My Uncle Oswald

I am Beginning, once again, to have an urge to salute my Uncle Oswald. I mean, of course, Oswald Hendryks Cornelius, deceased, the connoisseur, the bon vivant, the collector of spiders, scorpions and walking sticks, the lover of opera, the expert on Chinese porcelain, the seducer of women and, without much doubt, the greatest fornicator of all time. Every other celebrated contender for that title is diminished to a point of ridicule when his record is compared with that of my Uncle Oswald. Especially poor old Casanova. He comes out of the contest looking like a man who was suffering from a severe malfunction of his sexual organ.

Fifteen years have passed since I released for publication in 1964 the first small excerpt from Oswald's diaries. I took trouble at the time to select something unlikely to give offense, and that particular episode concerned, if you remember, a harmless and rather frivolous description of coitus between my uncle and a certain female leper in the Sinai Desert.

So far so good. But I waited a full ten years more (1974) before risking the release of a second piece. And once again, I was careful to choose something that was, at any rate by Oswald's standards, as nearly as possible suitable for reading by the vicar to Sunday school in the village church. That one dealt with the discovery of a perfume so potent that any man who sniffed it upon a woman was unable to prevent himself from ravishing her on the spot.

Today, five years after publication of that perfume story, I have decided to permit the public yet another glimpse into my uncle's life. The section I have chosen comes from Volume XX, written in 1938, when Oswald was 43 years old and in the prime of life.

Here, then, is the extract from Volume XX of the Diaries of Oswald Hendryks Cornelius, word for word as he wrote it.

•

London, July 1938

Have just returned from a satisfactory visit to the Lagonda works at Staines. W. O. Bentley gave me lunch (salmon from the Usk and a bottle of Montrachet) and we discussed the extras for my new V12. He has promised me a set of horns that will play Mozart's Son giá mille e tre in perfect pitch. Some of you may think this to be a rather childish conceit, but it will serve as a nice incentive to be reminded, every time I press the button, that good old Don Giovanni had by then deflowered 1003 buxom Spanish damsels. I told Bentley that the seats are to be upholstered in fine-grain alligator, and the paneling to be veneered in yew. Why yew? Simply because I prefer the color and grain of English yew to that of any other wood.

The new Lagondas are peerless, and I, for one, would have no other machine. But this one isn't going to be cheap. It is costing me more thousands than I ever thought it possible to pay for an automobile.

Yet who cares about money? Not me, because I've always had plenty of it. I made my first £100,000 when I was 17 and later I was to make a lot more. Having said (continued on page 136)My Uncle Oswald(continued from page 133) that, it occurs to me that I have never once throughout these journals made any mention of the manner in which I became a wealthy man.

Perhaps the time has come when I should do this. I think it has. For these diaries would be incomplete without some reference to the art of moneymaking and the pleasures attendant thereon.

Very well, then. I have talked myself into it. I shall proceed at once to tell you something about how I set about making money.

In the year 1912, when I was barely 17, I won a scholarship in natural sciences to Trinity College, Cambridge. I was a precocious youth and had taken the exam a year earlier than usual. This meant that I had a 12-month wait doing nothing, because Cambridge would not receive me until I was 18. My father therefore decided that I should fill in the time by going to France to learn the language. I myself hoped that I should learn a fair bit more than just the language in that splendid country. Already, you see, I had begun to acquire a taste for rakery and wenching among the London debutantes. Already, also, I was beginning to get a bit bored with these young English girls. They were, I decided, a pretty pithless lot, and I was impatient to sow a few bushels of wild oats in foreign fields. Especially in France. I had been reliably informed that Parisian females knew a thing or two about the act of lovemaking that their London cousins had never even dreamed of. Copulation, so rumor had it, was in its infancy in England.

On the evening before I was due to depart for France, I gave a small party at our family house in Cheyne Walk. I had invited a dozen or so friends of both sexes, all of them about my own age, and by nine o'clock we were sitting around making pleasant talk, drinking wine and consuming some excellent boiled mutton and dumplings. The front doorbell rang. I went to answer it, and on the doorstep there stood a middle-aged man with a huge mustache, a magenta complexion and a pigskin suitcase. He introduced himself as Major Grout and asked for my father. I said he was out to dinner. "Good gracious me," said Major Grout. "He has invited me to stay. I'm an old friend."

"Father must have forgotten," I said. "I'm awfully sorry. You had better come in."

Now, I couldn't very well leave the major alone in the study reading Punch while we were having a party in the next room, so I asked him if he'd care to come in and join us. He would, indeed. He'd love to join us. So in he came, mustache and all, a beaming, jovial old boy who settled down among us quite comfortably despite the fact that he was three times the age of anyone else present. He tucked into the mutton and polished off a whole bottle of claret in the first 15 minutes.

"Excellent victuals," he said. "Is there any more wine?"

I opened another bottle for him, and we all watched with a certain admiration as he proceeded to empty that one as well. His cheeks were swiftly turning from magenta to a very deep purple and his nose seemed to be catching on fire. Halfway through the third bottle, he began to loosen up. He worked, he told us, in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan and was home on leave. His job had to do with the Sudan Irrigation Service and a very hot and arduous business it was. But fascinating.

We sat round him, listening and not a little intrigued by this purple-faced creature from distant lands.

"A great country, the Sudan," he said. "It is enormous. It is remote. It is full of mysteries and secrets. Would you like me to tell you about one of the great secrets of the Sudan?"

"Very much, sir," we said. "Yes, please."

"One of its great secrets," he said, tipping another glass of wine down his throat, "a secret that is known only to a few old-timers out there like myself, and to the natives, is a little creature called the Sudanese blister beetle, or, to give him his right name, Cantharis vesicatoria sudanii."

"You mean a scarab?" I said.

"Certainly not," he said. "The Sudanese blister beetle is a winged insect, as much a fly as a beetle, and is about three quarters of an inch long. It's very pretty to look at, with a brilliant iridescent shell of golden green."

"Why is it so secret?" we asked.

"These little beetles," the major said, "are found only in one part of the Sudan. It's an area of about twenty square miles, north of Khartoum, and that's where a tree called the hashab grows. The leaves of the hashab tree are what the beetles feed on. Men spend their whole lives searching for these beetles. Beetle hunters, they are called. They are very sharp-eyed natives who know all there is to know about the haunts and habits of the tiny brutes. And when they catch them, they kill them and dry them in the sun and crunch them up into a fine powder. This powder is greatly prized among the natives, who usually keep it in small, elaborately carved beetle boxes. A tribal chief will have his beetle box made of silver."

