Juliette

by Marquis de Sade

  This preliminary examination completed, he lays himself down on a kind of narrow upholstered bench, and then begins a veritable parade; all those present, male and female, file up and one by one straddle the bench, squat over his face, and shit into his mouth. Palmire steps first to the fore, and when she has eased herself she kneels down beside his Lordship, takes his prick in her mouth, and sucks on it throughout the rite. Next, Montalme and I present ourselves simultaneously in order that he be able, as he so desires, to handle one ass while the other is yielding. From nastiness the libertine moves straight to horrors; he gives Delcour instructions to flog the seven women, and I rub his prick upon the heads he has had me detach for this purpose.

  After that three tableaux take form before his eyes: my two fuckers embugger two of my tribades; in the center, Delcour flogs the third; at the foot of each group reclines one of the little girls Saint-Fond is to depucelate, and for this task he is now getting himself in readiness: Palmire and I are arraying him for fight, she by socratizing him, I by means of prick-friggery. Rampant, the libertine shivers the three forward pucelages, turns Fulvie over and sinks his lance in her bum and discharges. I suck his weapon to restore it to true and temper; he would have the headsman hold for him all the women, not excepting me; to each of us he applies two hundred strokes; then it is he who holds the women and bids Delcour embugger them all. While Delcour is performing, the Minister kisses them upon the mouth during all the scene, in which I figure too.

  Then Saint-Fond led each maiden away into a remote chamber and passed a brief interval with her alone. We do not know what he told them, nor what he did; nor dared we even question them when they were brought back. In all likelihood he apprised them of their impending deaths, for each returned weeping from the interview. While Saint-Fond’s consultations were in progress Delcour indicated to me that a certain subtle lubricious byplay ordinarily followed this announcement; and that since the outset of his acquaintance with the Minister, he, Delcour, had always observed that pronouncing sentence left his Lordship overwhelmed by a sweet and mysterious anguish. Such was now the case, for he came back profoundly agitated, flushed, and marvelously erected.10

  “Very well,” said he, rubbing his hands together, lust’s froth on his lips, “let’s take counsel. How shall we do them to death? Their agonies must be frightful, you understand, indescribable. Delcour, my lad, cudgel your wits, I expect you to outdo yourself in inventiveness: these poor swine are to endure one after the other all of hell’s tortures, it will desolate me if they get away with less.”

  And so saying he gave Fulvie a warm kiss; it was very obviously she who most aroused him.

  “Delcour,” he went on, “let me recommend this pretty little thing to you; she’ll look stunning on your wheel, those plump white buttocks were made for its spikes.”

  Wherewith he sank his teeth into her, bit her in half a dozen places, drawing blood from each; one of those bites cost her the nipple off her left teat, and the roguish Minister swallowed it. He popped his prick into her asshole for a moment, then plucked it out again, got hold of Delcour’s engine, and rammed it into the vent he’d vacated.

  “The executioner must fuck his victim,” said he, “protocol demands it.”

  While Delcour was complying, Saint-Fond’s fingernails raked and tore the child’s buttocks, thighs, breasts, and he lapped up the blood as he made it flow; he had Palmire come forward, Palmire for whom, it appeared, he also had a prodigious weakness, and he said to her, “Behold, ’tis thus I treat little girls who stiffen my tool.”

  Those words were scarce out of his mouth when he drove the selfsame tool into her ass: after some bucking and heaving he had her clamber upon a chair so he could proceed with her buttocks in better view; and beside her he had Délie take the same stance; then the three girls ranged themselves in a semicircle around him; they knelt; and he molested their bosoms while Blaisine frigged his prick. He ran pins into those three unfortunates’ still but half-formed breasts, with a penknife he gashed them, then immediately brought a hot iron into play and cauterized the wounds. And I? I was busy keeping his excitement at a pitch, having, pursuant to his orders, Delcour’s prick in my bowels and the prick of a valet in either hand. With cords the Minister bound the kneeling three into a compact group, their backs together, and with a martinet whose steel tips were arrowheads, edged as well as pointed, made a very hash of their mammaries; throughout these pageantries Palmire’s ass was constantly there wherever he looked; taking respite from his labors, he many times flung himself upon it and sucked it to recover strength.

