Juliette

by Marquis de Sade

  “It’s simply that I prefer to butcher males, I’ve never pretended otherwise: I enjoy avenging my sex. And if it be true that the other possesses a superiority over ours, is not the fictitious offense to Nature all the graver when we kill men?”

  “One would suppose that you regret that this offense is null.”

  “You grasp me aright, my dove, for me it is a source of immense despair ever to seek the crime and nowhere to find anything but the prejudice instead. O fuck! by God’s envenoming fuck, when,” she sighed, “oh, when shall I be able to do an authentic evil?”

  They fetched us the youth.

  “Shall we need an executioner?”

  “Don’t you think we can dispatch the thing well enough by ourselves?”

  “Why, I believe we can try.”

  “Let us.”

  We had our victim installed in an adjoining cell where there awaited us everything needed for the piecemeal destruction of the young man; his agony was slow, it was ghastly, the infernal Clairwil drank of his blood and swallowed one of his testicles. Less given to these masculine murders than she, my transports were probably not so violent; killing a woman, at any rate, would have excited me more; be that as it may, I discharged copiously; and, quitting that seraglio, we directed our steps toward the other.

  “Let’s go to the room where extraordinary things are accomplished,” I proposed. “If you don’t care to do anything, there is no reason why we must; but we shall be able to watch.”

  A man in his forties, he was a priest, had a pretty little girl of fifteen hanging by her hair from the ceiling; he was stabbing her with a long needle, blood covered the floor, he embuggered Clairwil while gnawing my ass. Another was plying a whip over the breasts and face of a beautiful girl of twenty: he confined himself to inquiring, would we like to have the same done to us? It was by one ankle the third had suspended his victim, most ingeniously, we agreed, and laughed merrily at the sight: she looked to be about eighteen and superbly made; the position she was in caused her cunt to start wide open, into it the villain was ramming a wooden member studded with nails. Noticing our presence, he invited Clairwil to hold the girl’s free leg and to pull on it so as to open her cunt farther still, and he had me kneel beside him, ordering me to rub his prick with one hand, to massage his asshole with the other: it was not long before Clairwil and I were drenched in the blood gushing from the victim. The fourth person in action was an elderly magistrate; upon a grill he had chained a delicious twelve-year-old and by means of a huge charcoal brazier, which the scoundrel now approached and now drew away, he was roasting her by inches; I leave you to imagine what were the screams the poor little soul would give vent to whenever her tormentor saw fit to resume the cooking of her flesh. When he saw us, he shoved the stove into place and asked for my ass: I present it, while he drives into it he mauls Clairwil’s; but he discharges, ’tis prematurely and a calamity: the torture is interrupted while there is yet an hour or so of life in the victim, the villain’s joy is cut short, he curses us for having come along and spoiled everything for him.

  All this had put me in a sanguine mood, I insisted upon proceeding to the murder room; Clairwil was nothing loath to follow me: although she was not fond of killing women, neither was she opposed to their destruction, her native tigerishness leading her to accept whatever flattered her tastes.

  I had twenty girls stood in line and from among them selected one of seventeen, she was as engaging a creature as any you have ever seen. A vacant cell was designated to me by the duenna, and in the three of us went.

  The wretch I was about to sacrifice, fancying I would be sooner moved to pity than a man, cast herself at my feet in a ludicrous effort to sway me: a very angel for beauty and full of grace, her methods would certainly have succeeded with a less toughened adversary, with someone whose soul was less corrupt than mine. I had developed beyond the point where pleas are heard. Rather, the only effect her wiles had upon me was to fan the flames of my irritation…. And indeed, even had it not been so, would I have dared relent in Clairwil’s presence? After having this lovely girl suck me two hours straight, after having slapped, buffeted, beaten, and thwacked her, after having maltreated her in every conceivable way, I had her bound upon a table, and drove a dagger again and again into her body while my friend, squatting over me, simultaneously titillated my clitoris, the interior of my vagina, and my asshole. Rarely had I enjoyed a happier discharge, I literally discharged myself dry; and afterward was so exhausted I felt it would be useless to return to the assembly hall. Instead, I invited Clairwil to come home with me; we supped and then retired to bed together. It was then that charming personage, inclining to the belief I had lacked somewhat of determination in my latest performance, decided she had best speak to me, and this is what she said.

