Venus in Furs Read Free Page A

simply painted the portrait of some aristocratic Mesalina, and was tactful enough to let Cupid hold the mirror in which she tests her majestic allure with cold satisfaction. He looks as though his task were becoming burdensome enough. The picture is painted flattery. Later an 'expert' in the Rococo period baptized the lady with the name of Venus. The furs of the despot in which Titian's fair model wrapped herself, probably more for fear of a cold than out of modesty, have become a symbol of the tyranny and cruelty that constitute woman's essence and her beauty.
    “But enough of that. The picture, as it now exists, is a bitter satire on our love. Venus in this abstract North, in this icy Christian world, has to creep into huge black furs so as not to catch cold—”
    Severin laughed, and lighted a fresh cigarette.
    Just then the door opened and an attractive, stoutish, blonde girl entered. She had wise, kindly eyes, was dressed in black silk, and brought us cold meat and eggs with our tea. Severin took one of the latter, and decapitated it with his knife.
    “Didn't I tell you that I want them soft-boiled?” he cried with a violence that made the young woman tremble.
    “But my dear Sevtchu—” she said timidly.
    “Sevtchu, nothing,” he yelled, “you are to obey, obey, do you understand?” and he tore the kantchuk [Footnote: A long whip with a short handle.] which was hanging beside the weapons from its hook.
    The woman fled from the chamber quickly and timidly like a doe.
    “Just wait, I'll get you yet,” he called after her.
    “But Severin,” I said placing my hand on his arm, “how can you treat a pretty young woman thus?”
    “Look at the woman,” he replied, blinking humorously with his eyes. “Had I flattered her, she would have cast the noose around my neck, but now, when I bring her up with the kantchuk , she adores me.”
    “Nonsense!”
    “Nonsense, nothing, that is the way you have to break in women.”
    “Well, if you like it, live like a pasha in your harem, but don't lay down theories for me—”
    “Why not,” he said animatedly. “Goethe's 'you must be hammer or anvil' is absolutely appropriate to the relation between man and woman. Didn't Lady Venus in your dream prove that to you? Woman's power lies in man's passion, and she knows how to use it, if man doesn't understand himself. He has only one choice: to be the tyrant over or the slave of woman. As soon as he gives in, his neck is under the yoke, and the lash will soon fall upon him.”
    “Strange maxims!”
    “Not maxims, but experiences,” he replied, nodding his head, “ I have actually felt the lash . I am cured. Do you care to know how?”
    He rose, and got a small manuscript from his massive desk, and put it in front of me.
    “You have already asked about the picture. I have long owed you an explanation. Here—read!”
    Severin sat down by the chimney with his back toward me, and seemed to dream with open eyes. Silence had fallen again, and again the fire sang in the chimney, and the samovar and the cricket in the old walls. I opened the manuscript and read:
    CONFESSIONS OF A SUPERSENSUAL MAN.
    The margin of the manuscript bore as motto a variation of the well-known lines from Faust :
       “Thou supersensual sensual woer
   A woman leads you by the nose.”
   —MEPHISTOPHELES.
    I turned the title-page and read: “What follows has been compiled from my diary of that period, because it is impossible ever frankly to write of one's past, but in this way everything retains its fresh colors, the colors of the present.”
    Gogol, the Russian Moliere, says—where? well, somewhere—“the real comic muse is the one under whose laughing mask tears roll down.”
    A wonderful saying.
    So I have a very curious feeling as I am writing all this down. The atmosphere seems filled with a stimulating fragrance of flowers, which overcomes me and gives me a headache. The smoke of the fireplace curls and condenses into figures,