Justine, Philosophy in the Bedroom, and Other Writings

by Marquis de Sade

“To bring you back to happiness, if that is possible.”

  “Therefore, if I find myself happy in my present situation, may I assume that you should have nothing further to say to me?”

  “It is impossible, Monsieur, to find happiness in the exercise of crime.”

  “I agree. But the man who, through profound study and mature reflection, has been able to bring his mind to the point where he does not see evil in anything, where he contemplates the whole of human endeavor with the most supreme indifference and considers every action of which man is capable as the necessary result of a power, whatever its nature, which is at times good and at times bad, but always imperious, inspires us alternately with what men approve and what they condemn, but never anything that disturbs or troubles it—that man, I say, and I’m sure you will agree, can be just as happy living the way I do as you are in your chosen calling. Happiness is ideal, it is the work of the imagination. It is a manner of being moved which relies solely upon the way we see and feel. Except for the satisfaction of needs, there is nothing which makes all men equally happy. Not a day goes by but that we see one person made happy by something that supremely displeases another. Therefore, there is no certain or fixed happiness, and the only happiness possible for us is the one we form with the help of our organs and our principles.”

  “I know that, Monsieur, but though our mind may deceive us, our conscience never leads us astray, and here is the book wherein Nature has inscribed all our duties.”

  “And do we not manipulate this factitious conscience at will? Habit bends it, it is for us like soft wax which our fingers shape as they choose. If this book were as certain as you pretend, would man not be endowed with an invariable conscience? From one end of the earth to the other, would not all of man’s actions be the same for him? And yet is such truly the case? Does the Hottentot tremble at what terrifies the Frenchman? And does the Frenchman not do daily what would be punishable in Japan? No, Monsieur, no, there is nothing real in the world, nothing deserving of praise or approbation, nothing worthy of being rewarded or punished, nothing which, unjust here, is not quite lawful five hundred leagues away. In a word, no wrong is real, no good is constant.”

  “Do not believe it, Sir. Virtue is not an illusion. It is not a matter of ascertaining whether something is good here, or bad a few degrees farther away, in order to assign it a precise determination of crime or virtue, and to make certain of finding happiness therein by reason of the choice one has made of it. Man’s only happiness resides in his complete submission to the laws of his land. He has either to respect them or to be miserable, there is no middle ground between their infraction and misfortune. ’Tis not, if you prefer to state it in these terms, these things in themselves which give rise to the evils which overwhelm us whenever we allow ourselves free reign to indulge in these forbidden practices, ’tis rather the conflict between these things—which may be intrinsically either good or bad—and the social conventions of the society in which we live. One can surely do no harm by preferring to stroll along the boulevards than along the Champs Élysées. And yet if a law were passed forbidding our citizens from frequenting the boulevards, whosoever should break this law might be setting in motion an eternal chain of misfortunes for himself, although in breaking it he had done something quite simple. Moreover, the habit of breaking ordinary restrictions soon leads to the violation of more serious ones, and from error to error one soon arrives at crimes of a nature to be punished in any country under the sun and to inspire fear in any reasonable creature on earth, no matter in what clime he may dwell. If man does not have a universal conscience, he at least has a national conscience, relative to the existence that we have received from Nature, and in which her hand inscribes our duties in letters which we cannot efface without danger. For example, Monsieur, your family accuses you of incest. It makes no difference what sophistries you employ to justify this crime or lessen the horror, or what specious arguments you apply to it or what authorities you call upon by buttressing these arguments with examples drawn from neighboring countries, the fact remains that this crime, which is only a crime in certain countries, is most assuredly dangerous wherever the law forbids it. It is no less certain that it can give rise to the most frightful consequences, as well as other crimes necessitated by this first one . . . crimes, I might add, of a sort to be deemed abominable by all men. Had you married your daughter on the banks of the Ganges, where such marriages are permitted, perhaps you might have committed only a minor wrong. But in a country where these unions are forbidden, by offering this revolting spectacle to the public . . . and to the eyes of a woman who adores you and who, by this treacherous act, is being pushed to the edge of the grave, you are no doubt committing a frightful act, a crime which tends to break the holiest bonds of Nature: those which, attaching your daughter to her who gave her life, ought to make this person the most respected, the most sacred of all objects to her. You oblige this girl to despise her most precious duties, you cause her to hate the very person who bore her in her womb; without realizing it, you are preparing weapons that she may one day direct against you. In every doctrine you offer her, in every principle you inculcate in her, your condemnation is inscribed. And if one day her arm is raised against you in an attempt against your life, ’tis you who will have sharpened the dagger.”

