Juliette

by Marquis de Sade

  Nobody is more skilled than I at aiding pleasure to attain its crisis…. I sense my darling’s need of help: some pumping is required to make the honeyed sap flow. Few women, it should be said in passing, few women sufficiently well realize the need their cunt has to be sucked as their fuck builds to the discharging point; and nevertheless at such moments there is no diviner service one may render them. With what ardor I now fulfilled this task; kneeling between Honorine’s glorious thighs, I clutch her flanks and lift them to me, I drive my tongue into her cunt, I suck it, I pump it, and in the meantime my nuzzling promotes the erection of her clitoris. What buttocks my hands knead! Never had Venus ones so lovely! I felt called upon to broaden this into a general conflagration; these crises, you know, cannot be too carefully tended, too lavishly ministered to. All restrictions must be barred; and if to the woman you frig Nature had given twenty avenues for receiving pleasure, you would have to attack them all with a view to increasing the tumult in her a hundredfold.14 So I go in quest of her pretty little anus in order that the titillations produced by a digit buried there may be added to those my mouth is causing her on the other side. So tiny, so strait, is this cunning little hole I have difficulty finding it, but there it is at last, one of my fingers pops into it…. Delicious episode! ah, never do you fail to have your effect upon a woman of sensibility. No sooner has this charming little vent been invaded than Honorine sighs … she smiles, is in raptures, this heavenly woman! She discharges, she is in the sweetest ecstasy imaginable, and ’tis to me her delirium is owing.

  “Ah, my angel, my beloved angel, I adore you,” that dove says to me as she opens her eyes to the light, “you slew me with happiness. How ever can I repay you?”

  “In kind, my dear, in kind,” I reply, snatching off my skirts. And taking hold of her hand, clapping it to my cunt: “Frig me, my love, frig me into a lather. Great heaven, what else is there to do but frig?”

  However, like all well-bred women, Honorine was clumsy: she aroused desires in me and knew not how to cope with a single one of them. I was obliged to give her lessons.

  Coming at length to the conclusion that she might do a better job with her tongue than her fingers, I have her get between my legs and she licks my cunt while I take my frigging personally in hand. Here Honorine performed creditably. Prodigiously excited by the delightful creature, I shot three discharges into her mouth…. Overcome now by a desire to see her entirely nude, I raise her up, rid her of all she is wearing…. Oh, God! this sudden splendor that met my gaze, ’twas as though I were looking upon the star of daylight when in springtime it shines through a long winter’s mists. Ah, I may truly say that I had never seen so beautiful an ass, never. What radiant fairness! What gleaming exquisite skin, how soft! What breasts, what hips! And that waist; those incomparable buttocks! Ah, that ass. Sublime altar of love and of pleasure, not a day goes by, no, not a single day passes but my imagination dwelling yearningly upon you, as it were stretching forth its arms toward you, offers you some fresh homage….

  I could not resist the sight of that divine posterior. Manlike in my tastes as in my thinking, how bitterly I regretted that I was unable to burn some more real incense before my idol. I kissed it, opened it and gazed ecstatically therein, my tongue sounded it and while it thrilled in that celestial hole I refrigged lovely Honorine’s clitoris: thus did I wheedle a fresh discharge from her. But the more I aroused her, the greater was my distress at being powerless to arouse her farther still.

  “Oh, my dearest one,” said I, my heart heavy because of this regret, “be sure that when next we come together I shall have by me some instrument capable of dealing more telling blows than may a tongue: I would be your lover, your husband, I have told you so: I wish to have you as might a man.”

  “Ah, do anything with me you want,” was the Duchess’ gentle reply to this, “multiply the proofs of your love, in return I shall give you back twice as many tokens of mine.”

