“Delicious creature,” I responded, kissing her upon the mouth, “the more restraints one thrusts aside in these cases, the more one discharges.”
“Then I shall discharge plentifully,” she observed, “for barriers are things I ignore.”
Six months later she was husbandless, fatherless, motherless, without children.
A member of the Council of Ten sent for me, needing a woman to serve his son’s pleasures while he himself embuggered that son.
Another, belonging to the same Chamber, required that I frig myself with his sister, who was old and ugly. He embuggered that sister; after which, he did the same to me; then I received one hundred lashes from that sister’s hand.
In brief, there was no species of venereous activity, of debauchery, of infamy to which Durand and I did not dedicate ourselves from morn to night; and not a day passed but our fourfold trade of whore, procuress, fortune-teller, and poisoner brought in a thousand sequins, and often much more.
Supported, applauded, sought after by all the most amiable libertines, male and female, in the city of Venice, we were, without the slightest doubt, leading the most delightful and the most lucrative of lives when a dreadful reversal disrupted our partnership, deprived me of my beloved Durand, and caused me the loss, in the space of a day, of all the sums I had brought to Venice for investment, and all those I had earned there.
In the punishment it meted out to Durand, fate expressed an intolerance of the same weakness for which I myself had been made to pay many years before. My fault, leading to my enforced departure from Paris, had been a reluctance to carry crime to its ultimate degree. The same misfortune befell Durand; and such cruel lessons could only reinforce her conviction, and mine, that the most dangerous course, when you are in crime’s train, is to face about in a virtuous direction, or to lack the boldness necessary to pass the final frontiers; for my friend’s failure was indeed one of courage rather than of will; and if the unhappy creature suffered defeat, ’twas not through default of ambition, but through that of nerve.
The three State Inquisitors had, one morning, summoned Durand before them; and after having sworn her to absolute secrecy, they divulged their need of her destructive assistance for the purpose of annihilating a numerous faction which had formed inside the city.
“Unfortunately, affairs have got beyond the point,” they advised her, “where legal means can be employed; poison is the only one remaining to us. You have, as you know, benefited from our indulgence during the three years you have been in Venice, we have allowed you to enjoy the fruits of your crimes in perfect tranquillity; today, as token of your gratitude, we expect you to lend yourself in an advisory capacity or as an executant to crimes similar to those which our duty might otherwise have required us to punish most severely. Would you be able to disseminate the plague through a town and at the same time preserve from its ravages such persons as will be indicated to you?”
“No,” said Durand, although she did in fact possess both the required secrets; she possessed them, but she was afraid.
“Very well,” said the magistrates. A door was opened and she was dismissed.
And what added to her fright was the fact that they had not even bothered to warn her to keep silent.
She returned straight to the house. “We are lost,” she told me the moment she entered. Thereupon she related everything that had just taken place. My first thought was to send her back at once to see the Inquisitors.
“It would change nothing,” she replied. “Carrying out the work, I would lose my life just the same; they would do away with me secretly. No, the only thing for me to do is leave you this very minute; for if they discover or suspect that we have seen each other, you shall be compromised.”
The poor thing made ready to go. “Farewell, Juliette,” said she, “adieu. We may perhaps never meet again.”
Not two hours after my friend had departed officers appeared at my door with a warrant from the Republic. I am escorted to the Palace; I am led, deeply disturbed, to a remote, very isolated room in one of the uppermost stories. My guards form close ranks about me. A wide black taffeta curtain divided the room. Two Inquisitors appear; the police leave.
“Stand up,” one of the Inquisitors says to me, “and give clear and precise answer. Have you known a woman named Durand?”
“Yes.”
“Have you committed crimes jointly with her?”
“No.”
“Did she in your hearing ever speak ill of the government of Venice?”
“Never.”
The other judge now spoke up, his voice was grave. “Juliette, your replies are calculated to deceive; you tell us less than we already know; you are guilty.” He paused for a moment, then drew the black curtain aside. Behind it, hanging from the ceiling, was the body of a woman at which I no sooner looked than I averted my gaze in horror. “There is your accomplice; and that is the manner in which the Republic punishes cheats and poisoners. Get you gone from its territories inside twenty-four hours, else you will meet with the same fate tomorrow.”
My head swam, I lost consciousness.
