Juliette

by Marquis de Sade

  “It’s the father of that engaging and so very well-favored maiden who in like manner brings his child here; but he’ll not have her fucked; anything at all may be done to her provided the two pucelages are left intact. He’ll also be the third member of the party, I’m expecting him at any moment, for the man who’s to sport with his daughter is already here. You’d enjoy watching the scene, ’tis a pity you can’t stay. There’d doubtless be a role for you.”

  “And what is going to happen?”

  “The father will want to thrash the man who is to lay hands on his child; her ravisher will decline to be whipped; pleadings, obstinacy: the father grovels, the other refuses and finally, catching up a cane, he gives the father a fierce thwacking and in the midst of it squirts his fuck all over the girl’s ass. And papa? He’ll creep over and lap up the spilled seed, then unleash his own while wrath-fully gnawing the buttocks of the man who, the moment before, was administering a beating to him.”

  “A complicated passion, upon my soul. And in it what part would I play?”

  “For the blows he’d sustained the father would avenge himself upon you. You’d have to count on a few superficial scratches, a cut or two; they’d be worth one hundred louis.”

  “Continue, Madame, continue. You know I cannot participate today.”

  “Well,” said she, “only two remain. Consider now that very attractive person. She enjoys an annual income of over fifty thousand pounds and an excellent reputation; her taste is for women, notice how she ogles the others. She is also fond of buggers; and she is deeply in love with her husband withal. But well does she realize that the moral and the physical are two very distinct domains. She fucks her husband with the best will in the world, she comes here to satisfy her other needs; it is simply a matter of managing one’s affairs properly.

  “Finally, the last of those ladies is unwed, she has great pretensions, is one of our most celebrated prudes; in society, were a man so much as to murmur the word love within her hearing, I believe she’d strike him; whilst here in my little house she pays fortunes to get herself fucked fifty times a month.

  “How now, Juliette? Do you need further examples? Or are these enough to make you decide?”

  “I think you’ve persuaded me, Madame,” I replied; “in future, I’ll fuck here for pleasure and profit, yes, I’ll not turn up my nose at whatever little libidinous adventures you prepare for me. But I must give you fair warning: don’t put yourself to any trouble on my account unless, where money is concerned, a minimum price of fifty louis is acceptable to whoever wishes my services.”

  “Fifty? My dear, you’ll have your fifty louis a throw, never fear,” cried Duvergier, overcome with joy. “I only wanted your agreement. Money? Money presents no problem. Be gentle, be docile, be obedient, never say no; I’ll find you mountains of money.”

  Since it had grown late and I feared lest Noirceuil become alarmed at the length of this first promenade I’d taken, I hastened back to be in time for dinner, most sincerely upset at not having seen some of those fifteen women in action or having been able to participate in it with them.

  Madame de Noirceuil was not entirely unmoved to see her rival established in her house; the uncouth and imperious tone in which her husband had enjoined her to obey me contributed not a little to her resentment of my presence; not a day passed when she did not weep from sore chagrin and envy: I was incomparably better lodged than she, better served, better fed, more magnificently dressed, having a carriage to myself whereas she was scarcely allowed the use of her husband’s; little wonder that this woman developed a hatred for me. But so great was my appeal to Noirceuil’s intellect that, whatever her feelings, and they must truly have been strong, I dwelt in perfect security from the least of their effects.

  I hardly need stress, however, that love was not Noirceuil’s motive for acting in this manner. He valued my company, for in his eyes I represented the means to committing crimes; did he, what with his perfidious imagination, did he need another reason for keeping me by him? That villain’s disorders were faultlessly systematized. Every day, and nothing could have interfered with the ritual, Duvergier furnished him a maiden whose age, according to the requirements he laid down, was not to exceed fifteen nor be less than ten; for each of these girls he paid one hundred crowns; and their agreement further specified that if Noirceuil could supply proof positive that any one specimen was not absolutely mint, Duvergier must pay him twenty-five louis in damages and for breach of contract. Despite all these precautions, the example of my own self suggests to what an extent he could be deceived, and I dare say he very often was.

