Mesdames soon devised another fashion for giving me pleasure; here, all activities centered upon me: I was laid out upon a group of six, with whose voluptuous undulations I sweetly rose and fell, and all the rest came forward by the half-dozen to consult my sensations and slake them with lubricity: one had me suck her cunt, my two hands were busy palpating two more; another, straddling me, frigged herself upon my nipples, yet another rubbed her clitoris against my face; they all discharged, all washed me in their sperm; and you must not suppose I was reluctant or miserly in the release of mine.
Finally, I besought them to embugger me; a cunt was applied to my lips, I drank of its whey; this cunt, drained, was replaced by another each time a new dildo penetrated into my fundament; my guide, the widow, had the same done to her, but cuntwise, and ’twas an ass she fed from.
While I was off rioting at the abbey, Sbrigani devoted himself to replenishing our funds, seriously depleted by my wild spending; by the time I returned he had accomplished the last of a series of six robberies and entirely repaired the damage my extravagance had caused. Happy is the man who learns to settle his expenditures and fill the gaps in his own fortune solely by using the fortunes of others.
This was in the extent of between two and three thousand sequins; we were able to leave Bologna about as rich as we had come.
I was exhausted; but since the excesses of libertinage, as they weary the body, only heat the imagination further, my thoughts were taken up with planning a thousand new debaucheries; I regretted not having done more, and in search of an explanation for my failure could only suppose that it was owing to some mental sluggishness on my part: and it was then I discovered that the remorse one may suffer for not having gone to the limit in crime is superior to anything that afflicts feeble spirits for having strayed away from virtue.
Such was my physical and moral state as we were crossing the Apennines. This vast mountain chain dividing the peninsula along its length holds much of interest for the inquiring traveler; as the road rises, the most extraordinary prospects greet the eye: on the one side stretches the great Plain of Lombardy and on the other lies the Adriatic Sea; a spyglass enables one to see to a distance of fifty leagues.
We dined at the wayside inn at Pietra Mala, with the intention of visiting the volcano. Profoundly devoted to all the irregularities of Nature, adoring everything that characterizes her disorders, her caprices, and the gigantean horrors whereof she gives us renewed examples every day, I had of course to observe this phenomenon; and so, after a meal that was poor despite our policy of always sending a cook ahead of us, we set out on foot across the little stretch of blasted terrain at whose farther end the crater is situated. The zone surrounding it is a waste, uncultivated and littered with pebbles and stones; the temperature of the air mounts as one moves toward it, and one breathes the stench of copper and carbon the volcano exhales; by and by we caught sight of the flame whose heat, curiously enough, was intensified by a fine rain which happened then to start to fall: the fire pit seemed about thirty or forty feet in circumference: strike a spade into the earth anywhere near it, and fire springs up from the ground at that spot….
“It is,” said I to Sbrigani, who stood contemplating this wonder beside me, “it is like my imagination igniting under the strokes of a lash applied to my ass.”
The earth inside that furnace is baked, charred, black; that in its vicinity is like clay, and impregnated with the volcano’s odor. The flame soaring from the pit comes out in an intense gush, it burns and instantly consumes anything tossed into it; its color is a violet blue, like the color of burning brandy. To the right of Pietra Mala is another volcano which only bursts into flame when fire is brought near its edge; nothing so amusing as the experiment we made: by means of a candle we set the whole plain afire. With a mind like mine such things had best never be seen, yes, my friends, I must agree to that; but the candle I touched to the ground set it alight less quickly than the poisonous vapors arising from the place were intoxicating my brain.
“Oh, my dear,” said I to Sbrigani, “Nero’s wish is becoming mine. Did I not foresee that from breathing that monster’s native air I would soon adopt his penchants?”
When rain fills the crater of that second volcano with water, this water boils away in steam, and this steam is cool—O Nature! impenetrable and strange are thy ways and beyond the imitation of mortals….
