Juliette

by Marquis de Sade

  Minski visits a sickroom, six patients look to him a little worse than the rest, he snatches them bodily from their beds and heaves them one after the other into the menagerie where they are devoured in a matter of minutes.

  “That,” Minski whispers to me while we watch the terrible feast, “is one of my favorite diversions. Exciting, isn’t it?”

  “Incredibly, my dear,” I answer the giant, staring delightedly at the spectacle, guiding his hand toward my cunt; “probe about in there and verify whether or not I share your sentiments.”

  And I discharged. Inferring that I might be pleased to witness the doctoring of a second batch of sufferers, Minski rounded up a number of girls who had nothing more wrong with them than a few virtually healed scratches and bruises. They trembled as they were led up to the window. To prolong and heighten our amusement we had them gaze awhile at the savage beasts for which they were about to become fodder; Minski’s nails raked their buttocks, I pinched their breasts, tweaked their nipples. Then out they were tossed. The giant and I frigged each other during the massacre; the spasms which jarred me made me fairly scream my joy.

  We rambled through the other apartments where all manner of horrifying scenes were enacted; Zephyr expired in the course of one of the most ferocious of them.

  “Well, good friend,” I commented, when I had sated my passions, “you can hardly deny that the conduct you permit yourself here, and which in my weakness I have copied, is abominably unjust.”

  “Come sit down” that libertine invited me, “and listen to what I have to say.

  “Before deciding, simply because of the veneer of injustice you see there, that the action I commit is blameworthy, we had better, I think, come to some sort of understanding upon what we mean by just and unjust. If now you meditate a little upon the ideas lying behind these terms, you will recognize that they are most profoundly relative, and profoundly lacking in anything intrinsically real. Similar to concepts of virtue and vice, they are purely local and geographical; that which is vicious in Paris turns up, as we know, a virtue in Peking, and it is quite the same thing here: that which is just in Isfahan they call unjust in Copenhagen. Amidst these manifold variations do we discover anything constant? Only this: each country’s peculiar legal code, each individual’s peculiar interests, provide the sole bases of justice. But these national, these regional laws depend upon the preferences of the government locally in power, and these interests depend upon the physiology of the individual who holds them; thus, self-interest, you see it very clearly, is the single rule for defining just and unjust; and thus, in the light of a certain law, it will be very just in a certain country to behead a man for a deed which would win him laurels elsewhere, quite as a certain individual interest will reckon just a deed which, nonetheless, the person whom it harms will esteem very iniquitous. Some examples may be cited.

  “In Paris the law punishes thieves; it rewards them in Sparta: robbery is legitimate in Greece and highly illegal in France, and justice consequently as illusory as virtue. A man breaks his enemy’s back; he will tell you he has done the right and just thing, now ask his victim for his view of the matter. Themis is therefore an altogether make-believe goddess, whose scales ever show in favor of him who tips them harder, and over whose sightless eyes they need hardly have bothered to place a blindfold.”

  “Minski,” I remarked, “I have often heard it said, however, that there is a kind of natural justice man has always and everywhere adhered to, or which he has never violated without ruing it afterward.”

  “Sheer nonsense,” said the Muscovite, “that fabled natural justice is simply the fruit of man’s weakness, his ignorance, or his folly whenever it is not to his advantage to propagate the lie. If he is of little strength he will always, automatically, belong to the natural-justice camp, and will always discover injustice in the hurt inflicted by the mighty upon members of his class; let him acquire some power himself, then his opinion and his ideas touching justice change instantaneously: henceforth nothing but what flatters him will be just, nothing equitable but what serves his passions; analyze it carefully, this famous natural justice always reveals itself based upon his interests; take Nature for your guide when you shape your laws, only in this way will you avoid error. Well, is there any limit to the injustices we see her commit all the time? Is there anything so unjust as the hailstorm that capricious power flings to ruin the poor peasant, although—explain it as you will—not a grape in his rich neighbor’s vineyards is spoiled? and the wars, of her fomenting in whose course the whole of a land is laid waste for the sole benefit of some tyrant, and the fortunes she permits the villain to amass while the honest man founders all his life in hardship and privation? Say, those diseases wherewith she slaughters the populations of entire provinces, those repeated, innumerable triumphs she accords brazen vice while not a day passes but she grinds deserving virtue beneath her heel; this protection she forever grants to the powerful man, seconding him to the detriment of the helpless—I ask you, is all that just? and may we suppose we are guilty when we imitate her?

