#memnoch the devil

Again a dim boyhood memory returned to me, of seeing the crucifix in our church at home in the Auvergne and being awestruck by the sight of the painted blood running from the nails. I must have been very small.

I was bedding village girls in the back of that church by the time I was fifteen—something of a prodigy for the times, but then the lord's son was supposed to be a perfect billygoat in our village. Everyone expected it. And my brothers, such a conservative bunch, they had more or less disappointed the local mythology by always behaving themselves. It's a wonder that the crops hadn't suffered from their paltry virtue. I smiled. I had certainly made up for it.