Read Teleny or the Reverse of the Medal for Free Online

strength, in fact.
    My first infatuation was for a young Hercules of a butcher, who came courting our maid —a pretty girl, as far as I can remember. He was a stout athletic fellow with sinewy arms, who looked as if he could have felled an ox with a blow of his fist.
    I often used to sit and watch him unawares, noting every expression of his face while he was making love, almost feeling the lust he felt himself.
    How I did wish he would speak to me instead of joking with my stupid maid. I felt jealous of her although I liked her very much. Sometimes he used to take me up and fondle me, but that was very seldom; one day, however, when—apparently excited—he had tried hard to kiss her, and had not succeeded, he took me up and greedily pressed his lips against mine, kissing me as if he were parched with thirst.
    Although I was but a very little child, still I think this act must have brought about an erection, for I remember every pulse of mine was fluttering. I still remember the pleasure I felt when—like a cat—I could rub myself against his legs, nestle between his thighs, sniff him like a dog, or pat and paddle him; but, alas! he seldom heeded me.
    My greatest delight in my boyhood was to see men bathing. I could hardly keep myself from rushing up to them; I should have liked to handle and kiss them all over. I was quite beyond myself when I saw one of them naked.
    A phallus acted upon me, as—I suppose—it does upon a very hot woman; my mouth actually watered at its sight, especially if it was a good-sized, full-blooded one, with an unhooded thick and fleshy glans.
    Withal, I never understood that I loved men and not women. What I felt was that convulsion of the brain that kindles the eyes with a fire full of madness, an eager bestial delight, a fierce sensual desire. Love, I thought, was a quiet drawing-room flirtation, something soft, maudlin and aesthetic, quite different from that passion full of rage and hatred which was burning within me. In a word, much more of a sedative than an aphrodisiac.
    —Then, I suppose you had never had a woman?
    —Oh, yes! several; though by chance, rather than by choice. Nevertheless, for a Frenchman of my age, I had begun life rather late. My mother—although considered a very light person, much given to pleasure—had taken more care of my bringing up than many serious, prosy, fussy women would have done; for she always had a great deal of tact and observation. Therefore I had never been put as a boarder into any school, for she knew that such places of education are—as a rule—only hotbeds of vice. Who is the interne of either sex who has not begun life by tribadism, onanism, or sodomy.
    My mother, besides, was frightened lest I might have inherited my father's sensual disposition, and she, therefore, did her best to withhold from me all early temptations, and in fact she really succeeded in keeping me out of mischief.
    I was therefore at fifteen and sixteen far more innocent than any of my school fellows, yet I managed to hide my utter ignorance by pretending to be more profligate and blase.
    Whenever they spoke of women—and they did so every day—I smiled knowingly, so that they soon came to the conclusion that 'still waters run deep.'
    —And you knew absolutely nothing?
    —I only knew that there was something about putting it in and pulling it out.
    At fifteen, I was one day in our garden, strolling listlessly about in a little meadow by the roadside at the back of the house.
    I was walking on the mossy grass, as soft as a velvety carpet, so that my footsteps were not heard. All at once I stopped by an old disused kennel, which often served me as a seat.
    When I got there I heard a voice within it. I bent down my ear, and listened without moving. Thereupon I heard a young girl's voice say:
    'Put it in and then pull it out; then put it in again, and pull it out; and so on for some time.'
    'But I can't put it in,' was the reply.
    'Now,' said the first. 'I open my