Sevérités perverses (Perverse Punishments) is yet another opportunity for Carlo to exercise his uniquely perverse imagination, as twenty-five-year-old Julie enters the training establishment of Berthe de Z— to learn the ropes (literally) of extreme SM. The stated author, Juana Lapaz, is of course a pseudonym, possibly for the author Allan Kardy or Cardy.

Librairie Artistique et Édition Parisienne Réunies’s catalogue for 1935 describes Sevérités perverses as ‘A work of incredible refinement in its descriptions of the strange ill-treatment and humiliation inflicted on young girls with bad habits.’ Nothing like blaming the victim.