Desire

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  The next moment I began caressing her red clitoris with my hot, stiff organ: Lorna sighed deeply once or twice and her eyes turned up; slowly I pushed my prick in to the full and drew it out again to the lips, then in again and I felt her warm love-juice gush as she drew up her knees even higher to let me further in: “Oh, it’s divine”, she sighed, “better even than the first time”, and when my thrusts grew quick and hard as the orgasm shook me, she writhed down on my prick as I withdrew, as if she would hold it, and as my seed spirted into her, she bit my shoulder and held her legs tight as if to keep my sex in her. We lay a few moments bathed in bliss. Then as I began to move again to sharpen the sensation, she half rose on her arm: “Do you know”, she said, “I dreamed yesterday of getting on you and doing it to you: do you mind, if I try—” “No, indeed!” I cried, “go to it: I am your prey!” She got up smiling and straddled kneeling across me and put my cock into her pussy and sank down on me with a deep sigh. She tried to move up and down on my organ and at once came up too high and had to use her hand to put my Tommy in again; then she sank down on it as far as possible: “I can sink down all right”, she cried smiling at the double meaning, “but I cannot rise so well! What fools we women are, we can’t master even the act of love; we are so awkward!” “Your awkwardness, however, excites me,” I said. “Does it?” she cried, “then I’ll do my best”, and for some time she rose and sank rhythmically; but as her excitement grew, she just let herself lie on me and wiggled her bottom till we both came. She was flushed and hot and I couldn’t help asking her a question: “Does your excitement grow to a spasm of pleasure?” I asked, “or do you go on getting more and more excited continually?” “I get more and more excited,” she said, “till the other day with you for the first time in my life the pleasure became unbearably intense and I was hysterical, you wonder-lover!”

• From The Selected Works of Audre Lorde

  now there is brown earth under my fingernails And sun full on my skin with my head thick as honey the tips of my fingers are stinging from the rich earth but more so from the lack of your body I have been to this place before where blood seething commanded my fingers fresh from the earth dream of plowing a furrow whose name should be you. Making it My body arcing across your white place we mingle color and substance wanting to mantle your cold I share my face with you but love becomes a lie as we suffer through split masks seeking the other half-self. We are hung up in giving what we wish to be given ourselves. On a night of the full moon I Out of my flesh that hungers and my mouth that knows comes the shape I am seeking for reason. The curve of your body fits my waiting hand your flesh warm as sunlight your lips quick as young birds between your thighs the sweet sharp taste of limes. Thus I hold you frank in my heart’s eye in my skin’s knowing as my fingers conceive your flesh I feel your stomach curving against me. Before the moon wanes again we shall come together. II And I would be the moon spoken over your beckoning flesh breaking against reservations beaching thought my hands at your high tide over and under inside you and the passing of hungers attended, forgotten. Darkly risen the moon speaks my eyes judging your roundness delightful. from From a Land Where Other People Live (1973) Progress Report These days when you do say hello I am never sure if you are being saucy or experimental or merely protecting some new position. Sometimes you gurgle while asleep and I know tender places still intrigue you. Now when you question me on love shall I recommend a dictionary or myself? You are the child of wind and ravens I created always my daughter I cannot recognize the currents where you swim and dart through my loving upstream to your final place of birth but you never tire of hearing how I crept out of my mother’s house at dawn, with an olive suitcase crammed with books and fraudulent letters and an unplayed guitar. Sometimes I see myself flash through your eyes in a moment caught between history and obedience that moment grows each day before you comply as, when did washing dishes change from privilege to chore? I watch the hollows deepen above your hips and wonder if I have taught you Black enough until I see all kinds of loving still intrigue you as you grow more and more dark rude and tender and unfraid. What you took for granted once you now refuse to take at all even I knock before I enter the shoals of furious choices not my own that flood through your secret reading nightly, under cover. I have not yet seen you, but

• From Speak, Memory (1966)

