Antoine Catches The Bouquet Pt II free porn video

Despite my trust in my older brother, Pierre, I still remember it being a fitful night of sleep, not least because Maman wanted me to wear a corset tomorrow as well and insisted that I keep it on that night. I ought to have simply refused, but I saw that Maman felt terrible about messing up our arrangements. I also saw that Nicole, flushed with her new masculine strength and energy, was taking care of browbeating mother quite well on her own without me joining in. And Maman was just so invested in the appearance of me, her "daughter". She felt bad enough. I acquiesced. So, I lay there stiff as a board in my consticting corset amid all the feminine finery of Nicole's room trying to reassure myself that there was no need to worry and that I'd surely be Antoine again in just a day or so. I woke with a slap, a hard slap to my girl's rear just below my corset. "Hey!" I called back over my shoulder in my now expected soprano. "Get up, wide girl!" It was Nicole my once sister now brother. She was in an exuberant mood, grinning and kidding me at the beginning of what she expected to be her last full day as the handsome, slender and quite athletic 14 year old boy who had bounced onto my bed. "I'm not that wide, just wider than you," I said giving a playful slap to her round boy's rear. "Huh? What a change of perspective for you!" "What about you?" "The same thing's happened to me. These narrow hips are starting to seem normal to me now and you seem excessively fleshy. But our re- education will begin either late this evening or tomorrow. I wanted to ask you a question, though, about this" said Nicole patting her penis beneath he shorts. "At the reception, I was just standing there at one point. Just standing there. I wasn't having a lascivious thought toward anyone or anything and I didn't touch ... it. But out of the blue, it-it became erect. It was hard as ever, pushing up against my belt and I swear I gave it no cause!" I chuckled. "It didn't become erect. You did. It's part of you. Anyway. That happens sometimes to boys in their early teens. I was told it seldom happened to anyone older." "It's not likely to happen again as we walk down from the airplane at the airport in New York is it?" "No, it's not likely. It only happened to me once or twice." Nicole smiled. "Good. I-I don't want you to make too much of this, but even with ridiculous characteristics such as that, this ..." she gestured at her whole 14 year old boy's body, "isn't all bad-" "Ahahahahahahahaha!" "-I mean, the feeling of energy and spring in my step is kind of fun. I don't want this thing between my legs anymore but it's tolerable for short periods." "And it didn't even make you evil, did it?" Nicole conceded no with a laugh and we both got dressed, she in her boy's suit, I in the best dress I had. We were in good spirits We packed a small bag, each, too and waited in the study for a phone call from Pierre at the airport. We were both ebullient. This would definitely work. We'd looked so much alike growing up, she was the female version of me. I was the male version of her. Our faces were so alike. This would fool everyone. I couldn't wait for call from Pierre to go to the airport so that I could get that weirdly bound book in my hands and recite the correct spell. At 10 am it came. I was closest to the phone and answered. It was Pierre. I was immediately worried because he spoke haltingly. "Get your sibling on the line. Hold the phone between you if necessary." "Okay. But what is it Pierre?" I asked while waving Nicole over to stand next to me and turning the receiver so that we could both hear. Across the room from us, mother watched. "Are you both there?" "Yes." "Yes." "Is mother there with you?" "Yes." "Can she hear what I'm saying?" "No." "Allright. I-I'm sorry to tell you this but there are no seats available on the few flights there are to New York. I tried everything. Everything. No matter the bribe I could not get a ticket. There's already a waiting list of American and Canadian servicemen who have priority. There's a huge number of them being shipped home right now." "So-so we have to stay like this?" Nicole gasped "Yes. I'm sorry. Really I am. But the spell book went on ahead of us to New York and-" "What about Hawaii?" I asked. "Well, Antoine," Pierre began despite the voice he heard being the soprano of the two on our end of the line. "The same goes for Hawaii. I-I think our first chance to meet up will be in Rio in two weeks time but even that ..." "Even that what?!" Nicole interrupted frantically in her midrange boy's voice. "Well, the workers at the airport here are all saying that there's about to be a general strike and that no one will be flying out of France except for Allied servicemen for a few weeks." "So ... I have to stay like this till you get back?" I gasped, suddenly noticing the constriction of my corset and how the stays holding my nylons were rubbing on my thickened thighs and how uncomfortable my shoes were and, well, just every damn thing about being a girl. "I-I'm afraid so, Antoine." I put my hand over the mouthpiece and turned to Nicole and let out a big sigh. "Look. This is their honeymoon!" I whispered furiously. "We can't ruin this for them. We can't! It's our fault. We have to tell them to go ahead and have fun." Nicole let out a tremendous pained sigh. She closed her handsome boy's eyes and nodded. "Hey, it's no big deal, Pierre," Nicole said amazingly convincingly. "I'm getting pretty used to this and I'll see you in a month." "Are-are you sure you're okay?" asked Pierre. "My sister's the one in the corset," said Nicole, realizing mother had moved closer. After saying this, Nicole moved away from the phone because she could not keep her composure. "How about you, Antoine?" "It's no big deal, Pierre," I said holding the phone to my ear now to speak away from Maman who was consoling Nicole. "Everyone tells me I'm beautiful like this. I can certainly stand that for a while more. Just have a great time, you and Winnie!" "You're sure?" "Jeez, Pierre. This is almost insulting that you think I'll go to pieces or something. How girlish do you think I am, big brother? Go on! Have a wonderful time you two deserve it! That's all I'm going to say. Now au revoir!" "Au-au revoir, Antoine." I hung up the phone and went to pieces. Oh, I added in enough fake bleeting about wanting to see New York that mother didn't realize to what I was really reacting to and Nicole followed suit. I went back up to "my" room and had a big girlish cry face down on the bed. I didn't even try and be a stoic boy. I cried and cried. God damn it! A blasted girl for another month! I don't know if it had been acceptance, knowing I'd soon be a boy again, or if it was increasing familiarity but my beautiful girl's body hadn't seemed so terrible that morning. Now I positively hated it again. This wide ass! These damn jiggling breasts! Breasts! And a girl's sex! A wet hole where my boy's equipment should be! Another month! Damn! Another month of being leered at lusted after, of being pinched and pawed at and just sitting around in the estate house with Maman and taking the occasional walk in the garden. Another month of not being able to be with my friends! I cried and pounded my little fists into the mattress and kicked my legs, too. Mon Dieu! Enough! I want to be Antoine again, to be a 15 year old boy again! I screwed up. I was foolish. How much do I have to be punished for it?! I didn't come down till after lunch time. It wouldn't have mattered much anyway. With the blasted corset on I would've ended up feeling full after a couple mouthfuls anyway. And when I did, I found the day's newspaper on the table in the foyer. There, on the front page was a picture of me. It was the picture of me, the beautiful 5 foot 7, 117 pound girl in that new 2 piece swimsuit, the