Juliette

by Marquis de Sade

  “Come with me,” said Saint-Fond.

  We entered the office of a clerk.

  “My good sir,” said the Minister, “your attention, please. “Look closely at this young lady; remember her. I order you to sign and to deliver to her, upon her simple request, as many lettres de cachet as she wishes, whenever, and for whatever places of detention she chooses.”

  We returned to the chamber we had formerly been in. “There, you are prettily equipped,” said the Minister, “now show what you can do. Burn, trample, hack away, all France is yours; and whatever crime you perpetrate, regardless of its magnitude, its gravity, perpetrate it intrepidly, for fear you need not, you shall get away scot-free, you have my word. You shall have more: as I have told you already, thirty thousand francs for every crime you commit on your own initiative, on your own behalf.”

  My friends, I shall not attempt to describe the impact these promises, these prospects had upon me.

  It is well nigh incredible, said I to myself. From the outset blessed by Nature with an imagination tending to extravagance, here am I now, rich enough to satisfy my every whim, to achieve my every ambition, strong enough to defy any retaliation. No; there are no inward joys comparable to this knowledge that I am powerful and hence free; no lubricity to equal the effect of this one upon the soul.

  “So now, Madame, let us seal the bargain,” said the Minister. “Here’s a little gift for you, a mere bauble,” he went on, handing me a casket where there were five thousand louis in gold, and twice that in gems and jewelry; “take it along, and don’t forget the box of poisons.”

  Then he led me into a secret room where the furnishings were both sumptuous and bizarre.

  “Henceforth upon entering this place, and while you are here, your condition will be that of a common whore; and at all other times you will be one of the greatest ladies in the kingdom.”

  “Wherever I am, my Lord, I shall be your slave, your admirer eternally, and the very soul of your most exquisite pleasures.”

  I undressed. Thrilled at having found a suitable accomplice at last, Saint-Fond performed horrors. Of his ways I have told you something, I now discovered more; leaving his house I might feel as though I had not my peer in all the world, but when I was in his company, he degraded me unutterably; when it was a question of lust, he was truly the filthiest man that can be conceived, the most despotical, the crudest. He had me do reverence to his prick, his ass; he shat, I had to make a god of his very mard; but he also had this curious mania, he had me soil those very things that symbolized all that his pride was founded upon; he insisted that I shit upon various honorific insignia and badges and he wiped my ass with his cordon bleu. I owned to him my surprise at this last gesture.

  “I would have you see, Juliette, that such rags and ribbons designed to dazzle fools do not overawe a philosopher.”

  “But a short moment ago you obliged me to kiss them?”

  “True enough, but just as I pride myself on what these little fripperies represent, so it also flatters my pride prodigiously to profane them. All this—’tis just a quirk such as makes sense only to libertines of my species.”

  Saint-Fond’s prick was up in extraordinary size; I discharged in his embrace: for those with an imagination like mine, the question is never whether this or that is repulsive, irregularity is the sole valid consideration, and anything is good provided it be excessive. Something told me he had a burning desire to have me eat his shit, I sought his permission to do so, obtained it, he was in ecstasies; he devoured mine, between mouthfuls tonguing my vent at length. He showed me a portrait of his daughter, scarcely fourteen years old, and as lovely a creature as one could behold; I begged him to include her at one of our forgatherings.

  “She is not here,” he told me; “were she, you’d have already seen her in our midst.”

  “I take it you are not sending her to Noirceuil without having enjoyed her first?”

  “That is quite correct,” he replied; “I would be heartbroken to allow someone else to pluck such delicious first fruits.”

  “So you have ceased to love her?”

  “Love her? Juliette, I love nothing, nobody, none of us libertines loves anything at all. That child gave me a good many erections; she no longer excites me nowadays, I’ve wearied myself toying with her. I am giving her to Noirceuil, whom she heats exceedingly—it is a matter of mutual convenience, that’s all.”

  “But when Noirceuil tires of her?”

