Gynecocracy

The room was a large one and very handsomely furnished. The extremely pretty bed stood under a heavy silk canopy across the angle of the room farthest from the fireplace, the canopy suspended from the ceiling and the carved oak bedstead standing clear of the walls. There were several quaint, cosy-looking chairs about, and bowls of spring flowers. Mademoiselle stood between me and the light, tall and graceful in her severely simple black mousseline de laine dress, displaying her womanly figure to the fullest advantage. As I contemplated her in my wretched condition I felt yet more abjectly humiliated. A novel sensation of awkwardness again replaced my habitual self-possession, an inveterate stupidity my ordinary sprightliness and vivacity. There I stood, a great boy, trussed like a fowl, with nothing to conceal my bare legs but a shirt, which did not reach to my knees.

Mademoiselle ordered Elise to place a long carved bench of black oak, about a foot wide, in the middle of the room, and to put upon it a feather bolster which Elise, by means of tapes, tied to the bench. I was then compelled to stand across one end while Elise strapped my ankles close together underneath and then left the room. Mademoiselle went to the door, shut and locked it, and then turned full upon me. I could not but note as I trembled how her whole form glowed with smiling and triumphant satisfaction. She walked deliberately up to me, lifted my shirt up behind, and, to my intense shame, intently contemplated my back for some seconds; then, still holding up this undergarment and standing a little way off, she took up the birch and gave me some stinging lashes with it. I had never felt anything like it before. I had no idea that it would hurt one-tenth as much as it did, and was compelled to cry out.

Mademoiselle then, to my horror, unbuttoned my waistcoat and lifted my shirt with both hands high up in front. I could not move. I was speechless, as she stood facing me and examining my most secret possessions over which and along the front of my things she several times passed her dimpled hand. Then she let the shirt fall, untied my elbows, and taking up a lady's jewelled riding whip, she remarked that I should be flogged naked. Standing at my left side she ordered me to take off my jacket and waistcoat. I hesitated and fumbled. Looking round she gave me a touch of the whip on my bare legs. If the birch smarted, that vicious little thing bit like fury. I yelled and clapped my hands to my legs, but only to get them lashed also. She went on until, in desperation, I tore off my jacket and waistcoat.

"Now your shirt! Quick!"

Up went the whip, her eyes sparkling savagely. This time, without an instant's hesitation, and without thinking about it, I whipped off my shirt more quickly than ever I had done before. And there I was, perfectly naked before her, red and overwhelmed with shame and smarting with pain. She leisurely regarded me, evidently intending not to spare me a single pang. She moved her hand along my back and shoulders, remarking that she thought the whip would mark my skin easily, and, by way of experiment, she gave me several more smart cuts with it on various parts of my body, each stroke causing me intense anguish. I cried out, and implored her to desist; but she merely gloated the more over my torture.

"Now," she at length said, "your bottom must be put in a proper position for me to punish."

"Oh, Mademoiselle, forgive me! Oh, I am sorry for my disobedience and folly! Do forgive me!.."

"I never forgive! Lie down on your face."

I saw there was nothing for it but compliance; so, with a sigh like a gasp of despair, I obeyed her. She placed her hand on the back of my head and pressed it into the bolster. The wide bench separated my thighs, pressing my most sensitive parts cruelly. She fixed a strap round my neck and passed it under the bench, placed another round the seat and my waist, and lastly fastened my hands together underneath the bench. My posture and the soft bolster (which soon became pleasantly warm) gave me a certain voluptuous feeling soon, however, to be dispelled by my sufferings.