|
Venus In Furs This is section 3 of 8. = We are sitting on Wanda's little
balcony in the soft fragrance of a summer night, a twofold roof is above us,
the green ceiling of creepers and the vault of heavens sown with innumerable
stars. From the park rises the low wailing love-call of a cat, and I am
sitting on a stool at the feet of my divinity, telling her of my childhood.
"And so, even then, all these strange traits were apparent?" said Wanda. "I
cannot recall a time when they were not. Even in my cradle, so my mother told
me, I was supersensual, I scorned the healthy breast of my nurse and had to be
brought up on goat's milk. As a boy I was unaccountably shy with women, but
this was only a sign of my inordinate interest in them. I was also oppressed
by the grey vaulting and semi-darkness of the church, and actually afraid of
the glittering altars and images of the saints. By stealth I would creep, as
to a secret vice, to a plaster cast of Venus which stood in my father's little
library, and kneel and repeat to her the prayers I had been taught -- the
Paternoster, the Ave and the Credo. "Once, at night, I left my bed to visit
her. The sickle of a new moon was my only illumination, and showed me the
goddess in an icy pale-blue light. I threw myself before her and kissed her
cold feet as I had seen our peasants kiss those of the dead Saviour. "All at
once an irresistible craving seized me. "I rose and embraced the beautiful
cold body with my arms and kissed the chilly lips, and the next moment I was
convulsed by a long exquisite tremor... I fled, and later, in a dream, it
seemed as if the goddess herself stood by my bed, threatening me with upraised
arm. "I was sent to school early and soon reached the gymnasium. I seized
passionately on everything that promised to bring the world of antiquity
nearer to me. Soon I was more familiar with the gods of Greece than with the
religion of Jesus: I was with Paris when he gave the fatal apple to Venus, I
saw Troy burn, and I followed Ulysses on his wanderings. The prototypes of all
that is beautiful sank deeply into my soul, and so at an age when other boys
are coarse and obscene I showed an insurmountable aversion to everything base,
vulgar and uncouth. "To me, then on the verge of adolescence, the love of
woman seemed something particularly base and ugly, for I saw it first in all
its grossness. I avoided all contact with the other sex; in a word, I was
supersensual almost to madness. "When I was about fourteen my mother had a
charming chambermaid, young, pretty, with a figure just budding into
womanhood. I was sitting one day studying my Tacitus and growing enthusiastic
over the virtues of the ancient Teutons while she was sweeping the room. All
at once she paused and bent over me, still holding her broom, and the next
moment a pair of fresh, full, adorable lips was pressed to mine. The kiss of
this amorous little she-cat sent a delicious shudder through me, but I lifted
up my Moribus Germaniae like a shield against the temptress and fled from the
room in indignation." Wanda broke into a merry laugh. "It would really be hard
to find another man like you! but go on." "There is another memorable incident
of that period," I said. "The Countess Sobol, a distant aunt of mine by
marriage, was visiting my parents. She was a beautiful and imposing woman with
a charming smile, but I hated her, for she was looked on by my family as a
kind of Messalina. My conduct towards her was as rude, surly and malicious as
it could be. "One day my parents had driven to the capital of the district. My
aunt determined to profit by their absence and execute judgment on me. She
entered suddenly in her fur-lined Russian jacket, followed by the cook, the
kitchenmaid and the cat of a chambermaid whom I had scorned. Without any
questions or parley they seized and stripped me, bound me hand and foot in
spite of my violent resistance, and then my aunt, with an evil smile, rolled
up her sleeve and began whipping my naked loins with a stout switch. She
whipped so hard that she drew blood, and at last, in spite of all my heroic
resolve to remain silent, I howled and wept and begged for mercy. She then had
me unbound, but I had to go on my knees, thank her for the punishment, and
kiss her hand. "Now you understand the supersensual fool! Under the lash of a
beautiful haughty woman, looking in her fur jacket like a wrathful sovereign,
I felt my senses first awake to the meaning of woman, and from that moment my
aunt became the most desirable woman on earth. "My Catonian austerity, my
shyness with women were simply an excessive feeling for beauty. In the furnace
of my imagination sensuality assumed the rank of an aesthetic, and I swore to
myself that I would not squander its stores on any ordinary woman but would
preserve them for an ideal one, and if possible for an avatar of the goddess
of love herself. "I went to the university at a very early age. It was in the
capital, where my aunt lived. My room there looked like Doctor Faustus'.
