“The most outstanding service one could do to some young person,” I observed after hearing this speech, “would then be to pluck out of him all the weeds of virtue Nature or education might have sown in his soul?”
“That is exact, snatch them out and if possible stifle them while they are yet in seed,” Saint-Fond answered. “For even supposing the individual in whom you annihilate these virtuous possibilities were to maintain he finds happiness in virtue, you, perfectly certain you will cause him to find far greater happiness in vice, ought never to hesitate to blot out the one in order to permit the other to waken; ’tis a real and capital service he’ll thank you for sooner or later: and that is why, very different from my predecessor, I authorize the publication and sale of all libertine books and immoral works; for I esteem them most essential to human felicity and welfare, instrumental to the progress of philosophy, indispensable to the eradication of prejudices, and in every sense conducive to the increase of human knowledge and understanding. Any author courageous enough to tell the truth fearlessly shall have my patronage and support; I shall subsidize his ideas, I shall see to their dissemination; such men are rare, the State has great need of them, and their labors cannot be too heartily encouraged.”
“But,” I inquired, “how does this sit with the severity you favor in government? with the Inquisition you would establish?”
“As nicely as you please,” Saint-Fond replied; “it is to keep the people in their place I urge severity, and if I so often imagine the autos-da-fé of Lisbon transferred to Paris, it is in the interests of subordination. My knife will never be drawn against the upper classes, the elite in substance or mind.”
“But must not these writings, if generally read, pose a threat to those very persons you seem to wish to keep out of harm’s way?”
“Impossible,” declared the Minister. “If these texts quicken in the weak the desire to break their bonds (and mind you, lest they have that desire I cannot forge bonds at all), the strong, for their part, will find instruction therein upon how to load further and heavier chains upon the captive masses. In short, the slave will perhaps accomplish in a decade what the master will have accomplished in a night.”
“You are widely accused,” I now ventured to remark, “of persistent condescension in everything that touches the growing depravity of manners nowadays; never, so it is said, were they so corrupt as since you entered into office.”
“Perhaps, but we still have an enormous task to achieve before they are as I’d like to see them; and at the present time I am working upon some new police regulations which, I hope, will help matters along in the proper direction. I do not believe it is a secret, at any rate it is a fact whereof you cannot afford not to be fully aware, Juliette: a vital chapter in the policy followed by all those at the head of any government is to foment and promote the extremest degree of corruption in the citizenry; so long as the subject wastes away body and soul in the delights of gangrenous, enfeebling debauchery, he does not feel the weight of his irons, and you can heap fresh ones upon him without his even noticing. The true essence of statecraft is thus to multiply a hundredfold every possible means to debilitate and pervert the people. Lots of shows, much pomp and display, cabarets, brothels without number, a general amnesty for all crimes committed in debauchery: those are the expedients for bringing the plebeians to heel. O you who ambition to rule over them, beware of virtue within the frontiers of your empire, only let virtue reign and your peoples will open their eyes, and your thrones, reposing as they do upon nothing but vice, will be very speedily overthrown; the free man’s awakening will be cruel for the despots, and the day he ceases to fritter his leisure away in vices he’ll start to strive for domination like yourselves.”
“And what are your proposed regulations?” I asked.
“It’s by means of fashion I aim to mold public opinion at first; you know how the French are influenced by the latest in vogue.
“1) I am launching a new style in masculine and feminine dress which leaves all the lust-inspiring parts, and the ass especially, exposed in their virtual entirety.
“2) There will be spectacles after the model of the Floral Games they used to hold in glorious Rome, at them lads and lasses will dance naked.
“3) Instead of morality and religion, which will be stricken from the curriculum, the pure and unadulterated principles of Nature will be taught in the public schools; every child of either sex who has reached the age of fifteen without having been able to get a lover will be very sharply reprimanded, penalized, held up to public scorn and dishonor, and declared^ if a girl, forever ineligible for marriage, for holding any office, if a boy; in default of a lover, the boy or girl will be obliged to present a certificate proving prostitution and nonpossession of virginity in any shape or place.
“4) Christianity will be rigorously banished out of the land; none but libertine rites and feasts will ever be celebrated in France. I’ll be rid of Christianity, I say: but not of religion, this I intend to retain, for its chains are useful to the preservation of order as I proved to you a moment ago. The object of worship doesn’t matter in the slightest, the thing that counts is clergy; but I’d rather see the dagger of superstition wielded by the priests of Venus than by the admirers of Mary.
“5) The common herd will be kept in a state of subservience, of prostrate bondage, which will render them powerless even to strike for, let alone to attain to, domination, or to encroach upon or debase the prerogatives of the rich. Tied to the glebe as in olden days, the people will be held like any other property, and, like it, will be subject to all the various mutations of value and ownership. Only the people will be liable to punishment at the hands of the law, and it will be inflicted for the most trifling offenses. The commoner’s proprietor will have the right of life or death over him and his family, and neither his complaints nor his recriminations will ever receive hearing. Never will free schools be available to him: tilling the soil does not require knowledge, the blindfold of ignorance is made for the peasant’s eyes, showing him the light is always a risky business. The first individual, regardless of his class, who were to think to stir up the people or to invite them to break their chains will be thrown to wild beasts and eaten alive.