It is to be feared that the many volcanoes ringing Florence may someday cause it harm: these fears are amply justified by the signs of past upheavals one notices everywhere in the area. They suggested some comparative ideas to me: is it not very probable, said I to myself, that the fiery destructions of Sodom, Gomorrah, etc., made up into miracles for the purpose of instilling in us a terror of the vice which held universal sway among the inhabitants of those cities; is it not altogether likely that the famous conflagrations were caused, not by supernatural agencies, but by natural forces? The region surrounding Lacus Asphaltites, where Sodom and Gomorrah lay, was studded with imperfectly extinct volcanoes; the country there was similar to what it is here. From the geographical parallel I moved on to the parallel of climate; and when I saw that at Sodom as at Florence, at Gomorrah as at Naples, and in the vicinity of Etna as in that of Vesuvius, the population cherish and adore nought but buggery, I came swiftly to conclude that the irregularity of human behavior is closely related to Nature’s own caprices, and that wherever Nature is depraved she also corrupts her children.18 Wherewith I imagined myself transported to those happy Arabian towns, here I am in Sodom, I said, let us do here as the Sodomites do; and poised on the brink of the crater, bending forward over its edge, I presented my bare buttocks to Sbrigani while next to me Augustine and Zephyr imitated us; we changed partners; Sbrigani drove full length into my waiting maid’s pretty ass, and I became my valet’s prey; and while our men toiled in our bowels, Augustine and I gazed dreamily into the pit and masturbated.
“This is indeed a charming pastime I find you at” we suddenly heard declared in a cavernous voice which seemed to issue from behind a bush. “No, no, carry on, carry on, I do not wish to spoil your pleasures, only to take a hand in them,” went on this species of centaur who, as he emerged from hiding and drew near, proved to be of proportions and aspect which exceeded anything we had ever seen in all our life. Seven feet and three inches tall, with, behind huge moustaches, a face both swarthy and awful; we wondered for a moment whether it were not the Prince of Darkness who was hailing us. Surprised at our alarmed stares, “What!” cried he, “have you not heard of the Hermit of the Apennines?”
“Certainly not,” Sbrigani replied, “we have never heard tell of the likes of you!”
“Why, then, come along with me, all four of you, and you shall behold more wonderful sights yet: the business I discover you engaged in leads me to suspect that you deserve to see what I have to show you, and to partake in it too.”
“Giant,” said Sbrigani, “we are fond of extraordinary things, and to witness them there is doubtless nothing we would be unwilling to do; but your tremendous strength, might it not be exerted to the detriment of our liberty?”
“No, because I judge you worthy of my society,” said this singular personage; “but for that, your fears would be fully authorized. Lay them aside, however, and follow me.”
Determined indeed to learn what this adventure held in store for us, we sent Zephyr to tell our entourage to wait for us at the inn until we reappeared there; Zephyr returned from his errand, we set forth, the giant in the lead.
“Have patience,” our guide told us, “the road is long but seven hours of daylight remain and we shall arrive before the veils of night overspread the heavens.”
We walked in total silence, for the giant would have it so; during that march I was able to give all my attention to the landscape.
Leaving the volcanic plain of Pietra Mala we climbed for an entire hour the slope of a high mountain lying to the right; from the pass we finally reached we gazed into an abyss
a full two thousand fathoms deep, and it was down into it our winding path led, through a forest that quickly grew so dense, so dark, we were scarce able to see the way. After three hours of nearly perpendicular descent we came to the edge of a lake; on an isle in its center was to be seen the donjon of the castle where our guide had his abode, of which only the roof could be made out owing to the lofty battlements girting it. We had been some six hours coming this far and during that time we had espied not a single house, not a single individual. A black bark, like a Venetian gondola, was moored to the shore; from there we could take in the tremendous bowl at whose bottom we were: it was rimmed all around by towering mountains whose flanks were covered by forests of pine, larch, and green oak, and ended in barren peaks and snow: words cannot convey to what extent that scene was wild and lonely and forbidding, nay, unearthly. We stepped into the boat, the giant ferried us to the island. His castle lay two furlongs back from the water; we arrived before an iron gate set in the thick outer wall; spanning a moat twenty feet wide was a drawbridge which was raised once we had crossed over it; here was a second wall, again we went through an iron gate, and found ourselves in a belt of trees so close-spaced that we had indeed to force a passage between them, and beyond this enormous hedge was the castle’s third enclosure, a wall ten feet thick and without any gate at all. The giant stoops and lifts a great stone slab no one else would have been able to budge; thus does he uncover a stairway; we precede him down the steps, he replaces the stone; at the farther end of that underground passage we ascend another stairway, guarded by another such stone as I have just spoken of, and emerge from dank darkness into a low-ceilinged hall. It was decorated, littered with skeletons; there were benches fashioned of human bones and wherever one trod it was upon skulls; we fancied we heard moans coming from remote cellars; and we were shortly informed that the dungeons containing this monster’s victims were situated in the vaults underneath this hall.