Everything was in utter confusion, there were great closets stuffed with
books~ I had bought for a song from a Jewish dealer in the Servanica, globes,
atlases, retorts, celestial charts, skeletons of animals, skulls, busts of
eminent men. At any moment Mephistopheles, dressed as a peripatetic schoolman,
might have stepped out from behind the big green stove. "I studied everything
pell-mell, without system or selection -- chemistry, alchemy, history,
astronomy, philosophy, law, anatomy and literature; I read Homer, Virgil,
Ossian, Schiller, Goethe, Shakespeare, Cervantes, Moli confused every day,
more fantastic, more supersensual. And all the time a beautiful female ideal
was hovering in my imagination, every now and then appearing before me like a
vision among my leather-bound books and dead bones, lying on a bed of roses,
her body encircled by cupids; sometime she appeared gowned like the Olympians
and with the stern white face of the statue of Venus, sometimes blue-eyed,
with her hair in rich brown braids and wearing my aunt's red velvet jacket
trimmed with ermine. You can imagine the culmination of my solitary
meditations at this time..." Wanda frowned swiftly, but her lovely mouth did
not lose its indulgent smile as she listened. "One morning, however, when this
ideal creature had been floating before me all night long in her smiling
beauty, I went to see the Countess Sobol, who received me in a friendly and
even cordial manner; she gave me a kiss of welcome, which put all my senses in
a turmoil. She was perhaps forty years old at this time, but like most society
women she was now at the height of her beauty. She was still wearing a
fur-edged jacket, this time one of green velvet trimmed with marten, but none
of the sternness which had once so delighted me was now discernible in her
face; on the contrary, there was so little cruelty in her that without any ado
she let me adore her. "Only too soon did she discover my supersensual folly
and innocence, and she was pleased to grant me her favours. And I -- I was as
happy as a young god. What ecstasy it was to be allowed to lie at her feet and
to kiss her hands, those hands which had scourged me! What marvellous hands
they were -- beautifully shaped, delicate, rounded and white, with rose-tinted
nails. I was really in love only with her hands; I played with them, let them
submerge and reappear in the dark fur, held them against the light, and was
unable to glut my eyes with them." Wanda involuntarily glanced at her own
hands; I noticed it and had to smile. "From the extent to which I was governed
by supersensuality in those days, you can see I was in love only with the
cruel lashes I had received from my aunt; it was the same later on, when I
made love to a young actress only in the role and costume in which she had
attracted me. Still later, I lost my head over a highly respectable woman who
played the part of virtue to admiration and deceived me with a wealthy Jew --
since when, having been betrayed by a woman who feigned the strictest
principles and the highest ideals, I have hated all that kind of sentimental
poetic virtue. Give me a woman who is honest enough to say, 'I am a Pompadour,
a Lucrezia Borgia,' and I am ready to adore her." Wanda rose and went to the
window. "You have a strange way of rousing one's imagination," she said, "of
playing on one's nerves and making one's pulse beat faster. You place a halo
on vice, provided only it is honest. Your ideal is simply a bold and gifted
courtesan. Oh, you are a man who would corrupt a woman to her depths!" In the
middle of the night there was a knock at my window; I got up, opened it and
was startled. Outside stood Venus in Furs, as she had appeared to me the first
time. "You have unsettled me with your talk," she said. "I have been tossing
in bed, unable to sleep. You must come up and keep me company." "At once."
