Charolais

Charolais 

When, in the 1760s, in Paris, 

the Comte Du Charolais, a member of the Condé, 

clan and the Faubourg St. Germain 

and a Prince of The Blood is unable 

to locate his mistress at her usual station 

inside the crowded-out cafe 

beneath her current apartment,  

he becomes extremely agitated. 

She’s a fashionable aristitute, Delisle, 

with whom Charolais sired a son 

and slaughtered him at seven months 

with Spanish Fly, and Laudanum. 

He was no sperm of mine, guffaws Du Charolais, 

if a drink like that killed him.  

and throats always gape  

before ejaculations of laughter. 

Now Charolais, in a passionate rage, 

assumes her secreted from him 

in some fumiferous snug of the gathering,  

wearing one of those high-society 

human-hair wigs he and other 

Bourbon Blood Princes have bought her,  

or she’s at work in the lounge, or,  

more disturbing to him, in the cellar. 

So Charolais orders The Watch  

(that is, the early Gendarmes), 

to surround the Cafe and when the plebs  

there continue concealing Delisle 

directs an all-out attack.  

Many ruffians are bludgeoned.  

One loses an eye. Another draws arms  

and is shattered through the thigh. 

Delisle is not discovered in the cafe  

but later, stalking the Rue Traversière, 

Charolais sights her from his coach,  

Orders the coachman to corral her,  

leaps out whip-in-hand, 

slaps her twice on the cheek, lashes her behind,  

and bundles her into the coach  

where he sits down upon her. 

Back in the apartment, that he partially pays for,  

Charolais commands Delisle 

to her chamber to await on all fours there, 

beats up her maid and her butler,  

(who sound no alarm, but disgrace  

him ever-after with the tale  

and dream on their deathstraw 

of his body in a bonfire),  

then orders supper, dines for an hour-and-a-half and retires.  

Charolais and Delisle spend all night  

and the next day together 

in each other’s arms. 

********

Charolais is from my collection Medium