Histoire d’une puce tells the story of a flea, born in a stable and living quite a miserable life on the back of a dog. One day, the flea takes the opportunity to jump on the back of a fancier dog, belonging to a baroness. Traveling along, the flea decides to try the adventure on the baroness’ stockings and finds a vacation spot in her private areas. The flea, naive, goes from discovery to discovery on the body of the baroness. And from there, the initiatory journey continues. The flea meets other fleas and is introduced to other intimacies of women of all ages.

The book doesn’t name an author on its cover, or inside, but one of the manuscript notes attributed to Augusta Piper³ tells us that it was “written by the Duke de Piennes”. Augusta’s granddaughter Sophie’s husband Charles Piper provides this precious information years later, when he donates the book to the National Library of Sweden, with a letter that is still in the book. Louis Marie Céleste d’Aumont was a emigrant from France later known as the Duke de Piennes,⁴ who spent some years after the French Revolution in the Swedish army during the reign of Gustav IV Adolf. While in Sweden, he lived with Axel and Sophie von Fersen in Stockholm, and after Axel’s murder in June 1810, he followed Sophie to Löftstad Castle, near Norrköping. Before this tragic date, he was introduced to the Swedish court and rubbed shoulders with the country’s most important aristocrats. The Duchess Hedvig Elizabeth Charlotte of Holstein-Gottorp, wife of the Duke Charles of Södermanland (the future King Charles XIII), met him several times and described him in her diary.⁵ It seems that the Duke de Piennes was a multidisciplinary artist: he used some of his spare time during his service to the Swedish King, including wars where he fought in Finland for example, to write, paint watercolours, and create a garden at Löfstad Castle.

As the author’s name does not appear on the title page, we don’t have an actual date of publication for this unique copy. It is dated 1785, but the Duke de Piennes was only 23 years old at the time and was not yet in Sweden. We can thus assume that he may have had the idea of the book, or started writing it by hand, but decided to print it when he was in Sweden, in the period between 1805 and 1812. Another possibility is that the Duke didn’t want to reveal that he was the author, since he didn’t actually put his name on the cover, so he might have chosen a random year before his stay in Sweden, simply to make the book look older. There are fictitious references in the introduction with a similar effect.

Whatever the reason for the antedating, it is most probable that the Duke finished his book during his time at Löfstad Castle and even printed it there himself.⁶ As a matter of fact, a secretary desk containing moveable type is one of the Duke’s remaining assets at the Castle. A closer look reveals that it still has most of its letters, lower and upper case, in lead, as well as numerous typographical signs.⁷ I checked if it was possible to compose in both French and Swedish, and yes, I found all the French vowels with accents as well as the c cedilla (ç), and the desk also contains the vowels specific to Swedish (å, ä, ö). The printed text does not appear to have been made by a professional, as the ink is sometimes smudged, some letters are reversed, and there are uneven spaces or varying width between words.⁸ I thus conclude that a single edition was made and privately printed in the duke’s spare time, during his stay at Löfstad Castle, using this type case. This hypothesis is supported by the fact that some Swedish words are found in the narrative, words that must have struck the author at the beginning of his stay in Sweden, such as many occurrences of fröken (miss), but also rixdallers⁹ and the interjection JA SÅ (well, well), probably to amuse a small circle of friends.

Taking a closer look at the narrative itself, we discover that this kind of writing is very much part of its time. Michel Delon declares in his book Le savoir-vivre libertin: “the man of the salon knows how to play with the limits, feels how far he can go without going too far”.¹⁰ When we look at the literary and cultural references made between the lines, the Duke seems to have drawn on his literary heritage from France, and added some picturesque elements. The inclusion of Swedish words in the second part of his work clearly shows that it was intended primarily for French-speaking Swedish readers, of whom there were many in the 18^th and early 19^th century. With his text, the author introduces us to a gallant, erotic and libertine tradition, still alive in the beginning of the 19^th century, which could have been shared with a limited and worldly audience.

