Note to the Editors. While at the farmsale of a local vintner, I came across a small and curious volume in a box of old books. The entire book was in Old French, with the above title. The first part was a botanical guide to different types of grapes for wine, and the second was concerned with the process of blending and ageing them. The third seemed to be a fragment of a novel entitled "Imperator Du Vin." I believe this translation would be of interest to your readers.It is with great sorrow and desolation that I, Tria Oculo, scribe to my Liege, tell of His last days. It was my news of the bearded Nazarene that had stricken him with that perpetual ennui of the day after. It was I who provoked in Him, The Deep Sounder, the desire to return to Thebes. I have forsaken my own savoir and Gentle Master.
He who saved me, a Sacred Virgin of Naxos, from the invading Herculi. Those infidels who violated me, rendering mute and deaf. It was Bacchus, the Careless Lord, whom I saved and committed to another realm
Since the massacre of his followers and Constantine’s conversion of the Empire to the Christ, we had taken refuge the deserted estate of a bankrupt vintner in Illyricum. That land, as much of the Empire had ceased to be fertile. The numbers of my Lord's worshiper's had dwindled, it was only a few who declared their devotion, and still it was only convenient for them to do so.
There was Debacchus, that whimpering simp of ill-prudus, who was the ungrateful son of my Liege and an acolyte of Medea. He whom the Father of Liberty did take charge over to avoid suit of paternity and palimony from the causidicus. Those are dark days when a God can be sued.
And Sardia Licentia, whom Sapho's high priestess did lure down from the Caucus range with a trail of oysters and mussels, to a boat filled with lobsters and crabs and, set sail for Lesbos. There she was drafted into service, and achieved the rank of Sergeant-at-Arms. However having hunted all the stags and trapped all the ganders of that isle she fell victim to Diana's jealousy, and she was forced to wander as the eternal huntress. Having been intrigued with the strength and fierceness of the Bacchanals, particularly my Liege’s own aunts, she was mercenaried as His protector.
By far His Most Fidelus was Bababalouk, the Great Dark Giant of Tremendous Girth, the former Emperor of Sudan, who was enslaved by the Perses and made a eunuch for their petty harems. Meus Rex did find him in the woods, having escaped and suffering fron several wounds in the belly from their scimitars. The oil that oozed from his avulsions was tapped into our empty lamps, which lit the many nights he was nursed to health with grapes and olives. Bababalouk’s devotion never wavered and for this Bacchus frequently restored him to his former virilitas.
The Maenads, those most mysterious of spirits, are those who always accompany and herald Him. Some say they are simulacra of the nurses of Jove's Most Pious Bastard, to others they are his incarnated aunts, the daughters of Cadmus. It is they who shine in the drunken maid's eye. Their form is ever shifting, their number unknown, both befit their fancy. Sometimes they are swarm of thighs and breasts, of carameled hair, kohled eyelids, and hungry mouths. Other times, as then upon our departure from that refuge in the hills, they took the shape of five Egyptian slave girls with tibae and sistrum, accompanied by a peacock and his hen who with their music they incited into a mating dance.
Bacchus' litter was supported by a company of statues of soldiers from the court of Pluto, who in flesh were victims of the Gorgon's, gaze. They had been reanimated for divine attention, and many were missing noses, heads or arms lost in faithful service.
We had journeyed far in the Dalmatian Mountains. into the glowing hills of Uranium, whose realm was governed by Regina Cerratonium. She was a barren queen who desired a great son to rule over her decrepit kingdom. All the young men had expired from exhaustion from her wanton, yet futile desire. Those that were virile enough to survive the crush of her great thighs, had paid for their efforts of spilling their seed into her broken womb with their heads. Her court now depleted, she took audience only with the vermin that proliferated in great abundance. She greatly admired these rats, for their ability to reproduce, and hoped vainly that their fertility would somehow relieve her of her great desire.She never left her bed, a great walled eiderdown sunken in the middle of her chambers, and let these rodents scurry freely about in her presence. She cooed to them and spoke soft and lovingly, declaring them her children.
In fits of passion she would strip herself of her regal vestments, and anoint her pendulous breasts and swollen buttocks with hazelnut and almond butter. The rats would swarm about her, nibbling and licking ber pale flesh, causing cries of ecstasy to be released from her gnashing mouth.
Being of hazy mind she would grapple for a great ivory phallus, chiseled from a column of Minerva's temple, and impale herself upon it vigorously. At her climax, with two digits in her rear, she would scream to Priapus to grant her a prince worthy of soaking her in his milky nexus and relieve her from that infernal torment that burned her to her limbs. This practice she engaged in several times daily, and the Gods turned deafly away.
