Justine, Philosophy in the Bedroom, and Other Writings

by Marquis de Sade

  EUGÉNIE—I accept the revision; but, in truth, Dolmancé, the frankness of your avowal little offsets its impoliteness.

  DOLMANCÉ—A thousand pardons, Mademoiselle; but we other buggers are very nice on the question of candor and the exactitude of our principles.

  MADAME DE SAINT-ANGE—However, a reputation for candor is not the one we commonly grant those whom, like yourself, are accustomed only to taking people from behind.

  DOLMANCÉ—We do have something of the treacherous, yes; a touch of the false, you may believe it. But after all, Madame, I have demonstrated to you that this character is indispensable to man in society. Condemned to live amidst people who have the greatest interest in hiding themselves from our gaze, in disguising the vices they have in order to exhibit nothing but virtues they never respect, there should be the greatest danger in the thing were we to show them frankness only; for then, ’tis evident, we would give them all the advantages over us they on their part refuse us, and the dupery would be manifest. The needs for dissimulation and hypocrisy are bequeathed us by society; let us yield to the fact. Allow me for an instant to offer my own example to you, Madame: there is surely no being more corrupt anywhere in the world; well, my contemporaries are deceived in me; ask them what they think of Dolmancé, and they all will tell you I am an honest man, whereas there is not a single crime whereof I have not gleaned the most exquisite delights.

  MADAME DE SAINT-ANGE—Oh, you do not convince me that you have committed atrocities.

  DOLMANCÉ—Atrocities . . . indeed, Madame, I have wrought horrors.

  MADAME DE SAINT-ANGE—Fie, you are like the man who said to his confessor: “Needless to go into details, Sir; murder and theft excepted, you can be sure I’ve done everything.”

  DOLMANCÉ—Yes, Madame, I should say the same thing, omitting those exceptions.

  MADAME DE SAINT-ANGE—What! libertine, you have permitted yourself . . .

  DOLMANCÉ—Everything, Madame, everything; with a temperament and principles like mine, does one deny oneself anything?

  MADAME DE SAINT-ANGE—Oh, let’s fuck! fuck! . . . I can bear such language no longer; we’ll return to it. But save your confessions for later, Dolmancé; to hear them best your auditors should be clear-headed. And when you have an erection, all the sincerity deserts what you say, you fall to uttering horrors and from you we get, in the guise of truths, the libertine glitterings of an inflamed imagination. (They take their places.)

  DOLMANCÉ—One moment, Chevalier, one moment; I am the one who shall introduce it; but, by way of preliminary, and I ask the lovely Eugénie’s pardon for it, she must allow me to flog her in order she be put in the proper humor. (He beats her.)

  EUGÉNIE—I assure you, this ceremony has no purpose. . . . Admit, Dolmancé, that it satisfies your lewdness; but in doing it don’t take on airs, I beg of you, and suppose you are doing anything in my behalf.

  DOLMANCÉ, whipping merrily away—Ah, you’ll have news for me in a moment! . . . You have yet no acquaintance with this preliminary’s influences. . . . Come, come, little bitch, you’ll be lashed!

  EUGÉNIE—My God, how he does wax hot! And my buttocks too, they are all afire! . . . But, indeed, you’re hurting me!

  MADAME DE SAINT-ANGE—I’ll avenge you, dear heart; I’ll retaliate in kind. (She takes up a whip and flogs Dolmancé.)

  DOLMANCÉ—With all my heart; I ask but one favor of Eugénie: that she consent to be flogged as vigorously as I myself desire to be; you notice how well within natural law I am; but wait, let’s arrange it: let Eugénie mount your flanks, Madame, she will clutch your neck, like those children whose mothers carry them on their backs; that way, I’ll have two asses under my hand; I’ll drub them together; the Chevalier and Augustin, both will work upon me, striking my buttocks. . . . Yes, ’tis thus . . . Well, there we are! . . . what ecstasy!

  MADAME DE SAINT-ANGE—Do not spare this little rascal, I beseech you, and as I ask no quarter, I want you to grant it to no one.

  EUGÉNIE—Aië! aië! aië! I believe my blood is flowing!

