Pierre Louys - The She-Devils

“Would you like to know?”

Ricette whispered into my ear, “If she tells her, Charlotte will start fingering herself.” But Lili knew it as well as she and, like the famous captain who followed his men wherever they wanted to go because he was their leader, she ordered what she was unable to prevent.

“Don't waste any more time! Give me the lesson in masturbation I'm supposed to have and I'll tell you before you finish.”

“Where have I fallen?” wailed Charlotte, raising her skirts. “Did I pass all my exams in order to give lessons in masturbation?”

“Which exams? Your whore's exams? And you didn't cheat to do it?”

“You dare to speak to me like that? You would treat your governess like a whore?”

“Look at the beard! I'm waiting, miss. I'm awaiting my lesson. Discharge first, you can rave at me afterwards.”

There was the same ease to be found in the tone of voice in which Lili delivered her remarks as in the choice of expressions she employed. But these are things that are impossible to describe.

“I'm ashamed of myself for two reasons,” began Charlotte. “First of all I have to teach you horrors like this, and secondly, I can't teach them as they should be taught.”

“That's; easy to see. I know you're pretty stupid, but go ahead anyway. I understand everything.”

“Beginning with the elementary course… That's the one I know the best,” said Charlotte laughing. “It isn't hard. First you wet your middle finger like this… Then you stick it in here, and you move it back and forth like this… There, see?”

“And serve it hot, eh?” asked Lili. “Hey! Stop! Look who's fingering herself while I haven't learned a damn thing! What a dolt this governess is! She's as stupid as she is whore! Will you please continue with my lesson?” she said, grabbing her sister's hand.

“To repeat,” said Charlotte, patiently, looking for more technical terms, “this here is called my vulva.”

“You would have thought it was a cunt,” observed Lili.

“You stick your finger here, in the vagina, and you wet it with the… the… what do you call a woman's come?”

“You can tell me tomorrow. Continue.”

“Then if you can wait, you tickle yourself inside here with two fingers or pull these little lips here on the outside. If you're in a hurry, you touch the clitoris right away; you push against it, you rub it from left to right or else you go around…”

“And look who's doing it again! And at top speed this time!”

“I can't anymore…!” murmured Charlotte.

“What an education!” sighed Lili turning toward lie. “Disgusting to have a mistress like that! Instead of teaching me how to write, she teaches me how to finger myself! Me, a little girl who doesn't even know the provinces of Outer Mongolia!”

“Neither do I.”

“She drips juice all over all the furniture, she whacks away at mama's pussy, mama who is such a saintly woman, she smells come like I do orange blossoms, and when you look in her work table what do you find?” And here Lili pulled a dildoe from her pocket.

“Oh! In that child's hands…!”

“You really disgust me, miss!”

“I disgust myself even more.”

“And now you're going to see how much I respect you. But first finish beating yourself off… That's enough!” Lili pulled Charlotte's arm so her hand should leave its occupations.

“Oh! Lili! Lili! I was just going to come! I'll have an attack!”

However, Lili got a moment from her. She donned the dildoe by fastening the over-large belt attached to it with a pin and, fixing her dress so that the instrument protruded like the enormous phallus of a grotesque little god, she said:

“A whore of a governess can at least be as polite as a little girl, right? Remember what you just made me recite?”

“What?” groaned Charlotte, almost deranged.

“Even more bitch than “whore!” said Lili compassionately. “Look here, my good woman. Look at me. You'll get it in good time. Look. I'm a man and you have just given me an erection. That's obvious isn't it? So, what do you show me now? Well? Raise your skirts, damn it! Oh! Oh! I'm hot as a firecracker!”

“I don't even know what she's saying,” murmured Charlotte, lifting her clothes as if in a dream.

“And when a filthy beast like you shows her two holes to a man, what does she say?”

“Will you… screw me… cornhole me… or should I… suck you…”

“On your knees! Give me your buttocks! No, but look how she opens them! And how I enter there! What a calamity to have a governess who shows her ass all the way through a lesson and then lets her little charge stick a dildoe into it at the end… What disgusts me the most, miss, is not that you are a whore, but that you're stupid enough to let me cornhole you.”

And then…

Then what happened? The saddest, most unfortunate incident of this whole story.

Had Charlotte overestimated the capacity of her morbid taste for humiliation? Lili, like all children, didn't know where to stop in farce of this kind; had she gone too far in her role?

No. The explanation that I read from what had preceded is entirely different, and all the more difficult to explain since I am writing this book in the first person. But, faced with Charlotte's love, “there is nothing to brag about” as Lili said. It is certainly not this story that I would have chosen from among my experiences if I had wished to impress on anyone the brilliance of my attractions or the effect of my seductions. And I hope that you will not he moved to any such condemnations, young lady, if I say that during that evening when I scarcely left Mauricette's side for a moment, Charlotte, who grew more and more nervous from minute to minute, seemed to me much more unfortunate. My presence was responsible for her state.

It was Mauricette that finally unleashed the crisis. She laughed. I do not know why. Lili's last line had been one of the least funny she had spoken in an hour or so, but it bad been injurious and Mauricette had laughed. Immediately, Charlotte had burst out sobbing.

And what sobs! I thought I knew Charlotte's sobs, but I was wrenched heart and soul by what I heard.

She lie on the floor like a dying beast, holding her skirt in one lifeless hand while Lili, unnerved, continued to ram her from the rear. And all the time she sobbed out great wailing cries. Not tears, but racking, choking, rending cries that shook her body unceasingly.

Teresa said quickly as she passed by me, “They kept her from coming. It's the kid's fault. She should never have tried to keep her from coming when she was ready. That's what always happens.”

Even so, the crisis was so strong this time that it frightened even her sisters as much as it did me. With Teresa, they picked her up and stretched her out on the divan, taking her in their arms. But the storm didn't cease as quickly as it had burst, and it was only some time before Charlotte could overcome her sobs enough to gasp out these few despairing sentences:

“You're right, my Lili… I'm as stupid as… as a whore… I'm nothing but a bitch and a moron… Everyone mocks me… And no one will ever love me.”