anonymous - The Memoirs of a Voluptuary

We were now ready to start and as soon as we were notified that the carriage was at the door, we descended to the porch.

The drive was a long one, taking us right away into the furthest suburbs; but we finally passed through a gate and along a short private road, drawing up before the portico of a large stone villa. The doors were shut, but on knocking we were admitted into the hall, where our cloaks and Cecile's wrap were taken from us by a servant. We were then led along a wide passage, and passed through a pair of big folding-doors into a great hall or winter-garden with a glass room. This presented a truly brilliant spectacle, with its countless lights, its richly decorated walls, its tessellated pavement spread with soft carpets, its multitude of silk- covered couches and its huge, branching palms.

We were late arrivals, and the rest of the company was already assembled. Gaston pointed out to me Helene; Isabelle, Yvonne and others whom he recognised; and we were soon in the midst of them, as they trooped around us. None of them, however, gave any sign, of remembering having seen him before as Cecile introduced us. The costumes were all marked by the same simplicity as Cecile's, this seeming to be the rigueur for the occasion. There were some dozen other boys present, all in eighteenth-century dress, but I do not think it too much to say that Gaston and I quite outshone the rest in plumage.

In addition to the members and their guests, there was quite a number of attendants in evidence-both boys and girls. The boys wore rose-coloured silk stockings with black satin garters tied in a bow at the side, and elegant satin shoes, together with a very short, open jacket, in shape not unlike that of a Spanish matador, brocaded and sewn with spangles and coloured stones, and finished of with a border of black velvet. This constituted their sole attire, leaving the whole front of their bodies and their posteriors perfectly open to view. The girls had a broad scarf of purple silk bound round them just below the breasts and little shoes with long purple silk ribbons crossed round the leg, trellis-fashion, to the knee-their apparel being thus even more primitive than that of the boys.

"Now that you have come, Cecile," said Helene, "we will go and have a little refreshment. Then the entertainment can commence."

We repaired to a room laid out with a long table, where various light and stimulating dishes were served to us, accompanied by copious libations of champagne and liqueurs, well calculated to arouse the senses. At the finish, wine of a peculiarly exhilarating kind was brought round in glasses fashioned to represent the male organ of generation, the vessels themselves seeming to impart a flavour of lasciviousness to the beverage. This was undoubtedly the idea, and it will be remembered that Juvenal (Satires, II, 96) mentions that drinking-cups of the same kind were used at similar gatherings in his time.

I was seated between Cecile and Helene, and was all eyes and ears amid the strangeness of the situation. The conversation which took place was tinged with considerable freedom, but there were no liberties of action so far, such being reserved till a late moment.

I was rather amused by Helene enquiring of Cecile how her cousin, Elise, was.

"Oh, poor child!" replied Cecile; "she has gone back to the country again. Our frivolity in Paris unnerved her altogether, but she will be quite happy at home in her own quiet way; I do not think she would ever have accustomed herself to our manners, and it really seemed a sin to disturb her peace of mind by insisting upon her remaining with me."

Belene gave the signal to rise, and we made our way back to the great saloon again.

A hidden orchestra began to discourse voluptuous music, and when we had all taken our places where the fancy led us, two boys and two girls entered and advanced to the middle of the hall. They wore sandal-shoes and loose, short tunics of the thinnest white gauze and carried each a tambourine. The unseen musicians struck up a fresh air, and the quartet kept time to the measure in a graceful dance, leaping and pirouetting with agile cleverness, shaking their tambourines as they did so and accompanying their steps with every sort of wanton gesture. It was a performance such as Nero loved to watch, or Petronius to write of, and the inciting effects were plainly visible on the faces of the women, at they looked on. The last shreds of reserve were disappearing fast, and when the dancers paused for a space, a general sigh went up at the breaking of the suspense. After a short breathing-time, the dance started again, and waxed more furious. The boys' members stood violently upright, vibrating with their every movement, while the swollen clitoris and distended vagina of each girl spoke of equal excitement. They carried out their terpsichorean revolutions to the utmost limit of their capacity, but at last, responding to the nimble touches which the boys administered to them, the girls collapsed and sank into their partners' arms, while streams of white semen ran down their thighs.

At this conclusion, the ladies of the audience rose as of one accord, with ardently shining eyes and panting breasts. With a common consent, they cast their robes from them, revealing themselves in complete nakedness, their shoes and stockings being also removed by the deft attendants. On a marble pedestal at one end of the hall; a beautiful little boy, with body all nude, was stood, and the women thronged around him, as before an altar, kissing his feet and body, and casting votive offerings of roses-white and red and yellow- before this living personification of the god of love, until the floor around him was heaped with perfumed blossoms in loveliest profusion. Then they joined hands and circled about him in a bacchanal dance, shrieking a wild chorus of licentious abandon. I stood lost in amaze at the scene, to match which one would have had to go back to the days when the Roman women celebrated at midnight, with closed doors, the mysteries of the Bona Dea. It was just such a sight as this that doubtless met the eyes of Publius Clodius when, disguised as a singing-girl, he penetrated into the most sacred precincts of Caesar's house in order to witness for himself the rites partaken in by Pompeia. Never could the maenads of those archaic times have exhibited greater frenzy than these, their latter-day imitators. Breaking apart from each other, the screamed for the attendants to come to them, and each claimed the services of a boy and a girl-the boy to soothe and at the same tithe aggravate their lust by swiftly working their fingers on clitoris and vagina, while the girl stood ready with a goblet in which to catch the outpour that was to follow. One after another, in quick succession, each salacious female, trembling in a madness of lubricity, with deep sighings and half-groans, stooped down and gave forth of her over-flowing abundance of spermatic fluid into the receptacle held for her. The contents of these were all emptied into one gleaming, sculptured chalice. This Helene, as high-priestess, took in her hands, and held aloft for a moment, like a pontiff offering sacrifice, uttering a loud cry as she did so. Then she advanced towards the naked boy on the pedestal, and bent the knee before him, her fellow- worshippers also prostrating themselves. Rising, Helene poured the whole of the warm, thick liquor over the shoulders of the boy, thrusting the chalice into the arms of a ready attendant when she had done so. The dense volume of these commingled essences ran in a pearly flood over Cupid's body in this baptism of lasciviousness, and at the sight the women, drunk with passion, flocked about him fiercely, like souls possessed, striving with one another in a desperate effort to smother him with their embraces, smearing the coagulated semen over his form with their hands, and lapping up the moisture with their tongues in demonic fanaticism. I have only to close my eyes, to bring the vision before me again, and see those wild-eyed creatures indulge once more in that riot of sensuality.