  Fire-hazard considerations had led one to select for the show an obsolete nursery in a corner of which stood a columnar water heater, painted a bronzy brown, and a webfooted bath, which, for the occasion, had been chastely sheeted. The close-drawn window curtains prevented one from seeing the yard below, the stacks of birch logs, and the yellow walls of the gloomy annex containing the stables (part of which had been converted into a two-car garage). Despite the ejection of an ancient wardrobe and a couple of trunks, this depressing back room, with the magic lantern installed at one end and transverse rows of chairs, hassocks, and settees arranged for a score of spectators (including Lenski’s fiancée, and three or four governesses, not counting our own Mademoiselle and Miss Greenwood), looked jammed and felt stuffy. On my left, one of my most fidgety girl cousins, a nebulous little blonde of eleven or so with long, Alice-in-Wonderland hair and a shell-pink complexion, sat so close to me that I felt the slender bone of her hip move against mine every time she shifted in her seat, fingering her locket, or passing the back of her hand between her perfumed hair and the nape of her neck, or knocking her knees together under the rustly silk of her yellow slip, which shone through the lace of her frock. On my right, I had the son of my father’s Polish valet, an absolutely motionless boy in a sailor suit; he bore a striking resemblance to the Tsarevich, and by a still more striking coincidence suffered from the same tragic disease—hemophilia—so several times a year a Court carriage would bring a famous physician to our house and wait and wait in the slow, slanting snow, and if one chose the largest of those grayish flakes and kept one’s eye upon it as it came down (past the oriel casement through which one peered), one could make out its rather coarse, irregular shape and also its oscillation in flight, making one feel dull and dizzy, dizzy and dull. The lights went out. Lenski launched upon the opening lines: The time—not many years ago; The place—a point where meet and flow In sisterly embrace the fair Aragva and Kurah; right there A monastery stood. The monastery, with its two rivers, dutifully appeared and stayed on, in a lurid trance (if only one swift could have swept over it!), for about two hundred lines, when it was replaced by a Georgian maiden of sorts carrying a pitcher. When the operator withdrew a slide, the picture was whisked off the screen with a peculiar flick, magnification affecting not only the scene displayed, but also the speed of its removal. Otherwise, there was little magic. We were shown conventional peaks instead of Lermontov’s romantic mountains, which Rose in the glory of the dawn Like smoking altars, and while the young monk was telling a fellow recluse of his struggle with a leopard—

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  “Oh, you wise boy!” she laughed, “don’t you see you are skipping the time I most desire you, and that’s not kind to either of us; is it?” “There’s still another way of evasion”, I said, “get me to withdraw before I come the first time, or get up immediately and syringe yourself with water thoroughly: water kills my seed as soon as it touches it—” “But how will that help if you go on half a dozen times more?” she asked. “Doctors say,” I replied, “that what comes from me afterwards is not virile enough to impregnate a woman: I’ll explain the process to you if you like; but you can take it, the fact is as I state it.” “When did you learn all this?” she asked. “It has been my most engrossing study,” I laughed, “and by far the most pleasureful!” “You dear, dear,” she cried, “I must kiss you for that.” “Do you know you kiss wonderfully?” she went on reflectingly, “with a lingering touch of the inside of the lips and then the thrust of the tongue: that’s what excited me so the first time” and she sighed as if delighted with the memory. “You didn’t seem excited,” I said half reproachfully, “for when I wanted another kiss, you drew away and said ‘tomorrow’! Why are women so coquettish, so perverse?” I added, remembering Lucille and Jessie. “I think it is that we wish to be sure of being desired,” she replied, “and a little too that we want to prolong the joy of it, the delight of being wanted, really wanted! It is so easy for us to give and so exquisite to feel a man’s desire pursuing us! Ah how rare it is”, she sighed passionately, “and how quickly lost! You’ll soon tire of your mistress”, she added, “now that I am all yours and thrill only for you” and she took my head in her hands and kissed me passionately, regretfully. “You kiss better than I do, Lorna! Where did you acquire the art, Madame?” I asked, “I fear that you have been a naughty, naughty girl!” “If you only knew the truth,” she exclaimed, “if you only knew how girls long for a lover and burn and itch in vain and wonder why men are so stupid and cold and dull as not to see our desire.

• From Speak, Memory (1966)

  The “sate,” let us concede, gives duration and body to the kiss which the captain so comfortably “had,” but I could not help feeling, even at the age of eleven, that centaurian love-making was not without its special limitations. Moreover, Yuri and I both knew a boy who had tried it, but the girl’s horse had pushed his into a ditch. Exhausted by our adventures in the chaparral, we lay on the grass and discussed women. Our innocence seems to me now almost monstrous, in the light of various “sexual confessions” (to be found in Havelock Ellis and elsewhere), which involve tiny tots mating like mad. The slums of sex were unknown to us. Had we ever happened to hear about two normal lads idiotically masturbating in each other’s presence (as described so sympathetically, with all the smells, in modern American novels), the mere notion of such an act would have seemed to us as comic and impossible as sleeping with an amelus. Our ideal was Queen Guinevere, Isolda, a not quite merciless belle dame, another man’s wife, proud and docile, fashionable and fast, with slim ankles and narrow hands. The little girls in neat socks and pumps whom we and other little boys used to meet at dancing lessons or at Christmas Tree parties had all the enchantments, all the sweets and stars of the tree preserved in their flame-dotted iris, and they teased us, they glanced back, they delightfully participated in our vaguely festive dreams, but they belonged, those nymphets, to another class of creatures than the adolescent belles and largehatted vamps for whom we actually yearned. After having made me sign an oath of secrecy with blood, Yuri told me about the married lady in Warsaw with whom at twelve or thirteen he was secretly in love and whom a couple of years later he made love to. By comparison it would have sounded jejune, I feared, to tell him about my seaside playmates, but I cannot recall what substitute I invented to match his romance. Around that time, though, a real romantic adventure did come my way. I am now going to do something quite difficult, a kind of double somersault with a Welsh waggle (old acrobats will know what I mean), and I want complete silence, please.

