Chapter 1: Caveat emptor

The girl paused momentarily, as if nervous of entering, but then took a deep breath and walked boldly across the room to her table. Her short pleated skirt, swinging and clinging to her coltishly slender, entrancing legs in time with her swaying hips, drew the attention of a dozen pairs of eyes, all of them belonging to elderly men.

The Chevalier wondered why he had not noticed the young girl before now. She was exquisite and almost a double for his lost love, in fact as she moved across the floor he had to stop himself from shouting out aloud 'Clothide'.

The girl moved with the air of a young girl poised on the brink of womanhood, he judged her to be about thirteen years old, the same age as Clothide had been when he had last seen her.

'You stupid old man, ' he berated himself, 'Clothide was nearly sixty years ago!'

He sent his waiter Raefel over to ask if she would accept a bottle of wine from him and was delighted to learn on Raefel's return that she would accept a glass of Prosecco, not his drink of choice but it did have the advantage of being a well known Leg Opener.

She raised her glass to him and the Chevalier rose from his chair, bowed then lifted his glass in return; they drank, looking at each other over the rims of their glasses.

He watched as she was served her dinner. He had finished his meal but thought, just in case things turned out well for him, that he would build up his strength and libido, so ordered a dozen oysters and a glass of Black Velvet.

When he brought the order Raefel had a smirk on his face, which the Chevalier chose to ignore.

The Chevalier went into a reverie after he had eaten the aphrodisiac food.

His mind returned to Clothide and the last time they had met and made love. Of course he had not been the Chevalier Maurice de Champingiron at that time. Just plain Jacques Verde.

Jacques was the son of the town's butcher. A high class butcher, 'Purveyor of Fine Meat and Game to the Nobility', but a butcher none the less.

Clothide was the youngest of the four daughters of the Maire of the town, Villard de Lans; an important man in the town with the important family name of Sancerre de Valois that scorned the likes of those with a plebeian name of 'Verde'.

However Jacques father was an aspiring bourgeoisie and Jacques himself had been offered a place at The Ecole Militaire de St Cyr, where all the officers of the Republic's army were trained.

In a years time, when Jacques reached the age of 17, he would become a cadet of that august establishment, assuming he could pass the entrance exam, and would then gain an immediate higher status than that which he currently held.

It was common for clever boys of the lower classes to be given the opportunity of bettering themselves by becoming officers in the army. Jacques was one such youngster. He excelled in mathematics and he had left the school room far behind him and was now taught by Father Ignatius, the parish priest, who before taking Holy Orders had taught at The Sorbonne.

Jacques had soon picked up the intricacies of Geometry, Algebra and Calculus. Father Ignatius had also introduced Jacques to Latin, as he said it would stand him in good stead in any career.

It was usual in the army that both the engineering and artillery arms were staffed by competent mathematical trained officers from the lower classes while the infantry and cavalry branches were filled by sons of the more noble families. ( Egalitie was an ideal not a right ).

It was for these reasons that the daughter of the Maire and the son of a butcher were allowed to see one another and, in due time, they would be expected to marry.

The fourth daughter in a family cannot hope for much, her older siblings would have swept up all eligibtle bachelors in the district and Clothide would have to make the best she could with an an engineer or artillery officer.

Jacques and Clothide loved one another with an intensity that was so fierce, so deep and so eternal that they themselves had no doubts they would marry, whatever their respective stations in life. They had first met when attending the one room school of the town; Jacques was ten and Clothide seven. From that first day they recognised that each was the soul mate of the other.

On her twelfth birthday Jacques took Clothide's virginity, or rather she willingly gave him her virginity.

Their coupling was sweet and tender and so enjoyable that they did it when ever and wherever they could.

Chapter 2: Aeternus Amor

Every month Jacques would accompany his father to the catttle market in Grenoble, the nearest large town to Villard de Lans. Here Monsieur Verde would pick out the beasts that he would buy for slaughter, and it was his ability to choose the best animals to tempt the gourmets of the town that made his business so successful.

Jacques would wander about the town after the business of the catttle market was done while his father shared a botttle of wine with other local butchers at the Café Victor Hugo, in the town square that bore that august name.

It was on one of these expeditions that Jacques had come upon a pawnbrokers shop in one of the many narrow alleyways that ran like a maze behind the square. In the window was displayed a heart shaped black stone and Jacques could see that the heart came in two, each half having it's own chain.

He was determined to buy it for Clothide. The price was well above the amount of money that he carried but the pawnbroker promised to keep it for him until his next visit in a month's time.

Jacques had managed to acquire the money required to purchase the locket and on the next visit to Grenoble went to buy it.

"The stone is polished obsidian, a stone created in a volcano," the pawnbroker informed him," very rare, in fact I've never come across a love locket like this one before."