Good Bacchus, whose sympathies lay with debtors, but despised advocates, did request from Bababalouk his sacred chalice:. The god eunuch held the cup out to my Liege who vomited into it sour wine vinegar. No sooner had the cup touched the wretch's lips than be began to sputter and spout curses upon the Son of the Thunder-Shaft. Yet these revilements provoked only laughter and a gesture to the Maenads. In a cloud of blurry lust they descended upon the poor man.
The Maenads bit his buttocks and pinched his nipples, inciting from him a great erection by caressing his only jewels that the court had spared. The man winced and spasmed in discomfort as the wicked dancers pushed to his face their nether cheeks and lips. He was enticed, brought to the brink and then left unfulfilled. They turned their attentions upon poor Bababalouk, their favorite to tease; whirling about him until be stamped and snorted in rut.
King Vino surrendered the great pine-cone from his thyrsus, which was strapped around Bababalouk’s equally great waist with length of grapevine. One of the Maenads lay across the back of the turgid lawyer and jangled her charms. The great Sudanese, blinded by the spell of the mischievous nymphs, stepped up to the posterior of the filthy criminal and penetrated his back-hole.
This disgusting man screamed half in pain, but most in pleasure as Bacchus' favorite worked upon him like the ceaseless waves upon the beach, until the criminal spilled his innards upon the thirsty sands and collapsed in torpor, while the Jolly God's laughter broke the night.
As we skirted the border of Actium, we viewed the strange ruins of an ancient zigguraut. This sight provoked a melancholic reaction from my Lord. He remembered the mortal girl he found ill his wanderings through the Orient, a girl who was collecting stones from the ruins of Babylon to be chiseled and sold to worshipers of Baal. She was roundly heckled, and in a flush of anger threw a rock at Bacchus with deadly accuracy.
Bababalouk, to protect his savoir, leapt from his steed to block the projectile's transit, and was soundly crowned. Bacchus, admiring this girl's spirit, enticed her upon the eunuch’s mount with fruits and sweet-meats. He placed the poor reposed guard in his sedan while he rode backwards with the girl, laughing with great mirth at his poor dazed friend.
Later in his silken tent, in privacy with the heathen girl, he tried to woo her. She lay unresponsive, never looking upon Him. He commanded a stray lamb from a nearby sheppard's flock to enter His tent. It lay upon silver tray and was spontaneously roasted and stuffed with pistachios. The hungry urchin feasted until bloated and tired.
In her swoon, He merely lay hemp rope along her wrists and she never moved as He stripped her. Her skin was dark and tanned compared to His own pale flesh. He kissed her rough feet, which were thickly calloused. He wept for this girl who was never shod, anointing her with His drunken tears. Her calves were high and tight from running from the royal guard. While her soft thighs were thin her derriere was ample and firm, and my Lord nibbled at the soft sparse hairs of her pubis. He drank the salty roe of her folds and she lowly moaned her allegiance to The Grape. He kneaded her slightly risen belly, and caressed the small and pert fruits of her bosom.
There are none who can resist Liber, who will not cry out with longing for deliverance from the pent-up, heated lusty wine of abandon. All prudent levees burst in the soaking vernal flood of desire, and this lowly peasant, although not unique, was like no other in the attention of the King of Nature.
She cried to be mounted; only she could command the Sleepy Duke so. He fulfilled his orders to the hilt promising her a kingdom and proclaiming her His queen. They were both racked and shook, as if enstormed, and like from a just tapped cask her cup was filled to the brim, but she was drained just the same.
She was my Liege's favorite prize; and he draped her in finest silks and bedecked her in the purest gold. No enchantments, however could save her from a mortal's end. This heartbreak settled heavy in the Lord of Mirth's chest and seemed to precurse these hardened times.Bacchus, fearing the fall of his borderless kingdom, and craving the sight of his homeland, bid us to hasten our journey.
It had become increasing difficult for my Lord to rise in the morning, and while sleeping late, the Maenads did bath in a stream.
As is their way, they were cavorting about having great sport when unbeknownst to them they were being watched by two fair-haired barbarian scouts. As I have said before these were horrible times, and all were subject to the invasions of those most lowly and uncivil.
These two pernicious lads hatched a plan to have unseemly fun with the Maenads. An idea not unlike catching a slippery fish barehanded. The boys had just waded out into the waters to accost them, when the Spirits of Liber shifted their shape into crocodiles and gave them quite a scare. They fled through the reeds and climbed up a willow tree.
The Maenads, now bawdy girls of the Tiber, did laugh and call to the tree's dryad. The spirit shook it's temporal shape as if in a ga1e, and the boys fell on to the banks of the water. The girls, there were four of them now, descended upon the boys with pursed lips.
The boys were shocked at such fortune, cautiously exploring the apparitions with tenuous fingers. It was not known to them, being of petty minds, that it was each other they tested. Enchanted in toto, they treated one another like tawdry huntsmen. As one thought it was a breast be sucked, it was his companion’s turgid organ he throated.
