MADAME DE SAINT-ANGE—Allow me to be the scholar for a moment, and let me ask you, Dolmancé, in what state the patient’s ass must be in order to ensure the agent a maximum of pleasure?
DOLMANCÉ—Full, by all means; ’tis essential the object in use have the most imperious desire to shit, so that the end of the fucker’s prick, reaching the turd, may drive deep into it, and may more warmly and more softly deposit there the fuck which irritates and sets it afire.
MADAME DE SAINT-ANGE—I fear the patient’s pleasure is less.
DOLMANCÉ—Error! This method of pleasure-taking is such that there exists no possibility of the fucker’s receiving hurt nor of the employed object’s failing to be transported into seventh heaven. No other matches this in value, no other can so completely satisfy each of the protagonists, and they who have tasted of it know a great difficulty in abandoning it for another. Such, Eugénie, are the best ways of taking pleasure with a man if the perils of pregnancy are to be avoided; for one enjoys—and be very certain of it—not only offering a man one’s ass, but also sucking and frigging him, etc., and I have known libertine ladies who often had an higher esteem for this byplay than for real pleasures. The imagination is the spur of delights; in those of this order, all depends upon it, it is the mainspring of everything; now, is it not by means of the imagination one knows joy? is it not of the imagination that there come the most piquant delights?
MADAME DE SAINT-ANGE—Indeed; but let Eugénie beware thereof; the imagination serves us not save when our mind is absolutely free of prejudices: but a single one will suffice to chill it. This capricious portion of our mind is so libertine nothing can restrain it; its greatest triumph, its most eminent delights come of exceeding all limits imposed upon it; of all regularity it is an enemy, it worships disorder, idolizes whatever wears the brand of crime; whence derived the extraordinary reply of an imaginative woman who was fucking coolly with her husband: “Why this ice?” quoth he. “Ah, truly,” answered this singular creature, “’tis all very dull, what you are doing with me.”
EUGÉNIE—I adore the remark. . . . Ah, my dear, how great is my urge to become acquainted with these divine outbursts of a disordered imagination! You’d never believe it, but during our stay together . . . since the instant we met—no, no, my darling, never could you conceive all the voluptuous ideas my brain has caressed. . . . Oh, how well I now understand what is evil . . . how much it is desired of my heart!
MADAME DE SAINT-ANGE—May atrocities, horrors, may the most odious crimes astonish you no more, my Eugénie; what is of the filthiest, the most infamous, the most forbidden, ’tis that which best rouses the intellect . . . ’tis that which always causes us most deliciously to discharge.
EUGÉNIE—To how many incredible perversities must you not, the one and the other, have surrendered yourselves! And how I should relish hearing the details!
DOLMANCÉ, kissing and fondling the young lady—Beauteous Eugénie, a hundred times more would I love to see you experience all I should love to do, rather than to relate to you what I have done.
EUGÉNIE—I know not whether it would be too good for me to accede to everything.
MADAME DE SAINT-ANGE—I would not advise it, Eugénie.
EUGÉNIE—Very well, I spare Dolmancé his narrations; but you, my dear, pray tell me what they are, the most extraordinary things you have done in your life?
MADAME DE SAINT-ANGE—I engaged fifteen men, alone; in twenty-four hours, I was ninety times fucked, as much before as behind.
EUGÉNIE—Mere debauches, those, tours de force; I dare wager you have done yet more uncommon things.
MADAME DE SAINT-ANGE—I passed a term in a brothel.
EUGÉNIE—And what does that word mean?
DOLMANCÉ—Such are called the public houses where in consideration of a price agreed upon, each man finds young and pretty girls in good sort to satisfy his passions.
EUGÉNIE—And you gave yourself there, my dearest?
MADAME DE SAINT-ANGE—Yes; there I was, a perfect whore; there during an entire week I satisfied the whims of a goodly number of lechers, and there I beheld the most unusual tastes displayed; moved by a similar libertine principle, like the celebrated empress Theodora, Justinian’s wife,1 I waylaid men in the streets, upon public promenades, and the money I earned from these prostitutions I spent at the lottery.
EUGÉNIE—My dear, I know that mind of yours: you’ve gone still further than that.
MADAME DE SAINT-ANGE—Were it possible?
