The 120 Days of Sodom and Other Writings

by Marquis de Sade

  The next day I treated with a personage whose baroque mania will perhaps find some worshipers amongst yourselves, Messieurs. First of all, he was installed in the room next to the one in which we ordinarily operated and in whose wall was that hole so conveniently placed for observations. He was left alone to arrange himself; a second actor awaited me in the adjoining chamber: he was a cab driver we had picked up at random and who was fully apprised of the situation; as I was too, our cast knew the various roles to perfection. It was a question of having the Phaëthon shit squarely opposite the hole, so that the libertine hidden on the other side of the partition would miss nothing involved in the spectacle. I catch the turd upon a plate, see to it that it lands intact, spread the driver’s buttocks, press around his anus, I neglect nothing that can make shitting comfortable; as soon as my man has done all he has to do, I snatch up his prick and get him to discharge over the shit, and all that well within sight of our observer; finally, the package ready, I dash into the other room.

  “Here you are, take it quickly, Monsieur,” I exclaim, “it’s nice and warm.”

  There is no necessity to repeat the invitation; he grasps the dish, offers me his prick, which I frig, and the rascal bolts everything I tender him while he exhales his fuck in tune with my diligent hand’s elastic movements.

  “And what was the driver’s age?” Curval asked.

  “About thirty,” Duclos answered.

  “Why, that’s nothing at all,” said Curval. “Durcet there will tell you whenever you like that we once knew an individual who did the same thing, and with positively the same attendant circumstances, but with a man of sixty or seventy who had to be found in the lowest sewer of misery and filth.”

  “And, you know,” said Durcet, “it’s only pretty that way.” The financier’s little engine had been gradually lifting its head ever since Sophie’s aspersion. “I shall at any given time be happy to do it with the eldest of veterans.”

  “You’re stiff, Durcet,” said the Duc, “don’t deny it, for I know you: whenever you start that nasty boasting it’s because your fuck is coming to a boil. So hold, good friend; though not so seasoned in years as you might like, still, to appease your intemperance, I offer you all I have in my entrails, and I believe you will find it enough to make a meal upon.”

  “Ah, by God’s belly!” cried Durcet, “you always serve your guests well, my dear Duc.”

  The Duc entering Durcet’s alcove, the latter kneels down before the buttocks which are to fill him to overflowing with good cheer; the Duc grunts once, twice, a prodigy tumbles out, the banker swallows and, transported by this crapulous excess, discharges while swearing he has never tasted so much pleasure.

  “Duclos,” said the Duc, “come do for me what I have done for our good friend.”

  “My Lord,” our storyteller replied, “you will recall that I did it this morning, and that you swallowed it.”

  “Why, yes, ’tis true,” the Duc admitted. “Very well then, hither, Martaine, I must have recourse to you, for I want none of those children’s asses; I feel my fuck readying to come, but, you know, it comes reluctantly, and so we need something out of the ordinary.”

  But Martaine’s case was that of Duclos, Curval had gobbled her shit that morning.

  “What! by fuck,” cried the Duc, “am I then to fail to find a turd this evening?”

  Whereupon Thérèse advanced and offered the dirtiest, the broadest, and the most stinking possible of asses you, dear reader, may hope to behold.

  “Well, that will do, that will do perfectly,” said the Duc, assuming the posture, “and if in my present disorder this infamous ass I’ve got here does not produce its effect, I don’t know what I’ll have to resort to.”

  Dramatic moment: Thérèse pushes; the Duc receives! and the incense was quite as dreadful as the temple whence it emerged, but when one is as stiff as the Duc was stiff, ’tis never excess of filth one complains of. Drunk with joy, the scoundrel swallowed every ounce, and directly into Duclos’ face, for she was frigging him, shot the most indubitable proof of his male vigor.

  Then to table; the ensuing orgies were devoted to the distribution of justice; that week there were seven delinquents: Zelmire, Colombe, Hébé, Adonis, Adelaide, Sophie, and Narcisse; the gentle Adelaide was granted no quarter. Zelmire and Sophie also bore away a few marks of the treatment they had undergone and, without giving further particulars, since circumstances do not permit us to give them yet, everyone retired to bed, and in Morpheus’ arms recovered the strength requisite to make further sacrifices to Venus.