  MADAME DE SAINT-ANGE—’Twill embellish our buttocks by lending color to them. . . . Courage, my angel, courage; bear in mind that it is always by way of pain one arrives at pleasure.

  EUGÉNIE—I can no more!

  DOLMANCÉ, halts a minute to contemplate his work; then, starting in again—Another fifty, Eugénie; yes, precisely, fifty more on either cheek will do it. O bitches! how great shall now be your pleasure in fucking! (The posture is dissolved.)

  MADAME DE SAINT-ANGE, examining Eugénie’s buttocks—Oh, the poor little thing, her behind is all bloodied over! Beast, how much pleasure you take thus in kissing cruelty’s vestiges!

  DOLMANCÉ, polluting himself—Yes, I mask nothing, and my pleasures would be more ardent were the wounds more cruel.

  EUGÉNIE—But you are a monster!

  DOLMANCÉ—Indeed I am.

  LE CHEVALIER—There’s good faith in him at least.

  DOLMANCÉ—Off with you, Chevalier. Sodomize her.

  LE CHEVALIER—Hold her body and in three shakes ’twill be done.

  EUGÉNIE—Oh heavens! Yours is thicker than Dolmancé’s . . . Chevalier, you are tearing me apart! . . . go softly, I beg of you! . . .

  LE CHEVALIER—Impossible, my angel, I must reach my objective. . . . Consider: I’m performing before my master’s eyes; both his prestige and mine are at stake.

  DOLMANCÉ—’Tis there! I prodigiously love to see a prick’s pubic hair rub the border of an anus. . . . Come now, Madame, embugger your brother. Here we have Augustin’s prick, in an admirable way to be introduced into you, and I promise you I’ll spare your fucker nothing. . . . Excellent! it seems to me we’ve got our rosary well strung together; not another thought now but of discharging.

  MADAME DE SAINT-ANGE—Cast an eye on this little tramp! How she quivers and wriggles!

  EUGÉNIE—Is it my fault? I am dying from pleasure! That whipping . . . this immense prick . . . the amiable Chevalier who frigs me the while! My darling, my darling, I can no more!

  MADAME DE SAINT-ANGE—Jesus! nor can I! I discharge! . . .

  DOLMANCÉ—A little unity, my friends; grant me another two more minutes to overtake you and we shall all of us come together.

  LE CHEVALIER—There’s no time left; my fuck runs into lovely Eugénie’s ass . . . I am dying! Ah sacred name of the fucking Almighty! what pleasure! . . .

  DOLMANCÉ—I follow you, friends . . . I follow hard after you . . . I too am blinded by fuck. . . .

  AUGUSTIN—Me too! . . . and me! . . .

  MADAME DE SAINT-ANGE—What a scene! . . . This bugger has filled up my ass! . . .

  LE CHEVALIER—To the bidet, ladies, to the bidet!

  MADAME DE SAINT-ANGE—No, indeed, no, I like that, I do; I like the feeling of fuck in my ass, and keep it in me as long as I can.

  EUGÉNIE—No more, enough. . . . My friends, tell me now if a woman must always accept the proposal, when ’tis made to her, thus to be fucked?

  MADAME DE SAINT-ANGE—Always, dear heart, unfailingly. More, as this mode of fucking is delightful, she ought to require it of those of whom she makes use; but if she is dependent upon the person with whom she amuses herself, if she hopes to obtain favors from him, gifts or thanks, let her restrain her eagerness and not surrender her ass for nothing; cede it after being urged, besought, wheedled; there is not a man of all those who possess the taste who would not ruin himself for a woman clever enough to refuse him nothing save with the design of inflaming him further; she will extract from him all she wants if she well has the art of yielding only when pressed.

  DOLMANCÉ—Well, little angel, are you converted? have you given over believing sodomy a crime?

  EUGÉNIE—And were it one, what care I? Have you not demonstrated the nonexistence of crime? There are now very few actions which appear criminal in my view.

  DOLMANCÉ—There is crime in nothing, dear girl, regardless of what it be: the most monstrous of dee
ds has, does it not, an auspicious aspect?

  EUGÉNIE—Who’s to gainsay it?

