Anonymous - The Autobiography of a Flea, Book 3

“Oui, mon Pere,” Marisia sighed, “I do feel very much that way, for I have no one else to look after me, and yet it is not exactly like a daughter that I feel towards you, mon Pere.”

“Shhh,” cautioned the good English ecclesiastic. “Remember, we have a pact between us so that once you are in the seminary you will not breathe a word to the other priests of what tender joys you and I have shared. It could be, so to speak, a kind of family secret between us. And even when you find that you must turn your devotions to others, who will doubtless try to urge or even browbeat you into compliance, think tenderly of me. If the need arises, close your eyes and remember the idyllic passages we have shared, which cannot be taken away from us even with the passage of the years.”

He spoke mournfully enough, verily, to compose a sonnet on his sorrow at aging. But I did not think that he would have to worry for a good many years yet over his loss of liaison between himself and the fair sex.

“Are you going to help Denise and Louisette find their brother, truly, mon Pere?”

“Why, as to that, my cherished daughter, I mean to put the matter before my brothers of the cloth once we have arrived at St. Thaddeus. You see, a seminary which is endowed by the charitable contributions of many wealthy parishioners – who, it may be added, are the more generous precisely because they are the more sinful, wishing to buy their dispensation in advance to save them from the flames of Hell when their time is come – has no end of monetary riches which can be put to costly endeavors. By this I mean, dear Marisia, that if my brothers at St. Thaddeus are impressed by the virtue and beauty of Denise and Louisette, they may, in their own charitable disposition, divert some of those funds to send a messenger or courier to the powerful Bey of Algiers and even buy this worthy youth Jean back. I cannot tell in advance if they will do this, but I promise them, as I promise you, that I will do all in my power to aid your new friends so that your little family may be reunited once again. We will say a prayer together for this worthy cause. Kneel down beside me at this window and stare out into the sky, where the fair sun once more parades upon the heavens. Does this not augur well for our journey by ship this eventide?”

“Oh yes, Father.”

“Then let us pray that you and I will always be as close as we are now, to share delights and joys, to confide in me your sorrows and dreams – especially the latter, for a maiden's dreams are the stuff which women are made by – and I will interpret for you, just as Joseph interpreted the dreams of Potiphar and then of Pharoah in those ancient days of Egypt.”

I heard a rustling of garments and a little sigh. Marisia was doubtless, the little baggage, snuggling closer to her guardian by way of promising him that tender nearness which he had asked of her. I admired his zeal, but I also admired his forbearance. He had been with her alone so many untold hours that he could have taken her maidenhead a thousand and one times ere now; yet, apart from some delightful digital dalliance, he had not really taxed her virgin estate. Did he actually mean to bring her to that seminary where fornication was the watchword if not the password, without once attempting to match his stalwart staff against the tender barrier of that membrane which mortals call the maidenhead? And since I knew him to be a man of parts and a man of hot-blooded intensity as well, under that cassock of his, (and still more out of it) I found it highly amusing to conjecture exactly how he proposed to save that jewel for his own taking once he and Marisia had crossed the threshold of St. Thaddeus. From my recollections of my sojourn (which, dear reader, you may enjoy for yourself by reading the first volume of my memoirs), I could name at least four sturdy, portly priests who would fall upon Marisia as if she were a side of fresh mutton to be devoured during a time of famine. How then, for all his vigor and casuistry, could he out-talk or out-maneuver those ravenous colleagues and be first between the shapely nubile thighs of gentle Marisia?

He was mulling over that problem, though I could not know it at the time. But after this communal prayer, he rose and bade Marisia attend to her attire, saying that he would have supper sent up to the three girls and that then they must be ready to go down to the wharf to board the ship, for he was now certain that they were upon the last stage of their long journey.

As he put on his cassock, I was rudely jounced from one end of the locket to the other, thus interrupting my own meditations. I could not understand why, with the good Father's natural curiosity, he had not deemed it advisable to pry open this locket and see what token Laurette had given her charming young cousin by her old husband's adoption. I crouched, ready to spring, waiting for that moment when the catch should be turned and the top of the locket fly open so that I might fly out. But he did not so much as delve his hand into the pocket of the black robe which announced his piety. Instead, he went down the stairs to give orders to the landlord to have a tray of viands and a pitcher of milk sent up to the two rooms, sufficient to nourish three growing young maidens. As it chanced, he met the fair Georgette, who informed him that her father, too, was taking a nap and that she would therefore take charge of fulfilling his wishes.

“Why, my daughter, you have already filled them more than I could ask,” he insinuated with a genial chuckle. “But tonight is the last time that you will see me on these shores, for with the calming of the Channel, our ship must sail upon the eventide. I shall miss you, dear Georgette, and I shall say a prayer for you when I repeat my orisons two days hence in the holy seminary of St. Thaddeus.”

“But I thought, mon Pere,” Georgette curiously observed, “that you are un Anglais. And yet the name St. Thaddeus suggests rather the name of a Pole. How did that come about, mon Pere?”

“Now that you mention it, my clever beauty,” he said thoughtfully, “I confess that I am somewhat perplexed that the Seminary was not named after a good English saint. Ah, I have it! You say that this St. Thaddeus is a Pole. Well, by my troth, each of my colleagues with whom I am shortly to be joined, so I am reliably informed, must be in truth the descendant of a Pole of good measure and good valor, since he possesses a fearsome pole between his thighs, a staff fortified with vigor enough to terrify Lucifer if it were struck upon the doors of Hell!”

This allegorical allusion left Georgette still perplexed, for she only giggled and did not pursue the topic. Or perhaps, in a different sense, she did, since I heard her voice much nearer to Father Lawrence, as if she were up against him, with a sweet and mournful expression saying: “But does this mean that I am not to see you again, mon Pere?”

“In your dreams, or in your thoughts, or, if it is so willed, my daughter, then in the flesh should I be assigned to these French shores by my superiors,” was his response.

“Oh, I would rather see you in the flesh, then, a hundred times over, mon Pere,” she murmured coquettishly. “For when you are across the Channel with all those Poles, you will not think of me at all.”

“Why, my daughter, that is not true in the least. Indeed, the more I am forced to think of my pole, the more often both it and I will remember the charming hospitality you accorded both of us so recently. And I think that there is still a little time before I must depart from this cordial inn, which I would use in the sweet employment of saying au revoir to you, dear Georgette.”

“Why, whatever do you mean, mon Pere?” she tittered.

“I mean that I will explain to you the riddle of the Pole as against a pole, so that the two are often one, but the one is not necessarily the other, depending on geography as well as birth.”