bikini. The picture had apparently gone all over France and it identified the lovely minx in the photo as me or at least who I was for the next month. Damn! What the hell was I going to do for a month, like this? People would see me and point at the girl who wore that new swimsuit. The men would all leer, leer at me, Antoine, Antoine Richard. Nope. I wasn't going to go through that. I thought maybe I could read some of the collection of classics in the library walls of Pierre's study, but only Ovid's Metamorphoses seemed relevant at the moment. What a terrible day that was. A large part of my composure at my ridiculous condition had been the knowledge that it was to be short lived. I looked down at my bosom and then over my shoulder at my young woman's derriere. I would have to endure this for four times as long as I already had. Empty days with nothing to do but stew over the humiliating metamorphosis I'd undergone loomed before me. But Maman already had plans for filling my time besides a new devotion to literature. It was the same plan she had outlined at the wedding reception after that damn bouquet had dropped right into my bosom. I'd forgotten about it with my focus on trying to be changed back into a boy. The conveyor belt of suitors would be dropping off boys in front of me and not Nicole. Ugh. I, Antoine Richard, would have to go on dates with boys. If being pawed at by my pals at the wedding reception wasn't already enough for me never to be able to breathe a word of this afterwards, going on a series of dates with boys would certainly ensure my later silence. In addition, I was to spend hours with Maman sewing. Maman regarded this as a basic feminine ability. Nicole had skillfully evaded doing much of it. I somehow couldn't manage to avoid it. So, for much of the next month, I, Antoine, was conscripted into sewing things for my brother Pierre and Nicole, now, in Maman's eyes, her son Antoine. Oh, you'll come to love it, Nicole! You can give the men the benefit of your feminine capabilities just as they give you the benefit of their masculine ones. I admit that I liked doing things to help Pierre. I always looked up to my older brother. But I wasn't excited about the idea of fixing his shirts, sewing buttons and making repairs to any of his suits or other clothes that had the slightest defect. What's more, I had to endure Maman's constant corrections and instructions on my work, down to the most basic elements. For iinstance, in the first five minutes of my new sewing apprenticeship, she gave me thread to sew buttons on one of Pierre's shirts. I took the needle, wet the thread and tried to push it through the narrow hole at the end of the needle. Maman, watching me, shook her head and reproached me. "You're doing it wrong, Nicole! You move the eye of the needle over the thread. You don't try to push the thread through the hole. Where did you get such an idea?!" I pleaded that it seemed more natural. She looked at me like I had two heads or something for arbitrarily doing such a little thing differently. I could see it would be a long feminine month, a fact reinforced by her sudden declaration an hour later. "Tomorrow, Claude Reynaud will be here at noon to take you to lunch. Wednesday, I have Antoine's friend Phillipe Poincard lined up for you and ... " Mother continued and outlined another 10 boys. She had spoken to their mothers at the wedding reception and just needed to make calls to confirm times. I tried to talk Maman out of it but she thought I simply wanted to wallow in my disappointment over not going to New York. She thought she was helping me with these horrible arrangements by giving me something to do. Thanks a lot Maman. "A handsome, energetic boy will be just the thing you need," she told me. I looked away so that she couldn't see the expression of extreme distaste on my gorgeous face. I wracked my brain trying to think of a way to get out of this but couldn't come up with a way to do it short of explaining to her that I was, in fact, her son Antoine, made gorgeously female by a spell book that she probably regarded as an instrument of the devil. Again, I limply acquiesced. Maman was all bubbly assurances that I would looooooove being courted by these boys, hugging me and fairly running to the phone to call the mothers of the first two boys. I went into the study where Nicole sat disconsolately. "I overheard. Mother is lining up boys for you to date?" I could only muster a slight nod. Nicole dropped her head to the desk. "I know it was the right thing to do. You and I deserve punishment and Pierre and Winnie deserve to have a wonderful, carefree honeymoon but, oh god. I wanted to be my real self again, not you ... no offense." "None taken. Can-can we at least agree to help each other get through this? There's no Pierre around to save us from being foolish. Agreed?" "Agreed." We sealed our compact with a hug but after that just sat there sullenly in Pierre's magnificent study for the better part of the afternoon. Our sibling rivalry had been foolish and it had backfired on the both of us as we deserved. But knew enough not to keep acting foolish. The Richard estate had been kept whole by children not fighting. When we were just 8 and 7 respectively, Papa had explained that one of the misconceptions of the French Revolution is that it took the property away from the aristocrats and broke up the huge estates. It didn't. What broke up most all the big estates was a simple law, a law in the years that followed which ended primogeniture, the custom that the first born son inherited the entire estate. A clever lawmaker of the second republic attacked the wealthiest families and the biggest estates by getting a law passed which legally ended this practice. Regional dynasties imploded as brothers and sisters feuded and refused to cooperate fracturing magnificent estates into pieces that were frequently sold off making them nearly impossible to ever reconstitute. But, Jean Paul Richard made his children pledge that, they would act in concert. No matter what the legal ownership of the land was, all would be considered one. For five generations, the Richards followed this rule. The Marquis did not technically own all the land but was allowed to pursue our economic interests as if he did. And through the wise stewardship of each successive Marquis, the Richards grew richer and richer and that wealth was divided fairly with siblings. It wasn't until the beginning of this century that we were able to create a legal entity, a trust, to hold all the lands. But even with that legal instrument, it isn't necessarily certain that each Marquis would be voted authority to manage the trust's assets. The Richards always gave the Marquis that authority. And we were lucky enough to have talented and wise men like my father and now Pierre running things. So, Nicole and I seeing our common interests was much more in keeping with Richard family practice than the foolish rivalry that had turned each of us into a beautiful example of the opposite sex. But there was nothing that Nicole could do to help me through the series of engagements mother arranged for me because of that damned bouquet. At first, I was simply very reserved with these suitors who showed up at our door day after day. Maman would answer and shepherd some handsome boy in his late teens into our estate house and have him wait by the door, whereupon I would come down the stairway in a beautiful dress. Half of them stared with their mouths open. One drooled on himself. It was oddly unsettling, this powerful reaction I, 15 year old Antoine, was creating in every male I encountered. But I had to face it. My new body was real. I really had the round girl's derriere that they all stared at as they let me walk ahead of them to their automobiles or into restaurants or theaters. It was my long, smooth and lovely legs that their