“6) In every town and city of the land there shall be opened public houses containing specimens of both sexes, the number of these houses to be proportional to the population of the district or agglomeration, there being at least one male and one female establishment per every thousand inhabitants; the personnel of each shall be three hundred individuals, who will begin their internment at the age of twelve and not retire from service before twenty-five. These establishments will be subsidized by the government; only members of the free class will have the right of entrance and they will of course be empowered to do in these places whatever they please.
“7) Everything denominated crime of libertinage at present, to wit: murder in debauch, incest, rape, sodomy, adultery, etc., will be reprehensible only if committed by a member of the slave castes.
“8) Prizes shall be awarded to the most celebrated courtesans in the bawdy houses, likewise to the young boys there who have got themselves a name in the art of pleasing. Similarly, bonuses and stipends shall be granted to each inventor of a new lubricity, to every author of cynical books, to all libertines recognized as professed in their order.
“9) The slave class shall exist as did the Helots in ancient Lacedaemon. There being no difference whatsoever between the human slave and the brute beast, why should you punish the murderer of the one more than the murderer of the other?”
“My Lord,” I put in, “this last, it seems to me, deserves some slight explaining. I would like to have you prove to me there is no real distinction to be drawn between the human slave and an animal.”
“Glance at the works of Nature,” this philosopher answered me, “and judge for yourself whether she has not, in forming the two classes of men, made them vastly unalike; I ask you to put aside partial
ity, and to decide: have they the same voice, the same skin, the same limbs, the same gait, the same tastes, have they, I venture to inquire, have they the same needs? It will be to no purpose if someone attempts to persuade me that circumstances or education have made for these differences and that the slave and the master, in a state of Nature, as infants, will be indistinguishable. I deny the fact; and it is after having pondered the matter and sifted much personal observation, after having examined the findings of clever anatomists, that I affirm there is no similarity between the conformations of these several infants. Abandon them both to themselves, and you’ll observe that the child of the first class manifests tastes and aims most unlike those the child of the second class demonstrates; and you will perceive the most striking dissimilarity between the sentiments and dispositions proper to each.
“Now perform the same study upon the animal resembling man the closest, upon, for example, the chimpanzee; let me, I say, compare this animal to some representative of the slave caste; what a host of similarities I find! The man of the people is simply the species that stands next above the chimpanzee on the ladder; and the distance separating them is, if anything, less than that between him and the individual belonging to the superior caste. And why should Nature, who so assiduously observes these gradations in all her works, have neglected them here? Are all plants alike? No. Are all animals the same in aspect and strength? No. Dare you compare a shrub to the majestic poplar, a pug-dog to the proud Great Dane, the Corsican mountain pony to the spirited Andalusian stallion? So many essential differences within the same over-all categories; and why do you object to the same differences existing among men? You should certainly never lump Voltaire and Fréron in the same class, any more than you would the virile Prussian grenadier and the debilitated Hottentot. Therefore, Juliette, cease to doubt these inequalities; and, admitting their existence, let’s not hesitate to take full advantage of them, and to persuade ourselves that if it so suited Nature to have us born into the upper of these two human classes, we have but to extract profit and pleasure from our situation by worsening that of our inferiors, and despotically to press them into the service of all our passions and our every need.”
“Kiss me, my beloved,” I cried, throwing myself into the arms of a man whose principles I simply could not resist; “to me you are as a god, ’tis at your feet I want to pass my life.”
“Apropos,” remarked the Minister, getting up from the table and leading me to the couch in the salon, “I forgot to tell you that the King is fonder of me than ever; I’ve just had new proof of his attachment. From somewhere he got the idea I am burdened by heavy debts, and has given me two million to straighten out my affairs. ’Tis only just that you share in my good fortune, Juliette; I am turning half the gift over to you; continue to approve my tenets and to serve me well, I’ll raise you so high in the world you’ll have no more trouble believing in your superiority over others: you cannot imagine the joy I derive in advancing you to atop the very pinnacle, and making your pre-eminence conditional upon profound humility and unbounded obedience toward me alone. I wish you to be the idol of others and, at the same time, my slave; the mere thought heats my prick…. Juliette, we’ll perform horrors this day, shan’t we, my angel? horrors, atrocities?”
And he pressed his lips to mine, the while toying with my cunt.
“Oh, my love, how delicious are our crimes when impunity veils them, when duty itself prescribes them. How divine it is to swim in gold and, as one reckons up one’s wealth, to be able to say, here are the means to every black deed, to every pleasure; with this, all my wishes can be made to come true, all my fancies can be satisfied; no woman will resist me, none of my desires will fail of realization, my wealth will procure amendments in the law itself, and I’ll be despot without let or hindrance.”