  Honorine wishes now to see me nude, her eyes rove over my body; but she is so newly come to pleasure that she ignores the art of giving it to me…. Ah, it mattered not to my flaming soul: she gazed upon me, she examined me: I was fucked by the rays of her glances, and extreme was my happiness. O lubricious women! if ever you are in the position I was in, you “will sympathize with me, you will taste the despair wherein one is hurled by thwarted desires, and like me you will curse Nature for having inspired in you feelings which the buggeress cannot satisfy…. We fell to frolicking anew. Though not able to give each other all the relief we both needed, we nevertheless gave each other as much as we could, and upon separating promised to meet soon again.

  Just two days after this scene Olympia called upon me; she had found out I had been to see the Duchess; she was jealous.

  “Honorine is attractive, it cannot be denied,” said she, “neither will you deny that she is stupid; I defy her ever to give you as much pleasure as I. Moreover, Juliette, there is that husband of hers. He has a keen nose, you would be running a grave risk if he were to begin to scent this intrigue.”

  “Dear friend,” said I to Princess Borghese, “allow me a fortnight, I ask no more: by then I shall have made my attitude toward Honorine quite clear to you. For the time being, I shall confess this, and be reassured by it: now and then I may divert myself with virtue but only crime has the place of privilege in my heart.”

  “Then we shall speak no more of the matter,” said the Princess, embracing me warmly; “you have said enough to dispel my fears. I shall be there when you emerge from your illusion, and I doubt not but that it will be short-lived with Grillo.

  “But let us change the subject,” she went on. “Were you not surprised the other day to see me play the whore as merrily as you?”

  “No, truthfully, I was not,” said I. “Knowing the kind of mind you have, I could expect libertinage to be your one concern.”

  “Ha, I have others as well, my dear. Those two cardinals rule the roost at the Vatican, and I have my reasons for humoring them; apart from that they pay me liberally, and I too am fond of money. Come now, Juliette, be honest with me, you did rob Albani, didn’t you? Have no fear, I’ll not let your secret out nor reproach your deed, not I, for I too rather incline toward little knaveries of the sort, and who knows? I may have pilfered as much from those rascals as you: theft is delicious, my angel, it heats. It can even precipitate a discharge—this is usually the case with me. It is base to steal for your living, delightful to steal at the behest of passion.”

  Such and so many were the things Olympia and I had done together that I considered I could depend upon her tact and discretion. It seems to me that one may safely confess a peccadillo to the person who acts as your collaborator in a major crime.

  “That you come to know me better, this is one of my cherished aims,” I told Olympia; “your conjectures flatter me: yes, I committed that theft. More, I helped send to her doom the innocent who was beheaded for my deed, and this compilation of little bits of mischief proved enough to cause me some voluptuous discharging.”

  “Ah yes, by fuck, such words have a familiar ring to me. For it was hardly a year ago I did just about the same thing, and I am well acquainted with all the amenities which result from these breaches of good conduct.

  “But my chief purpose in coming to see you is to announce that we shall shortly be supping with the Pope; Braschi would have us participate in his appalling excesses. Appalling, I repeat, for the Vicar of Christ is to an astounding degree depraved, impious, bloodthirsty; it must be seen to be believed. Near the place where these orgies will be celebrated is the treasury room of the State, I know how to unbar its door: there are millions there for the taking. And trust me, Juliette, taking them will not be difficult: His Holiness will not dare so much as object, not after the things we shall have been witness to. You will join me in this expedition?”

  “Of course.”

  “I may have confidence in you?”

  “Can you doubt it when the question is one of
a crime?”

  “Grillo must never hear anything of this, Juliette.”

  “Count somewhat more heavily upon my intelligence; and think not, dear Princess, that a passing fancy could cause me to compromise or neglect a passion: indulging a taste amuses me, but it is infamy I take seriously, it alone has access to my heart, it alone has the power to inflame me, only to it do I really belong.”

  “Ah, the properties of crime are unique,” Olympia affirmed, “nothing else has such an exciting effect upon me: compared to it love is so drab, so puny! Oh indeed, my friend,” she went on, “I have reached the point where if I am to be stirred even in the slightest, a crime must be of uncommon strength. Those which vengeance led me to commit seem contemptible now that you have introduced me to those we perform for lewdness’ sake.”