  “Your way of reasoning, so different from that of most men of the cloth,” Franval replied, “compels me to trust in you, Monsieur. I could deny your accusations. I hope that the frankness with which I reveal myself to you will also oblige you to believe the wrongs I impute to my wife when, to expose them, I employ the same truthfulness with which I intend to characterize my own confessions. Yes, Monsieur, I love my daughter, I love her passionately, she is my mistress, my wife, my daughter, my confidante, my friend, my only God on earth; in fine, she possesses all the homage that any heart can ever hope to obtain, and all homage of which my heart is capable is due her. These sentiments will endure as long as I live. Being unable to give them up, I doubtless must therefore justify them.

  “A father’s first duty toward his daughter is undeniably—I’m sure you will agree, Monsieur—to procure for her the greatest happiness possible. If he does not succeed in this task, then he has failed in his obligations toward her; if he does succeed, then he is blameless. I have neither seduced nor constrained Eugénie—this is a noteworthy consideration, which I trust you will not forget. I did not conceal the world from her. I expounded for her the good and bad sides of marriage, the roses and the thorns it contains. It was then I offered myself, and left her free to choose. She had adequate time to reflect on the matter. She did not hesitate: she claimed that she could find happiness only with me. Was I wrong to give her, in order to make her happy, what she appeared in full knowledge to desire above all else?”

  “These sophistries justify nothing, Monsieur. You were wrong to give your daughter the slightest inclination that the person she could not prefer without crime might become the object of her happiness. No matter how lovely a fruit might appear, would you not regret having offered it to someone if you knew that lurking within its flesh was death? No, Monsieur, no: in this whole wretched affair you have had only one object in mind, and that object was you, and you have made your daughter both an accomplice and a victim. These methods are inexcusable. . . . And what wrongs, in your eyes, do you ascribe to that virtuous and sensitive wife whose heart you twist and break at will? What wrongs, unjust man, except the wrong of loving you?”

  “This is the point I wish to discuss with you, Sir, and ’tis here I expect and hope for your confidence. After the full candor to which I have treated you, in making a full confession of all that is ascribed to me, I trust I have some right to expect such confidence.”

  And then Franval, showing Clervil the forged letters and notes he had attributed to his wife, swore to him that nothing was more authentic than these documents, and than the affair between Madame de Franval and the person who was the subject of the papers.


  Clervil was familiar with the entire matter.

  “Well, Monsieur,” he said firmly to Franval, “was I not right to tell you that an error viewed at first as being without consequence in itself can, by accustoming us to exceed limits, lead us to the most extravagant excesses of crime and wickedness? You have begun with an act which, in your eyes, you deemed totally inoffensive, and you see to what infamous lengths you are obliged to go in order to justify or conceal it? Follow my advice, Monsieur, throw these unpardonable atrocities into the fire and, I beg of you, let us forget them, let us forget they ever existed.”

  “These documents are authentic, Monsieur.”

  “They are false.”

  “You can only be in doubt about them. Is that sufficient reason for you to contradict me?”