eyes lingered on as they pretended to glances casually along the floor. It was my cleavage, the very real and visible dewy soft skin of my melon sized breasts that their eyes migrated to as they professed to be speaking to me. As beautiful as my girl's face was, and I couldn't deny that I was now gorgeous, many of my suitors were more fascinated by my breasts. It was quite a lesson to the 15 year old boy that I still considered myself to be. I realized that on more than one occasion, I had stared at the breasts of a pretty girl even while speaking to her, rudely treating her as just the sum of a few attractive body parts. Now, I was getting my own rudeness back a hundred fold. I, for my part, had no idea where my eyes should be. Though I was a near duplicate of the Daughter of Reason statue by the front gate of the estate, I was not a daughter of the Richards on the inside. I puzzled at the way these suitors behaved. At times, I think they were trying to present themselves to best advantage, sort of posing for my supposedly feminine eyes. But they looked ridiculous. At times I mostly averted my eyes, not wanting to look at whichever boy it was, thinking this would lessen his ardor for me. But quite the opposite would result. Nicole later told me that this was signalling to the boy that I was "playing hard to get". The boy would only pursue me more fervently, grab my hand, put a hand about my waist or speak in an even more luridly romantic way about what a beauty I was. A few times I almost punched the boy. I felt like a boy was grabbing me, Antoine Richard. But those moments faded quickly. I was obviously not a boy. And they were almost all bigger than me, their hands so much larger than mine with my dainty digits, their shoulders so much wider and stronger than mine, and they were not encumbered by breasts or fleshy hips like mine. To put it in its starkest terms, most of them could have overpowered me and-and had their way with me. The situation was such that it wouldn't happen. They were dating a daughter of the Richards, after all, but it was an underpinning of the whole farcical circumstance. I was the, ugh, damsel in distress. They were the rescuing princes. Though, not all were inclined to rescue me. A particularly odious date occured a week after the wedding. I remembered that I was supposed to be taken to a movie by a Gaston or a Gaetan something or other. Sigh. The 8th boy I, Antoine Richard was to have dated. Reading between the lines of Maman's brief description, he sounded like sort of a bookworm. That was a bit of a relief. At least he was less likely to be so aggressive. Less attempt at a goodnight kiss was certainly welcome. It was an uncomfortably warm day. I picked out a long, sort of high-waisted dress with a very loose fit to it. Beneath it, I wore a pair of Nicole's panties. Winnie's had not come back from the wash yet. I didn't think it would be so bad. But Nicole evidently didn't have the fullness to her derriere that Winnie and I had, that Daughter of Reason shaped roundness of the hips despite their not being wide. I had not taken ten steps from my room but they were creeping up into the split of my expanded rear. I tugged at them. But they were simply inadequate to cover my new dimensions. No matter I thought. No one will know. And then, only as I descended the stairs, did Maman tell me that Gaston or Gaetan or whoever would not be coming that day. He was ill in some way. But, not to worry, said Maman. She had run into another boy's mother and he would take whoever's place. I stopped at a middle step. I saw that it was Louis LeClerc. And then I felt sort of ill. Louis LeClerc. The smirking trickster who had vowed to screw Nicole Richard. Ugh. And now I was Nicole, or so he thought. I imagined him laughing at me in front of a group of boys after I'd returned to being Antoine and telling them all how he'd screwed me, how Antoine had had a pair of boobs like melons. Laughter. And Antoine had a round ass like a young whore. More laughter. And that he, LeClerc had screwed Antoine, had jammed his giant thing, or so he would represent it, into Antoine's soft wet pussy. The crowd of boys falls down laughing at me because I had a girl's sex and LeClerc was within it. I could almost hear the gales of laughter. Finally, I regained my composure by the bottom step but could not have looked very happy at seeing him. Yet, he smiled innocently and spoke in the most harmless tones in front of Maman. I scarcely knew who this person was. Damn, he was slick. It was like meeting a completely different person than the guy I had spoken to in back rooms at family gatherings. He was smooth as could be all the way on the drive into the city. He was glib and charming with only the slightest tinge of off color attitude to anything he said. And he was so perfectly nonchalant in the way he put a hand to my hip helping me into the car. The guy felt up my rear so deftly that I wouldn't have known it myself had I not been absolutely sure he would. And as we talked in the car, I looked down to find my hand in his without remembering his ever having taken it. He must have done it while we were both laughing at one of his jokes. Mon Dieu! He was smooth. It continued in the theater. He bought tickets for a comedy, one that turned out to be pretty good. And by the end of the feature, he had somehow wrapped one arm around my shoulders and taken both my hands in his other hand. I didn't realize it until the lights went on and I tried to stand up. He was amazing. He could have been a master pickpocket. He even had the fingers of his other hand lightly touching the side of the left cup of my brassiere. With some effort I got up. "So quickly?" he smiled jovially. "The film's over," I said and rose to my feet against mild resistance. But then he removed his hands and followed close behind me out of the theater. He did manage, again, to get a hand on my ass, only the cotton fabric of my dress between me and his digits. "That's enough of that!" I told him. He kept trying to reassert a mood of light comedy. He even suggested that we go to the nearby apartment of a friend of his who might be out of town. Might? Ha! It's doubtful that the other guy even existed. I declined. I asked him to just take me home and we had a few cross words. He started leading me back to the car by a slightly different route than we'd gone to the theater. I thought nothing of it nor the way he seemed to smirk perhaps a bit more as we approached an overpass that went over train tracks. I could hear the train coming even over the noise of the construction site across the street. Again, he was very smooth, and I didn't even notice how he steered me to walk over a metal grate with a lattice pattern of small openings that covered an air shaft leading down to the train tracks below. The heel of first my one shoe then the other stuck in the small gaps in the metal grate. "Help me out of this, you!" I demanded but he only smirked at me and a moment later, with the approach of a train below, hot air was forced up the air shaft. To my humiliation, my dress was blown up around my head revealing me as nearly naked below the waist for Nicole's panties had become a thong. I frantically tried to push down my dress but the upward air pressure was strong and it kept slipping through my fingers. My exposure was noted by more than just the smirking LeClerc. In addition to his laughter I heard a score of whistles, catcalls and shouts from the construction site. My bare girl's ass was facing dozens of construction workers. I was offered connubial bliss and even marraige by the workers at the site of the new building. I couldn't wait for the damned train to go by and stop my dress from flying up but it was a long train and I must have been exposed for a whole minute. I tried to bend down to free myself from the grate but LeClerc had my left