“Still on the wash-hand basin, Julie! Are you quite sure that cold water is a good thing to calm the inquietude from which you suffer?”
“I have tried warm water also, sister.”
“I do not know if that is any better.”
“Ah, Nanine!”
“Julie, in truth, what the good God has done in depriving us of our husbands is to have muzzled nature.”
“I agree with you. I have some terrible things to tell you about this. I am wiping myself, and coming back close to you.”
“Julie, since it is you who govern this house, you ought to give me old napkins; new ones scrub me too much. I have become so sensitive there.”
“I feel ticklings night and day. My blood troubles me. I have flushes-”
“I have insupportable palpitations of the heart.”
“Let us go to the church to say our evening prayer, Nanine.”
“Alas, Julie, we have need to pray.”
The light was extinguished. The two sisters doubtless were going out. Calprenede and I looked at each other.
“By what means can we take this pair of turtledoves without males?”
“How seize this ready-made opportunity in the nick of time?”
As we thought for a moment, Calprenede cried, “I have a dildo in my bag.”
In these great crises of despair one understands half a word, Calprenede went and fetched the providential instrument. We approached the half-open window, and leaping through, found ourselves in the room. A cabinet stretched along one side. The famous wash-hand basin was in the middle. A candle was burning in the room; at the further end was an alcove. As I went to place the dildo on the bed, Calprenede stopped me by a very natural reflection.
“If we act thus,” he said to me, “the two poor widows, finding this noble article on their bed, will ask one another who put it there. They will conclude that someone has been in here; they will seek for the visitor, and if we hide ourselves in the cabinet they will easily discover us. Then there will be cries, and an uproar. Everyone will rush in, and we shall be taken to the guardhouse-”
“Where we shall have no other recourse than to make love to the sentry!”
“This isn't the game we must play.”
And we thought afresh.
But two lads of imagination are never at the last shift. The result of our meditation was that the best thing to do would be to go out, after having made a neat parcel of the dildo inside an honest-looking envelope, join our two widows at the neighbouring church, and when they quitted it, present them with the parcel by the hand of the first street lad we could find. Then get in front of them, hurry back, mend up our bridge carefully so as to leave no trace of our passage, get into the cabinet, conceal ourselves underneath a mountain of dirty linen which we saw there, and wait.
We set off for the church. As we walked along the idea struck us to inform ourselves from the neighbours, as adroitly as possible, of the station in life of the two widows. The worst of it was that we had not seen them. If they should be too homely! If they were more than forty years old!
A sovereign placed in the hand of a grocer's boy did the business. The smart lad informed us grinningly that the two ladies were very well conducted persons, widows, the one of an officer, the other of a receiver of taxes; both with scanty fortunes, but virtuous, irreproachable, and very good-looking. The elder was scarcely more than thirty years of age.
“Only,” said the sugar-weighing lad, “she is a little lame.”
“Did you hear?” I whispered to Calprenede, “one of them is lame. We shall recognise them now!”
The shop which we had entered exactly faced the church. The evening service was finishing. “Look!” said Calprenede to me, “here are our sweethearts!”
Another sovereign decided the grocer's lad to act as our messenger, and to be silent as the grave. We handed him the parcel, which, in addition to the piece de resistance, contained a letter. As for us, we took to our heels, reentered our apartment, leapt over and mended our bridge, burrowed into the cabinet, and lay down flat on our stomachs underneath the dirty linen. The two sisters came in.
“What have you got in that parcel, Nanine?”
“I don't know, sister.”
And Nanine crossed by the cabinet to go and shut the window and the Venetian blinds.
We remained without moving, breathless. Julie broke open the parcel, and uttered a loud cry. Nanine ran to her.
“A member!”
“The member of a man.”
“It is a joke which someone wishes to play on us.”
“The insolent!”
“There is a letter, Nanine.”
“Let us read it: 'A present from two compassionate travellers to two affecting unfortunates.' ”
“Julie, we must throw it out of the window.”
“Are you mad, Nanine? Someone would pick it up, and then-”
“Let us throw it on the fire.”
“It is caoutchouc; it would not burn.”
“Caoutchouc?”
“Stop, Nanine! you are dying to look at it. Oh, a look costs nothing. The best revenge we could take against the wicked person who sent us this tool is never to show that we have received it.”
“And to keep it?”
“It is still less embarrassing to keep it than to destroy it.”
“Let us see. How funny it is!”
“Are all the Venetians shut?”
“Yes, yes. With the two-the two balls!”
“It's very big!”
“Brr-it is shocking to look at. We ought to throw it in the privy.”
“Stupid! They would find it when they emptied the closet.”
“But, in short, if you keep it, what are you going to do with it, Julie?”
“To lend it you, Nanine, to avoid your having to make use of your fingers. This morning I caught you at it!”
“It is true; I couldn't hold any longer. But there, do you believe that one could do oneself with this joujou alone?”
“Doubtless. But what is this riband for? I follow it-for instance, I could pass it round my waist, fasten the object to me, and then-”
“Then?”
“Don't be such a simpleton! Don't you understand that if I put it there the tool would stand out quite straight in front of me, and that I could then make love to you like a man?”
“How horrible! You would not dare, nor I either.”
“I should not have much trouble to decide. Lift up your petticoats a little, Nanine, that I may see how well it can march!”
“You are pulling up my skirts-Julie-but she puts the belt round me. Just see! I don't want anyone to see me stark naked! You don't think of trying this disgusting plaything, I should think! Stop that! Stop that!”
“There, it's fastened on. How funny! Do you know that you're quite plump and fresh? What stout thighs.”
“Oh, I don't look a bit like a man.”
“You could, however, play the role of a man. Nanine, let us try a little.”
“If you were not my elder sister I believe I should box your ears for the proposition you are making to me.”
“Box my ears! Leave that alone! I am more anxious to embrace you, I- Hold!”
“Fie, fie! she is pulling up her dress also, she rubs the lips of her- You disgust me! You, I say- She unlaces me! Julie! But she is quite on fire! Your husband Gustave was right when he said you had a temperament. Poor Gustave. But you see our petticoats tumble down again!”
“Let us be in our shifts!”
Julie started off and bolted all the doors, including that of the cabinet in which I was hidden in company with Calprenede.
“Good!” I said to him.
“I have my diamond ring to cut the glass at the right moment-when they are ejaculating,” said he.
The door of the cabinet was glazed, as it happened, and shaded with a muslin curtain. We could not hold out any longer. We raised ourselves and glued our eyes to this transparent curtain.