"But this powder," we said, "what do they do with it?"

"It's not what they do with it," the major said. "It's what it does to you. One tiny pinch of that powder is the most powerful aphrodisiac in the world."

"The Spanish fly!" someone shouted. "It's the Spanish fly!"

"Well, not quite," the major said, "but you're on the right track. The common Spanish fly is found in Spain and southern Italy. The one I'm talking about is the Sudanese fly and although it's of the same family, it's a different kettle of fish altogether. It is approximately ten times as powerful as the ordinary Spanish fly. The reaction produced by the little Sudanese fellow is so incredibly vicious it is dangerous to use even in small doses."

"But they do use it?"

"Oh, God, yes. Every wog in Khartoum and northward uses the old beetle. White men, the ones who know about it, are inclined to leave it alone because it's so damn dangerous."

"Have you used it?" someone asked.

The major looked up at the questioner and gave a little smile under his enormous mustache. "We'll come to that in a moment or two, shall we?" he said.

"What does it actually do to you?" one of the girls asked.

"My God," the major said, "what doesn't it do to you? It builds a fire under your genitals. It is both a violent aphrodisiac and a powerful irritant. It not only makes you uncontrollably randy but it also guarantees you an enormous and long-lasting erection at the same time. I will tell you a true story, if you like," he said, "about myself and the blister beetle."

"Tell us," we said. "Go on, sir."

"One evening," he began, "I was sitting on the veranda of my bungalow way upcountry about fifty miles north of Khartoum. It was hot as hell and I'd had a hard day. I was drinking a strong whiskey and soda. It was my first that evening and I was lying back in the deck chair with my feet resting on the little balustrade that ran round the veranda. I could feel the whiskey hitting the lining of my stomach and I can promise you there is no greater sensation at the end (continued on page 228)My Uncle Oswald(continued from page 136) of a long day in a fierce climate than when you feel that first whiskey hitting your stomach and going through into the blood stream. A few minutes later, I went indoors and got myself a second drink, then I returned to the veranda. I lay back again in the deck chair. My shirt was soaked with sweat, but I was too tired to take a shower. Then, all of a sudden, I went rigid. I was just about to put the glass of whiskey to my lips and my hand froze, it literally froze in mid-air, and there it stayed, with my fingers clenched around the glass. I couldn't move. I couldn't even speak. I tried to call out to my boy for help, but I couldn't. Rigor mortis. Paralysis. My entire body had turned to stone."

"Were you frightened?" someone asked.

"Of course I was frightened," the major said. "I was bloody terrified, especially out there in the Sudan desert miles from anywhere. But the paralysis didn't last very long. Maybe a minute, maybe two. I don't really know. But when I came to, as it were, the first thing I noticed was a burning sensation in the region of my groin. 'Hullo,' I said, 'what the hell's going on now?' But it was pretty obvious what was going on. The activity inside my trousers was becoming very violent, indeed, and within another few seconds, my member was as stiff and erect as the mainmast of a topsail schooner."

"What do you mean, your member?" asked a girl whose name was Gwendoline.

"I expect you will catch on as we go along, my dear," the major said.

"Carry on, Major," we said. "What happened next?"

"Then it started to throb," he said. "I could feel every beat of my heart all the way along it. Pulsing and throbbing most terribly, it was, and as tight as a balloon. You know those long sausage-shaped balloons children have at parties? I kept thinking about one of those, and with every beat of my heart it felt as if someone was pumping in more air and it was going to burst."

The major drank some wine. We sat still, waiting.

"So of course I began trying to puzzle out what might have happened," he went on. "I looked at my glass of whiskey. It was where I always put it, on top of the little white-painted balustrade surrounding the veranda. Then my eye traveled upward to the roof of the bungalow and to the edge of the roof and, suddenly, presto! I'd got it! I knew for certain what must have happened."

"What?" we said, all speaking at once.

"A large blister beetle, taking an evening stroll on the roof, had ventured too close to the edge and had fallen off."

"Right into your glass of whiskey!" we cried.

"Precisely," the major said. "And I, thirsting like mad in the heat, had gulped him down without looking."

The girl called Gwendoline was staring at the major with huge eyes. "Quite honestly, I don't see what all the fuss was about," she said. "One teeny-weeny little beetle isn't going to hurt anyone."

"My dear child," the major said, "when the blister beetle is dried and crushed, the resulting powder is called cantharidin. That's its pharmaceutical name. The Sudanese variety is called cantharidin sudanii. And this cantharidin sudanii is absolutely deadly. The maximum safe dose for a human, if there is such a thing as a safe dose, is one minim. A minim is one sixtieth of a fluid ounce. Assuming I had just swallowed one whole fully grown blister beetle, that meant I'd received God knows how many hundreds of times the maximum dose."

"Jesus," we said. "Jesus Christ."

"My member," the major said, "was now like a white-hot rod of iron burning into my body. I leaped up from my chair and rushed to my car and drove like a madman for the nearest hospital, which was in Khartoum. I got there in forty minutes flat. I was scared fartless. I dashed into the hospital and found the casualty room, where an English doctor was stitching up somebody's knife wound. 'Look at this!' I cried, taking it out and waving it at him."

"Waving what at him, for heaven's sake?" the awful Gwendoline asked.

"Shut up, Gwendoline," I said.

"Thank you," the major said. "The doctor stopped stitching and regarded the object I was holding out to him with some alarm. I quickly told him my story. He looked glum. There was no antidote for blister beetle, he informed me. I was in grave trouble. But he would do his best. So they stomach-pumped me and put me to bed and packed ice all around my poor throbbing member."

"Who did?" someone asked. "Who's they?"

"A nurse," the major answered. "A young Scottish nurse with dark hair. She brought the ice in small rubber bags and packed it round and kept the bags in place with a bandage."

"Didn't you get frostbite?"

"You can't get frostbite on something that's practically red-hot," the major said.

"What happened next?"

"They kept changing the ice every three hours, day and night."

"Who, the Scottish nurse?"

"They took it in turns. Several nurses."

"Good God."

"It took two weeks to subside."

"Two weeks!" I said. "Were you all right afterward, sir? Are you all right now?"

