Juliette

by Marquis de Sade

  “Do I wish, joining the two halves of the picture together, to contemplate this society as a whole? I behold a confusion of economic conditions; the citizen lacking the necessities of life taken up with useless activities; each man serving as amusement or spectacle to some other; indigence itself putting on grandiose airs that are the more revolting since, while horses draw its carriages, its cupboard at home is bare. One of the disastrous effects of the Neapolitans’ taste for luxury is that, in order to have a coach and valets, three out of four of the best households avoid marrying their daughters; this frightful practice extends throughout all classes. Again, what happens? The population diminishes in direct proportion to the increase of luxury; and the State gradually sinks, the brighter the sheen it acquires by these vile means.

  “But it is in your weddings and in your takings of the veil especially that this wastefulness becomes as preposterous as it is cruel. In the first case, you raid the luckless bride’s dowry in order to embellish her for a day; in the second, you’d have enough to find her a husband if you did not spend it upon the ludicrous ceremony which is to deprive her of one for the rest of her life.

  “Particularly, Ferdinand, it is that although your subjects are poor, you are rich. And you would be a great deal richer had your predecessors not sold the State piecemeal for great sums of silver. A State that has reciprocal commercial interests can bargain past rainy days; but a people who borrows from anybody and lends to nobody, a people who, in the article of trade, plays a lone hand against the whole of Europe, must inevitably become poor. Such is the history of your nation, my dear prince; all the others, having industry, make you pay the price for their goods, and your industry, practically at a standstill, wins you no customers.

  “The amusing thing is that your arts reflect the puffed-up character of your people. Not a city on earth surpasses yours in operatic decorations; Naples is all tinsel and frippery, like its population. Medicine, surgery, poetry, astronomy are still in the dark ages here; but your dancers are excellent; and nowhere do we have such droll Scaramouches. In other countries they go to all sorts of lengths to become rich; all alone, the Neapolitan exerts himself only to look rich: his heart is less set on owning a large fortune than in persuading others he enjoys one, and his search is far less for opulence than for outward signs thereof. That is the reason why in this country there are so many people stinting themselves on essentials in order to have the superfluous. Meanness reigns at the most lavish banquets; culinary refinements are unknown; apart from your macaroni, what do they eat here that’s good? Nothing: your countrymen are absolutely innocent of the voluptuous art of stimulating every passion by the delicious means of a subtle cuisine Everything is subordinated to the absurd pleasure of having a handsome carriage, expensive livery; along with the pomp and magnificence of modern times you have retained the frugality of the ancients—the contrast is unsightly. Your women are imperious and dirty, demanding and shrewish, without style and without conversation. In other climates, their commerce, though it spoils the heart, may at least improve the mind; here, the men do not even derive that latter advantage from them; the vices contracted in their society are mitigated by nothing; with them it’s all loss, never any gain.

  “However, one must be fair: there are some positive things to be said about your people. There is a basic goodness in them; the Neapolitan is quick-tempered, irascible, brusque, but his ill-humor doesn’t last, and his heart, grievances once forgotten, is warm and not without virtues. Almost all the crimes committed here are rather the products of a thoughtless first impulse than of premeditation, that this people is not spiteful is proven by the great number of the Neapolitans, which is maintained without police. This people loves you, Ferdinand: show your subjects you love them in return, be capable of a great sacrifice. Christine, Queen of Sweden, abjured her crown through philosophy: break your scepter out of benevolence, relinquish the reins of a so badly organized government that enriches nobody but you. Remind yourself that kings are nothing in today’s world, the common masses everything. Leave to this people the task of overhauling and refitting a ship which will never sail very far with you at its helm; let Naples live as a Republic: to the extent this race, and I have studied it well, makes for bad slaves, it will produce good citizens; liberate its energy by delivering it from the shackles of your power, that will be to accomplish two meritorious acts at one stroke: there will be a tyrant the less on the face of Europe, and one nation the more to admire there.”

  Ferdinand, who had listened to me with his best attention, asked, when I had finished, whether all Frenchwomen thus reasoned about politics.

