“What you tell me is reassuring,” said I; “Saint-Fond will love my tastes, my mind, my character, and shan’t be at all jealous of my person? Very great is my relief to hear you say it, for, I confess to you, continence would be impossible for me, my temperament requires satisfaction, my thirst requires to be slaked at all costs; hot-blooded as I am, energetic and imaginative as you know me to be, with this colossal wealth at my command, how ever could I resist passions aroused by everything, inflamed continually?”
“Surrender to them, Juliette, surrender to them, you cannot do more, you should not do less; but in your dealings with the public at large, I would urge you to be somewhat the hypocrite. Remember that in this world hypocrisy is an indispensable vice for him who has the fortune of possessing all the others; with art and deceit, one succeeds at anything, for it isn’t your virtue society needs, it is simply a pretext for supposing you virtuous. For every two occasions when this virtue will be necessary to you, there will be thirty others when you’ll only have to simulate it; therefore don the mask, debauched women, study to perfect the appearance expected of you, but only to the point of indifference to crime, never so far as enthusiasm for virtue, because the former attitude leaves the amour-propre of others in peace whilst the latter exasperates it. Moreover, it is quite enough to hide what one loves without having to feign what one detests. If all men were vicious in better faith, there’d be no need for hypocrisy; but, falsely persuaded that from virtue there are advantages to be reaped, they must absolutely cling to some shred or vestige of it. One must do as they, and, to secure their good opinion, conceal all one can of one’s misconduct under the cloak of that worm-eaten and ridiculous idol; quits, of course, to revenge oneself for this enforced homage by making that many the more sacrifices to its rival. In addition, hypocrisy, teaching one craft and guile, facilitates countless crimes; your disinterested air invites trust, the adversary lowers his guard, and the less you give him to suspect you are armed with one, the easier it is to drive home the dagger. This covert and mysterious manner of thus satisfying the passions increases a thousandfold the enjoyment you derive from them. Cynicism has its piquancy, I am aware of it, but it does not lure into your net, it does not assure you victims as certainly as hypocrisy does; and then too, effrontery, all that comes under the head of the criminally crapulous, is not truly to be savored except in debaucheries. These the hypocrite, secure within the four walls of his house and his solid reputation, may perfectly well indulge in once he has answered the requirements of his libertinage—surely; who’s to stop him? But it will be generally agreed that elsewhere than in the sanctuary of the home cynicism is out of place, it is bad form, in poor taste, and by creating a breach between society and yourself, it incapacitates you for the enjoyment of all society has to offer. The crimes of debauchery are not the only ones that afford delight, you understand, there are quantities of others, of the highest interest and often very lucrative, which hypocrisy makes available to us, but cynicism unattainable. Was there ever a falser, adroiter, more unscrupulous wench than Madame Brinvilliers, that pillar of society in her day? It was in the charity hospitals she used to make trial of her poisons, it was behind the shield of piety and the screen of philanthropy she would experiment with the delicious means to her crimes. Her father said to her, as he lay upon his deathbed where he had been brought by a poisoned drink administered by her, ‘Oh, my beloved daughter, my one regret in taking leave of life is that I shall no longer be able to do for you all the things I would like.’
“And the daughter’s response was a supplementary dose in the cup of tea she handed to the sinking patient.4 The world boasted no more artful, more subtle creature; she played at devotion, she was ever at Mass, she distributed a fortune in alms, and did all that to cover her crimes; and so it was a long time before she was found out, and perhaps she never would have been but for the incaution and misfortune of her lover.5 Let that woman serve as an example to you, my dear, I couldn’t propose a better.”
“I know the whole story of that famous creature by heart,” I replied, “and you may be sure I aspire to follow in her footsteps. But, kind friend, I’d like to have a more contemporary model; I’d wish her to be somewhat older than me, I’d want her to love me, to have tastes like mine, passions like mine, and, though we’d masturbate together, I’d want her to allow me all my other follies without being in the slightest bit jealous; be that as it may, I’d want her to have a certain ascendancy over me, but that without seeking to dominate me; I’d want her to give me sound advice, to cooperate at all times in my caprices, to be profoundly experienced in libertinage; to be irreligious as well as unprincipled, as much a stranger to good manners as to virtue, to have great warmth of wit and a heart of ice.”
“I have just what you are looking for,” Noirceuil replied; “a widow of thirty, lovely, nay, beautiful, criminal to the core, arrayed with all the qualities you list, and who will be of invaluable aid to you in your chosen career. She can replace me as your tutor; for, you realize, separated as we are, I can no longer attend to your needs with the same ardor as before: Madame de Clairwil, that is the name of the person I have in mind, and she is a millionaire, knows everybody worth knowing, everything that can possibly be known, and I am convinced she will agree to take you under her wing.”
“Charming Noirceuil, you are too good; but there’s yet more to it, my friend, I’d like to share my knowledge with another; I keenly sense my need of instruction, I no less keenly desire to educate someone: I must have a teacher, yes, and I must have a pupil too.”
“Of course. My fiancée?”
“What!” I cried enthusiastically, “would you entrust me with Alexandrine’s education?”
