Justine, Philosophy in the Bedroom, and Other Writings

by Marquis de Sade

  MADAME DE SAINT-ANGE—My, what blasphemies, my friend.

  DOLMANCÉ—I’ll have your ass, Madame, if you please. . . . Yes, give it me, let me kiss it while I’m sucked, and be not astonished at my language: one of my largest pleasures is to swear in God’s name when I’m stiff. It seems then that my spirit, at such a moment exalted a thousand times more, abhors, scorns this disgusting fiction; I would like to discover some way better to revile it or to outrage it further; and when my accursed musings lead me to the conviction of the nullity of this repulsive object of my hatred, I am irritated and would instantly like to be able to re-edify the phantom so that my rage might at least fall upon some target; imitate me, charming women, and you will observe such discourses to increase without fail your sensibility. But, by God’s very damnation, I say, I’ve got absolutely, whatever be my pleasure, I’ve got to retire from this celestial mouth . . . else I’ll leave my fuck in it! . . . All right, Eugénie, move! let’s get on with the scene I proposed and, the three of us, let’s be plunged into the most voluptuous drunkenness. (The positions are arranged.)

  EUGÉNIE—Oh, how I fear, dear one, that your efforts will come to naught! The disproportion is exceedingly strong.

  DOLMANCÉ—Why, I sodomize the very youngest every day; just yesterday a little lad of seven was deflowered by that prick, and in less than three minutes. . . . Courage, Eugénie, courage! . . .

  EUGÉNIE—Oh! You’re tearing me!

  MADAME DE SAINT-ANGE—A little management there, Dolmancé; remember, I am responsible for the creature.

  DOLMANCÉ—Then frig her, Madame, she’ll feel the pain less; but there! ’tis said, ’tis done! I’m in up to the hilt.

  EUGÉNIE—Oh heaven! it is not without trouble . . . see the sweat on my forehead, dear friend. . . . Ah! God, I’ve never undergone such agonies! . . .

  MADAME DE SAINT-ANGE—Yet there you are, dear heart, half deflowered, there you are, arrived at a woman’s estate; ’tis well worth purchasing the glory at the cost of a little inconvenience; my fingers then do not soothe you at all?

  EUGÉNIE—Could I have borne it without them! . . . Tickle away, rub, my angel. . . . I feel it, imperceptibly the pain metamorphoses into pleasure. . . . Push, Dolmancé! . . . thrust! thrust! oh, I am dying! . . .

  DOLMANCÉ—O by God’s holy fuck! thrice bloody fuck of God! Let’s change! I’ll not be able to hold . . . your behind, kind lady, I beseech you, your ass, quick, place yourself as I told you. (Shift of attitude, and Dolmancé goes on.)’Tis easier so . . . how my prick penetrates . . . but, Madame, this noble ass is not the less delicious for that. . . .

  EUGÉNIE—Am I as I should be, Dolmancé?

  DOLMANCÉ—Admirably! I’ve got this little virgin cunt all to myself, delicious. Oh, I’m a guilty one, a villain, indeed I know it; such charms were not made for my eyes; but the desire to provide this child with a firm grounding in voluptuousness overshadows every other consideration. I want to make her fuck to flow, if ’tis possible I want to exhaust her, drink her dry. . . . (He sucks her.)

  EUGÉNIE—This pleasure will kill me, I can’t resist it! . . .

  MADAME DE SAINT-ANGE—I’m coming, I say! Oh fuck! . . . fuck! . . . Dolmancé, I’m discharging! . . .

  EUGÉNIE—And I too, my darling! Oh, my God, how he does suck me! . . .

  MADAME DE SAINT-ANGE—Then swear, little whore, curse! . . . Then cry an oath! . . .

  EUGÉNIE—All right then, damn thee! I discharge! Damn thee! . . . I am so sweetly drunk! . . .

  DOLMANCÉ—To your post! . . . Take up your station! . . . Eugénie! . . . I’ll be the dupe of these handlings and shifts. (Eugénie assumes her place.) Ah, good! here again am I, at my original place and abode . . . exhibit your asshole, Madame, I’ll pump it at my leisure. . . . Oh, but I love to kiss an ass I’ve just left off fucking. . . . Ah! lick up mine, do you hear, while I drive my sperm deep home into your friend’s. . . . Wouldst believe it, Madame? in it goes, and this time effortlessly! Ah, fuck! fuck! you’ve no idea how it squeezes, how she clamps me! Holy frigging God, what ecstasy! . . . Oh, ’tis there, ’tis done, I resist no longer . . . flow! my fluid flows! . . . and I die! . . .

