The deed done, she returned.
“You frigged yourself, of course?”
“Of course, to utter shreds,” the rascal assured me, “I ended up bloody-cunted at his bedside? Never were the Parcae deeper drenched in fuck and it yet seeps out of me even as I recall the dog’s pratings and his contortions. Oh, Juliette, let not the fire die out of me, I have come running to you, make the embers blaze up again. Make me discharge, precious Juliette, incomparable Juliette. It is with fuck one must wash remorse for crime away—”
“Remorse! Bugger-fuck me, is it possible to feel remorse over what you have done?”
“No, surely not—but, don’t you see, I…. Ah, no matter, just frig me, Juliette, just frig me; I must exhaust myself, I must discharge….”
Never before had I seen her in such a lively state. Ah, my friends, ’tis so, and well ye know it, crime embellishes a woman as does nothing else. Olympia was pretty, no more than that. But the moment she had committed this crime she took on an angelic loveliness. How intense, I then realized, is the pleasure one receives from someone cleansed of all prejudices and soiled by every crime. When Grillo frigged me I had experienced an everyday sensation; but when I was in Olympia’s hands, my brain too would be irritated, I would be quite beside myself.
That same day, having just accomplished the worst of all crimes and her senses all aglow, the rascal invited me to go along with her to a house hard by the Corso where, if I cared to, I might join in an altogether unusual party. We arrive; an elderly woman greets us.
“Will you be having many guests this evening?” Olympia inquired of her.
“A great many, Princess,” the matron answered; “they come in droves on Sunday.”
“Then let us establish ourselves,” said Olympia.
We were shown to an attractive little room. Here were several low couches so placed that from them we had a clear view of the adjoining room and of the three or four whores in it.
“What might this be?” I wondered, “and what curious pleasure are you preparing for me?”
“Keep a close eye on the scene nearby,” said Olympia. “In the space of the seven or eight hours we shall be here, whole legions of monks, of priests, of abbots, of youths are going to put themselves in the hands of those girls. The number of patients will be all the larger since it is I who pay the expenses, their amusement costs these gentlemen nothing. As soon as a whore has a prick in her hand she will display it to us; if it does not suit us, they will be apprised of the fact by our silence; whereas if it pleases us, they will hear this little bell ring: the possessor of the desired prick will move directly into this room and will regale us to the limit of his abilities.”
“Delightful,” said I, “this arrangement is completely new to me, and I propose to make the most of it. Independently of the pleasure I may anticipate with the fellows who appeal to me, there will be the other, the piquant one, of observing how the rest disport with those sluts.”
“Exactly,” said Madame Borghese; “and while we ourselves discharge we shall be seeing them fuck.”
Olympia had only finished pronouncing these words when a tall seminarian appeared. He was a pretty young man of twenty or so, strongly made and virile; into the hands of one of the whores he deposits a member seven inches round behind the knob and twelve inches long over-all. So gorgeous a prize could not but interest us, and when ’twas offered we rang the bell loudly.
“Go into the next room,” says the whore upon hearing the signal, “this machine of yours will be more appreciated there than here.”
The great clod arrives pike aloft. Olympia catches it and crams it into my cunt.
“Fuck away, my dear, don’t wait for me,” says she, “I’ll be served before long.”
I fall to. My rascal has scarcely discharged when another divinity student, rung for by Olympia, walks in and stuffs her as copiously as I have just been.
He and his confrere are followed by two sbirri,15 these by two Augustinian friars; a pair of Observant friars, doleful, morose creatures, come next, and are replaced by two very randan Capuchins; after them it was a stream of coachmen, scullions, sweeps, hairdressers, bumbailiffs, butchers, and lackeys. So vast was this crowd, and among it so many awesome members, that I was at last obliged to beg quarter. ’Twas, I think, after the one hundred ninetieth that I besought my companion to bring a halt to this deluge of fuck which had been pouring into me before and, as I trust you have already surmised, behind.
“God’s aching asshole,” I groaned, picking myself wearily up, “tell me, Princess, do you play often at this game?”