  “No,” I replied, “and more’s the pity: the majority of them are better analysts of ruffles and flounces than of the structure of kingdoms: they weep when oppressed, they are insolent once unchained. As for me, frivolity is not my vice; I’ll not say the same for libertinage. … I am excessively addicted to it. But the pleasure of fucking does not blind me to the point of being unable to discuss the interests of the world’s populations. In strongly made souls the passions’ torch lights a Minerva as well as a Venus; burning with the latter’s fire, I fuck like your sister-in-law;16 illuminated by the rays of the former, I think and discourse like Hobbes and Montesquieu. Is it then, in your opinion, such a difficult thing to manage, an empire? So assure the people’s welfare that nobody can envy you yours; then dedicate yourself unreservedly to this latter, which you can safely do, since human beings cease to be observant or restless when they are happy—that, it seems to me, is the whole secret, and I would have put it into practice long ago had I had, like you, the power and the foolishness to rule a nation. But mark you well, my friend, it is not despotism I forbid you, I am too familiar with its charms to deny it to you; I simply advise the suppression or the rectification of whatever jeopardizes or interferes with the maintenance of this despotism, if it is upon the throne you choose to stay. Render every sentient being happy if you wish to be so yourself; for the moment the crowd’s enjoyments pale, be very certain of it, Ferdinand, the crowd will spoil your pleasures in its turn.”

  “And by what means?”

  “Institute the broadest freedom of thought, of belief, and of conduct. Do away with moral impediments: the man with an erection wishes to act as freely as a cat or dog. If, as is done in France, you are going to appoint for him the altar upon which he must shed his fuck, employing absurdities to bend him under the yoke of a puerile morality, he will repay you in kind and with good measure. Such irons, forged to your order by pedants and priests, will be yours to wear ere long, and it may be that you’ll carry them to the scaffold, for your erstwhile victim will have his revenge.”17

  “Your opinion, then, is that there must be no moral standards under a government?”

  “None save those inspired by Nature. You will always render the human animal unhappy when you seek to subject him to any others. To him who has suffered the outrage leave the problem of obtaining redress, he will handle the business better than do your laws, for his interests are more closely involved; your laws, moreover, are frequently eluded, but the object of just revenge rarely escapes.”

  “Faith, all that is quite beyond me,” the great simpleton confessed with a sigh. “I fuck, I eat macaroni without cooks, I build houses without architects. I collect medallions without antiquarians, I play at billiards like a lackey, I exercise, my cadets like a drill-sergeant; but I don’t talk politics, religion, ethics, or government, because I know nothing about any of them.”

  “And your kingdom?”

  “Oh, it gets along, it gets along as best it can. Think you then that to be king one has to be so very wise?”

  “Apparently not, for I must take you as proof,” I replied. “But that is not enough to convince me that a leader of men can dispense with reason and philosophy, nor that, deprived of the one and the other, a prince like you can avoid blunders which will one fine day see your subjects up in arms and ridding themselves of an idiotic master. And this
will come very shortly to pass unless you take every possible measure to prevent it.”

  “I have cannons, fortresses.”

  “Who mans them?”

  “My people.”

  “When they weary of you, they’ll turn the guns against your castle, take your fortresses and perhaps, who knows, drag you in the mire.”

  “You terrify me, Madame! What must I do?”

  “I have told you. Imitate the experienced horseman: rather than shorten the bit when the charger rears, go softly with him, loosen the reins, let him have his head. Nature, disseminating peoples over all the surface of the globe, gave them all the intelligence necessary to run their affairs; but it was only in a moment of wrath she suggested the idea of saddling themselves with kings. These are to the body politic as a doctor is to the physical body: you may call him when you are ill, you must show him to the door once health returns, else he’ll prolong the malady so as to be of eternal aid, and while pretending to cure, he’ll bide with you to the grave.”18

  “Juliette, you reason forcefully, I like your conversation, but … confound it all, you overawe me; you have more wit than I.”

  “Which is to credit me with more than none at all. Never mind, Sire, since my wit frightens you, reason will yield for a moment to your pleasures. Come, what do you desire?”

  “It is said that you have the world’s prettiest body, Juliette, I should like to see it. This, perhaps, is not quite the language I ought to be employing, considering the manners you displayed at the time of your arrival in our midst; but I am not taken in by façades, my dear. I have informed myself about your sisters and you; although exceedingly rich, you are, beyond any doubt, thoroughgoing whores, the three of you.”