  “Pardon me, Monsieur, but the only reason I have to suppose they are authentic is your word on the matter, and you have good reason indeed for buttressing your accusation. As for believing them false, I have your wife’s word for it, and she too would have good reason to tell me if they were authentic, if they actually were. This, Sir, is how I judge. Self-interest is the vehicle for all man’s actions, the wellspring of everything he does. Wherever I can discover it, the torch of truth immediately lights up. This rule has never once failed me, and I have been applying it for forty years. And furthermore, will your wife’s virtue not annihilate this loathsome calumny in everyone’s eyes? And is it possible that your wife, with her frankness and her candor, with indeed the love for you which still burns within her, could ever have committed such abominable acts as those you charge her with? No, Monsieur, this is not how crime begins. Since you are so familiar with its effects, you should maneuver more cleverly.”

  “That, Sir, is abusive language.”

  “You’ll forgive me, Monsieur, but injustice, calumny, libertinage revolt my soul so completely that I sometimes find it hard to control the agitation which these horrors incite in me. Let us burn these papers, Monsieur, I most urgently beseech you . . . burn them for your honor and your peace of mind.”

  “I never suspected, Monsieur,” said Franval, getting to his feet, “that in the exercise of your ministry one could so easily become an apologist . . . the protector of misconduct and of adultery. My wife is dishonoring me, she is ruining me. I have proved it to you. Your blindness concerning her makes you prefer to accuse me and rather suppose that ’tis I who am the slanderer than she the treacherous and debauched woman. All right, Monsieur, the law shall decide. Every court in France shall resound with my accusations, I shall come bearing proof, I shall publish my dishonor, and then we shall see whether you will still be guileless enough, or rather foolish enough, to protect so shameless a creature against me.”

  “I shall leave you now, Monsieur,” Clervil said, also getting to his feet. “I did not realize to what extent the faults of your mind had so altered the qualities of your heart and that, blinded by an unjust desire for revenge, you had become capable of coolly maintaining what could only derive from delirium. . . . Ah! Monsieur, how all this has persuaded me all the more that when man oversteps the bounds of his most sacred duties, he soon allows himself to annihilate all the others. . . . If further reflection should bring you back to your senses, I beg of you to send word to me, Monsieur, and you will always find, in your family as well as in myself, friends disposed to receive you. May I be allowed to see Mademoiselle your daughter for a moment?”

  “You, Sir, may do as you like. I would only suggest, nay urge you that when talking with her you either employ more eloquent means or draw upon sounder resources in presenting these luminous truths to her, truths in which I was unfortunate enough to perceive naught but blindness and sophistries.”

  Clervil went into Eugénie’s room. She awaited him dressed in the most elegant and most coquettish negligee. This sort of indecency, the fruit of self-negligence and of crime, reigned unashamedly in her every gesture and look, and the perfidious girl, insulting the graces which embellished her in spite of herself, combined both the qualities susceptible of inflaming vice and those certain to revolt virtue.

  Since it was not appropriate for a girl to engage in so detailed a discussion as a philosopher such as Franval had done, Eugénie confined herself to persiflage. She gradually became openly provocative, but upon seeing that her seductions were in vain, and that a man as virtuous as the one with whom she was dealing had not the slightest intention of allowing himself to be ensnared in her trap, she adroitly cut the knots holding the veil of her charms and, before Clervil had the time to realize what she was doing, she had arranged herself in a state of great disorder.

  “The wretch,” she cried at the top of her lungs, “take this monster away from me! And, above all, let not my father know of his crime. Just Heaven! I was expecting pious counsel from him . . . and the vile man assaulted my modesty. . . . Look,” she cried to the servants who had hastened to her room upon hearing her cries, “look at the condition this shameless creature has put me in. Look at them, look at these benevolent disciples of a divinity they insult and outrage. Scandal, debauchery, seduction: there is the trinity of their morality, while we, dupes of their false virtue, are foolish enough to go on worshiping them.”

  Clervil, although extremely annoyed by such a scene, nonetheless succeeded in concealing his emotions. And as he left the room he said, with great self-possession, to the crowd around him:

  “May heaven preserve this unfortunate child. . . . May it make her better if it can, and let no one in this house offend her sentiments of virtue more than I have done . . . sentiments that I came here less to defile than to revive in her heart.”