“Seven or eight times a month,” Olympia confessed; “I’m used to it, I never tire of it anymore.”
“I congratulate you; as for me, I am a dry wreck. I discharge too much and too quickly, it’s my undoing.”
“Come, we shall bathe and sup together,” said Olympia, “and tomorrow you shall be as good as new.”
The Princess took me home with’ her, and after two hours in the bath we sat down at table, in no state to undertake anything beyond a sweet and lubricious conversation.
“Did you have any in the ass?” the Princess asked.
“Certainly,” I answered; “how on earth would you have had me withstand so many assaults in only one sector?”
“La,” said Olympia. “Cunt-fuck was all I had time to do. For I did not foresee you would wish to stop so soon; twenty-four hours is my usual stint at that house, and I do not swing round my ass to the fuckers until they have made a hash of my cunt. A hash, yes. Transformed it into an open wound.”
“Dear Olympia! Among libertine women I have never encountered your superior. Ah, none so well as we apprehend that ’tis by way of the various and ascending stages of secret excesses everything else is to be attained. I am a slave of those voluptuous episodes, each day I discover I have found some new habit as a result of them, charming habits which turn into so many little rituals, little homages one offers to one’s physical nature and which are wonderfully pleasing to one’s spiritual self.
“These divine flights of overindulgence, amongst which one must not neglect to include immoderate eating and drinking, of prime necessity in that they inflame the nervous humours and consequently determine the voluptuous mood; these self-pamperings, I say, have a gradual degenerating effect and tend before long to render excesses indispensable. Now, it is in excess pleasure exists. What therefore are we better advised to do than maintain ourselves constantly in the state pleasure demands? But there are,” I continued, “scores and scores of little habits, dirty and furtive ones, loathsome and ugly ones, crapulous and brutal ones, which, perhaps, my gentle dove, you are still to make acquaintance of. I shall whisper them in your ear: they will prove to you that the celebrated La Mettrie was right when he said16 that we humans must wallow in filth like swine and ought like them to seek pleasure in the ultimate degrees of corruption. As regards all this I have had some very singular experiences, and I shall tell you about them. I wager it has never occurred to you, for example, that by numbing two or three of the faculties of sensation one may extract astonishing things from the others; whenever you like I shall demonstrate this remarkable truth. In the meantime accept my word for it, that generally speaking ’tis when we have achieved depravation, insensibility, that Nature begins to yield us the key to her secret workings, and that it cannot be pried away from her save through outrages.”
“Long have I been firmly persuaded of these maxims,” Olympia replied, “but, woe is me, I am now at a loss to know what outrages to inflict upon the sublime jade. I run this Court at my will. Pius VI was once my lover, our relations are still amicable and frequent. Through his protection and the influence it procures me I have acquired a total impunity, and I have ridden it too long and too far, everything has lost its savor for me, my dear, I am surfeited. Upon this parricide I have just accomplished I founded exaggerated hopes; projecting it aroused my senses a thousand times more than carrying it out satisfied them: nothing m
easures up to the stature of my desires. But too much have I reasoned on my fancies, better would it have been by far had I never analyzed them at all; left inside their dark envelope of crime, their strangeness would doubtless affright me, but they would at least titillate me; whereas the light my philosophy sheds upon them renders them so comprehensible, so simple, that they have ceased altogether to have any effect upon me.”
“It is the downtrodden, the unlucky, the helpless,” said I, “one should whenever possible make the targets of one’s wickedness; the tears you wring from indigence have a pungency which very potently stimulates the nervous humours, etc.”
“Why, ’tis a happy coincidence,” said the Princess, suddenly brightening, “for the splendid little scheme I have lately had in mind is perfectly in the spirit of your suggestion: my intention is, on the same day, at the same hour, to send all the hospitals in Rome, all the city’s poorhouses, all the orphans’ homes, all the public schools up in smoke; and not only is this excellent plan agreeable to my lewd mischievousness, it will also profit my greed.
From an entirely trustworthy individual I have the offer of one hundred thousand crowns to be mine once the catastrophe has taken place: it will prepare the ground for a project of his own and from which he will gain a fortune in gold, and glory besides.”
