Office Session 1

The Earl and the Governess

The Earl instructed the widow Governess to bind up a small bundle of sticks with anaranjada silk batiked with vermillion diamonds, a cobalt spot in the center of each, with simple rhinestones on little brass bells jingling from the four corners. He told her to take it to the apothecary, purchase a vial of honeysuckle extract to sprinkle over it, and then take it to the butcher. Once there she was to wait for blood sausage containing extra sage, to disguise the heavy abundance of arsenic and strychnine. After that, in the instructions she wrote down, she was to take it to a musician writing a symphony in the basement of the opera house. She walked through the cold and freezing mist to arrive at her destination.

After waiting for a long time for the musician to answer the service entrance to that man's bedroom and makeshift studio she watched aghast as he unwrapped the sausage and flung it against a sheet hanging on the wall. "Thank you very much," he said. "I'll see you out." She stammered but didn't manage to say anything as she mounted the steps to ascend from the place, that met the street at the midway point in the door, making it slightly below ground.

When she got back to the Earl he gave her a nickel from America. She marveled at the valuable gift. It said "Peso" on it, and it gleamed in the light. Then he proposed marriage to her, and promised to spend the rest of his life with her, provided she promised not to pretend to be stupid anymore. He ascertained that she really believed the coin was rare and valuable. It was as if he purchased her body and soul with one shiny peso, so anxious was her desire to milk their relationship for monetary gain.

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Hidden meaning of The Earl and the Governess: The governess once dominated the Earl's cousin in a sexual game that man fell into out of desperation for a relationship. [A video I referenced has been removed from this post's credit because of the involvement of file sharing.] The Earl, anxious to redeem his cousin's reputation from the stigma attached to that socially lethal fetish, forced the governess on a series of maddening errands and to perform monotonous, tedious busy work. Desperate herself for physical attention and capital advancement she took the bait and married the count, frazzled to the core by everything she experienced. The entire story has not been provided here.