The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

The First Letter of several of reputedly written by Isidor the Thaumaturge gentleman of Parva, as redacted by Eromel

Greetings and best felicitations, O fellow worker in the vineyards of truth.

I write you from the narrow abode which has been granted me by the kind offices of the Inquisition. It is the nature of my crime which I desire to inform you of, O fairest of judges. For only a peer can judge fairly, and you are the only one whom I can call my peer among all mankind. It was you and I who watched, incognito, as the Master was burned at the stake in Venice, and from that day forward made a mutual pact to work ceaselessly for the liberation of Europe from the plague of superstition. It was perhaps with that sole object in mind that I recently carried out a most perilous experiment in the city of Parva. Or was it? Perhaps I was impelled by my own vanity, or by even baser motives to embark on such rash measures. The inquisition has no jurisdiction over me, it can destroy my body but not my spirit. I look to you, Telesio, to tell me whether I have done anything which merits condemnation...for a man is not an adequate judge of his own case.

First I should inform you of how matters are here in Parva. Two years ago the famous preacher Fra Scarpiglione was invited into our state by the Duke. There was a general feeling that morals had become lax, and the Duke felt that our society needed a general housecleaning. The monk, Scarpiglione was so successful in this regard that the Duke himself was swept away with all the vanities of our former existence. Scarpiglione appealed to the conscience of our Ducal prince, and the latter made a vow to go on a crusade. Not that are any crusades in the true sense any more, but our Duke vanished north of the Alps where he is now endlessly besieging heretic cities on behalf of his lord, the Emperor. His daughter, a creature of Scarpiglione, was appointed princess regent in his stead.

From the moment of the Duke’s departure, Scarpiglione showed his true hand and instituted a reign of terror. This city, which had once been the garden spot of Lombardy, now was avoided by all, as if it had been infected by the plague. No festivals were held, no music wafted above the streets, the great works of art and literature which had been the glory of our museums and libraries were taken out onto the public squares and burnt as sinful vanities. All sensuality was condemned save in the service of procreation, men went about like cowled mendicants, in imitation of Fra Scarpiglione, while women became so modest that laywomen could barely be distinguished from veiled nuns. At first there was universal approval of this reform, and people were only too glad to divest themselves of their worldly possessions in exchange for the incorruptible coin of heaven.

Had it ended there, I would never have been swept up in the events of my time. I am, as you know Telesio, naturally an ascetic and a recluse. Although, as a gentleman, I am forced to keep up a minimum of appearances, and what is worse, to make occasional appearances at court, the abolition of all finery and entertainment would suit me as well as anyone. However Scarpiglione was not content that the outward person conform to his notions of purity, he was also a great investigator into opinions, being of the Order of Preachers and well connected with the Holy Office of the Inquisition, an institution which he endeavored to introduce into our state. From the beginning he sensed that there was something odd about my philosophy although as a minor member of court I was far down on his list of suspect persons.

As you know Telesio, it is one of the major precepts of our art never to divulge our true ideas or practices, but as someone once said, “to be in the world but not of it.” I am at a loss to recall what indiscretion or chance remark put me at odds with Scarpiglione, but he had spies everywhere, and even the most minute nuance might well be interpreted as damning evidence of impiety or subversion. Moreover, and note this well Telesio, certain among the monks and priests, such as Scarpiglione, are men not unlike ourselves...that is, they can wrap themselves within mental currents which preclude gross deceptions or betrayals. Thus Scarpiglione could feel the fear of a spy or the anger of a secret plotter. Fortunately he was blinded by his own prejudices, and quick to draw conclusions. Thus, for some reason, he marked me down as a follower of the great, but now out of favor and censored, commentator Averroes. To be branded an Averroist would be considered a major calamity by most scholars, and only you Telesio, will be able to see the humorous irony of the accusation in my case and the golden opportunity which it was soon to open up for me.

Still, such slander did not constitute sufficient cause for me to go to war, either openly or otherwise, against the monk and his hypocrisy. After the initial enthusiasm for righteousness had worn off, the court resumed, with redoubled ardor, its passion for licentiousness. In this it was protected by the solid walls of the palace which shielded it from the jealous eyes of the general citizenry and the purchase of indulgences from Fra Scarpiglione which protected it from the wrath of heaven. It was said in the city that Fra Scarpiglione wore a hair shirt underneath his monkish robe, but it was known in the palace that beneath the hair shirt was yet another shirt made of silk. No doubt some unfortunates had actually seen the latter garment, as the monk was addicted to youths of both sexes.