"I was out of action for six months," the major said, smiling wanly. "But that is no hardship in the Sudan. Yes, if you want to know, I'm all right now. I made a miraculous recovery."

That was the story Major Grout had told us at my little party on the eve of my departure for France, and it set me thinking. It set me thinking very deeply, indeed. In fact, that night, as I lay in bed with my bags all packed on the floor, a tremendously daring plan began rapidly to evolve in my head. I say daring because, by God, it damn well was daring when you consider I was only 17 years old at the time. Looking back on it now, I take my hat off to myself for even contemplating that sort of action. But by the following morning, my mind was made up.

•

I bade farewell to my parents on the platform at Victoria Station and boarded the boat train for Paris. I arrived that afternoon and checked in at the house where my father had arranged for me to board. It was on the Avenue Marceau, and the family, who were called Boisvain, took paying guests. Monsieur Boisvain was a civil servant of sorts and as unremarkable as the rest of his breed. His wife, a pale woman with short fingers and a flaccid rump, was in much the same mold as her husband, and I guessed that neither of them would give me any trouble. They had two daughters, Jeanette, aged 15, and Nicole, who was 19. Mademoiselle Nicole was some kind of freak, for while the rest of the family were typically small and neat and French, this girl was of Amazonian proportions. She looked to me like a sort of female gladiator. She could not possibly have stood less than 6'3" in her bare feet, but she was nonetheless a well-made young gladiator with long, nicely turned legs and a pair of dark eyes that seemed to hold a number of secrets. It was the first time since puberty that I had encountered a woman who was not only (continued on page 279)My Uncle Oswald(continued from page 228) tremendously tall but also attractive, and I was much impressed by what I saw. As we shook hands, I applied a touch of extra pressure to her knuckles and watched her face. Her lips parted and I saw the tip of her tongue push out suddenly between her teeth. Very well, young lady, I told myself. You shall be number one in Paris.

In case this sounds a bit brash coming from a 17-year-old stripling like me, I think you should know that even at that tender age, fortune had endowed me with far more than my share of good looks. I was, in fact, a youth of quite piercing beauty and there is no point in denying it.

In order to carry out the plan which the good Major Grout had put into my head, I straightaway announced to Madame Boisvain that I would be leaving first thing in the morning to stay with friends in the country. We were still standing in the hall and we had just completed the handshakes. "But Monsieur Oswald, you have only this minute arrived!" the good lady cried.

"I believe my father has paid you six months in advance," I said. "If I am not here, you will save money on food."

Arithmetic like that will mollify the heart of any landlady in France, and Madame Boisvain made no further protest.

The next morning, in order to carry out my plan, I said farewell to the Boisvains and took a train for Marseilles. I had on me the six months' expense money my father had provided before I left London, £200 in French francs. That was a lot of money in the year 1912.

At Marseilles, I booked a passage for Alexandria on a French steamship of 9000 tons called L'Impératrice Josephine, a pleasant little passenger boat that ran regularly between Marseilles, Naples, Palermo and Alexandria.

The trip was without incident, except that I encountered on the first day out yet another tall female. This time she was a Turk, a tall dark-skinned Turkish lady, who was so smothered in jewelry of all sorts that she tinkled as she walked. My first thought was that she would have worked wonders on top of a cherry tree to keep the birds away. My second thought, which followed very soon after the first, was that she had an exceptional shape to her body. The undulations in the region of her chest were so magnificent that I felt, as I gazed at them across the boat deck, like a traveler in Tibet who was seeing for the first time the highest peaks in the Himalayas. The woman returned my gaze, her chin high and arrogant, her eyes traveling slowly down my body from head to toe, then up again. A minute later, she calmly strolled across and invited me to her cabin for a glass of absinthe. I'd never heard of the stuff in my life, but I went willingly, and I stayed willingly and I did not emerge again from that cabin until we docked at Naples three days later. It was then that I learned for the first time that to tangle with a Turk is like running 50 miles before breakfast. You have to be fit.

I spent the rest of the voyage getting my wind back and by the time we docked at Alexandria four days later, I was feeling quite bouncy again. From Alexandria, I took a train to Cairo. There I changed trains and went on to Khartoum.

By God, it was hot in the Sudan. I was not dressed for the tropics, but I refused to waste money on clothes that I would be wearing for only a day or two. In Khartoum, I got a room at a large hotel where the foyer was filled with Englishmen wearing khaki shorts and topees. They all had mustaches and magenta cheeks like Major Grout, and every one of them had a drink in his hand. There was a Sudanese hall porter of sorts lounging by the entrance. He was a splendid, handsome fellow in a white robe with a red tarboosh on his head, and I went up to him.

"I wonder if you could help me?" I said, taking some French bank notes from my pocket and riffling them casually.

He looked at the money and grinned.

"Blister beetles," I said. "You know about blister beetles?"

Here it was, then. This was le moment critique. I had come all the way from Paris to Khartoum to ask that one question, and now I watched the man's face anxiously. It was certainly possible that Major Grout's story had been nothing more than an entertaining hoax.

The Sudanese hall porter's grin became wider still. "Everyone knows about blister beetles, sahib," he said. "What you want?"

"I want you to tell me where I can go out and catch one thousand of them."

He stopped grinning and stared at me as though I'd gone balmy. "You mean live beetles?" he exclaimed. "You want to go out and catch yourself one thousand live blister beetles?"

"I do, yes."

"What you want live beetles for, sahib? They no good to you at all, those old live beetles."

Oh, my God, I thought. The major has been pulling our legs.

The hall porter moved closer to me and placed an almost jet-black hand on my arm. "You want jig-a-jig, right? You want stuff to make you go jig-a-jig?"

"That's about it," I said. "More or less."

"Then you don't want to bother with them live beetles, sahib. All you want is powdered beetles."

"I had an idea I might take the beetles home and breed them," I said. "That way, I'd have a permanent supply."

"In England?" he said.

"England or France. Somewhere like that."

"No good," he said, shaking his head. "This little blister beetle, he live only here in the Sudan. He needs very hot sun. Beetles will all die in your country. Why you not take the powder?"

I could see I was going to have to make a slight adjustment in my plans. "How much does the powder cost?" I asked him.

"How much you want?"

"A lot."

"You have to be very, very careful with that powder, sahib. All you take is the littlest pinch, otherwise you get into very serious trouble."

"I know that."

"Over here, we Sudanese men measure up one dose by pouring the powder over the head of a pin and what stays on the pinhead is one dose exactly. And that is not very much. So you better be careful, young sahib."

