The Talon

A good bourgeois of Picardy, who was perhaps a descendant of one of those illustrious troubadours on the banks of the Oise or the Somme, and whose anonymous life, after a decade or more, now stands revealed by a great writer of the last century; a brave and honest bourgeois, I say, lived in the city of Saint-Quentin, so famous by the great men she gave to literature.

He did it a great honor, he, his wife and a cousin, just to live there. It is to be sure the Nun was his third cousin, and it is she with which this story may now chiefly concern itself.

The third cousin was a small brunette with bright eyes, a fleshy face, a turned-up nose, a slender and delicate waist ; she was twenty - two years old, and afflicted by religion for four. Her name was sister Petronille, and she also possessed a pretty voice, and a hot-blooded temperament equal to and actually surpassing her religious zeal.

As for Mr. D'esclaponville, as our bourgeois was called, he was a good lad of about twenty-eight years old, loving his cousin quite hotly; and not so much Mme D'esclaponville, considering that it was already ten years since he slept with her, and that abstinence of ten years is very deadly to the fires of the hymen.

Mme D'esclaponville-for it is necessary to describe her, lest one should pass her up; in modern times, one must make a lascivious and bold description of what should most assuredly excite the reader's jaded sensibilities!

(If, for example, one left the canvas bare, the author lacking, as one young man has put it, 'the descriptive faculties,' the tragedy would be altogether lost on those merchants of taste and image, who desire at least six comely faces to therby profit from!)

At any rate, Mme D'esclaponville, I say, was a blondasse; a little bland, perhaps, but very white, with pretty eyes, soft skin, and possessed of the most plump and delectable fleshly endowments that is common to treasure in the world of the most enjoyable and...good.

Until the present moment, Madame D'esclaponville had been unaware that there was a way to take revenge on an unfaithful husband; as wise as her mother, who had lived eighty - three years with the same man, without making him cheat, she was still naive enough, full of candor enough, not to even suspect this terrible crime that the casuists called adultery, and that the sophists, who soften everything, called simply gallantry, had even been commited!

Soon though, finding she had been deceived, and not liking one bit to have been left behind in affairs of the heart or the bedroom, resentment soon began to speak to her heart, giving her terrible advice, and she began to watch. And, of course, wait. Biding her time, she did not, most certainly, rush into action, and there was seemingly nothing of which she could be suspected or blamed.

Mme D'esclaponville finally noticed that her dear husband visited the third cousin a little too often!

Alas! let us recount the scene as it was played out before the eyes of an indifferent Nature:

The demon of jealousy takes hold of her soul. She watches, spying, gathering information; she realizes that the entire town of Saint-Quentin knows little else about the affairs and doings of her husband, except of his constant meeting with sister Petronille. Now, sure that they are burning their onerous incense at the altar of wanton lust, Madame D'esclaponville finally declares to her husband that his conduct corrupts his soul, that her own soul does not deserve to be treated in such a manner; and that she begs him to repent his misdeeds and terminate the affair. .

"Out of my sins," replies the husband phlegmatically, "do you not know that I am saving myself, my dear friend, by sleeping with my cousin The Nun?

"One cleanses his soul in such a holy intrigue; it is to identify with the Supreme Being; it is to incorporate the Holy Spirit into oneself. No sin, my dear, with people consecrated to God! They purify everything that is done with them! and to frequent them, in a word, is to open the road to heavenly bliss!"

Mme D'esclaponville, unhappy with the success of her remonstrance, does not say a word, but swears deep inside herself that she will find a way to "a more persuasive eloquence"...

(The devilish thing with this is that women always have an alternative at hand, a way to exact revenge; just so long as they are young and desireable. Let them but give the call, and their champions will pour forth like falling rain all around them, to avenge their dishonor.)

