He showed his teeth,
and his face acquired the blood-thirsty expression, which startled
me the first time I saw him.
And he began to apply the lash--so mercilessly, with such frightful
force that I quivered under each blow, and began to tremble all over
with pain. Tears rolled down over my cheeks. In the meantime Wanda
lay on the ottoman in her fur-jacket, supporting herself on her arm;
she looked on with cruel curiosity, and was convulsed with laughter.
The sensation of being whipped by a successful rival before the eyes
of an adored woman cannot be described. I almost went mad with shame
and despair.
What was most humiliating was that at first I felt a certain wild,
supersensual stimulation under Apollo's whip and the cruel laughter
of my Venus, no matter how horrible my position was. But Apollo
whipped on and on, blow after blow, until I forgot all about poetry,
and finally gritted my teeth in impotent rage, and cursed my wild
dreams, woman, and love.
All of a sudden I saw with horrible clarity whither blind passion
and lust have led man, ever since Holofernes and Agamemnon--into a
blind alley, into the net of woman's treachery, into misery, slavery,
and death.
It was as though I were awakening from a dream.
Blood was already flowing under the whip. I wound like a worm that
is trodden on, but he whipped on without mercy, and she continued to
laugh without mercy.
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