"I know all about that," I said. "Just tell me how I go about getting hold of a large quantity."

"What you mean by large quantity?"

"Well, say about ten pounds in weight."

"Ten pounds!" he cried. "That would take care of all the people in the whole of Africa put together!"

"Five pounds, then."

"What in the world you going to do with five pounds of blister-beetle powder, sahib? Just a few ounces is a lifetime supply, even for a big strong man like me."

"Never mind what I'm going to do with it," I said. "How much would it cost?"

He laid his head on one side and considered this question carefully. "We buy it in tiny packets," he said. "Quarter ounce each. Very expensive stuff."

"I want five pounds," I said. "In bulk."

"Are you staying here in the hotel?" he asked me.

"Yes."

"Then I see you tomorrow with the answer. I must go around asking some questions."

I left it at that for the time being.

The next morning, the tall black hall porter was in his usual place by the hotel entrance. "What news of the powder?" I asked him.

"I fix," he said. "I find a place where I can get you five pounds in weight of pure powder."

"How much will it cost?" I asked him.

"One thousand English pounds, sahib. Very cheap."

"Then forget it," I said, turning away.

"Five hundred," he said.

"Fifty," I said. "I'll give you fifty pounds."

"One hundred."

"No. Fifty. That's all I can afford."

He shrugged and spread his palms upward. "You find the money," he said. "I find the powder. Six o'clock tonight."

"How will I know you won't be giving me sawdust or something?"

"Sahib!" he cried. "I never cheat anyone."

"I'm not so sure."

"In that case," he said, "we will test the powder on you by giving you a little dose before you pay me. How's that?"

"Good idea," I said. "See you at six."

One of the London banks had an overseas branch in Khartoum. I went there and changed some of my French francs for pounds. At six P.M., I sought out the hall porter. He was now in the foyer of the hotel.

"You got it?" I asked him.

He pointed to a large brown-paper parcel standing on the floor behind a pillar. "You want to test it first, sahib? You are very welcome, because this is the absolute top-class quality beetle powder in the Sudan. One pinhead of this and you go jig-a-jig all night long and half the next day."

I didn't think he would have offered me a trial run if the stuff hadn't been right, so I gave him the money and took the parcel.

An hour later, I was on the night train to Cairo. Within ten days, I was back in Paris and knocking on the door of Madame Boisvain's house in the Avenue Marceau. I had my precious parcel with me. There had been no trouble with the French customs as I disembarked at Marseilles. In those days, they searched for knives and guns but nothing else.

•

I announced to Madame B. that I was now going to stay for quite a while but that I had one request to make. I was a science student, I told her. It was my wish not only to learn French during my stay in France but also to pursue my scientific studies. I would therefore be conducting certain experiments in my room which involved the use of apparatus and chemicals that could be dangerous or poisonous to the inexperienced. Because of this, I wished to have a key to my room, and nobody should enter it.

"And who will clean your room and make your bed?"

"I will," I said. "This will save you much trouble."

She muttered and grumbled a fair bit but gave way to me in the end.

I went upstairs to my room and locked the door. For the first time, I opened my big brown-paper parcel. The powder had been packed, thank goodness, in two large biscuit tins. I opened one up. The stuff was pale gray and almost as fine as flour. Here before me, I told myself, lay what was probably the biggest crock of gold a man could ever find. I say probably because, as yet, I had no proof of anything. I had only the major's word that the stuff worked and the hall porter's word that it was the genuine article.

I lay on my bed and read a book until midnight. I then undressed and got into my pajamas. I took a pin and held it upright over the open tin of powder. I sprinkled a pinch of powder over the upright pinhead. A tiny cluster of gray powder grains remained clinging to the top of the pin. Very carefully, I raised this to my mouth and licked off the powder. It tasted of nothing. I noted the time by my watch, then I sat on the edge of the bed to await results.

They weren't long coming. Precisely nine minutes later, my whole body went rigid. I began to gasp and gurgle. I froze where I was sitting, just as Major Grout had frozen on his veranda with the glass of whiskey in his hand. But because I'd had a much weaker dose than him, this period of paralysis lasted for only a few seconds. Then I felt, as the good major had so aptly put it, a burning sensation in the region of my groin. Within another minute, my member had become as stiff and erect as the mainmast of a topsail schooner.

Now for the final test. I stood up and crossed to the door. I opened it quietly and slipped along the passage. I entered the bedroom of Mademoiselle Nicole and, surely enough, there she was waiting for me. "Bon soir, monsieur," she whispered, giving me a formal handshake.

I didn't say anything. Already, as I got into bed beside her, I was beginning to slide off into another of those weird fantasies that seem to engulf me whenever I come to close quarters with a female. This time I was back in the Middle Ages and Richard Coeur de Lion was king of England. I was the champion jouster of the country, the noble knight who was once more about to display his prowess and strength before the king and all his courtiers in the Field of the Cloth of Gold. My opponent was a gigantic and fearsome female from France who had butchered 78 valiant Englishmen in tournaments of jousting. But my steed was brave and my lance was of tremendous length and thickness, sharp-pointed, vibrant and made of the strongest steel. And the king shouted out, "Bravo, Sir Oswald, the man with the mighty lance! No one but he has the strength to wield so huge a weapon! Run her through, my lad! Run her through!" So I went galloping into battle with my giant lance pointed straight and true at the Frenchy's most vital region, and I thrust at her with mighty thrusts, all swift and sure, and in a trice I had pierced her armor and had her screaming for mercy. But I was in no mood to be merciful. Spurred on by the cheers of the king and his courtiers, I drove my steely lance 10,000 times into that writhing body and then 10,000 times more, and I heard the courtiers shouting, "Thrust away, Sir Oswald! Thrust away and keep on thrusting!" And then the king's voice was saying, "Begad, methinks the brave fellow is going to shatter that great lance of his if he doesn't stop soon!" But my lance did not shatter, and in a glorious finale, I impaled the giant Frenchy female upon the spiked end of my trusty weapon and went galloping around the arena, waving the body high above my head to shouts of "Bravo!" and "Gadzooks!" and "Victor ludorum!"

All this, as you can imagine, took some time. How long, I had not the faintest idea, but when I finally surfaced again, I jumped out of the bed and stood there triumphant, looking down upon my prostrate victim. The girl was panting like a stag at bay and I began to wonder whether I might not have done her an injury. Not that I cared much about that.

