Anonymous: The Autobiography of a Flea, Book 2

“Well enough, ma belle,” he remarked in a gruff voice while his hands roamed over her back and down to her plump, spaciously rounded buttocks which he began to squeeze with lingering enjoyment. “It will be quite an event tomorrow afternoon. Master Villiers has promised that the winner of a contest, she who treads out the most wine from her vat, shall have a month's rent free as well as a dozen bottles of the finest wine.”

“Never fear, dear Jacques,” his wife purred as she wriggled about in his embrace, “I shall win the prize for you, my dear husband.”

“Now that I do not expect of you, Lucille,” he chuckled, as he at last disengaged himself from her embrace. “Go get my supper, that's a sweet-ling. With all due respect, I do not much suppose you can best the maidens who will compete against you. They are naturally younger and stronger in the limb, for all your good intentions. But I am well satisfied with you, nonetheless.”

With this, he gave her a lusty clap on the behind which made her squeal, and in great good spirits he strode off to his own chamber to remove his working clothes, which were soiled and stained from his work with the grapes.

When he returned, I saw somewhat to my surprise that he was clad only in his nightshirt. At first blush, this seemed singular, since the sun was only just setting and it certainly was not time to retire for the night. But I quickly divined that the worthy vintner was suffering from the pangs of two different hungers, and wished merely to be in a state of readiness for the satisfaction of both. His auburn haired spouse hovered about him like a cooing dove as he seated himself at the table, nor did she think it amiss that his attire for the evening repast was so informal. She brought him first a bowl of lentil soup, together with a crusty loaf of freshly baked bread and a bottle of red wine. Graciously he deigned to pour out two glasses, one of which he took and clinked to his.

“May you have luck tomorrow, ma mie,” he chuckled as he circled his right arm around her graceful waist and hugged her to him. After he had taken a sip of the wine, he put his lips to the bodice of her thin dress and nuzzled the luscious side-curve of one of those magnificent breasts of hers. “Yet on the other hand,” he added, giving her a jocular wink, “mayhap I should not wish you such, for you know it is the custom of the patron who owns the vineyard in which we all toil, to fuck each harvest time with her who is declared the most puissant squeezer of grapes. Hence, Lucille, if you should win on the morrow, I should be compelled to accept cuckoldry from him who pays me my wages. Do you still tell me that you wish to come off victorious in a matter that concerns my own husbandly honor?”

At this, the buxom Lucille promptly left her place on the other side of the table, went around to him, clasped her fair white arms about his chest and lovingly rubbed her cheek against his as she purred, “Dear Jacques, do you think me a faithless trollop, then? I warrant you, even should I win as I mean to – if only to spite that harpy Margot next door, Monsieur Villiers shall not pluck my flower nor rob me of my wifely virtue. Do you not know that a woman has ways of denying a man that which he seeks between her thighs? There are manners and methods of exciting the good patron so that he will lose all his juices before he manages to pour them out into that funnel which nature gave all women to have as the receptacle of man's passion.”

This salacious retort pleased Jacques mightily, for he roared with laughter and clapped his good wife resoundingly upon her ample buttocks. Breaking the crusty loaf in twain, he tore off a chunk and took an enormous bite, washing it down with the red wine as his eyes sparklingly detailed his handsome spouse who thereupon returned to her seat.

Although of course my hostess and her husband spoke in French, and with that softly slurred dialect which is famous in Provence, I understood them well. The erudition of a Flea is assimilated much as his nourishment; herein is one advantage which my species possesses which man cannot attain save by assiduous study. It suffices for a Flea to bite the flesh of a human to acquire at that moment a comprehension of the language which that provider of nourishment ordinarily speaks. Besides, in England, some little time before I met the fair Bella and Julia, I had partaken of the flesh of a handsome Parisian actress who, during her sojourn in London, had become the mistress of an Earl to whose person I was then temporarily attached. I mention all this not out of boastfulness – for such is not the nature of a Flea, that being an attribute reserved only for mankind – but so that my readers will not doubt the veracity of my tale. I think also that my readers may envy my brothers and me, for surely it is far easier and more delightful to acquire the knowledge of a language by sinking one's proboscis into the white flesh of a fair damsel's thigh or breast or haunch than to ponder over a guttering candle and learn another tongue word by laborious word.

But I digress. There is little need to relate what went on during the rest of the evening meal, though there was much bawdy conversation and laughter as Jacques and Lucille Tremoulier discussed the forthcoming wine-pressing contest and the candidates against whom she would be opposed the next afternoon. I listened with great interest and amusement. It is said that women are catty by nature and that they rip to pieces even their best friends once within the intimacy of their own chambers. Yet I tell you that men are equally verbose when it comes to denigrating their neighbors. The worthy Jacques went into rapturous and somewhat lascivious expatiations on the charms of the women of the village, and it was evident from this that he had already looked with lustful eye upon Dame Margot, that bold, black haired wench who had made the wager with Lucille.

However, I could not deduce from all his remarks whether he had had actual carnal knowledge of all those beauties of whom he spoke so knowingly, for after all Lucille added her own evaluations, and I was reasonably certain that she was not perversely acquainted with these damsels and matrons. She and Margot, it appeared, had once bathed together naked in a little stream down by the mill, and she informed her worthy husband that Margot's thighs were a bit lean, and that there was a dainty brown, oval-shaped birthmark just to the left of the wench's bellybutton.

At the end of the repast, Lucille served her husband a glass of brandy with his coffee and took one for herself also. The good stew, the crusty bread, the red wine, had put them both into a convivial state, and their language was entirely uninhibited as the result. “Tell me, cheri,” Lucille purred as she took a sip of her brandy, “if you had your choice of all the women in this village with my leave, with whom would you desire most to make love?” (Here I might observe that she used the vulgarism, “plonger ton vit,” which, roughly translated, means “plunge your cock into.”)

“Now of course, ma belle,” Jacques remonstrated with a cajoling smile, “it is understood that you will bear me no ill will if I speak my mind. For you know that I am as faithful as any husband to his wife here in Languecuisse.”

He was, in truth, a masterful diplomat, because his remark implied that he was no better or worse than any other man in this little village, and I am certain that continence and chastity could not be uppermost in a land where the sun is warm and the wine is red and stirring to the senses and there is so much white flesh abundantly revealed. But Dame Lucille did not attempt to read any second meaning into his seemingly innocent statement, for she laughingly avowed, “I have told you that you may speak without fear of my wifely anger, dear Jacques. Pretend, therefore, that you are the ruler of a mighty suzerainty and that to your beck and call come the fairest maidens from every corner of the globe. Whom then would you select to baiser?” (This word, which means “to kiss,” also means “to fuck.” This is why we say that the French language is full of doubles entendres.)