  EUGÉNIE—He causes me to die also, my friend, I swear it to you. . . .

  MADAME DE SAINT-ANGE—The wench! how promptly she’s taken to it!

  DOLMANCÉ—Yes, but I know countless girls of her age nothing on earth could force to take their pleasure otherwise; ’tis only the first encounter that taxes; a woman has no sooner tried that sauce and she’ll eat no other cookery. . . . Oh heavens! I’m spent; let me get my breath, a few moments’ respite, please.

  MADAME DE SAINT-ANGE—There they are, my dear: men. A glance at us, no more, and their desires are satisfied; the subsequent annihilation conducts them to disgust, soon to contempt.

  DOLMANCÉ, coolly—Why, what an insult, heavenly creature! (They embrace.) The one and the other of you are made for naught but homages, whatever be the state wherein one finds oneself.

  MADAME DE SAINT-ANGE—Console yourself, Eugénie; while they may have acquired the right to neglect us because they are sated, have we not in the same way that to scorn them, when their conduct bids us to it? If Tiberius sacrificed to Caprea the objects that had just appeased his hungers,4 Zingua, Africa’s queen, also immolated her lovers.5

  DOLMANCÉ—Such excesses, perfectly simple and very intelligible to me, doubtless, all the same ought never be committed amongst ourselves: “Wolves are safe in their own company,” as the proverb has it, and trivial though it may be, ’tis true. My friends, dread nothing from me, ever: I’ll perhaps have you do much that is evil, but never will I do any to you.

  EUGÉNIE—No, my dear, I dare be held answerable for it: never will Dolmancé abuse the privileges we grant him; I believe he has the roué’s probity: it is the best; but let us bring our teacher back to his theorems and, before our senses subside into calm, let us return, I beg of you, to the great design that inflamed us before.

  MADAME DE SAINT-ANGE—What, dost think yet on that? I thought ’twas no more than a little intellectual effervescence.

  EUGÉNIE—It is the most certain impulse of my heart, and I’ll not be content till the crime is done.

  MADAME DE SAINT-ANGE—Oh splendid! splendid! Let her off, though; consider: she is your mother.

  EUGÉNIE—Noble title!

  DOLMANCÉ—She is right: did this mother think of Eugénie when she brought her into the world? The jade let herself be fucked because she found it agreeable, but she was very far from having this daughter in mind. Let her act as she sees fit with what regards her mother; let’s allow her complete freedom and we’ll be content to assure her that, whatever be the extreme lengths she goes to, never will she render herself guilty of any evil.

  EUGÉNIE—I abhor her, I detest her, a thousand causes justify my hate; I’ve got to have her life at no matter what the cost!

  DOLMANCÉ—Very well, since your resolve is unshakable, you’ll be satisfied, Eugénie, I give you my oath; but permit me a few words of advice which, before you act, are of the utmost necessity. Never let your secret go out of your mouth, my dear, and always act alone: nothing is more dangerous than an accomplice: let us always beware of even those whom we think most closely attached to us: “One must,” wrote Machiavelli, “either have no confederates, or dispatch them as soon as one has made use of them.” Nor is that all: guile, Eugénie, guile is indispensable to the projects you are forming. Move closer than ever to your victim before destroying her; have the look of sympathy for her, seem to console her; cajole her, partake of her sufferings, swear you worship her; do yet more: persuade her of it: deceit, in such instances, cannot be carried too far. Nero caressed Agrippina upon the deck of the very bark with which she was to be engulfed: imitate his example, use all the knavery, all the imposture your brain can invent. To lie is always a necessity for women; above all when they choose to deceive, falsehood becomes vital to them.

  EUGÉNIE—Those instructions
will be remembered and, no doubt, put into effect; but let us delve deeper into this deceit whose usage you recommend to women; think you then that it is absolutely essential in this world?