None of which was worth making any of my business. It is futile to try to beat the moralists at their own game, or try to censor the censors. It might be unfortunate that the double and triple tithes of the city, ostensibly for charitable works, were pouring into the coffers of the palace and its functionaries, notably the chief minister and ducal confessor, Fra Scarpiglione, but there was nothing to do about the matter as long as the mad monk remained allied to, and protected by, the princess regent, Lady Leonora. I, by analogy, was protected through the circumstances of my poverty. Although every day somebody new disappeared into the dungeons of the Inquisition, they were generally harmless but wealthy persons who had incurred the wrath of either the monk or the lady. They inevitably repented, after having forfeited their fortune to the state.

Yet Telesio, even I have my breaking point. Inclined as I was to wait out the storm, hoping for the return of the Duke or a revulsion of popular opinion before the Inquisition could get around to so paltry a heretic as myself, I was eventually goaded into action. Yes Telesio, I say “goaded” deliberately. Just as cattle might be prodded by a stick, I Isidor, student of the highest wisdom, found my animal nature compromising my will to impassive acceptance of injustice. Surely I shall receive some punishment for this, either in this world or the next, most likely at the hand of the Inquisition itself. None the less I do not repent of it in the least. What is my fate compared to the general progress of the human race? I was prodded into conducting a certain experiment which proved successful beyond my wildest expectations, an account of which should provide, if not edifying, at least instructive material to all future generations. Our Master himself would, I believe, have approved of the experiment, had he not preceded us into the flames of glory.

My decision was provoked by a singular sermon by Fra Scarpiglione. It is the custom of the court for all to listen to the ducal confessor’s declamations on saint’s days in the palace oratory. It was on the feast of St. Joseph the Prophet and Scarpiglione, inspired by a text on the Egyptian captivity was expiating on the salutary, nay, soteric nature of the institution of slavery. Now, our Master had ever taught his disciples to keep a mind free of prejudice, and to hear out even the most unlikely and absurd argument with equanimity. I must admit that I was greatly swayed by the monk’s oration, for whatever his vices, Fra Scarpiglione “the golden tongued” is arguably the best orator in Italy, if not all Christendom. He has the power, and what practicer of our art will gainsay it, of moving his auditors to tears with the force of his rhetoric. And so it was this time, as he extolled the blessings which had been unwittingly wrought upon those wretches who were favored by being clapped in chains and exported to the Indies. He made some very pretty figures of speech, especially when he expiated on the fate of certain Portuguese hulks which had perished in the mid-Atlantic, taking their servile cargo, chained to the bowls of the hull and screaming in terror, down into a briny and everlasting abode. He warned us against seeing anything other than the smiling face of a benign providence at work in such incidents, since those who perished were either devil-worshipers and worthy of damnation, or if they happened to be Christians, owed such a boon to the happy circumstance of their captivity.

I always seek to keep an open mind, and it was far beyond the power of my poor wit to refute the numerous arguments which Fra Scarpiglione produced to the glory of involuntary servitude. In this I was in good company for I noticed the Lady Leonora, our princess regent, enthralled and passionately in accord with every word and phrase which dripped from the honeyed tongue of the monk, indeed she seemed to take in every morsel of his teaching with delectation as she sat imperiously upon the ducal throne. Therefore, far from opposing the declamations of the preacher with futile objections, in my own mind I endeavored to expand upon them. For it seemed to me that a singular injustice was being overlooked. If, indeed, being striped of one’s liberties was such a rare and precious blessings, why should it be squandered on the heretic, the savage, and the hapless vagabond? Why should we search out the Saracen and the distant inhabitants of the bights of Guinea and Benin in order that they may have this great advantage heaped upon them, when it ought, by rights, be bestowed on those of our own land, both fair and near at hand, from whom we so unjustly withhold it?

Entertaining such thoughts caused me to embark on the perilous, but as it happened highly rewarding, venture of seeking an audience with the Lady of the court. Perilous because it would require the intercession of Fra Scarpiglione himself, who had aquired, among many other titles, the office of ducal chamberlain. He was, to say the least, greatly surprised when, among the courtly crowd mingling about the oratory, I boldly approached him, and even more so when he discovered the nature of my petition.

“And why, O esquire, should I grant thy petition?” He spoke menacingly, his great eagle-like nose and piercing eyes framed by the black hood of his order. “Are you not the same Isidor who skulks about in the back of the crowd at court, the most obscure and insignificant of men? What is it that you could possibly have to say of interest to our Lady?”

“I wish to introduce her to a new science, a most potent one, which might advance, and indeed revolutionize, the fortunes of our state.”

