manipulating his little faucet, now his little pen, no longer in possession of his wits, scandalized by the two “notorious loudmouths” who go at it with hilarity, tenderness, and ingenuity. Ah! Ah! His fuck is flying!
Now that he’s emptied his balls, the Owl of Paris is replete with scorn. Off he goes to publish another broadside against the two, posts some, hands more over to the booksellers, and then, having supped on fresh peas, finds a little whore to frig him. Damned! Tonight in my loneliness, the certitude that Restif ambles my beloved Paris—Paris! her mysterious doors! behind each door a lass with a beautiful ass, a green footman as fuckable as my beloved La Jeunesse! each door like the cover of a forbidden book to be opened! each lover within a book to be read, a book to be written! Paris!—that he , the ignoble Restif, splashes about freely in the filth of his own making, like an infant making merry with his waters and turds, while I am contained like a thing in a box—so wretched a box! so wretched a thing!—throws me into such a temper that I am reduced to trembling with rage and cannot write without breaking the nib of my pen!
Peeping through holes is a singularity of taste I can well understand when it takes place in a brothel . Once, long ago…Ah! There it is again: the specter of the Lost Manuscript! I itemized a hundred things, each more outrageous than the next, that one might imagine peeping at through the apothecary keyhole. I included the tale of a libertine, hated for his miserly tips and glacial ejaculations, receiving the gift of a blazing hot fart well peppered with pimento in the eye. A touch of realism: One frolics with whores at one’s own risk. (No one knows that better than I! Whores and a strumpet sister-in-law as beautiful as the day—these are the items at the top of the list of my undoing!) And here, in passing, forthwith, and for the gracious reader’s enlightenment, are listed the
Risks of Brothels
1. the clap
2. running into a lady of one’s acquaintance, slumming
3. crabs
4. being robbed of one’s watch and shoes
5. a sound but altogether impromptu and undesirable thrashing
6. the pox
7. a jealous pimp armed with a knife
8. le chancre mou
9. to be ruined by a sumptuous baladeuse , or a well-hung andrin
10. above all: to be peeped at by some masturbator who has paid more for his hour’s pleasure than you have—Restif himself, perhaps—and who as he watches your ignorant bum rattles his own device!
Ah! Ah! Ah! Perish that horrid, horrid thought! (And here you have jail’s greatest mortification: the fact that one’s thoughts cannot be aired out, not ever! And so one cannot help but think such things, to stew and pickle in them. Because once they are thought up, there’s no forgetting them! That is, not until an equally disagreeable idea attaches itself to the brain like a tumor.)
Olympe had enraged Restif, and how? I know the facts from Gabrielle:
He had followed her into the Jardin des Plantes. Suddenly, there he was, bowing and beaming in the path’s turning, complimenting her on a pamphlet she had just published but which, it was clear, he had not properly read, and commenting on her attire:
“Carmagnoles! Carmagnoles! Everyone is wearing carmagnoles! But you, madame , are the only one to carry it off!”
Restif proposed a cup of coffee at the fashionable M. Pickersgill, which had just opened and was all the rage—with its murals depicting Captain Cook trading in beads in Otahiti; the beauties of the Bay of Matavai, Tropical Scenes including natives riding the waves on flat pieces of wood (a thing, I hear, still causing much animated discussion), and pictures of the Adventure and the Resolution sparkling beneath the tropical sun.
“The coffee is hot, the pastry excellent, the murals must be seen , the conversation—as you, dear madame , and I will be its principal authors—will be sublime.
Now that he’s emptied his balls, the Owl of Paris is replete with scorn. Off he goes to publish another broadside against the two, posts some, hands more over to the booksellers, and then, having supped on fresh peas, finds a little whore to frig him. Damned! Tonight in my loneliness, the certitude that Restif ambles my beloved Paris—Paris! her mysterious doors! behind each door a lass with a beautiful ass, a green footman as fuckable as my beloved La Jeunesse! each door like the cover of a forbidden book to be opened! each lover within a book to be read, a book to be written! Paris!—that he , the ignoble Restif, splashes about freely in the filth of his own making, like an infant making merry with his waters and turds, while I am contained like a thing in a box—so wretched a box! so wretched a thing!—throws me into such a temper that I am reduced to trembling with rage and cannot write without breaking the nib of my pen!
Peeping through holes is a singularity of taste I can well understand when it takes place in a brothel . Once, long ago…Ah! There it is again: the specter of the Lost Manuscript! I itemized a hundred things, each more outrageous than the next, that one might imagine peeping at through the apothecary keyhole. I included the tale of a libertine, hated for his miserly tips and glacial ejaculations, receiving the gift of a blazing hot fart well peppered with pimento in the eye. A touch of realism: One frolics with whores at one’s own risk. (No one knows that better than I! Whores and a strumpet sister-in-law as beautiful as the day—these are the items at the top of the list of my undoing!) And here, in passing, forthwith, and for the gracious reader’s enlightenment, are listed the
Risks of Brothels
1. the clap
2. running into a lady of one’s acquaintance, slumming
3. crabs
4. being robbed of one’s watch and shoes
5. a sound but altogether impromptu and undesirable thrashing
6. the pox
7. a jealous pimp armed with a knife
8. le chancre mou
9. to be ruined by a sumptuous baladeuse , or a well-hung andrin
10. above all: to be peeped at by some masturbator who has paid more for his hour’s pleasure than you have—Restif himself, perhaps—and who as he watches your ignorant bum rattles his own device!
Ah! Ah! Ah! Perish that horrid, horrid thought! (And here you have jail’s greatest mortification: the fact that one’s thoughts cannot be aired out, not ever! And so one cannot help but think such things, to stew and pickle in them. Because once they are thought up, there’s no forgetting them! That is, not until an equally disagreeable idea attaches itself to the brain like a tumor.)
Olympe had enraged Restif, and how? I know the facts from Gabrielle:
He had followed her into the Jardin des Plantes. Suddenly, there he was, bowing and beaming in the path’s turning, complimenting her on a pamphlet she had just published but which, it was clear, he had not properly read, and commenting on her attire:
“Carmagnoles! Carmagnoles! Everyone is wearing carmagnoles! But you, madame , are the only one to carry it off!”
Restif proposed a cup of coffee at the fashionable M. Pickersgill, which had just opened and was all the rage—with its murals depicting Captain Cook trading in beads in Otahiti; the beauties of the Bay of Matavai, Tropical Scenes including natives riding the waves on flat pieces of wood (a thing, I hear, still causing much animated discussion), and pictures of the Adventure and the Resolution sparkling beneath the tropical sun.
“The coffee is hot, the pastry excellent, the murals must be seen , the conversation—as you, dear madame , and I will be its principal authors—will be sublime.
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