The Romance of Violette

by Alexandre Dumas

  As her nervous system gradually reverted to its normal state of quietude, so the babyish look returned to her violet eyes, and her face was as full of innocence as heretofore.

  “Good night, my own papa! Good night, dear love – my father- and my love!”

  With a last kiss – a pure, chaste touch of her closed lips this time – she turned and slept like a child, sinking at once into hearty slumber.

  Sandcross looked enraptured at her for a second, and switching off the light retired on tiptoe to his own room. Two or three times did he return in the night to kiss his loving girl, who still slept on, until he dared no longer show himself as the servants arrived through the kitchen at six o'clock.

  Next day, Fanny stayed in bed, scolded tenderly for her love of theatres and suppers by her affectionate mother, although she could well understand the allurement of a coup of iced consomme and a truffle or two after the enjoyment of a new play.

  The guilty couple now sailed on a calm and laughing lake of unmitigated wanton voluptuousness. Sandcross and his daughter lived through a perpetual honeymoon, and the electrician's wife was charmed to see such a perfect union, suspecting of course nothing whatever. A mother is always the last to grasp the guilt of her children. Sandcross's wife compared the life of their daughter with that of other girls in Paris; fretful, bickering, coquettish maidens, suffering from green sickness, and perpetually worrying their poor parents to get them a husband so that the wayward up-to-date damsels shall be at liberty to love – other men of their own choice.

  Fanny grew exceptionally obedient and meek. Her chorus of “Yes, ma!” and “Yes, pa!” would have made the recording angel retire from business, had not the devil been there to whisper in his ear the secret of incestuous lechery that kept Fanny so outwardly calm. Indeed, when matrimony was mentioned it was she who consoled her mamma, impatient to see her daughter smothered in orange-blossoms and white faille.

  “What are the men about?” she would sigh, and worry her husband to leave France, and settle in England, Saxon suitors not being so mercenary as the sons of Gaul.

  In the meanwhile, Fanny and her father slipped into each other's rooms at night whenever it suited them, and that was very often.

  From the point of view of simple salacity, it is perfectly certain that nothing can equal the enjoyment to be found with a young girl, really loving the man who has deflowered her. Her sensual being gradually develops in the arms of a male who is, for the time being, all in all to her-the one man in whom every thought and desire is centred. The surprises of slowly approaching womanhood, and the first thrills of ravishing, immodest pleasure and pruriency have all arisen in her under his influence. She becomes his devoted slave, thankful for a kiss, and brimming over with gratitude for the deeper insidious final caress when he chooses to bestow it upon her.

  There was another and more cynical standpoint which we must not forget, which will rejoice the heart of all those who find the power of their passions weirdly increased by inflicting punishment upon the object of their affections. To be able to hurt the loved one, mingling pleasure and pain at one's sweet will, certain that the dolent martyr will eagerly kiss the hand that brandishes the birch, is not that a most enchanting dream of overpowering delight?

  Fanny's first sensual spasm was due to spanking, and the desire to be flogged would thus last all her life, inseparable from other yearnings. A young woman, whipped by her first lover, nearly always falls under the spell of the enchanted twigs. It seems as if the rod, red-hot, burnt into the brain, indelibly searing the imagination of the so-called victim. Such is the invisible brand of the birch.

  Papa taught her everything that a woman could possibly require to know, especially those tit-bits of refined scientific stupration which females are generally better without. What a difference to the half-veiled semi-falsehoods of her silly governesses! Here was practice and theory.

  What delighted Fanny most was Sandcross's staff of life itself; the tremendous instrument from which had sprung the mysterious germ of her existence. Alone with her father, she must need free the blind bird from its cage, and at rest, or proudly standing, it was unceasingly the object of her wondering admiration. She would play with it for hours, kissing it, talking to it, purring over it, examining it as if she saw it for the first time whenever her avidious hand dived deeply down in the folds of her father's underwear. When her eager, tickling touches caused her pa's excitement to bring him close to the goal of the orgasm, she fell back on his big hairy purse, playfully handling and dandling the slumbering olives which she deliriously exclaimed were her twin idols. She had sprung from their white foam like another Venus rising from a sea of sperm, and now they gave her the sole pleasure she hungered for in this world. How could she help worshipping them?