  “The truth, Juliette, is that, a certain undeniable progress notwithstanding, your conscience has yet to reach the stage I should desire; what I demand of it is that it become so warped as to be unable to reassume its former shape; to achieve this there are means to employ; I don’t mind indicating what they are, but I am not so sure you have the strength to apply them. Those means, my dearest friend, are simple in themselves: they consist in doing, immediately, in cold blood, that very thing which, done in the throes of passion, has been able to cause you remorse when later on you recover your wits. This way you strike squarely and hard at the virtuous impulse the instant it bares itself; and this custom of attacking it head on at the first sign of its reappearance, and it tends to reappear once the senses have subsided into calm, this, I say, is one of the most certain fashions of destroying it definitively; employ this secret, it never fails: directly a moment of calm favors the resurgence of virtue, announcing itself under the colors of remorse, for that is always the guise it wears in its endeavor to regain ascendancy over us—then, directly when you perceive it, commit forthwith the act you are wont to regret; by the fourth repetition of the trick you shall hear the nagging voice of conscience no more, and you shall be at peace for the rest of your days. But this is no trifling matter, it calls for strength, discipline, and a certain ruthlessness with oneself: it is, you understand, illusion which invests crime with its attractiveness, and a weak spirit encounters greatest difficulty committing it when, totally self-possessed, illusion there is none. The means I propose are valid nonetheless, indeed, I may assure you that virtue itself will safeguard you from remorse, for you shall have acquired the habit of doing evil at the first virtuous prompting; and to cease doing evil you shall have to stifle virtue. Oh, Juliette, be sure of it, this is the best advice you are apt to receive in this important connection; and you realize its worth, since by carrying it out you surmount the most painful of situations, victory being yours whether you choose to combat it by vice or to annihilate it by virtue.”

  “Clairwil,” said I to my friend, “your suggestions are excellent, doubtless, but perhaps unnecessary. I am not without experience in the profession of vice, and the soul in me requires no fortification. Neither does my purpose. Rest assured, you shall never see me falter whatever the deed to be perpetrated whether for the sake of my material advantage or for that of my pleasure.”

  “Dear heart,” said Clairwil, hugging me to her, “I beseech you to have no other gods than those.”

  Somewhat later, Clairwil called upon me and proposed an unusual exploit. We were in the season of Lent.

  “Shall we go and make our devotions?”

  “Are you mad?”

  “Not at all. I have had a truly extraordinary idea in my head for quite a while, and you are the companion I want to have in this adventure. At the Carmelite convent there’s a friar of thirty-five, the most gorgeous creature in the whole wide world and I have had my heart set upon him for the past six months; I simply must be fucked by him, and this is how we shall manage it: we shall go to have him hear our confession, tell him a few tales, lewd ones, he’ll become aroused, I am absolutely certain we need do no more to have him make us a proposition:
he will explain how we are to get together, we’ll go to the rendezvous and we’ll drain the holy brother’s balls…. And more: we’ll go to communion after that, we’ll hide the hosts one way or another and bring them home; and at lunch we’ll find some not very Christian use to which these abject symbols may be put.”

  Here I felt moved to remark to my friend that of her two schemes, the first struck me as far more sensible than the second.

  “Once we have ceased to believe in God, my dear,” I pointed out, “the profanations you have in mind become so much pure childishness, the worse for being useless.”

  “Childishness, yes,” she rejoined, “that I cannot deny. But they excite me mentally and for that I value them. Nothing, in my view, is surer proof against backsliding: one cannot accord any seriousness to objects one treats in such a manner. May I add that I suspect doubts may still be warranted of your firmness in these matters?”

  “Ah, Clairwil, banish them out of your mind!” I retorted most energetically. “You err. If anything, my atheism is perhaps solider than your own. At any rate, it is not to be bolstered by such nonsense as you have just proposed; I shall join you in these undertakings because they please you, but for me they are mere amusements at best, and in no wise necessary either to the strengthening of my opinions or to their demonstration.”