  DOLMANCÉ—Well, as of this moment, it loses every aspect of crime; for, in order that what serves one by harming another be a crime, one should first have to demonstrate that the injured person is more important, more precious to Nature than the person who performs the injury and serves her; now, all individuals being of uniform importance in her eyes, ’tis impossible that she have a predilection for some one among them; hence, the deed that serves one person by causing suffering to another is of perfect indifference to Nature.

  EUGÉNIE—But if the action were harmful to a very great quantity of individuals . . . and if it rewarded us with only a very small quantity of pleasure, would it not then be a frightful thing to execute it?

  DOLMANCÉ—No more so, because there is no possible comparison between what others experience and what we sense; the heaviest dose of agony in others ought, assuredly, to be as naught to us, and the faintest quickening of pleasure, registered in us, does touch us; therefore, we should, at whatever the price, prefer this most minor excitation which enchants us, to the immense sum of others’ miseries, which cannot affect us; but, on the contrary, should it happen that the singularity of our organs, some bizarre feature in our construction, renders agreeable to us the sufferings of our fellows, as sometimes occurs, who can doubt, then, that we should incontestably prefer anguish in others, which entertains us, to that anguish’s absence, which would represent, for us, a kind of privation? The source of all our moral errors lies in the ridiculous acknowledgment of that tie of brotherhood the Christians invented in the age of their ill-fortune and sore distress. Constrained to beg pity from others, ’twas not unclever to claim that all men are brothers; how is one to refuse aid if this hypothesis be accepted? But its rational acceptance is impossible; are we not all born solitary, isolated? I say more: are we not come into the world all enemies, the one of the other, all in a state of perpetual and reciprocal warfare? Now, I ask whether such would be the situation if they did truly exist, this supposed tie of brotherhood and the virtues it enjoins? Are they really natural? Were they inspired in man by Nature’s voice, men would be aware of them at birth. From that time onward, pity, good works, generosity, would be native virtues against which ’twould be impossible to defend oneself, and would render the primitive state of savage man totally contrary to what we observe it to be.

  EUGÉNIE—Yet if, as you say, Nature caused man to be born alone, all independent of other men, you will at least grant me that his needs, bringing him together with other men, must necessarily have established some ties between them; whence blood relationships, ties of love too, of friendship, of gratitude: you will, I hope, respect those at least.

  DOLMANCÉ—No more than the others, I am afraid; but let us analyze them, I should like to: a swift glance, Eugénie, at each one in particular. Would you say, for example, that the need to marry or to prolong my race or to arrange my fortune or insure my future must establish indissoluble or sacred ties with the object I ally myself to? Would it not, I ask you, be an absurdity to argue thus? So long as the act of coition lasts, I may, to be sure, continue in need of that object, in order to participate in the act; but once it is over and I am satisfied, what, I wonder, will attach the results of this commerce to me? These latter relationships were the results of the terror of parents who dreaded lest they be abandoned in old age, and the politic attentions they show us when we are in our infancy have no object but to make them deserving of the same consideration when they are become old. Let us no longer be the dupes of this rubbish: we owe nothing to our parents . . . not the least thing, Eugénie, and since it is far less for our sake than for their own they have labored, we may rightfully test them, even rid ourselves of them if their behavior annoys us; we ought to love them only if they comport themselves well with us, and then our tenderness toward them ought not to be one degree greater than what we might feel for other friends, because the rights of birth establish nothing, are basis to nothing, and, once they have been wisely scrutinized and with deliberation, we will surely find nothing there but reasons to hate those who, exclusively thoughtful of their own pleasure, have often given us nothing but an unhappy and unhealthy existence.