When I entered Wanda was kneeling before the fireplace where she had kindled a
small fire. "Autumn is coming on," she said, "already the nights are quite
cold. I am afraid you may not like it, but I must keep my furs on until the
room warms up." "Not like it! You are joking --" I put my arm around her and
kissed her. "Of course I know your weakness," she said smiling. "But why this
excessive fondness for furs?" "I was born with it," I replied. "I had it as a
child. Moreover, furs have a stimulating effect on all highly-strung natures,
due to certain general and natural laws. They possess a physical stimulus
which sets one a-tingle, and no one can wholly escape it. Science has recently
shown a connection between electricity and warmth; at any rate, their effects
on the human organism are closely related. The torrid zone produces more
passionate people through the influence of the warmer atmosphere. It is the
same with electricity. This is why the presence of cats has such a magical and
salutary influence on all highly-strung men of intellect, and why these
long-tailed Graces of the animal world, these adorable spark-engendering
electric batteries, have been the favorite animals of men like Mohammed,
Cardinal Richelieu, Cr^Bbillon, Rousseau, Wieland." "A woman wearing furs,
then," cried Wanda, "is nothing more than a large cat, an amplified electric
battery?" "Exactly," I said. "That is my explanation of the symbolic meaning
which fur has acquired as an attribute of power and beauty. In former times
monarchs and the higher nobility made it, as such, their privileged costume;
great painters used it only for sovereign beauty. The most fitting frame which
Raphael could find for the divine form of La Fornarina, and Titian for the
rosy body of his beloved, was one of dark furs." "I thank you for the learned
discourse on eroticism," said Wanda, "but you have not told me everything. You
associate with furs something entirely personal to yourself." "Certainly," I
said. "I have already told you that suffering has a peculiar attraction for
me, and that nothing can heighten my passion more than the idea of tyranny, of
cruelty, and above all of a woman's faithlessness. And for some reason I
cannot picture this woman -- this ideal beauty strangely derived from an
aesthetic of ugliness, this soul of a Nero in the body of a Phryne -- except
in furs." "l understand," said Wanda. "They give a woman a dominant and
imposing air." "It is more than that. You know I am supersensual, that for me
everything has its roots in fantasy and receives its whole nourishment from
the fantastic. Well, I was already precocious and highly sensitive when at
about the age of ten the legends of the Christian martyrs fell into my hands;
I remember reading with a kind of horror, which was actually rapture, of how
they languished in dungeons, were laid on gridirons, were pierced with arrows,
boiled in pitch, thrown to wild beasts, nailed to the cross, and how they
suffered the most atrocious torments with a kind of joy. From then on, to
undergo cruel torture seemed to me an exquisite delight, especially when it
was inflicted by a beautiful woman -- for ever since I can remember all poetry
and everything demonic were for me combined and concentrated in the idea of
woman. "Thus I felt there was something sacred in sensuality, that indeed
sensuality was the only sacred thing; in woman and her beauty I saw something
divine, because the most important function of woman -- the continuation of
the species -- was her vocation and her mission. To me woman represented the
very personification of nature, the goddess Isis, and man was no more than her
priest, her instrument, her slave; in contrast to him she was cruel, like
Nature herself who throws aside whatever has served her purpose as soon as she
needs it no longer -- while to him her cruelties, even death itself, were
still sensual raptures. "I envied King Gunther whom the mighty Br^Annhilde
fettered on his bridal night, and the poor troubadour whom his capricious
mistress ordered to be sewn in the skins of wolves and hunted like a wild
beast; I envied the knight Ctirad whom the bold Amazon Scharka cunningly
ensnared in the forests of Prague and carried off to her Castle Divine where,
after amusing herself with him for a while, she had slowly broken on the wheel
--" "Revolting!" cried Wanda.