  This libertine session was ordinarily scheduled for every afternoon; we were all convoked, the two young pederasts, Madame de Noirceuil, and I, and every day Noirceuil’s susceptible and hapless wife was the victim of those piquant and unusual practices I have described already. The children would be dismissed and Noirceuil and I would sup together; he usually drank himself into a stupor and would end up asleep in my arms.

  Now I must avow, my friends, that for a long time I’d been mightily eager to test Dorval’s theories in action; my fingers were nigh to itching from impatience; I simply had to steal at any cost. I had yet to determine what I could do: I didn’t doubt my abilities, but I needed someone to try them upon. Situated there in Noirceuil’s house, conditions would have favored a stunning performance: his confidence in me was as complete as his wealth was immense and his disorders extreme: I could at any time and every day have laid hands on ten or twelve louis, he’d never have noticed their disappearance. But by some quirk of the imagination, by some curious way of reckoning, thanks to some feeling I’d perhaps have difficulty explaining clearly, even to myself, I never wanted to wrong anyone as corrupt as I. It is doubtless here the old story of honor amongst thieves, or of mutual respect; but it was operative in me. I had another reason also, an important one, for restraining myself; I wanted to steal, and I wanted my victim to sustain grave hurt: the idea wonderfully heated my brain. Well now, what crime would I be committing in plundering Noirceuil? I considered his property mine: I would simply be making off with what I already owned; thus, robbing Noirceuil would be mere reappropriation, lacking the faintest trace of larceny. In short, had Noirceuil been a good man, I’d have bled him white; he was a wicked man, I respected him. In a moment or two you’ll hear how I was unfaithful to him; you’ll perhaps wonder why my veneration for the man did not inhibit my fuckeries; but fuckery is something else again, and between my principles and infidelity there lay not so much as a shadow of contradiction. I loved Noirceuil for his libertinage, for his mental qualities; I was not by any means captivated by his person, I did not consider myself so firmly attached to him as to be deterred from fucking anyone else whenever I pleased. I was ambitious, I took the longer view: the more men I saw, the greater my chances of finding one better than Norceuil. And even if that luck should not befall me, collaboration with Duvergier must necessarily be profitable; and I could not throw away that money in the name of a quaint chivalric sentiment for Norceuil in whom no manner of delicacy could in any fundamental or even superficial sense exist. In observance of this scheme of behavior, I, as you may very well imagine, accepted an invitation I received from Duvergier several days, after the interview I described a little while ago.

  The party was to be given at the home of a millionaire; he was not prone to stint on his pleasures, it was in their weight in gold he recompensed those accommodating creatures who were disposed to satisfy his shameless whims. However extensive one’s acquaintance with the question may be, libertinage forever holds surprises in store for us; and there is no predicting to what degree it can degrade a man who heeds only the mischievous urgings quickened by ever astonishing vice.

  Six of Duvergier’s most winning protégées were to accompany me to the house of that Croesus; but I being the most distinguished of the troupe, his finer attentions were concentrated upon me, and my companions really officiated only as priestesses in
the ceremony.

  We arrived and at once we were introduced into a chamber hung in brown satin, a color and a material chosen, no doubt, to emphasize the fairness of the skin of the sultanas who were summoned there; straightway, the woman who had led us thither bade us undress. She swathed me in a black and silver gauze gown, this costume setting me apart from the others: this tire, the divan I was instructed to recline upon while the others, remaining standing, quietly awaited orders, the special attention shown me—I was speedily convinced that I was to occupy a central position in the festivities.

  Mondor enters. He was a man of seventy, short, squat, but keen of eye, and libertine. He gazes around, examining my companions; he utters words of praise for each, then he comes up to me and pays me some of those compliments such as are to be heard from none but a slave trader’s lips.

  “Very well,” says he to his aide, “if these young ladies are ready, I believe we can get on with the job.”