A short introduction plunges the reader into a biting text in the style of Voltaire. The narrator ridicules “the scholars of all the academies of Europe” with his exaggerations and introduces a man, “M. de Kersaventin, who wanted to make a name for himself and deserve one of the 360 vacancies at the Quimper-Corentin Academy”.¹¹ This name recalls the prior of Kerkabon, who appears in the first chapter of Voltaire’s L’Ingénu. It is also interesting to note that the prefix ker- means house in Breton, the south-west Bretonic language of the Celtic language spoken in Brittany, a part of France, and in this story the main character, a flea, will have to find accommodation. One might wonder if the rest of the name is not a construction of the French word “savant” – scholar – with the addition of the diminutive French suffix -in, which could be interpreted as “le petit savant” – the little scholar of houses, which appear to be women’s privates.

The incipit invites the reader to a fable, and we recognise in this first page some similarities to the beginning of a philosophical tale:

A flea from the Margraviat of … big and fat and healthy, having nothing better to do, one day, it was night, it decided to jump on the toilet of the pretty Baroness of ***, after having searched every nook and cranny, and after having watched with great care its sworn enemy, called Boxwood Comb, it stopped near a needle; then, smelling the blood that had been painted on its tip (fleas have always had a very keen sense of smell), it exclaimed: “Hey what! Comrade, you too, you are a professional! I am enchanted; since we share the same taste, I would like to join you from now on, and if you like, we’ll make common cause, because I have been walking here for an hour and haven’t found anyone to talk to.¹²

This introduction is followed by a discussion between the needle and the flea in the same tone as Jean de la Fontaine’s The Grasshopper and the Ant. It is obvious that the author uses methods of irony and ridicule, as well as comic techniques.

The story starts with a heterodiegetic narrator referring to the flea, and when this little insect introduces itself to the needle, it takes over and the story continues with a homodiegetic narrator-character, to use Gérard Genette’s terminology.¹³

Just after the end of the story, a Note from the editor is inserted, in which the editor, and therefore the author, who is in this case the same person, tries to clear his name and distance himself from the text through a fictional character, M. de Kersaventin. This was common practice in the 18^th century.

As they appeared in the preface, the role of the Academicians returns to close the book. There is an ironic explanation that the Academicians had not yet had time to do their work to expound the expression:

Anyone who has the faculty of reflection will easily find that since there is a flea and an ear, we could have said the same thing; but languages were in their infancy; the Academicians had not yet taken care of it; and at that time we used only circumlocutions, which are a sure proof of poverty.¹⁵

This way of ending with a pirouette, while implicitly mocking the incompetence or ignorance of the Academicians, is reminiscent of the conclusion of the Voltairean philosophical tale Micromégas.¹⁶

In these various processes, we can observe a latent satire on certain characteristics of the society of the time, such as the knowledge jealously guarded in small, privileged circles. The author, himself an aristocrat, could pose as an observer of the excesses of his time.

At a later point, the narration slips from the concrete, with the animals to the figurative, with the people. When the flea is living on the back of the Baroness’s dog, Mignone, the latter must be scratched:

after the wickedness had indicated with its dough the place where I was, two pretty little hands came to fetch me: twice I was seized and twice I escaped death, and this time, I was free for severe pains.¹⁷

This flea hunt on a dog’s back could seem almost harmless, but a reader might be attracted by the expression “two pretty little hands” and have their expectations raised. From the dog, the flea decides “to settle down on a very white and perfectly drawn silk stocking”.¹⁸ And the flea thinks:

everything has an end, a silk stocking could also have an end; I was soon convinced of this great truth, because by searching, I finally found what I had wanted for so long, a charming place, isolated, where I could live alone and as I pleased, very different from those I knew and where I had spent my life.¹⁹

Of course, the reader understands that the flea has chosen to live in the Baroness’s private parts. The use of silk-stocking patterns is not new to literature, and the Duke de Piennes may have been inspired here by an old anonymous German poem, Mecklenburgisch, when he commanded troops in Mecklenburg for the King of Sweden: [ …] He hoops up the white stocking And comes to the gate of paradise; What was hidden from many men This is so bright and clear before him. […]²⁰

