Justine, Philosophy in the Bedroom, and Other Writings

by Marquis de Sade

  MADAME DE MISTIVAL, about to lose consciousness—Have pity upon me, I beg of you . . . I . . . I am not well . . . I am fainting. . . . (Madame de Saint-Ange seems to wish to aid her; Dolmancé lifts a restraining hand.)

  DOLMANCÉ—Why, no, leave her in her swoon: there is nothing so lubricious as to see a woman who has fainted; we’ll flog her: that should restore her to her senses. . . . Eugénie, come, stretch out upon your victim’s body . . . ’tis here I wish to discover whether you are steadfast. Chevalier, fuck her as she lies upon her failing mother, and let her frig us, Augustin and me, with each of her hands. You, Saint-Ange, frig her while she’s being fucked.

  LE CHEVALIER—Indeed, Dolmancé, ’tis horrible, what you have us do; this at once outrages Nature, heaven, and the most sacred laws of humanity.

  DOLMANCÉ—Nothing diverts me like the weighty outbursts of the Chevalier’s virtuousness; but in all we are doing, where the devil does he see the least outrage to Nature, to heaven, and to mankind? My friend, it is from Nature roués obtain the principles they put into action; I’ve told you a thousand times over that Nature, who for the perfect maintenance of the laws of her general equilibrium, has sometimes need of vices and sometimes of virtues, inspires now this impulse, now that one, in accordance with what she requires; hence, we do no kind of evil in surrendering ourselves to these impulses, of whatever sort you may suppose them to be. With what regards heaven, my dear Chevalier, I beg of you, let us no more dread its effects: one single motor is operative in this universe, and that motor is Nature. The miracles—rather, the physical effects—of this mother of the human race, differently interpreted by men, have been deified by them under a thousand forms, each more extraordinary than the other; cheats and intriguers, abusing their fellows’ credulity, have propagated their ridiculous daydreams, and that is what the Chevalier calls heaven, that is what he fears offending! . . . Humanity’s laws are violated, he adds, by the petty stuff and nonsense in which we are indulging ourselves this afternoon. Get it into your head once and for all, my simple and very fainthearted fellow, that what fools call humaneness is nothing but a weakness born of fear and egoism; that this chimerical virtue, enslaving only weak men, is unknown to those whose character is formed by stoicism, courage, and philosophy. Then act, Chevalier, act and fear nothing; were we to pulverize this whore, there’d not be a suspicion of crime in the thing: it is impossible for man to commit a crime; when Nature inculcated in him the irresistible desire to commit crime, she most prudently arranged to put beyond his reach those acts which could disturb her operations or conflict with her will. Ha, my friend, be sure that all the rest is entirely permitted, and that she has not been so idiotic as to give us the power of discomfiting her or of disturbing her workings. The blind instruments of her inspirations, were she to order us to set fire to the universe, the only crime possible would be in resisting her: all the criminals on earth are nothing but the agents of her caprices . . . well, Eugénie, take your place. But what do I see? . . . she’s turning pale! . . .

  EUGÉNIE, lying down upon her mother—Turning pale! I! God no! you’ll very soon see the contrary! (The attitude is executed; Madame de Mistival remains unconscious. When the Chevalier has discharged, the group is broken.)

  DOLMANCÉ—What! the bitch is not yet awake! Whips! I say, bring me whips! . . . Augustin, run and gather me a handful of thorns from the garden. (While waiting, he slaps her face.) Oh, upon my soul, I fear she may be dead; nothing seems to have any effect upon her.

  EUGÉNIE, with irritation—Dead! dead! what’s this? Then I’ll have to go about wearing black this summer, and I have had the prettiest dresses made for me!

  MADAME DE SAINT-ANGE—Ah! the little monster! (She bursts into laughter.)

  DOLMANCÉ, taking the thorns from Augustin, who returns— We shall see whether this final remedy will not have some results. Eugénie, suck my prick while I labor to restore a mother to you and, Augustin, do you give me back the blows I am going to strike this stricken lady. I should not be sorry, Chevalier, to see you embugger your sister: you would adopt such a posture as to permit me to kiss your buttocks during the operation.

  LE CHEVALIER—Well, let’s comply with it, since there seems no way of persuading this scoundrel that all he is having us do is appalling. (The stage is set; as the whipping of Madame de Mistival proceeds, she comes slowly to life.)

  DOLMANCÉ—Why, do you see the medicine’s effects? I told you it would not fail us.