Perfect Toes has
Tons of foot fetish videos with hot xxx pictures and porno movies. foot fetish videos
will be sure to give you a hard on your make your pussy wet wanting
even more foot fetish videos Goto Perfect Toes today and get more foot fetish videos you
will not be sorry. Thousands of Pictures of foot fetish videos. And hot sexy
movies with foot fetish videos
Click Here to
Enter Perfect Toes - #1 Site for foot fetish videos
"Ah, I almost wish you could fall into the hands
of such a savage woman. In the wolf's skin, under the teeth of the dogs or on
the wheel, you would lose the taste for your kind of poetry." "Do you think
so? I do not." "You are really out of your senses." "Possibly. But let me go
on. I developed a perfect passion for stories where the worst cruelties were
described, and I especially liked to look at pictures and prints which
portrayed all the bloody tyrants who have ever occupied a throne, the
Inquisitors who had the heretics tortured, roasted, racked and whipped, and
above all the women whom the pages of history have recorded as lustful,
beautiful, violent -- Libussa, Lucrezia Borgia, Agnes of Hungary, Queen
Margot, Isabeau, the Sultana Roxolana, the Russian Czarinas of the last
century -- all these women I saw in furs bordered with ermine." "And so furs
now rouse strange fancies in you," said Wanda, and she began draping her
magnificent fur cloak temptingly about her, making the shining sable play
around her breast and arms. "So -- how do you feel now, half broken on the
wheel?" Her piercing green eyes rested on me with a peculiar mocking pleasure.
Overcome by desire I fell at her feet and threw my arms about her. "Yes, you
have brought my dearest dream to life!" I cried. "It has slept long enough."
"And that dream is -- ?" She laid her hand on my neck. The pressure of her
warm hand, and the tender searching gaze she bent on me through half-closed
eyes, filled me with a delicious vertigo. "To be the slave of a woman, a
beautiful woman whom I live, whom I worship!" "And who maltreats you in
return," added Wanda laughing. "Yes, who binds me and whips me, treads me
underfoot, while she gives herself to another." "And who in her wantonness
will go so far as to make a present of you to your successful rival when,
maddened by jealousy, you meet him face to face -- a female demon who will
hand you over entirely to his mercy. Why not?" She gazed at me intently. "This
last tableau doesn't please you quite so well?" I looked at Wanda with awe.
"You surpass my dreams." "Yes, we women are inventive," she said. "Be careful,
when you find your ideal: she might well treat you more cruelly than you
expect." "I fear I have already found my ideal," I cried, burying my burning
face in her lap. "Surely it is not l?" she cried, throwing off her furs and
moving about the room laughing. She was still laughing when I went downstairs,
and as I stood musing in the courtyard I could still hear her laughter ringing
from above. "Do you really expect me, then, to embody your ideal?" Wanda asked
quizzically when we met in the park today. At first I could find no answer;
the most contradictory feelings were warring within me. Meanwhile she had sat
down on one of the stone benches and was playing with a flower. "Well," she
said, "do you?" I knelt and took her hands. "Once more, Wanda, I beg you to be
my wife, my true and loyal wife... But if you cannot, then become my ideal,
entirely, without restraint or compunction." She surveyed me with a level
gaze. "You know I am still ready to give you my hand at the end of a year, if
by that time you prove to be the man I am looking for," she said gravely. "But
I think you would you would be really more grateful to me if I realized your
fantasies. Well, which do you prefer?" "I believe that everything my
imagination has dreamed lies latent in your personality." "You are mistaken."
"I believe," I continued, "that you would enjoy having a man wholly in your
power, torturing him --" "No, no," she exclaimed quickly. "Or -- or perhaps
--" she paused. "I understand myself no longer, but I have a confession to
make. You have corrupted my imagination and inflamed my blood. I am beginning
to like the things you speak of. The enthusiasm with which you speak of a
Pompadour, a Catherine, of all those other selfish, frivolous, cruel women has
carried me away and taken possession of my soul. It tempts, it incites me to
become like those women who for all their vileness were slavishly worshipped
during their own lifetimes and who still exert a miraculous power from the
grave. Ah, you will end by making me a despot in miniature, a domestic
Pompadour!" "Then if this is latent in you," I said with animation, "yield to
this tendency of your nature! I want no half-commitment. If you cannot be a
true, loyal wife to me, be a demon." I was nervous and exhausted from lack of
sleep, and the nearness of the beautiful woman had put me in a kind of
delirium; I no longer remember what I said, but only that I kissed her feet
and finally raised her foot and placed it on my neck, when she withdrew it
hurriedly and rose almost in anger. "If you love me, Severin," she said
quickly, and her voice was sharp with command, "never speak to me of these
things again. Do you understand, never! Otherwise -- I might really --" She
smiled and sat down again. "I am completely serious," I exclaimed, scarcely
knowing what I was saying. "I adore you so infinitely that I will endure
anything from you for the sake of spending my whole life at your side."
