Juliette

by Marquis de Sade

  “Good friends,” said I, striving to put everyone at ease, “my reputation for lewdness is sufficiently well established to leave no room for doubt upon my manner of conducting myself at such forgatherings. My lubricity, always modeled after the caprice of the men, is always set alight by the fire of their passions. I am truly heated by their desires alone, my keenest pleasure comes only from satisfying all their whims. If what they ask of me is commonplace, my enjoyment is mediocre; let them require the unusual, the rarified, of me, and through sympathy I immediately sense the most violent desire to content them, and never have I known, no, nor conceived of any restriction in acts of libertinage, since the more they outrage polite usage and exceed the bounds of modesty and decency, the greater their contribution to my felicity.”

  “And all that is quite as it should be,” Bernis replied, congratulating me, “and it is greatly to your credit; the prudishness that leads a woman to recalcitrance necessarily invalidates her claim to the consideration of her associates, and to the esteem of reasonable men.”

  “Such refusals are absurd,” advanced Albani, a confirmed sectator of all lubricity’s more fanciful practices, “they prove nothing in a woman but stupidity or frigidity, and I do declare to you that to those who feel that a female can only make up for her sex by the most accommodating behavior, a frigid or stupid woman is beyond words contemptible; this is my opinion.”

  “Well,” said I, “what woman could be such an idiot as to imagine a man does more wrong lodging his prick in her behind than sticking it in her cunt? Is not a woman a woman everywhere, and is it not extravagant for her to wish to reserve one part of her body to modesty while consenting to make free of the others? To say this mania can ever outrage Nature, the contention is perfectly ridiculous; would Nature instill in us such a taste for it if it were offensive to her? Why of course not, we may boldly assert, to the contrary, that she cherishes it, that it is favorable to her; that human laws, forever dictated by egoism, upon this subject lack all common sense, and that Nature’s, far simpler, far more expressive; must necessarily inspire in us all the tastes that are inimical to a reproduction which, when men undertake it, challenges her right to create the species ever anew, displaces her from her prime function, and reduces her to an inactivity that jars with her energy.”

  “There is a very pretty thought you have just set forth,” said Bernis; “to this theoretical erudition I should now like us to join a little practice. Let me therefore invite you, lovely Juliette, to give us a glimpse of that throne of voluptuousness which, as has been intimated to you already, will be the unique object of our caresses and of our pleasures. With Olympia’s we have been long and exhaustively acquainted; yours will suffice for the time being, will you kindly make it available.”

  The two cardinals having drawn near I promptly unveiled the shrine at which they would worship. My skirts lifted waist-high, their examination began, and it was accompanied, you may be sure, by the most elaborate and the most lubricious details. Albani carried strictness of sodomite manners to the point of disguising meticulously everything in the vicinity which I in my bent-forward position could not help but bring into view: your authentic sodomist will always come unerect at the sight of a cunt. Following the touches there were the kisses, the twittering of tongues. And as with libertines of this feather barbarity is the usual sequel to lubricious impulses, suckings gave way to slaps, then to pinches, after that to bitings, to the vigorous, abrupt, and dry introduction of several fingers into my anus, finally to proposals of a whipping which would probably have been inflicted in short order had my companions not appeared at that juncture. As the adventure I am relating now begins to take on an indisputably serious character, from here on I shall describe it in the cynically frank style which best becomes the subject.

  Enchanted by the two delicious creatures I offered to their lewdness, the cardinals soon demanded to make searching investigation of the hindward beauties promised by such a pair of arresting lasses as my Elise and Raimonde. Olympia herself fluttered about them no less ardently than the men. It was then I drew Albani aside, and this is the gist of what I said to him:

  “Saintly man,” I began, “you do not, I am certain, imagine that my pretty friends and I have come here to satisfy all your brutal whims simply out of piety. You must not be misled by the figure I cut at Rome; it is the fruit of my prostitutions, they alone get me my livelihood: I do not give myself except for money, and the price I ask is not trifling.”

