When the novel begins, Oswald is a strikingly handsome seventeen-yearold who has become bored with the girls of London, having bedded more than sixty of them. Feeling in need of wider experience, he travels to Paris, where he learns of the powerful aphrodisiac made from crushed North African blister beetles. A pinhead of the powder is said to drive a man wild for sex and to allow him to maintain an erection for hours. Seeing an opportunity to combine his two chief passions in life, sex and money, Oswald travels to Egypt, buys five pounds of the stuff, returns to Paris, and sets up business selling pills he has made of the powder to wealthy Parisians and diplomats. In the process, he finds that the aphrodisiac works on women too, making them into powerfully demanding lovers.

This opening tale is told to set up the main plot of...