Gynecocracy

It will be remembered, perhaps, with surprise, that I had not seen any female quite naked until Elise, having syringed Maud, very violently stripped her with Mademoiselle's superintending assistance, and laid her, as I had myself been laid across the bed, to be flogged. I had been in Mademoiselle's bed between her legs, I had also been between them underneath her petticoats. I had been made rudely acquainted with the maid's bottoms, but had only seen pieces of nakedness-breasts-legs-thighs-at one time. The statues in Mademoiselle's boudoir were my nearest approach to knowledge of the divine feminine form in a condition of absolute nudity. I now called to mind their exquisite shapes, their full bosoms, their admirably rounded backs, their thighs under which I longed to be crushed. When Maud had been stripped before me, my own sufferings from the cruel whip were much too severe to permit me to dwell upon the spectacle. But now I was back to back with her absolutely naked. It was the fact that she was a girl, that she was feminine and I male, which gave such piquancy. But she had possessed me while she had on her petticoats, and they certainly emphasized the difference of sex. I distinctly recollect that when she was undressed a vague sense of disappointment stole over me to find that after all she had a body and two legs like myself.

Wherein does the charm, the esoteric feminine magnetism, lie? In petticoats? Verily petticoats, drawers, corsets, long silk stockings, have a powerful and mysterious influence.

Maud, naked, did not possess the same power over me as Maud in her petticoats. When I lay extended in an absolutely nude state before Beatrice, it was the fact that she was clothed and I naked which I felt so keenly. Had she also been naked I should not have suffered so much 141

shame. There is no severer ordeal for a young man than to be naked in the presence of clothed damsels. Whence the subtle influence of clothes? If women abandon their garments in favour of a "rational" costume, they will at the same time lose much of their empire over men.

Macaulay, in his history of England, reflects that: "The poison which they (certain writers) administered was so strong, that it was in no long time rejected with nausea. None of them understood the dangerous act of associating images of unlawful pleasure with all that is endearing and ennobling. None of them was aware that a certain decorum is essential even to voluptuousness, that drapery may be more alluring than exposure, and that the imagination may be more powerfully moved by delicate hints which impel it to exert itself, than by gross descriptions which it takes in passively." Certainly, if woman be an image of unlawful pleasure, she, I reflected, thoroughly does understand the whole art and craft of associating her lovely self with endearing and ennobling petticoats, frilled, and tucked, and laced, with a glimpse half revealing the exquisite beauties stimulated imagination then depicts as concealed.

Had I lived in the times when Courts of Love were held, I should have proposed the question:-Whether a lover was happier who saw his mistress naked than he who saw her en grande tenue, and I should have required at the hands of every member of the tribunal a written and closely reasoned judgment.

For another aspect now presents itself of the question. If I was in possession of my mistress naked, I should wish to be clothed! Here my soliloquy was interrupted by Elise opening the door.

Elise! I dreaded to see her again.

Maud also had her own cogitations, for the moment before Elise's arrival she had remarked to me: "I do not think Mademoiselle will dare to say much to me when she hears that I know she shewed you the way.

She shewed him the way, she shewed him the way to woo," hummed Maud.

There was no time for reply. But it struck me that we might be a very happy family and the father and mother of a whole generation if things were only properly and sensibly managed. On the other hand even at that age I plainly, with a boy's acuteness, perceived that if Mademoiselle Hortense de Chambonnard found that she was becoming entangled and in danger of losing prestige, she would choose the most favourable opportunity for bursting the whole thing up. There was one thing I could plainly perceive my Haughty governess would never endure and that was restraint of any description. I believe my father himself was afraid of her.

Mademoiselle had all my letters and the only news she vouchsafed to me was that my parents were quite well and glad to hear that I had arrived safely and that they hoped I would be very good and obey Mademoiselle in all things.

CHAPTER 2

Retribution-"Saeva Venus"