"You are ferocious and you are marvelous and I feel like my boiler has exploded!" she cried.

That made me feel pretty good. I left without another word and sneaked back along the corridor to my own room. What a triumph! The powder was fantastic! The major had been right! And the hall porter in Khartoum had not let me down! I was on my way to the crock of gold and nothing could stop me. With these happy thoughts, I fell asleep.

The next morning, I immediately began to set matters in train. You will remember that I had a science scholarship. I was, therefore, well versed in physics and chemistry and several other things besides, but chemistry had always been my strongest subject.

I therefore knew already all about the process of making a simple pill. In the year 1912, which is where we are now, it was customary for pharmacists to make many of their own pills on the premises, and for this they always used something called a pill machine. So I went shopping in Paris that morning, and in the end, I found a supplier of secondhand pharmaceutical apparatus. From him I bought an excellent little pill machine that turned out good professional pills in groups of 24 at a time. I bought also a pair of highly sensitive chemists' scales.

Next, I found a pharmacy that sold me a large quantity of calcium carbonate and a smaller amount of tragacanth. I also bought a bottle of cochineal. I carried all this back to my room, and then I cleared the dressing table and laid out my supplies and my apparatus in good order.

Pillmaking is a simple matter if you know how. The calcium carbonate, which is neutral and harmless, comprises the bulk of the pill. You then add the precise quantity by weight of the active ingredient, in my case, cantharidin powder. And finally, as an excipient, you put in a little tragacanth. An excipient is simply the cement that makes everything stick together and harden into an attractive pill.

I weighed out sufficient of each substance to make 24 fairly large and impressive pills. I added a few drops of cochineal, which is a tasteless scarlet coloring matter. I mixed everything together well and truly in a bowl and fed the mixture into my pill machine. In a trice, I had before me 24 large red pills of perfect shape and hardness. And each one, if I had done my weighing and mixing properly, contained exactly the amount of cantharidin powder that would lie on top of a pinhead. Each one, in other words, was a potent and explosive aphrodisiac.

I was still not ready to make my move.

I went out again into the streets of Paris and found a commercial boxmaker. From him, I bought 1000 small round cardboard boxes, one inch in diameter. I also bought cotton wool.

Next, I went to a printer and ordered 1000 tiny round labels. On each label the following legend was to be printed in English:

Professor Yousoupoff's Potency Pills.

These pills are exceedingly powerful. Use them sparingly, otherwise you may drive both yourself and your partner beyond the point of exhaustion. Recommended dose, one per week. Sole European agent, O. Cornelius, 192 Avenue Marceau, Paris.

The labels were designed to fit exactly upon the lids of my little cardboard boxes.

Two days later, I collected the labels. I bought a pot of glue. I returned to my room and stuck labels onto 24 box lids. Inside each box, I made a nest of white cotton wool. Upon this I placed a single scarlet pill and closed the lid.

I was ready to go.

As you will have guessed long ago, I was about to enter the commercial world. I was going to sell my Potency Pills to a clientele that would soon be screaming for more and still more. I would sell them individually, one only in each box, and I would charge an exorbitant price.

And the clientele? Where would they come from? How would a 17-year-old boy in a foreign city set about finding customers for this wonder pill of his? Well, I had no qualms about that. I had only to find one single person of the right type and let him try one single pill and the ecstatic recipient would immediately come galloping back for a second helping. He would also whisper the news to his friends and the glad tidings would spread like a forest fire.

I already knew who my first victim was going to be.

The current British ambassador to France was someone by the name of Sir Charles Makepiece. He was an old friend of my father's, and before I left England, my father had written a letter to Sir Charles asking him to keep an eye on me.

I knew what I had to do now, and I set about doing it straight away. I put on my best suit of clothes and made my way to the British embassy. I did not, of course, go in by the chancery entrance. I knocked on the door of the ambassador's private residence, which was in the same imposing building as the chancery, but at the rear. The time was four in the afternoon. A flunky in white knee breeches and a scarlet coat with gold buttons opened the door and glared at me. I had no visiting card, but I managed to convey the news that my father and mother were close friends of Sir Charles and Lady Makepiece and would he kindly inform her ladyship that Oswald Cornelius Esquire had come to pay his respects.

I was put into a sort of vestibule, where I sat down and waited. Five minutes later, Lady Makepiece swept into the room in a flurry of silk and chiffon. "Well, well!" she cried, taking both of my hands in hers. "So you are William's son! He always had good taste, the old rascal! We got his letter and we've been waiting for you to call."

She was an imposing wench. Not young, of course, but not exactly fossilized, either. I put her around 40. She had one of those dazzling ageless faces that seemed to be carved out of marble, and lower down there was a torso that tapered to a waist I could have circled with my two hands.

She led me by the hand through a number of vast and superbly appointed rooms until we arrived at a smallish, rather cozy place furnished with a sofa and armchairs. "This," she said, "is my own private little study. From here I organize the social life of the embassy." I smiled and blinked and sat down on the sofa. Lady Makepiece sat beside me. "Now tell me all about yourself," she said. There followed a whole lot of questions and answers about my family and about me. It was all pretty banal, but I knew I must stick it out for the sake of my great plan. So we went on talking for maybe 40 minutes, with her ladyship frequently patting my thigh with a jeweled hand to emphasize a point. In the end, the hand remained resting on my thigh and I felt a slight finger pressure. Ho-ho, I thought. What's the old bird up to now? Then suddenly she sprang to her feet and began pacing nervously up and down the room. I sat watching her. Back and forth she paced, hands clasped across her front, head twitching, bosom heaving. She was like a tightly coiled spring.

"Have you met my husband?" she blurted out. "Obviously, you haven't. You've just arrived. He's a lovely man. A brilliant person. But he's getting on in years, poor lamb, and he can't take as much exercise as he used to."

"Bad luck," I said. "No more polo and tennis."

"Not even ping-pong," she said.

"Everyone gets old," I said.

She took a great big deep breath and her breasts blew up like two gigantic balloons. "I'll tell you what I want," she whispered softly. "I want you to ravish me and ravish me and ravish me! I want you to ravish me to death! I want you to do it now! Now! Quickly!"

By golly, I thought. Here we go again.

"Don't be shocked, dear boy."

"I'm not shocked."

