Juliette

by Marquis de Sade

  “Exactly!” I interrupted; “that is his single motive for exposing his doctrine; nothing but wickedness on his part, but he won’t believe it.”

  “I believe you are wrong: and you see perfectly well that my actions correspond in every point to my manner of thinking: convinced that the torture of being reunited with the maleficent molecules will be quite mild for the person as maleficent as they, I cover myself with crimes in this world so as to have less to suffer in the next.”

  “As for me,” retorted Clairwil, “I soil myself with them because they please me, because I believe them one of the ways of serving Nature, and because, since nothing of me is going to survive, it matters bloody little how I behave in this world.”

  Thus far had we come in our conversation when we heard a carriage enter the courtyard and stop; Noirceuil was announced, then introduced. With him he brought a youth of sixteen, never had I clapped eyes on one so fair.

  “Bless me,” murmured the Minister, “I’ve only this minute finished giving these ladies an analysis of hell; could it be that my dear Noirceuil arrives to tempt me into meriting it a little?”

  “Only too true,” Noirceuil returned; “you might damn yourself wondrously at this pretty little chap’s expense, I fetched him here for that very purpose. He is the son of the Marquise de Rose, the same whom last week you sent to the Bastille upon charges—what were they? plotting against the Crown?”

  “That was the pretext, as I recall.”

  “And your aim, presumably, was to procure yourself this child and perhaps some money besides?”

  “Precisely.”

  “Then I was not mistaken. At any rate the Marquise, knowing of our connections, sought audience with me; I had one of your clerks draw up a writ, and this morning she and I had a chat together. Here’s the result of our negotiations,” Noirceuil said, thrusting young Rose into the Minister’s arms, “fuck and sign. I’ve also a hundred thousand crowns to turn over to you.”

  “He’s pretty,” said Saint-Fond, kissing the lad, “exceedingly pretty; but he comes at a bad moment… we’ve been up to horrors; I’m exhausted.”

  “Tush,” Noirceuil replied, “the boy has all the qualities needed to restore you to life, of that I’m certain.”

  Rose and Noirceuil, who had not yet taken supper, joined us at table. Saint-Fond said, when the meal was over, that he wished to have me on hand while he amused himself with the youth, and he proposed that Noirceuil lie with Clairwil, both of whom seemed pleased by the arrangement; and the company retired.

  “I fear I shall have to put you to contribution,” Saint-Fond declared, “for attractive though this child undeniably is, I foresee I’ll have trouble stiffening. Unbutton him for me, my pet, roll his shirt above his waist and, that’s it, leave his breeches hanging just above his knees, quite, that’s the style I adore.”

  And as the ass I bared for his delectation was nothing short of luscious, Saint-Fond, polluted by me, kissed it fervidly and long, while frigging a juvenile prick we soon saw reach a most creditable stand.

  “Suck it,” my lover bade me; “I’ll tongue his asshole in the meantime. I believe that, between the two of us, we should be able to wheedle a discharge out of him.”

  Next, his greed aroused by the thought of the fuck I was about to pump forth, Saint-Fond said he would change places with me; this we did so dextrously that scarcely had he got the boy’s prick in his mouth than he felt it filled by a most abundant ejaculation; he swallowed every drop down.

  “Oh, Juliette,” he confided to me, smacking his lips, “food for the gods, that. I thrive upon no other.”

  Then instructing the boy to get into bed and to await us without falling asleep, Saint-Fond conducted me to his boudoir.

  “Juliette,” said he, “I must give you the particulars concerning an affair upon which Noirceuil himself is by no means thoroughly informed.

  “The Marquise de Rose, one of the most beautiful women of the Court, was once my mistress, and the child Noirceuil brought here this evening is mine. I became interested in him two years ago, for two years the Marquise prevented me from satisfying a passion: and I was obliged to bide my time until my position was strong enough to permit me to act without risk. It was not until recently, my prestige and credit towering upon the shattered remnants of hers, that I judged the occasion ripe; my grievances are two: I resent having fucked her, I resent having been kept from fucking her son. Now she trembles; she sends the boy to me, but he arrives rather late in the day: for eighteen months I discharged at the very thought of him, but such enthusiasms are never maintained indefinitely, and I find that this one, if it has not completely disappeared, has ebbed very significantly; however, this adventure retains certain other criminal possibilities which I owe it to myself not to leave unexplored. Oh, yes, I am perfectly willing to pocket the Marquise’s hundred thousand, I am nothing loath to fuck her son; but matters don’t end there, my vengeance has to be considered. She’ll not emerge from the Bastille save in a crate.”

