Tableaux Vivants

THE STRAWBERRY

You have slept enough, pretty one. The sky is clear, the morning air fresh, the birds chirping amid the budding foliage; put on your white dress, dearest, and let us take a trip to the wood!”

Laurette gladly consented; we took the train, got out at Sevres station, and climbed up to the forest.

Arrived under its shade, certain of being alone and unnoticed, we rested ourselves for a while. Laurette offered me her mouth. I took one kiss, two kisses, ten kisses. But she seemed preoccupied. Following her glance, I perceived a sparkling stream which trickled through the herbage and formed a small natural basin surrounded by great clumps of daisies. I comprehended my mistress's longing, and drew her towards the spring. She paddled in the water. I wanted to sprinkle her all over with it.

Afterwards we plunged deep into the wood. At the side of the path I saw some eglantines in flower. I said to my pet, “Laurette, look at these eglantines. If I were a poet I should compare them to the nipples of your breast.”

“Oh!” said she, “they are not so rosy.”

“Indeed they are.”

“I wager they are not.”

My faith, I opened her corsage and compared them. It was I who was in the right.

A little later, Laurette saw some strawberries. She went into the midst of the brambles to pick them, and when she had got her hands full, ate them delightedly. I appealed for my share of the feast; she invited me to take it from her mouth.

Our lips chased each other, and mingled, besmeared with this ruddy and perfumed juice. However, this game could not but lead us to another. Laurette began to roll the whites of her eyes. I speedily divined this language. “Ah, well,” I murmured softly to her, “lie down, then, on the grass.”

When she had lain down, I raised her dress and her white petticoats. She said not a word, did not budge, and held her two thighs tightly pressed together. I commenced tapping on her firm and full stomach, saying,

“Toe, toe! Open, my lady.”

Laurette's two thighs opened themselves sweetly.

“Good morning, the other little mouth,” I said. “Ah, Laurette! If we were to make it also eat strawberries?”

“Put one in, then, with the tip of your finger,” she sighed, “and let us try.”

“Not so silly!” I cried. “It is with the tip of my tongue that I shall put it in.”

I did as I had said. I pushed the strawberry in with the tip of my tongue. Laurette, swooning, said to me, “Push! push again. Ah, Richard! Ah! How amusing! What a merry way of eating strawberries!”

Such were my amours then. I was twenty years old. My heart still rejoices at the remembrance of these simple pleasures and this happy day. O truth! O nature!