EUGÉNIE—Why, yes! Yes, and this is how I fancy it: have you not told me our most delicious moral sensations come of the imagination?
MADAME DE SAINT-ANGE—I did say so.
EUGÉNIE—Then, by allowing this imagination to stray, by according it the freedom to overstep those ultimate boundaries religion, decency, humaneness, virtue, in a word, all our pretended obligations would like to prescribe to it, is it not possible that the imagination’s extravagances would be prodigious?
MADAME DE SAINT-ANGE—No doubt.
EUGÉNIE—Well, is it not by reason of the immensity of these extravagances that the imagination will be the more inflamed?
MADAME DE SAINT-ANGE—Nothing more true.
EUGÉNIE—If that is so, the more we wish to be agitated, the more we desire to be moved violently, the more we must give rein to our imagination; we must bend it toward the inconceivable; our enjoyment will thereby be increased, made better for the track the intellect follows, and . . .
DOLMANCÉ, kissing Eugénie—Delicious!
MADAME DE SAINT-ANGE—My, but how our little rascal has progressed, and in such a brief space! But, do you know, my charming one, that one can go very far by the route you trace for us.
EUGÉNIE—I understand it very nicely thus; and since I will subject myself to no inhibitions, you see to what lengths I suppose one may go.
MADAME DE SAINT-ANGE—To crime, vicious creature, to the blackest, most frightful crimes.
EUGÉNIE, in a lowered and halting voice—But you say no crime exists there . . . and after all, it is but to fire the mind: one thinks, but one does not do.
DOLMANCÉ—However, ’tis very sweet to carry out what one has fancied.
EUGÉNIE, flushing—Well, then, carry it out. . . . Would you not like to persuade me, dear teachers, that you have never done what you have conceived?
MADAME DE SAINT-ANGE—It has sometimes been given to me to do it. . . .
EUGÉNIE—There we are!
DOLMANCÉ—Ah! what a mind.
EUGÉNIE, continuing—What I ask you is this: what have you fancied, and then, having fancied, what have you done?
MADAME DE SAINT-ANGE, stammering—Someday, Eugénie, I shall . . . relate my life to you. Let us continue our instruction . . . for you would bring me to say things . . . things . . .
EUGÉNIE—Ah, begone! I see you do not love me enough fully to open your soul to me; I shall wait as long as you say; let’s get on with the particulars. Tell me, my dear, who was the happy mortal who intended at your beginnings?
MADAME DE SAINT-ANGE—My brother: from childhood on he adored me; during our earliest years we often amused each other without attaining our goal; I promised to give myself to him immediately I married; I kept my word; happily, my husband damaged nothing: my brother harvested all. We continue with our intrigue, but without hampering ourselves; we do not—he on his part, I on mine—plunge ourselves into anything but the most divine of libertinage’s excesses; we even mutually serve one another: I procure women for him, he introduces me to men.
EUGÉNIE—Delightful arrangement! But, is not incest a crime?
DOLMANCÉ—Might one so regard Nature’s gentlest unions, the ones she most insistently prescribes to us and counsels most warmly? Eugénie, a moment of reason: how, after the vast afflictions our planet sometime knew, how was the human species otherwise able to perpetuate itself, if not through incest? Of which we find, do we not, the example and the proof itself in the books Christianity res
pects most highly. By what other means could Adam’s family2 and that of Noah have been preserved? Sift, examine universal custom: everywhere you will detect incest authorized, considered a wise law and proper to cement familial ties. If, in a word, love is born of resemblance, where may it be more perfect than between brother and sister, between father and daughter? An ill-founded policy, one produced by the fear lest certain families become too powerful, bans incest from our midst; but let us not abuse ourselves to the point of mistaking for natural law what is dictated to us only by interest or ambition; let us delve into our hearts: ’tis always there I send our pedantic moralists; let us but question this sacred organ and we will notice that nothing is more exquisite than carnal connection within the family; let us cease to be blind with what concerns a brother’s feelings for his sister, a father’s for his daughter: in vain does one or the other disguise them behind a mask of legitimate tenderness: the most violent love is the unique sentiment ablaze in them, the only one Nature has deposited in their hearts. Hence, let us double, triple these delicious incests, fearlessly multiply them, and let us believe that the more straitly the object of our desires does belong to us, the greater charm shall there be in enjoying it.