  “Hence—no other conclusion is warranted—there is not the slightest wrong of any sort in violating all the imaginary principles of human justice as we go about composing our own, tailored to fit our personal needs, and which will always be the best of all justices because expressly constructed for the service of our passions and our interests: in this world only they are sacred; and if true wrong there be, it is whenever we award a preference to hallucinations, neglecting sentiments given us by Nature, who is truly outraged by any sacrifice we are weak enough to make of them. Despite the allegations of your demi-philosopher Montesquieu, justice is not eternal, it is not immutable, it is not in all lands and in all ages the same; those are falsehoods, and the truth is the reverse: justice depends purely upon the human conventions, the character, the temperament, the national moral codes of a country. ‘If that were so’ the same author continues,1 if justice were but the consequence of human conventions, ‘of characters, temperaments, etc., it would be a dreadful truth such as one would have to dissimulate from oneself….’ And why hide such essential truths from oneself? Is there a single one man should flee from? ‘It would be dangerous,’ the same Montesquieu continues, ‘because it would put man ever in fear of man and bring to an end all our security of property, of honor, and of life itself.’ But where is the necessity to adopt this mean little prejudice, to shut one’s eyes to truths so general, so vital? Is he of any help to us, who seeing us enter a forest where he has himself been attacked by bandits, does not alert us of the perils that perhaps lurk there? Yes, yes, let us have the courage to tell men that justice is a myth, and that each individual never actually heeds any but his own; let us say so fearlessly. Declaring it to them, and giving them thus to appreciate all the dangers of human existence, our warning enables them to ready a defense and in their turn to forge themselves the weapon of injustice, since only by becoming as unjust, as vicious as everybody else can they hope to elude the traps set by others. ‘Justice,’ Montesquieu rattles on, is a seeming and right relationship existing really between two things, independently of the view any person may take of them.’

  “Where have you encountered a greater piece of sophistry? Never has justice been a seeming and right relationship really existing between two things. Justice has no real existence, it is the deity of every passion: this passion finds justice in this act, that passion finds justice in that act, and although those acts may be contradictory and usually are, those passions find them just nonetheless. So let us abandon our belief in this fiction, it no more exists than does the God of whom fools believe it the image: there is no God in this world, neither is there virtue, neither is there justice; there is nothing good, useful, or necessary but our passions, nothing merits to be respected but their effects.

  “Nor is that all; I go farther, and regard unjust acts as indispensable to the maintenance of universal harmony, necessarily disturbed by an equitable order in things. This
fact once realized, for what reason would I abstain from all the iniquities my brain conceives since it is proven that they are useful to the general plan? Is it my fault if it be my capacities Nature is pleased to enlist for preserving her law and order in this world? Of course not, and if only through atrocities, execrations, and horrors this end may be attained, why, let’s perpetrate them cheerfully and serenely, in the knowledge that our delights answer Nature’s aims.”

  We continued our tour of the apartments and put into practice the theories which the giant had just developed for me. Our unspeakable doings finally reduced me to such a point of exhaustion that I was obliged to beg quarter, and announced that the one desire I had left was to repose myself for the rest of the day.

  “Just as you like,” said he, “I can perfectly well postpone until tomorrow showing you the two rooms you have yet to see, and which contain features and equipment that will probably astonish you.”