  “Bernis and I have always held a similar attitude,” the Cardinal told me.

  “Then we should get on,” said I; “indicate to me, if you please, the recompense my friends and I may expect in return for our services. Not until this matter is settled shall they be rendered.”

  Albani enters into whispered conference with his fellow churchman, then both turn back to me and protest I shall be dealt with in a manner that will leave me no cause for complaint.

  “Too vague, these assurances,” I retort. “We each of us live from our calling, you know: that of eating little flour and water symbols earns you five or six hundred thousand pounds a year; consider it fitting that from mine, infinitely more agreeable to society, and with merit on its side, I extract as much. You are shortly going to reveal a quantity of turpitudes to me; their witness, I shall possess your secret and could compromise you by letting it out. You will retaliate by denouncing my conduct? But I too have enough gold to be listened to, and you will be ruined when my lawyers unmask you. For six thousand sequins apiece and your agreement to procure an audience with the Pope for me, the whole affair is arranged, the discussion ended, and nothing but pleasures will result for you from all our future relations. Few are the women who can equal me for lewdness, for easiness, for wickedness, and what my uncommonly irregular imagination will add to your joys may very possibly render them quite as incisive, complete, and blissful as any mortal can hope for.”

  “Fair child,” Bernis answered me, “you do not sell yourself cheap; but there is no refusing the wishes of one so endearing, you shall have your interview with His Holiness. The desire you express has already been conceived by him, and since hiding anything from you is farthest from our intentions, know that he has ordered the organizing of this preliminary party, wanting, before making your direct acquaintance, to have a report upon you from us.”

  “Excellent,” said I, “out with the money and I am at your disposition.”

  “What, must you have it at once?”

  “Right away.”

  “But if we were to pay you first and then you were to take it into your head to—”

  “Ah,” I interrupted, raising my hand, “I see you have had little experience with women of my nationality. Frank as the country whose name they bear, Frenchwomen wish to be sure of where they stand before concluding a bargain; but they are incapable of breaking it once they have pocketed the money.”

  At this Albani, upon a gesture from his confrere, ushered me into a small room, unlocked a secretary, and out of it drew banknotes in the sum I had stipulated. One glance at that secretary and the hoard it contained was quite enough to seduce me.

  Good, said I to myself the moment I had struck upon the ruse whereby I was to appropriate that treasure, it is all the more certain to succeed considering that the multitude of abominations these rascals are going to enact with me will prevent them from daring to prosecute me afterward.

  Before the Cardinal has time to shut up his secretary, I, taking swift advantage of the moment, sink to the floor in a swoon so artfully feigned that an alarmed Albani rushes out in search of aid. Quickly I scramble to my feet, pounce upon the banknotes, the pocketbooks, and in one swoop make away with a million. I close the secretary. Thanks to the hurly-burly, I assure myself, he’ll not remember whether he locked the lid or not and, finding it this way, will be less apt to suspect me.

  All this accomplished in less time than it takes to tell, I resume my position on the floor; in comes Albani, Olympia and Bernis
on his heels. As they enter I open my eyes, fearing lest in the course of efforts to revive me they discover what is not very securely cached beneath my skirts.

  “Oh, it’s nothing, nothing, I shall be quite all right,” say I, fending them off, “my extreme sensitivity renders me subject to nervous cramps every now and then, I am much better now and altogether at your orders.”

  Just as I had foreseen, Albani, noticing that his secretary was closed, fancied he had left it so and, rather than suspecting anything amiss, was only too happy to lead me into a delicious salon where the projected orgies were to transpire.

  There we found eight new personages whose roles were of considerable importance in the mysteries about to be celebrated. These eight individuals included four boys, fifteen years of age and perfect Cupids all; and four fuckers, between eighteen and twenty, and each with a positively monstrous member. Thus were we twelve assembled there for the amusement of the two lecherous collegians, for Olympia’s participation in these scenes was far more in the capacity of a victim than a sacrificer: libertinage, greed, ambition put her in the service of these masters, and there her employment was identical to ours.