  DOLMANCÉ—Without hesitation I say I know of nothing more necessary in life; one certain truth shall prove its indispensability: everyone employs it; I ask, in the light of that, how a sincere individual will not always founder in the midst of a society of false people. Now, if ’tis true, as they declare, that virtues are of some usefulness in civil life, how would you have someone unprovided with either will, or power, or the gift of any virtue, which is the case with many persons, how, I ask you, would you have it that such a personage be not essentially obliged to feign, to dissemble, in order to obtain, in his turn, a little portion of the happiness his competitors seek to wrest away from him? And, in effect, it is very surely virtue, or might it not be the appearance of virtue, which really becomes necessary to social man? Let’s not doubt that the appearance alone is quite sufficient to him: he has got that, and he possesses all he needs. Since one does nothing in this world but pinch, rub, and elbow others, is it not enough that they display their skin to us? Let us moreover be well persuaded that of the practice of virtue we can at the very most say that it is hardly useful save to him who has it; others reap so little therefrom that so long as the man who must live amongst other men appears virtuous, it matters not in the slightest whether he is so in fact or not. Deceit, furthermore, is almost always an assured means to success; he who possesses deceit necessarily begins with an advantage over whosoever has commerce or correspondence with him: dazzling him with a false exterior, he gains his confidence; convince others to place trust in you, and you have succeeded. I perceive someone has deceived me, I have only myself to blame; and he who has conned me has done so all the more prettily if because of pride I make no complaint and bear it all nobly; his ascendancy over me will always be pronounced; he will be right, I wrong; he will advance, I’ll recede; he is great, I am nothing; he will be enriched, I ruined; in a word, always above me, he’ll straightway capture public opinion; once arrived there, useless for me to inculpate him, I’ll simply not be heard; and so boldly and unceasingly we’ll give ourselves over to the most infamous deceit; let us behold it as the key to every grace, every favor, all reputation, all riches, and by means of the keen pleasure of acting villainously, let us placate the little twinge our conscience feels at having manufactured dupes.

  MADAME DE SAINT-ANGE—Having there infinitely more on the matter than, so it appears to me, is needed, Eugénie, well convinced, ought also to be reassured, encouraged: she will take action when she pleases. We had now better resume our dissertations upon men’s various libertine caprices; the field should be vast; let’s survey it; we’ve just initiated our student into a few of the practice’s mysteries, let’s not neglect theory.

  DOLMANCÉ—The libertine details of masculine passions, Madame, have little therein to provide suitable stuff for the instruction of a girl who, like Eugénie, is not destined for the whoring profession; she will marry and, such being the hypothesis, one may stake ten to one on it, her husband will have none of those inclinations; however, were he to have them, her wiser conduct is readily to be described: much gentleness, a readiness ever to comply, good humor; on the other hand, much deceit and ample but covert compensation: those few words contain it all. However, were you, Eugénie, to desire some analysis of men’s preferences when they resort to libertinage, we might, in order most lucidly to examine the question, generally reduce those tastes to three: sodomy, sacrilegious fancies, and penchants to cruelty. The first of these passions is universal today; to what we have already said upon it, we shall join a few choice reflections. It divides into two classes, active and passive: the man who embuggers, be it a boy, be it a woman, acquits himself of an active sodomization; he is a passive sodomite when he has himself buggered. The question has often been raised, which of the two fashions of sodomistic behavior is the more voluptuous? assuredly, ’tis the passive, since one enjoys at a single stroke the sensations of before and behind; it is so sweet to change sex, so delicious to counterfeit the whore, to give oneself to a man who treats us as if we were a woman, to call that man one’s paramour, to avow oneself his mistress! Ah! my friends, what voluptuousness! But, Eugénie, we shall limit ourselves here to a few details of advice relating only to women who, transforming themselves into men, wish, like us, to enjoy this delicious pleasure. I have just familiarized you with those attacks, Eugénie, and I have observed enough to be persuaded you will one of these days make admirable progress in this career; I exhort you to pursue it diligently as one of the most delightful of the Cytherean isle, and am perfectly sure you will follow my counsel. I’ll restrict myself to two or three suggestions essential to every person determined henceforth to know none but these pleasures or ones analogous. First of all, be mindful also of yourself, insist your clitoris be frigged while you are being buggered: no two things harmonize so sweetly as do these two pleasures; avoid a douche, let there be no rubbing upon the sheets, no wiping with towels, when you have just been fucked in this style; ’tis a good idea to have the breech open always; whereof result desires, and titillations which soon obviate any concern for tidiness; there is no imagining to what point the sensations are prolonged. Prior to sodomite amusements remember to avoid acids: they aggravate haemorrhoids and render introductions painful: do not permit several men to discharge one after the other into your ass: this mixture of sperms, however it may excite the imagination, is never beneficial and often dangerous to the health; always rid yourself of each emission before allowing the next to be deposited.