  There was not the slightest shadow of repentance or remorse to darken the dazzling path leading through their waking dream of highly refined voluptuousness, and if it were possible for either of them to have given utterance to any inward prayer whatsoever, they would have lifted up their hearts in some song of touching, joyful thanksgiving to the unknown power that had created the daughter for the father, and the father for the daughter.

  Fanny, by dint of perpetually playing a part, grew in time to be a most perfect actress and a ready, able, tricky liar. She gloried in her hypocrisy, and now and then amused herself by skating on the thinnest of ice, tempting Providence, and abandoning her mouth and body to the most shameless caresses, before her mother's back was scarcely turned.

  Sandcross developed a new malady which he had invented himself-a kind of intermittent insomnia. He had irregular attacks of sleeplessness, enabling him to wander about the house at nights, and thus furnishing excuses for all noises and sounds of footsteps which might be heard in the small hours. His only cure was a glass of soda-water liberally dashed with spirits about two in the morning, with a cigar-and his wily, lustful daughter of the innocent violet eyes, to keep him company. She would then read to him chapters from ultra-naughty novels in French, English, and German, printed on the sly, and soon was a walking encyclopedia of love, passion, and bawdiness. She rolled with radiant ecstasy in the slough of her shame, proud of being her own father's mistress, and always eager to learn fresh secrets of licentiousness.

  In spite of all his scoldings and alarms she would never permit him those exercises known to Malthusian couples as “withdrawing", nor practise any fraudulent tricks to hinder conception. Copulation, without the final shower of soft seed, she opined was like kissing a woman or a priest, something very nice, but detestably incomplete. If she fell in the family way, she declared she would retire to Switzerland, or Belgium, and under a false name bring her dear baby into the world. She unblushingly declared to her father that she secretly longed to find herself enceinte, and would be pleased beyond measure to bear a boy, for preference, the picture she hoped of the dual father and grandfather.

  Luckily her womb remained refractory, although she did all she could to bring about this consummation which her father devoutly wished would never take place.

  Another of this extraordinary couple's delights was to take little trips alone together to most of the European capitals. Sandcross's business allowed him to travel as much as he liked; he had but to-take the place of his representatives. By this means, he increased his gains and enjoyed his daughter more freely.

  The rich Englishman and the young and lovely woman who was generally taken for his wife or mistress, had many strange little adventures together, seeing peculiar sights, as they always sought for some glorious indecency in all the capitals they visited. In Sweden and Norway, they had women to attend to them in their bath; in Russia, men assisted during their ablutions; and at Ostend, one day, on repairing to a bath-house, they were shown by the sedate proprietor into a double bathroom.

  It must not be thought that Sandcross ever allowed any stranger to touch his daughter. He did not debauch her to that extent, nor did her insatiable curiosity for all the sights in the peep-s
how of sexual horrors induce her to forget her allegiance to her papa. She was an onlooker. She liked to see, but not to touch or be touched. We need not say more. The following instances will suffice to show our meaning.

  Her father had been told that in Paris were miserable prostitutes of the lowest class, too old and ugly, or if young, too shabby, to show themselves in the light of day, and who eked out a precarious living by masturbating passers-by in the darkest recesses of the public parks and gardens. Fanny wanted to see these off-scourings of feminality, and her papa allowed her to view most smutty scenes.

  There was a young creature dressed in bicycle costume, who with an old rusty machine, used to haunt the benches of the Bois de Boulogne. When in a lonely bypath, she espied a man on foot or on horseback, she would rise from her seat and open her bloomers in front showing the gaping, worn mystery of her shop-soiled sex. If this simple enticement succeeded, the sylvan siren drew her prey into the bushes and there offered him the contents of her breeches or the succour of her hands and mouth for a franc or two. She satisfied horsemen by standing on a bench or broad post, using her lips and mouth to sate their spending appetite, without it being necessary for them to dismount. Fanny saw her at work, and opened her baby eyes with her look of simplicity and candour, while the slow moisture of lickerish lewd desire on her glorious lips betrayed the secret concealed by her skirts, as she glanced at her father.