I kissed Saint-Fond a thousand times over and, profiting from the enthusiasm, the drunkenness he was carried away by, and above all from his predisposition to me, I had him sign a lettre de cachet written out for the arrest of Elvire’s father, who wished to deprive me of her, and wheedled two or three other favors out of him, each of which was worth about five hundred thousand francs to me. And the fumes of the excellent dinner I had just provided him rising to his head, he announced he was sleepy and would retire for a little; he departed to his chamber, and I looked to the completion of the arrangements for the evening’s entertainments.
Saint-Fond woke toward five that afternoon. By then everything stood ready in the salon, and this is the way the scene and the actors were disposed: nude and simply decked in garlands of roses, there were, on the right, the three maids intended for the orgies; I’d grouped them like Botticelli’s Graces: all three were girls of condition spirited out of a convent at Melun, and their beauty was startling.
Louise was the name of the first: she was sixteen, fair-haired, and never was a more interesting face beheld.
The second was named Hélène: fifteen years old, slender in the waist, slight of build and tall for her age, long brown tresses, Love’s own eyes and mouth; beautiful though she was, most would have admitted her to be surpassed by Fulvie, ravishing and also sixteen.
In the center, to offer a contrast to this group, I had stationed the ill-starred family, likewise naked and festooned with black crepe: the father and the mother were watching each other in expectation of the worst, at their feet lay the charming Julie; heavy irons rubbed their bare skin raw, the nipple on Julie’s left breast peeped through a link, which had bruised it, and it bled softly. Another length of chain was visible between the thighs of Madame de Cloris, and was pinching the lips of her womb; Delcour, whom I had outfitted in the terrifying garb of a demon out of hell and armed with the sword he was to use upon his victims, held the end of the chain which ever and again he would tug, with dreadful effect wherever it touched flesh.
Next, in the pose of Callipygian Venus, their backs to Saint-Fond, draped in a simple brown-and-white gauze which left their asses very distinctly in sight, were my four women:
The first was twenty-two, superb, a veritable Minerva, magnificently formed; her name was Délie.
The name of the second was Montalme: twenty, in full bloom, as nicely fleshed as woman can be.
Palmire was nineteen. She was blonde and had the romantic countenance of those girls you always like to see in tears.
Seventeen years old, Blaisine had a mischievous look, faultless teeth, the sauciest eyes that ever fired desire.
And at the far left of this semicircle were placed two strapping lads, five feet and ten inches in height, awesomely membered; they were standing face to face and while frigging each other were exchanging passionate kisses. They were naked.
“Charming,” said Saint-Fond upon opening his eyes, “heavenly! No possible mistake, all this attests the mind and art of Juliette. Have the guilty ones brought hither,” he continued, directing me to take a seat beside him, Montalme to come and suck his engine, Palmire to place her ass within his reach.
Delcour marched the family forward.
“You are all three under accusation of enormous crimes,” the Minister began, “and from the Queen I have express orders to put you promptly to death.”
“They are unjust orders,” Cloris replied, “my family and I are innocent—as you know full well, you wretch! (At this point Saint-Fond was prey to a pleasurable emotion so puissant he was scarce able to fight off a discharge.) Yes, you know perfectly well that we are innocent. But if we are under suspicion, then let us be put on fair trial, but not exposed this way to the tigerish lust of one who sports with us only to quicken his ignoble passions.”
“If you please, Delcour,” said the Minister, “a taste of the chain.”
And the executioner gave it a jerk, so sudden, so violent, that the cunt of Madame de Cloris, the breast of her daughter, one of her husband’s thighs were cut into, blood spurted on the iron.
Then Saint-Fond said, “You allude to the law. You have broken the law, you have violated it too gr
ievously to invoke its protection; its full severity is all you have a right to expect now. Ready yourselves to die.”
“You,” was Cloris’ proud answer, “you are the hireling of a tyrant and the creature of a whore. Posterity will judge me.”
Here Saint-Fond rises in fury; his prick is prettily grown; he beckons to me, “Come.” Going close to the well-chained insolent, the Minister slaps him with all his might several times, insults him, spits in his face and, frigging his weapon on Julie’s teats, defies her father: “You are ill used? Call not on the opinion of later times, but take matters into your own hands now. Are you a man? Then exert yourself a little.”
“Coward, were I to get free you’d run off in a panic!”
“You are quite right. But you are not going to get free, I have you in my power, I enjoy the situation; would you deprive me of enjoyment? Try.”
“Everything you have, you owe to me.”
“You have only yourself to blame for that,” the Minister said; and took hold of his benefactor’s prick, massaged it; then bade me endeavor to bring it to life. But my efforts were fruitless also; seeing this, he said to Delcour, “Separate this man from his family, attach him to that stake. The Queen having left to my discretion the choice of tortures that are to prelude your deaths,” Saint-Fond continued, now addressing the two women, “I mean to subject you to a certain amount of lewd handling; Cloris will be witness to it.”
Juliette Page 39