“I have you in my power,” he said once we had sat down, “I can do with you what I please. Do not, however, be alarmed; the acts I saw you in the midst of performing convinced me that here were kindred spirits such as would merit my hospitality. Supper is being prepared, between now and the time it is ready let me tell you a little about myself.
“I am a Muscovite, born in a small town on the Volga bank. Minski is my name; upon my father’s death I inherited his colossal riches and Nature had proportioned my physical faculties and my tastes to the favors wherewith fortune now gratified me. Sensing myself made for better things than to vegetate in the back country of an obscure province like this that was my birthplace, I traveled; the whole wide world seemed too narrow for my desires, they were limitless and the universe cramped them: born libertine and impious, debauched and perverse, bloodthirsty and ferocious, I visited a thousand far-flung lands to learn their vices, and no sooner adopted one than I refined it. I began with China, the Mongolias, and Tartary; I journeyed throughout all Asia; swerving north again I passed by way of Kamchatka and entered America by the famous Bering Strait. In that extensive part of the world I sojourned practically everywhere, by turns in its politer societies, by turns among its savages, copying none but the crimes of the former, the vices and atrocities of the latter. Sailing east, to your Europe I brought back penchants so dangerous that they condemned me to the stake in Spain, to be broken on the wheel in France, hanged in England, drawn and quartered in Italy; wealth is a guarantee against anything. I crossed over to Africa; there I became most fully aware that what you so foolishly call depravity is neither more nor less than the natural state of man and its particular details usually the result of the environment into which Nature has cast him. Those noble children of the sun laughed at me when I rebuked them for their barbarous treatment of women. ‘And what do you suppose a woman is,’ they would reply, ‘if not a domestic animal Nature gives us for the double purpose of satisfying our needs and our desires? What better claim to our consideration has she than the cattle and swine in our barnyards? The only difference we see here,’ those sensible people would tell me, ‘is that our livestock may merit some indulgence thanks to their mildness and docility, whereas women merit harshness only, in view of their congenital and everlasting dishonesty, mischievousness, treachery, and perfidy. We fuck them, don’t we? and is there anything better, indeed, is there anything else you can do with a woman you have fucked than use her as you do your ox or a mule, as a beast of burden, or kill her for food?’
“In a word, it was there I observed man in his constitutionally vicious, instinctively cruel, and studiously ferocious form, and as such he pleased me, as such he seemed to me in closer harmony with Nature, and I preferred these characteristics to the simple crudeness of the American, to the knavery of the European, to the cynical depravation of the Oriental. Having killed men on the hunt with the first, having drunk wine and lain with the second, having done much fucking with the third, I ate human flesh with my brave African comrade; I have preserved a taste for it; all this wreckage you see around you are relics of the creatures I devour; I eat no other sort of meat; I trust you shall enjoy tonight’s feast, there will be a fifteen-year-old boy on the table. I fucked him yesterday, he should be delicious.
“After ten years wandering abroad I returned for a visit to my native land, where I was greeted by my mother and sister. Loath to tarry in Muscovy and resolved, once I had left it, never to set foot there again, this seemed the propitious moment to put a final order in my affairs. I raped and massacred them both in the same day: my mother was still a handsome woman, of impressive stature; and though my sister was only six feet tall, she was certainly the superbest creature to be found anywhere in the two Russias.