He looked at Jacques, could the boy be persuaded to pay more he pondered.

"Actually I've had a better offer for the locket and..."

He stopped talking for the simple reason that Jacques had his throat in a vice- like grip.

"You promised to sell it to me," Jacques didn't raise his voice but his tone of voice struck terror in the pawnbroker. Jacques released his grip and the pawnbroker coughed spluttered and eventually got back his breath.

"Give me one good reason why I shouldn't call for a gendarme," he blustered.

Jacques pulled his butcher's knife from under his coat.

"It would be the last thing you would say before I cut your tongue out!"

The pawnbroker saw from the look in the boy's cold grey eyes that he was quite prepared to do it.

"Just having a laugh young sir," he said and quickly passed over the locket.

Jacques walked slowly back to the square examining the locket. The stone was as black as midnight and yet seemed to be lit from within. Forged in the heat of a volcano the pawnbroker had said.

He thought that it resembled the relationship between Clothide and himself; forged in the heat of their love.

Clothide was delighted by the locket, and his interpretation of it.

"Forged in the heat of our love," she sighed "Oh Jacques you are so poetical."

She pulled the locket apart and gave one half to him.

"We will always wear our half and when we meet we will put the two halves together and then make love!"

She then demonstrated what she had described and their ecstatic cries during their mutual climax rang out in the wooded copse where they always met; song birds adding their paean of joy to the two young lovers locked in bliss.

They often joined their lockets and bodies together during that long hot summer and in later years the Chevalier remembered those days as the best of his life.

On The Feast of St Bartholomew Jacques world came crashing down. His father was arrested for fraud, false accounting and treason!

Monsieur Verde, desperately trying to haul himself up the social ladder, had gone into business with the Maire and the Prefect of Police of the town. Their firm supplied fresh meat to the army barracks in Grenoble.

There had been large amounts of money paid to the firm but only sub-standard meat supplied. Of course Monsieur Verde, as the butcher and the man who signed all the invoices, was held to blame and off he was taken to stand trial.

The Maire and Prefect had creamed off the money and had diverted the good quality meat, as chosen by Verde, to other butchers in Grenoble while supplying the army with cheap low standard quality meat. They had recruited Verde to take the blame should their fraud be detected.

Monsieur Verde was found guilty and was sentenced to life imprisonment on Devil' s Island. He was incarcerated in a cell at Grenoble barracks until such time as transport to Devil's Island was available. A week after being sentenced he was found hanged in the cell.

As a suicide he could not be buried in consecrated ground and it was this, as much as the shame brought on to to the family by his crime, that caused Madame Verde to go into a decline and die shortly afterwards.

Jacques' offer of a place at St Cyr was withdrawn; no son of a traitor could be allowed in the academy, and he was also forbidden to see Clothide. They did still manage to meet secretly for a few months but when that was discovered Clothide was sent away.

Jacques had gone to their meeting place and when she hadn't appeared had gone to her house. One of the house maids, who was a bit sweet on Jacques, told him that Clothide had been sent to the Convent of The Little Sisters of Mercy in Grenoble.

This order had a reputation for harsh discipline and austerity, which was meted out with so little, or no, Christian charity that they were known as The Sisters of Little Mercy.

"Clothide was distraught," Brigitte the house maid said, "they were so rough as they bundled her into the car, and her in that condition, terrible it was."

"What do you mean, 'that condition'?" Jacques asked sharply.

"Didn't she tell you?" Brigitte sounded surprised, "Clothide was three months gone, couldn't you tell? ... Men!"

Jacques was astounded, Clothide pregnant? He had noticed she was a bit fuller in the bosom, and that she had an indefinable glow but arrogantly had thought that was due to his love technique.

Chapter 3: Festucam fregit dorsum cameli

Early next morning Jacques closed the shop and went into Grenoble. Asking at the Convent gate in the Rue Turenne for news of Clothide was a complete waste of breath and eventually a gendarme was called to escort him away.

the gendarme was a some one that Jacques knew as a drinking companion of his father when visiting the town.

"Terrible thing about your Pa," the gendarme said "but you're not doing yourself any favours by shouting at the nuns. Anyway if they got a young lad like you in there they would probably shag you to death!"

He laughed and continued, "Go back home and look after your Ma, she needs you even more now your Pa has gone, God rest his soul." The gendarme crossed himself.

"My mother died last month of shame and a broken heart," Jacques voice was bitter.

"God rest her soul as well," the gendarme exclaimed "to think those bastards are responsible for two deaths..." he stopped abruptly.

"Come along son, you best be off back to Villard, stay here any longer and you'll end up in jail." He now spoke in the authoritative tone of a policeman rather than in his former tone of a family friend.

Jacques made his way home thinking what the man had said - 'those bastards are responsible for two deaths.'