  “Why, you know the usual fate of his wives; in all likelihood I shall participate in the ceremony myself. I have in others; they are always stimulating. They are always worthwhile. That’s the sort of thing I like….”

  And his prick soared another inch.

  “My Lord,” said I, “it seems to me that if I were in your position, I’d be tempted to abuse my authority at certain moments.”

  “When stiff, you mean to say?”

  “Yes.”

  “It sometimes happens.”

  “Oh, my Lord,” I began. Then: “Let’s massacre some innocents, shall we? The idea makes my brain whirl.”

  I was frigging him, one of my fingers was tickling his asshole.

  “One moment,” said he, removing a sheet of paper from his pocket and unfolding it, “I have but to put my signature to that, and a very attractive person dies tomorrow. She is in prison at the moment; I issued the warrant upon the request of her family. Their single grievance is that she prefers women to men. I have seen her; she is charming; I amused myself with her the other day, and since then I have been so anxious lest she blab that my one thought, or rather desire, has been to get rid of her.”

  “Ah, my Lord, she’ll talk if given the chance, she’ll talk, your fears are only too well founded; so long as that girl is alive, you will be in constant danger. Therefore, and if I implore you to do so, it is because your safety depends on it, sign that paper.” And taking it from his hand, I placed it flat against my buttocks. “There is a quill on that desk, and an inkhorn.”

  He signed his name.

  “I am quite willing to carry it to the clerk myself,” I said.

  “As you like,” said he, “but one thing at a time, presently I must discharge, Juliette. That all reach its proper climax I have need of further assistance.” He rang. “Pray be not alarmed,” he went on, “it is a ritual.” And the next moment a pretty youth appeared in the doorway.

  “Kindly kneel, Juliette, this young man is to bestow three blows of a cane upon your shoulders, the traces will last only a few days; afterward he will hold you steady while I embugger you.”

  And the newcomer, having stripped off his pantaloons, straightway gave his behind to be colled by the Minister who licked it complacently.

  In the meantime, I knelt down; the youth picks up his cane and so smart were the three cuts he gave me the marks showed for the space of a fortnight. While the boy was laying on, Saint-Fond, sitting opposite me, watched with lewd curiosity; then he came up and examined the stripes on my skin, grumbled about their faintness, bade the boy take hold of me; and while sodomizing me vigorously, very vigorously, kissed the hinderparts belonging to him who was accessory to the operation.

  “Ah, fuck my eyes!” he cried, loosing his seed, “ah, God be double-fucked, the whore’s marked.”

  The mysterious youth withdrew. It was not until long afterward that an event I will relate in due course shed light on his character and identity.

  Saint-Fond escorted me out of the boudoir; and once we had left it, reassumed his former thoughtful air.

  “Take the caskets with you, Madame,” said he, “and remember that our schedule calls for operations to begin three weeks from today. Very well. Libertinage, crime, discretion, Juliette, and your welfare is assured. Adieu.”

  The very first thing I did was examine the order of execution whereof I was the bearer. Great heavens, what was my amazement to discover that here in black and white were instructions to the supervisor of the convent-prison in question secre
tly to poison—whom? None other than Sainte-Elme, that charming novice I had fairly worshiped during my sojourn at Panthemont. Another person would perhaps have torn up that baneful piece of paper; not I. For I was too far advanced in my criminal career to quail; I did not even pause, no, nor waver for an instant, with determined step I betake myself to Sainte-Pélagie, where Sainte-Elme had been languishing three long months behind bars; I transmit the order into the hands of the head warden, ask to see the culprit; I interrogate her, she declares the Minister offered to arrange her liberation in return for her favors, and that she did with him all that it is possible for a woman to do. The lecherous monster had omitted not a single episode in his repertory of abominations; mouth, ass, cunt … the beast had defiled her everywhere, and as consolation for this evil treatment she had been given nothing but the hope of having her freedom restored to her.

  “I have with me the document that will put an end to your misery,” I say, kissing her.

  Sainte-Elme thanks me, repays my caresses tenfold. … I notice that betraying her is moistening my cunt…. The following day she was dead.

