VOICE: And the count?
BARON: He appeared that night too, but only at the last moment.
VOICE: No, you numbskull! In those fifteen years! What happened to him in those fifteen years, after the Terror?
BARON: He was my greatest confidant. He was often at my side. I owe him my life. He’s a man of the world, with many contacts. More than once he managed to stop my name being included in lists of suspects. He never took part in an orgy at the château, but he got me the men and women I needed. He never wanted to take part. And it wasn’t for lack of invitations. I wanted to pay him back for so many favours, but he always declined my offers. It just seems that my nights weren’t to his taste. Until the last one, at least. For on this last occasion, it was he who invited himself. At the last moment. And I accepted, of course. I couldn’t refuse. He had my best interests at heart. He understood my philosophy. And he respected me. As soon as the baroness started with her stories and went away to Marseilles, he procured the best women in the region for me. Once, he even brought three prostitutes from Paris. He got the prettiest women in the Midi, who were up for anything. He helped me to understand the baroness’s caprices, that she wasn’t a woman for the bedroom, and made me understand that she had her own reasons. He had his own little domestic problems. The countess, so it seems, also spent most of her time away from the count. She hated provincial life. That was what she said. And my cousin led me to understand that certain women don’t appreciate the pleasures of the flesh. Because their instincts have been undermined by convention. How on earth did I believe him? It’s true that it was a great consolation to know that he had gone through the same humiliation that I was suffering now, but that idea that the baroness, like the countess, might have had her instincts undermined, only strengthened my will to corrupt her and debase her to bring them to the surface. He hardly saw the countess. They had no children. He must have consoled himself in some other way. But I didn’t ask. The count is a discreet man. I owe him the discretion with which he brought his consignments of women and men to the château, the most depraved examples of the species, risking himself even under the Terror. Just as he helped me, he must have got his own benefits from these contacts. It’s strange that you’ve never heard of the Lagrange nights, and in particular of the last, which was in all the important European papers from what they tell me, although it didn’t even come close to the previous ones for debauchery. There were only four of us. I was taken by surprise. It wasn’t intended to be an orgy. It was a special night for the count’s maid. It’s true that no one had died on the other occasions, but nothing was planned, believe me. Unlike the others, which I planned in every detail, often with the count’s collaboration, I didn’t expect guests for that night. I had to change the plans at the last moment, because of the baroness. It was completely unexpected and out of order. I’d planned a night alone with Martine, the count’s maid; I met her just when I’d decided to look for him in what was left of his lands, something I’d not done since I’d known the baroness, fifteen years earlier. Since that lunch in which he introduced the baroness to me, he’d always procured the women and the men I needed. And since meeting the baroness, I’d never returned to what was left of the count’s lands. He was always very obliging. It was he who came to see me. He took the initiative before I even thought about going over to see him. But now it was more than a month since he’d last appeared. More than a month with no news of him, and I needed more individuals willing to take part in a night I’d been imagining for some time. The count might be ill, or even have died in a duel or, worse, have been included in the list of traitors, under false accusation of one of the Emperor’s toadies. Someone with so many contacts attracts many enemies too, and this world is full of slanderers. He’d always been so helpful, and the least I could do was to go and look for him in what was left of his property, and go to his aid if it should be necessary. That was when the miracle happened. When I least expected it. There she was, this thing of beauty. It’s curious that, fifteen years after the baroness, I should have met Martine, both of them in what was left of the count’s property. And that I should have fallen in love with both. When I arrived at what was left of the count’s property, neither he nor the countess were there. I feared the worst. He was a clever man. At the worst moments, he had to let part of the property and his possessions go to keep the best part. He understood the situation. He managed to keep in with the right people. And he gave me advice. But one never knows. With so many interests involved, his allies might be the first to stab him in the back. From what they told me, the countess hadn’t set foot there for years. And they told me nothing of the count. Only that he wasn’t there. That was when the miracle happened. She appeared from the back of the house, she was a wonderful girl, with her breasts pressed into the silver corset like the ones I still had the memory of from the first time I saw the baroness, the same little breasts, covered by the golden hair falling over her shoulders. Where had this creature come from? Was she the last maid left to the count? She was the baroness as I had imagined her the first time and all through the seven months I didn’t see her before our marriage. She was a mirage. The most beautiful woman. The baroness as I had imagined her during seven months of waiting, and who had disappeared when I saw her at the altar and, above all, with her refusal to give in to my growing desires to debase her. I asked her name and she told me. I asked how old she was and she told me. Fifteen. She also said that the count would only be back the following week. He’d gone to Paris. I asked how long she’d been there. She laughed. She said: Forever. That explained it. I hadn’t been in what was left of the count’s lands for fifteen years. So I couldn’t have seen her. Then, she whispered to me that, in fact, she had fled from a convent where she was being prepared to be a novice. Before the mother superior could use her, which was more than understandable. And she’d ended up there as a servant. Straight away, I invited her to visit me. I could feel a thirst for vengeance in her eyes, though I couldn’t think what for. She had fine skin and hands. It’s quite usual for a girl like her to rebel against her condition. And the fact that I might be of use to her to take her revenge on the world only excited my senses the more. My body at the service of a maid’s vengeance. She smiled, with her full lips. I tried to kiss them, but she drew back. She feigned timidity. She was for me: treacherous in her purity. I did everything to persuade her to come and see me in the château. I didn’t tell her it was nothing more than a ruin. I promised to get her out of there and she began to laugh, laugh a lot, so much