“Olympia is right,” Clairwil said, “that infamous prejudice will be felled in no other way. The objection may be brought forward, that martial courage will fade out of hearts once its exercise ceases. This is quite possible; but I assert that courage is a dupe’s virtue, and declare that I prize it very little: I have never seen anyone but fools being brave. The second Caesar was a very great man, no doubt of it, yet he was afraid of his shadow; Frederick of Prussia had a good mind and many talents … and had a bout of fever whenever the time came to fight. All the illustrious men who trembled in their boots, the list would be endless; the Romans even revered fear, they raised altars to it. Fear, in short, is in Nature, it is born of the innate concern for personal safety, that is, for self-preservation, a concern one cannot possibly not have, so deeply is it graved in us by the Prime Mover which cast us into the world. To disesteem a man because he fears danger, ’tis to hate him for loving life. For my part, I protest to you that I will always have the highest regard for a man who dreads death; that fact alone proves to me that he possesses a brain, an imagination, and a capacity for pleasure. The day the whole of Paris castigated La Luzerne for having assassinated his adversary on the dueling grounds, that was the day I wanted him on my belly: I have beheld few more amiable mortals, and probably not one whose mind was so attractively organized.”
“Only they are appealing,” I put in; “the higher an individual rises above prejudice, the better his mind becomes: the man hemmed in by narrow moral principles, necessarily infertile and dull, will be as insipid as the maxims he professes, and since with the kind of imagination Nature gave us, we will derive nothing from his society, we should keep carefully away from him.”
After a few days, Sbrigani’s condition showed to be much improved.
“He has just fucked me,” Clairwil told me, “I took his pulse and I can assure you he is in good health: a throbbing prick is the best test of it, and I am still wet with his sperm. … So listen to me, Juliette,” that incredible personage continued, “is it true that this man exists in your affections?”
“He has rendered me many services.”
“He has only done his duty, you pay him for that. Is your soul beginning to open to the mighty principles of gratitude?”
“No, not yet, upon my honor.”
“Well, you see, I for one don’t like him, this Sbrigani; what’s more, I don’t trust him. That man will end up robbing us.”
“Say rather that you are weary of him because he gave you a good fucking and because you cannot abide a man once he has discharged in your cunt.”
“That one has never fucked me anywhere but in the ass—look at it, it’s still leaking what he pumped into it.”
“Out with it, silly, what are you driving at?”
“At ridding ourselves of that bugger.”
“Do you forget that he faced death for us?”
“I certainly do not forget it; and there’s one reason the more for detesting him, since his act illustrates stupidity.”
“Again, what do you propose to do with him?”
“Tomorrow he will take a last spoonful of medicine; the day after that, we bury him.”
“Have you anything left of those charming drugs we bought together from Durand long ago?”
“A pinch of this, a pinch of that. … I’d like to have your Sbrigani taste a few of them.”
“Ah, Clairwil, your behavior gets no better with the years, you shall always be a great rogue. But what will sister Olympia say?”
“Whatever she pleases. When I have the urge to commit a crime, my heart is dominated by something else than concern for my reputation.”
I consented; could I coldly turn my back upon crime? So precious to me was anything bearing its stamp that I could not refrain from embracing it immediately. I had used that Italian, more out of need than from love. Clairwil promised to take care of all the details of day-to-day management that had been entrusted to him: Sbrigani’s usefulness came therewith to an end: I endorsed his destruction. Olympia made no fuss. On the following day, poisoned by Clairwil herself, Sbrigani went off to inform all the demons in hell that the wicked spirits existing in a real woman’s body are a thousand times more dangerous than those with which priests and poets array Tartarus. This operation concluded, we set out on a tour of the surroundings of Naples.
Nowhere in Europe does Nature attain such imposing expression, such splendor as in the environs of this city; ’tis something utterly different from that melancholy, uniform beauty of the Lombard Plain, which produces a certain torpor in the imagination. Here, to the contrary, everything quickens it: the convulsions, the volcanoes, of this everlastingly criminal Nature engender restlessness in the spirit, rendering it capable of great deeds and tumultuous passions.
“This,” said I to my two companions, “all this is us, and virtuous folk resemble those flat stretches of Piedmont countryside whose mournful evenness depresses. Carefully examining this extraordinary region, one feels it may have been all one volcano in the past; hardly a spot unmarked by the emblem of upheaval. And so this curious Nature is at times given also to unruliness … and we are not supposed to imitate her! Crying injustice: the solfataras we have been roaming about seem to be the proof of what I say.”