When I returned to my senses I was in the hands of an unknown woman and still surrounded by police officers. I was dragged out of that room.
“Now go home,” the chief of the sbirri advised me, “comply scrupulously, punctually, with the orders of the Republic. Refrain from obstructing the task of the bailiff who will confiscate your holdings and chattels, that is to say, the funds you have in Venetian banks, your household furniture, and your personal jewelry. Leave with the rest, otherwise you die if sunrise finds you still in the city.”
“I shall obey, good sir,” I replied, “I shall obey, I have no wish to remain any longer in a town where they punish people for having declined to do evil.”
“Silence, Madame, silence; were anyone else to hear such remarks, you would not leave this palace alive.”
“My thanks to you, my good man,” I said to that turnkey, dropping one hundred sequins in his palm, “I understand your advice and I appreciate it; when tomorrow comes I shall be far away from your melancholy swamplands and lagoons.”
My packing was accomplished in no time. Lila and Rosalba appeared to wish to stay in Venice, where they were earning a comfortable living; I left them there; with me I took only one woman, who had been at my side ever since my marriage and of whom I have not spoken hitherto because she never played any role in my adventures. Having permission to keep my pocketbook and my cash, I set out with a little more than eight hundred thousand francs; everything else was seized by the Republic; but still intact were my Roman investments, from which I had dividends of five million a year, and that helped cheer me up. That night I reached Padua; less than a week later, Lyon, where I halted for a few days’ rest. During my northward journey I had not once paused to dally, and that little fast had brought on a violent need for fucking; to satisfy it, I betook myself most naturally to the house of a celebrated bawd whose address I had been given, and who in the course of the fortnight I spent with her, furnished me with everything I could possibly wish for in the one and the other sex.
Considering no risk entailed in a return to Paris, since the Minister from whom I had fled was no longer among the living, I decided to proceed thither once I received a reply from Noirceuil, to whom I penned a letter describing my intended move. Delighted at the prospect of seeing me again, that stout and cherished friend assured me that it was with the greatest pleasure he looked forward to a sight of me and of the progress his outstanding pupil had made. I dispatched another letter to Abbé Chabert, asking him to bring my daughter to Paris, and I named the hotel at which I planned to stop. We all converged there at almost the same moment. Marianne was entering her seventh year. No child could have been prettier than she; but Nature was mute in me, libertinage had extinguished its voice. Such then are its effects; taking a soul in its tyrant’s grip, it is loath, so it would seem, to allow room there to any sentiment other than those it inspires,
and if in its despite some other contrives to penetrate, it is able to corrupt it at once and turn it to its advantage. I am obliged to say that in embracing Marianne I felt absolutely nothing stir in me but the pulsations of lubricity.
“There’s a pretty subject for educating,” I murmured to Chabert; “oh! I am eager to preserve this creature from the errors that drove her mother from Paris, and from those that brought about the downfall of Durand in Venice. I shall make her so aware of the necessity for crime that she will never stray out of its path, and if ever virtue strives to worm its way into her heart, I want it to discover vice so firmly entrenched there as to have not even the chance to launch an attack.”
Chabert, who had presided over Marianne’s upbringing, was pleased to have me admire all her little talents; she played the piano, she danced charmingly, drew prettily … spoke Italian, etc.
“And the animal temperament?” I asked the Abbé.
“Animal enough, I believe,” Chabert replied, “and if we do not watch our step, the little minx will be frigging herself fairly soon.”
“Why, I shall aid her,” said I, “I shall be overjoyed to gather the first indications of her nubility.”
“Wait just a bit,” the Abbé advised me, “else you may endanger her health.”
This consideration, however, affected me barely at all. The Abbé, who had come to Paris several times during my absence, informed me of the most recent developments and took charge of the transfer of my funds from Rome. I soon acquired two fine town houses, as well as the country estate you are familiar with.
The day after arriving I went to find Noirceuil; he welcomed me with every sign of happiness, and declared that in his opinion I was more beautiful than ever. Having continued to profit from the Minister’s favor up until the time of his death, Noirceuil, while I had been away, had tripled his fortune, and all Paris looked upon him as one of the foremost men of the day.