But the literature of the flea has a long tradition, now often forgotten, from the ancient authors, the Italians, the French humanists of the Renaissance, then the Germans and the English, through various texts such as poems, fables, and satires.²¹ The Germans had a particularly rich flea literature. It is possible that the Duke de Piennes mixed his French literary culture with what he read and heard in Germany before moving back to Sweden and completing his book. The Duke thus inscribes his story in erotic literature using the flea motif in modern literature. Similarly, on the side of the French tradition, Jean de La Fontaine’s bawdy tale “The Nightingale”, Le Rossignol, which the Duke de Piennes must have known, plays with the implicit and “says without saying”. The lively, pleasant, and informative side of La Fontaine’s animal fables with a moralizing conclusion lived on, while his erotic tales are still little known because Catholic religion and the prudishness of the 19^th century tried to pass them over in silence. However, they found a readership in the 17^th and 18^th centuries.

Indeed, La Fontaine’s influence appears in Histoire d’une puce a few pages after the flea has climbed the stocking. We find that hand and those fingers again, and what was previously delayed will happen:

I had scarcely begun when I was disturbed from this sweet occupation by this pretty hand, which I knew only too well, for it wanted to chase me from Mignone’s back; two very annoying fingers, which had slipped in very indiscreetly in my dining room, threw themselves on me without giving me time to escape; they began to roll me violently on the floor when there was a knock at the door, it was the cousin of the house; my enemies did not let go for this, but left me alone.²³

Here, the flea clearly moves from being the subject of the narration and becomes the object, believing itself the reason for the hunt. The reader will have understood that all the references to the dining room, the palace, etc. are metaphors for the woman’s vagina. Like the young girl in La Fontaine’s story, the Baroness has a sexual desire that she satisfies with her fingers. But now the intervention of a new character called the cousin, who appears to be a visitor and probably a close friend and lover to the Baroness, arouses the reader’s interest, but also causes confusion. The narrative plays with double meanings and this passage explains the book’s long title:

[…] which made it easy for me to hear the conversation that took place, remarkable for a phrase that has since become a proverb; to avoid being wordy I will only quote what is interesting; it is what the baroness said to her cousin at the end. – Why did you come so late, my little cousin? I was really worried, every noise I heard I thought it was you, I had, I swear to you, a Flea in my ear.²⁴

An uninformed reader might take the expression “a flea in my ear” to mean the same thing as it does in today’s French: the Baroness is listening, she is on the alert, she is expecting something. However, what follows, and in particular the use of two small adjectives, “new and robust” (nouveaux et robustes) will lead the reader to another interpretation, firstly an old and quite innocent one: to provoke a romantic desire, as attested in texts from the 13^th century,²⁵ and by extension, shortly afterwards, with an erotic sense, to have a love itch.

And now there is no doubt that this flea hunt is a metaphor for onanism and that this hunt, or sexual practice, can be individual or shared. What is more, this erotic tale moves from individual onanistic pleasure to collective pleasure. The text reserves this surprise for the reader and testifies that this flea hunt is shared by most of the women at court, and if one of them doesn’t know, the others initiate her.

A cheeky wink at the reader’s sympathy completes the story:

In spite of the lack of success of the hunt, they had so much fun that they made it last long enough without appearing disappointed at having failed. Everything comes to an end, even flea hunting.²⁸

There may be a fashionable reference here to the “proverbes dramatiques” that were very popular in the 18^th and 19^th centuries. Valentina Ponzetto describes the use of this practice, which was likened to a secular game in her article “Le proverbe dramatique, une voie détournée pour théâtraliser l’irreprésentable?”.²⁹ We can hypothesise that this interest in entertainment based on maxims and proverbs did indeed exist in the intimate circles of Löfstad Castle, since the castle has preserved many games, including small papers with riddles. The Duke could have used this resource by choosing to mention a proverb in his title in order to playfully wink at his readers.³⁰

Proceeding in disguise, with allusions to the emotions and love of dogs, and to the eviction of fleas, the writing of the story reaches its climax with the stylistic devices of erotic literature. The author masters the art of delay in order to create an expectation, and a tension, in the reader.

