Chocolate

Chocolat by Joris Sprout

On a hot summer day in 1892, one of those days when the canicule strikes Paris like the blast of the depths of Hades, Gabriel des Esseintes made his way slowly along the Boulevard St Germain, his jewel encrusted tortoise at his heels, seeking, as was his wont, those pleasures, which to him were like the nectar of the Gods, but which were to others of such a nature that had his purpose been known, he might have found himself entrusted to the care the guardians of the law which in that day patrolled the streets of the great city in their never ending quest to quell the causes of social disorder among the heaving masses.

Seating himself in Les Deux Magots by the parvis of the ancient church he looked across at the Café de Flore where two jeunes filles en fleurs sipped coffee in the shade of the great hornbeams which cast their sombre shades over the convives who gathered at that early morning to watch, in the way of all French people, the world as it passed along the great thoroughfare, ploughing ruts in the road and filling the air with cries of the vendors and the incessant whinnying of the horses, both of gentry and of tradespeople, as they strove, each in his own way, to go about their daily business.

Seeing the young girls he felt within his loins that strange yearning, that indefinable sensation which he had first encountered when, with the other devotees of the small religious establishment at which he had been educated, he had first laid his eyes upon a comely demoiselle of the village.

Margueritte had been brought into the school for the avowed purpose of demonstrating to the boys the virtues of maidenly modesty; the intention being that Mademoiselle would be paraded before of the boys as a living example of the degrading effects of dissolution upon the comportment of the honest female; notwithstanding which her abrupt disrobing in the middle of matins, an act generally thought to have bee instigated by the rich, and it must be said, excessively precocious Henri de Grand'bite, had left des Esseintes in such a state of physical and emotional perturbation that a whole term of early morning cold baths had been ordered for him that he might rid himself of the lascivious thoughts which seemed from that moment to become his sole preoccupation.

Thus it was that he had entered upon his existence, devoted now that he was master of his own fortune, to the pursuit of pleasure, and to a stimulation of the senses in every way that his so richly tutored mind could imagine.

He dropped a small measure of water into his absinthe and watched the cloud swirl in the small glass as he idly picked at his dish of duck's gizzards and bull's sweetbreads upon which he breakfasted each day.

So acute were his senses, so synaesthetic his brain that such food produced in him a surge of amatory desire, and as his gaze fell upon one of the jeune filles he felt a cord develop between her most secret place and his own virile member, a cord which, charged with electricity, stimulated him in a way in which no physical contiguity in mere mortals could have emulated.

Smoothing his waxed moustache and curling the ends in the way he knew to be irresistible to the gentler sex, he rose, placed his gibbus on his head, and walking slowly, for jewel encrusted tortoises proceed but slowly, he made his way over to where sat the young ladies.

- Forgive me Mesdemoiselles, said he, may I make myself so bold as to introduce myself to you.

The girls dropped their eyes, as maidenly modesty, that arbitrator of all social intercourse of man with woman, dictated.

- Sir, replied Alphonsine, you make too bold with us, pray.

Des Esseintes twirled his moustache and fixed them with his cold grey eye: that eye which, seeming as of a gimlet forged of white hot metal, bore itself into the very soul of its target.

- Mesdemoiselles, continued he, I make so bold as to intrude myself into your repast that I may partake of a dish of chocolate with you.

Des Esseintes had uttered the word that he knew would captivate any jeune fille who heard it, whether demoiselle of the fair capital or bergère from a rural metairie. The fateful word, chocolate.

The girls stopped still as if frozen in place, resistance felled by the thought of chocolate, little mattered it to them that the chocolate once imbibed could lead only to their utter humiliation and degradation, for they had been offered chocolate by a man with curly mustachios, an ivory tipped ebony cane, a jewel encrusted tortoise and a silk top hat. They were lost.

For des Esseintes, but two things mattered to him in his life: the full and venal satisfaction of the cravings of his sensuality, and the mystic power of control over women that his looks and the use of chocolate gave him.

Slowly, together and silently, they sipped their bowls of chocolate; the eyes of Des Esseintes never for one moment quitting those of the young and beautiful Alphonsine, their Mesmeric quality drawing her ever deeper into the liquid pool of his soul, immersing her in the syrup of his sensuality.