that she scared me. I thought I might have sent her mad. But she soon pulled herself together. She knew what she was doing, and that’s something I admire. I admire women who know how to seduce and to use words. She was for me. I forgot my orgies. I forgot everything else I’d gone there to do. It was her I wanted. I asked her to come to the château of Lagrange before the count came back, on the night of the second Saturday in the month, when I planned my orgies. But this time, I explained, it would be a night for her alone. I was in love. I fall in love very easily. I’m not a proper libertine; I’m a slave of my instincts but of my feelings too. She smiled and accepted. With a great deal of reluctance. She said she would come on Saturday before the count came back. I’ll send someone to bring you, I said. I saw she was delighted. I saw her breathing nervously, panting inside her corset. She was mine. Please understand that for her I was not planning an orgy. It was, exceptionally, a night only for two. That’s why I couldn’t believe my eyes when the count appeared at château Lagrange, well before his planned return, exactly on the night of the second Saturday in the month, when I usually laid on my orgies, and on top of that bringing the baroness, whom I’d not seen for months. They appeared a few hours before the maid. I couldn’t believe what I heard and saw. For the first time in fifteen years, the baroness was asking me if she could take part in one of the nights in the château. The baroness, my wife. She said she’d heard stories of my fame in Marseilles and Bordeaux. After fifteen years, she was ready to discover the pleasures of sex. I burst out laughing. But the count didn’t laugh, and nor did she. I laughed out loud. What an irony! After so many years dreaming of deflowering her. Just at this moment, when I’d found this light on my path. It was all very inconvenient. I pulled the count over into a corner. I asked him to help me once more and take the baroness away; she was spoiling my night. He said he thought it better for me to agree with what she was asking of me. He said he would take part too, out of solidarity with me. With me? I shouted, and started laughing again. That was when he asked where the maid was. I don’t know how he’d found out. Probably one of the other servants who worked on the land or in the stables, or some witch tired of cleaning up cowshit and envious of Martine’s beauty, had betrayed her. I answered, trying to hide my surprise, that she ought to arrive at any moment, I’d sent a carriage to fetch her, and asked him where he’d found such a beautiful creature. As I asked him I laughed, but he didn’t. Nor did he reply. Before I’d pulled him over into the corner, the baroness had told me that she’d got hold of the formula for your aphrodisiac, master, the Spanish fly one. She was anxious as she spoke, nervous, and ready to enjoy the party. It would be just now, when I was in love with someone else, after fifteen years of debauchery trying to forget her, fifteen years of absence, that she wanted to take part in one of my orgies. And the count! I tried to tell him I was in love, and that I’d even thought, exceptionally, of not laying on an orgy that Saturday. I had to speak carefully so as not to offend him, now that he too said he was ready to take part, an eleventh-hour sodomite. But he repeated that he didn’t think it was a good idea to disappoint the baroness. The count and I saw eye to eye. I decided to accept his advice. My meeting with Martine would be put off to another occasion. Immediately after talking about the Spanish fly, the baroness said that she had only one demand, since it was the first time: beyond the count and me, she only wanted one other woman, and we should not get a prostitute for her. Little did she know that that night I was only expecting the count’s maid and no one else. I had no orgy prepared. Only the fifteen-year-old maid, ready to be deflowered. Just like with the baroness, when I saw her for the first time in what was left of the count’s property, it had been a blinding flash, what the hypocrites call love at first sight. I wasn’t going to let the two of them spoil everything. If at least I could prevent Martine arriving and substitute her for a prostitute, I would satiate the baroness’s inconvenient desires on that Saturday, and the following one bring the maid back again. But the baroness would not have a prostitute on her first night of debauch. I racked my brains. I couldn’t lose everything because of the caprices of a minx who for fifteen years repelled all my advances, rightful as they were. What did she want now, with her sudden conversion to sex? That was what I asked the count, irritated as I was by having to change my plans. And he replied that women can smell things a long way off. They have a sixth sense. Just now, when I was in love with another, she asked me to be subjected to punishment from my whip. She wanted to be corrected by her husband, to be punished for her fifteen years of dereliction of duty, and she was even providing me with the aphrodisiac. At the same time as I felt frustrated of my night of love – I had decided to keep to my encounter with Martine, I wanted to discover alone the perfidiousness of those fifteen years of purity – I confess I couldn’t contain my excitement at the prospect of soon beating the baroness, that minx!, after fifteen years of respecting her chaste refusals. She was no longer the woman I had known in what was left of the count’s property. Nor even the one I had met again at the altar seven months later. I tried to make the count convince her that none of this made the least sense. Useless. My only solution was to wait. The baroness said: a chamber orgy. It was plain she didn’t know what she was talking about. Whoever’s heard of that! A chamber orgy! The baroness! She said: I want to be initiated with a discreet ceremony. As if she was talking about a late christening. I confess it passed through my brain that my hour of revenge had come after fifteen years of prudish rejection, the mare! I imagined subjecting her to the horrors of a libertine night, and debasing her to the point of death. She fully deserved it. But it was only a thought, interrupted by the sight of the count entering what was left of the château salons with my sweet Martine. He’d gone to wait for her at what was left of the gateway. They really had decided to put paid to my happiness. The baroness had put a platter on the table with the aniseed pastilles in which she’d dissolved the Spanish fly paste according to the formula she’d got hold of. On the journey, which had taken two days, from Bordeaux to Lagrange, she’d gone by an alchemist’s, and he’d made her the paste according to the formula she’d got hold of, heaven knows how. She got to the château exhausted by the journey. She said: I have to retire to my apartments. She disappeared while the count was waiting outside for his maid. And she only came back when the count came back in; he came into the château, followed by the maid. Martine had the countess’s clothes on. It was as I’d thought. She didn’t think she’d be caught