  Faith, said I to myself upon learning of the outcome of my scurvy deed, I can do better than that. I was made for great things. I feel it.

  And setting myself promptly to work preparing the stage for the scenes Saint-Fond was to enact, within the space of three weeks I was, as I had promised, able to provide the first of his suppers.

  Six excellent procuresses I had taken into my employ supplied me, for my debut, three young sisters spirited away from a pious retreat in Meaux, twelve, thirteen, and fourteen years of age, and positively celestial in face and figure.

  That first evening the Minister appeared in the company of a man in his sixties. Upon arriving he encloseted himself for several minutes with me, inspected my shoulders, and appeared irritated at finding no traces left of the stripes he had had inflicted upon me at our last encounter. Scarcely did he touch me; but he advised the greatest respect and the profoundest submissiveness in my behavior toward the individual who had come with him, he being one of the foremost personages at the Court, a prince. The latter entered the room as soon as Saint-Fond left it. Forewarned by my lover, I turned and exhibited my behind as soon as he had shut the door. He approached, a spyglass in his hand. “Fart,” he commanded, “or be bitten.”

  Unable to satisfy him with all the celerity he desired, I felt a sudden pain in my left buttock: his teeth had caused it. They left deep marks in my flesh. He walked around to in front of me; it was a severe and unlovely visage I looked into.

  “Put your tongue in my mouth.”

  I did so. Whereupon he said: “Belch or be bitten.”

  But seeing that I couldn’t obey, I backed away quickly enough to avoid the trap. The old rascal flies into a fury, he catches up a bundle of withes and belabors me for a quarter of an hour; then he stops and walks around to in front of me again.

  “You behold the little effect even these activities I am fondest of have upon my senses nowadays; consider,” said he, “this limp prick nothing hoists. Nothing. To bring it at all aloft I’ll be obliged to cause you much hurt.”

  “There’ll be no need for that, my Prince,” said I, “since you’re soon to have at your disposal three delicious objects whom you can torment in whatever way you like.”

  “Aye, but you are attractive … your ass,” said he, fondling it apace, “pleases me infinitely; I’d like to stiffen for its sake.”

  So saying he rids himself of his clothing and upon the mantel lays a diamond-studded timepiece, a gold snuffbox, his purse overflowing two hundred louis, and two superb rings.

  “Let’s have another try now. Here, take hold of my ass, you must pinch and bite it hard, fearfully hard, and while you do that, frig me with the supplest possible wrist. Good, excellent!” he cried upon perceiving some slight improvement in his state; “now stretch out on this couch, will you, and let me prick your buttocks with this hatpin.”

  I lie down. “Steady,” says the Prince. But when I emit a loud scream and seem about to faint away at a second thrust, confused and aflutter and dreading lest by using his mistress somewhat too roughly he give offense to the Minister, the Prince scurries from the room, hoping his departure will quiet me. I fling his clothes into an adjoining chamber, pounce upon his valuables, and hurriedly rejoin Saint-Fond, who inquires of me, “Is there anything amiss?”

  “Nothing at all,” say I, “but from being in too great haste fetching his Highness’ clothes I let the door to my boudoir shut to, the key is inside and these English locks—there’s no opening them. But never mind; Monsieur has his shirt and breeches here, we can defer the interview he desires until some later time.”

  And I draw my two guests out into the garden where everything has been put in readiness to receive them; the Prince forgets his belongings, dons the costume I tender him, and is mindful only of the pleasures yet to come.

  The weather that evening was faultless, we were beneath a bower of roses with lilac bushes all around us; a multitude of candles furnished the light, our seats were three thrones supported on artificial clouds whence came the scent of the most delicious perfumes; in the center of the table was a very mountain of the rarest flowers, set amongst which were the jade and porcelain cups and plates we were to drink from and dine off; the service was of gold. No sooner had we taken our places than the bower opened overhead and before our eyes there descended a fiery cloud: upon it, the Three Furies and, prisoned in the coils of their serpents, the three victims destined to be sacrificed at this feast. The Furies alighted from their aerial car, each chained the victim in her keeping to boxwoods near where we were sitting, then stood by in readiness. No previously established program decided the order of that meal, it was to shape itself according to the wishes of my guests; anything you happened to wish you simply demanded, and the Furies brought it to you instantly. Above eighty widely varying dishes are called for, every one is served up in a trice; ten kinds of wines are requested, all ten flow, everything is there in plenty, in profusion!