  “Quite so,” I agreed, “the most enjoyable crimes are the motiveless ones. The victim must be perfectly innocent: if we have sustained some harm from him it legitimates the harm we do him, and lost to our iniquity is the keen pleasure of exerting itself gratuitously. Evil must be done, bad one must be, this is the great and indispensable thing; and is it possible when your victim, no better than you, merits his fate? Ingratitude is to be recommended at all times and especially in this case,” I continued, “your ingratitude is a further affliction to the person you outrage: you force him to regret ever having given you pleasure, and this in itself can afford you an enormous one.”

  “Yes, yes, I follow your meaning,” Olympia replied, “and I believe I have some rare joys of this kind awaiting me.

  “My father lives, he is forever outdoing himself in kindness toward me, he heaps gifts upon me, adores me; twenty times over have I discharged at the thought of severing such a tie: I dislike indebtedness, it weighs disagreeably upon my heart, stifles me—I long to be rid of this burden. Moreover, ’tis said parricide is a very black crime. You have no idea how it tempts me…. But listen to me now, Juliette, judge to what lengths my perfidious imagination goes. You must change your customary role. Were someone else to avow a similar desire, you would, I know, cheer him on, clear obstacles from his path; you would prove to him that when all has been considered, there is, strictly speaking, no wrong whatever in killing one’s father; and as you are exceedingly clever and eloquent, too, your arguments would soon convince him. I shall ask you to employ very different tactics here; we shall retire together into some quiet nook, you will frig me; while you do so you will have me appreciate the full horror of the crime in question; you will represent the punishments that are meted out to parricides, you will harangue me, exhort me, endeavor to scare me into abandoning my plan; the greater your efforts to deter, to convert me, the more fixed I shall become in the idea of the crime I am projecting, and unless I am mistaken, a voluptuous tension of prodigious violence ought to be engendered by this conflict—whence I shall emerge victorious.”

  “To ensure the complete success of the scene you meditate,” I ventured to suggest, “third persons should figure in it; and it will be necessary not that I frig you throughout, but that I chastise you. There is nothing for it, I shall have to whip you.”

  “Whip me? Why, of course, Juliette! You are right, infinitely right,” said Olympia; “your conceptions are more delicate than mine. But who shall these third persons be?”

  “Raimonde and Elise; they will suck you, they will deliciously frig you during my discourse; and I shall beat you.”

  “And after that we shall go straight to work?”

  “Have you the instruments for it?”

  “I do.”

  “What kind?”

  “Three or four sorts of poison; these are commodities of everyday use at Rome, as easily to be had as an ounce of salt or a piece of soap.”

  “Those you have purchased are violent?”

  “No, rather slow as a matter of fact. Mild but dependable.”

  “That won’t do. If one is to enjoy the thing properly, the victim in such cases must suffer, his agonies must be hideous. While he is in their throes one frigs oneself, and how do you expect to discharge if his pain is not excruciating? Here,” said I, taking from a drawer a small packet of one of Durand’s most potent confections, “have the author of your days swallow some of this: his miseries will last forty hours and they will be almost unbearable to see, his body will literally come to pieces before your eyes.”

  “Oh, fuck! Quickly, Juliette, let us make haste, the mere sound of your words is causing me to discharge.”

  Elise and Raimonde enter; Olympia bends over them both, presenting me her superb buttocks, bare; I flog her with skill, caressingly at first, then fiercely, then savagely, and during this ritual address her in roughly these terms:

  “For certain, the most dreadful crime in all the world is to take the life of the person who gave life to us,” I begin. “The object of his devotion and of his solicitude, do we not incur an immense debt to him, do we not owe him our eternal thanks? Can we have any more sacred duty than to protect and care for him? Criminal must be the very idea of harming a hair on his head, and that wretch who entertains it merits the very promptest and extremest punishment, and none can be too heavy nor too awful for a horror of this magnitude. Ages were to pass before our ancestors could even comprehend the thing, and ’twas only in fairly recent times they promulgated laws to repress the scoundrel who assassinates his father. The monster able to be this forgetful of all natural sentiments deserves to be put to yet uninvented tortures, and everything of the very crudest that can be imagined strikes me as retribution too mild for this atrocity. And no warning can be too solemn for him in whom barbarity, ingratitude, the repudiation of all duties, the renunciation of all principles are such that he is capable even of dreaming of destroying that father whence he has received the blessing of existence. Ye furies of Tartarus, come howling out of your dens, come hither your own selves and organize torments fitting to this revolting execration, and however unspeakable those you devise, they shall be less than what the offense demands.”