Des Esseintes licked his lips, cleaning carefully from his moustache the small flecks of chocolate still remaining there, and as he did so Alphonsine looked about her as those piercing eyes and the warmth and sweetness of the chocolate suffused through her whole being producing in her a sort of feeling as if of another world a world in which but she and he were sole the denizens.

- Come, said des Esseintes, let us take a turn within the gardens of the palais.

The Palais, thought Alphonsine, how fit it would be. To stroll there neath the linden trees and feel the cool breeze on her face.

Turning upon des Esseintes her eyes of periwinkle blue, she picked up her parasol, but felt as soon his restraining hand, firm and commanding.

Of course! Alphonsine knew it be right; she had no need, neither of parasol nor hat, to stroll beneath the linden trees in the warm heat of summer, accompanied by a gentleman of distinction and his jewel encrusted tortoise.

She saw not the look of surprise upon the visage of her companion, for a young lady of breeding does not depart sans hat and parasol of ponceau red in the company of a gentleman, however fine be his breeding, with her mind upon chocolate and the warm summer breeze upon her fair featured face.

Together arm in arm they strolled in leisured fashion through the gates of the Luxembourg Gardens, and passing close the fountain that stood before the palace des Esseintes withdrew from a small etui a chocolate sweet and placed it soft upon the tongue of Alphonsine. It tasted sweet, of honey and lavender, the warm scented air of Provence wherein she had been born, and where ofttimes would she run barefoot upon the garrigue crushing the sweet herbs of the maquis neath her dainty feet.

Careless of others and seeing naught but this vision of her childhood she cast off her shoes and walked barefoot upon the dew damp grass of the tonnelle. This was how it felt to be free; this was how it felt to cast off the crushing yoke of bourgeois etiquette. She felt another chocolate placed upon her tongue, melting there in a pool of delicious sweetness, suffusing her through with the taste of strawberry, cream and soft brown sugar. It made her warm, it made her feel at peace and around her she saw naught but the strawberry fields of home where she strode careless and free, no suffocating cloth of linen lace upon her. She saw at once that she needed this freedom, and in a trice the cotton dress was unbuttoned to the waist and lay then crumpled and discarded as she strolled through her fields of white flowers and scented fruit clad but in the camisole and culottes of her younger years.

Des Esseintes looked at her and smiled; she looked so charming thus, in silk camisole and culottes; the culottes coming just above the knee and the camisole hugging her figure displaying beneath the voluptuous curves of her naked breasts, for she yet eschewed the wearing of the i bust support, a garment which though à la mode she felt she had no need, and which indeed she felt did no justice to the femininity of her figure.

He withdrew from his etui a further chocolate and Alphonsine felt it dissolve upon her tongue. A hot taste of ginger and orange exploded in her mouth filling her breasts with intense desire so that they longed to burst free, to feel the cool wind upon their areolae, to stand erect and proud like twin peaks of snowy white, and cherry topped, blancmange. She looked around to see herself in hot and arid countryside and in one motion pulled off the restraining camisole so that her bosoms stood out free and proud as she held each breast cupped in a perfect white hand.

Des Esseintes looked upon those breasts with a deep feeling of satisfaction and, pondering long and hard and staring once more into the pervanche eyes of his beautiful companion, he withdrew one last bonbon from its box.

Alphonsine felt it upon her tongue. It tasted of rose water and cinnamon. Of the intensely sweet spices of the east and she saw herself in the seraglio of a mustachioed Turkish sultan, clad not in culottes but in the silken pantaloon of the odalisque. And she knew what must be done. She must be naked for her lord, and casting aside her last remaining vestment, she stood so that her very charms were displayed in all the natural glories to his bold discerning eye.

In a trice she stood there naked, and mounting upon the plinth at the centre of the seraglio, next the tinkling fount that ever played there, she placed her hands behind her neck and cast back her head to accentuate the prominence of her bosoms and the sway of her naked hips.

She closed her eyes and as she did so she seemed to hear above the splash of the crystal waters a murmur of voices as if of a great multitude. She opened her eyes and looked around to see that far from her being undressed for the lord of the seraglio she was standing upon a plinth before the great fountain that stands in front of the Palais de Luxembourg. In the distance she saw a man walking slowly away, walking with the gait of one who leads before him a tortoise bedizened with rich rubies and emeralds.

Des Esseintes looked back and smiled at his work of art, for Alphonsine stood there as a statue before the assembled crowds, in all her natural beauty, and she had upon her faultless figure not one single stitch of clothing.