  “As you like, my beloved,” said Clairwil, “as you like, we shall execute them for pleasure’s sake alone.”

  “Seducing the friar by means of a confession, this is worthy of us; but my stars, Clairwil! profaning a wee bit of a wheatpaste disk which happens to be the idol of imbeciles, why that amounts to no more than tearing up or burning some scrap of paper—”

  “To be sure, but to your scrap of paper no meaning is attached, whereas the better part of Europe assigns a very holy significance to that host, to that crucifix, and that exactly is why I am fond of profaning them: I hit at public opinion, that entertains me, I vomit on the prejudices they strove to inculcate in me when I was young, I obliterate them, that excites me.”

  “Let’s be away,” said I.

  We went by carriage; our simple, artless toilettes conformed wonderfully to our designs, and Brother Claude, whom we asked for and who quickly seated himself in the confessional, could not have taken us for anything but models of piety.

  Clairwil opened fire first. It was plain, the poor Friar was listing very heavily when my turn came to loose a broadside.

  “Oh, my Father!” I cooed, “grant me much indulgence for I have horrors to divulge to you.”

  “Courage, my child,” stammered Claude, “great is the goodness and mercy of God, He listens to us with infinite understanding; what have you to confess?”

  “Enormities, Father, sins which a frightful libertinage makes me commit every day: young though I am, I have violated every commandment, I have ceased, yes, ceased to pray and God has become a stranger to my soul. Oh, intercede in my behalf, very sore is my distress! And my lewd doings … ah, you shall tremble when you hear about them, I hardly dare speak—”

  “Are you married?”

  “Yes, Father, and not a day passes but I outrage my husband by behaving in the very worst way.”

  “A lover … a tendency?”

  “An indomitable longing for men in general, and a liking for women too—a fondness for every possible variety of debauchery—”

  “You are then, I take it, hot-blooded—”

  “Hot-blooded? Insatiable, Father, that’s what I am, it’s this hunger that is dragging me farther and farther into vice, hurling me so violently into it that I dread I must succumb in spite of all the aid religion can be…. Must I avow it, dare I? Oh, Father, at this very moment, the pleasure of holding this secret conversation with you is upsetting me, aye, convulsing me, counteracting the effects of pardon … I seek God in this holy place and whom do I find? A charming man beneath his cassock and, woe is me, I sense myself ready to forget the Lord—”

  “My daughter,” said the poor Friar, his voice shaking now, “the state you are in afflicts me … only great penances—”

  “Ah, the crudest for me would be never to see you again…. Why is it the ministers of God are as though illuminated by charms that distract from the sole object which ought to occupy us here? My Father, this sanctuary, this interview have not restored me to serenity, instead I … I—oh, heavenly man, your words speed to my heart rather than to my mind, I came hither in search of peace, but it is restlessness, excitement that has hold of me: can we not meet elsewhere? Can we not flee this box, it frightens me; and will you not cease a little to be the man of God and take the part of Juliette’s lover?”

  Claude’s erection stamped him as a true Carmelite: the milk-white and rose-tipped breast I’d cunningly brought into view, my sparkling eyes, gestures, and fumblings which pointed to the emotions I was at grips with … beside himself, the ecclesiastic capitulated.

  “Fair lady,” he replied, and his tone was impassioned, “your friend, in a case very like unto your own, has also proposed things, ah … which your starry gaze inspires and which I … I burn to do, I…. You are two sirens, your sweet words bewitch me and I am no longer able to resist—let’s leave the church; I have a small room, it is not far from here … if you will consent to come, I shall do everything in my power to put you at ease.”

  Then, stumbling from the confessional and grasping Clairwil by the hand: “Follow me, ladies, come with me, the foul fiend has sent you to tempt me; ah, was he not a match for God Almighty Himself? He must then best a poor friar.”

  And out we go.

