Impossible to represent the ecstasy of this servant of God; he was in the clouds, he inhaled, he swallowed everything that came his way, you'd have thought the very idea of losing the least puff of air would have distressed him, and whilst all this was going on, his hands roamed inquiringly over my colleague's breasts and under her petticoat, but these fingerings were no more than episodic; the unique and capital object was that mouth overwhelming him with sighs and digestive rumblings. His prick finally enlarged by the voluptuous vibrations the ceremony caused to be born in him, he discharged into my companion's hand, and ran off to deliver a lecture, protesting as he went that never had he enjoyed himself more.

Some time after this, a rather more extraordinary man came to the house with a particular problem in mind, and it well deserves to be mentioned in this catalogue of natural wonders. Guérin had, that day, urged me to eat, had all but forced me to eat as copiously as, not long before, I had seen Aurora dine. Guérin took care to have me served everything she knew I liked best, and having forewarned me, as we rose from table, of everything I should have to do for the elderly libertine with whom she intended to match me, she had me swallow down three grains of emetic dissolved in a glass of warm water. The old sinner arrived, he was a brothel-hound I had seen dozens of times before without bothering to find out what he came to do. He embraces me, drives a dirty and disgusting tongue into my mouth, and the action of the emetic I'd drunk is complemented by his stinking breath. He sees my stomach's about to rise, he's in ecstasy. "Courage, dearie," he cries, "be brave, never fear, I don't propose to lose a drop of it." Being foreadvised of all he expects of me, I seat him on the couch, lay his head to rest on the edge of it; his thighs are separated, I unbutton his breeches, drag out a slack, stunted instrument that betrays no sign of stiffening, I shake, squeeze, pull it, he opens his mouth: all the while frigging him, all the while receiving the touches of his impudicious hands which stray over my buttocks, at point-blank I launch into his mouth the imperfectly digested dinner that vomitive has fetched up from my stomach. Our man is beside himself, he rolls his eyes, pants, bolts down the spew, goes to my lips to seek more of the impure ejaculation that intoxicates him, he does not indeed miss a drop, and when it seems to him the operation is in danger of ending, he provokes a repetition of it by dexterously inserting his appalling tongue into my mouth, and his prick, that prick I've scarcely been able to touch because of my convulsive retchings, that prick doubtless warmed by nothing but such infamies, grows purple, rises up of itself,

and weeps into my fingers the unsuspected proof of the impressions these foul activities have made upon it.

"Ah, by God's balls," said Curval, "that's a very delicious passion indeed, but none the less susceptible of improvement."

"And how?" asked Durcet in a voice broken by signs of lubricity.

"How?"Curval repeated, "why, by the choice of food and of partner."

"Partner? Oh, but of course. You'd prefer a Fanchon."

"To be sure!"

"And the food?" Durcet continued, while Adelaide frigged him.

"Food?" the Président murmured, "why, I think I'd force her to give me back, and in the same manner, what I'd just introduced into her."

"That is to say," stammered the financier, beginning to lose all control of himself, "you'd spew into her mouth, she'd swallow and then have to blow it back at you?"

"Precisely."

And each rushing into his closet, the Président with Fanchon, Augustine, and Zélamir; Durcet with Desgranges, Rosette, and Invictus: proceedings were halted for roughly thirty minutes. Then the two lechers returned.

"Ah," the Duc said chidingly to Curval, the first to reappear, "you've been up to some nastiness or other?"

"Ah, a little of this, a little of that," the Président replied, "it's my life's happiness, you know. I've not much patience with mild or tidy pleasures."

"But I trust you were also purged of a little fuck?"

"Enough of that nonsense," the Président said, "do you suppose everyone is like you, flinging fuck this way and that every six minutes? Why no, I leave those efforts and that unconscionable prodigality to you and to vigorous champions like Durcet," he went on, watching the financier stagger weakly from his closet.

"Yes," said Durcet, "yes, it's true, there was no resisting the girl. Desgranges is so filthy in word, deed, and body, she is so adroit, so suitable in every way . . ."

"Well, Duclos," the Duc said, "go on with your story, for if we don't quiet him down, the indiscreet little fellow will tell us everything he did, and never once consider what a dreadful breach of good manners it is to boast of the favors one has received from a pretty woman."