hand and would not let go. All I could do was press my right hand down to my girl's sex and hold the dress there. I was completely humiliated. I nearly cried on the spot which shocked me, Antoine. But I held back. When the train had gone by, LeClerc let go of my hand and with the hem of my dress circling my feet I pried my heels free. He spoke as though I should just forget about it but I wouldn't walk a step further with him. I stormed off to a nearby hotel's lobby with construction workers hooting and hollering every step of the way about what they wanted to do to me. I felt about as tall as the heels of my shoes. I called the estate and Dimitri drove out and brought me home. I recounted these events to Nicole that night and my once sister vowed to punch LeClerc's lights out if she saw him while still pretending to be me, and maybe even if she was back to being herself. After this uncomfortable experience, I got Maman to temporarily stop the conveyor belt of suitors. I spent a day in the kingdom of flowers as I termed it speaking to Nicole. Maman's reading room. The garden. My, formerly Nicole's bedroom. All was pink and flowers. And Maman had the most boring books for me to read. Jane Austen and Colette. I wanted to finsh some more of my Rafael Sabatini stories of adventure. But what would Maman have thought. So, I, Antoine sat there reading Pride and Prejudice and carried it with me about our garden. But, though many of my tastes hadn't changed, books for example, I was nearly three weeks a female at this point and though I didn't admit it to Nicole, I couldn't remember what it felt like to be a boy. My ... thing between my legs? Just a concept. I couldn't recall what that felt like. It was like trying to think of one song while the band in the room is playing another. And the band never stopped playing this damned female song. The other effect of my forgetting masculinity was that femininity didn't seem so foreign or odd at all. I remembered finding my hips to be gargantuan after I'd first been transformed by the spell book. But they didn't feel that way now, after three weeks that way. Oh, I was more full in shape, better rounded than almost any other girl, save perhaps for Winnie and the Daughter of Reason at our gates. But I didn't feel wide, not anymore. My shape felt perfectly normal and, in fact, wonderful. My breasts felt not foreign but just right, large but firm and pert. I walked along the paved path from the estate house to the front gates now positively enjoying my new body. That I went along with a certain sway to my gait didn't bother me at all any more. I was becoming accustomed to being the beautiful girl everyone saw. It was certainly easier now that I didn't have to wear a corset. I wore mid length dresses of Winnie's, mostly, they all fit like a glove, as if they'd been made for me. And I wore heels but not the high ones that Maman had me wear with my bridesmaid's dress. And though I would never have confessed it to Nicole, the textures of my girl's clothes were much softer, much finer, more pleasing than the things I'd worn as Antoine. Yes, I was adjusting to circumstance. I still had two more weeks like this before Pierre and Winnie returned from their honeymoon. Though I felt gradual shifts in my thoughts and attitudes taking place, nothing much worried me. And that sentiment was bolstered when, on my walk, I reached the front gate of the estate. There was the name, RICHARD, in a proud arc of iron across the roadway. And there were the Son and Daughter of Reason statues to either side. I glanced at her. I was so much like her now, distinguished only by different hair and a slightly different face. And yet, I remembered great grandmother's words. That beautiful girl had been Jean Paul Richard, the legendary 13th Marquis who had done so much to build the estate. My circumstance, bizarre as it was, was not even original. I would return to being a young man just as he had. There was precedent for it being no particular problem. I sighed contentedly. The oddity of my circumstance was always raising worries in my mind. It was nice to feel a certainty in my fate being positive. I sighed again. The statue was still magnificent in its detail. Though more than 150 years old and kept outside, it was periodically covered with some sort of glaze which protected it from the elements. I glanced over to see how the Son of Reason was doing then inspected her further before casting another glance at her marble brother. I sighed with a frown. When I went by the gates as a boy, either in a car or on foot, I always used to fixate on her, on the statue of the Daughter of Reason. She was the female, the exotic other, that I didn't understand and didn't see, certainly not naked like that! Of course, there was probably an element of the Son of Reason being such a magnificent slender athlete with that huge organ dangling between his legs that I wanted to avoid comparison. That was certainly part of it. But I was more drawn to her than avoiding him. I glanced at him again, now, before turning back to the Daughter of Reason with an angry sigh. I tried to focus my eyes on her, to keep them there. But I couldn't. No matter how I tried my gaze returned to the nude figure on the other side of the entrance roadway. He was now the exotic one, the one I could not identify with. What did it feel like to have .... that? What was it like to be so athletic? Fine, I decided and walked over to stand several feet from him. I marveled at his wonderful physique. According to great grandmother, the Son of Reason was an exact copy of Jean Paul Richard after he'd been transformed back into a young man. And what a young man! He must have been six foot one with fine, strong shoulders that tapered down to a small waist, perhaps only 30 inches, with hips no wider yet a fantastically muscular rear and long, toned legs, between which was ... Hmmph. I sighed, unsure what I should be thinking of a man's organ. But it wasn't as though we never talked about them or compared them as boys. Gilles, Guy, Robert and I did from time to time. Pierre and I, too. Pierre, in fact, from age 13 on, possessed in flesh what the Son of Reason had in marble. I remember the two of us going to the pond by the north end of the estate, the one with the brook flowing into it from a waterfall. I'd even said to Pierre as we undressed. "Mon dieu, you look like the Son of Reason!". He just shrugged. I hadn't thought of it at the time but it was what great grandmother had said, wasn't it? She'd said he'd come to look just like the Son of Reason. And he had. My older brother parted his hair differently and his face was slightly different but otherwise he was just like the magnificent statue. He even had ... that. I stared at it. And then a thought occurred to me. I quickly pressed both hands to my dress below my waist. I shook my head. No. Never. I wouldn't allow it. Of course not! But ... was it even possible with someone such as the Son of Reason? I glanced from his organ down to myself. It would be even longer and thicker in the heat of passion. That?! Inside me!?! No! Never!! It was at that moment, with my thoughts completely distracted, that a small coupe roared up to the gates and stopped beside me. It was Victor. I stepped back from the embarassing location immediately in front of the nude young man in marble but also felt relief that it was him. "Would you like a ride, Antoine?" My girl's body went rigid. I slowly turned toward him. "What-what are you talking about?" He chuckled. "Don't worry. Your brother told me what foolishness you and your sister did." "He did?" Victor nodded. I felt no anger at this. Victor was a great guy, my brother's best friend all his life even though he was a negro with skin not just brown but dark as coal. And, suddenly, something else occurred to me as I walked around his car to accept his offer