  “Your information is highly inexact, fair my Lord,” I replied with vivacity, “your spies resemble your ministers, they steal your money without giving you service in return. You are in error; but no matter. For my part, I have no inclination to act the vestal. The question is merely one of coming to terms. I shall not make the capitulation any harder for you than it was for your brother-in-law, that little Duke of Tuscany. Now listen to me. While you are mistaken in considering us whores, if we are not so in fact, yet it is a certainty that for wickedness and corruption we cannot be easily outdone; you shall have the three of us, if you like.”

  “Truly,” said the prince, “nothing pleases me more than to string beads an entire family at a time.”

  “Well, you shall have that satisfaction, and we merely ask, in exchange, that you defray the expenses we shall be incurring in Naples over the coming six months, that you pay our debts if we contract any, and that you guarantee our total immunity, whatever may be the pranks we indulge in.”

  “Pranks?” Ferdinand wondered. “What kind of pranks?”

  “Numerous, violent, beyond anything imaginable: my sisters and I do not stint ourselves where it is a question of crime, we commit all sorts and we do not wish to be punished for any of them.”

  “Granted,” Ferdinand replied; “but endeavor to keep your depradations from becoming unduly noticed, and let neither my government nor my person become the target of your attacks.”

  “No, no,” I assured him, “they’d not amuse us. Good or bad, we leave regimes as they are; and to the underlying people we leave the task of settling matters with their kings.”

  “All right,” said Ferdinand, “we can now discuss pleasures.”

  “Did you not tell me you wanted to enjoy my sisters too?”

  “Yes, but a beginning must be made somewhere. Let us therefore start with you.” And, guiding me into an adjoining chamber, “Juliette,” the Neapolitan went on, showing me a woman of twenty-seven or twenty-eight years, almost naked and lying upon a couch in an alcove paneled with mirrors, “they are this lady’s passions no less than mine that you shall have to satisfy.”

  “Who is this person?”

  “My wife.”

  “Ah, ’tis you, Charlotte,” I say, “to be sure. I know you through your reputation: as whorish as your sisters, report has it, however, that you pay better. We shall see.”

  “Juliette,” Ferdinand interjected, “if you wish to have me favor your desires, you must, toward the Queen, show utmost consideration.”

  “All she has to do is say what she wants: the resources of lewdness, I possess them every one, there are none I am not ready to employ.”

  And that was when Charlotte of Lorraine, throwing her arms around my neck, gave me to understand, by a thousand kisses, how alive she already was to the pleasures I promised her. Ceremony was laid aside: Ferdinand undressed us both. Then, there having been fetched in a page boy of some fifteen years, a delight to behold, whose clothes the King also removed, Charlotte and I frigged each other upon the couch while, from where he had a clear view of our doings, Ferdinand, polluted by the page, kissed the boy’s mouth ardently, at the same time fingering his behind.

  Oh, my friends! What a woman that Charlotte was! Impudicity had established its hearth in that royal whore’s cunt; Charlotte, her thighs entwined with mine, rubbed her clitoris against my clitoris, frenziedly; her hands roved over my buttocks; one of her fingers tickled my asshole; her tongue, stuck far into my mouth, lapped thirstily at my saliva; the wench was all ablaze, fuck fairly leaked from her pores. I engage her to change positions; her head slips between my thighs, mine between hers, and we suck altogether at our ease. Oh, how willingly she repays me for what I yield to her mouth; if my cunt floods her throat with sperm, her frequent ejaculations send rivers of delight into mine. When we had shed our fuck to the last drop she besought me to piss into her mouth; I asked the same of her, we poured urine into each other, swallowing it as it flowed.

  Charlotte is beautiful, her skin is very white, her breasts high and firm, her buttocks admirable, her thighs of marvelous proportion; ’tis plain that she has much fucked and in every conceivable manner, but she is well preserved all the same, and her openings are still very narrow.19

  “Oh, my love,” I said to her, truly moved by her charms, “let us exchange more serious blows.”

  “Here is what you need for that,” spoke up the King, tossing us a pair of dildoes. And having each donned that equipment, we set to smiting each other with greatest energy. At one point in our capers my ass was directly in front of Ferdinand; he examines it, covets it, covers it with the most heated kisses.