One of my friends has the habit of living with the girl he had by his own mother; not a week ago he deflowered a thirteen-year-old boy, fruit of his commerce with this girl; in a few years’ time, this same lad will wed his mother: such are my friend’s wishes; he is readying for them all a destiny analogous to the projects he delights in and his intentions, I know very well, are yet to enjoy what this marriage will bring to bear; he is young and he has cause to hope for the best. Consider, gentle Eugénie, with what a quantity of incests and crimes this honest friend would be soiled were there a jot of truth in the low notion that would have us define these alliances as evil. To be brief, in all these matters I base my attitude upon one principle: had Nature condemned sodomy’s pleasures, incestuous correspondences, pollutions, and so forth, would she have allowed us to find so much delight in them? That she may tolerate what outrages her is unthinkable.
EUGÉNIE—Oh! My divine teachers, I see full well that, according to your doctrine, there are very few crimes in the world, and that we may peacefully follow the bent of all our desires, however singular they may appear to fools who, shocked and alarmed by everything, stupidly confuse social institutions for Nature’s divine ordinations. And yet, my friends, do you not at least acknowledge that there exist certain actions absolutely revolting and decidedly criminal, although enjoined by Nature? I am nothing loath to agree with you, that this Nature, as extraordinary in the productions she creates as various in the penchants she gives us, sometimes moves us to cruel deeds; but if, surrendered to depravity, we were to yield to this bizarre Nature’s promptings, were we to go so far as to attempt, let me suppose, the lives of our fellows, you will surely grant me, at least I do hope so, that such an act would be a crime?
DOLMANCÉ—Indeed, Eugénie, little good would it do for us to grant you anything of the sort. Destruction being one of the chief laws of Nature, nothing that destroys can be criminal; how might an action which so well serves Nature ever be outrageous to her? This destruction of which man is wont to boast is, moreover, nothing but an illusion; murder is no destruction; he who commits it does but alter forms, he gives back to Nature the elements whereof the hand of this skilled artisan instantly re-creates other beings: now, as creations cannot but afford delight to him by whom they are wrought, the murderer thus prepares for Nature a pleasure most agreeable, he furnishes her materials, she employs them without delay, and the act fools have had the madness to blame is nothing but meritorious in the universal agent’s eye. ’Tis our pride prompts us to elevate murder into crime. Esteeming ourselves the foremost of the universe’s creatures, we have stupidly imagined that every hurt this sublime creature endures must perforce be an enormity; we have believed Nature would perish should our marvelous species chance to be blotted out of existence, while the whole extirpation of the breed would, by returning to Nature the creative faculty she has entrusted to us, reinvigorate her, she would have again that energy we deprive her of by propagating our own selves; but what an inconsequence, Eugénie! Indeed! an ambitious sovereign can destroy, at his ease and without the least scruple, the enemies prejudicial to his grandiose designs. . . . Cruel laws, arbitrary, imperious laws can likewise every century assassinate millions of individuals and we, feeble and wretched creatures, we are not allowed to sacrifice a single being to our vengeance or our caprice! Is there anything so barbarous, so outlandish, so grotesque? and, cloaking ourselves in the profoundest mystery, must we not amply compensate ourselves for this ineptitude, and have revenge?3
EUGÉNIE—Yes, of course . . . Oh, but your ethics seduce me, and how I savor their bouquet! Yet, wait, Dolmancé, tell me now, in good conscience, whether you have not sometimes had satisfaction in crime?
DOLMANCÉ—Do not force me to reveal my faults to you: their number and kind might bring me excessively to blush; Perhaps someday I’ll confess them to you.
MADAME DE SAINT-ANGE—While guiding the law’s blade, the criminal has often employed it to satisfy his passions.
DOLMANCÉ—Would that I have no other reproaches to make myself!
MADAME DE SAINT-ANGE, throwing her arms about his neck— Divine man! . . . I adore you! . . . What spirit, what courage are needed to have tasted every pleasure, as have you! ’Tis to the man of genius only there is reserved the honor of shattering all the links and shackles of ignorance and stupidity. Kiss me—oh, you are charming!
DOLMANCÉ—Be frank, Eugénie, tell me: have you never wished the death of anyone?