  THE FIFTEENTH DAY

  Rarely would the day following correction offer fresh signs of misbehavior. There were none upon this one, but as strict as ever in the article of permission to shit in the morning, Messieurs granted this favor to no one but Hercule, Michette, Sophie, and Desgranges, and Curval came perilously near to discharging while watching the storyteller at work. Not overmuch was accomplished at coffee, the friends were content to fondle buttocks and to suck one or two assholes; the hour sounded, everyone went promptly to establish himself in the amphitheater. Duclos faced her audience once again and addressed the company in this wise:

  There had lately come to Fournier’s a little girl of twelve or thirteen, the age preferred by that singular gentleman I mentioned to you; but I truly doubt whether in a very long time he had debauched anything so cunning, so innocent, or so pretty. She had fair hair, was tall for her years and fit to be painted, her physiognomy was tender and voluptuous, her eyes the loveliest one could hope to see, and in all her charming person there was something sweet and intriguing which turned her into a very enchantress. But what was the degradation to which such a host of attractions was about to be subjected! and how shameful was the debut being prepared for them! She was the daughter of a tradesman in lingerie, purveyor to the Palace and a man of comfortable means, and his daughter surely had been destined for a happier fate than this of playing the whore; but the more the man of whom it is a question was able, by means of his perfidious seductions, to beguile his victims to their ruin, and the more thorough the depravation into which he guided them, the greater his pleasure, the fiercer his ecstasy. Little Lucile, directly after her arrival, was scheduled to satisfy the disgusting and unclean caprices of a man who, not merely content to have the most crapulous tastes, wished, still better, to inflict them upon a maid.

  He arrives at the house: he proves to be an old notary stuffed with gold and who, together with his wealth, has all the brutality that avarice and luxury excite when combined in a seasoned spirit. The child is exhibited to him; pretty as she may be, his first reaction is disdain; he grumbles, he grits his teeth, mutters and swears, and says that it damned well seems as if one can no longer find a pretty girl in Paris; he demands, at last, whether there is proof positive she is a virgin, he is assured that, yes, the article is mint, Fournier offers to show it to him.

  “What? look at a cunt, I? Madame Fournier! I, look at a cunt! I certainly hope you propose the thing in jest; have you noticed me spending much time considering those objects since I have been coming to you? I use them, to be sure, but in a manner which, I believe, attests no great fondness for them.”

  “Very well, Monsieur,” Fournier said, “you will have to take the house’s word for it: I declare that she is as much a maid as a child born five minutes ago.”

  They go upstairs together and, as you may well conceive, curious about the forthcoming tête-à-tête, I go and establish myself at the hole. Poor little Lucile was overcome by a shame only to be described by superlative expressions, hence not to be described at all, for those expressions are needed to represent the impudence, the brutality, and the ill-humor of her sixty-year-old lover.

  “Well, what the devil are you doing there, are you a stone?” says he in a harsh voice. “Do I have to tell you to get your skirts up? I should have been looking at your ass two hours ago. . . . Don’t stand there like an idiot, move.”

  “But, Monsieur,
what am I to do?”

  “Why, Jesus Christ, are such questions still asked? What are you to do? Pick up your skirts and show me that damned ass I’m paying to see.”

  Lucile obeys, trembling like a leaf, and discloses a little white ass just as darling and sweet as would be that of Venus herself.

  “Hum . . . looks all right,” mutters the brute, “bring it nearer. . . .”

  Then, getting a firm grip upon the two buttocks and separating them forcefully:

  “You’re damned certain no one’s ever done anything to you here?”

  “Oh, Monsieur, no one has ever touched me. . . .”

  “Very well. Now fart.”

  “But, Monsieur, I can’t.”

  “Well, try, for Christ’s sake, make yourself fart.”

  She struggles, frowns, squints, a little breath of aromatic wind does escape and produces a little echo upon entering the infected mouth of the old libertine, who seems delighted.

  “Do you want to shit?” he asks.

