Page:Georges Eekhoud - Escal Vigor, a novel.djvu/285

Rh their neckerchiefs. Their bodices ripped open left their throats and bosoms exposed, naked to the winds, hair hanging loose, bruised all over and with blood besmeared finger-nails, in the thick atmosphere of the wild wood borderland they might have passed for maenads.

"Let me go! Help!" cried the victim. Twice he broke his bonds. Blood flowed from his wrists and ankles.

Claudie, more ferocious than the others, but cooler and better advised, uttered a cry of triumph.

"I say, how about the strap which holds up his breeches!"

"Why, of course, they can come down now, right enough, " said the domestic sneeringly.

And she herself unclasped his waist-belt, with which Landrillon then tied strongly the sufferer's legs.

This time, Guidon, reduced to helplessness, lay there three parts clean naked; for the furies, not content with taking down his trousers, had torn his clothes to shreds. Then, at the instigation of Claudie, the claws of these harpies violated in turns the unhappy youth's unwilling and horror-stricken flesh.