EUGÉNIE—Oh, I have! Yes! there is every day before my eyes an abominable creature I have long wished to see in her grave.
MADAME DE SAINT-ANGE—Now, I dare say I have guessed her name.
EUGÉNIE—Whom do you suspect?
MADAME DE SAINT-ANGE—Your mother?
EUGÉNIE—Oh, let me hide myself upon your breast!
DOLMANCÉ—Voluptuous creature! in my turn I would overwhelm her with the caresses that should be the reward of her heart’s energy and her exquisite mind. (Dolmancé kisses her entire body and bestows light smacks upon her buttocks; he has an erection; his hands, from time to time, stray also over Madame de Saint-Ange’s behind which is lubriciously tendered him; restored a little to his senses, Dolmancé proceeds.) But why should we not put this sublime idea into execution?
MADAME DE SAINT-ANGE—Eugénie, I detested my mother quite as much as you hate yours, and I hesitated not.
EUGÉNIE—The means have been lacking to me.
MADAME DE SAINT-ANGE—The courage, rather.
EUGÉNIE—Alas! still so young.
DOLMANCÉ—But, Eugénie, now what would you do?
EUGÉNIE—Everything . . . only show me the way and you’ll see!
DOLMANCÉ—It will be shown you, Eugénie, I promise it; but thereunto, I put a condition.
EUGÉNIE—And what is it? or rather what is the condition I am not ready to accept?
DOLMANCÉ—Come, my rascal, come into my arms: I can hold off no longer; your charming behind must be the price of the gift I promise you, one crime has got to pay for another. Come hither! . . . nay, both, the two of you, run to drown in floods of fuck the heavenly fire that blazes in us!
MADAME DE SAINT-ANGE—If you please, let us put a little order in these revels; measure is required even in the depths of infamy and delirium.
DOLMANCÉ—Nothing easier: the major object, so it appears to me, is that I discharge the while giving this charming girl all possible pleasure: I am going to insert my prick in her ass; meanwhile, as she reclines in your arms you will frig her; do your utmost; by means of the position I place you in, she will be able to retaliate in kind; you will kiss one another. After a few runs into this child’s ass, we will vary the picture: I will have you, Madame, by the ass; Eugénie, on top of you, your head between her legs, will present her cl
itoris to me; I’ll suck it: thus I’ll cause her to come a second time. Next, I will lodge my prick in her anus; you will avail me of your ass, ’twill take the place of the cunt she had under my nose, and now you will have at it in the style she will have employed, her head now between your legs; I’ll suck your asshole as I have just sucked her cunt, you will discharge, so will I, and all the while my hand, embracing the dear sweet pretty little body of this charming novice, will go ahead to tickle her clitoris that she too may swoon from delight.
MADAME DE SAINT-ANGE—Capital, my Dolmancé, but will not there be something missing?
DOLMANCÉ—A prick in my ass? Madame, you are right.
MADAME DE SAINT-ANGE—Let’s do without it this morning: we’ll have it in the afternoon: my brother will join us and our pleasures will be at their height. Now let’s to work.
DOLMANCÉ—I think I’ll have Eugénie frig me for a moment. (She does so.) Yes, quite, that’s it . . . a bit more quickly, my heart . . . that rosy head must always be kept naked, never let it be covered over, the more ’tis kept taut the more you facilitate the erection . . . never, you must never cap the prick you frig. . . ’Tis very well done . . . thus you yourself put into a proper state the member that is to perforate you. . . . Notice how it responds, gets sturdily up. . . . Give me your tongue, little bitch. . . . Let your ass rest on my right hand, while my left goes on to toy with your clitoris.
MADAME DE SAINT-ANGE—Eugénie, would you like to cause him to taste the extremest pleasures?
EUGÉNIE—By all means . . . I wish to do everything to give him them.
MADAME DE SAINT-ANGE—Why, then take his prick in your mouth and suck it a few instants.
EUGÉNIE, does it—Thus?
DOLMANCÉ—Delicious mouth! what warmth! Worth as much to me as the prettiest ass! . . . Voluptuous, tactful, accomplished woman, never deny your lovers this pleasure: ’twill bind them to you forever . . . Ah! by God! ah, by God’s own fuck! . . .
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