"Oh, yes you are. I can see it on your face. I should never have asked you. You are so young. You are far too young. How old are you? No, don't tell me. I don't want to know. You are very delicious, but schoolboys are forbidden fruit. What a pity. It's quite obvious you have not yet entered the fiery world of women. I don't suppose you've ever even touched one."

That nettled me. "You are mistaken, Lady Makepiece," I said. "I have frolicked with females on both sides of the Channel. Also on ships at sea."

"Why, you naughty boy! I don't believe it!"

I was still on the sofa. She was standing above me. Her big red mouth was open and she was beginning to pant. "You do understand I would never have mentioned it if Charles hadn't been... sort of past it, don't you?"

"Of course I understand," I said, wriggling a bit. "I understand very well. I am full of sympathy. I don't blame you in the least."

"You really mean that?"

"Of course."

"Oh, you gorgeous boy!" she cried and she came at me like a tigress.

There is nothing particularly illuminating to report about the barney that followed, except, perhaps, to mention that her ladyship astounded me with her sofa work. Up until then, I had always regarded the sofa as a rotten romping ground, though heaven knows, I had been forced to use it often enough with the London debutantes while the parents were snoring away upstairs. The sofa to me was a beastly uncomfortable thing surrounded on three sides by padded walls and with a horizontal area that was so narrow one was continually rolling off it onto the floor. But Lady Makepiece was a sofa wizard. For her, the sofa was a kind of gymnastic horse upon which one vaulted and bounced and flipped and rolled.

"Were you ever a gym teacher?" I asked her.

"Shut up and concentrate," she said, rolling me around like a lump of puff pastry.

It was lucky for me I was young and pliable; otherwise, I'm quite sure I would have suffered a fracture. And that got me thinking about poor old Sir Charles and what he must have gone through in his time. Small wonder he had chosen to go into moth balls. But just wait, I thought, until he swallows the old blister beetle! Then it'll be her that starts blowing the whistle for time out, not him.

Lady Makepiece was a quick-change artist. A couple of minutes after our little caper had ended, there she was, seated at her small Louis Quinze desk, looking as well groomed and as unruffled as when I had first met her. The steam had gone out of her now, and she had the sleepy, contented expression of a boa constrictor that has just swallowed a live rat. "Look here," she said, studying a piece of paper. "Tomorrow we're giving a rather grand dinner party. Admiral Joubert has dropped out. He's reviewing his fleet in the Mediterranean. How would you like to take his place?"

I only just stopped myself from shouting hooray. It was exactly what I wanted. "I would be honored," I said.

"Most of the government ministers will be there," she said. "And all the senior ambassadors. Do you have a white tie?"

"I do," I said.

"Good," she said, writing my name on the guest list. "Eight o'clock tomorrow evening, then. Good afternoon, my little man. It was nice meeting you." Already she had gone back to studying the guest list, so I found my own way out.

•

The next evening, sharp at eight o'clock, I presented myself at the embassy. I was fully rigged up in white tie and tails. A tail coat, in those days, had a deep pocket on the inside of each tail, and in these pockets I had secreted a total of 12 small boxes, each with a single pill inside. I marched in and joined the receiving line.

"Dear boy," said Lady Makepiece. "I'm so glad you could come. Charles, this is Oswald Cornelius, William's son."

Sir Charles Makepiece was a tiny little fellow with a full head of elegant white hair. "So you are William's boy, are you?" he said, shaking my hand. "How are you making out in Paris? Anything I can do for you, just let me know."

I moved on into the glittering crowd. I seemed to be the only male present who was not smothered in decorations and ribbons. We stood around drinking champagne. Then we went in to dinner. I concentrated on the food, which was superb. I still remember the large truffle, as big as a golf ball, baked in white wine in a little earthenware pot with the lid on. And the way in which the poached turbot was so superlatively undercooked, with the center almost raw but still very hot. (The English and the Americans invariably overcook their fish.) And then the wines! They were something to remember, those wines!

When dinner was over, the women, led by Lady Makepiece, left the room. Sir Charles shepherded the men into a vast adjoining sitting room to drink port and brandy and coffee.

In the sitting room, as the men began to split up into groups, I quickly maneuvered myself alongside the host himself. "Ah, there you are, my boy," he said. "Come and sit here with me."

Perfect.

There were 11 of us, including me, in this particular group, and Sir Charles courteously introduced me to each one of them in turn. "This is young Oswald Cornelius," he said. "Meet the German ambassador, Oswald." I met the German ambassador. Then I met the Italian ambassador and the Hungarian ambassador and the Russian ambassador and the Peruvian ambassador and the Mexican ambassador. Then I met the French minister for foreign affairs and a French army general and, lastly, a funny little dark man from Japan who was introduced simply as Mr. Mitsouko. Every one of them spoke English.

"Have a glass of port, young man," Sir Charles Makepiece said to me, "and pass it round. Your father tells me you've got a scholarship to Trinity. Is that right?"

"Yes, sir," I said. My moment was coming any second now. I must not miss it. I must plunge in.

"What's your subject?" Sir Charles asked me.

"Science, sir," I answered. Then I plunged. "As a matter of fact," I said, lifting my voice just enough for them all to hear me, "there's some absolutely amazing work being done in one of the laboratories up there at this moment. Highly secret. You simply wouldn't believe what they've just discovered."

Ten heads came up and ten pairs of eyes rose from port glasses and coffee cups and regarded me with mild interest.

"I didn't know you'd already gone up," Sir Charles said. "I thought you had a year to wait and that's why you're over here."

"Quite right," I said. "But my future tutor invited me to spend most of last term working in the Natural Sciences Lab. That's my favorite subject, natural sciences."

"And what, may I ask, have they just discovered that is so secret and so remarkable?" There was a touch of banter in Sir Charles's voice now, and who could blame him?

"Well, sir," I murmured, and then purposely, I stopped.

Silence for a few seconds. The nine foreigners and the British ambassador sat still, waiting politely for me to go on.

"Don't tell me they are letting a fellow of your age handle secrets," Sir Charles said, smiling a little.

"These aren't war secrets, sir," I said. "They couldn't help an enemy. These are secrets that are going to help all of mankind."

"Then tell us about them," Sir Charles said, lighting a huge cigar. "You have a distinguished audience here and they are all waiting to hear from you."

"I think it's the greatest scientific breakthrough since Pasteur," I said. "It's going to change the world."

"If the world is about to be changed," Sir Charles said, "I'm a little surprised that this information hasn't yet found its way to my desk."