  “No, Monsieur.”

  “Well, I do, I’ve something copious to get rid of, if you’re interested in the pertinent facts; so prepare yourself to satisfy this particular need of mine . . . take off your skirts.”

  They are removed.

  “Lie down upon that sofa. Raise your thighs.”

  Lucile settles herself, the old notary arranges and poses her so that her wide-flung legs display her cunt to the fullest advantage, in which open and prominent position it may be readily employed as a chamber pot. So to use it was his heavenly intention; in order that the container respond more perfectly to what is to be demanded of it, he begins by widening it as much as possible, devoting both hands and all his strength to the task. He takes his place, pushes, a turd lands in the sanctuary Cupid himself would not have disdained having for a temple. He turns around, eyes his work, and with his fingers presses and thrusts the filthy excrement into the vagina and largely out of sight; he establishes himself astride Lucile once again, and ejects a second, then a third stool, and each is succeeded by the same ceremony of burial. Finally, having deposited his last turd, he inserts and tamps it down with such brutal zeal that the little one utters a cry, and by means of this disagreeable operation perhaps loses the precious flower, Nature’s ornament, offered the child as a gift to Hymen. This was the moment at which our libertine’s pleasure attained its crisis: to have filled the young and pretty cunt to overflowing with shit, to crowd it with shit and stuff it with yet more, that was his supreme delight: all the while in action, he opens his fly and draws out a species of prick, very flaccid it is, and he shakes it, and as he toils away in his disgusting manner, he manages to spatter upon the floor a few drops of thin, discolored sperm, whose loss may be credited solely to the infamies he has been performing. Having concluded his business, he takes himself off, Lucile washes, and that is that.

  Some time later, I found myself with another individual whose mania struck me as no less unpleasant: he was an elderly magistrate at the high court. One was obliged not only to watch him shit, no, there was more to it than that: I had to help him, with my fingers, facilitate the matter’s emergence by pressing, opening, agitating, compressing his anus, and when once he had been freed of his burden, I had with utmost care to clean the soiled area with my tongue.

  “Well, by God! there’s a bit of taxing drudgery, I own,” said the Bishop. “The four ladies you see here, and they are our wives, or our daughters, or our nieces, these ladies nevertheless have to perform that same chore every day, you know. And what the devil, I ask you, what the devil is a woman’s tongue good for if not to wipe assholes? I frankly cannot think of any other use to put it to. Constance,” the Bishop pursued, turning to the Duc’s lovely wife, who happened to be upon his couch, “give Duclos a little demonstration of your proficiency in the thing; here you are, I’ll offer you a very untidy ass, it hasn’t been cleaned since this morning, I’ve been keeping it this way for you. Off you go, display your abilities.”

  And the poor creature, only too well accustomed to these horrors, executed them as a dutiful, a thoughtful wife should; ah, great God! what will not dread and thralldom produce!

  “Oh, by Jesus,” said Curval, presenting his ugly, beslimed asshole to the charming Aline, “she’ll not be the only one to give examples of excellence. Get to work, little whore,” said he to that beautiful and virtuous girl, “outdo your companion.”

  And the thing was accomplished.

  “Why, Duclos,” said the Bishop, “I think we might proceed now; we only wished to point out that your man’s request had nothing of the unusual about it, and that a woman’s tongue is fit for nothing if not to wipe an ass.”

  The amiable Duclos fell to laughing and continued:

  You will permit me, Messieurs, said she, to interrupt the catalogue of passions for an instant that I may apprise you of an event which has no bearing upon them; it has only to do with me, but as you have ordered me to recount the interesting episodes in my life, even when they are not related to the anthology of tastes we are compiling, I think that the following ought not be passed by in silence.

  I had been a great while at Madame Fournier’s, had long since become the first ranked according to seniority, and in her entire entourage was the girl in whom she had the greatest confidence. It was I who most often arranged the parties and received the funds. Fournier had gradually taken the place of the mother I had lost, she had aided me in time of trouble, watched over my welfare, had written faithfully to me when I had been abroad in England, upon my return had as a friend opened her house to me when, in difficult circumstances, I desired to take asylum with her once again. Twenty times over she had lent me money, and often had never asked for it back. The opportunity arrived to show my gratitude and to respond to her limitless faith in me, and you shall judge, Messieurs, with what eagerness my soul opened itself to virtue’s entrance and what an easy access it had thereinto: Fournier fell ill, and her first thought was to call me to her bedside.