  “And, pray, what do you mean by that?”

  “Just what I say. The Marquise does not know that in the event her son dies, I, though a distant relative, would be sole heir to her fortune; the whore shan’t outlast the month; and after I’ve properly fucked her scion tonight, tomorrow morning we’ll have him breakfast on a cup of chocolate which will remove the single obstacle between me and a windfall.”

  “What an accumulation of crimes!”

  “Not one too many, my dear, if I am to go favorably prepared to that crucial rendezvous with the maleficent molecules.”

  “Astonishing man! And there’s something substantial to be gained from the enterprise, I take it?”

  “Over five hundred thousand livres a year, Juliette, and earning them entails an investment of twenty sous worth of arsenic. Well,” said the Minister, getting to his feet, “we have some fucking ahead of us, let’s not tarry. See for yourself,” he continued, giving me his swollen, rock-hard prick to handle, “behold the influence a criminal thought can have upon my senses. There’s not a woman on earth who’d ever have had cause to complain of my services if I’d been sure of being able to kill her afterward.”

  Young Rose was expecting us; we lay down in bed on either side of him. Saint-Fond covered him with lewd kisses; we frigged him, we sucked him, we tongued his vent; and as his imagination was powerfully astir, Saint-Fond was soon lodged to the hilt in the boy. I titillated my lover’s asshole with my tongue; great though his previous exertions had been that day, seldom had I seen him loose his sperm in such quantity or seen the spasm last so long. He enjoined me to collect his seed from the vessel he had spat it into and to convey it to his mouth; this challenge to my libertine abilities pleased me hugely, I acquitted myself of the chore with gladness in my heart. Next, Rose had to embugger me while the Minister bum-fucked him afresh, and then Saint-Fond buggered me while licking and sucking the ass of our humble little playfellow, whom we wore positively to shreds by dint of the discharging we made him do now into our mouths, now into our asses. Dawn was approaching when Saint-Fond, dead sick of it all but not yet satisfied, ordered me to hold the child fast, and the villain slashed his backside with a hundred or so strokes of a martinet, then beat him with his fists and molested him very cruelly indeed. At eleven o’clock the chocolate was brought in; upon the Minister’s instructions I poisoned the cup in such wise as to ensure his inheritance; and he, while I was preparing the poison that would do away with the son, busied himself penning a note to the commandant of the Bastille, wherein the latter was ordered to administer a similar dose to the mother.

  “And so,” said Saint-Fond, stifling a yawn, “and so,” said he, once death had been insinuated by our fell maneuvers into the veins of the unlucky child, “that’s what I call a day fairly begun; may the Being Supreme in Wickedness but deign to send me four such victims a week, and I shall never cease to sing heartfelt praises unto his name.”

  Noirceuil and Clairwil, waiting for us, took
breakfast together; we joined them in due time. Everything of what had passed remained a secret between the Minister and me. The two men set out for Paris, the doomed child accompanying them; while Clairwil and I returned thither in her carriage.

  Concerning this adventure, my friends, I have nothing further to tell you that you have not already taken for granted: the crime, like all Saint-Fond’s crimes, was crowned with greatest success: he very shortly came into possession of a legacy which proved every bit as valuable as he had originally estimated; and a million livres, representing two years of his new income, was the gift he had the kindness to present me for my help in obtaining it.

  On the road to the capital, Clairwil posed me several questions; I managed to elude them. To be sure, I spoke of our lewd activities—there would have been no point attempting to conceal them, she would not have believed me had I denied them; but as for the rest, I hid it all, which was according to Saint-Fond’s wishes. During that journey I took the opportunity to remind my friend of her promise to secure my admission to her libertine club; she gave me her word that I would be received the next time it met; we entered the city, kissed, and said goodbye.