Steady on, Oswald, I told myself. You've hardly begun and already you've been laying it on too thick.

"Forgive me, sir, but the point is he hasn't published yet."

"Who hasn't? Who's he?"

"Professor Yousoupoff, sir."

The Russian ambassador put down his glass of port and said, "Yousoupoff? Is he a Russian?"

"Yes, sir, he's a Russian."

"Then why haven't I heard of him?"

I wasn't about to get into a tangle with this black-eyed, black-bearded Cossack, so I kept silent.

"Come on, then, young man," Sir Charles said. "Tell us about the greatest scientific breakthrough of our time. You mustn't keep us in suspense, you know."

I took a few deep breaths and a gulp of port. This was the great moment. Pray heaven I wouldn't mess it up.

"For twenty-seven years," I said, "Professor Yousoupoff has been studying the seed of the pomegranate."

"Excuse me, please," said the little Japanese man. "But why the pomegranate? Why not the grape or the black currant?"

"I cannot answer that question, sir," I said. "I suppose it was simply what you might call a hunch."

"Hell of a long time to spend on a hunch," Sir Charles said. "But go on, my boy. We mustn't interrupt you."

"Last January," I said, "the professor's patience was at last rewarded. What he did was this. He dissected the seed of a pomegranate and examined the contents bit by bit under a powerful microscope. And it was only then that he observed in the very center of the seed a minuscule speck of red vegetable tissue that he'd never seen before. He proceeded to isolate this tiny speck of tissue. But it was obviously too small to be of any use on its own. So the professor set out to dissect one hundred seeds and to obtain from them one hundred of these tiny red particles."

I took another sip of port. My audience waited for me to go on.

"So we now had one hundred red particles, but even when we put them all together on a glass slide, the result could still not be seen by the naked eye."

"And what did this famous professor do with them?"

"He took the one hundred tiny red particles and fed every one of them to a single large healthy male rat. He then put the rat in a cage together with ten female rats. At first, nothing happened. Then suddenly, after exactly nine minutes, the rat became very still. He crouched down, quivering all over. He was looking at the females. He crept toward the nearest one and grabbed her by the skin of her neck with his teeth and mounted her. It did not take long. He was very fierce with her and very swift. But here's the extraordinary thing. The moment the rat had finished copulating with the first female, he grabbed a second one and set about her in just the same way. Then he took a third female rat, and a fourth and a fifth. He was absolutely tireless. He went from one female to another, fornicating with each in turn, until he had covered all ten of them. Even then, gentlemen, he hadn't had enough!

"Professor Yousoupoff got very excited. 'Oswaldsky, my boy, I think I have discovered the absolutely greatest, most powerful sexual stimulant in the whole history of mankind!'

"'I think you have, too,' I said. We were still standing by the cage of rats and the male rat was still leaping on the wretched females, one after the other. Within an hour, he had collapsed from exhaustion. 'We give him too big a dose,' the professor said."

"This rat," the Mexican ambassador said, "what came of him in the end?"

"He died," I said.

"From too much women, yes?"

"Yes," I said. "So the next time, we isolated only twenty of these tiny red microscopic nuclei. We inserted them in a pellet of bread and then went out looking for a very old man. We found our old man in Newmarket. His name was Mr. Sawkins and he was one hundred and two years old. He was suffering from advanced senility. His mind was wandering and he had to be fed by spoon. He had not been out of bed for seven years. The professor and I knocked on the door of his house and his daughter, aged eighty, opened it. 'I am Professor Yousoupoff,' the professor announced. 'I have discovered a great medicine to help old people. Will you allow us to give some to your poor old father?'

"'You can give 'im anything you damn well please,' the daughter said. 'The old fool doesn't know what's goin' on from one day to the next. 'Ee's a flamin' nuisance.'

"We went upstairs and the professor somehow managed to poke the bread pellet down the old man's throat. I noted the time by my watch. 'Let us retire to the street outside and observe,' the professor said.

"We went out and stood in the street. I was counting each minute aloud as it went by. And then--you won't believe this, gentlemen, but I swear it's exactly what happened--precisely on the dot of nine minutes, there was a thunderous bellow from inside the Sawkins house. The front door burst open and the old man himself rushed out into the street. 'I want me a woman!' he bellowed. 'I want me a woman and, by God, I'm goin' to get me a woman!'

"Mr. Sawkins ran, he actually ran, to the next-door house. He started banging on the door with his fists. 'Open up, Mrs. Twitchell!' he bellowed. 'Come on, my beauty, open up and let's 'ave a bit of fun!'

"I caught a glimpse of the terrified face of Mrs. Twitchell at the window. Then it went away. Mr. Sawkins, still bellowing, put his shoulder to the flimsy door and smashed the lock. He dived inside. We stayed out on the street, waiting for the next development. The professor was very excited. He was jumping up and down in his funny black boots and shouting, 'We have a breakthrough! We've done it! We shall rejuvenate the world!'

"Suddenly, piercing screams and yells came issuing from Mrs. Twitchell's house. Neighbors were beginning to gather on the street. 'Go in and get 'im!' shouted the old daughter. ''Ee's gone stark-starin' mad!' Two men ran into the Twitchell house. There were sounds of a scuffle. Soon, out came the two men, frog-marching old Mr. Sawkins between them. 'I 'ad 'er!' he was yelling. 'I 'ad the old bitch good and proper! I near rattled 'er to death!' At that point, the professor and I quietly left the scene."

I paused in my story. Seven ambassadors, the foreign minister of France, the French army general and the little Japanese man were all now leaning forward in their seats, their eyes upon me.

"Is this exactly what happened?" Sir Charles asked me.

"Every word of it, sir, is the gospel truth," I lied. "When Professor Yousoupoff publishes his findings, the whole world will be reading what I have just told you."

"So what happened next?" the Peruvian ambassador asked.

"From then on, it was comparatively simple," I said. "The professor conducted a series of experiments designed to discover what the proper absolutely safe dose should be for a normal adult male. For this, he used undergraduate volunteers. And you can be quite sure, gentlemen, that he had no trouble getting young men to come forward. As soon as the news spread around the university, there was a waiting list of over eight hundred. But to cut the story short, the professor finally demonstrated that the safe dose was no more than five of those tiny microscopic nuclei from the pomegranate seed. So, using calcium carbonate as a base, he manufactured a pill containing exactly this quantity of the magic substance. And he proved beyond any doubt that just one of these pills would, in precisely nine minutes, turn any man, even a very old man, into a marvelously powerful sex machine capable of pleasuring his partner for six hours nonstop, without exception."