“Could I put her in better hands? I’d be delighted to have you take charge of her. Moreover, it is Saint-Fond’s wish that she keep the most intimate company with you.”
“And what is causing the delay in this marriage?”
“I am in mourning for my last wife, you know.”
“Do you defer to conventional usages?”
“Occasionally, for the sake of appearances; though it goes fearfully against the grain.”
“One further word, dear Noirceuil: you are very sure this woman you propose to introduce me to will not become my rival?”
“You are thinking of your position with Saint-Fond? Fear not. Saint-Fond knew her long before he met you, he still amuses himself with her; but Madame de Clairwil would not consent to undertake your functions, and, for his part, the Minister would not obtain anything like the same pleasure from having-her exercise them.”
“Ah,” I exclaimed, “you are divine, both of you, and your generosity toward me will be very fully rewarded by my zeal in the service of your passions. Issue me orders, I shall be only too happy, always, to be the instrument of your debauches and the main accessory to your crimes.”
I was not to see my lover again until after I executed the task he had assigned me; on the eve of the appointed day I was exhorted to be firm; and on the morrow the dear old gentleman appeared. Before we sat down at table I employed all my skill to mend his opinion of his son, and was quite taken aback to discover that, indeed, it would not be at all difficult to set things straight between them. Therefore I hastily shifted my tack. ’Tis not a reconciliation we want now, said I to myself; if that happens, I lose both the opportunity for the crime I am in a perfect itch to commit, and the twelve hundred thousand francs promised me for bringing it off; let’s cease negotiations and start to act. Administering the drug was child’s play; the old man collapses, he is trundled out, and two days later I learn to my considerable satisfaction that he is no more, his death having been hideously painful.
It was but an hour or so after he expired that his son arrived for one of his semiweekly suppers at my house. Poor weather forced us to hold it indoors; and Noirceuil was the one other guest present. I’d readied three little girls of fourteen or fifteen, prettier than you can imagine; a Paris convent had supplied
them to me at the price of a hundred thousand francs a head—I’d stopped bargaining ever since Saint-Fond had agreed to cover costs.
“These,” said I, presenting them to the Minister, “will console you for the loss you have just sustained.”
“It does not overly affect me, Juliette,” said the Minister, kissing me, “I’d willingly send fifteen such blackguards to their death every day, and without an ace of compunction. My one regret is that he suffered so little; he was a most contemptible clown.”
“But, you know,” I said, “it wouldn’t have taken much to change his attitude?”
“You acted properly in not encouraging him to do so. I shudder at the thought of still having to endure the beggar’s existence. I even resent having to bury him; but for some loathsome prejudices, I’d have the pleasure of flinging his corpse on the dung heap and watching it devoured by vermin.”
And, as if eager to forget, the libertine turned immediately to the job, my three maids were assessed. There was nothing the fiercest critic could find fault with: size, shape, birth, mint condition, youth, looks, they were all there; but I noticed that neither of the two friends was stiffening in the least, and satiety is not easy to please: ’twas apparent they were not content, but did not, however, dare complain.
“Speak up,” said I, “if these objects don’t satisfy you, you must tell me what you want. For you must admit, I cannot hope to guess what it would be that outdoes this.”
“No,” sighed Saint-Fond, who was having himself handled by two of the little girls, whose efforts were proving fruitless, “there’s no one to blame unless it’s Noirceuil and myself. We’re exhausted, we’ve just been performing horrors, and I haven’t the faintest idea what’s to be done to revive us now.”
“Perhaps,” I suggested, “if you were to recount your feats, you might, from the telling, rediscover the strength to commit fresh infamies.”
“We can at least try,” said Noirceuil.
“Well then, off with the clothes,” said Saint-Fond, “you too, Juliette, undress yourself, and listen to us.”
Two of the girls converged upon Noirceuil, one sucked him, he tongued the other and palpated both their asses; the frigging of the narrator was confided to me, and while speaking, he spanked the third maiden’s behind; and here follow the atrocities Saint-Fond divulged:
“I led my daughter to where my father lay dying. Noirceuil was with me; we drew the shutters, we bolted the doors, and then”—and the lecher’s prick rose, nodding as though in confirmation of what he was saying—”and then I most barbarously announced to my father that this that had befallen him, and the agonies he was undergoing, were my work; upon my instructions, I told him, you had poisoned him and I advised him to think on death. Then raising my daughter’s skirts, I sodomized her before his eyes. Noirceuil, who adores me when I commit infamies, had been fucking me very briskly; but when the rascal saw Alexandrine’s ass bared to the light, he soon replaced me in the breach … and I, bending over the bed, forced the old man to frig me, and while he fisted my prick, I slowly strangled him: I gave up my fuck at the same moment he gave up the ghost, and Noirceuil simultaneously discharged into my daughter’s fundament. Ah, the joy that was mine! Foul accursed unnatural son who all at one stroke was guilty of parricide, incest, murder, sodomy, pimping, prostitution. Oh, Juliette, Juliette! never in my life had I been so happy. See what it does to me just to recite those voluptuous exploits, my prick’s as stiff as it was this afternoon.”