  Part Three

  My friends, it is time I tell you a little about myself, and above all describe my opulence, fruit of the most determinedly dissolute living, in order that you will be able to contrast it with the state of indigence and adversity wherein my sister, who had chosen good behavior, was languishing already. Your outlook and philosophy will suggest to you what conclusions are to be drawn from these comparisons.

  I lived on a grand scale, on a perfectly enormous scale; you must surely have suspected as much, what with the expenses I had to make in behalf of my lover. But leaving aside the innumerable things required for his pleasure, I had to myself a superb town house in Paris, an exquisite property by Sceaux at Barrière-Blanche, as delightful a little dwelling as ever you saw, twelve Lesbians were perpetually in my train, four equally engaging chambermaids, a reader, a night nurse, three carriages, ten horses, four valets chosen for their virility and excellence of member, all the other appurtenances of a very great household, and after salaries and upkeep had been deducted I was left with a balance of two million to throw away on trifles of one kind or another. You will concede, I believe, that something is to be said for the way I had managed my affairs.

  Would you like my daily life described?

  I rose every day at ten. Until eleven I saw nobody except intimate friends; from then until one, my toilette, at which all my retinue assisted; promptly at one o’clock I gave private audience to those individuals who came to solicit my favors, or to the Minister when he happened to be in Park. At two I hied myself to Barrière-Blanche where, every day, I would find awaiting me what had been delivered by tasteful and conscientious procuresses, to wit: four new men, and four new women, with whom I would very wantonly, very amply, indulge my caprices. To obtain some idea of the objects I used to receive there, you have only to know that not one of them cost me less than twenty-five louis, and I frequently paid double that; nor is there any imagining what of the delicious and rare was purveyed to me in either sex; at these trysts I more than once met women and girls of rank and the highest station; sweet were the joys, yes, elaborate were the pleasures I tasted in that house. I would return to town at four in the afternoon, and always dine with friends. I shall not speak of my board: nowhere in Paris was there anything to match it for splendor, for delicacy, for profusion; and yet I was a hard mistress to my cooks and wine steward, demanding that they ever outdo themselves; but I need not press the point, you are familiar enough with my extreme intemperance. It is perhaps a mild vice, gourmandise; it is one of my favorites nonetheless; for I have always been of the opinion that unless you carry this one to excess you can never properly enjoy the others. After those royal repasts I used to go out to the theater; or entertain the Minister if it was one of his evenings.

  Regarding my wardrobe, my gems, my furniture, and my savings, though at this period I had been scarcely two years with Monsieur de Saint-Fond, I believe four million would be a low figure for the value of the lot; I had half that sum in gold, and used sometimes, after Clairwil’s example, to fling up the lids of my treasure chests and masturbate frenziedly: I love crime, and see! I would gloat, discharging over the thought, see, here at my disposal are all the means I need for committing it. Oh, my good friends, ’tis a very sweet idea and what seas of fuck have I not spilled entertaining it. Did I desire a new piece of jewelry, another dress, anything, and my lover—who disliked having me wear the same thing more than twice—would satisfy me immediately; and in return for all that nothing was required of me save lawless conduct, lechery, libertinage, and prodigious care in arranging the Minister’s frolics. It was thus that by flattering my tastes I found them gratified, every one; through my surrender to every sensual irregularity my senses were kept in a constant drunken exhilaration.