  You mention, Eugénie, ties of love; may you never know them! Ah! for the happiness I wish you, may such a sentiment never approach your breast! What is love? One can only consider it, so it seems to me, as the effect upon us of a beautiful object’s qualities; these effects distract us; they inflame us; were we to possess this object, all would be well with us; if ’tis impossible to have it, we are in despair. But what is the foundation of this sentiment? desire. What are this sentiment’s consequences? madness. Let us confine ourselves to the cause and guarantee ourselves against the effects. The cause is to possess the object: splendid! let’s strive to succeed, but using our head, not losing our wits; let’s enjoy it when we’ve got it; let’s console ourselves if we fail: a thousand other identical and often much superior objects exist to soothe our regrets and our pride: all men, all women resemble each other: no love resists the effects of sane reflection. O ’tis a very great cheat and a dupery, this intoxication which puts us in such a state that we see no more, exist no more save through this object insanely adored! Is this really to live? Is it not rather voluntarily to deprive oneself of all life’s sweetness? Is it not to wish to linger in a burning fever which devours, consumes us, without affording us other than metaphysical joys, which bear such a likeness to the effects of madness? Were we always to love this adorable object, were it certain we should never have to quit it, ’twould still be an extravagance without doubt, but at least an excusable one. Does this happen, however? Has one many examples of these deathless liaisons, unions which are never dissolved or repudiated? A few months of doting and dalliance soon restores the object to its proper size and shape, and we blush to think of the incense we have squanderingly burned upon that altar, and often we come to wonder that it ever could have seduced us at all.

  O voluptuous young women, deliver your bodies unto us as often and as much as you wish! Fuck, divert yourselves, that’s the essential thing; but be quick to fly from love. There is none but physical good in it, said Buffon, and as a good philosopher he exercised his reason on an understanding of Nature. I repeat it, amuse yourselves; but love not at all; nor be any more concerned to make yourselves loved: to exhaust oneself in lamentation, waste in sighs, abase oneself in leering and oglings, pen billets-doux, ’tis not that which you must do; it is to fuck, to multiply and often change your fuckers, it is above all to oppose yourselves resolutely to enslavement by any one single person, because the outcome of constant love, binding you to him, would be to prevent you from giving yourself to someone else, a cruel selfishness which would soon become fatal to your pleasures. Women are not made for one single man; ’tis for men at large Nature created them. Listening only to this sacred voice, let them surrender themselves, indifferently, to all who want them: always whores, never mistresses, eschewing love, worshiping pleasure; it will be roses only they will discover in life’s career; it will no longer be but flowers they proffer us! Ask, Eugénie, ask the charming woman who has so kindly consented to undertake your education, ask her what is to be done with a man after one has enjoyed him. (In a lower voice, so as not to be heard by Augustin.) Ask her if she would lift a finger to save this Augustin who, today, is the cause of her delights. Should it fall out that someone wished to steal him from her, she would take another, would think no more on this one and, soon weary of the new, would herself sacrifice him within two months’ time, were new pleasures to be born of this maneuver.

  MADAME DE SAINT-ANGE—Let my dear Eugénie be very sure that Dolmancé is describing the impulses of my heart, mine and that of every other woman, as if she were to unfold it to him herself.

  DOLMANCÉ—The final part of my analysis treats the bonds of friendship and those of gratitude. We shall respect the former, very well, provided they r
emain useful to us; let us keep our friends as long as they serve us; forget them immediately we have nothing further from them; ’tis never but selfishly one should love people; to love them for themselves is nothing but dupery; Nature never inspires other movements in mankind’s soul, other sentiments than those which ought to prove useful in some sort, good for something; nothing is more an egoist than Nature; then let us be egoists too, if we wish to live in harmony with her dictates. As for gratitude, Eugénie, ’tis doubtless the most feeble of all the bonds. Is it then for ourselves men are obliging to us? Not a bit of it, my dear; ’tis through ostentation, for the sake of pride. Is it not humiliating thus to become the toy of others’ pride? Is it not yet more so to fall into indebtedness to them? Nothing is more burdensome than a kindness one has received. No middle way, no compromise: you have got to repay it or ready yourself for abuse. Upon proud spirits a good deed sits very heavily: it weighs upon them with such violence that the one feeling they exhale is hatred for their benefactors. What then, in your opinion, are now the ties which supply the isolation wherein Nature creates us? What are they, those which should establish relationships between men? By what title should we love them, those others, cherish them, prefer them to ourselves? By what right should we relieve them, who says that we must relieve them in misfortune? Where now in our souls is that cradle of the pretty and useless virtues of generosity, humanity, charity, all those enumerated in the absurd codes of a few idiotic religious doctrines, doctrines which, preached by impostors or by indigents, were invented to secure them their sustenance and toleration? Why, Eugénie, why do you yet acknowledge something sacred in men? Do you conceive some reasons for not always preferring yourself to them?