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  To baffle observation, therefore, he entered into an intrigue with a lady named Paulina, who was considered in her time so beautiful that few men saw her and es- caped her fascinations. Paulina being aware how Ama- dour had made love in Barcelona and Perpignan,and won the hearts of the handsomest ladies in the country, especially that of a certain Countess of Palamos, who was reputed the finest woman in all Spain, told him one day that she pitied him for having, after so many good fortunes, married a wife so ugly as his own. Amadour, who well knew that she had a mind to supply his wants, talked to her in the most engaging terms he could use, hoping to conceal a truth from her by making her be- lieve a falsehood. As she had experience in love, she did not content herself with words, and plainly perceiv- ing that Amadour's heart was not her own, she made no doubt that he wanted to use her as a stalking-horse. With this sufipicion in her mind, she observed hia> w First Jay.l QUEEN OF NA VARRE. yy narrowly that not a single glance of his eyes escaped her; but he managed, though with the utmost difficulty, to regulate them so well that she could never get beyond conjectures. Florida, who had no notion of the nature of Amadour's feelings towards her, used to speak to him so familiarly before Paulina that he could hardly prevent his eyes from following the movements of his heart. To prevent bad consequences, one day, as Florida and he were talking together at a window, he said to her, " My dear, I beseech you to advise me which of the two is better, to speak or to die ? " " I shall always advise my friends to speak," she re- plied, without hesitation ; " for there are few words which cannot be remedied : but from death there is no return." " You promise me, then, that not only you will not be angry at what I want to tell you, but even that you will not give way to surprise until I have laid my whole mind open to you ? " " Say what you please," replied Florida, " for if you surprise me there is no one who can reassure me."

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  Among the advocates in Paris, there was one who was more esteemed than any nine others in his profession ; and as his knowledge and abiHty made him sought by all clients, he became the richest of all the men of the gown. Now, seeing that he had no children by his first wife, he thought he should have some by a second ; for though he was old, he had, nevertheless, the heart and the hope of a young man. He made choice of a Parisian of eighteen or nineteen, very handsome in face and complexion, and handsomer still in figure and plumpness. He loved her and treated her as well as possible ; but he had no chil- dren by her any more than by his first wife; which the fair one at last took sorely to heart. As youth cannot carry the burden of care very far, the advocate's young wife resolved to seek elsewhere the pleasure she did not find at home, and used to go to balls and feasts ; but this she did, nevertheless, with such outward propriety, and so much caution, that her husband could not take offence, for she was always with those ladies in whom he had most confidence. One day, when she was at a wedding entertainment, there happened to be present a young prince, who told me the story, and forbade me to name him. All I can tell you is that there never was, and never will be, I think, a prince in France of finer person and demeanour. The eyes and the countenance of the advocate's lady inspired the prince with love. He spoke to her so well, and with Third day:\ QUEEN OF NA VARRE. 249

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  “We must get up and dress”, she said, “they’ll soon be back”, so I had to content myself with just lying in her arms with my sex touching hers. Soon she began to move against my sex, and to kiss me, and then she bit my lips just as my sex slipped into hers again; she left it in for a long moment and then as her lips grew hot: “it’s so big”, she said, “but you’re a dear.” The moment after she cried: “We must get up, boy! if they caught us, I’d die of shame.” When I tried to divert her attention by kissing her breasts, she pouted, “That hurts too. Please, boy, stop and don’t look”, she added as she tried to rise, covering her sex the while with her hand, and pulling a frowning face. Though I told her she was mistaken and her sex was lovely, she persisted in hiding it, and in truth her breasts and thighs excited me more, perhaps because they were in themselves more beautiful. I put my hand on her hips; she smiled, “Please, boy” and as I moved away to give her room, she got up and stood by the bed, a perfect little figure in rosy, warm outline. I was entranced, but the cursed critical faculty was awake. As she turned, I saw she was too broad for her height; her legs were too short, her hips too stout. It all chilled me a little. Should I ever find perfection? Ten minutes later she had arranged the bed and we were seated in the sitting-room but to my wonder Jessie didn’t want to talk over our experience. “What gave you most pleasure?” I asked. “All of it”, she said, “you naughty dear; but don’t let’s talk of it.” I told her I was going to work for a month, but I couldn’t talk to her: my hand was soon up her clothes again playing with her sex and caressing it, and we had to move apart hurriedly when we heard her sister at the door. I didn’t get another evening alone with Jessie for some time. I asked for it often enough, but Jessie made excuses and her sister was very cold to me. I soon found out it was by her advice that Jessie guarded herself. Jessie confessed that her sister accused her of letting me “act like a husband: she must have seen a stain on my chemise”, Jessie added, “when you made me bleed, you naughty boy; any way something gave her the idea and now you must be good.” That was the conclusion of the whole matter. If I had known as much then as I knew ten years later, neither the pain nor her sister’s warnings could have dissuaded Jessie from giving herself to me. Even at the time I felt that a little more knowledge would have made me the arbiter.