  EUGÉNIE—But if they were to be made in my cunt, should that purging not be a crime?

  MADAME DE SAINT-ANGE—Imagine nothing of the sort, sweet little fool; there is not the least wrong in diverting a man’s semen into a detour by one means or by another, because propagation is in no wise the objective of Nature; she merely tolerates it; from her viewpoint, the less we propagate, the better; and when we avoid it altogether, that’s best of all. Eugénie, be the implacable enemy of this wearisome child-getting, and even in marriage incessantly deflect that perfidious liquor whose vegetation serves only to spoil our figures, which deadens our voluptuous sensations, withers us, ages and makes us fade and disturbs our health; get your husband to accustom himself to these losses; entice him into this or that passage, let him busy himself there and thus keep him from making his offerings at the temple; tell him you detest children, point out the advantages of having none. Keep a close watch over yourself in this article, my dear, for, I declare to you, I hold generation in such horror I should cease to be your friend the instant you were to become pregnant. If, however, the misfortune does occur, without yourself having been at fault, notify me within the first seven or eight weeks, and I’ll have it very neatly remedied. Dread not infanticide; the crime is imaginary: we are always mistress of what we carry in our womb, and we do no more harm in destroying this kind of matter than in evacuating another, by medicines, when we feel the need.

  EUGÉNIE—But if the child is near the hour of its birth?

  MADAME DE SAINT-ANGE—Were it in the world, we should still have the right to destroy it. In all the world there is no prerogative more secure than that of mothers over their children. No race has failed to recognize this truth: ’tis founded in reason, consecrated in principle.

  DOLMANCÉ—The right is natural . . . it is incontestable. The deific system’s extravagance was the source of every one of those gross errors. The imbeciles who believed in God, persuaded that our existence is had of none but him and that immediately an embryo begins to mature, a little soul, emanation of God, comes straightway to animate it; these fools, I say, assuredly had to regard as a capital crime this small creature’s undoing, because, according to them, it no longer belonged to men. ’Twas God’s work; ’twas God’s own: dispatch it without crime? No. Since, however, the torch of philosophy has dissipated all those impostures, sin
ce, the celestial chimera has been tumbled in the dust, since, better instructed of physics’ laws and secrets, we have evolved the principle of generation, and now that this material mechanism offers nothing more astonishing to the eye than the development of a germ of wheat, we have been called back to Nature and away from human error. As we have broadened the horizon of our rights, we have recognized that we are perfectly free to take back what we only gave up reluctantly, or by accident, and that it is impossible to demand of any individual whomsoever that he become a father or a mother against his will; that this creature whether more or less on earth is not of very much consequence, and that we become, in a word, as certainly the masters of this morsel of flesh, however it be animated, as we are of the nails we pare from our fingers, or the excrements we eliminate through our bowels, because the one and the other are our own, and because we are absolute proprietors of what emanates from us. Having had elaborated for you, Eugénie, the very mediocre importance the act of murder has here on earth, you have been obliged to see of what slight consequence, similarly, must be everything that has to do with childbearing even if the act is perpetrated against a person who has arrived at the age of reason; unnecessary to embroider upon it: your high intelligence adds its own arguments to support my proofs. Peruse the history of the manner of all the world’s peoples and you will unfailingly see that the practice is global; you will finally be convinced that it would be sheer imbecility to accord a very indifferent action the title of evil.

  EUGÉNIE, first to Dolmancé—I cannot tell you to what point you persuade me. (Now addressing herself to Madame de Saint-Ange:) But tell me, my most dear, have you ever had occasion to employ the remedy you propose to me in order internally to destroy the fetus?