“I marvel that you hesitate.”
“Oh, the vestiges of a prejudice…. This horror, do you realize, will cost the lives of a good three hundred thousand human beings.”
“I dare say; but does it matter? You will discharge, Olympia, you will rescue your senses from the torpor where they are presently becalmed; yours shall be the delicious moments you are about to taste, as for the rest, eh, it is of no concern to you; is hesitation philosophically warranted? Why, my sweet, I had no idea matters stood so ill with you. When shall you wake up? When are you going to understand that all this world abounds in is nought but game meant for our pleasures; that every last one of these creatures you see waiting about is Nature’s gift to us, that ’tis only through dallying destructively with them, with the greatest possible number of them, that we fulfill Nature’s expectations of us? Come, an end to this sulking in your tent, up, Olympia, great deeds call to you. Since you are in the midst of unburdening yourself, this is perhaps the proper moment to tell me whether you have not perpetrated some other crime than those you have avowed to me already: if I am to advise you well I must know you thoroughly, so speak freely if there are any pertinent facts whereof I ought to have intelligence.”
“Very well then,” said Princess Borghese, “I am guilty of a child-murder; I feel the need to recount it to you. When twelve years of age I gave birth to a daughter more beautiful than anything you can imagine. It was when she had grown to be ten that I became wild about her. My authority over her, her candor, her guilelessness, her innocence, all this furnished me the means to satisfy myself. We frigged each other. Two years of that and she began to pall on me. My penchants, reinforced by satiety, soon spelled out her fate; only the thought of her destruction moistened my cunt now. I had just buried my husband; of near relatives there were none left, nobody who could call me to account for my child. I publish the rumor she has been carried off by sickness and clap her into the tower of a castle I have by the seaside, and which more resembles a fortress than an abode for decent and well-intentioned folk; I left her to languish six months in this reclusion, behind those stone walls and iron bars. Stripping people of their liberty amuses me, I like holding captives; I know that while they are incarcerated my victims suffer: this perfidious idea excites me, I should love to be able to maintain entire nations in this cruel situation.17
“I arrive at my castle—with you may imagine what fell designs. In my entourage were two paid queans and a young maiden, my child’s playmate, her dearest friend. After a delicious dinner, thorough and artful masturbations brought my rage to a pitch and readied me for my crime. Finally, I climb the stairs to the tower, alone, and spend a preliminary two hours in that raving, in that peculiar delirium, that divine incoherence whereinto lust plunges us drunkenly and which it is so pleasant to hazard with a person who is never again to see the light of day. I doubt, my love, whether I could well render to you the things I said, the things I did…. I behaved like one gone stark mad: this was my first open sacrifice of a victim. Hitherto I had acted covertly, employed stealth, and my opportunities to enjoy the effects of my crime had been meager; this however was outright assassination, a premeditated murder, a horror, an execrable infanticide—a prank after our own taste, save only that into it there was not incorporated that lewd ingredient you have since taught me to blend into such deeds. Here blind hatred had a greater share than lucid calculation, fury a greater share than voluptuousness. Incredibly animated, I was perhaps about to leap tiger-like upon my victim when a fiendish idea entered my crazed brain and made me pause…. This friend of my daughter’s … this creature she adored and whom I had used as I had used her, I struck upon the idea of killing her first. Thus, I said to myself, thus shall I have the further pleasure of enjoying my daughter’s reaction to the sight of her dead companion. I rush out to arrange the confrontation.
“Then, returning to fetch my daughter, ‘Come,’ said I, ‘I am going to show you your very best friend.’
“‘Oh, Mother, where are you leading me? These dark tunnels…. And what is Marcelle doing in this dreadful place?’
“‘You shall see, Agnes.’
“I open a door. This new dungeon into which I drag my child is draped in black. Marcelle’s head was hanging from the ceiling; propped upright, sitting in a negligent attitude upon a bench, her naked body was just beneath the head, six inches of emptiness separated the one from the other; one of her arms, lopped off at the shoulder, was wrapped like a girdle around her waist, and three daggers were driven into her heart. Agnes stared at the spectacle, and shuddered. Her distress was extreme, but she did not give way before it; the color drained from her face, a gray wave of grief replaced it. Yet another moment did she gaze upon this horror; then, slowly turning her lovely eyes toward me, she asked: ‘Is it you who have done this?’