  “So now,” said Bernis, “we start. Juliette, and you, Elise and Raimonde, by paying the merry price you ask for your hire we buy the right to address you as one does whores; serve us with corresponding obedience.”

  “That is only fair,” I observed; “do you wish to see us naked?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then will you let us have the use of a dressing room where my companions and I may leave our clothes….”

  We are shown to one; when we are alone, I divide up my bulky loot into three parcels, we each stow one into our pockets, remove our garments, and reappear nude in the circle where the cardinals are awaiting us.

  “Now heed me,” said Bernis. “I shall exercise the master of ceremonies’ functions, Cardinal Albani has consented to this; everyone will hence comply with my instructions. Your asses, Mesdames, cursorily glanced at a short while ago, must be more narrowly studied; kindly step forward one by one and offer those articles to our criticism, the boys will then do likewise, and after having been viewed, each subject will repair directly to some one of the fuckers and proceed to dispose him for pleasure, in such wise that the review once concluded, we may find each of the four fuckers in the hands of a boy and a woman, and in full bloom.”

  The inaugural scene is executed: we passed from the first to the second of those libertines. Our hindward parts were kissed and palpated, nibbled and gnawed, pinched and scratched, then we hastily took up our posts by the fuckers, seeing to it that we were a woman and a boy in attendance upon each.

  “And now,” said the master of ceremonies, “we must have a small boy kneel between our thighs and suck our pricks; a big boy will give each of us his to suckle; to excite him, he will have a woman’s ass ahead of him, and will tongue it; ready to hand we shall have, to the right, a fucker’s prick to dandle, to the left, the buttocks of a small boy, and the two other women, stationed close to us and slightly beneath, will tickle our testicles and our assholes.

  “For the third scene,” Bernis informed us, “we shall remain lying down as we are at present; ’twill be the women who shall pump us, two small boys kneeling astride our chests will give us their assholes to suck, they will kiss, above them, the asses of the two women who, themselves, will frig the pricks of the small boys. As for the four fuckers, we shall frig them, having our four hands free.

  “Thus shall we be marshaled in the forthcoming scene,” continued the charming cardinal; “the two women who have not just been sucking us will, kneeling at the edge of these sofas, receive our pricks into their mouths; the two other women, I mean those who sucked us a moment ago, will act as our pimps: they will ready the four fuckers to embugger us one after the other, they will socratize those fuckers, they will tongue them, they will lick them anally, in fine, they will exert themselves unstintingly to bring those four members up high and hard, and when once they see the weapons burnished and fit to perforate us, they will with their mouths and tongues moisten our vents and carefully pilot the ship into port; the four small boys will present their posterior charms to our lips, lying before us, belly down.”

  The four fuckers were stout, mettlesome lads: they responded splendidly to our efforts. The two ancient, purple breaches were each sodomized eight times in a row, solidly and impetuously; but for toughness those two rogues outdid the devil and endured this last-mentioned scene as phlegmatically as they had the preceding ones; we were rewarded by not even a shadow of an erection.

  “Ah ha,” Bernis declared, “’tis all too plain we require more potent stimulants; ours, you apprehend, is a state of advanced decrepitude. Voracious is the appetite of a satiety nothing satisfies, the malady is like those consuming thirsts which the coolest well-water only increases. Albani is in the same case as I: look there and see whether these accumulated efforts have hoisted his prick even a single notch. Let us not be disheartened, however, we may try other things and indeed we must, a stern Nature commands it. You are a dozen; divide. Let each squad be composed of a pair of fuckers, two small boys, two women: the first will work upon my old friend, the second upon me. Ranged about us, everybody in his turn shall be frigged by us, shall suck us successively, and one by one shit into our mouths.”

  This disgusting operation saw the pricks of our decayed adversaries unwrinkle a little and upon the basis of these unmistakable albeit faint signs, they judged themselves ready to essay more serious attacks.