  “No dallying,” said he. rising up again, “set the stage. We’ll have some more of the whip.”

  The seven women—I was left out—were tied to specially constructed columns; in their upraised hands they each held a crucifix; also upon crucifixes the four tribades were standing, and seemingly treading them contemptuously under foot; while the three victims found support upon cannonballs studded with nails all over, in such wise that their feet were lacerated owing to the weight of their bodies. The victims were cinctured around the breast by a leather strap, first wet, and as it dried, shrinking ever tighter; a device impended above the head of each and Saint-Fond, controlling a small crank, could bring its needle-sharp point down so that it penetrated to whatever depth desired into the cranium of the girl; other instruments, these resembling two-tined forks and likewise needle-pointed, and also controlled by Saint-Fond, were aimed at their eyes; yet another point was there to receive their navels in the event that, jostled by the blows of the whip, they might perchance slip forward; and each of the victims, arranged as I have said, was flanked by tribades, who were free of all such intricate harnesses.

  Saint-Fond at first uses the switches Delcour and I hand over to him; he metes out a hundred strokes to each victim and deals each tribade fifty; the second round sees the steel-tipped martinet in service, each victim is favored with two hundred blows thereof, each tribade with a mere dozen. Then Saint-Fond starts his machineries working; the poor children, pricked in this place and that, set up a clamor such as would have melted the heart of any villain made of less stern stuff than we. Sensing a mounting irritation in his prick, whence fuck is already oozing, Saint-Fond quickly has Louise brought to him, that Louise, sixteen years old, whom he has singled out to be executed first. Much does he kiss her, lick and fondle her bleeding ass, give her his prick to suck and his asshole; then turns her over to Delcour who, once he has slipped his goad into both her orifices, fastens her down upon a long table and subjects her to that Chinese torture which consists in being chopped up alive, by less than inches, into twenty-four thousand pieces. Saint-Fond, seated on the lap of the lackey fucking him, assists at the spectacle, and between his thighs grips Hélène, next on the list and whose ass he molests while I frig him and he tongues Palmire’s mouth. The torture used upon the second consists in having her eyes gouged out and after that of being spread on a Saint Andrew’s cross and broken alive. Saint-Fond attends to the matter while I thrash him. All the victim’s limbs are broken, all her joints pulled loose; in that state she is offered to him again, he embuggers her and while he instruments her anus, Delcour finishes her off with a mace, dashing out her brains so that they fairly splatter into Saint-Fond’s mouth and eyes.

  The charming Fulvie alone remains, surrounded by the gory vestiges of her two companions; can she be in doubt of her fate? Saint-Fond points to the wheel.

  “Look there,” says the Minister, “I’ve saved the best for you.”

  And the traitor does not fail to caress her and to kiss her tenderly upon the lips; yet again he embuggers her before delivering her to the killer. Delcour has her now; hideous are her screams; she is fitted into position, fastened there, and the wheel begins to turn. Fucked now by one valet, now by the other, Saint-Fond sounds Delcour’s ass while alternately kissing Palmire’s behind and mine, and in a detached and fugitive manner fingering the three unoccupied assholes. Very soon the ascending volume and t
one of the victim’s screams give us report of her pain. Violent you may be certain it was; judge thereof by this detail: the blood was coming from her like one of those fine rains blown almost to mist by a strong wind. Saint-Fond, eager to prolong the game to the utmost, varies his tableaux and his festive doings too. He embuggers my four tribades in swift succession, while we all, Delcour included, compose new groups for him. The spike-surfaced drum, ever contracting, begins to attack the nerves, and the cries of the victim are stilled as overwhelmed by suffering she faints away; and that’s the very moment when Saint-Fond, weary of horrors and cruelty, finally unleashes his fuck into Palmire’s superb ass while he gamahuches Delcour’s, palpates mine with one hand and Montalme’s with the other, watches one of the valets embugger Blaisine on the floor beside the fatal wheel, and is whipped by Délie who also sucks his tongue to hasten his discharge.

