We made some punch, and amused ourselves in eating oysters after the voluptuous fashion of lovers. We sucked them in, one by one, after placing them on the other’s tongue. Voluptuous reader, try it, and tell me whether it is not the nectar of the gods!
At last, joking was over, and I reminded her that we had to think of more substantial pleasures. “Wait here,” she said, “I am going to change my dress. I shall be back in one minute.” Left alone, and not knowing what to do, I looked in the drawers of her writing-table. I did not touch the letters, but finding a box full of certain preservative sheaths against the fatal and dreaded plumpness, I emptied it, and I placed in it the following lines instead of the stolen goods:
‘Enfants de L’Amitie, ministres de la Peur,
Je suis l’Amour, tremblez, respectez le voleur!
Et toi, femme de Dieu, ne crains pas d’etre mere;
Carsi to le deviens, Dieu seal sera le pere.
S’il est dit cependant que tu veux le barren,
Parle; je suis tout pret, je me ferai chatrer.’
My mistress soon returned, dressed like a nymph. A gown of Indian muslin, embroidered with gold lilies, shewed to admiration the outline of her voluptuous form, and her fine lace-cap was worthy of a queen. I threw myself at her feet, entreating her not to delay my happiness any longer.
“Control your ardour a few moments,” she said, “here is the altar, and in a few minutes the victim will be in your arms.”
“You will see,” she added, going to her writing-table, “how far the delicacy and the kind attention of my friend can extend.”
She took the box and opened it, but instead of the pretty sheaths that she expected to see, she found my poetry. After reading it aloud, she called me a thief, and smothering me with kisses she entreated me to give her back what I had stolen, but I pretended not to understand. She then read the lines again, considered for one moment, and under pretence of getting a better pen, she left the room, saying,
“I am going to pay you in your own coin.”
She came back after a few minutes and wrote the following six lines:
‘Sans rien oter au plaisir amoureux,
L’objet de ton larcin sert a combier nos voeux.
A l’abri du danger, mon ame satisfaite
Savoure en surete parfaite;
Et si tu veux jauer avec securite,
Rends-moi mon doux ami, ces dons de l’amitie.