"Severin, once more I warn you." "Your warning is in vain. Do with me as you
will, only do not drive me away." "Severin," she replied, "I am a frivolous
woman, it is dangerous to put yourself completely in my power; you will end by
really becoming my plaything. What makes you sure I will not abuse this mad
love of yours?" "Your own nobility of character." "But absolute power makes
one unfeeling, arrogant." "Be so, then," I cried, "tread me underfoot!" Wanda
threw her arms around my neck, gazed into my eyes and shook her head. "I am
afraid I cannot. But I will try, for your sake -- for I love you, Severin, as
I have never loved another man." Today she suddenly appeared in
street-costume, and made me go shopping with her. She looked at whips,
long-lashed whips of the kind used on dogs. "Are these what you require,
madam?" asked the shopman. "No, they are too small," said Wanda judicially,
with a side glance at me. "I need something heavier --" "For a bulldog,
perhaps?" he suggested. "Why yes," she exclaimed. "The kind used in Russia for
intractable serfs." She looked further and at last picked out a heavy whip
made of braided leather, the sight of which gave me a strange, shrinking
sensation. "Now goodbye, Severin," she said. "I have other purchases to make
for which I shan't need you." I took my leave of her and went for a walk.
Coming back I saw Wanda leaving a furrier's; she beckoned to me. "Consider, my
dear," she began pleasantly, "I have never made a secret of the fascination
your fantastic character holds for me. The idea of having such a serious man
altogether in my power, actually lying at my feet in ecstasy, stirs me -- but
will this attraction last? A woman loves a man, but she abuses a slave and
ends by kicking him aside." "Very well then," I replied. "Kick me aside when
you are tired of me. I wish only to be your slave." "Ah, Severin, dangerous
forces lie within me," said Wanda after we had gone a few steps further. "You
are awakening them, and to no good to yourself. You know how to paint
pleasure, cruelty, arrogance, in glowing colours, -- but what you would say if
I really tried my hand at them and made you the first subject of the trial? I
should be like the tyrant Dionysius who had the inventor of the brazen ox
roasted in it, to see whether his groans and death-rattle really resembled an
ox's bellowing. Perhaps I am a she- Dionysius..." "Be so," I cried, "and my
dreams will be realized! I am yours for good or ill, as you see fit. The
destiny I feel within my breast is driving me on -- demoniacally,
relentlessly." "Beloved, I do not even care to see you today or tomorrow: not
until the day after tomorrow, and then as my slave. Your Mistress, Wanda." "As
my slave" was underlined. I read the note, which I received early in the
morning, once more; then I had a donkey saddled -- an animal symbolic of
learning -- and rode into the mountains; I was trying to dull the pain of my
desire and longing with the magnificent scenery of the Carpathians. I return
tired, hungry, thirsty and more in love than ever. I change my clothes
quickly, and a few moments later knock at her door. "Come in!" I enter. She is
standing in the middle of the room, wearing a gown of white satin which flows
over her body like liquid light; over it she wears a scarlet Russian jacket
richly edged with ermine, and on her powdered snowy hair is a small diamond
tiara. She stands with her arms folded, her brows contracted. "Wanda!" I run
forward and am about to throw my arms around her when she draws back,
measuring me with her gaze from head to foot. "Slave!" "Mistress!" I kneel,
and kiss the hem of her gown. "That is better." "Oh, how beautiful you are."