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  The want of breath will soon make him also long to rejoin the mother-atmosphere, and he will take the shortest path to his end by swimming straight upwards. But if a jar full of water be inverted over him, he will not, like the bubbles, perpetually press his nose against its unyielding roof, but will restlessly explore the neighborhood until by re-descending again he has discovered a path around its brim to the goal of his desires. Again the fixed end, the varying means! Such contrasts between living and inanimate performances end by leading men to deny that in the physical world final purposes exist at all. Loves and desires are to-day no longer imputed to particles of iron or of air. No one supposes now that the end of any activity which they may display is an ideal purpose presiding over the activity from its outset and soliciting or drawing it into being by a sort of vis a fronte. The end, on the contrary, is deemed a mere passive result, pushed into being a tergo, having had, so to speak, no voice in its own production. Alter, the pre-existing conditions, and with inorganic materials you bring forth each time a different apparent end. But with intelligent agents, altering the conditions changes the activity displayed, but not the end reached; for here the idea of the yet unrealized end co-operates with the conditions to determine what the activities shall be. The Pursuance of future ends and the choice of means for their attainment, are thus the mark and criterion of the presence of mentality in a phenomenon. We all use this test to discriminate between an intelligent and a mechanical performance. We impute no mentality to sticks and stones, because they never seem to move for the sake of anything, but always when pushed, and then indifferently and with no sign of choice. So we unhesitatingly call them senseless. Just so we form our decision upon the deepest of all philosophic problems: Is the Kosmos an expression of intelligence rational in its inward nature, or a brute external fact pure and simple? If we find ourselves, in contemplating it, unable to banish the impression that it is a realm of final purposes, that it exists for the sake of something, we place intelligence at the heart of it and have a religion. If, on the contrary, in surveying its irremediable flux, we can think of the present only as so much mere mechanical sprouting from the past, occurring with no reference to the future, we are atheists and materialists.

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  “I can’t promise”, I said, “it was too sweet; but kiss me and I’ll try to be good.” She kissed me a quick peck and pushed me away. “Didn’t you like it?” I whispered, “I did awfully. I can’t tell you how I thrilled: oh, thank you, Lucille, thank you, you are the sweetest girl in all the world, and I shall always be grateful to you, you dear!” She looked down at me musingly, thoughtfully; I felt I was gaining ground: “You are lovely there”, I ventured in a whisper, “please, dear, what do you call it? I saw ‘chat’ once: is that right, ‘pussy’?” “Don’t talk of it”, she cried impatiently, “I hate to think—” “Be kind, Lucille”, I pleaded, “you’ll never be the same to me again: you were pretty before, chic and provoking, but now you’re sacred. I don’t love you, I adore you, reverence you, darling! May I say ‘pussy’?” “You’re a strange boy”, she said at length, “but you must never do that again; it’s nasty and I don’t like it. I—” “Don’t say such things!” I cried, pretending indignation, “you don’t know what you’re saying—nasty! Look, I’ll kiss the fingers that have touched your pussy”, and I suited the action to the word. “Oh, don’t!” she cried and caught my hand in hers, “don’t!” but somehow she leaned against me at the same time and left her lips on mine. Bit by bit my right hand went down to her sex again, this time on the outside of her dress, but at once she tore herself away and would not let me come near her again. My insane desire had again made me blunder! Yet she had half-yielded, I knew, and that consciousness set me thrilling with triumph and hope, but alas! at that moment we heard Edwards shout to us as he left the house to rejoin us. This experience had two immediate and unlooked for consequences: first of all, I could not sleep that night for thinking of Lucille’s sex; it was like a large fig split in the middle, and set in a mesh of soft hairs: I could feel it still on my fingers and my sex stood stiff and throbbed with desire for it. When I fell asleep I dreamed of Lucille, dreamed that she had yielded to me and I was pushing my sex into hers; but there was some obstacle and while I was pushing, pushing, my seed spirted in an orgasm of pleasure—and at once I awoke and, putting down my hand, found that I was still coming: the sticky, hot, milk-like sperm was all over my hairs and prick.