  That libidinous drama was comprised of three scenes: first of all, whilst with mouth, lips, and nibbling teeth I strove to rouse the deeply slumbering activity in Mondor, my six colleagues, grouped in pairs, were to strike the most suggestive sapphic poses for Mondor’s contemplation; no two of their attitudes were to be alike, they were all to keep in continual motion. Gradually, the three couples merged and our six tribades, who had spent several days training for the occasion, finally composed the most original and the most libertine configuration you could hope to imagine. We had already been half an hour at play and I was only beginning to detect a few faint hints of progress in our septuagenarian.

  “My angel,” said he, “I do believe these whores are putting the wind in my sail. Turn around, give me a sight of your cheeks, for were I to find myself able to perforate the noble asshole you’ll offer up to my kisses like a good little girl, why then, without further ado we’d proceed to the conclusion of the affair.”

  But, swept away by optimism, Mondor had neglected to take Nature into account.

  They failed, the several attacks he therewith delivered, though they helped apprise me of what he wished to achieve. “Well,” he sighed at last, “it won’t do. I need further encouragement.”

  All seven of us surrounded him. To each the duenna handed a bundle of sturdy withes; then, one after the other, we belabored the wrinkled and seamed backside of that poor Mondor who, while being flayed by one girl, fondled the charms of the six others. We lashed him till blood flowed; and still no sign of success.

  “Oh Lord!” the sorry old dog groaned, “I’m apparently reduced to taking desperate remedies.”

  Sweating, bleeding, breathless, the knave cast a troubled eye about the company.

  At that point the amiable duenna spoke up, busying herself applying eau de cologne to her master’s lacerated buttocks. “Ladies,” said she, “I am afraid there remains but one means to bring his Honor back to life.”

  “And what may that be?” I inquired. “For truly, Madame, have we not exhausted every device that would bring his Honor forth from slumber?”

  “Nay, there is yet this we may attempt,” she answered. “I shall stretch his Honor comfortably upon this couch; you, my kind Juliette, kneeling before him, you will go on imparting the warmth of your pink mouth to my dear master’s glacial tool. You, only you can succeed in its resurrection, of that I am convinced. As for you other ladies, will you one by one step forward and perform these three little services: first, briskly slap his Honor’s face, then spit upon it, and finally fart thereupon: as soon as all six have completed these exercises we may, I believe, see his Honor wonderfully revived.”

  She spoke, the prescription was followed out, and I swear to you I am still amazed at the efficacy of these combined expedients: in my mouth, as the treatment advanced, the balloon inflated until I nigh to choked on that swelling morsel. True, all went at great speed: those slaps, that spittle, and the farts, perfectly orchestrated, rained down a very tempest upon the patient; passing strange it was, and most entertaining, to listen to the music wherewith the air resounded, a symphony of eructations, bass and tenor, the sharp percussive sounds of the blows, the flat notes of the expectorations. Well, the sluggardly member at last woke up, as I say, filled out, waxed wroth, and I thought it was about to explode between my lips when, springing away from me, Mondor signaled to the duenna, and she readied everything for the finale: ’tis within my ass the opera is to end. She adjusts me in the posture sodomy prefers; Mondor, helped, guided by his assistant, plunges instantly into the arcanum where the bugger takes his sweetest pleasures—but wait, there’s more to tell; I’d fail to give an honest portrait of these goings-on were I to omit the crapulous episode with which Mondor crowned his ecstasy. While the lecher ass-fucked me, it was necessary:

  1) that his governess, outfitted with a gigantine dildo, render him the same service;

  2) that one of the girls, crouched beneath me, cause a great racket and stir in my cunt by sucking and licking it and blowing air thereinto and smacking her lips together;

  3) that two dainty asses be placed where I could fondle them vigorously;

  4) and finally that two other girls, the first sitting astride me and bent low over my back, and the second likewise seated upon the first, both simultaneously shit, the former delivering a gobbet of excrement into his Honor’s mouth, the latter smearing another over his brow.

