Read Teleny or the Reverse of the Medal for Free Online Page A

hole widely with both my hands. Push it in; stick it in— more—much more—as much as you can.'
    'Well—but take away your fingers.'
    'There—it's all out again; try and push it in.'
    'But I can't. Your hole is shut,' muttered the boy's voice.
    'Press down.'
    'But why have I to put it in?'
    'Well, you see my sister has a soldier for her good friend; and they always do like that when they are alone together. Haven't you seen the cocks jump on the hens, and peck at them? Well, they also do like that, only my sister and the soldier kiss and kiss; so that it takes them a long time to do it.'
    'And he always puts it in and pulls it out?'
    'Of course; only just at the end my sister always tells him to mind and not finish it in her, so that he may not make her a child. So now, if you wish to be my good friend—as you say you want—push it in—with your fingers, if you can't otherwise; but pay attention and don't finish in me, because you may make me a child.'
    Thereupon I peeped in, and I saw our gardener's youngest daughter—a girl of ten or twelve—stretched on her back, while a little vagrant of about seven was sprawling over her, trying his best to put her instructions into practice.
    That was my first lesson, and I had thereby a faint inkling of what men and women do when they are lovers.
    —And you were not curious to know more about the matter?
    —Oh, yes! Many a time I should have yielded to the temptation, and have accompanied my friends in their visit to some wenches—whose charms they always extolled in a peculiar low, nasal, goatish voice, and with an unexplainable shivering of the whole body—had I not been kept back by the fear of being laughed at by them and by the girls themselves; for I should still have been as inexperienced in knowing what to do with a woman as Daphnis himself, before Lycenion had slipped under him, and thus initiated him into the mysteries of love; and yet hardly more initiation is required in the matter than for the new-born babe to take to the breast.
    —But when did your first visit to a brothel take place?
    —Upon leaving college, when the mystic laurel and bays had wreathed our brows. According to tradition we were to partake of a farewell supper and make jolly together, before separating on our divers paths in life.
    —Yes, I remember those merry suppers of the Quartier Latin.
    —When the supper was over—
    —And everyone more or less tipsy—
    —Precisely; it was agreed that we should pass the evening in visiting some of the houses of nightly entertainment. Although I was myself rather merry, and usually up to any kind of joke, still I felt somewhat shy, and would willingly have given my friends the slip, rather than expose myself to their ridicule and to all the horrors of syphilis; but do what I could it was impossible to get rid of them.
    They called me a sneak, they imagined that I wanted to spend the evening with some mistress, a pretty grisette, or a fashionable cocotte, for the term horizontale had not yet come into fashion. Another hinted that I was tied to my mammy's apron-strings, that my dad had not allowed me to take the latch-key. A third said that I wanted to go and 'menarmi la rilla' as Aretino crudely expresses it.
    Seeing that it was impossible to escape, I consented with a good grace to accompany them.
    A certain Biou, young in years, but old in craft, who—like an elderly tomcat—had, at sixteen, already lost an eye in a battle of love, (having got some syphilitic virus into it), proposed to show us life in the unknown parts of the real Quartier Latin.
    'First,' said he, 'I'll take you to a place where we'll spend little and have some jolly fun; it'll just put us “en train” and from there we'll go to another house, to fire off our pistols, or I should rather say our revolvers, for mine is a seven shot barrel.'
    His single eye twinkled with delight, and his trousers were stirred from within as he said this. We all agreed to his proposal, I