“Juliette,” he assured me, “be certain that I shall never take a step upward without enabling you to rise alongside me; you are indispensable to my existence; I like committing crimes with nobody but you, and delicious excesses await us if we succeed in obtaining a still greater amount of influence than the very considerable amount of it I enjoy already: it shall therefore be necessary for us to combine our efforts in order to exploit this vein.”
After that he invited me to recount my adventures; and when I came to the five hundred thousand francs I had promised to turn over to Fontange de Donis, being brought up in a convent at Chaillot, and who must then have been seventeen years old, he urged that we amuse ourselves with the girl and pocket the half-million. His arguments touching this matter were so compelling that I cannot resist repeating them to you; I should interject that I deliberately adopted a hesitating attitude, which incited him to reason more forcefully and at greater length than he might otherwise have done. Here then is how he combated my simulated objections, one evening when we were supping together in his little house at Barrière-Blanche.
“When one has two reasons for doing a thing, Juliette,” said he, “and none for not doing it, I confess to you that I am inclined to disbelieve my ears when I hear the question raised of whether it should be done. When one is thirty years old, when one has intelligence, no prejudices, no more religion, no more God, no remorse, the most thorough habit of crime, much to gain from doing that thing, I confess to you, once again, that it strikes me as passing strange to hear it asked whether that thing is to be done or not. Once one has ready to hand everything required to operate, once one has already accomplished greater and more difficult things by far, once one has found pleasure in doing them, once one has been thrilled by that pleasure, I frankly confess to you, when over and above the same dose of pleasure the thing offers still greater advantages, then it sounds very peculiar indeed to hear one debate, shall I succumb to the temptation? shall I not succumb to it? You merit the whip, my dear Juliette, yes, the whip, for daring to consult me upon any such futile affair as this; I therefore declare to you that if four days hence it has not been attended to, executed, done, I shall break off all dealings with you, and regard you as one of those insipid, characterless women who spend their lives fidgeting without ever achieving anything. Are you going to allege that you are rich enough to dispense with a sum upon which the welfare of an unhappy orphan may depend? Ah, Juliette! does one ever have enough money? Granted, as spent by you, this half-million will go merely for superfluities: I ask you whether the enjoyment of these superfluities would not, from your point of view, be preferable to the vain pleasure of renouncing them for the sake of a little girl with whom you have no acquaintance, and whom, through this gift, you would furthermore be robbing of the only pleasures to which you ought to submit her.
“Let us, if you like, glance inquiringly at the existence of this little girl—for, oh yes! it is not so devoid of importance as to be undeserving of investigation. What is she to you? Nothing. Who is she? The bastard engendered by a woman with whom you had libertine traffic. Very respectable titles! But, one moment now: what will happen if you fulfill the prescribed commission? Nobody in the wide world will congratulate you; they will simply say you performed your duty. If, on the other hand, you keep the sum, never will anybody know it was given you in trust to hold for another, and you will have the delicious pleasure of enjoying it: say, the more attractive in your eyes, is it this empty and pointless duty, or the happiness you will procure for yourself with the sum? Oh, Juliette! can you waver for an instant? I shall go farther; I myself have never seen this girl, but you, look carefully at her, tell me whether upon her brow it is not written: ’Tis for thy little pleasures Heaven placed me in this world; consider all the irresistible fatalities which have led our paths to cross, and see whether it is not a victim Nature offers thee in my person. Yes, that is the legend writ upon her brow, you shall read it there; and whose hand but Nature’s could have inscribed it? But, you may perhaps reply, ’tis to hurt the interests of a friend; I behaved badly with her, all the more reason why I should make up for it now. There are, here, two things to be proven: that you are not hurting your friend’s interests, and that there is not the slightest wrong in thwarting a dead person’s intentions, whatever the idiotic respect fools have always had for such things. In what way, to begin with, will you be deceiving your friend? Her pure and simple intention was that this sum go to her daughter; but no clause denies you the right to benefit from it beforehand. Thus, hold on to the money with the intention of bequeathing the sum to her when you are gone, if she outlives you, and there’s your conscience at rest, if matters are such that you feel the need to placate it. What would be a violation of your friend’s wishes, would be to leave this property to a third person; but when you put it profitably to use with the idea of leaving it behind you, those wishes, certainly, are perfectly carried out. Madame Donis did not say to you, keep this child out of danger’s way, I recommend her life to your protection, and if by ill chance she dies, the funds will be yours, but yours only under those circumstances; no, not at all, she merely said: here are five hundred thousand francs, I am leaving them to my daughter. Well! if this child survives you, let the money become hers, and the dead mother’s desires shall be satisfied.