of a ride. "You're a child of the spell book, too, aren't you?" I said as I got in. How had I not seen it before? He was almost a physical duplicate of Pierre except for his skin, hair and face. Even, I glanced hesitantly at the wool of his pants below his belt, even ... that. Victor nodded. "It's true." "But how did it get into your family?" "Well, the story that I have heard is that one of my anscestors, a good friend of him," he pointed to the Son of Reason statue through the windshield, and spoke in his wonderful deep bass voice, "of Jean Paul Richard, became sick and the medicine of the time could do nothing for him. As my predecessor was on his death bed, Jean Paul Richard had everyone leave the room and had the dying man read the spell to turn the speaker into a man such as the Son of Reason. Perhaps because it was not a complete change, it was not the change of sex that you and Nicole have undergone, my anscestor was able to endure it and it healed whatever had been ailing him. It also made him look just like that, though as a negro. And this was propagated through my family for several generations before passing over a few and then showing up again in me, just as it did in your family with Pierre." "Did you always know this?" Victor shook his head. "An aged grandmother told me the legend around the same time that Pierre found out. We told each other. It all made sense. That's why, from the neck down, he and I are exactly the same except for the color of our skin. We were shaped this way by the same spell. But you are not so thankful for the spell books, effects, eh? You wish to be free of the spell's effects, don't you?" I nodded. "Well, it will apparently just be a few more weeks, Antoine. In the meantime, make the best of it and if you need any help, just call on me." He bave me a hug about my delicate shoulders. I exhaled contentedly. I could count on Victor. Besides Victor, I had another ally in the house, our abyssinian cat, Cleopatra. Mother had gotten her in 1939. She'd had the misconception that Abyssinia was Egypt and, so, named the amazing little creature Cleopatra. She was a very intelligent and very social little feline. But she had absolutely clear favorites. She tolerated my mother but would follow my father or Pierre around the house with the devotion one expected of a trained dog. I, too, was one of her favorites though not to the same degree as Pierre. The demarcation of who was and was not in Cleopatra's favor was quite clear. She would growl or brandish five claws or hiss and use them if someone other than her favorites tried to pick her up. They were not worthy of the furry little queen. But even though I was now a beautiful girl, Cleopatra would come to me and sit on my lap purring. And to mother's amazement, the cat brandished her claws when the boy Maman thought was Antoine tried to pet her. I delighted in this. My identity further confirmed, if only by the cat. But no one else knew that the gorgeous girl they saw was anything but she appeared. And because Maman didn't know and couldn't be told the conveyor belt of suitors kept running, every day or two dropping another smiling young man in front of me who would take my hand and smile at the beautiful girl he wanted to screw. They all did. Every one. Oh, there was perhaps one homosexual boy in there, very handsome, too, who made my time much less stressful. But the others! Even as my feelings of being Antoine were diminishing day by day I roused myself, my masculinity for each of these dates Maman sent me on. I would go along with the rest of my feminine treatment. But I was Antoine! No young man would have his way with me no matter how gorgeous I was. Even though I had come to completely accept my beautiful female body, even though masculinity was just a concept I vaguely recalled, I still felt like 15 year old Antoine reacting to how these suitors treated me. I regarded all their blandishments, all their flattery about how pretty I was with a skeptical eye. After the repeated declarations to myself that I was Antoine that I made before each date, these words seemed like such calculated cajolery. And yet, oddly, whenever I saw one of the boys squiring me about look at another girl with interested appraisal, I got furious inside. I'm made this way by supernatural power and I'm not good enough for him?!? This incredible girl's ass is not good enough for him?!?! He has me in front of him and he casts a glance at that strumpet of a waitress?!? One boy, a tall thin one who I thought was quite handsome, though with flaws I immediately noted, was a certain Poincard. He was whispered to me by a girlfriend of Nicole's as being quite the casanova. The Poincards were also quite rich, perhaps even richer than we Richards. It did not matter to me but it perhaps played a part in the amazing egotism of this boy. Yes, he had wonderful blue eyes and fine chestnut colored hair as well as a pleasing taper of shoulders to a small waist. But his lips were very thin and the bridge of his nose was too weak. I immediately catalogued these faults upon perceiving his tremendous pleasure in his own appearance. Oh, you're beautiful too, are you? I don't think so. For instance .... I kept my words to myself, of course, but they were never far from my lovely lips, for he was so overbearing. We saw a Rene Clair movie that he chose which was rather disappointing, surprising for Clair. Then we went to a restaurant and no sooner had we sat down than he started to talk, half jokingly, about how a merger of the Poincards and Richards would be very advantageous to all, Though, of course, he said, the Poincards would be the controlling party. And even as he spoke of this seemingly matrimonial union of corporations, he was glancing about the room at the pretty waitresses serving other tables. I could well imagine what sort of merger he imagined with them. He went on about this imagined union of families and added that his father, of course, would be the leader. We couldn't have a leader who was a, haha, ballet dancer, he chuckled. My anger was barely controllable. Insulting Pierre now?! He got up to use the men's room as some people at the next table also got up. I don't know what possessed me but I don't regret what I did, in retrospect. I leaned forward and stuck one leg between two people now standing at the next table. No one saw it, including Poincard who tripped on my foot and went flying onto a table for 8 across the aisle just covered with food hot from the kitchen. With a smash and a chorus of shouts, he first descended, with arms outstretched, onto all their entrees then overturned the table and the entrees all descended onto him as the entire restaurant turned to watch the angry diners sputter at the young man whose hair was no longer chestnut but now Chicken Kiev. Just as voices were finally quieting down I got up and strode past him. "You're an embarassment to me, Poincard! We Richards have standards and you do not meet them. How many drinks did you have? I won't spend another minute with you!" I called Victor from the phone at the maitre de's station and wouldn't let Poincard talk to me. When he began to plead his case I asked the maitre de to keep him from me and the large, tuxedoed man pushed him off toward the door. He pleaded from there and I let him have it. "Please. You are an embarassment, Poincard! As if I would be with a boy of such common appearance. Your lips are barely visible, your nose weak and you should better coordinate things with your tailor because the seat of your pants should be ironed flat before you put them on, not afterward as seems to have been done. You make fun of Pierre for having been in the ballet but he was also in the resistance. There are quite different whispers about you Poincards!" I told Victor exactly what had happened and he laughed. Poincard took his humiliation and walked