  Saint-Fond’s shrieks, his disport, his foul, ungodly language were all appalling; he was only half-conscious when we bore him to the bed where, he nevertheless gave me to understand, he wished to have me pass the night at his side.

  This peerless libertine, quite as though he had just performed wonders of charity, enjoyed ten hours of blissful undisturbed sleep. I watched his rest; and if I had doubted it before, I was convinced now that it is easy to build oneself a conscience to sort evenly with one’s opinions, and that after the initial effort has been made, nothing afterward stands in one’s way. Oh, my friends, believe me when I say that he who has succeeded in ridding his heart of every idea and trace of God or religion, he whose gold or influence removes him beyond the reach of the law, he who has toughened his conscience and brought it firmly into line with his attitudes and cleared it utterly and forever of guilty remorse; he, I say, and be certain thereof, he may do whatever he pleases and whenever, and never know an instant’s fear.

  When he woke up, the Minister asked me if it were not true that he was the wickedest man in the world. Knowing the pleasure I would give by answering in the affirmative, I did not by any means contradict him; and he smiled.

  “You flatter me.”

  “Do I? It is sincere.”

  “I rather suppose so. Ah, my angel,” said he, yawning, “could it be otherwise with me? Is it my fault if this is how I am, and if Nature put the most irresistible taste for vice in me, and not so much as a hint of a bent for virtue? Don’t you agree that I serve her quite as well as some other in whom she ingrained a fondness for doing good deeds? That seems self-evident to me; and this likewise, that there would be no greater folly than willfully to cross her purpose as it regards us individually; I am the poisonous plant she makes grow by the balsam tree, and find my manner of being no more to be regretted than I would esteem enviable that of the virtuous man; and once we realize that upon earth there must be the bitter together with the better, can it make one jot of difference to us whether we are numbered in this category or that? Imitate me, Juliette,11 your native leanings are in this direction: let no criminal act daunt you, the more atrocious it is, the more pleasing to Nature; guilt? The only guiltiness is in reluctance, in backhanging; lift up your head, beloved girl, and go ever forward. To the dreary mediocre portion of mankind leave all notions and prattle such as that righteousness and modesty must accompany fleshly pleasure, they’ll fail utterly of it every time. For it cannot possibly delect save when one outsteps every limit in one’s quest; the proof thereof is that there must be a breaking of restraining rules before pleasure begins to be pleasure; go farther yet, break still another and the irritation becomes more violent, and necessarily so with each ascending step; and you do not really attain to the true goal whither these pleasure-takings point until the ferment of the senses has reached the extremest pitch, until you have got to the final limit of what our human faculties can endure, in such wise that your nerves are so prodigiously wrought upon that they are frayed as if to paralysis, smitten into a convulsion that resembles standstill and shocked insensibility. He who also would know the whole wild power and all the magic of lubricity’s pleasures must thoroughly well grasp that only by undergoing the greatest possible upheaval in the nervous system may he procure himself the drunken transport he must have if he is properly to enjoy himself. For what is pleasure? Simply this: that which occurs when voluptuous atoms, or atoms emanated from voluptuous objects, clash hard with and fire the electrical particles circulating in the hollows of our nerve fibers. Therefore, that the pleasure be complete, the clash must be as violent as possible; but so delicate is the nature of this sensation that a mere nothing can spoil or nullify it; hence, the soul must be prepared, tranquil, its serenity ensured by certain mental attitudes or certain physical postures, so that it lies as though in a calm and smiling vale; and then the imagination’s fire must set the furnace of the senses alight. From this point onward give that imagination free rein, act at its every behest, its every whim; and labor not only to grant it what it desires but, by making practical use of your philosophy and above all of the chill hardness of your heart and your lack of conscience, enable it to forge, to weave, to create new fantasies which, injecting energies into the voluptuous atoms, cause them to collide at greater speed and more potently with the molecules they are to make vibrate; these vibrations are your delight. From what I have just said, you will appreciate, Juliette, how obstacles, exerting their restrictive influence upon the form of your delirium, will always tend to confine it within the boundaries of decency and virtue, thus altering its essence; upon your delirium obstacles of any sort have a dampening effect, water poured on fire; a hindering effect, so many chains, so many clogs encumbering the spirited young destrier that asks only to take the bit in its mouth and break into a gallop.