“You sound to me like a dangerous thinker, unfit to give counsel to princes, and certainly not to princesses!” Then his thin lips curled into a sinister smile, “And are you not of the philosophical sect of the Averroists, those vile worms who eat at the marrow of Church and Empire while Islam batters it from without?”

At that moment I felt the icy hands of the Inquisition reaching out to me, for there are two categories of people before whom it is vain to dissemble, or to attempt any strategy of cunning. Both the practicers of our art, and the seasoned father-confessors of the church have the skill of looking directly into the human heart. Fortunately Fra Scarpiglione had committed a blunder which I was quick to exploit, being able to answer him in utter sincerity.

“A pox on all Averroists! If I have even a single spot of their errors in my mind I renounce it utterly!” Thus I confessed to the wondering Scarpiglione. “Nothing disgusts me more than those latter day sun worshipers, who exalt the intellect and virtue above all things. They deny God only to glorify reason and human nature. Human nature! What is human nature but, to paraphrase scripture, a serpent which we must must bruise beneath our heel, a squirming mass of iniquity which must be brought to the bar of justice by those whom fate has appointed the executors of divine vengeance?”

I could sense Fra Scarpiglione’s heart warming to me since, being utterly corrupt himself, he was a patron of the theory of total human depravity. “Perhaps, after all, you are fit to visit the princess regent. But if you indeed are in possession of some new knowledge, you had better confide it to me first...it may not be worth intruding on the leisure of the sovereign herself.”

“It is a memory system.” I confessed without guile.

“Ha! A vanity for our Lady. Such things are all the rage now are they not? I have no need of such an art, having perfect recall for every face and fact. In my system there are two categories, friends and enemies. You may congratulate yourself on having gotten out of the enemies category and into a sort of limbo which consists of people who are too slight to matter either way. Yes, you may have your audience, provided that I find a time which is convenient for the Lady Leonora.”

Thus spake our father-confessor and ducal chamberlain, and I gave him my heartfelt thanks. Hence I bided my time until the appointed day and hour when I was to meet our lady, our domina. At last I was ushered into her presence by the steward of the wardrobe, one of Scarpiglione’s underlings. It was in the early afternoon, at one of her interludes of recreation, during which she was busy upon the lute. After the steward had withdrawn I stood silent while she continued her play. At last, when she tired of this she put down the instrument and deigned to address me.

“Master Isidor greetings, I understand that you will have words with us.”

Master Isidor indeed! It was the title one gives a vagabond scholar, half in contempt, and almost in the sense that one addresses a boy with the humorous honorific Master so-and-so. But I savored it, for I knew in time that the princess regent would come to call me ‘master’ in a far different sense of the term. Of this I was supremely confident as soon as I had made the resolve to carry out my rash plan.

And now Telesio, you will be desiring a full description of the Lady Leonora, for you are of an amorous disposition, and I, the brooding misanthrope, should not, through the omission of any mention of her charms, lead you to the conclusion that she was in want of them. Her years had, at the time of our meeting, barely attained one score, a time when womanhood still bears the luster of a newly minted coin. However her character and fate had been cruelly stamped by the die of heaven, having already suffered the departure of her mother, the late Duchess, and bearing some unfathomable enmity towards her father, whom she was only too happy to bid godspeed to the slaughtering fields of Germany. Yet of her exterior there was much which might excite praise, for she was born at that moment when the Virgin was mounting the horizon, at the first degree of the third decan thereof, which gives a clear complexion, a voluptuous torso though sufficiently taunt at the waist, soft well formed limbs, and hair a shade at the midpoint betwixt brown and auburn. Her eyes were an uncanny green, perhaps indicating a tincture splashed out from the asterism of Copula. But to probe deeper into the marrow of her person was to disclose bafflement rather than beauty, for the sun had struck her geniture in the sign of the Twins, normally the mark of a strong character, but, if poorly aspected cursed with two wills working at cross purposes. To public sight she was a creature of wit and intelligence, but lurking below the surface were the soft and seductive rays of Selene, dignified in the watery sign of the Crab. However most ominous of all was the greater malefic lurking under the sign of the Goat in the fourth house, bearing the double significance of both her sire and the cowled one. No wonder she had come under the enchantments of Fra Scarpiglione, or that she had conspired to cast her father into the schismatic lion pits of the north in search of martyrdom, for mutable Cynthia was severely afflicted by opposition to that leaden star in Capricorn, showing that the higher she set her heart on domination the more abysmal would be her ultimate fate. But do not believe me, my skeptical friend, but draw your own portrait of the lady, for she was born somewhat after the noon time in these latitudes, on the twenty-ninth day of the fifth month in the seventh year after the martyrdom of our Master, that portentous rupture in the current of time which itself marked the last year of a cycle. To be sure the Master himself would be the first one to chastise us for crediting the nonsense of the stargazers, and moreover I had determined on wrenching her out of her orbit, and setting her destiny on a new course.