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  The story marks an epoch in my life. We were taught singing at school and when it was found that I had a good alto voice and a very good ear, I was picked to sing solos, both in school and in the church choir. Before every church festival there was a good deal of practice with the organist, and girls from neighbouring houses joined in our classes. One girl alone sang alto and she and I were separated from the other boys and girls; the upright piano was put across the corner of the room and we two sat or stood behind it almost out of sight of all the other singers; the organist, of course, being seated in front of the piano. The girl E… who sang alto with me was about my own age: she was very pretty or seemed so to me, with golden hair and blue eyes and I always made up to her as well as I could, in my boyish way. One day while the organist was explaining something, E... stood up on the chair and leant over the back of the piano to hear better or see more. Seated in my chair behind her, I caught sight of her legs; for her dress rucked up behind as she leaned over: at once my breath stuck in my throat. Her legs were lovely, I thought, and the temptation came to touch them; for no one could see. I got up immediately and stood by the chair she was standing on. Casually I let my hand fall against her left leg. She didn’t draw her leg away or seem to feel my hand, so I touched her more boldly. She never moved, though now I knew she must have felt my hand, I began to slide my hand up her leg and suddenly my fingers felt the warm flesh on her thigh where the stocking ended above the knee. The feel of her warm flesh made me literally choke with emotion: my hand went on up, warmer and warmer, when suddenly I touched her sex: there was soft down on it. The heart-pulse throbbed in my throat. I have no words to describe the intensity of my sensations. Thank God, E…. did not move or show any sign of distaste. Curiosity was stronger even than desire in me; I felt her sex all over and at once the idea came into my head that it was like a fig (the Italians, I learned later, call it familiarly “fica”); it opened at my touches and I inserted my finger gently, as Strangways had told me that Mary had taught him to do; still E… did not move. Gently I rubbed the front part of her sex with my finger. I could have kissed her a thousand times out of passionate gratitude.

• From Another Country (1962)

  LeRoy laughed. He reached out and pulled Eric against him, under the shadow of the leaves. “Poor little rich boy,” he said, “tell me what you want to do.” Eric stared at him. Nothing could have moved him out of LeRoy’s arms, away from his smell, and the terrible, new touch of his body; and yet, in the same way that he knew that everything he had ever wanted or done was wrong, he knew that this was wrong, and he felt himself falling. Falling where? He clung to LeRoy, whose arms tightened around him. “Poor boy,” LeRoy murmured again, “poor boy.” Eric buried his face in LeRoy’s neck and LeRoy’s body shook a little—the chest and belly of a man!—and then he pushed Eric away and guided him toward the stream and they sat down beside it. “I guess you know, now,” LeRoy said, after a long silence, while Eric trailed his hand in the water, “what they saying about us in this town. I don’t care but it can get us in a lot of trouble and you got to stop coming to see me, Eric.” He had not known what they were saying, or he had been unable to allow himself to know; but he knew now. He said, staring into the water, and with a totally mysterious abandon, “Well, if we’ve got the name, we might as well have the game is how I see it. I don’t give a shit about those people, let them all go to hell; what have they got to do with you and me?” LeRoy looked briefly over at Eric and smiled. “You a nice boy, Eric, but you don’t know the score. Your Daddy owns half the folks in this town, ain’t but so much they can do to you. But what they can do to me—–!” And he spread his hands wide. “I won’t let anything happen to you.” LeRoy laughed. “You better get out of this town. Declare, they going to lynch you before they get around to me.” He laughed again and rubbed his hand in Eric’s bright red hair. Eric grabbed his hand. They looked at each other, and a total, a dreadful silence fell. “Boy,” LeRoy said, weakly. And then, after a moment, “You really out for trouble, ain’t you?” And then nothing was said. They lay together beside the stream.

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  to Montferrat To his great vexation, he learned that his brother was going to Oly and Taffares, and fearing that the journey would be a long one, he resolved to try before his departure if the lady were not better disposed towards him than she appeared. To this end he went to lodge in town, and took, in the street in which she lived, a dilapidated old wooden house, to which he set fire about midnight. The whole town was in great alarm ; the rich man was roused by the noise, and calling out from the window to know where the fire was, he was told that it was at the house of M. D'Avannes. Hurry- ing thither with all his domestics, he found the young lord in the street in his shirt. Such was his pity for him that, taking him in his arms, and covering him with his own robe, he hastened home with him, and said to his wife, " Here is a prisoner, my dear, whom I commit to your custody. Treat him like mysell." He was no sooner gone than M. D'Avannes, who would have been glad to be treated as her husband, jumped into the bed, hoping that the opportunity and the place would inspire the chaste lady with more humane sentiments ; but he was quite disappointed, for as he got in at one side she got out at the other, carrying away her chamarre, which she put on ; and seating herself at the bedside, she said, " What ! mon- sieur, did you imagine that opportunity could change a virtuous heart } Know that as gold becomes purer in the fire, so a chaste heart grows stronger amid tempta- tions. Often it grows stronger among them than else- where, and becomes more cold the more it is attacked by its opposite. Be assured, then, that if I had enter- tained any other sentiments than those I have avowed, I should not have lacked means, and that I neglect them pnly because I do not choose to use them. If you would 266 THE HEPTAMERON OF THE {Nmel 26 have me continue to love you, banish not only the de sire but the thought that, do what you may, you can ever bring me to be other than what I am."