  “In such cases, the impediment represented by religion is without doubt the first that ought to be liquidated, being as it is a perpetual source of discomfort and remorse to anyone languishing in its grip; but combating superstition is only half the job, it will remain unfinished so long as the altars of a fantastical God are left standing. No, there’s not much to the former operation, neither a great deal of intelligence nor a great deal of brawn is needed to dispose of religion’s disgusting chimeras, since not one of them can hold up under examination. But that’s not the end to it, Juliette, not by any means, there are countless other duties, other social conventions, other barriers which will soon become as much a nuisance to you as religion was, if, bold and independent of mind, you do not make it a rule to thrust aside anything that lies in your path. Just as hampered by these contemptible restraints, you’ll soon discover them interfering with your pleasures equally as much as his belief interferes with the believer’s; if, on the contrary, you have ridden roughshod over everything in order to attain pleasure, and if you have protected your rear by taming your conscience and lulling it nicely off to sleep, then, in this other case, there is no doubt but that your enjoyment will be as intense and complete as anything Nature allows of; and such will be your frenzy that its excessive consequences will be all if not more than your physical faculties can endure. Nevertheless, do not expect to be as happy in the beginning as, by dint of persistence, you shall be later on; no matter what you do to counter them, prejudices will continue a long while to harass you, and the more severely the more formidable the obstacles you surmount: baneful, fatal effects of education, for which the only remedy is deep thought, indefatigable perseverance, and entrenched habits especially.

  “But little by little—my intention is not to discourage you—little by little your mind will become fortified; habit, that second nature which sometimes becomes more powerful than first, which is at length able to annihilate those very natural principles that seem the most invulnerable, the most sacred, this habit that is essential to vice, that I cannot too strongly urge you to acquire, and upon which success in the career you have chosen depends; this habit, I say, will dull your remorse, quell it, silence your conscience, put a stop to the silly bleating that comes from the heart; and then you’ll see things in a very different lig
ht indeed. Amazed at the fragility of the bonds that held you captive once, you’ll look with a certain regret, yes, with a certain nostalgia back upon the days when, stupidly ensnared, innocently, you were able to resist pleasures; and though a few paltry obstacles may have got in the way of your felicity, the charm of having known it, and the divine memories you will have of it, will cause the thorns they wished to strow in your path to appear as very flowers. Well now, in the circumstances where I have placed you, with the security I guarantee you, what have you to fear? Reflect a moment upon your marvelous situation; and if the certainty of getting off scot-free furnishes crime its divinest allurements, who in all the world is better placed than you to enjoy yourself to death? Consider now your other advantages: eighteen years, perfect health, the prettiest face, the noblest figure, all the wit one could ask for, intelligence, the temperament of a Messalina, the riches virtually of a Croesus, a splendid reputation, no handicaps, no chains, no relations, friends who adore you … and you’re afraid of the law? Put by your fears forever; if some day the sword of justice is bared against you, Juliette, protect yourself with the shield of your wiles and winningness; instead of this languor where you lie becalmed in a sea of voluptuous delights, adopt another mood, put on seductive raiments, show yourself about, and crowds will fall at your feet; bestir yourself and a kneeling world will provide you with ten thousand champions, they will shed their blood to the last drop defending the name of their most cherished idol and to keep it pure; ten thousand hearts will beat for you, and where others would have judges to dread you’ll find none but devoted lovers. Let the isolated, the friendless, the penniless individual, he who counts for nought, who scarce has an identity, let him groan under vulgar yokes; they were designed for him only. But you, Juliette, ah! hurl all Nature into confusion, wreak havoc, destroy, rend the whole universe asunder; men will consider your anger godlike and do you divine worship if perchance you deign to smile upon the world, whensoever you cast a crumb of kindness to it; and will dread you when in wrath you trample upon it; but it is all one, whatever you do, you’ll always be God to the common sort and mass of humankind.