  MADAME DE MISTIVAL, opening her eyes—Oh heavens! why do you recall me from the grave’s darkness? Why do you plunge me again into life’s horrors?

  DOLMANCÉ, whipping her steadily—Indeed, mother dear, it is because much conversation remains to be held. Must you not hear your sentence pronounced? must it not be executed? . . . Come, let’s gather round our victim: let her kneel in the center of the circle and, trembling, hear what will be announced to her. Madame de Saint-Ange, will you please begin. (The following speeches are pronounced while the actors are in full action.)

  MADAME DE SAINT-ANGE—I condemn her to be hanged.

  LE CHEVALIER—Cut into eighty thousand pieces, after the manner of the Chinese.

  AUGUSTIN—As for me, by Gar, I’d let her get off with being broken alive.

  EUGÉNIE—Into my pretty little mamma’s body there will be driven wicks garnished with sulphur and I will undertake to set them afire, one by one. (The circle is dissolved.)

  DOLMANCÉ, coolly—Well, my friends, as your leader and instructor, I shall lighten the sentence; but the difference which will be discovered between what I decree and what you have demanded, this difference, I say, is that your sentences would be in the nature of the effects of mordant practical joking; mine, on the contrary, is going to be the cause of a little knavery. I have, waiting outside, a valet, and he is furnished with what is perhaps one of the loveliest members to be found in all of Nature; however, it distills disease, for ’tis eaten by one of the most impressive cases of syphilis I have yet anywhere encountered; I’ll have my man come in: we’ll have a coupling: he’ll inject his poison into each of the two natural conduits that ornament this dear and amiable lady, with this consequence: that so long as this cruel disease’s impressions shall last, the whore will remember not to trouble her daughter when Eugénie has herself fucked. (Everyone applauds; the valet is called in. Dolmancé speaks now to him.) Lapierre, fuck this woman; she is exceptionally healthy; this amusement might cure you: at least, there may be some precedent for the miracle’s success.

  LAPIERRE—In front of everyone, Monsieur?

  DOLMANCÉ—Are you afraid to exhibit your prick?

  LAPIERRE—No, by God! for it’s very attractive. . . . Let’s to it, Madame, be so good as to ready yourself.

  MADAME DE MISTIVAL—Oh, my God! what a hideous damnation!

  EUGÉNIE—Better that than to die, Mamma; at least I’ll be able to wear some gay dresses this summer.

  DOLMANCÉ—Meanwhile, we might amuse ourselves; my opinion would be for us all to flagellate one another: Madame de Saint-Ange will thrash Lapierre, so as to insure Madame de Mistival’s obtaining a good encuntment; I’ll flay Madame de Saint-Ange, Augustin will whip me, Eugénie will have at Augustin and herself will be very vigorously beaten by the Chevalier. (All of which is arranged. When Lapierre has finished cunt-fucking, his master orders him to fuck Madame de Mistival’s ass, and he does so. When all is completed, Dolmancé continues.) Capital! Out with you, Lapierre. Wait. Here are five louis. Ha! by God, that was a better inoculation than Tronchin made in all his life!

  MADAME DE SAINT-ANGE—I believe it is now of the highest importance to provide against the escape of the poison circulating in Madame’s veins; consequently, Eugénie must very carefully sew your cunt and ass so that the virulent humor, more concentrated, less subject to evaporation and not at all to leakage, will more promptly cinder your bones.

  EUGÉNIE—Excellent idea! Quickly, quickly, fetch me needle and thread! . . . Spread your thighs, Mamma, so
I can stitch you together—so that you’ll give me no more little brothers and sisters. (Madame de Saint-Ange gives Eugénie a large needle, through whose eye is threaded a heavy red waxed thread; Eugénie sews.)

  MADAME DE MISTIVAL—Oh, my God! the pain!

  DOLMANCÉ, laughing like a madman—By God! excellent idea indeed! it does you honor, my dear; it would never have occurred to me.

  EUGÉNIE, from time to time pricking the lips of the cunt, occasionally stabbing its interior and sometimes using her needle on her mother’s belly and mons veneris.) Pay no attention to it, Mamma. I am simply testing the point.

  LE CHEVALIER—The little whore wants to bleed her to death!

  DOLMANCÉ, causing himself to be frigged by Madame de Saint-Ange, as he witnesses the operation—Ah, by God! how this extravagance stiffens me! Eugénie, multiply your stitches, so that the seam will be quite solid.