I returned her greeting, “Your play upon the lute is peerless my lady, I beg forgiveness for taxing you with my interruption.” It was true, she was an accomplished musician. That, and the gaming board, were her two known pleasures. What her more intimate pleasures were was one of the court’s great mysteries. Her stars indicated that she was a lover of men, but the bold worthys of the court had accompanied her father to the wars, leaving only the odd, such as myself, and the old. What relation she had to Fra Scarpiglione was a matter of intense speculation. Neither could rule the state without the other, but it was doubtful if this alliance had been sealed in the bedchamber.

“And what, Master Isidor, is the art which you profess?”

“The very same which I would tutor you in, a new science and one which profits its adepts greatly: The art of memory.”

“Memorization? How tedious. I was hoping that you would bring me something tangible, like a telescope. I should ever so much like a telescope.” She sighed, tossed her long brown tresses and reluctantly laid the lute to the side of the garden bench on which she was perched.

“But imagine the practical applications.” I ventured.

“Come Master Isidor, I mustn’t keep you standing.” She showed a flicker of interest at the mention of practicality and gestured for me to have a seat next to her on the bench. “But you’ll find me hard to convince. They say I am strong headed. What applications?”

Strong headed? We shall see, I thought. For I perceived fissures in her psyche wrought by vanity and indolence, into which the narrow edge of various suggestions might be easily inserted. “Well,” I resumed, “have you ever lost something among your belongings, perhaps in a very obvious spot, and then days later, and after much frustration, one finds the object. Would it not be nice to eliminate such frustrations permanently?”

“Master Isidor.” She gave a mocking laugh. “This is an art for common people. I can assure you that rulers of states never have such experiences. Whenever we want something we have our servants fetch it for us, and if they don’t return with the item in due time they receive a whipping.”

“Perhaps then I should teach my art to your servants.”

“It won’t be necessary, the whippings suffice.”

“Are you so sure? Tell me my lady, have you ever been whipped yourself?”

The question caught her off guard. The green eyes just stared out blankly but the damascene bodice of her low cut dress began to heave with a faster rhythm. “Of course not. But that’s an impertinent question Master Isidor. Mind what you say if you don’t want things to go ill with you. I am disposed to dismiss you at once.”

“But you haven’t heard me out yet my lady. This is a new science, and one which I am offering to you exclusively, as any loyal subject would offer his sovereign the first fruits of his invention. What impertinence is there in that?”

“None. But there is nothing new about memory systems, they are hawked by charlatans everywhere.”

“That is because they are all, other than mine, inefficacious. My system is based on a revolutionary concept which I am prepared to confide in you.”

“Very well...”

“You promise that you won’t divulge it.”

“If it is useless there will be no sense in telling, and if it works I intend to keep it exclusively for myself.”

“In that case I shall reveal the secret to you: The art of memory is founded on the ability to forget.”

“That sounds like a riddle, or a parable. I don’t have time for such things.” The princess regent waved her hand in a depreciative gesture and glanced back at her lute.

“You mean,” I countered, “having no reason to remember things...allowing that you have others to remember them for you, you infer that you have even less reason to bother with trying to forget things. However there is a flaw in this line of thinking my lady, for although you may succeed in getting others to remember things for you, try as hard as you may, you will never be able to get any of your servants to forget something for you.”

Jolted by the curious logic of my argument she returned her gaze to my eyes, a condition which would prove to my advantage, and laughed. “Master Isidor, you are either a speaker of riddles or a fool. I take the latter to be more likely!”

I continued to hold the attention of her eyes and said in a soft voice like a lullaby, “Never, ever, never, ever, never, ever, lady Leonora.”

“What?”

“I said...never, ever, never, ever, lady Leonora.”

“I don’t understand.” She protested, but somewhat softly.

“You don’t understand because it is you who are the fool. You sat like a mute beast of the field when Fra Scarpiglione declaimed upon the nobility of slavery and you hung on each golden word, giving his every premise your ardent affirmation. Therefore you should suffer in your life to enact the consequences of whatever is deducible from those premises. The premise, may I remind you, is the nobility of slavery. The deduction is that those who are most noble should be reduced to the lowest state of slavery. The consequence, madam, you shall discover in good time. I cannot give you the specifics at present...so let your imagination roam at will. Perchance you shall be thrown, manacled, into the hold of a Saracen galley, there to be used for pleasure according to the whims of the crew.”