away, but there was a whole spectrum of reactions to my rejections. Every boy I was meeting was being turned down, of course. I was Antoine Richard. I was not about to become bride of another boy. At first, I would not give any of these boys so much as a kiss. They could hold my dainty little hand but that was it. I didn't care how much my supernaturally produced beauty inflamed them, my lips were not for them. But gradually, this came to seem too harsh. And some of them were rather handsome. I started to relent. A simple kiss wasn't too much. A beautiful girl such as I temporarily was, would be hated if she didn't give out at least a goodbye kiss. And so I started to become comfortable with boys having a hand around my shoulders at the movies, perhaps an arm around my waist as we walked and the favor of a kiss goodbye. Some of them were so handsome. As the days wore on, Maman seemed to be doing a much better job of picking more and more handsome boys as possible suitors. I don't know why she'd chosen all the less enticing ones to go first but it certainly seemed that way. The later ones were all quite handsome. It wasn't too much to give them a chaste kiss. But, eventually Maman had found a cad for whom that wasn't enough. A certain Valois took me to a museum and dinner at a fine restaurant. He was quite handsome and we had a good enough conversation. I certainly felt safer with a boy who made such a cultured choice as to take me to a museum. We chatted amiably about each painting or sculpture, though, I had several uncomfortable moments in front of the nude statues of young gods. But dinner went well and then he brought me home. As we approached the door, I muttered a thank you but added that I think this would be goodbye and not au revoir. He smirked at me, sort of an angry smirk. "You're the type of girl who doesn't know what she really wants," he said. I sputtered the beginnings of a response but was perplexed at this Valois putting his middle finger in his mouth and grinning at me. Before I knew what happened, he'd taken me in his arms and was kissing me. Or perhaps I should say he'd taken me in his arm. For his one hand was about my shoulders, the other I felt reaching under my dress. "Ohh!" And then, his hand pulled my panties down and, to my shock, that wetted finger was plunged into my girl's sex. Mmmmmfff! I tried to cry out but found his lips perfectly covering mine. At last I turned my head sufficiently to half shout, "Let me go!" But he was so much stronger than me that I couldn't affect a release from his grasp on my own and a moment later his lips were back over mine, his tongue in my mouth and I gasped. For, shocking things were happening at my sex, things I had not known could occur. He was rubbing at a single location within me, rubbing a rhythmic pattern that was making me feel a warmth, a delicious tingle and warmth not just down there but perceptibly now in my whole body. I'm sure I went a bit limp with this feeling before having a resurgence of my feeling of being Antoine. "No! I'm-" Mmmmmfff! I was about to shout out that I was Antoine when he got his lips over mine again, while, down below, it continued, this brute bringing me pleasure. I don't know what would have happened but thankfully, without the outside light turning on I heard the door to the estate house swing open. A hand pushed at Valois's shoulder separating him from me and then a fist flashed right in front of me connecting with his nose knocking him down off the steps onto the topiary. He groaned and grasped at his nose with both hands from a seated position. "Get out of here now!" shouted Nicole my vengeful apparent brother. "Get out now and never come back!" He did. The next few minutes were a blur. I was both grateful and ashamed, Nicole, my knight in shining armor, led me into the house. Maman got very upset even without my recounting of things including what Valois had done to my girl's sex. And then I became progressively more upset, finally running into my pink and white room and flopping down on the bed and crying. For I realized that I had become the damsel in distress and Nicole was now the masculine rescuer. And it was all so natural. I wasn't masculine Antoine at all. My gender, my identity, was just arbitrary. And it was a vicious cycle of emotion, because my ever increasing femininity made me cry so readily which only fed my feelings of insecurity about how I was changing which made me cry some more which .... Eventually, I regained my composure and sat up on the bed. I was Antoine. I was Antoine and would return to being Antoine in less than two weeks. Any boy would feel like this in my circumstance. I-I wasn't less of a boy it was simply an overwhelming circumstance. I nodded. This was the right formulation. It wasn't a question of my masculinity. I was truly a boy, of course. Of that there could be no doubt. I was simply stuck in an outrageous circumstance. Still, I could not help but wonder. Doubt crept into my mind again that very evening, when I thought, again, of what Valois had done to me, what he'd done with his finger in my girl's sex. Lying there amid my covers, I wet one finger and reached in ... there. I'd been extremely reluctant to even look ... there, since the spell had transformed me. I didn't want to think a moment longer than necessary about the loss of my penis and its replacement with, well, that. I didn't even want to think about how this girl's sex was mine now. But that Valois, had known something. He'd known what pleased a girl. Against my will it had been a delicious warm tingle that was spreading through me before Nicole had saved me. I reached for the spot I remembered him touching and rubbed lightly. Yes. A tingle began in my sex and as I kept rubbing and pressing my fingertip back and forth across that nub of flesh in my girl's sex, warmth filled my whole body. I realized I was rubbing my nipples with my other hand and both my breasts were becoming hard. I rubbed and rubbed, eventually gasping for air and trembling with delight, so overcome was I by my pleasuring of myself. Finally, I cried out "Mon Dieu!" as I felt a sort of release. As I lay there catching my breath, I considered this incredible experience. I felt sort of moist in my sex but, of course, I didn't shoot a fluid or my seed at climax as I did when I was Antoine. And as my heart finally stopped racing I considered something else about it. It felt better than when I'd pleasured myself as Antoine. Better. This notion filtered into my head as I fell asleep. My feminization continued apace. Occasionally it really bothered me and I was desperate to return to being Antoine. I went into my old room one morning after Nicole had gone out for a day's work with the woodsmen and tried on my old clothes. I'm not sure what I expected to feel or what I wanted to feel. But there I was with a white dress shirt on and my black dress pants pulled most of the way up looking at myself in the mirror. I tried to picture my old self looking back at me. I could just barely conjure up an image of my slender, dark haired boy self, the boy I'd been. He would never have believed this could be done to him, I thought looking at myself as I was now. I looked ridiculous. The shirt was big in the shoulders but completely lacking in the chest as my firm, melon sized breasts pressed against the white fabric, my nipples making two dark circles beneath the cotton. But the pants were even worse. My thighs weren't fat. Far from it. I was wonderfully toned just like the Daughter of Reason statue. But I could only pull my former, boy's pants halfway up my thighs. They were too thick for those boy's pants. It was just as well. My full, round rear would have burst the seams of those pants had I ever pulled them up all the way. I stared at the ridiculous image in the mirror. The most beautiful girl I'd ever seen trying to wear