  EUGÉNIE—I’ll take, if necessary, over two hundred of them. . . . Chevalier, frig me while I work.

  LE CHEVALIER, obeying—I’ve never seen a girl as vicious as this one!

  EUGÉNIE, much inflamed—No invectives, Chevalier, or I’ll prick you! Confine yourself to tickling me in the correct manner. A little asshole, if you please, my friend; have you only one hand? I can see no longer, my stitches go everywhere. . . . Look at it! do you see how my needle wanders . . . to her thighs, her tits. . . . Oh, fuck! what pleasure! . . .

  MADAME DE MISTIVAL—You are tearing me to pieces, vile creature! . . . Oh, how I blush that it was I who gave you life!

  EUGÉNIE—Come, come, be quiet, Mother dear; it’s finished.

  DOLMANCÉ, emerging, with a great erection, from Madame de Saint-Ange’s hands—Eugénie, allow me to do the ass; that part belongs to me.

  MADAME DE SAINT-ANGE—You’re too stiff, Dolmancé, you’ll make a martyr of her.

  DOLMANCÉ—What matter! have we not written permission to make of her what we please? (He turns Madame de Mistival upon her stomach, catches up the needle, and begins to sew her asshole.)

  MADAME DE MISTIVAL, screaming like a banshee—Aië! aië! aië!

  DOLMANCÉ, driving the needle deep into her flesh—Silence, bitch! or I’ll make a hash of your buttocks. . . . Eugénie, frig me. . . .

  EUGÉNIE—Willingly, but upon condition you prick her more energetically, for, you must admit, you are proceeding with strange forbearance. (She frigs him.)

  MADAME DE SAINT-ANGE—Work upon those two great cheeks for me!

  DOLMANCÉ—Patience, I’ll soon have her carved like a shank of beef; Eugénie, you are forgetting your lessons: you capped my prick!

  EUGÉNIE—’Tis because this bitch’s sufferings are inflaming my imagination to the point I no longer know exactly what I am doing.

  DOLMANCÉ—Sweet fucking God! I’m beginning to go out of my mind! Saint-Ange, have Augustin bugger you in front of my eyes while your brother flies into your cunt, and above all dress me a panorama of asses: the picture will finish me. (He stabs Madame de Mistival’s buttocks while the posture he has called for is arranged.) Here, Mamma dear, take this . . . and again that! . . . (He drives his needle into at least twenty places.)

  MADAME DE MISTIVAL—Oh pardon me, Monsieur, I beg your pardon a thousand thousand times over . . . you are killing me. . . .

  DOLMANCÉ, wild with pleasure—I should like to . . . ’tis an age since I have had such an erection; never would I have thought it possible after so many consecutive ejaculations.

  MADAME DE SAINT-ANGE, executing the called-for attitude— Are we as we should be, Dolmancé?

  DOLMANCÉ—Augustin, turn a little to the right; I don’t see enough ass; have him lean forward: I must see the hole.

  EUGÉNIE—Ah fuck! look at the bugger bleed!

  DOLMANCÉ—Rather a good deal of blood, isn’t there? Well, are the rest of you ready? As for myself, one minute more and I’ll spray life’s very balm upon the wounds I have just opened.

  MADAME DE SAINT-ANGE—Yes, my heart, yes . . . I am coming . . . we arrive at the end at the same time. . . .

  DOLMANCÉ, who has finished his task, does nothing but increase his stabbing of the victim’s buttocks as he discharges—Ah triple bloody fucking God! . . . my sperm flows . . . ’tis lost, by bleeding little Jesus! . . . Eugénie, direct it upon the flanks I have just mutilated . . . oh fuck! fuck! ’tis done . . . over . . . I’ve no more . . . oh, why must weakness succeed passions so alive? . . .

  MADAME DE SAINT-ANGE—Fuck! fuck me, brother, I discharge! . . . (To Augustin:) Stir yourself, great fucking-john! Don’t you know that it is when I come that you’ve got to sink your tool deepest into my ass? . . . Ah, sacred name of God! how sweet it is, thus to be fucked by two men . . . (The group disperses.)