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  When I was between four and five, I was sent with Annie to a girl’s boarding-school in Kingstown kept by a Mrs. Frost. I was put in the class with the oldest girls on account of my proficiency in arithmetic, and I did my best at it because I wanted to be with them, though I had no conscious reason for my preference. I remember how the nearest girl used to lift me up and put me in my high-chair and how I would hurry over the sums set in compound long division and proportion, for as soon as I had finished, I would drop my pencil on the floor, and then turn round and climb down out of my chair, ostensibly to get it, but really to look at the girls’ legs. Why? I couldn’t have said. I was at the bottom of the class and the legs got bigger and bigger towards the end of the long table, and I preferred to look at the big ones. As soon as the girl next to me missed me, she would move her chair back and call me, and I’d pretend to have just found my slate-pencil, which I said had rolled, and she’d lift me back into my high-chair. One day I noticed a beautiful pair of legs on the other side of the table, near the top. There must have been a window behind the girl; for her legs up to the knees were in full light and they filled me with emotion giving me an indescribable pleasure. They were not the thickest legs, which surprised me. Up to that moment, I had thought it was the thickest legs I liked best; but now I saw that several girls, three anyway, had bigger legs, but none like hers, so shapely, with such slight ankles and tapering lines. I was enthralled and at the same time a little scared. I crept back into my chair with one idea in my little head: could I get close to those lovely legs and perhaps touch them—breathless expectancy. I knew I could hit my slate-pencil and make it roll up between the files of legs. Next day I did this and crawled right up till I was close to the legs that made my heart beat in my throat and yet gave me a strange delight. I put out my hand to touch them; suddenly the thought came that the girl would simply be frightened by my touch and pull her legs back and I should be discovered and—I was frightened.

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  As I had guessed, her figure was slight and lissom, with narrow hips but she had a great bush of hair on her Mount of Venus and her breasts were not so round and firm as Jessie’s: still she was very pretty and well-formed with the fines attaches (slender wrists and ankles) which the French are so apt to over-estimate. They think that small bones indicate a small sex; but I have found that the exceptions are very numerous, even if there is any such rule. After I had kissed her breasts and navel, and praised her figure, she disappeared in the bathroom but was soon with me again on the sofa which we had left an hour or so before. “Do you know” she began, “my husband assured me that only the strongest young man could go twice with a woman in one day? I believed him; aren’t we women fools? You must have come a dozen times?” “Not half that number”, I replied smiling. “Aren’t you tired?” was her next question, “even I have a little headache” she added: “I never was so wrought up: at the end it was too intense: but you must be tired out.” “No,” I replied, “I feel no fatigue, indeed I feel the better for our joy ride!” “But surely you’re an exception?” she went on; “most men have finished in one short spasm and leave the woman utterly unsatisfied, just excited and no more.” “Youth”, I said, “that, I believe, makes the chief difference.” “Is there any danger of a child?” she went on, “I ought to say ‘hope’,” she added bitterly, “for I’d love to have a child, your child” and she kissed me. “When were you ill last?” I asked. “About a fortnight ago”, she replied, “I often thought that had something to do with it.” “Why?” I asked: “tell truth!” I warned her and she began: “I’ll tell you anything; I thought the time had something to do with it for soon after I am well each month my ‘pussy’ that’s what we call it, often burns and itches intolerably; but after a week or so I’m not bothered any more till next time. Why is that?” she added. “Two things I ought to explain to you” I said, “your seed is brought down into your womb by the menstrual blood: it lives there a week or ten days and then dies and with its death your desires decrease and the chance of impregnation. But near the next monthly period, say within three days, there is a double danger again; for the excitement may bring your seed down before the usual time and in any case, my seed will live in your womb about three days, so if you wish to avoid pregnancy, wait for ten days after your monthly flow is finished and stop say four days before you expect it again, then the danger of getting a child is very slight.”