As we have seen, the female sexual organs are never named explicitly in the narrative. Instead, the reader follows the flea’s point of view, and the little insect always uses the lexical field of the house to mention the vagina in which it has chosen to live, such as my Palace, my home, my hermitage, my estate, my cave, an institution, a place and so on.³¹

Similarly, following a long tradition, the story uses martial vocabulary to describe the attack on the woman in order to possess her physically. The equation of romantic seduction or physical possession with war or the hunt corresponds to the ideology of the Ancien Régime,³² as Michel Delon has pointed out.³³ The man’s fingers are described by the flea as enemies and sexual intercourse as a manœuvre. A great work of the 18^th century that uses this type of lexical field is The Dangerous Liaisons by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos. The main male protagonist, Valmont, can say, for example, in a less pornographic register than Histoire d’une puce:

I forced the enemy to fight who was temporising. By skilful manœuvres, gained the advantage of the ground and dispositions; contrived to lull the enemy into security, to come up with him more easily in his retreat; struck him with terror before we engaged.³⁴

In de Piennes’s text, the metaphor is deflected by a double perspective, which creates a shift and a comic effect. The naivety of the flea is juxtaposed with the consciousness of the reader. The flea seems to be fighting for its life, yet it conveys images of erotic possession.

The eroticization of discourse continues through references to baths and perfumes. As the flea has the opportunity to change places and meet other fleas, it can compare different intimacies through smell. The reader gradually experiences an awakening of the senses and is immersed in a fragrant festival. Here too, the author is following a tradition of recounting the mores of a late 18^th century court. As Michel Delon underlines:

The discretion of these light and sweet scents is characteristic of the olfactory revolution, […] which replaces animal odours and musk with plan perfumes. […] While the musk highlighted the emanations of the body, its sexual scent, rose water and other scented waters want to attenuate them, to refine them, to steal them.³⁵

In the Duke’s text, page after page, different fragrances flow: lavender, jasmine, rose, orange blossom. At first, the flea gets to know the Baroness’ scent, which is lavender:

I will talk to you first about Thursday at nine in the morning, because it is that of my first bath with lavender water: without expecting it, I was sprinkled from my feet to my head with this infernal mixture.³⁶

Although the flea does not appreciate the lavender water, its complaint gives the reader a good idea of the personal hygiene of a lady of the aristocracy; the flea mentions how often the Baroness uses water and perfume:

I noticed that there were three days a week, Monday, Thursday and Saturday, where the water was perfumed with amber lavender brandy, which I really did not like.³⁷

Alain Corbin deals extensively with the history of odours in his book Le miasme et la jonquille, L’odorat et l’imaginaire social, 18–19^e siècles.³⁸ In his chapter “Le nouveau calcul du plaisir olfactif”, he recounts the abandonment of musk for plant scents in the 18^th century. He recalls the increasing codification of the spirit of civility and stresses the social function of washing: “Intrusive perfumes as well as indiscreet body odours had to be avoided so as not to cause discomfort”.³⁹ He adds:

Among the elite, the new use of perfumes coincided with the new ritual of the toilette: the individual must not betray poor hygiene by wearing a scented mask. Quite the contrary, the individual atmosphere revealing the uniqueness of the “I” must be allowed to break through. Only some vegetable odours, chosen with discernment to express a certain olfactory harmony, could enhance allurement of the individual person. The woman developed a wish to breathe and control her fragrances at the same time that she began using the looking glass. The psychological and social function of delicate scents justified the new fashions.⁴⁰

Histoire d’une puce is representative of these new tastes, and de Piennes had probably read erotic books from the previous generation, such as Restif de la Bretonne and Casanova, which introduced this olfactive revolution:

Courtly literature was quick to record the discrediting of musk. Notions of hygiene and ablutions are central to Restif de La Bretonne’s eroticism. Rose water had a surprising monopoly; it was ceaselessly refreshing Conquette-Ingénue’s feet and private parts. The bidet became the accessory of pleasure. Casanova’s story has the same monotony as far as the use of scents is concerned: washing the woman’s body in rose water assumed the form of a ritual. Perfume played hardly any role except in setting the scene for pleasure.⁴¹

The flea later learns that every lady can have a different scent and that no two private parts are the same. One of them also uses rose water: “Knowing beings as I did, I didn’t take long to find an establishment almost identical to the one I had just left, and all scented with rose water”.⁴² And the flea that lives on this lady has an estate “a third smaller”.⁴³ The flea continues the exploration thanks to the intervention of another flea. Like an ingenue in the writings of Voltaire and Montesquieu, the flea has the opportunity to see and understand more as this second flea addresses him:

I can see that you’re a bit of a novice, so I want to take charge of your education, and if you like I’ll introduce you to all the court fleas, even the Princess’s; you know that you should make the first visit.⁴⁴

During the expedition, the reader is entitled to a guided tour of the underwear of young and old ladies, and the secrets of intimate hygiene are revealed:

We started with a very young Fröken, where we found an infinitely small flea, and very miserable, but nevertheless content with her mediocre fortune. If you adapt your wishes to what you can have, you are always happy. The land had almost no walks, and it seemed to be fallow. Despite its poverty the flea wanted to live in an atmosphere that smelled of orange blossom.⁴⁵

Jumping from one lady to another, the Baroness’s flea sees “a flea that had just danced […]” and says: “There was a very pleasant scent of jasmine in the air, which I much preferred to that of the sweet water that we had just inhaled”.⁴⁶ Confirming this change in mores during the 18^th century, the flea asks and learns:

To my question about smells, it answered me: – It’s something that you have to get used to at court, and of all the ladies you have seen here, there are only two, old and ugly, who do not use it.⁴⁷

To complete this foray into 18^th century feminine practices, the story reveals very intimate details about hygiene and intimate washing. The reader becomes a voyeur while reading the text, which uses comic devices and exaggerations to imagine a scene of shaving and hair regrowth:

[T]here was still another young lady’s flea, because there were a lot of them; we found it bursting into tears, and in despair: – You see me in the deepest pain, she told us, sobbing; if you had come yesterday, ladies, I could have received you properly and in a delicious place, but Fate wanted it completely shaved, half an hour before the ball. For a year, since I settled here, this is the fourth time I have had this misfortune; the devastating spirit, which thus upsets my domain, cannot be touched by any instance, and every three months, it reappears with the destructive iron; like the Aquilon that devastates the countryside: to add to the misery, I don’t even have the means to sleep under the stars, because my house is always unbearable afterwards, and uninhabitable for more than a fortnight.⁴⁸

All the senses are honoured in erotic literature, and the sense of hearing is often used to mean hearing music or a pleasant voice. In Histoire d’une puce, the use of this sense is discreet, but it is nevertheless a leitmotif for understanding the action of the story. The flea’s misfortune draws our attention to this theme:

Monday, fatal day, and I spent my night hidden in a towel on the bedside table, where I was disturbed four times, if I know how to count. When I fell asleep, I don’t know exactly what time the Baroness’s cousin, who had come to supper with her, left: all I know is that I woke up with a start, and in that first moment when we have no clear ideas, I thought I heard the door close softly, just as the clock struck four. Unable to free myself from one of the folds of the towel, I was carried into the wardrobe.⁴⁹

As Michel Delon reminds us: “indiscretion through the keyhole […] is constitutive of an entire libertine literature that invites the reader to participate in a burglary”.⁵⁰ Here, the flea is hidden under a towel and can’t see what is happening, but it hears the noises. The indiscretion in this passage occurs through the sounds heard and the interpretation given to them. In one sentence, de Piennes shows us that he masters the style of erotic and libertine writing: “I thought I heard the door close softly just as the clock struck four”. The French verb croire used with two infinitive verbs (“entendre fermer”) helps to mitigate an assertion. Then a verb of perception is used, with elements that open and close, as well as an adverb that makes the difference, stealthily raising the reader’s interest without them even realizing it. The adverb is interesting because it is it “that most often carries the burden of emotion, trouble and desire”:⁵¹ by interpreting “gently”, the reader can make a cheeky reading and understand that the cousin’s visit was not just a courtesy visit and why he must slip away discreetly before daybreak.