  DOLMANCÉ—And now all’s been said. (To Madame de Mistival:) Hey! whore, you may clothe yourself and leave when you wish. I must tell you that your husband authorized the doing of all that has just been done to you. We told you as much; you did not believe it. (He shows her the letter.) May this example serve to remind you that your daughter is old enough to do what she pleases; that she likes to fuck, loves to fuck, that she was born to fuck, and that, if you do not wish to be fucked yourself, the best thing for you to do is to let her do what she wants. Get out; the Chevalier will escort you home. Salute the company, whore! on your knees, bow down before your daughter, and beseech her pardon for your abominable use of her. . . . You, Eugénie, bestow two good smacks upon Madame your Mother and as soon as she gains the threshold, help her cross it with a few lusty kicks aimed at her ass. (All this is done.) Farewell, Chevalier; don’t fuck Madame on the highway: remember, she’s sewn up and has got the pox. (After the Chevalier’s departure and Madame de Mistival’s.) And now, good friends, let’s to dinner, and afterward the four of us will retire for the night . . . in the same bed. Well, we’ve had a fine active day. I never dine so heartily, I never sleep so soundly as when I have, during the day, sufficiently befouled myself with what our fools call crimes.

  PART THREE

  Two Moral Tales

  Eugénie de Franval (1788)

  In his famous Catalogue raisonné1 of 1788, drawn up with obvious pride in the Bastille less than a year before it was stormed, Sade made note of a work entitled Eugénie de Franval, which he described in the following manner:

  7.2 Eugénie de Franval, which might also be called or the Misfortunes of Incest. In all the literature of Europe there are neither any stories or novels wherein the dangers of libertinage are exposed with such force, no work wherein the dark-hued class of fiction [genre sombre] is carried to such frightening and pathetic extremes. This story offers a sublime characterization of a clergyman; a personage well-suited to reconcile the ungodly and debauched with virtue and religion.

  Sade originally intended to include Eugénie de Franval in a projected multivolume work which was to be entitled Contes et fabliaux du XVIIIe siècle, par un troubadour provençal.3 Of this work, Sade noted:

  This work comprises four volumes, with an engraving for each tale; these short tales are interspersed in such a manner that an adventure which is gay, and even naughty but still well within the limits of modesty and decency, will follow immediately upon a serious or tragic adventure. . . .4

  Many of the manuscripts slated for this work were lost or destroyed when the Bastille was stormed,5 however, and Sade was obliged to abandon his initial plan of publication. It was not until the year VIII (1800) that he compiled a new work, using those tales he had managed to save or recover, a volume for which he gave up the idea of alternating gay and somber stories, eliminating the gay.6 Sade entitled the work Les Crimes de l’Amour, and prefaced it by a fascinating essay on the novel, Idée sur les romans, in which, turning his back on much of the French fiction of his day, he paid special homage to the robust genius of Fielding and Richardson.

  The eleven stories which comprise Les Crimes de l’Amour are uneven in quality, but at least one of them, Eugénie de Franval, qualifies as among the best of Sade’s sh
orter fictions. We present it here in its entirety, augmented by certain passages which did not figure in the original edition but which Maurice Heine discovered in Sade’s rough drafts and included in a later edition.7

  To instruct man and correct his morals: such is the sole goal we set for ourselves in this story. In reading it, may the reader be steeped in the knowledge of the dangers which forever dog the steps of those who, to satisfy their desires, will stop at nothing! May they be persuaded that the best education, wealth, talent, and the gifts of Nature are likely to lead one astray unless they are buttressed and brought to the fore by self-restraint, good conduct, wisdom, and modesty. Such are the truths we intend to relate. May the reader show himself indulgent for the monstrous details of the hideous crime we are obliged to describe; but is it possible to make others detest such aberrations unless one has the courage to lay them bare, without the slightest embellishment?

  It is rare that everything conspires in one person to lead him to prosperity; does Nature shower her gifts upon him? Then Fortune refuses him her gifts. Does Fortune lavish her favors upon him? Then Nature proves niggardly. It would appear that the hand of Heaven has wished to show us that, in each individual as in the most sublime operations, the laws of equilibrium are the prime laws of the Universe, those which at the same time govern everything that happens, everything that vegetates, and everything that breathes.

  Franval lived in Paris, the city of his birth, and possessed, among a variety of other talents, an income of four hundred thousand livres, a handsome figure, and a face to match. But beneath this seductive exterior was concealed a plethora of vices, and unfortunately among them those which, when adopted and practiced, quickly lead to crime. Franval’s initial shortcoming was an imagination the disorderliness of which defies description; this is a shortcoming that one cannot correct; its effects only worsen with age. The less one can do, the more one undertakes; the less one acts, the more one invents; each period of one’s life brings new ideas to the fore, and satiety, far from dampening one’s ardor, paves the way for even more baleful refinements.