a boy's clothes. I thought again at how I would have laughed if anyone had said, "Antoine, a magic spell is going to turn you into a girl so beautiful that every boy lusts after you." He would not have believed anything like this could be done to him. But it had. And each day I felt like I lost a little more of that boy who would not have believed this. One day around midday, I was in the tub taking a hot bath. I'd gone for a walk that morning out the front gates of the estate. I'd had a look at the Son and Daughter of Reason, well, mostly him. The heat was so strong even that early in the day that I built up a sweat just walking back to the estate house. Maman insisted that I take a bath and sprinkled in the water some expensive oils that she'd bought in Paris. I never took baths after age 6 as a boy. Baths were for little boys and women. But my father took showers as did Pierre. But almost four weeks into being a girl, I had adjusted to the leisurely pleasures of baths. It was almost a vanity about my new female beauty that I had completely surrendered to. I sat in the giant tub in the bathroom next to Maman's room for quite a while caressing my bosom and running fingertips down the length of my legs. My tactile reveries were only interrupted when I thought I heard a loud laugh somewhere outside the second story window. I listened and could perhaps detect voices but could not tell whose they were. My reveries interrupted, I stepped out of the bath, pulled the stopper and dried off. From there I went to Winnie's room. Do girls always want to try on each other's clothes? Perhaps that was what motivated me. I can't say. But I went into Winnie's drawers and found a pair of the softest, most wonderful nylons. What a pleasure to pull them up the dewy soft skin of my legs! And then I found and pulled on a bustier and attached garters to my nylons. Winnie's lingerie fit me perfectly. And it felt wonderful. I sighed contentedly at how these things felt and how I looked in the mirror. And there was the laugh again. Unlike the bathroom window, Winnie's was open. There was that deep bass laugh. It was Victor's. And there was another voice, not so deep but laughing raucously. It was Nicole, transformed into a stupendously handsome, slender but quite athletic boy by the spell book. Both wore swimsuits, black stretchy things about the size of briefs as was the fashion of the day. I peeked at them from the edge of the window. Nicole, the 14 year old boy, was laughing and roughhousing with Victor. They were having great fun, pushing and shoving, wrestling and pushing one another into the pool, and racing each other across its surface and then underwater from side to side. It looked like great fun. And it used to be the sort of fun that I had. All of a sudden, I glanced in the mirror at my luscious girl self and felt much less happy about my nylons and bustier. I was supposed to be the one roughhousing with Victor. I was supposed to be the one racing across the pool. But there I was, a Venus in lingerie, while Nicole had a boy's fun. And, as I said, this was nearly four weeks after I'd first become this luscious beauty of a girl. Having always been a boy, I was not in the habit of thinking of my body in four week cycles, so what happened a few days later took me completely by surprise. At first, I thought I was just unusually perceptive of my weight and the width of my girl's ass again for some mysterious reason. I woke up one day feeling heavy. I remember pressing my little hand to my convex girl's abdomen wondering if my shape had always been so ... full. I just sighed in frustration and figured that it was from a late night dessert the previous day, nothing more. I had to be careful about my weight in this humiliating new body. I couldn't just eat anything the way Antoine -I mean Nicole!- the way Nicole could now that she had a boy's express train metabolism. I was also in a very foul mood but that, too, was quite understandable. Here I was, a 15 year old boy now at the end of my 4th week of being a beautiful girl, not by my choice. I snapped at Nicole as we were having breakfast and confess that I threw back at her resentments stored since this ordeal began. "Why can't you ask for all those things at once? Is that too difficult? Butter, salt and jam all at once. That's not too hard is it?" I snapped with rising voice "It's not that big a deal, is it?" "No it's not except you casually interrupt my breakfast three times every morning when it could be just once! Why?!" "Antoine? What is it?" "It's nothing! It's just like you ruining my reputation with the huntsmen and the woodsmen and everyone else on the estate by being too good to put out effort in every other way!" "Antoine!" "You ruin my reputation that I had worked so hard to build and all I can do is sit here in the estate house, fat as a battleship as it happens" "Antoine. I thought you were over the whole fat thing. Don't you ..." Nicole cut off her own words with a gasp. "Oh my god ..." "What?! What is it? Can you make that effort? Is that also too much to ask of you that you tell me what's spinning around in that boyish brain of yours?" "Never mind," said Nicole and she walked away from the table. I went upstairs and changed for my next date and went downstairs. God what a foul mood I was in. I snapped at mother once and could have exploded at her several times. I was barely in control of myself as I waited for that day's boy. It was Lucien DeGrasse, a tallish, slender, red haired 19 year old ballet dancer who had been a colleague of Pierre's. He wore a three piece suit much like Pierre favored. Hmmph, I wondered, cynically, if he thought this choice would impress me because I was Pierre's "sister". I must have been horrible company for him because I tried not to say anything, so certain was I that I would say one hurtful thing to him and release a flood of caustic remarks on this unsuspecting boy. He was actually quite polite and, well, very handsome, extremely handsome. He had very stong facial features, bright red hair and bright blue eyes. He was really much more a young man than a boy. As he walked beside me leading me to the restaurant where we were to have lunch, I detected a lot of spring in his step. We were seated and had just ordered when I felt a disgusting sensation at my crotch. Oh no! What's this now? What fresh humiliation is this?! I reached hesitantly under my dress. My fingertips were wet. I grabbed a paper napkin off the table and stuffed it against my sex before excusing myself and walking to the women's room with very small steps. There, I removed the napkin and confirmed my fears. It was bloody. I-I was having my period. Aaaarrrrgggghhhh. A period. Was I officially a girl now or what? No wonder I felt bloated and was in such a bad mood. Nicole had guessed it, too, hadn't she? I took a long slow breath. Okay. Enough dramatics. How do I deal with this? How do I deal with this? Damn, what are those little things that Nicole had? What are they called? I couldn't remember the term. I knew what they were generally supposed to do, to soak up the blood. I took a couple napkins from the counter in the women's bathroom and inserted part of one ... within me and set the other against the opening of my sex, hiking up my panties behind me to try and help hold it there. I inspected my dress and found only a single red spot that, quite fortuitously, looked as though it was part of the flowered pattern of my dress. The ballet dancer, Lucien, was very understanding and accomodating. When I cut our date short pleading "feminine troubles" and asked him to take me home I actually felt reluctant because this wonderfully good looking boy had been so nice about things. I was excused from going out or seeing anyone for the next two days though I only bled that day and a little bit the next day. I apologized to Nicole and she was