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  The Cordelier, who was anything but what he seemed, replied, " Certainly, sir ; I think it is one of the greatest sins that can be committed in marriage. I need only refer you to the example of the blessed Virgin, who would not enter the Temple till the day of her purifica- tion, though she had no need of that ceremony. This alone should teach you the indispensable necessity of abstaining from this little pleasure, since the good Virgin Mary, in order to obey the law, abstained from going to the Temple, in which was her whole consola- tion. Besides, the physicians say there is reason to fear for the children that might be begotten under such cir- cumstances." The gentleman, who had expected that the monk would give him permission to lie with his wife, was much annoyed at a reply so contrary to his hope ; however, he let the matter drop. The reverend father having drunk 2,o THE HEPTAMERON OF THE INovd 2^ a little more than was reasonable during the conversation, cast his eyes on the lady, and concluded within himself that if he was her husband, he would lie with her with- out asking anyone's advice. As the fire kindles little by little, and at last waxes so strong and fierce that it burns down the house, so the poor monk felt himself possessed with such vehement concupiscence, that he resolved all at once to satisfy the desire he had cherished in secret for three years. After the supper-things had been taken away, he took the gentle-man by the hand, led him to the side of the bed, and said to him, in the presence of his wife, •' Knowing, sir, as I do, the affection that subsists between you and mademoiselle, I compassionate the feel- ings with which your great youth inspires you both. Therefore I will impart to you a secret of our holy theol- o^v. You must know, then, that the law which is so rio-orous on account of the abuses committed by indis- creet husbands, is not so strict with regard to husbands so prudent and moderate as you. Hence, sir, after hav- ing stated before others what is the severity of the law, I must tell you in private what is its mildness. Know, then, that there are women and women, as there are men and men. Before all things, then, it is necessary that mademoiselle, who has been delivered these three weeks, should tell you if her flux of blood has quite ceased." The demoiselle replied very positively that it had. "That being the case, my son," resumed the Corde- lier, " I permit you to lie with her without scruple, on these two conditions : first, that you mention it to no one, and that you come to her secretly ; secondly, that you do not come to her until two hours after midnight, in order not to disturb your wife's digestion."

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  I am again, however, running ahead of my story. The second evening of the voyage, the sea got up a little and there was a great deal of sickness. Doctor Keogh was called out of his cabin and while he was away, someone knocked at the door. I opened it and found a pretty girl. “Where’s the Doctor?” she asked. I told her he had been called to a cabin passenger. “Please tell him”, she said, “when he returns, that Jessie Kerr, the chief Engineer’s daughter, would like to see him.” “I’ll go after him now if you wish, Miss Jessie”, I said. “I know where he is.” “It isn’t important”, she rejoined, “but I feel giddy and he told me he could cure it.” “Coming up on deck is the best cure”, I declared: “the fresh air will soon blow the sick feeling away. You’ll sleep like a top and tomorrow morning you’ll he alright. Will you come?” She consented readily and in ten minutes admitted that the slight nausea had disappeared in the sharp breeze. As we walked up and down the dimly lighted deck I had now and then to support her, for the ship was rolling a little under a sou-wester. Jessie told me something about herself; how she was going to New York to spend some months with an elder married sister and how strict her father was. In return she had my whole story and could hardly believe I was only sixteen. Why she was over sixteen, and she could never have stood up and recited piece after piece as I did in the Cabin: she thought it “wonderful.” Before she went down, I told her she was the prettiest girl on board and she kissed me and promised to come up the next evening and have another walk. “If you’ve nothing better to do” she said at parting, “you might come forward to the little Promenade Deck of the Second Cabin and I’ll get one of the men to arrange a seat in one of the boats for us.” “Of course”, I promised gladly and spent the next afternoon with Jessie in the stern-sheets of the great launch where we were out of sight of everyone, and out of hearing as well. There we were, tucked in with two rugs and cradled, so to speak, between sea and sky, while the keen air whistling past increased our sense of solitude. Jessie, though rather short, was a very pretty girl with large hazel eyes and fair complexion.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  It is abundantly clear, that the human heart is more intensely attracted to one object, in proportion as it is withdrawn from a multiplicity of desires. Therefore, the more a man is delivered from solicitude concerning temporal matters, the more perfectly he will be enabled to love God. Hence St. Augustine says (De Diversis Quaestionibus Octaginta Tribus, Lib. lxxxiii. Quest.1) that, the hope of gaining, or keeping, material wealth, is the poison of charity; that, as charity increases, cupidity diminishes; and that, when charity becomes perfect, cupidity ceases to exist. Hence, all the counsels which call man to perfection tend to withdraw his affections from temporal objects; so that, his sour is enabled the more freely to turn to God by contemplating Him, loving Him, and fulfilling His will. CHAPTER VII The First Means of Perfection, Viz.: the Renunciation of Earthly PossessionsTHE first among the material possessions to be renounced are those extrinsic goods that we call riches. Our Lord counselled us to relinquish them when He said, “If you would be perfect, go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you shall have treasure in Heaven; and come, follow me” (Matt. xix. 21). The utility of this counsel is evident. First, we have the evidence of a fact. For, when the young man who was inquiring about perfection heard the words of Christ, he went away sad. And “Behold,” says St. Jerome in his commentary on St. Matthew, “the cause of this sadness. He had many possessions, which, like thorns and briars, choked the seed of the Lord’s words.” St. Chrysostom, writing on the same passage, says that, “they who possess but little, and they that abound in riches, do not encounter the same obstacles; for the renunciation of wealth enkindles a more mighty fire and causes avarice to grow greater.” St. Augustine likewise says, in his epistle to Paulinus and Therasia, that “when earthly things are inordinately loved, those that we already possess fetter us more closely than those that we desire; for why did this young man go away sad, save because he had great possessions? For, it is one thing not to be anxious to acquire the things that we lack, but quite another to be ready to divest ourselves of those that we possess. For the things that are not ours we can repudiate as extrinsic to ourselves, but our own possessions are dear to us as the limbs of our body.”