Certain places are more conducive to social exchange and romantic seduction, such as gardens and parks, dinners, balls and evenings at the theatre or the opera. Histoire d’une puce ends up at the opera, a favorite pastime of 18^th century aristocrats and libertines. Patrick Wald Lasowski, in his work Dictionnaire libertin, describes the opera as follows: “the opera girl stirs the imagination. We conceive her freer, more corrupt, more spiritual, more knowledgeable than any other woman in pleasures”.⁵² The fall of this erotic tale remains suspended, and everyone has reason to imagine what the singer has her hand on:

Two days later I went to the opera with the baroness. Since I wanted to hear the music better, which I really like, I left my lodgings: and jumping from box to box, I was soon in the theatre. I had the idea of making a niche for the first actress, who was very pretty: I took the most interesting moment to jump in her ear; her surprise was so great that she sang out of tune; then she quickly brought her hand to her ***⁵³

So, if the reader has been attentive to the actual meaning of the expression, he or she will have no problem understanding the image of the ear, which is shaped like a shell and represents the female sex. It is a piquant detail intended to amuse and probably leave the reader with a smile of understanding between the heterodiegetic narrator and the reader. The ellipsis that closes the story is a final testimony to this style of erotic writing, which is a part of a logic of suspension of reading.

Just as the female sex is represented by a shell-shaped ear, the author uses nature to metaphorically describe the erotic journey of the female body and the sexual relations between lovers. Throughout the story, women’s bodies are eroticized with terms that come from nature. In this way, the narrator makes the reader wait by eroticizing the description of the journey, thus creating an expectation, and perhaps even desire.

The reader can understand that the flea explores the woman’s body and reaches the breast, which looks young and firm, as the terms “lava” and “polished” suggest. The mention of the “charming rose bush” is a classic theme. The French medieval work The Romance of the Rose has been a major influence on the seduction of women for centuries, and de Piennes’s family seems to have owned a medieval manuscript of it, which he brought with him to Sweden. In the first part of the book, the protagonist sees a rose bush in a fountain, then his gaze falls on a particular rose. In the courtly part written by Guillaume de Lorris, this rose is the symbol of womanhood, while in Jean de Meun’s additions, the quest continues in a more licentious way, as this rose becomes synonymous with the female genitals.⁵⁵ In Histoire d’une puce we are closer to the biting irony of Jean de Meun since the little bud does not represent the woman but her nipple.

This passage is again elliptical and comic, as the flea thinks it is being chased away, while the cousin tries to nibble the Baroness’s nipples during their erotic games.

Nature returns again and again to describe the flea’s actions, as well as the parts of the body:

I was so enchanted with the country I had just discovered that I promised myself I would return there: it was entirely devoted to flowers; I didn’t see any other kind of vegetation there, except a few saplings on the western mountain, which Nature in her wisdom had placed to protect and shelter another pretty rose bush she had grown there.

As I continued my journey, I found myself in a dark and deep valley, a rather dense forest, which I crossed with difficulty, and saw a plain as far as the eye could see; as there was no clear path, I was at first very embarrassed, and in order not to get lost, I decided to walk across the fields, always heading South.⁵⁶

The reader has to imagine the hairs and the down with “a few saplings”, then probably the armpits, “a dark and deep valley”, as “the plain” should be the Baroness’s back and not her stomach, because the flea says that it’s coming home “through the back”.

It is interesting to note that Nature seems to be personified in the text, as the term is always capitalized. This is in line with an idea already present in the Romance of the Rose, namely that Nature is the assistant of lovers and should provide them with everything necessary for their carnal union, which is seen as a natural and normal instinct to satisfy.

Moreover, the laws of physics and natural metaphors intervene in the narrative, which seeks to imitate sexual activity through words and to show copulation to orgasm:

While I was searching for the reason, I felt such an enormous weight fall on me that I was stunned: I would certainly have suffocated, if this foreign body, by some kind of elasticity that I cannot imagine, hadn’t made bounce and move a few inches away, making it easier to breathe a little; it didn’t take long, because it fell harder to move away again. This manoeuvre went on for some time, I only had the interval between each jolt to catch my breath and look at the day. At that moment a violent earthquake was felt throughout my kingdom, my palace was shaken to its foundations, the earth seemed to open up; I thought I was between two volcanoes, moved alternately by a centrifugal and a centripetal force, trying to come together as one. The intervals between the tremors were too short for me to think of running away and reaching my country; besides, for every step forward I took, I took four steps back.