  Sbrigani and I retired to our bedchamber; when alone with my one remaining traveling companion, “Good friend,” said I, “we found entry into the palace of vice and horror, if this piece of excellent fortune is not to be spoiled we must now find a way out of it. My confidence in the ogre is not so entire as to recommend our remaining any longer under his roof. With me I have reliable means for being rid of this personage, after whose death we could very easily seize his treasure and be off. However, our host is too great a menace to humanity, my principles approve too warmly of such a character and of such depravations for me to wrest him away from the world. It would be to borrow the role of the law, it would be to serve society, to banish this scoundrel out of it, and I am not so fond of virtue as to render it such an enormous service. So I propose to let this man live rather than throw crime into mourning: eh, a Friend of Crime deprive Crime of a sectator? Perish the thought! We must rob him, that is all; but it is important, he is richer than we and equality has always been the cornerstone of my doctrine. Rob him, then fly; else he will not fail to kill us, for pleasure’s sake or perhaps to rob us himself. With some stramonium we shall drug him, while he sleeps steal his money, pick the two prettiest wenches out of his harems, and escape.”

  Sbrigani was not immediately won over to my scheme: stramonium, he pointed out, might not have effect upon a body of such prodigious size, a concentrated dose of strong poison looked by far the more advisable thing to him; specious as my considerations were, they must cede before those of our safety and, according to my husband, that would be uncertain so long as the ogre remained alive. But unshakable in my resolve to take all possible care never to be the undoing of anyone as wicked as I, I held firm. At last we decided that after administering the soporific to the ogre while breakfasting with him, we would proclaim to his hirelings the success of a plot against his life, thus forestalling any objections they might raise to our appropriation of his wealth, and that once we had emptied his coffers we would quit the place forthwith.

  It all came out remarkably well. Swallowing the chocolate into which we had slipped the stramonium, Minski sank a few minutes later into a torpor so deep that we had no trouble persuading the household that its overlord was dead. His steward was the first to seek to induce us to reign in his stead; we feigned consent, and having had the treasure chests opened, we loaded the most valuable of their contents upon ten men. Proceeding next to the harem of women, we chose two French girls, Elise and Raimonde, respectively seventeen years of age and eighteen, and then set forth after assuring the major-domo that we would shortly return to lead him and the others away; that we were indeed prepared to succeed to the place left vacant by his deceased master, but felt that such splendid possessions would be put to better showing in some one of the cities of the plain, where we ought all to remove rather than continue to dwell like bears in this dreadful den. Enchanted, the major-domo facilitated everything, concurred in everything, and for his cooperation was doubtless richly rewarded by the giant when upon awakening he learned of his losses and of our flight.

  Our loot loaded into our carriages, our women and ourselves installed inside, we dismissed the ten porters, after paying them for their trouble and advising them to head in any direction except back to the inferno where only calamity would be awaiting them. They did not dispute the wisdom of our counsel, we bade them farewell and departed. That same evening we reached the outskirts of Florence. When we procured lodgings we turned to taking stock of our treasures and to appraising our two women: they were lovely creatures.

  Seventeen-year-old Elise combined all Venus’ graces with the seductive charms of the goddess of flowers. Raimonde, a year older, had one of those inspiring faces you cannot look upon without emotion; both of them recently acquired by Minski, neither had yet been touched, and it need hardly be stressed that this circumstance was among the principal ones which had led me to select them. They helped us tally our booty, it included six million in gold and silver coin, another four in gems, plate, ingots and Italian banknotes. Ah, how my eyes feasted upon this hoard, and how sweet it is to count riches when we owe it to a crime! These tasks dispatched, we retired, and in the arms of my two new conquests I spent the most delicious night I had enjoyed in a long time.

  Allow me now to speak for a moment, my friends, of the superb city we came to the following morning. Listening to these details will have a refreshing influence upon your imaginations, berayed as they are by this lengthy series of obscene anecdotes: such a digression, I should think, can only render more piquant that which the truth you have demanded of me shall perhaps shortly oblige me to relate.