  “Stand where you are for a moment and steady your movements,” he says to me, “I mean to embugger you while you fuck my wife. You, Zerbi, frig my behind.”

  The scene lasts several instants, at the end of which the prince, having his wife exchange places with me, buggers her while she fucks me; a moment later, he has her sodomized by the youth, I tongue her cunt, and he at last discharges into the bowels of the page who is cuckolding him.

  After a brief interval of rest employed in kissing, in fondling one another, we started in anew. Ferdinand fitted himself into my ass, he sucked Zerbi’s, had the boy shit into his mouth, and his wife beat him; a minute of this and he retired from my bum, took the switches and beat the three of us rather severely; the Queen then wielded them upon my hindquarters, flogging was one of her passions, she kept at it until my blood flowed; she sucked the page’s prick while her husband ass-fucked her and she kneaded my behind. A little while later we surrounded Ferdinand, I sucked him, his wife socratized him, palpated his balls, and the page, straddling his chest, gave the King of Naples his asshole to lick; he got up from that with a fierce erection.

  “I don’t know why we shouldn’t wring that little bugger’s neck,” said he, collaring his page and squeezing shrill screams from him.

  “Hang him,” said Charlotte.

  “Dear girl,” said I, kissing that charming person, “would you have a fondness for cruelties too? Ah, I adore you, if ’tis so. Yes, I can see it, you would be capable of that trick of the Chinese empress, who fed her goldfish on the genitals of the children of the poor.”

  “Oh yes, I shall imitate tha
t horror when called upon; and I am capable of worse yet. Infamies, Ferdinand, let’s perform infamies, this woman is delightful, she has wit, character, imagination; I believe she shares our tastes. Here, my friend, be Zerbi’s executioner, and let us all remember that an individual’s destruction is the most potent stimulant one can add to the charms of sensual debauchery. Hang Zerbi, dear husband, hang him short; Juliette will masturbate me while we observe the operation from close on.”

  It is carried out: Ferdinand hangs the page up with such skill, dispatch, and violence that the boy expires before we have time to get properly started.

  “Alas,” Charlotte grumbles, “unlucky creature that I am, I postponed my spasm until I could watch him die. Never mind, Ferdinand, cut him down; dead as he is, guide his hand, I want to be frigged by it.”

  “No,” says the King, “Juliette will undertake that chore; I shall embugger the cadaver in the meantime; they claim there is nothing better in the world, I must try it. Oh, sweet fuck!” he cries, once lodged in that ass, “this pleasure is everything it is reputed to be. What a grip to a dead anus! ’Tis divine.”

  The scene goes forward; Zerbi does not come back to life, but his slayers die of pleasure. Charlotte, for one last discharge stretched out naked upon the page’s already cold body, and while her husband frigged her, she had me shit in her mouth. Four thousand ounces20 was my fee, and we separated with the promise to meet together soon in more numerous company.

  Once home again, I tell my sisters about his Sicilian Majesty’s odd tastes.

  “Wonderful, is it not,” Clairwil remarked, “always to find such passions lodged in the brains of those whom Nature has made outstanding through the gift of intelligence, wealth, or authority.”

  “It strikes me as perfectly understandable,” said Olympia, whom we called by no other name, fearing lest her real one be recognized, “no, I tell you, I know of nothing more natural than that the most refined forms of pleasure-seeking be conceived by those endowed with the finest powers of discernment, or by those whom despotism or the favors of fortune place on a superior level. A man with much intellect, much power, or much money cannot possibly amuse himself the way everybody else does. Now, if he refines his pleasures he must inevitably arrive at murder, for murder is the ultimate excess of pleasure: voluptuousness dictates it, murder is a branch of erotic activity, one of its extravagances. The human being reaches the final paroxysm of delight only through an access of rage; he thunders, he swears, he loses all sense of proportion, all self-control, at this crucial moment he manifests all the symptoms of brutality; another step, and he is barbaric; yet another, and he has killed; the more intelligent he is, the more he will refine his gestures and proceedings. One obstacle will nevertheless continue to impede him, he will fear either the extreme costliness of his pleasures, or the law; deliver him from these silly terrors by means of gold or authority, and you have launched him into a career of crime, because impunity reassures him, and because nothing daunts a man when along with the mind capable of conceiving anything there are combined the means to undertake everything.”