And Duclos obediently returned to her tale.

Since, said our chronicler, these gentlemen are so fond of that kind of drollery, I greatly regret they were unable to restrain their enthusiasism yet another minute, for the effects of what I have still to relate this evening might, it seems to me, have better found their mark. Precisely that which Monsieur le Président declared to be lacking to the perfection of the passion I have just described was entirely present in the one that follows; what a pity, I repeat, that I was unable to get to it in time. The example of the elderly Président de Saclanges affords, in every particular and word for word, all the singularity Monsieur de Curval appeared to desire. By way of a partner for him, Guérin had chosen the dean of our chapter: a tall, sturdy lass of about thirty-six, a great and chronic drunk, loutish, foul-mouthed, rather a fishmonger's wife, although by no means unattractive; the good Président arrives, they are served supper, both get blind drunk, both become unreasonable, one vomits in the other's mouth, the one swallows the stuff, then the other vomits into the mouth of the first, now he swallows, and so forth and so on, and they finally collapse into the supper's debris, that is to say, into the filth they've just splashed all over the floor. And then I am sent into the fray, for my co-worker has not an ounce of strength left, indeed she has lost consciousness. But this, however, is the crucial moment from the libertine's point of view: I find him prone, his prick straight and hard as a crowbar; I seize his instrument, the Président stammers, swears, draws me to him, sucks my mouth, and discharges like a bull, the while twisting and turning and continuing to wallow in his ordure.

The same girl, somewhat later, participated in a drama which was surely not much less filthy; a monk of some consequence, who paid her very liberally, threw himself astride her belly after having spread and immobilized my companion's thighs by tying them to heavy articles of furniture. Several kinds of food were brought in and served the monk, who had the dainties placed on the girl's naked belly. The merry fellow then picks up the morsels he is to eat, and dips them one by one in his Dulcinea's open cunt, and only consumes them after they have been completely impregnated with the spices the vagina secretes.

"Ha!" cried the Bishop, "an entirely novel manner of dining."

"And one which wouldn't suit you, eh, my Lord?" said Duclos.

"By God's belly, no!" replied the man of the Church, "I'm not that fond of the cunt."

Very well, our storyteller replied, lend an ear to the item with which I am going to close this evening's narrations, I am persuaded it will amuse you more.

I had been with Madame Guérin for eight years -- had just reached the age of seventeen -- and during this period not a day had passed without my seeing a certain farmer-general arrive at the house every morning and be received with the warmest welcome. He was thought very highly of by the management; a man of roughly sixty, rotund, short, he resembled Monsieur Durcet in a good many points. Like Monsieur, he had an air of freshness and youth, and was also plump; he required a different girl every day, and those of the house were never used save in emergencies or when someone contracted abroad failed to meet her appointment. Monsieur Dupont, so was our financier called, was just as discriminating in his choice of girls as he was fastidious in his tastes, he simply would not have a whore to attend to his needs except in the rare and extreme cases I mentioned; he had to have, on the contrary, working women, shopgirls, especially milliners or seamstresses. Their age and coloring also had to meet specification: they had to be between fifteen and eighteen, neither more or less, and, most important of all, they needed to have a sweetly moldered ass, an ass so absolutely clean that the least blemish, a mere grain of matter clinging at the hole was sufficient grounds for rejection. When they were maids, he paid twice as much.

They had made plans for, and were that day actually expecting the arrival of, a young lacemaker of sixteen whose ass was generally acclaimed by connoisseurs as a true model of what an ass should be; Monsieur Dupont did not know the treasure that was to be offered him, and as it turned out the young lady had word sent that on this particular morning she was unable to leave her parents' house and that matters would have to proceed without her. Guérin, knowing Dupont had never set eyes on me, ordered me to dress in a shopgirl's costume at once, to go out, take a cab at the end of the street, and alight again at the brothel, all this fifteen minutes after Dupont entered the house; I was to play my role with care and pass myself for a milliner's apprentice. But the most important consideration of all was the anise water: I was to fill my stomach at once with half a quart of it, and directly afterward I was to drink the large glass of balsamic liqueur she gave me; you shall shortly learn for what its effect was intended. Everything went forward very smoothly; fortunately, we had been given several hours' notice, and in this time were able to make thorough preparations.