  Such were the only fruits which Madame de Farneille and her daughter culled from a negotiation they had approached so hopefully. They were far from realizing the degradations that crime works in the souls of the wicked: what might have some effect on others only embitters them, and it is in the very lessons of good that they find encouragement to do evil.

  From then on, everything turned more venomous on both sides. Franval and Eugénie clearly saw that Madame de Franval would have to be persuaded of her alleged wrongs, in a way that would no longer allow her to doubt of the matter. And Madame de Farneille, in concert with her daughter, concocted serious plans to abduct Eugénie. They discussed the project with Clervil; this worthy man refused to have any part of such drastic resolutions. He had, he said, been too badly treated in this affair to be able to undertake anything more than imploring forgiveness for the guilty, and this he urgently did pray for, steadfastly refusing to involve himself in any other duty or effort of mediation. How sublime were his sentiments! Why is it that this nobility is so rare among men of the cloth? Or why had so singular a man chosen so soiled a calling?

  Let us begin with Franval’s endeavors.

  Valmont reappeared.

  “You’re an imbecile,” Eugénie’s guilty lover said to him, “you are unworthy of being my student. And if you do not come off better in a second meeting with my wife, I shall trumpet your name all over Paris. You must have her, my friend, and I mean really have her, my eyes must be persuaded of her defeat . . . in fine, I must be able to deprive that loathsome creature of any means of excuse and of defense.”

  “And what if she resists?” Valmont responded.

  “Then employ violence . . . I shall make certain that there is no one around. . . . Frighten her, threaten her, what does it matter? . . . I shall consider all the means of your triumph as so many favors I owe you.”

  “Listen,” Valmont then said, “I agree to everything you propose, I give you my word of honor that your wife will yield. But I require one condition, and if you refuse it then I refuse to play the game. We agreed that jealousy is to have no part in our arrangements, as you know. I therefore demand that you accord me half an hour with Eugénie. You have no idea how I shall act after I have enjoyed the pleasure of your daughter’s company for a short while. . . .”

  “But Valmont . . .”

  “I can under
stand your fears. But if you deem me your friend I shall not forgive you for them. All I aspire to is the charm of seeing Eugénie alone and talking with her for a few moments.”

  “Valmont,” said Franval, somewhat astonished, “you place too high a fee on your services. I am as fully aware as you of the ridiculous aspects of jealousy, but I idolize the girl you are referring to, and I should rather give up my entire fortune than yield her favors.”

  “I am not claiming them, so set your mind at rest.”

  And Franval, who realized that, among all his friends and acquaintances, there was none capable of serving his purposes so well as Valmont, was adamantly opposed to letting him escape:

  “All right,” he said, a trifle testily, “but I repeat that your services come very dear, and by discharging them in this manner you have relieved me from any obligation toward you, and from any gratitude.”

  “Oh! gratitude is naught but the price paid for honest favors. It will never be kindled in your heart for the services I am going to render you. And I shall even go so far as to predict that these selfsame services will cause us to quarrel before two months are up. Come, my friend, I know the ways of men . . . their faults and failings, and everything they involve. Place the human animal, the most wicked animal of all, in whatever situation you choose, and I shall predict every last result that will perforce ensue. . . . Therefore I wish to be paid in advance, or the game is off.”

  “I accept,” said Franval.

  “Very well then,” Valmont replied. “Now everything depends on you. I shall act whenever you wish.”

  “I need a few days to make my preparations,” Franval said. “But within four days at the most I am with you.”

  Monsieur de Franval had raised his daughter in such a way that he had no misgivings about any excessive modesty on her part which would cause her to refuse to participate in the plans he was formulating with his friend. But he was jealous, and this Eugénie knew. She loved him at least as much as he adored her, and as soon as she knew what was in the offing she confessed to Franval that she was terribly afraid this tête-à-tête with Valmont might have serious repercussions. Franval, who believed he knew Valmont well enough to be persuaded that all this would only provide certain nourishments for his head without any danger to his heart, reassured his daughter as best he could, and went about his preparations.