Les quatres jeudis, or Quat’ jeudis (The Four Thursdays) was subtitled ‘Being the First Tale of Male Masochism from the Garden of Delicate Torments’ in the 1984 English-language edition published by Sinistre. It is the most conventionally sexual of the Montorgueil manuscripts, if you count two women enjoying sex with a male ‘guest’ as conventional; it certainly contains less fetish machinery than the others, though whips and reins still feature prominently.

As with all of the Montorgueil portfolios shown here, we have used the later colour versions where they exist; the monochrome illustrations come from the original manuscript.