欧宝娱乐

"Here lies Don Rigerbto, who contrived to love the epigastrium of his spouse as much as her vulva or her tongue,鈥� he philosophically projected as a fitting epitaph on the marble of his tomb. Would that mortuary motto be a lie? Not in the slightest.

"Happiness exists鈥�, he repeated to himself, in one鈥檚 own body and in that of one鈥檚 beloved, for instance; by oneself and in the bathroom; for hours or minutes on a bed with the being so ardently desired. It was hidden, a pearl in its seashell, in certain rites and ceremonial duties that offered human being brief flashes and optical illusions of perfection. Happiness lies hidden in...all that rich and subtle biological orography that lay beneath the smooth epidermis of Lucrecia鈥檚 belly.

Alfonsito鈥檚 attention appeared to be riveted on his stepmother鈥檚 hands. He had seized them and was kissing them lingeringly, timidly, with fervent devotion. Then, as he rubbed them against his satiny cheek, Do帽a Luncrecia heard him murmur in a very soft voice, as though he were addressing only the slender fingers that he was squeezing so hard: 鈥淚 love you a lot, stepmother. A whole lot鈥�.Don鈥檛 ever treat me again the way you have lately, because I鈥檒l kill myself. I swear to you I鈥檒l kill myself."

From that night on, she was certain that the clandestine meetings with the boy, however obscure and complicated, however difficult to explain, enriched her marital relation, taking it by surprise and thus giving it a fresh start. But what kind of morality is this, Lucrecia? She couldn鈥檛 understand it, and made no attempt to do so. One morning, on opening her eyes, the phrase 鈥淚 have won sovereignty鈥� came to her. She felt fortunate and emancipated, but could not have said what it was that she had been freed from.

When the organ player looks at where his gaze is fixed, what is he finding? There is something there that attracts his eyes in the late afternoon each day, with the imperiousness of a stroke of fate or the magic of a witch鈥檚 spell. Something like the divination that, at the foot of the sunlit mound of Venus, in the tender cleft protected by the rounded columns of the lady鈥檚 thighs, resilient, red, moist with the dew of her privateness, pours forth the fountain of life and pleasure. In just a little while now, our lord and master Don Rigoberto will bend down to drink ambrosia from it.

Jordan Jordaens, Candaules, King of Lydia, showing his wife to Prime Minister Gyges (1648), oil on canvas. The National Museum of Stockholm

There are those who soon tire of their lawfully wedded wife. The routine of married life kills desire, they philosophize: what illusory hope can swell and revive the veins of a man who sleeps, for months and years, with the same woman? Yet, despite our having been wed for so long a time, Lucrecia, my lady, does not bore me. When I go off on tiger and elephant hunts, the memory of her makes my heart beat faster, just as in the first days, and when I caress a slave girl or some camp follower so as to relieve the loneliness of nights in a field tent, my hands always experience a keen disappointment: those are merely backsides, buttocks, rumps, asses. Only hers 鈥� O Beloved 鈥� is the croup.