very fair about it. She didn't make fun of me at all, though it would have been so easy, me, Antoine, having a period! We were just a week away from the return of Pierre and Winnie and the spell book I so desperately wanted to get my hands on. In the meantime, I wanted to stop seeing a new boy each day. Being courted by fawning boy after fawning boy was becoming too much to deal with. Plus it just created more chances for a Valois or a Louis LeClerc to treat me badly. This wonderful looking boy had been very kind to me. I figured I could go on a few more dates with him and then regretfully tell him that we were not a true match, whereupon I would read the spell to turn myself back into a boy. I would mislead this boy for a week but no more than that. I told mother that I would like to see Lucien DeGrasse again. But first I told Nicole what I was going to say. Because she was going to be seen as having interest in young Monsieur DeGrasse. "Why now?" asked Nicole "I-I've just had enough and he was very kind about things when I had my ... period" Nicole giggled. I sighed angrily. "It's so funny to hear you talk about your period, Antoine." "Oh yeah. Well-well how did you like your wet dream last night? I saw you in the hallway in the middle of the night" Nicole groaned. "So messy. How did you ever deal with it?" "Pleasure yourself now and then it won't happen." "Really? Then how did you ever have a wet dream, with the frequency that you ... ?" she smirked I mock slapped at her. "Never mind the jokes. That's what will prevent it from happening again." "But I'm reluctant to become too engrossed in the pleasures of being a boy." "And I'm reluctant to become too engrossed in the pleasures of being a girl but Maman is forcing me to go on dates." "Fair enough. But, what do you know about him?" "Not all that much." "How tall is he?" "Six feet and a half inch, perhaps six foot one." "Weight?" "Oh, one hundred sixty five, one hundred sixty seven." "What's he look like again?" I smiled. "Very very handsome. Red hair, strong cheekbones, just a few freckles, a strong nose but not too large, just perfect and a good jaw. A small waist, long legged and a r- ... what?" She was staring at me so oddly. I continued despite her odd look and searched for a way to describe the impressively round little behind at which his dress pants hinted. "and, well, he's a ballet dancer. He used to be a colleague of Pierre's." "Oh, but you didn't notice much about him?" "Well I-I-I was I was thinking that I should pay attention in case I, um, stuck you with one of these boys." "Uh huh." "Well, I suppose it stuck with me because Lucien DeGrasse was very kind about my ... problems. I hesitate to think what some of those other boys would have done." Nicole gave her blessing that this boy should be one with whom she is seen going out for a second time. So, we did, three days later. I wanted it to be just a perfunctory sort of evening. I wanted to be just friendly enough to him that another date would be at least possible so that Maman wouldn't simply send the next boy forward. That really was all I intended. But he was so clever and charming, so glib. Sigh. I found myself laughing my little soprano titter at joke after joke. It was a warm evening, so he left his coat in his car. I'm sure I would have felt annoyed if he had taken my hand in his large hand but he explicitly asked me to hold my hand so it didn't bother me and then it seemed quite comfortable having my dainty hand encircled by his as we walked along and laughed. He seemed so strong and my feeling of ridiculous weakness seemed to disappear, somehow, with his strength to protect me. This Lucien was quite an intelligent boy and, as I glanced up at his face, I realized he was even more handsome than I'd described him as being to Nicole. She would really like this Lucien. I was sure of it. And with each quality that I noticed in him and found appealing I told myself that Nicole will appreciate this or that. He seems so ... athletic. She'll like that. Damn, what wide shoulders for that little waist. Nicole will love that. And when he stooped to pick up a ball that a little boy had dropped on the sidewalk, I noted how the seat of his dress pants hinted at an athletic rear ... but only for Nicole, of course. Girls loved that sort of thing, athletic rear ends. That's what I told myself. I was just scouting for Nicole I told myself with professed detachment. Nicole's friends had certainly spoken of boys' rears in enthusiastic terms. Nicole would certainly like a terrific ass like that one flexing beneath his dress pants with each step up a stairway. We walked along and decided to see "Children of Paradise", a critically acclaimed movie playing at the theater just ahead of us that neither of us had seen though it had first come out the previous year. It was wonderful. I found my eyes tearing over like the girl I appeared to be and Lucien reached around and pulled my head onto his muscular shoulder. I didn't resist. It seemed perfectly natural to let my emotions be protected by his strength. I watched the remainder of the movie from there. I think I had perhaps a moment of wondering about how completely emotional my behavior was but quickly fell back under the spell of the wonderful film Only as the credits announced "Fin" did I realize the situation. I was sighing contentedly with my perfumed cheek resting on his warm, protecting muscle. I hurriedly lifted my head off him. I'm sure my eyes must have gone wide with shock. What was I doing?!. What the hell?! I looked around nervously hoping that no one had seen me, Antoine, resting my head on a boy like that, but quickly realized that I was Nicole to any witness and nothing would be thought to be awry. I took a deep breath. Without a word, Lucien dabbed very softly with one long finger at the remaining tear on my face. Had he done anything more, the Antoine in me, the 14 year old boy trapped in that body, would have been furious. I would have pushed him away with my delicate little arms. But he didn't. He only smiled softly at me remarking about what a fine film it was and led me out of the theater. He didn't speak again until I had finally calmed down and chose to a few blocks away. I was actively looking for a reason to fight with him. The Antoine in me was welling up in protest at my comfort with this boy, my acceptance of his sheltering strength. The Antoine in me wanted a scene right then and there. A word, any word, even one, would have turned me against him but he was very perceptive, Lucien DeGrasse. I wanted to dislike him at that point so I started asking about ballet thinking that ridiculous occupation would surely make it easy to distance myself from him. Unlike my brother Pierre I had never taken ballet class. In fact, I'd never seen Pierre dance. I only attended one ballet, a few years before the war, perhaps 1937. Maman brought me, Pierre, Nicole and my friend Gilles whose mother also attended. Gilles and I burst out laughing at one point. The guys looked so ridiculous in tights. And they made the most ridiculous theatrical faces in the course of their tepid prancing about the stage. Gilles made a joke about one and we both burst out laughing. Maman banished us to the hallway outside for the rest of the performance. Pierre said that the next, more brief dance had been much more athletic and that he'd said it looked like fun. Maman immediately enrolled him in ballet classes. And it was this base of experience, his couple years taking ballet classes before the war that made Pierre able to join a troupe after the occupation by the bosche and travel with them working all the while for the resistance. Still, even though I knew Pierre had danced ballet, I could not shake the stereotype that my friends and I had of it, that it was filled almost entirely with sissies and that men looked comically ridiculous en