With the most varied and picturesque scenery unfolding all along the way, we reached Pozzuoli. From there can be seen Nisida, the pretty little island to which Brutus retired after having killed Caesar. What a charming hideaway for the kind of joys we cherish; there, one would be as though at the farthest corner of the world; the secret horror one would be incited to commit there would be curtained from sight by impenetrable screens; and nothing needles the imagination, nothing inflames it like silence and mystery. Off in the distance, beyond the Bay, the headlands of Sorrento and Massa can be made out, ruins, noble edifices, flowering hillsides, everything that is able to adorn the most smiling prospect and create the most agreeable mood.
Pozzuoli,21 where we returned for dinner, does not today display any trace of its ancient grandeur; but the site remains, it is one of the loveliest in the whole Kingdom of Naples. And yet, the crass population inhabiting the town is unconscious of its happiness; excessive idleness serves only to render it more barbarous and more insolent.
As soon as we appeared, a swarm of people crowded up, eager to show us the curiosities of the country.
“Children,” said Olympia, shutting the door after a dozen of those rascals had elbowed their way into our chambers, “we do not intend to enlist the services of anybody unprovided with an outstanding prick. Show us what you have; we shall do our own selecting.”
They all agree to the bargain; we lower breeches, we excite, we frig; six are judged worthy of the honors of a spasm, and the biggest, that is to say, a funny fellow all in rags and tatters, whose leviathan stretched itself thirteen inches in length and filled out to nine in circumference, alone obtained, after having fucked us all three, the privilege of becoming our cicerone. We dubbed him Raphael.
He took us first to the Temple of Serapis whose impressive debris caused us to presume that this structure had once been superb. We visited the neighboring antiquities, and wherever we looked, we beheld unequivocal evidence of the magnificence and the tastefulness of those Greek and Roman peoples who, after having been the light of the world for a brief hour, faded away, as shall vanish them who make the world tremble today.
The remains of a monument to pride and superstition next presented themselves to our eyes. Thrasyllus had prophesied that Caligula would not wear the purple until he had been from Baiae to Puteoli upon a bridge. The emperor had one built of boats for a distance of two leagues, and marched across it at the head of his army. ’Twas a piece of folly, no doubt, but one of a great man; and Caligula’s crimes, which were to make an epoch in history, demonstrate, it shall have to be admitted, at once the most unusual figure and the most impetuous imagination.
From Caligula’s bridge, Raphael guided us to Cumae; he pointed out to u
s, near the ruins of that town, those of a house that belonged to Lucullus. Gazing at them, we reflected upon the magnificence of that illustrious person.
“He is no more … and ere a little, a few months, a few years, we too shall have come and gone: the shears of Fate spare no one, neither rich nor poor, neither the good man nor the wicked…. Let us gather flowers while we tread this path whose end we reach so soon, and let it at least be of gold and silk the Dark Whore spins the thread of our days.”
We penetrated into the ruins of Cumae, where our attention was directed mainly toward the vestiges of the Temple of Apollo built by Daedalus when, a refugee from the wrath of Minos, he wandered to this city.
Making our way thence to Baiae, we traversed the little locality of Bauli, where the poets situated the Elysian Fields; Acheron flows nearby.
“Let us pay a visit to the underworld,” said Clairwil upon seeing those waters; “let us go and muse upon the torments of the damned, and dwell upon the thought of adding to their sufferings. Would that Proserpina’s office were mine…. However, provided there is earthly woe for me to gaze upon, I shall always be the happiest of living women.”
Eternal springtime reigns in that valley. Amidst the vineyards and the poplars are to be seen here and there the burial vaults where cinerary urns used to be placed, and Charon doubtless had his abode at Misenum. One likes to persuade oneself of such things when one has imagination. This brilliant part of our mind vivifies everything, and truth, always in arrears of illusion, becomes almost of no purpose to him who is able to create and embellish falsehood.
Close to the village of Bauli the visitor finds the traces of a hundred intercommunicating rooms; all this belongs to what they call Nero’s Prison: here one could once hear the groans of the victims of that villain’s lust and cruelty.
A little farther along one comes to the marvelous artificial lake Marcus Agrippa built for the fleet which ordinarily lay inside the bight of Cape Misenum. This cape forms a sheltered haven whose importance was recognized by the Roman admirals. It was there Pliny’s ships were anchored when Vesuvius’ eruption cost him his life. Some vestiges provide clues to this ancient city’s considerable size. From there you go down to Bauli, which boasts the tomb of Agrippina. ’Twas off the shore of this town that there broke asunder the vessel in the disaster whereby Nero calculated to rid himself of his mother. However, the stratagem failed: returning from a festival at Baiae, Agrippina and her women leapt into the sea when the trap was sprung and the ship began to capsize; in the darkness the empress was able to swim away, and at length reached the shore and made her way home. Thus as it is given in Tacitus, the story lends no support to the legend that has grown up, that Bauli is the place where this celebrated woman was buried.