  And while speaking I was plying the lash, I was tearing whole patches of skin off my whore who, her brain sotted by lust, crimes, and delights, was discharging and redischarging uninterruptedly under the deft hands polluting her.

  “You make no mention of religion,” said she, “I should like to have you approach my crime from the theological side and thunder a little about the outrage to the divinity it is purported to constitute. I should like you to talk about God to me, to tell me how sorely I offend him; to delineate the inferno where demons will roast me after mortals have massacred my body.”

  “Ha!” I then cried, “ha! abject sinner, have you any inkling of the enormity of the insult you are about to hurl at the Supreme Being in consummating this abomination? That mighty Lord, image of all virtues, that God who is our Father in this world, must he not be dismayed and aghast at an offense which compromises him so grievously? Oh, indeed, thoughtless one, be certain that the very worst of hell’s tortures are reserved for those who have damned themselves by this frightful crime you plot, and that apart from the remorse you shall be racked by in this world, in the next you shall be rent by all the material woes wherewith a just God shall smite ye.”

  “I would have more on this chapter,” said the libertine Princess; “gratify me now with an account both of the physical pains of the ordeal in store for me and of the shameful blot which must forever attach to the memory of me and remain ineffaceably upon my family.”

  “Lost soul,” I thereupon exclaimed, “is it then as nought to you, this cloud of shame under which, as a consequence of your base crime, all your descendants will lie everlastingly? Behold your posterity which, for the brand marking its brow, dares not raise its head and cringes in the sight of all mankind; there in the depths of the grave into which your crimes are soon to send you, do you hear the later generations of your line curse the name of her who brought them into disgrace and ignominy? This so noble and distinguished name, do you see it sullied by your horrors? And the
awful torments awaiting you, say, does your imagination visualize them? Do you feel the avenging iron suspend its tremendous rebuke above you? And fall to detach this beautiful head from this impure body whose foul, odious lusts can bring you to the point of committing such a deed? It shall be horrible, this pain, which abates not till long after the head has been chopped off the shoulders; but even were that not so, consider that Nature, so profoundly outraged by you, would be no less than duty-bound to work the miracle that prolongs your sufferings beyond the very limits of eternity.”

  Here the Princess was attacked by a new storm of pleasure, such was its wild violence that she fainted away…. She reminded me of the Florentine Countess Donis brewing the murder of her mother and daughter.

  Ah, said I to myself, what extraordinary mentalities these Italian women have. Fortunate it was I came to this country; in no other could I have found monsters of my stripe.

  “Ah, by God’s fuck, the pleasure I have had,” murmured Olympia, when she returned to her senses and rubbed brandy upon the wounds my lashing had left on her buttocks. “So then,” said she, smiling, “now that my calm is restored let us glance a moment at the facts. Give me your sincere opinion, Juliette: is it really a crime to kill one’s father?”

  “Why bless me, I think nothing of the sort.”

  And in this connection citing in extenso what long ago Noirceuil had said to me at the time Saint-Fond was engaged in his patricidal projects, so completely did I set this charming woman’s mind at ease that if she had been anxious or in doubt heretofore, all her fears were banished now; and she decided action would be taken on the morrow. I aided her in preparing the several doses her father was to absorb; and with a hundred times more daring than did ever Brinvilliers show, Olympia Borghese slew the man who had given her life, and joyously watched him the whole long while he writhed in atrocious agony and finally disintegrated under the effects of the fatal potion I had counseled her to employ.