Now, there was in the city a certain parish vicar who was called M. L'abbé du Bosquet, great égrillard of about thirty years; this debauched young rake was always running after all women, making pathetic and clueless cuckolds of the spouses of Saint Quentin, (when he wasn't bowing low before them with the object of "exploring the forest" of their frontal equipage).

Mme D'esclaponville met the vicar; after a great derangement of the senses, perhaps brought about by the imbibing of a strong vintage, he likewise knew her in the manner so-defined by Biblical dispensation. Together, they became so familiar with eachother's distinctive physiognomy, they could have described each other wholly by memory without, for a moment, ever being doubted as to the veracity of the detail.

After a month each came to congratulate the unfortunate D'Esclaponville, who boasted that he had alone escaped from the formidable gallantry of the vicar, and that his was, in Saint-Quentin at least, the only "front" that this rakehell had not yet defiled.

"It is not possible," said D'esclaponville to those who spoke to him, "my wife is wise as a Lucretia; I would be told a hundred times, and I would still not believe it."

"Come, then," said one of his friends, "come, then, that I may convince you with your own eyes, and we shall see afterwards if you doubt!"

D'esclaponville let himself be carried away, and his friend led him to within half a league of the city, to a lonely place where a pond, squeezed between two fresh hedges and covered with flowers, forms a delicious bath to the inhabitants of the city; but, since the appointment was given at an hour when people do not usually bathe, our poor husband was sad to see arriving, one after another, his honest wife and his rival, without anyone else there to interrupt them.

"Well," said the friend to D'esclaponville,"does your forehead begin to itch ?"

"Not yet," said the bourgeois, rubbing himself involuntarily, "she may come here merely to confess!"

"So let's stay until the denouement!" said the friend...

They didn't have long to wait for it. Having just barely got there, exulting in the delightful shade of the so-fragrant flowery hedge, M. L'abbe du Bosquet strips down, standing in the water up to his ankles; and then Mme D'esclaponville begins to remove all of her clothing, stripping naked, so as not to have anything in the way of the holy caresses the dirty vicar places upon the length and width of her voluptuous form. His work he has set out to, he knows, is sacred, insomuch as he is sanctifying sin by cuckolding D'esclaponville, placing him in the tawdry, feckless rank of his fellow sinners. Truly, an act of Christian piety, if ever one was.

"Well," asked the smiling, smug and thoroughly-satisfied friend, "do you believe now ?"

"Let us turn back," D'Esclaponville said excitedly, " for I believe I could kill this damned priest, and they would make me pay far worse for it than he ever would; let us turn back, my friend, and keep it a secret, I pray thee!"

Now, Dear readers, let us recount the following exchange as if we were there, standing side-by-side with the unfortunate players in this romantic farce:

D'esclaponville returns home confused, and soon after his benign wife comes to present herself for supper.

"Just wait a moment, cutie," said the furious bourgeois, "since my childhood I have sworn to my father never to have dinner with whores."

"With whores?" replied Mme. D'esclaponville, "My friend, this statement amazes me! Of what do you have to reproach me for?"

"How, vulture, death-bird, carrion dog! You have the bold-faced temerity to ask of what do I have to reproach you? Well: explain what you were doing this afternoon at the baths with our vicar?"

"Oh, my God!" answers the sweet woman. "That's all, my son? That's all you have to say to me?"

"How, ventrebleu, it's just that..."

"But, my friend, I must confess myself confused. I followed your advice. Did you not tell me that one risked nothing by sleeping with church people, that one purified his soul in such a holy intrigue; that it was to identify with the Supreme Being, to bring the Holy Spirit into oneself and to open, in a word, the road to heavenly bliss? Well, my son, I only did what you told me, so I'm a saint--not a whore!"

Then, a smile curling the corner of her lips, she says:

"Now, I answer you that if any of these good souls of God does have the means to open, as you say, the road to heavenly bliss, it is certainly the Vicar, for I have never seen such a monstrously BIG key!"

The Marquis de Sade's Adelaide of Brunswick