"Do I please you?" She stepped before the mirror and looked at herself with
proud satisfaction. "I shall go mad..." I murmured. Her lips twitched in
derision, and she looked at me mockingly from between half-closed lids. "Give
me the whip." I looked around the room. "No," she cried, "stay as you are, on
your knees!" She went to the fireplace, took the whip from the mantelpiece and
then, looking at me with a meaningful smile, made it whistle in the air; then,
slowly, she rolled up the sleeve of her jacket. "Marvellous woman!" I cried.
"Silence, slave!" Her mouth suddenly twisted with beautiful savagery, and she
lashed me with the whip; the next moment she threw one arm around me and bent
down with a tender look. "Did I hurt you?" She asked with a mixture of shyness
and timidity. "No," I said, "and even if you had, the pain that comes from you
is a joy. Strike again, if it gives you any pleasure." "Ah, it does not..."
But once again I was seized by that strange intoxication. "Whip me," I begged,
"whip me without mercy!" Wanda raised the whip and struck me twice. "Now, are
you satisfied?" "No." "No? Seriously?" "Whip me, I beg you -- it is a joy to
me." "Yes, because you know it is not in earnest, and that I could not find it
in my heart to hurt you. And you are right: for me this brutal game goes
against the grain. If I were really the kind of woman who whips her slaves you
would be horrified." "No, Wanda," I replied, "I love you more than myself, I
am devoted to you, for life or death. You can literally do with mc whatever
you wish, whatever your whim suggests." "Severin!" "Tread me underfoot!" I
cried, throwing myself down before her. "I hate all this play-acting," she
said impatiently. "Then abuse me in earnest..." An uncanny pause. "Severin, I
am warning you -- for the last time," said Wanda. "If you love me," I begged
with upraised eyes, "be cruel." "If I love you," she repeated slowly. "Very
well!" She stepped back and looked down at me with an evil smile: standing
there with the long-lashed whip doubled in her hand, she was marvellously
beautiful. "Be my slave then, and know what it means to be given into the
hands of a woman." At the same moment she thrust me away from her with her
foot. "How do you like the sound of this, slave?" she said, and cut the air
with the whip. "Get up!" I made to rise. "Not like that," she ordered. "on
your knees." I obeyed, and she began to apply the lash. The blows fell rapidly
and with stinging force, each one cutting into my flesh and burning, but the
pain was rapturous -- for it came from her whom I adored and for whom I was
ready to lay down my life... At last she ceased. "I am really beginning to
enjoy this," she said, "but enough for tonight. I have a diabolical curiosity
to see how much you can stand, I find a cruel pleasure in seeing you quiver
and writhe under this whip, in hearing your moans and cries, I want to keep on
whipping until you beg for mercy, until you are senseless. You have roused a
dangerous creature in me... But now, get up." I seized her hand to press it to
my lips. "What insolence!" She thrust me away with her foot. "Out of my sight,
slave!" I awoke after a feverish night filled with confused dreams. Dawn was
just breaking. How much of what was still floating in my memory was true? What
was experience, and what was dream? That I have been whipped is certain, I can
still feel each stroke, can count the burning red stripes on my body. And she
whipped me. Yes, now I know. My dream has been realized. What is it like? Am I
disappointed with the truth of my dream? No, I am only a little tired -- but
her cruelty has enraptured me. Oh, how I love her, how I adore her! Anything I
write here could not express a tithe of my feeling for her, my utter devotion.
What happiness, to be her slave. She calls to me from her balcony. I hasten
up. She is standing on the threshold, holding out her hand in a comradely
manner. "I am ashamed of myself," she says as I embrace her; and she hides her
head on my breast. "Why?" "Try to forget that ugly scene last night," she said
in a quavering voice. "I have satisfied your insane wish, now let us be
sensible and happy and loving, and in a year I will be your wife." "Mistress,"
I cried, "and I your slave!" "Not another word of slavery, cruelty or the
whip," she interrupted. "I will grant you no such favours -- nothing except
wearing my fur jacket. Come, help me into it."
|