  “The sixth scene will be along these lines,” said the director; “Albani, whose faculties appear to be about as aroused as mine, shall sodomize Elise, I am going to embugger Juliette; the four fuckers, prepared by Olympia and Raimonde, will doctor our asses; the small boys, lying atop us, will present to our kisses, some their pricks, some their buttocks.”

  The groups form; but our champions, deceived by their desires, deliver too light an assault upon the tabernacle, falter at its gate, and limp away in defeat and chagrin.

  “Bah, I expected as much,” Albani grumbled, “I shall never understand why you persist in wanting to have us embugger women! With a boy I’d have sustained no such affront.”

  “Very well then, we shall change,” said the ambassador, “what is there to prevent us?”

  But no happier is the issue of this fresh onslaught; our cardinals are fucked, to be sure, but fuck they cannot; friggings, suckings are to no avail, their antiquated tools shrivel instead of deploying, and Bernis announces that, his colleague faring as poorly as he, they shall pursue the war in a different manner.

  “Mesdames,” says that great man, “since kindly treatment gets us nowhere with you, harsher methods must be resorted to. Do you know the effects of fustigation? It might be that which is needed; we shall see.”

  With these words he seizes me, while from a closet Albani brings forth an apparatus of such curious design as to deserve special description.

  I was bound facing the wall and a short pace from it, my hands high above my head, my feet on the floor. Once pinioned, in front of me Bernis placed a kind of prayer-stool, but of steel, its upper rung a sword-blade, razor-sharp and its edge touching my belly. Needless to say, I drew back from that menacing glaive: that is, I thrust my flanks back toward Bernis; which was precisely what he wanted me to do: never had I struck a prettier pose. Grasping a handful of withes, the lecher begins all of a sudden to thrash me with all his might, and so terrible are those blows that before ten of them have fallen the blood is streaming down my thighs. Albani advanced the infernal machine several inches nearer, gone was all possibility of swaying before the strokes to lessen their impact, and I must stand firm to the storm: however, I was able to weather it without undue difficulty, being, very fortunately, thoroughly inured to a ceremony which had often been my delight in the past. Those who followed me had not such a merry time of it. Elise, who replaced me in that cruel harness, gashed her belly and screamed th
e whole while her flagellation lasted. Raimonde suffered a great deal too. Olympia passed valiantly through the ordeal, she was fond of whipping; this vexation would only stimulate her. Bernis now turned his withes over to Albani, we all four had a second time to undergo the operation, and at last our rascals’ pricks came tottering up. Wary of women after that earlier skirmish, they chose small boys for their prey; while asodomizing they were flogged, and their attitudes were such that they were able to kiss the vulvas, assholes, and pricks artistically presented to their libertine attentions. And exacerbated Nature rescued their honor; they loosed almost simultaneous discharges. They are my buttocks Albani kisses during his crisis, and it is so violent, so furious is the blackguard’s joy, that upon my behind he leaves the imprint of the two solitary stumps still surviving in his foul mouth after half a dozen visitations of the pox. Raimonde’s ass, embraced by Bernis, came off little better; but ’twas with his fingernails and a penknife this roué had molested it, reducing it to tatters by the time his spasm supervened. A brief pause ensued, then the orgies were resumed.

  In the opening scene of this second act we were each dispatched into the arms of one fucker after another, who encunted us while the two debauchees peered at our asses and to encourage our performance barbarously pricked, pinched, and beat us in a thousand various ways. That done, the couples were rolled over, up came the four masculine asses; the four small boys sodomized them, and the cardinals ass-fucked those four small boys, but without discharging. From bum-stuffing the fuckers the little chaps moved aboard us women, the fuckers revenged themselves upon those catamites and next embuggered us while our cunts were licked by the small boys. After that, these idyllic little creatures were stood against the wall, attached, the steel chair was slid into position, and they were lashed to ribbons. At this point our two fauns were overtaken by the desire to spill some more seed. Like tigers sensing prey somewhere near, they stalk through our midst, casting savage glares to right and to left. They order the men to seize and to whip us, while they watch they sodomize one small boy apiece and kiss the ass of another. Their fuck dribbles forth for the second time, and we remove to table.