Reflecting upon the great emperor’s scheme, “I am much taken,” Clairwil said to me, “by the artfulness that entered into Nero’s efforts to slay his mother. They reveal a cruelty, a perfidy, a repudiation of every virtue which endears that personage to me. He had been very fond of Agrippina; Suetonius assures us that he often masturbated at the thought of her … and he finally kills her. O Nero, let me venerate they memory. Wert thou alive today, I would adore thee as a god, and to me thou wilt be an eternal model and an inspiration.”
After this amusing peroration from Clairwil, ever guided by Raphael whom Olympia caressed unceasingly while my friend and I were chatting together, we proceeded on along the coast, so renowned in olden days for the multitude of superb villas that lined it; only a few impoverished fishermen inhabit it at present. The first important object one encounters there is the fortress which defends it at this end. By and by one comes to the beach, and one is now on the spot where famous Baiae once flourished, center of delights and of debauchery, whither the Romans used to repair for the lewdest and most heteroclite revelries. This must indeed have been a wonderful town to live in, shielded by mountains from the northern winds, and open toward the south, so that the sun, source of life-sustaining warmth and fuel to natural passions, might play its sacred and miracle-working rays upon this divine country’s lucky inhabitants. Despite all the convulsions which over the centuries have shaken the terrain, one still breathes here that mild and voluptuous air, poison to austerities and virtues, delicate aliment to vice and all the so-called crimes of lust. In this connection, my friends, you will recall Seneca’s invectives; but that severe moralist’s reproaches made no headway against Nature’s irresistible influences, and the while his contemporaries read his philosophy, they were pleased to outrage his principles in the most flagrant manner possible.
A single fisherman’s rickety hut is all that survives today of once sumptuous Baiae; a few interesting bits of rubble—all that marks its erstwhile grandeur.
Venus had necessarily to be the favorite divinity of a town so corrupt. Vestiges of her temple still exist, but in such a state of dilapidation that it is difficult to judge of the past from this present evidence. It includes underground passageways, shadowy and mysterious corridors suggesting that these premises were used for very secret ceremonies. A subtle fire ignited in our veins the moment we entered them; Olympia bent close to me, and I saw fuck speak in her eyes.
“Raphael,” Clairwil exclaimed, “we must perform our duties in this holy place.”
“You drained me dry,” our guide replied, “and gadding up and down this way has wearied me to the bone. However, I know four or five fishermen nearby who will ask no more than to content you.”
Having said that, he is not six minutes fetching back some very unseemly but also very numerous company.
Blinded by the libertinage consuming us all three, we had, without thinking, put ourselves in a perilous situation. For what, in this ill-lighted and secluded place, what could a trio of women do against the ten men advancing insolently toward them? Fortified by the inspirations of the goddess who protects vice, we held our ground.
“Friends,” Olympia said to that crew in Italian, “we have not wanted to conclude our tour of Venus’ sanctuary without making a sacrifice to her; will you act a while as her priests?”
“Why not?” said one of those bumpkins, snatching up the orator’s skirts.
“Come on, let’s fuck ’em,” said another, laying hands on me.
However, fancying they were to be left out, the seven who were not chosen fell to grumbling, and knives were halfway drawn when I quickly endeavored to prove that with a little dexterity, each of us could receive three of them at once. I offer the example: one encunts me, I present my behind to a second, and suck a third; my companions follow suit. Raphael, exhausted, stands by and watches, and there we all are, fucking the crowd like hussies. One has no idea of the thickness of the Neapolitan prick: although we had promised to suck the third, we were reduced to frigging it instead, none of us being able to get it into our mouth. Once they had spent a while rambling through one sector they would shift off into another, that is to say, each of them fucked us cuntwise and ass-wise, and all discharged three times at least. The dim light in this place, the mysteries that used to be celebrated here, the order of persons with whom we were dealing, perhaps even the dangers we were running, all had heated our brains, and the desire for horrors took hold of us. But, ours being the weaker side, how were we to contrive to execute them?
“Have you any candy?” I asked Clairwil in a whisper.
“Yes,” she replied, “I never go anywhere unsupplied.”
“Well then, offer some to our champions.”
Olympia, acquainted with our intentions, explains to our rustic fuckers that these sweetmeats will have a restorative effect upon them. I hand the medicine around—in such instances I always coveted the role of distributor; our rascals swallow the dose.
“Another fucking from each of them,” Clairwil murmured to me; “now that death is in their bloodstreams, let us wring from them the last measure of seed Nature will ever generate in their balls.”
“Excellent,” said I, “but might they not transmit to us the venom
already circulating in their veins?”
“Keep them away from your mouth, let them have anything else. There is not the least danger,” Clairwil added; “I have performed such extravagances a hundred times over, and you see the blooming health I am in….”
Juliette Page 112