  Their blood heated to boiling point, they would return to their taxi, stationed some little distance off, and Fanny would study the old legend of Saint George and the dragon, on pa's lap, greedily engulphing to the pommel the beloved sword that taught her mother the science of cut and thrust years ago, and which now urged on the daughter to her molten crisis of incest, assisted by the shaking of the hired vehicle.

  Fanny would then sink down by Sandcross's side, happy and glutted, with her hand on the sign of virility. A black silk handkerchief was spread like an apron over the knees of the author of her being, and his private parts fully at liberty, his daughter could slip her hand underneath the dark foulard, and caress them as she chose while the wheels of their car rolled round. This was especially useful when going to the theatre or returning. Before reaching home, after the play they frequently indulged in complete connection in their roomy auto.

  One cold November evening, at dusk, they strolled together through the Champs Elysees gardens, and Fanny dropping a thick, double veil, of the kind known in the trade as tulle adultere, Sandcross interviewed a ragged young girl who was anxiously awaiting customers under the greenwood trees. A thick, rimy mist was falling, but the enterprising strumpet, in return for a trifle of silver, declared that she did not despair of getting enough to pay for her dinner and the morrow's keep in the course of an hour or so.

  There are, it appears, a number of men who enjoy naught but the manipulation of female fingers in the open air. They stand up, and the woman plunges her hand into their trousers in front, or through an unstitched or cut pocket, according as these misguided voluptuaries of the highways have arranged. Some cast their seed upon the ground, like Onan of old, others preferring to ejaculate inside their garments. They like to walk away, feeling themselves bedewed with their own semen. Others only look at these girls busy in the dark. The wretched females know this well, and are not surprised when masturbating a client to see another ghostly masculine form looming up in the gloaming The male who is being operated may start, dismayed, and lose all the benefits of cheap al fresco massage, but the nymph of the Paphian groves of Paris, with her horny, but willing palm, reassures her idiot, telling him not to be alarmed but to hurry up and discharge, as the new arrival has only come to look on.

  Sandcross and Fanny became lookers-on for once, and the father, always eager to please his daughter in her voyage round the world of venedy, told one of the open air, fingering females to accost the first passer-by and offer to masturbate him for nothing. Sandcross would treat the wayfarer to pastoral pleasure if allowed to look on with “his wife”. Two or three men were induced to expose their persons, and the peripatetic harlot, delighted at the windfall, proved that she could play upon this pipe, it being as easy as lying down. While the men were being shaken and rubbed past the gates of paradise, Sandcross and Fanny stood by and compared proportions and form. Next, sodomitical stories set the blood of Miss Sandcross on fire, and father and daughter watched the beardless boys of the unemployed stamp hanging about urinals offering their services to elderly, well-dressed men. Sandcross found out a furnished hotel, kept by a retired catamite, now too old to serve the inverted tastes of his patrons. He had invested his savings earned by the sweat of his brows in a comfortable little lodging-house, frequented by old friends and new acquaintances. Fanny and her father paid a visit there, and the jovial landlord at their request sent round the corner for a young passive pederast, who was celebrated for his abnormal proportions in one direction, and the narrowness of his… ideas, in another. The young knight of the powder puff appeared rouged, with hair dyed like that of a woman, wearing a loose, lay-down collar with a crushed strawberry cravat, and a short, tight-fitting, single-breasted jacket that enhanced the shape of his undulating crupper. Fanny thought she would have died of suppressed laughter when the grotesque hermaphrodite of the Boulevards walked with a wriggle of his breadwinner into the room and going straight up to Mr. Sandcross thrust his tongue into her father's mouth by way of polite salutation. The incestuous pair amused themselves by stripping and spanking him, and another boy being procured, they looked on while a pederastic duo was played from end to end for their benefit, not a note or variation being slurred over. When the lads were dismissed, Sandcross threw himself on willing Fanny and they fully satisfied themselves.