  “Duclos, my child, I love you,” said she, “well you know it, and I am going to prove it by the absolute trust I am about to place in you. Despite your mind, which is not a good one, I believe you incapable of wronging a friend; I am very ill, I am old, I do not know what is to become of me. But I may die soon; I have relatives who will of course be my heirs. I can at least leave them something, and want to: I have a hundred thousand francs in gold in this little coffer; take it, my child,” said she, “here, I give it to you, but upon condition you dispose of this money in keeping with my instructions.”

  “Oh, my dear mother,” said I, stretching forth my arms to her, “I beseech you, these precautions distress me; they shall surely prove needless, but if unhappily they were to prove necessary, I take oath and swear exactly to carry out your intentions.”

  “I believe you, my child,” said she, “and that is why my eyes have settled upon you; that little coffer, then, contains one hundred thousand francs in gold; I have scruples, a few scruples, my dear friend, I feel remorseful for the life I have led, the quantity of girls I have cast into crime and snatched away from God. And so I wish to do two things by means of which it is my hope the divinity will be led to deal less severely with me: I think of charity now, and of prayer. You shall take fifteen thousand francs of this money, and you shall give it to the Capuchins on the rue Saint-Honoré, so that those good fathers will say a perpetual mass for the salvation of my soul; another sum, also of fifteen thousand francs, shall be set aside, and when I have closed my eyes, you shall surrender it to the curé of the parish and beg him to distribute it amongst the poor dwelling in this quarter of the city. Charity is a very excellent thing, my child; nothing better repairs in the eyes of God the sins we have committed in this world. The poor are His children, and beloved of Him is he who gives them succor and comfort; never is God more to be pleased than by alms distributed to the needy. There lies the true way of gaining Heaven, my child! As for the remainder, immediately I am dead you shall
take sixty thousand francs to one Petignon, a shoemaker’s apprentice in the rue du Bouloir: this poor lad is my son, he knows nothing of his origins: he is the bastard issue of adultery. Upon dying, I want the unhappy orphan to benefit from those marks of tenderness I have never shown him while alive. Ten thousand francs are left; I beg you to keep them, my dear Duclos, keep them as a feeble token of my fondness for you, may they be some kind of recompense for the trouble you shall have to take in seeing to the distribution of the rest of my fortune. And may this little sum aid you to resolve to abandon the dreadful trade we follow, a calling wherein there is no salvation, nor any hope. For one is not a whore forever.”

  Innerly delighted to be entrusted with such a handsome sum, and thoroughly determined, for fear of becoming confused by Fournier’s intricate instructions upon sharing it, to keep her fortune intact and for myself alone, I produced a flood of very artificial tears and cast myself into the old matron’s arms, reiterated many oaths of fidelity, and turned all my thoughts thenceforth to devising means to prevent the cruel disappointments certain to occur were a return to sound health to bring about a change in her resolutions. The means presented itself the very next day: the doctor prescribed an emetic, and as I was in charge of nursing her, it was to me he handed the medicine, drawing my attention to the fact the package contained two doses, and warning me to be sure to administer only one at a time because, were both given her, death would be the result; were the first to have no effect, or an insufficient one, the second could be employed later, if need be. I promised the doctor to take the greatest possible care, and immediately he had turned his back, banishing from my heart all those futile sentiments which would have stopped a timorous spirit, putting to rout all remorse and all frailty, and thinking exclusively of my gold, of the sweet charm of making it mine, and of the delicious titillation one experiences every time one concerts an evil deed, the certain prognostic of the pleasure it will give, dwelling, I say, upon all that and upon nothing else, I straightway dropped both doses into a glass of water and offered the brew to my dear friend’s lips; she swallowed it down without a moment’s delay and thereby, just as rapidly, found the death I had sought to procure her.