Whereupon the lecher has at one of the little girls, and while he proceeds to maculate her in every part, he would have Noirceuil and me abuse another of the children within his view. We improvise awful things; Nature, outraged in those girls, becomes frenziedly operative in Saint-Fond, and the scapegrace is near to shedding his fuck, when, so as not to squander his forces, he prudently withdraws from the ass of the novice in order to perforate the other two. Exercising faultless self-control that day, he triumphed six times in a row, and for his share Noirceuil had no buds, but full-blown roses only. Howbeit, the latter made the most of the little that was left to him, and the whole while he fucked, and he fucked at a leisurely pace, he kissed my ass and Saint-Fond’s too, he pumped them both, and drank up the farts we amused ourselves producing for him.
Then ’twas suppertime, I alone was invited to partake of the feast, but nude; the little girls lay scattered about the table, light was provided by the candles we had stuck in their asses; and as these candles were none of them very long, and as the supper lasted on and on, all their thighs were severely scorched. Earlier we had bound them fast to the table to hold them still, and the gags of wadded cotton we had inserted in their mouths saved our conversation from being disturbed by their clamorings. The three candelabras diverted our libertines throughout the meal; and I, reaching out from time to time to verify their state, found them both in very merry form indeed.
“Noirceuil,” said Saint-Fond, while our little novices were aroasting, “do, please, explain to us, manipulating your metaphysics prettily as you are wont to do, do explain to us, how ’tis possible we arrive at pleasure in the one case through the sight of others undergoing pain, and in the other, through suffering pain ourselves.”
“Pay me close heed,” said Noirceuil, “I’ll give you the thing detailed and demonstrated.
“‘Pain,’ logically defined, ‘is nothing other than a sentiment of hostility in the soul toward the body it animates, the which it signifies through certain movements that conflict with the body’s physical organization.’ So says Nicole, who perceived in man an ethereal substance, which he called soul, and which he differentiated from the material substance we call body. I, however, who will have none of this frivolous stuff and who consider man as something on the order of an absolutely material plant, I shall simply say that pain is the consequence of a defective relationship between objects foreign to us and the organic molecules composing us; in such wise that instead of composing harmoniously with those that make up our neural fluids, as they do in the commotion of pleasure, the atoms emanating from these foreign objects strike them aslant, crookedly, sting them, repulse them, and never fuse with them. Still, though the effects are negative, they are effects nonetheless, and whether it be pleasure or pain brewing in us, you will always have a certain impact upon the neural fluids. Now, what prevents this painful commotion—infinitely sharper and more active than the other—from exciting in the said fluid the same conflagration propagated there by the impact of the atoms emanating from objects of pleasure? and, stirred for the sake of being stirred, what prevents me from becoming accustomed, through habit, to being no less suitably agitated by the atoms that repel than by the others that blend? Weary of the effects that only produce a simple sensation, why should I not become accustomed to receiving the same pleasure from those that produce a poignant sensation? Both categories of shock are sustained in the same place; the only difference between them is that one is violent and the other mild; but from the standpoint of the blasé individual, is not the first greatly to be preferred to the second? Is there anything commoner than to see, on the one hand, people who have accustomed their palates to a pleasurable irritation, and next to them, others who couldn’t put up with that irritation for an instant? Is it not now true—my hypothesis once accepted—that man’s practice, in his pleasures, is an attempt to move the objects which procure him his enjoyment in the same way he himself is moved, and that these proceedings are what are termed, in the metaphysics of pleasure-taking, effects of his delicacy? What then should appear odd in the man who, endowed with organs of the kind we have just depicted, through the same procedures as his adversary, and through the same principles of delicacy, fancies he moves the pleasure-procuring object by means whereby he himself is affected? He is no more wrong than the other, he has only done what the other has done. The consequences are different, I grant you; but the initial motivations are identical; the first has been no crueler than the second, and neither of them is open to blame: u
pon the pleasure-procuring object both have employed the same means they themselves use to procure their own pleasure.
“‘But,’ replies he who is subjected to a brutal emotion, ‘but this doesn’t please me.’ ’Tis altogether possible; it now remains to be seen whether force will succeed with you where persuasion has failed. If not, then begone, leave me alone; if, to the contrary, my wealth, my influence, or my station gives me either some authority over you or some certainty of being able to stifle your complaints, then submit without a murmur to everything it pleases me to impose upon you, for have my enjoyment I must and shall, and I can obtain it only by tormenting you and seeing your tears flow. But in no case have you the right to be surprised or to reproach me, because I am acting in accordance with the way Nature designed me, am following the bent she imparted to me, and because, in a word, in forcing you to accede to my harsh and brutal lusts, they alone which are capable of leading me to the uppermost pitch of pleasure, I act pursuant to the same principle of delicacy as the tepid swain who knows nought but the roses of a sentiment whereof I recognize only the thorns; for I, torturing you, rending you limb from limb, I am merely doing the one thing that is able to move me, just as he, sorrowfully encunting his mistress, does that which alone moves him agreeably; but he can have his effeminate delicacy, it’s not for me—why? because it cannot possibly move organs so solidly made, of such tough fiber as mine.
Juliette Page 32