  But everyone took her turn accomplishing this last-mentioned task; everybody shat, even the duenna; everybody frigged me, everybody donned the dildo and impaled Mondor who, overwhelmed by lubricious titillations, at last darts the deplorable jets of his quavering lust to a good depth in my anus.

  “What is this, Madame! What is this strange tale you are telling us!” cried the Chevalier, suddenly interrupting Juliette. “Do you mean to say that the duenna shat also?”

  “She very certainly did, Sire,” our historian insisted, a hint of vexation in her voice, another of reproof in her glance. “I fail to apprehend how, with an imagination so matured as your own, Chevalier, you can find anything strange in that: the more worn and weary, the more wrinkled a woman’s ass, the more meet it is for such an operation; seasoning makes the salts more acrid, the vapors richer, the odors stronger. … In general, I might add, there persists a very great error in what pertains to the exhalations emanated from the caput mortuum of our digestions; there is nothing unwholesome about them, nothing that is not altogether agreeable … shit-hatred is unfailingly the mark of the simpleton, that you will admit; but need I tell you that there is such a thing as shit-connoisseurship, shit-gourmandise? No habit is more easily acquired than mard-savoring; eat one, delicious, eat another, no two taste exactly alike, but all are subtle and the effect is somewhat that of an olive. By all means, yes, one must allow one’s imagination free play; but shit gleaned from antique and much-traveled assholes … ah, a supper for the gods, one of the culminating episodes of the libertine experience….”

  “Which I shall willingly undergo before very long, Madame, I swear it unto you,” declared the Chevalier as he complacently stroked a prick which the idea just broached was causing to stiffen horribly.

  “Whenever you please,” Juliette replied, “and may I offer my own product for your delectation? Indeed, hold … this instant, if you wish; your palate’s whetted, my sphincters are stirring.”

  And the Chevalier, taking Juliette at her word, led her away into an adjoining cabinet whence they did not return for a good thirty minutes, which in all likelihood were employed to acquaint the Chevalier with the most voluptuous aspects of this patrician passion; and the Marquis devoted the same interval to harrying the much-weathered buttocks of the unfortunate Justine.

  The door opened; “True!” cried the Chevalier, “’tis delicious!”

  “Did you eat—?” inquired the Marquis.

  “I feasted. And gluttonously, I am afraid. There’s none left, my Liege.”

  “I too am surprised, Chevalier; but what strikes me as strange is that you’d not fam
iliarized yourself with the practice long before this. Nowadays you’ll not find a single child of eighteen or twenty who’s not had shit aplenty out of whores. But proceed, Juliette, ’tis very pleasant, the way you kindle our passions with your engaging stories and then appease them with such singular consideration and art.”

  “Heavenly creature,” said Mondor, drawing me into a secluded room after having dismissed the other women, “there is yet another service you may perform for me and that is the one from which I await my divinest pleasures. I would have you imitate your friends, you’re to shit as did they, and to deposit here in my mouth both the celestial turd I pray to God you have reserved for me, and with that succulent viand, the fuck-gravy I injected not long ago into your ass.”

  I inclined and in a tone at once dignified and respectful announced that my one desire was to comply with his.

  “But can you?” he cried.

  “I can indeed,” I assured him.

  “Is it so? Adorable child, wonderful child,” he stammered, “it is then within your power to grant my request? Great God, this shall be the discharge of my life.”

  When we had entered that little room my eyes had immediately lit upon a package of some size, containing, so I guessed, things which would be very instrumental to the improvement of my pecuniary situation; that same instant I had conceived an overpowering wish to steal it—but how? I was nude. Where could I conceal the package? Although it was not long, it was bulky, about as thick as a man’s arm.

  “Your Honor,” I asked, “are you going to call in someone to help us?”

  “No,” the financier answered, “my custom is to taste this final delight in solitude; so lubricious are my sensations, so voluptuous the gestures which they wring out of me….”