The afternoon was to be devoted to applying her marks.

Louise did not know in advance what was going to happen to her, for neither Blaise nor anyone else told her and she was herself forbidden to speak a single word, and had already curbed her reflex to speak. But as soon as she was brought into the forge, which was next to the stable, she realized what awaited her. In the centre of the forge, a charcoal brazier glowed and she could feel the warmth from the fire. Several irons were plunged into the charcoal to be brought to red heat. Seeing this, Louise was immobilized by fright.

Blaise pulled gently on her leash, which now was almost always clipped to her nose ring, to make her enter and reassured her by stroking her flanks. He was not brutal with her and very often understood and anticipated her feelings. Certainly he regarded her as an animal, but nevertheless had a certain affection for her and, more and more, pride because of her docility and visible progress, which she showed in her training.

It was thus, firmly, but without violence, that he brought her towards the object which stood next to the brazier. It was a kind of high square stool, covered with leather, whose feet were sufficiently far apart to give it a good stability. She bent over it and rested her belly on it so that her arms, which had been released for the occasion, hung down on one side of the stool and her legs on the other. Then, using leather belts, Blaise strapped each of her limbs, one to each leg of the stool so that her buttocks were prominently exposed above the stool.

Louise was trembling all over and whimpering piteously which he understood and ignored as he did most other supplications. He washed her rump to remove any bits of straw which remained there and then disinfected it with an alcohol soaked cloth. Then he took of one of the two branding irons. The one he held up had been made specially and was the girl's name. The letters were already a dull red but, Blaise thought, perhaps not sufficiently hot. He replaced the iron in the brazier and used the bellows to accelerate the fire. When, a few minutes later he brought it out, the iron was bright red, almost white and seemed quite ready.

Blaise then placed his hand firmly on the girl’s hips to keep her quite motionless and brought the glowing iron towards Louise’s left buttock. She, feeling the strong heat approaching her rump started to scream. In a totally professional way, without letting himself be disturbed, Blaise then pressed the hot iron onto the buttock and counted slowly: "One... Two... Three... Four." At the same time as Louise’s horrendous shrieks resounded about the room, smoke came from her burning flesh and a smell similar to that of frying bacon filled the air.

At "four", Blaise withdrew the iron and placed it by the side of the brazier. In black letters, approximately three centimetres in height, around whose edges a thin line of bright red could be seen against the buttock the word " LOUISE” appeared.

Blaise blew on the burn and wiped away the carbonised grains, which remained stuck to her bottom there and admired his work. The inscription was clear and very visible, even at a distance. His mistress would be pleased.

It was necessary now, in accordance with the instructions of Chantal de Roquemaure, to brand his mistress’s initials above Louise’s pubis

Blaise unfastened the girl in order to turn her over. Louise allowed him to do so without protest. She was suffering, certainly, but she had by now totally abandoned her body to its intended use by her owner and this gave a sort of comfort to her. She knew that she had a vocation now: she would be a luxury plaything, which some one would show, of which some one would be proud. She would be perhaps alone of her kind. And if that were not the case (she suspected that there were other girls under training) she decided to become the most beautiful and the most submissive, to arouse astonishment in the way in which she had become completely amenable. The pain that anyone inflicted on her would sometimes approach the unbearable, but she would accept it, seeking, more and more consciously to exceed herself in acceptance and abasement.

Thus she was found replaced on the stool, arm and legs attached to the feet of the machine, her thighs open, her belly offered.

“She will be superb!”

The voice came from behind her. It was that of Chantal de Roquemaure. She had come to see Louise’s marking and had already taken great pleasure in watching. She came close to Louise and laid her hand on the young woman’s body offered there. She caressed Louise’s belly with its fine and hairless skin, gazed at her smooth and infibulated sex, made more noticeable by the fine slit drawn by the lips. Her finger caressing her seal of virginity ran upwards along the slit, soft and cherishing, went up on the skin for three to four centimetres, fixed itself.

“Here!”

Blaise heated the remaining iron to full white heat. It was smaller than the first.

Louise felt the heat from it as it approached her skin. She began to scream again.

Calmly, without pressing, Blaise placed the iron on the flat belly of the girl. Again the squirming, the smell and the smoke, again the animal cry, and again the calm voice which counted: "One... Two... Three... Four."

One minute later, Louise was standing upright in the centre of the forge. Breasts hanging, her head low, her body still shaking, her skin naked and bathed in sweat, her mane bedraggled, deprived of any other hair, marked in black letters, haloed with red. On one buttock her name and, above her sex, the two letters "CR".

Chantal turned her around, obviously pleased, imagining what she could make of this filly when it was ready, the jealousy of her friends. An excitement ran through her belly as a sort of soft heat. She could not prevent herself from stroking the girl, running her hand over the curve of her rump, weighing her udders, passing a light finger on the branding, causing each time a sharp yelp of pain from the girl and a wave of deepest pleasure to herself.

“She is tired, Madam. It has been a long day her. May I feed her and attend to her needs before taking her back to her box?” Drawn along by her nose leash, Louise, whose belly and buttocks at each step reminded her by a sharp pain of what had been done to her, could not prevent herself from being proud of what she had endured and was grateful to the man who had brought her up to this point of ecstasy.