  But such comforts, such joys—what was my moral situation as a result of them? Ah, of this I am reluctant to speak, and yet however I must. The terrific libertinage I practiced day in and day out had so rusted and decayed the workings of my soul, to such a degree had I been envenomed by the pernicious advice, the vicious examples I was fairly deluged with from all sides and all the time, that I declare to you, I do not think I’d have given a penny out of my hoard to rescue someone on the brink of starvation. Indeed, about this time a dreadful famine broke out in the vicinity of my country home; all the folk in those parts were reduced to the very worst distress: I recall hideous scenes, girls sold their bodies by the roadside, waifs were abandoned, there were several suicides; droves of people came begging to my door; I held firm and deliberately and impudently reasserted my uncharitable disposition by laying out fabulous sums for the improvement of my lawns and shrubberies. But how can one possibly bestow alms, was my insolent rejoinder, when one is in the midst of having mirrored boudoirs built in one’s park, and one’s paths beautified by sculptured Cupids, Aphrodites, and Sapphos? Everything that could move a heart of stone was exhibited to my tranquil gaze; it got them nowhere, steadfast I remained: weeping mothers, naked infants, ghostlike figures wasted by hunger, I simply smiled, shook my head, and throughout those trying months slept as soundly as ever before and ate with an increased appetite. Taking stock of my sensations, I discovered that what I was feeling bore out my teachers’ predictions perfectly: instead of a disagreeable sentiment of pity, there was kindled in me a certain restlessness, a commotion produced by the evil I fancied I was doing in turning those wretches away empty-handed, and within my nerves there was a certain rush of heat much like the blaze ignited in us whenever we violate a law or subdue a prejudice. I suddenly recognized how delightful putting these principles into practice could be; and I understood that if the spectacle of misery caused by unkind fate can be sublimely voluptuous for those with minds trained and enriched by such doctrines as had been inculcated in mine, then the spectacle of misery for which one has oneself been responsible must surely intensify this pleasure; as you know, mine is a fertile imagination, it now began to run riot. The logic of the thing was eminently simple: I reaped pleasure merely from denying to the destitute the wherewithal that would have brought them respite; ah, what might I not experience from being the direct and sole cause of that destitution? If, said I, it is sweet to refuse to do good, it must be heavenly to do evil. I summoned up this idea, played with it during those critical moments when the flesh catches fire from the sparks emitted by an excited brain; moments when one is particularly apt to heed the voice of desires become that much more strident, that much more imperious with the receding into unimportance, and finally into nullity, of all else. The dream once dreamt and over, one may subside again into prudence and sobriety—it requires little or no effort. Purely intellectual wrongs are always easily effaced. They harm no one; but, unfortunately, the thing is likely to go farther. Ah, one says to oneself, what shall the deed itself do to me if the mere grating of the though
t upon my nerves has been able to affect them so keenly? The temptation is enormous: one makes the accursed dream come true, and its existence is a crime.

  Less than a mile from my chateau stood a humble cottage belonging to a peasant, one Martin Des Granges; in this world he had little else beyond his eight children and a wife who for kindliness and cheerfulness and thrift was a veritable treasure to the man; would you believe it? this asylum of poverty and virtue excited my fury and wickedness. Very true it is, to this I bear witness, that crime is a delectable thing; very certain it is that the flame it darts through our whole being is what sets alight the torch of lust, that it requires but the thought of crime to hurl us into a lubricious ferment.

  I had taken Elvire with me the day I visited that place, and with me also I had some phosphorus in a jar; upon arriving, I instructed that witty little jade to go in to entertain the family, saying I would join her in a minute; whereupon I slipped off and buried the combustible amidst the hay in the loft above the room where the wretches slept. I climb back down, enter, the youngsters kiss me, we play games together, the mother and I chat about the details of her household. The father asks if he may offer me some refreshment? He endeavors to be as hospitable as his dreadfully scanty means permit. … I am not for all that swerved an inch from my purpose, not in the least melted; what are my emotions? I inspect them and find it is not a tedious pity that pervades me, but a delicious irritation which racks me to the core of my being: a mere touch and I could discharge ten times over. I distribute renewed caresses to every member of this wonderful family into whose midst I have just sown the seeds of murder; my fell deceit is at its height; the blacker grows my gratuitous treachery, the more violent the itch in my cunt. To the mother I give some ribbons, candy to the brats; we take our leave, start for home; but I am in such a state of excitement, of very delirium, that I feel my knees ready to buckle and must beg Elvire to come to my relief. We turn off the road into a thicket, I raise my skirts, I spread my legs … she puts her hand to my sex, has scarce inserted her fingers when I discharge; never before had I known anything like those terrible moments. “What ails you, Madame?” asked Elvire, unaware of what I had just done.