I don’t think there can be any doubt that I took my resentment of Sharon’s collusion with me into my hypnotic trance. For I regressed very badly. If it’s not a good idea to eat cheese immediately before bed then I can vouch for its being even less of a one to hate your wife immediately before hypnosis. The effects can be similarly turbulent. I closed my eyes as I was told all right, but thereafter I was totally self-willed. I disregarded Harry Vilbert’s instructions. I hung loose in time. When I finally found myself somewhere I wanted to be I paid no attention to Harry’s enquiries. Was I there, Tommy? I was damned if I was going to respond to questions like that. I stormed and raged instead, waving my arms about and knocking things over; and when I did put together coherent sentences they were in a form of French that those who knew anything about it described as formal, stilted, much out-of-date and quite obscene. I can remember some of them still.

‘O filles voluptueuses,’ I exclaimed, addressing the three unmarried sisters I had met earlier, whose proud boast it was that they had cycled together to every part of Wessex mentioned in Hardy’s novels, ‘livrezvous donc vos corps tant que vous le pourrez! Foutez, divertissez-vous, voila l’essentiel; mais fuyez avec soin l’amour. Fuck for all you are worth,’ I told them, ‘but never be guided by your heart.’

Then I turned to Sharon. ‘Ah triple foutredieu!’ I said, ‘cette charmante fille m’a sucé comme un ange.’ And when she looked distressed I struck her across the mouth and I swear I danced for joy when the blood came. ‘Ah foutre! Voilà la bougresse en sang. Je bande, je bande.’

‘Are you there Tommy?’ I heard Harry Vilbert asking, as Fitzpiers rushed to Sharon’s aid.

But I wasn’t finished with her yet. ‘Double gueuse, je t’étranglerais si je n’en voulais laisser le plaisir aux autres,’ I said, before I struck her again. And again I revelled as she fell backwards with a cry into Fitzpiers’s arms. ‘Je bande,’ I told them all again. ‘Mon sperme coule … ah foutre! foutre! c’est fini … je n’en puis plus. Pourquoi faut-il que le faiblesse succède à des passions de vive?’

I don’t remember anyone offering any answers to that. But I know that Fitzpiers was bending over Sharon who was weeping, and that he was demanding that Harry Vilbert either wake me immediately or he would call the police.

The police? I shrugged my shoulders. You only called the police when there’d been a crime, ‘Et les crimes sont impossibles à I’homme,’ I told him. ‘Pour moi, mon ami, je ne mange jamais mieux, je ne dors jamais plus en paix que quand je me suis suffisamment souillé dans le jour de ce que les sots appellent des crimes.’