  “Nicely done,” my lover remarked. “I trust your Grace is satisfied with my directress’ initial effort?”

  “Enchanted,” answered the sexagenarian, his head reeling from the abundance of food and spirits, and his tongue thick already. “Indeed, Saint-Fond, I envy you your divine Juliette—I have never clapped eyes on a fairer ass.”

  “Nor have I,” the Minister owned; “but I suggest we leave it alone for a while and concern ourselves with those belonging to our Furies who, if I’m not greatly mistaken, are superbly fleshed also.”

  And at that hint, the three goddesses, impersonated by the three loveliest girls my purveyors had been able to locate for me after ransacking the whole of Paris, immediately bared their be-hinds to the two libertines, who kissed them, licked them, gnawed them with much relish and complete abandon.

  “My good Saint-Fond,” the Prince stuttered, “shall we have ourselves flogged by these Furies?”

  “With rose branches,” Saint-Fond proposed.

  And there are our lechers’ backsides exposed, being cruelly lashed now by garlands of flowers, now by the Furies’ snakes.

  “Very lubricious indeed, these exercises,” remarked Saint-Fond, resuming his chair and pointing to his towering device; “say now, my Prince, are you stiffening a little?”

  “No,” the hapless old dotard answered, “I require more potent stimulants than any of these; immediately when I enter into debauch, I like to be environed by atrocities in uninterrupted sequence, I like to have all that men hold sacred violated in the interests of my pleasure, all that is holy soiled by my doing—”

  “You are not a humanitarian then, my Prince?”

  “I abhor mankind.”

  “I strongly doubt,” Saint-Fond continued, “whether at any moment in the day I for my part am not animated by the most vehement impulse, or caressing some black scheme, to cause harm to humankind; there is no more execrable species. Be he powerful,
then man is dangerous, and no tiger in the jungle can match him for wickedness. Is he puny, weak, woebegone? then how base he is, how vile, how disgusting within and without! Oh, many a time have I blushed at having been born in the midst of such creatures. My one comfort is that Nature loathes them no less than I, for she destroys them daily; I wish only that I had as many means as she at my command for contriving their undoing; had I, I’d wipe the lot off the face of the earth.”

  “But you—august beings that you are,” I broke in, “do you really think of yourselves as human? Why no! no, when one bears so little resemblance to the common herd, when one dominates it so absolutely, it is impossible to be of its race.”

  “You know,” said Saint-Fond, “she is quite right; we are so many gods; as it is with them, so is it with us—do we not have but to formulate desires to have them satisfied instantly? Ah, is it not obvious that among men, or rather, above men, there is a class so superior to the weaker sort as to be what of old the poets termed divinities?”

  “As for myself, I am no Hercules, I sense that I am not,” said the Prince, “but I fain would be Pluto; it would please me mightily to have the task of dismembering mortals in hell.”

  “And I should like to be Pandora’s box, that the ills emergent from the depths of me might destroy them all piecemeal.”

  Some groans were heard at this point; they had been uttered by the three chained victims.

  “Unloose them,” said Saint-Fond, “and bring them hither.”

  The Furies detached them and led them before my two guests; and since no females can combine grace and beauty in a higher degree, I leave you to imagine to what lecherous attentions they were subjected straightway.

  “Juliette,” said the Minister, transported, “you are a charming and able creature; plainly, you have the touch of a master, these results authorize the statement…. Come, let’s lose ourselves amongst these arbors, amidst these flowers, come, in shadow and silence let us give ourselves up to all our brains may dictate…. You had some ditches dug?”