"Gott in Himmel!" shouted the German ambassador. "Ver can I get hold of ziss stuff?"

Suddenly, they were all speaking at the same time. Where could they get it? They wanted it now! How much did it cost? They would pay handsomely!

"I have some interesting news," I said, and suddenly everyone became silent. The German ambassador cupped a hand behind his ear. The Russian leaned forward in his seat. So did the rest of them.

"What I am about to tell you is extremely confidential," I said. "May I rely upon all of you to keep it to yourselves?"

There was a chorus of "Yes, yes! Of course! Absolutely! Carry on, young fellow!"

"Thank you," I said. "Now, the point is this. As soon as I knew that I was going to Paris, I decided I simply must take with me a supply of these pills, especially for my father's great friend, Sir Charles Makepiece."

"My dear boy!" Sir Charles cried out. "What a generous thought!"

"Having assisted the professor at every stage," I said, "I naturally knew exactly how to manufacture these pills. So I... well... I simply made them in his laboratory, each day when he was out to lunch." Slowly, I reached behind me and took one small round box from my tail-coat pocket. I placed it on the low table. I opened the lid. And there, lying in its little nest of cotton wool, was a single scarlet pill.

Everyone leaned forward to look.

"Do you have more?" Sir Charles asked me.

I fished in my tail-coat pockets and brought out nine more boxes. "There is one for each of you," I said.

Eager hands reached across, grabbing the little boxes. "I pay," said Mr. Mitsouko. "How much you want?"

"No," I said. "These are presents. Try them out, gentlemen. See what you think."

Sir Charles was studying the label on the box. "Ah-ha," he said. "I see you have your address printed here."

"That's just in case," I said.

"In case of what?"

"In case anyone wishes to get a second pill," I said.

At that point, the ladies returned and each man in our group quickly and rather surreptitiously pocketed his pillbox. They stood up. They greeted their wives and I slipped quietly away.

•

That night, I slept well. I was still fast asleep at 11 o'clock the next morning when the sound of Madame Boisvain's fists hammering at my door jerked me awake. "Get up, Monsieur Cornelius!" she was shouting. "You must come down at once! People have been ringing my bell and demanding to see you since before breakfast!"

I was dressed and downstairs in two minutes flat. I went to the front door and there, standing on the cobblestones of the sidewalk, were no fewer than seven men, none of whom I had ever seen before. They made a picturesque little group in their many-colored fancy uniforms with all manner of gilt and silver buttons on their jackets.

They turned out to be embassy messengers, and they came from the British, the German, the Russian, the Hungarian, the Italian, the Mexican and the Peruvian embassies. Each man carried a letter addressed to me. I accepted the letters and opened them on the spot. All of them said roughly the same thing: They wanted more pills. They begged for more pills. They instructed me to give the pills to the bearer of the letter.

I told the messengers to wait on the street and I went back up to my room. Then I wrote the following message on each of the letters: Honored Sir, these pills are extremely expensive to manufacture. I regret that in future, the cost of each pill will be 1000 francs. In those days, there were 20 francs to the pound, which meant that I was asking exactly £50 sterling per pill. And £50 sterling in 1912 was worth maybe ten times as much as it is today. By today's standards, I was probably asking about £500 per pill. It was a ridiculous price, but these were wealthy men. They were also sex-crazy men, and as any sensible woman will tell you, a man who is very wealthy and grossly sex crazy both at the same time is the easiest touch in the world. I trotted downstairs again and handed the letters back to their respective carriers and told them to deliver them to their masters. As I was doing this, three more messengers arrived, one from the Quai d'Orsay (the foreign minister), one from the general at the ministry of war and one from Mr. Mitsouko, and I scribbled the same statement about price on these last three letters.

Before the day was done, I was rich. One by one, the messengers started trickling back from their respective embassies and ministries. They all carried precise orders and exact amounts of money, most of it in gold 20-franc pieces. This is how it went:

Sir Charles Makepiece, 4 pills = 4000 francs

The German ambassador, 8 pills = 8000 francs

The Russian ambassador, 10 pills = 10,000 francs

The Hungarian ambassador, 3 pills = 3000 francs

The Peruvian ambassador, 2 pills = 2000 francs

The Mexican ambassador, 6 pills = 6000 francs

The Italian ambassador, 4 pills = 4000 francs

The French foreign minister, 6 pills = 6000 francs

The army general, 3 pills = 3000 francs

Mr. Mitsouko, 20 pills = 20,000 francs

Grand Total = 66,000 francs

Sixty-six thousand francs! I was all of a sudden worth 3300 English pounds! It was incredible.

•

My business flourished. My ten original clients all whispered the great news to their own friends and those friends whispered it to other friends and in a month or so, a large snowball had been created. I spent half of each day making pills. I thanked heaven I had had the foresight to bring such a large quantity of powder from the Sudan in the first place. But I did have to reduce my price. Not everyone was an ambassador or a foreign minister, and I found early on that a lot of people simply couldn't afford to pay my absurd fee of 1000 francs per pill. So I made it 250 instead.

The money gushed in.

By the time my 12 months in Paris were up, I had around 2,000,000 francs in the bank! That was £100,000! I was now nearly 18. I was rich. My year in France had shown me very clearly the path I wanted to follow in my life. I was a sybarite, and money is essential to a sybarite. It is the key of the kingdom. To which the carping reader will almost certainly reply, "You say you are without ambition, but do you not realize that the desire for wealth is in itself one of the most obnoxious ambitions of them all?" This is not necessarily true. It is the manner in which one acquires wealth that determines whether or not it is obnoxious. As you can see, I myself am scrupulous about the methods I employ. I refuse to have anything to do with money-making unless the process obeys two golden rules. First, it must amuse me tremendously. Second, it must give a great deal of pleasure to those from whom I extract the loot. This is a simple philosophy and I recommend it wholeheartedly to business tycoons, casino operators, Chancellors of the Exchequer and budget directors everywhere.

"'One tiny pinch of that powder is the most powerful aphrodisiac in the world.'"

"'Within a few seconds, my member was as stiff and erect as the mainmast of a topsail schooner.'"

"The woman returned my gaze, her chin high and arrogant, her eyes traveling slowly down my body."