  Such scenes were repeated for their benefit in many parts of France and other countries, Fanny never tiring. The nervis of Marseilles, the boatmen on the lakes of Northern- Italy, the gondoliers of Venice, the ragazzi of Rome, arid naked Neapolitans, all served to interest fantastic Fanny, the buxom queen of incest.

  She increased in stature, and filled out, thriving on the rich libations of in-breeding, until she attained the massive, though proportionate curves of the Grecian Venus. Her existence was an ideal one. She loved but one man on earth. He returned her affection and was entirely faithful to her, thinking no more of any other female, and showering gifts on his daughter-concubine.

  A cloud now passed over the happy home of Sandcross. His wife fell ill. Continuous gastronomical excesses, and a growing disinclination to put her foot to the ground or even go outside the house, had reduced Fanny's mother to the rank of an obese invalid. She developed rheumatic gout, and after several long illnesses and relapses, devotedly attended and nursed by her husband and daughter, it was discovered that her heart was touched and great care was therefore necessary.

  Fanny was getting near the age of twenty, when the doctors gave their verdict, Mrs. Sandcross being convalescent after a more than usually painful crisis of her malady. She was ordered change of air; a season in her native country was the thing for her. So she went by easy stages to Buxton to spend the month of August and part of September in a hydropathic establishment. Fanny and her father accompanied her. All three were greatly fatigued; the sick woman and her two faithful nurses. Miss Sandcross was invited to stop with some friends at Pulborough in Sussex; and papa was forced to return to business in Paris. At that moment, he could not leave the capital for more than forty-eight hours at a time.

  Papa and his Fan were greatly grieved at this their first separation, but they both needed rest and a change after the sleepless nights of anxious watching passed in turns by the bedside of the suffering mother.

  About the middle of September, mamma was much better in health, though still rather weak, and she was allowed to depart from the sanatorium. Fanny's visit had come to an end and she was dying to be clasped to her father's arms once more. The arcadian pleasures of honest English homes soon palled upon her, and she found the nights ridiculously long, as sh
e tossed on her solitary spring mattress in the best guest room. She was courted and adulated by the finest young men one could wish to set eyes upon, gentlemen athletes, skilled in all sports and gentle as sucking-doves with the fair sex, but none of those who worshipped at the shrine of her beauty or fell stricken to the heart by the magic of her violet, marvelling orbs, made the slightest impression. She would have given all the picked lives at Pulborough and its vicinity for one, soft, lingering kiss from the parental lips. She loved her father deeply, truly, loyally.

  Sandcross had arranged to go to England to fetch his wife and daughter, returning to France by way of Dieppe, meeting Fanny at Lewes as she left the Pulborough people, and proceeding to Newhaven with her, where father and daughter would meet Mrs. Sandcross returning from Buxton, and thus all three could embark and cross the Channel together.

  All the dates were carefully arranged by Mr. Sandcross, and he had a motive in being so punctilious. He had not seen Fanny for nearly two months, and as he was getting on in years, full of business cares, and wary now of the wiles of professional prostituted beauties, we may surmise that he had been faithful to his own girl as he called her. He was burning for a quiet night with her, and had arranged things splendidly as he thought.

  Mamma, of course, knew the day on which her husband would meet their daughter at Lewes, lunch with her there, and bring her on to Newhaven, but what she could not divine was that Fanny had arranged to leave Pulborough on the eve of the day notified to her mother, so as to get a night with her papa in the same bed, and then go on to Newhaven next morning. Sandcross was also to leave Paris twelve hours before the time stated to his wife. His good lady, rather feeble after her severe bout of illness, obliged to take minute doses of digitalis, thought it would be better to start from Buxton a day before the time fixed by her husband and sleep at Lewes. She really did not feel equal to going right through to Paris. It would be a nice little surprise, too, for Sandcross and Fanny when they met to have lunch, to find mama at Lewes having preceded them, instead of waiting their arrival at Newhaven.