This earthquake lasted at least twenty-five minutes, it seems to me, if I have a good memory, that the tremors were horizontal and vertical. There was a moment of calm, probably because there was not enough volcanic material in fusion, and I took the opportunity to crawl into my cave.⁵⁷

The text mimics sexual intercourse through the use of punctuation, such as the comma and the semicolon, which allows interruptions and resumptions, but also through the vocabulary used to describe comings and goings and opposing forces. Once again, there is a comic effect in the gap created between the reader’s understanding of the act’s reality and the flea’s naivety. It is designed to provoke self-satisfaction, even the smile and laughter of the reader: “it seems to me, if I have a good memory”, “a moment of calm” or when intimate fluids of the two protagonists are described as “volcanic material in fusion”. And this erotic writing, always hidden in an animal fable, pushes the situation to the point of ridicule: “I took the opportunity to crawl into my cave”.

Reading is also a topos of erotic literature, and the work uses this subterfuge in a striking paragraph. The apparent tranquillity of the reading activity is misleading.

Here we are witness to a new flea hunt, which leads to another masturbatory act: two fingers are once again designated as the flea’s enemies, and turning the metaphor of hunting around, the fingers are now called trackers, which by its definition – men employed to track game – can make the reader smile, suggesting the persistence of the search for pleasure. The passage begins with a pictorial expression – “the Baroness lying carelessly on her sofa, and busy reading” – that allows us to imagine the protagonist in a setting like those of the painter François Boucher, a Master of Rococo art who painted scenes full of sensuality and voluptuousness with women such as “Resting girl” or “La Sultane lisant”.⁵⁹ Once again, the adverb next to the verb helps to eroticize the scene. There is also a hint of irony in the use of the adjective busy, intended by the author to create complicity with the reader, but it works even better in French with the combination of a past participle, used as an adjective, and the adverb fort placed in front of it, which serves to reinforce the turn of phrase. Moreover, as Michel Delon describes it: “the dominant sexual ideology places the female body in an object position, showing it to be pervaded by a desire that makes it wait for a partner, with whom the male reader cannot avoid to identify himself”.⁶⁰ The narrative is thus visual enough to hold the reader’s attention until the book falls: “when I heard that the Baroness dropped her book”, which fits into the sentimental or erotic story with the suspension of reading, as Michel Delon again points out,⁶¹ and introduces the equivalence of the abandonment of the book to that of the body. The exaggeration is there to amuse and delight the reader, joining overstatement with a repetition: “Three times during this unhappy evening, I tried to return to my post, and three times I was driven out under the same circumstances”. Erotic writing plays with euphemisms, seeking the reader’s support with simple words like “under the same circumstances”.

Immoral tales were a particular subgenre in 18^th-century France, and it is not uncommon for these works to mock the aristocracy in the second half of the century, after they had previously laughed at the customs of peasants and shepherdesses.⁶² The Duke’s work is a testimony of this tradition, imported to Sweden, where there were readers already nourished by French culture.

The French immigrant living in Sweden left behind a text nourished by his own readings and experiences. In fact, his probable reading of texts such as The Romance of the Rose or the stories of La Fontaine shows his interest in stories about women, love, and the games of seduction. In retrospect, the theme of Histoire d’une puce may seem daring to a contemporary reader, but both women and men in the early modern European aristocracy knew how to use seduction and even eroticism with different codes. Since it’s likely that the Duke wrote his story in Sweden, he clearly expected a certain type of readership, revealing the great literary culture in French-speaking circles in Sweden at the time. The von Fersen library at Löfstad Castle confirms this, as we can still see today that during the time of Axel and Sophie there was a large collection of books on all sorts of subjects, including many books of French literary classics and erotic literature.

With Histoire d’une puce – “Story of a flea” – the Duke succeeds in using the style of the fable to introduce flea literature. In the description of the female body and the intervention of the personification of nature, he draws on a long tradition of seduction that can be traced back to the courtly but also to the erotic medieval literature of Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun. As we have seen, the book also makes use of erotic themes and metaphors in the style of 18^th-century writers such as Choderlos de Laclos. One might think that this kind of literature, more playful and subtle than some of the Swedish writings in the erotic genre of the time, might have appealed to women, although Augusta Piper seems to have found it “a little [too⁶³] nimble here and there”.