• From Speak, Memory (1966)

  There existed in Russia, and still exists no doubt, a special type of school-age boy who, without necessarily being athletic in appearance or outstanding in mental scope, often having, in fact, no energy in class, a rather scrawny physique, and even, perhaps, a touch of pulmonary consumption, excels quite phenomenally at soccer and chess, and learns with the utmost ease and grace any kind of sport or game of skill (Borya Shik, Kostya Buketov, the famous brothers Sharabanov—where are they now, my teammates and rivals?). I was a good skater on ice and switching to rollers was for me not more difficult than for a man to replace an ordinary razor by a safety one. Very quickly I learned two or three tricky steps on the wooden floor of the rink and in no ballroom have I danced with more zest or ability (we, Shiks and Buketovs, are poor ballroom dancers, as a rule). The several instructors wore scarlet uniforms, half hussar and half hotel page. They all spoke English, of one brand or another. Among the regular visitors, I soon noticed a group of American young ladies. At first, they all merged in a common spin of bright exotic beauty. The process of differentiation began when, during one of my lone dances (and a few seconds before I came the worst cropper that I ever came on a rink), somebody said something about me as I whirled by, and a wonderful, twangy feminine voice answered, “Yes, isn’t he cunning?” I can still see her tall figure in a navy-blue tailor-made suit. Her large velvet hat was transfixed by a dazzling pin. For obvious reasons, I decided her name was Louise. At night, I would lie awake and imagine all kinds of romantic situations, and think of her willowy waist and white throat, and worry over an odd discomfort that I had associated before only with chafing shorts. One afternoon, I saw her standing in the lobby of the rink, and the most dashing of the instructors, a sleek ruffian of the Calhoun type, was holding her by the wrist and interrogating her with a crooked grin, and she was looking away and childishly turning her wrist this way and that in his grasp, and the following night he was shot, lassoed, buried alive, shot again, throttled, bitingly insulted, coolly aimed at, spared, and left to drag a life of shame.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  24:3–53. And as he sat upon the mount of Olives, the disciples came unto him privately, saying, Tell us, when shall these things be? and what shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world? 4. And Jesus answered and said unto them, Take heed that no man deceive you. 5. For many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and shall deceive many. REMIGIUS. The Lord continuing His walk arrives at Mount Olivet, having by the way foretold the destruction of the temple to those disciples who had shewn and commended the buildings. When they had reached the Mount they came to Him, asking Him further of this. CHRYSOSTOM. They asked Him in private, because they were great things about which they were going to ask Him. They wished to know the day of His coming, for the vehement desire they had to see His glory. JEROME. They ask Him three things. First, The time of the destruction of Jerusalem, saying, Tell us when shall these things be? Secondly, The time of Christ’s coming, saying, And what shall be the sign of Thy coming? Thirdly, The time of the consummation of this world, saying, And of the end of the world? CHRYSOSTOM. Luke speaks of one enquiry, that concerning Jerusalem, as though the disciples supposed that Christ’s coming should be then, and the end of the world should be when Jerusalem should be destroyed. Whereas Mark does not state them all to have asked concerning the destruction of Jerusalem, but Peter, James, John, and Andrew, as having more bold and free speech with Christ. ORIGEN. I think Mount Olivet to be a mystery of the Church out of the Gentiles. REMIGIUS. For Mount Olivet has no unfruitful trees, but olives, which supply light to dispel darkness, which give rest to the weary, health to the sick. And sitting on Mount Olivet over against the temple, the Lord discourses of its destruction, and the destruction of the Jewish nation, that even by His choice of a situation He might shew, that abiding still in the Church He condemns the pride of the wicked. ORIGEN. For the husbandman dwelling on Mount Olivet is the word of God confirmed in the Church, that is, Christ, who ever grafts the branches of the wild olive on the good olive tree of the Fathers. They who have confidence before Christ, seek to learn the sign of the coming of Christ, and of the consummation of this world. And the coming of the Word into the soul is of two sorts. The first is that foolish preaching concerning Christ, when we preach that Christ was born and crucified; the second its coming in perfect men, concerning which it is said, We speak wisdom among them that are perfect; (1 Cor. 2:6.) and to this second coming is added the end of the world in the perfect man to whom the world is crucified.