is so extreme that one's not apt to be tempted to try
what is patently inferior."
       "Monseigneur," said the Prsident, "you have broached a thesis
which merits a two-hour dissertation."
       "And which will always conclude by giving further support to my
contention," said the Bishop, "because the fact that a boy is superior
to a girl is beyond doubt or dispute."
       "Beyond contradiction too," Curval agreed, "but nevertheless
one might still inform you that a few objections have been here and
there raised to your doctrine and that, for a certain order of
pleasures, such as Martaine and Desgranges shall discuss, a girl is to
be preferred to a boy."
       "That I deny," said the Bishop with emphasis, "and even for
such pleasures as you allude to the boy is worth more than the girl.
Consider the problem from the point of view of evil, evil almost
always being pleasure's true and major charm; considered thus, the
crime must appear greater when perpetrated upon a being of your
identical sort than when inflicted upon one which is not, and this
once established, the delight automatically doubles."
       "Yes," said Curval, "but that despotism, that empire, that
delirium born of the abuse of one's power over the weak. . . ."
       "But the same is no less true in the other case," the Bishop
insisted. "If the victim is yours, thoroughly in your power, that
supremacy which when using women you think better established than
when using men, is based upon pure prejudice, upon nothing, and
results merely from the custom whereby females are more ordinarily
submitted to your caprices than are males. But give up that popular
superstition for a moment, view the thing equitably and, provided the
man is bound absolutely by your chains and by the same authority you
exert over women, you will obtain the idea of a greater crime; your
lubricity ought hence to increase at least twofold."
       "I am of the Bishop's mind," Durcet joined in, "and once it is
certain that sovereignty is fully established, I believe the abuse of
power more delicious when exercised at the expense of one's peer than
at a woman's."
       "Gentlemen," said the Duc, "I should greatly prefer you to
postpone your discussions until mealtime. I believe these hours have
been reserved for listening to the narrations, and it would seem to me
proper were you to refrain from employing them upon philosophical
exchanges."
       "He is right," said Curval. "Go on with your story, Duclos."
       And that agreeable directress of Cytherean sport plunged again
into the matter she had to relate.

       Another elderly man, said she, this one a clerk at parliament,
paid me a call one morning, and as during Fournier's administration he
had been accustomed to dealing exclusively with me, tradition bade him
solicit an interview with me now. Our conference consisted in slapping
his face with gradually increasing force, and in frigging him the
while; that is to say, one had at first to slap him gently, then, as
his prick assumed consistency, one slowly augmented the force of one's
blows, and finally a series of truly bone-shattering cuffs would
provoke his ejaculation. I had so well apprehended the precise nature
of his eccentricity that my twentieth slap brought his fuck springing
out.

       "The twentieth, you say? Why, by Jesus," exclaimed the Bishop,
"my prick would have gone dead limp by the third."
       "There you are, my friend," the Duc declared, "to each his own
peculiar mania, we ought never blame nor wonder at another's;
tolerance, I say. Say on, Duclos, give us one more and have done."

       My last example for the evening, said Duclos, originally was
told to me by one of my friends; she had been living for two years
with a man whose prick never stiffened until one had first bestowed a
score of fillips upon his nose and tweaked it, pulled his ears till
they bled, and bitten his buttocks, chewed his prick, nipped his
balls. Aroused by these potent preliminary titillations, his prick
would shoot aloft like a stallion's, and while swearing like a demon
he'd almost always discharge upon the visage of the girl at whose
hands he had been receiving this exhilarating treatment.

       Of all that had been recounted during that afternoon's sitting,
only the masculine fustigations had affected their Lordships' brains
which, now passing hot, were only cooled after prolonged use of the
fantasy which had fired their enthusiasm; thus it was the Duc had
Hercule flog him until blood seeped from his pores, Durcet employed
Invictus to the same effect, the Bishop made use of Antinos, and
Bum-Cleaver ministered to Curval. The Bishop, who had done nothing
that day, did finally discharge at the orgies, they say, while eating
the turd Zlamir had been preparing for forty-eight hours. And then
they went to bed.