  Constructed by Sulla’s troops, embellished by the triumvirs, destroyed by Attila, then rebuilt by Charlemagne; enlarged at the expense of the ancient city of Fiesole, its neighbor, of which today only ruins are left; for many decades torn by internecine strife; subjugated by the Medicis who having ruled it for two hundred years finally let it pass to the House of Lorraine, Florence is now governed as is the whole of Tuscany whereof it is the chief town, by Leopold, Archduke and brother of the Queen of France,2 a despotic, haughty, and ungracious prince, like the rest of his family very crapulous and libertine, as my subsequent narrations shall soon convince you.

  Soon after arriving in this city I was able to conclude that the Florentines still think back nostalgically upon their native-born princes and resent being under the control of foreigners. Nobody is taken in by Leopold’s seeming simplicity; the popular costume he affects does not conceal his Germanic arrogance, and those who know anything of the spirit and temper of the Austrian dynasty understand why its members have far less difficulty pretending to virtues than acquiring them.

  Florence, lying at the foot of the Apennine range, is split by the River Arno; this central part of Tuscany’s capital is somewhat similar to the heart of Paris, traversed by the Seine; but there the comparison between the two cities must end, for Florence has many fewer inhabitants and in extent is a great deal smaller than the other. The reddish-brown stone of which its larger buildings are constructed gives it a disagreeable, forlorn air. Had I a liking for churches I would probably have some glowing descriptions to offer you, but my aversion for everything associated with religion is so compelling that I could not take it upon myself to enter a single one of those temples. It was otherwise with the superb ducal palace gallery, I went to visit it the day after we arrived. Impossible to render for you my enthusiasm at being amidst all those masterpieces. I adore the arts, they excite me; everything that imitates glorious Nature must be cherished too…. No encouragement is too great for those who love and copy her. There is but one way to make her bare her secrets, through incessant, unwearying study of her; only by probing into her furthermost recesses may one finally destroy the last of one’s misconceptions. I adore a talented woman; a pretty face will seduce me, but the spell talents weave captivates more durably; and I think that the one is more flattering than the other to amour-propre.

  My guide, as you may readily suppose, did not fail to show me the room in that celebrated museum
where Cosimo Medici was surprised at one of his little infamies. The famous Vasari was busy painting the ceiling of the apartment when Cosimo appeared there with his daughter, of whom he was inordinately fond: never pausing to think that the painter might be at work on the scaffolding overhead, that incestuous prince proceeded to caress the object of his ardors. Cosimo espies the couch nearby, the couple repair to it, the act is consummated within the view of the artist who, just as soon as he could, hurried from Florence, believing that violence would surely be used to prevent intelligence of such a liaison from getting abroad, and that witnessing what he had could well mean an early doom. Vasari’s were not idle fears at a period and in a town where the teachings of Machiavelli found no end of disciples: it was wise of him not to expose himself to the cruel effects of those doctrines.

  A little farther on my attention was drawn to an altar of solid gold and studded with precious stones—one of those objects I invariably covet at first sight. This immensely rich and wondrously wrought bit of furniture, it was explained to me, was an ex-voto which Grand Duke Ferdinand II, who died in 1630, offered to St. Charles Borromeo for the recovery of his health. The gift had been packed off and was on the road when Ferdinand died; the heirs, reasonable people, decided that since the saint had not answered the prayer, they were exempted from the payment and recalled the treasure. For how many extravagances is not superstition accountable, and with what confidence we can affirm that of all the multitude of human follies this one doubtless has the most degrading effects upon the spirit and the mind.

  From there we went to look at Titian’s renowned “Venus,” and I confess that before this sublime work my emotions were stirred as they had not been by Ferdinand’s ex-voto: the beauties of Nature are uplifting to the soul, religious absurdities make it recoil in disgust.