  Night had fallen, there was no moon; Claude told us to look sharply after him but to keep twenty paces back. He set off for the Vaugirard Barrier, and we soon found ourselves in a mysterious and chilly cell; the good Claude offered us cakes and liqueurs.

  “Excellent sir,” my companion said to him, “enough of this mystical chatter; we know the kind of man we are dealing with; we love you, why, what am I saying? we are quaking from a frantic desire to be fucked by you. Join us in laughing at the ruse we employed to get this far, contrive to make us feel our efforts have not been for nought. Speaking for myself, I tell you I have worshiped you for a year and I have been leaking for two hours in anticipation of your prick. There,” went on our libertine, tossing up her skirts, “there’s where I’d have you lodge it; look, is the cage not fitting for the bird?”

  Promptly flinging herself upon the bed, the slut had the fellow’s engine out in a trice.

  And an uncommon engine it was.

  “Christ’s tears, will you behold it, Juliette!” cried Clairwil, already half swooning away, “here, catch this mast if you can get your hands round it, and steer it at me; be a dear, I’ll do the same for you in a moment.”

  Clairwil is heeded; the bludgeon thunders into a cunt which, fuck-moistened already, had been yawning a welcome to it for fifteen minutes. Oh, my friends, how justly they refer to a Carmelite when wishing to describe the optimum in erected pricks. Our Claude’s member, like unto a mule’s, showed nine and three-eighths inches round the stem and thirteen inches in over-all length, head clear and included; and that formidable head, my friends, I was scarce able to encircle it with both hands. ’Twas the noblest, the most rubicund mushroom the human imagination can picture. By a miracle of Nature, a miracle Nature performs only in behalf of her favorites, Claude had been furnished with three balls … and how full they were! how swollen! ’Twas he himself declared it, not a drop of sperm had he shed in a month. What torrents thereof he spewed into Clairwil’s cunt the moment he touched bottom! and into what transports this enormous ejaculation pitched my voluptuous friend! Fucking her, Claude handled me, and his dextrous manipulation of my clitoris soon wrung the whey from me too. The Friar withdraws; I paw him. Clairwil remains in position. The tool dilates, hardens anew in response to my skillful attentions.4 Claude, breaking away from the hand guiding him, would dive again into the gaping vagina….

  “No, no,” says Clairwil, fen
ding off her impetuous lover, “Juliette, make me desire him, lick my clitoris.”

  And Claude, rather than stand idle during these preliminaries, falls to caressing me; while with one hand he holds Clairwil’s cunt agape for me, he masturbates me with the other. Like the fiery steed that will not be restrained by the bridle or bit, Claude leaps into the beckoning hole; and stretching me out beside Clairwil, the rascal, gone quite berserk, while furiously fucking the one of us pollutes the other with equally prodigious effect.

  “He’s assassinating me, the great swine,” shrieks Clairwil, swearing like one of the damned; “ah, by the balls of the bugger-fucking Almighty, I can’t resist this buffeting, every blow is costing me a pint of sperm—can you not at least kiss me, pig that you are? can’t you stick your filthy tongue as deep into my throat as you’ve buried that club of yours in my womb? Ah, by fuck, I’m coming—but you, keep yourself in check,” she adds, expelling him with a powerful heave of her flanks, “don’t squander your resources, I am going to call upon you again.”

  But poor Claude could not contain himself and prepared to unleash a second emission; seeing what he was up to, I seized his instrument and, stroking it, aimed the boiling flood into Clairwil’s wide-starting cunt. It was with fuck I tried to extinguish the fires fuck ignited.

  “Ah, doublefuck my eyes,” Clairwil expostulated, getting to her feet, “this bugger here would fain break me in two…. Juliette, you’ll not outlive his attack.”

  However, she catches hold of the Friar, begins to rattle his pike; to hasten its elevation, the slut endeavors to mouth him; but the engine of this servant of God is too massive to fit between her lips; resorting to another stratagem, she pokes two fingers into his vent: with the true-born buggers that all friars are, such means seldom fail. In response to Clairwil’s libertine questioning on this head, Claude allows that, as a youth, he played the bardash to his confreres.