“‘I, all by myself.’
“‘What wrong did the poor girl ever do you?’
“‘None, to my knowledge. Thinkst thou one must have pretexts to commit a crime? Shall I need any when a little while from now I butcher thee?’
“Upon hearing those words Agnes fell into a swoon, and absorbed in thought there did I tarry between my two victims, one smitten already by the scythe of death, the other shortly to feel its edge.
“Oh, my friend,” continued the Princess, much moved by the story she was telling, “how puissant are these pleasures! They assail the frame as a tempest and huge waves try a ship at sea, and by those blows one is nigh to overwhelmed. These pleasures, ah … how fascinating are their details, how they intoxicate. But it cannot be described; it must be experienced. There, all alone with two victims, to do everything you fancy, anything; to act, to riot, to rant at your ease, without interference from anybody, without anybody hearing you; to know that twenty feet of earth ensure the security of your imagination’s disorders; to say to yourself, here is an object Nature surrenders into my hands to do with absolutely whatever I please, I can smash it, I can burn it, I can maim it, I can dismantle it, I can torment it, I can fondle and annihilate it as I like, it is mine, nothing can deprive me of it, nothing save it from its fate—ah, Juliette, what happiness, what joy. And in such conditions what do we not attempt….
“And then I left off my brooding and sprang upon Agnes. She was nude, unconscious, utterly defenseless…. So mighty was my trouble that my frantic wrath encompassed, it defined, all that was alive in me. Oh, Juliette, I satisfied myself; and after three hours of the most various tortures, the most hideous and merciless, I restored to the elements an inert mass which had received life in my womb only in order to become the toy of my rage and my viciousness.”
“And then you discharged,” I ventured.
“No,” Olympia replied. “No, in those days, I say, I had still to establish the connection between lewdness and crime; a veil obscured my vision, you were the one who snatched it away…. Before we met I used to act mechanically; but if today I were to institute such a scene, how much more intelligently I would proceed…. But alas, that delicious crime cannot be repeated. I have no daughter left.”
The villainy behind that regret, the debauches which had occupied us earlier in the day, the conversation we had just now had, the excesses we had indulged in at table, everything drove us headlong into each other’s embrace. But too overwrought, too libertine to suffice unto ourselves, we must have auxiliaries, and Olympia summoned her women. Several more ecstatic hours were devoted to pleasure. Upon that god’s altars we immolated a young victim, she was as fair as the day. I requested Princess Borghese to treat her just as she had done her daughter; whence there resulted unspeakable horrors, and when we parted ’twas for the purpose of concerting others.
But prodigious as Madame Borghese’s libertinage might be, still it was not enough to make me forget the pure pleasures I was yet bent on tasting with sweet Honorine. Several days after our first adventure together I went to see her again. The Duchess greeted me more cordially than ever, we embraced delightedly and our conversation soon came around to the joys we had recently given each other: evoking them shortly moved us to engage anew in the activities whence they had derived, as will regularly happen when a pair of women hold such parley. The weather that day was sultry; we two were alone in a lovely boudoir, stretched indolently side by side upon a broad divan; what earthly excuse could we have had for delaying the sacrifice to a god whose altars were ready dressed and beckoning impatiently? Coy Honorine’s defenses were swiftly overrun and a moment later, in quivering surrender, she offered me all her desire-swollen charms. How beautiful the creature was to behold … a thousand times daintier than Olympia, fresher, more youthful than she, artless, embellished by modesty’s graces, why was it she pleased me not so much withal? Indescribable allurements of obscenity, lewdness’ fascination, divine amenities of debauchery, has Nature then invested in you some unique power to please abstractly? To sense your incredible sway, O crime, is to recognize your sovereign grandeur and to bow in acknowledgment before your absolute rights….
Juliette Page 84