Prior to having entered into this discourse I had, as you will have observed, put the Lady Leonora under a light trance. This had the effect of slowing her reactions by a small but significant margin, just enough for me to get through with the discourse without suffering an interruption and averting the likelihood of an alarm to her handmaidens or guards. There was also, embedded in the trance, a suggestion, or what our country cousins the natural magicians and the practicers of stregarie call a “spell” the functions of which you will soon appreciate. By the end of the discourse the princess was in a considerable state of excitement, her breathing was short and choppy, her face flushed, and beads of sweat were starting to form on her forehead and streak down her face. Although I steeled myself for a rebuke there was clearly a part of her which savored the thought of being ravished by a Saracen crew.

At last she found words. “What you speak to me is an outrage! I should have...I should have you...”

“My lady, you have my humble apologies. But the cruel words that I used on you were the necessary precondition of a scientific experiment which you yourself shall conduct to what I imagine shall be your genuine satisfaction. Call your guards, put me in the stocks if you wish, should the experiment fail. But first humor me in this and conduct the experiment, see if it does not confer upon you a new and most welcome power.”

“Power?” The anger in her eyes dimmed by ever so slight a degree.

“The power of forgetfulness. I have abused you most grievously my lady, and the pity is that you may bear the insult for a long time, if not to your grave. Even if you were to dispose of me through execution or imprisonment, you would still bear the scars of my tongue-lashing...for the suffering which I have caused you is as real and perhaps more lasting than had I scourged you with leather thongs. And I dare say that it is not the first time that you have been grievously offended. There are always grumblers at court, and what they would say can often as not be descried from what they do not say. No doubt you live in a rose garden, but it is a garden of thorns to your delicate sensibilities. All this unnecessary suffering has but one cause, an inability to forget.”

“You speak with great cruelty but with some truth, Master Isidor. My life is made a prison and a purgatory because of jealous stares and spiteful whispers. When I am just I am called a tyrant and when I am chaste I am called a whore. My usual remedy is to have such malefactors put away in such a fashion that they will have no future opportunity of insulting my dignity. But you are right, the sting remains after the pests have been swatted down. If only I could forget them all! What is this elixir of forgetfulness that you promise?”

“No elixir my lady, just a few simple words. Think of what has immediately gone before, my moral reproval and the terrifying prospect of your abduction by privateers, and then listen as I say these words...or you can say them yourself: Never, ever, never, ever, never, ever, Leonore.”

She repeated, “Never, ever, never, ever, never, ever, Leonore.”

“Well?”

“I am aware that there was something that you said which disturbed me greatly...but now I can’t remember it.”

“Not at all?”

“Well, there seemed to be something about a ship...but I rather like ships. Ships don’t terrify me in the least.”

“That’s good to hear, very good.”

Her look of concern began to melt into a pleasant smile. “Master Isidor, this is quite exciting. I don’t know how you did it but somehow you hit upon a problem which has bothered me since I was a girl, my sensitivity to criticism and inability to forget insults. Not only has it caused me untold mental agony, but, in all fairness, it has probably caused me to be unduly harsh on my subjects. If this simple method of producing forgetfulness works, then it is worth the price of any rare elixir. I should very much like it if you were to become my official tutor.”

“Really? Tutor in what art? Forgetfulness? It sounds a bit absurd.”

“Forgetting, remembering...whatever you wish to call it. But I insist that you meet with me several times a week. Of course there will be a generous stipend.”

“Then I can hardly refuse your command my lady!”

I rose and bowed deeply, thinking to take my leave. But she proffered her hand to me, indicating that it was to be kissed before I could be dismissed. And so I did, reflecting that it was the first, but not the last, proposition that the lady was to make to this humble laborer in the vineyards of truth and justice.

You can well imagine my feelings Telesio, as I walked out of the palace, past the majordomo, the servants, the guards, and the porters, past the impregnable walls and the iron gates, and all those other laboriously constructed outworks which served to protect the person and the dignity of the sovereign of Parva. They had all been rendered in vain, for I had breeched them with a smile, a kiss, a few words and the gestures of my hands. For deep within the inner chambers I had planted a seed in the bosom of the princess regent, a seed which would soon grow into a vine capable of smothering everything which our lady had once called herself and her own, a vine who’s poisonous grapes would be fermented, distilled and at last washed down the throat of Scarpiglione to the very dregs.

Tell me Telesio, o thou of the tender conscience, do you find fright or delight in that course in which I was about to embark? But of that later, for night has fallen and the feeble stars no longer suffice to guide the motions of my quill...and were I to conjure up a demon to assist me in the transcription you would note the change in the hand and charge me with either impiety or fraud.

end of the first letter