CANDACIS

“Candacis” is part of a modern translation of Rococo diaries and letters previously released as part of the Sacred Heart Diaries collection, comprised of the letters and journals of France’s well-born daughters in the final days of the Ancien Regime.

Orphaned at sixteen, Candacis was sent to a small convent in the countryside, where she found herself surrounded by other young noblewomen. Having lived an isolated life of titled poverty, Candacis was fascinated and appalled by the whispered stories of these privileged girls. She listened in silence for several years but, in the spring of 1787, as France's troubles were worsening, Candacis wrote to her cousin, Philipe, with an unusual proposition - to take the letters and diaries she transcribed from the papers of the young women at Sacred Heart and publish them in what would become the larger part of the Rococo Diaries - Invitation to Ruin.

The letter that follows is the last sent by Candacis to her cousin.

***

Philipe, my beloved cousin,

You have been most generous, not only with your financial support, but with your praise and approval. But what will you think when it is my own story I send to you? Yes, it is true. The words that follow are about me, about my lusts and adventures and disappointments.

Yes, disappointment. You will no doubt remember my mentioning that they had given me a roommate—AnneMarie?

We had developed a cautious friendship, my approval of her only tentative for so long because I could not believe that she should wish to call me friend. I thought at first she was kind only to secure my fawning services—that I might make her bed or keep our room clean entirely on my own.

But she served me! I would return from my duties at the convent too tired to lift a finger (although, I admit, my duties took so much of the day because of the time I spend in hiding, transcribing the diaries). The room would be clean, she would even have my towel and nightshift on my bed that I might more easily take my bath and return to bed—where she would brush out my hair afterwards.

Why? I could not quell my suspicions and had to ask, but she would only demur, saying the room was so small that it was no trouble or that she liked my long dark hair. “It flows like black ink,” she would say. (She is so blonde as to be white, Philipe—we walk down the hall like night and day in so many ways.)

On the thirteenth, I returned late to the rooms—almost too late to bathe. My things were out, as they always were, but AnneMarie was nowhere to be seen. Taking my clothing and towel, I went down the corridor to the washroom. Instead of it being empty as it should have been at that late hour, AnneMarie was filling the tub with hot water, her own night clothes folded neatly on the bench.

“Ah, I wondered where you were,” I said and started to back from the room, but she waved me in, crossing the room as she did so to close the door and shut us in.

“I am almost finished filling the tub for us,” she said and added a second bucket to cool what she had heated over the fire.

“For us?” I asked. (Philipe, no doubt you already know where this leads, but I did not! None of the diaries or gossip I have heard here at Sacred Heart ever hinted of such a thing, and yet it must be all too common.)

“I dawdled all evening, I fear.” She began disrobing, then stopped before revealing the flesh of her breasts. “I can skip my bath if it makes you uncomfortable, Candacis,” she said. “I forget that you are an only child…not one of four girls as I am.”

I mentioned, did I not, how we are very dissimilar in appearance? She blonde haired but with a light peach colored skin that keeps her from looking washed out as so many of the other girls here can. I, on the other hand, with my black hair and equally black eyes, my skin so pale it borders on translucence. Looking at her, with her hand hovering at the closures that kept her breasts concealed, I had to know how else our bodies varied.

“It does not matter,” I said. I was lying, of course. My breathing had grown quite shallow in anticipation. “I dawdled, too.”

She smiled then as if our joint tardiness made us conspirators. Ruby lipped, her teeth were an even gate of precious pearls and I had to pull my gaze from them, lest I miss her disrobing. I undressed as she did, studying her from the corner of my eye. I might as well have stared directly at her. I do not think I fooled her.

Her breasts are full, nearly the size of ripe cantaloupes, impossibly large for her narrow shoulders and slim waist. The nipples, too, are large and as ruby red as her lips—bright like the first day of menses. Her hips flare out seductively, her ass full. From her navel, a line of hair runs down, starting thin but blossoming into a thick bush that disappears down between her thighs.

It seems scandalous, Philipe, to describe my own appearance to you, my own blood, but I would have you know how I felt, watching her undress. How inadequate I pictured myself compared to her rounded beauty. My work at Sacred Heart, while not backbreaking, has left me lean and angular with an unfeminine outline of muscles along my arms, abdomen and legs. I can cover my breasts with my own small hands and the budlike nipples are a light pink, the remainder quite pale with blue veins visible just under the surface. My waist, though small, is a straight run to my hips, making me almost boyish in appearance and my mound has only a soft dusting of black hair—nothing like the womanly tangle of fur AnneMarie possesses.

Naked, she slipped into what passes for the tub on our floor of the convent. It was a tun barrel sawed down, its diameter so great we never fill it with more than a few inches of water. I mention the tub’s details, Philipe, so you understand that, when she urged me to sit in front of her between her legs, there was no need for us to be so close.

No need, only a wish, but what manner of wish? My naïveté embarrassed me, and I waited motionless to find out what she would do next. She released the pins in my hair, the points of her nipples brushing against my back. As she moved I could feel the tickle of her thick fur against my bottom and I had to keep myself from moaning. From the diaries I have transcribed for you, I knew too well what my body’s reactions were—lust—but I had never imagined a woman could incite such a feeling in me.

She reached in front of me for the soap and washcloth. Her breasts pressed flat against my back, her pubic mound full against my bottom and lower back. She dipped the soap and cloth in the water in f