“But there is more: were you, I must now point out, even were you to violate this dead woman’s intentions, would you not simply be declining to act like a fool? for how do you suppose one can possibly feel obliged to honor the instructions of someone who has departed out of the world? To fail an individual while he is alive is to cause him hurt, because his passive existence sustains injury and suffers from your refusal to obey him; but once this existence has ceased, it cannot feel pain anymore, no more pain can there be; the shock is nullified, there being no one there to endure it; it is therefore perfectly impossible to offend a dead person; whence it results that every heir who to his own detriment executes a will for no other purpose than to cocker a corpse is as thorough an imbecile as the man who throws his money out the wi
ndow; for the latter sacrifices his money, and the former sacrifices his happiness to the satisfaction of a nonexistent being, and according to my belief, between the one piece of madness and the other there is not much to choose. The world is full of many such benign little institutions of which people are loath to get rid, but which are not for all that any the less ridiculous. The clauses contained in testaments should none of them be executed, for it is absurd to think to be bound by them; absurd to think to endow a man with the faculty of action when he is dead, ’tis contrary to every law of Nature and of good sense: and there’s an end to the question. Retaining the five hundred thousand francs, you in no wise counter your departed friend’s intentions; I have, I think, demonstrated it sufficiently well. Let us now examine another branch of your dilemma: if I surrender the money, I secure this little girl’s well-being; whereas if I do not surrender it, I secure my own. To this the following reply may be made.
“We are able, it seems to me, to estimate the qualities in others only through the intimate relationships they have with us: someone’s features correspond, fit in nicely with ours, only then do we have a motive for liking him; we are charmed by his face, his mind, his character, his attitude, all that affords us pleasure, and to frequent this object is for us a real delight. But when between two delights only one can be had, common sense dictates, there is no question about it, that the choice be for the better. Such is your position: either you must enjoy Fontange, at the expense of the five hundred thousand francs, or you must enjoy the five hundred thousand francs at the expense of Fontange. Here, there is no need for me to offer you any advice; you alone can choose which enjoyment suits you best. Compare, deliberate, and simply remember that whatever decision you come to, you will inevitably feel some misgivings, for virtue provokes remorse just as does crime. Consequently, if you abandon Fontange and keep the money, you will be saying to yourself, why did I choose this course? I regret that pretty creature. If it is the opposite course you elect, it will be, how weak I am! I would have enjoyed five hundred thousand francs, and today I am obliged to make shift without them. Observe, however, that the former of these regrets is necessarily counterbalanced by a real consolation, a physical consolation. True, you will say to yourself, I have lost Fontange, but I have enjoyment; whereas for the latter the only compensation is an isolated, transitory pleasure, an insipid sacrifice to virtue whence you will never derive merit, a small inner satisfaction, an intellectual pleasure in itself very mediocre and apt at all times to be troubled by the other regret. The one involves a privation of slight importance, while ensuring much and delightful material happiness; the other, a very substantial privation and a little mental thrill. Your way of thinking, besides, is incompatible with such pitiful little moral delights; it is not when one believes in nothing, it is not when one detests virtue and adores vice, it is not when one loves crime for its own sake or for the advantages it yields, that one can be interested for long in virtuous pleasure. Simply compare that with the charms of enjoying your five hundred thousand francs, and you will sense the difference at once. The main object, you say, is to avoid remorse. If that be so, then, immediately and unhesitatingly, commit the crime you are projecting; for I say unto you, that if you do not commit it, you shall no sooner have denied yourself the possibility of committing it than you shall be devoured by chagrin at having let go by such a splendid opportunity to appropriate this money. For you, crime is not what it is for others. You have attained the point where you find the very keenest excitement in crime, it affords you the extremest voluptuous pleasure; therefore doubt not that this pleasure, which you will, in this case, enjoy all the more, there being no further restraints to cast off; doubt not, I say, that this pleasure entirely offsets the little pangs and qualms by which anybody else might have been afflicted, undertaking this deed.
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