“Then with an income amounting to roughly two million a year I made straight for Italy with the intention of settling here. But for surroundings I wanted something unusual, rustic, little frequented, and where I could indulge my wanton imagination; and its caprices are not mild, my friends, as I believe you shall have opportunity to perceive during these next few days as my guests; there is not a single libertine passion my heart does not cherish, not a piece of wickedness that has failed to amuse me. If I have not committed more crimes, it is for lack of occasion; I need not reproach myself for having neglected a one, and I have provoked all those which were laggardly in presenting themselves. Had I with greater luck been able to achieve twice as much, I would have that many more happy memories; for those of crimes are delights which cannot be too numerous. From this introduction you shall probably take me for a villain; the things you are going to witness in this house shall, I trust, confirm you in that opinion. You guess my palace large; it is huge, in it are lodged two hundred boys, aging from five to sixteen, who commonly pass from my bed to my kitchen, and about the same number of young men whose job is to fuck me. I have an infinite fondness for that sensation; in all the world, I maintain, there is none so sweet as to have your ass given a vigorous scraping while you busy yourself at some other distraction, whatever it may be. The pleasures I observed you tasting of late on the volcano’s rim prove that you share my liking for this fashion of fuck-shedding, and that is why I permit myself this open manner of speaking with you; were it not for that, I would simply butcher you.
“I have two harems: the first contains two hundred girls from five to twenty years old; when by dint of lewd use they are sufficiently mortified, I eat them. Another tenscore women of from twenty to thirty are in the second; you’ll see how they are treated.
“Fifty servants of both sexes look after this considerable store of pleasure-objects; and for purposes of recruitment I have one hundred agents posted in all the large cities of the world. And yet, with all the movement this entails, the only access to my island home is by way of the trail you came along today, no one would ever believe it is constantly being utilized by perfect caravans, and the security in which all this is accomplished will never be violated. Not, mind you, that I have the slightest reason for worrying; we are here in the territories of th
e Duke of Tuscany; the whole extent of my irregular doings is known in his circles, and the silver I scatter about protects them from undue publicity as well as from interference.
“To round out this portrayal of myself, I had best provide some details touching my more intimate person: I am forty-five, and at this age my lubricious faculties are such that I never retire for the night without having discharged ten times. True enough, such inordinate quantities of human flesh as I consume heavily contribute to the plentifulness and density of the seminal matter; whoever tries this diet is certain to triple his libidinous capacities, to say nothing of the strength, the health, the youthfulness such fare assures; nor do I speak of its unique amenities, I need only tell you that you have but to taste it once and you will have a stomach for nothing else; no other flesh, whether of fish or fowl or animal, can withstand the comparison. One has merely to overcome an initial aversion; after that it is fair sailing, one never tires of man. Since it is my hope that we shall discharge together, it is essential that you be forewarned of the appalling symptoms which distinguish my crisis: dreadful outbursts herald and accompany it, and the jets of sperm thereupon released mount to the ceiling, often in the number of fifteen or twenty: the repetition of pleasures has never left me dry so far, my tenth ejaculation is just as tumultuous, just as abundant, as the first, nor have I ever found myself tired and out of sorts today because of last night’s efforts. As regards the member whence all that comes, here it is,” said Minski, hauling forth a pike eighteen inches long by sixteen in circumference, surmounted by a crimson knob the size of a military helmet. “Aye, here it is: behold its state, it is never in any other, even as I sleep at night, even as I walk in the day.”
“Oh, good heaven 1” I cried upon seeing that instrument. “But, my kind host, you kill as many women and boys as you see—”
“Just about,” the Muscovite replied to me, “and as I eat what I fuck, that spares me the wages of a butcher…. Much philosophy is needed to understand me, yes, I realize it, I am a monster, something vomited forth by Nature to aid her in the destruction whereof she obtains the stuff she requires for creation; I am without peer in abomination, alone in my kind … oh yes, all the invectives they gratify me with, I know them by heart; but powerful enough to have need of nobody, wise enough to find sufficiency in my solitude, to detest all mankind, to brave its censure, to jeer at its attitude toward me; experienced enough, intelligent enough to explode every creed, to flout every religion, to send every god to hell for the devil’s fucking; proud enough to abhor every government, to refuse every tie, to ignore every check, to consider myself above every ethical principle, I am happy in my little domain; in it I dispose of all a sovereign’s privileges, in it I enjoy all the pleasures of despotism, I dread no man, and I live content; I have few visitors, indeed none unless in the course of my outings I encounter persons who, like you, strike me as philosophers enough to take part in my amusements awhile; such people only do I invite to my home, and I meet with few; thanks to my natural vigor, I am apt to rove very far on those excursions, not a day goes by but I make a twelve-league, sometimes a fifteen-league sally forth from here—”
Juliette Page 69