He had never thought his father had deliberately defrauded the government but Verde Senior was never the best at keeping accounts and Jacques thought it was down to mismanagement rather than to fraud.

Now it seemed his father had been set up. Jacques knew that his father's business partners were the Maire and Prefect and so now knew that his parents deaths could be laid at the door of those two worthies.

For the next six months Jacques continued to run the butcher shop; he was not a master butcher like his father, neither did he have his father's eye for a prime beast but he made a living.

He started seeing Brigitte the house maid from the Maire's house, to find out if he could glean any further information about Clothide, but either Brigitte didn't know or she wanted to keep all his attention on herself as she never knew anything about the Little Mistress, as she referred to Clothide.

Jacques and Brigitte indulged in frequent bouts of energetic, enthusiastic and quite inventive sex. She was a few years older than Jacques and was well versed in fellatio anal and soixante- neuf, all of which were eye openers to Jacques.

He and Clothide had only indulged in what Brigitte called, somewhat contemptuously, 'vanilla sex' i.e. the missionary position, although occasionally Clothide would elect to be on top of Jacques.

Brigitte did it all and every way and Jacques was a quick and eager student. He particularly liked entering her from behind, with her standing, or even better being bent over a table or chair.

He found he could drive deeper into her, while rubbing, stroking and pinching her breasts and nipples. Brigitte showed, by her shrieks and shouts, that this was what she liked. She also liked being whipped with Jacques leather belt.

He was a bit apprehensive at first as he didn't want to cause her pain but Brigitte went off like a rocket after he had made her buttocks glow with strokes from his belt and the intensity of their subsequent coupling was greatly enhanced.

Jacques remembered a saying of his Grandfather's, 'A dog, a woman, a walnut tree the more you beat them the better they be.' Jacques could vouch for at least one of those benefits.

Brigitte and he would spend stolen hours in her upstairs garret bedroom, when the rest of the house was empty. She with his penis in her mouth and he at her vagina.

He learnt all the secret places to lick, suck and nibble, while she would suck him to near climax before mounting and riding him as energetically as if booting home a winner at Longchamps racetrack.

Jacques would get home exhausted and physically sated, but still missing the emotional rapport that he would have had when coming home from having 'vanilla ' sex with Clothide.

He still made enquiries about Clothide but was told she was to become a novice in Grenoble Convent and that she was going to dedicate the rest of her life to God. This was from the mouth of her father the Maire.

Jacques could barely keep his hands from wringing the sanctimonious bastard's neck; this was the man whose actions had caused all of Jacques pain.

One evening Jacques and Brigitte were in the stables making love, or rather indulging in sweaty animal lust. Brigitte was gasping and babbling as she approached her climax. She would say strange things, swear, blaspheme and in some way go out of her mind, such was the intensity of her emotions when the orgasm was upon her.

Afterwards she would have little knowledge of what she had said, or screamed, during her paroxysm of pleasure.

"Oh yes Jacques, fill me with your seed!" She was approaching her climax.

Jacques moved his ear as far from her mouth as possible, sometimes her shrieks and shouts were deafening.

"That's it my darling I can feel you coming, fill me! I will carry your child, I'm alive, the Little Mistress is dead, love me as you loved her..."

Jacques abruptly stopped thrusting and pulled out of her.

"What did you say about Clothide?"

Brigitte was too far into her orgasm to answer, just moaning in pleasure as it washed over her. Eventually she came down from the heights and tried to refocus her eyes.

"What my love? Why did you withdraw, you know I would have waited for you to come?" She had no idea what Jacques was talking about.

Jacques said angrily, "You said that Clothide is dead, tell me what you know!"

"Oh my God, did I say that?" She started to sob.

"Tell me everything you know," Jacques voice, although quiet had an air of menace that stopped Brigitte's tears immediately and she said.

"I heard the Mistress talking to her sister, you know the stuck up one from Clermont Ferrand?"

Jacques said impatiently "Yes I know the one, now tell me what she said."

Brigitte told him what she had overheard

"It seems that the Little Mistress had escaped from the convent about two weeks ago, the nuns were frantically looking for her, the gendarmes were searching all over Grenoble and when they pulled a young girl's body from the Isere they were sure it was her."

Brigtite stopped and looked over at Jacques.

"I'm so sorry, I couldn't tell you as I know how you would feel, on the other hand I knew that as long as she was alive you would never really love me; you are still in love with her, ... it hurts me so much!"

She again burst into tears.Jacques let her cry for a time and then gently put his arms around her.

"Brigitte, you are a lovely girl and you'll make someone a wonderful wife but I'm forever bound to Clothide, alive or dead. I should never have let you into my life."

She stopped crying and said, a bit ruefully "I knew all that but I thought I could blot her from your mind by my loving."