Soon the Maenads, growing bored of such easy fun, departed, as one lad leap-frogged the other. The man above reached around with one hand to jerk his fellow’s member, while with his other, he forced two fingers down the youth's throat.
Debacchus, as was his fashion, often spied on the Maenads while they engaged in their bathing frolics. He had been watched the events from the brush by the stream and had become quite engorged. He leapt from the scrub wood with a battle yell, and unlatched his scorpion-skin codpiece in mid-flight.
He landed in position behind the lads, and deftly buggered the one who buggered his comrade. So true and deep was his thrust that the impalement was felt by the boy beneath. The boys were dispatched quickly, and left slumping windless. Debacchus, so great was his passion, was not bothered by this, and worked his art like war.
After a time his fury soured, his chiseled brow knitted with fatigue, and he cursed his grandfather for granting him lighting without thunder. Sardia Licentia, who caught sent of these games while setting bird-traps downwind, fell in to the clearing howling with laughter.
So great were her yells in lusty loudness, a she-bear, as if summoned by her mate in rut, charged through the trees upon the party. Sardia, refreshed for some sport, grappled with great Ursa Mater. She became enveloped in the fur and warmth of her wooded sister, and fell to the grass entranced with smells of the forest and cubs and her full, ripe teats. They twisted like a knot, with Sardia suckling bear milk and sweating honey, which the young mother's ceaseless tongue could not diminish. Debacchus, still uncompensated and disgusted at the huntresses' liberty, like a good soldier saddled his dappled gelding.
One day to the end of our journey, with Mount Citheron looming in the distance, I saw in my Lord's comely face great anxiety. It is with this malady that makes me mute and deaf, that I can read the past in ones visage. In every wrinkle, pockmark, and chipped tooth there is a story, event, thought, or feeling that is known to me. Thus it is my place as scribe of the Holy Vino.I saw Semele, pale and slender, approached by Juno, in the guise of a nurse. The Queen dismissed the claim that Cadmus' daughter had loved Jove. Envious Juno told the girl to command her lover to take her the way the King of Olympus takes his queen.
Upon his next visit, Jove, foolishly promising Semele's every wish beforehand, embraced the princess as she requested, and she ceased to be almost nothing but flames. Juno's revenge was hampered though, for her husband’s unborn son leapt from his mother's ashes and drove himself into Jove's thigh. Minerva stitched him in with silver thread, and at spring Bacchus burst in to this world in a crimson shower of blood and wine.
He thought of his cousin Pentheus, warrior tyrant who wore the crown of Thebes long ago. The king was disgusted at his aunts' participation in the orgies on Citheron. He publicly rebuked them, demanding from all a disciplined and temperate existence. And going out with a company of soldiers to seize the mountain from the revelers, was rent in pieces by his own mother and his remains distributed among and eaten by the bacchanals.
Thebes had changed much since the steady and even hand of Cadmus. All her men had been baptized and drafted by the army. Her fields, either flooded or cracked, were unworkable, and the livestock were barren. Even the eternal plume of smoke from Semele's tomb had ceased.
Bacchus was greatly disturbed by all this, and taking Bababalouk went to the mountain to meditate upon these events. They were gone but half the day when the eunuch emperor came running down the great slope alone and in an excitable state. His eyes were wide with fear, and he was sweating and shaking.
He stammered long, but I could see what had happened, and what fate was to befall us. As they journeyed to the summit my Lord’s pensiveness fell, and he was taken over with a capricious mood. He began running and skipping through the woods singing in birdsong, and Bababalouk labored to keep pace.
At Citheron’s apex, Bacchus climbed the tallest pine tree, and beckoned his most faithful bondservant to join him at that dizzying height. Bababalouk reached the mid-way point of the tremendous trunk and could not move. My Lord commanded him to climb. The Sudanese cried that he was afraid and after all mortal. Bacchus replied, 'There can be no fear in the realm I tread.’
Then the fantastic happened. My Liege, already high above Citheron, pulled down with his hand from nowhere, another pine tree top, more mighty than his current perch. In what ground this great tree's trunk was rooted, Bababalouk could not fathom. Bidding adieu, my Lord Bacchus stepped from his tree, and gripping the other bent across the sky like the moon and disappeared.
Bababalouk, weeping as he finished his story, caused all to be smitten with grief at our loss. We all stood silent in great distress. However soon the grey sky was broken with laughing thunder and warm milky seed rained down from the heavens.
Figs, dates, apples, and even grapes sprouted from the trees and vines that cracked up through the bleached Earth. The women of Thebes, even those that were invalid, ate hearty and stripped themselves of their sackcloth and danced in the warm spring rain on this, the first day of Ambervalia. My Lord Bacchus, the Divine Lout, had answered their call.
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