“Don’t speak to me, frig me … frig me,” said I, thrusting my tongue into her mouth, “I am fearfully overwrought this morning, that’s all. Here, let me have your cunt, let me toy with it, and let’s both of us drown in rivers of fuck.”
“But what can have happened?”
“Horrors, my dove … atrocities, and sperm flows marvelously, believe me, when its spurts are started but of the womb of abomination. So frig me, Elvire, frig me, dear heart, I have got to discharge.”
And the creature kneels, glides her head between my thighs, her tongue glides into my cunt, thrills there. “Oh fuck!” I gasp, “’tis even so, ’tis so, you seize me well….”
And my seed washes her lips, her nose, drips down her chin…. We pursue our way.
I reached home in an indescribable exaltation, it was as though every violent impulse, every instinct, every vice were allied in an effort to debauch my very soul, I swam in a kind of intoxication … in a kind of rage, there was nothing I might not’ have done, no lewd act I could not have soiled myself with. Bitterly I regretted that my blow had fallen upon only a tiny fraction of humanity, great was the evil in me, great enough to have laid all Nature waste; I dashed into one of my boudoirs and, naked, flung myself upon a couch, I commanded Elvire to send “me in every man she could get hold of, I bade them do everything they wished with me provided they insulted me, reviled me, treated me like the vilest whore. I was fingered, pawed, prodded, spat upon, beaten, slapped; my cunt, my ass, my breasts, my mouth were all used, befouled; would that I had had twenty other altars to present for their offerings. Some of those men left and fetched back their friends, individuals I had never seen before, I opened my holes to them, refused no one, was the harlot to everyone, anyone, and fuck gushed in torrents out of me. One of the more uncouth of those studs—I had been baiting him—declared it was not upon a bed he wanted to fuck me, but in the mire; I let him drag me bodily into a pigsty and there, in slime and excrement, I flung my legs apart and challenged him to do his worst. The knave performed brutally and let me go only after having shat all over my face … and I was happy. The more, the deeper I wallowed in ordure and infamy, the greater grew my excitement, the fiercer my joy. In less than two hours I was tupped twenty times over, and Elvire never stopped frigging me throughout it all, and nothing, no, nothing alleviated my pangs, my sufferings hideous and delicious and provoked by the thought constantly in my mind, that of the crime I had just perpetrated. Going upstairs to my dressing room, we noticed a ruddy glow in the distance.
“Madame, come look!” Elvire called, opening a window. “Look, Madame, a fire—over there, do you see? In that direction, where we were this morning—”
And I tottered back, to fall nearly unconscious upon the sofa. We were alone, that pretty girl and I. For perhaps five minutes, or ten, she frigged me; and then I sat up, thrusting Elvire away.
“Do you not hear shouts?” I demanded. “Come, let’s not tarry here, a rare spectacle awaits us outside…. Elvire, I am responsible for this—”
“Madame?”
“Come, I say, let’s go gloat together over my triumph. I simply must see it all, I must savor it all, I don’t want to miss a detail.”
We set out as we were, the two of us—our hair disheveled, our dresses rumpled, weariness and delight traced in our features: we resembled a pair of bacchantes. Stopping twenty paces away from that scene of horror, behind a little hillock which hid us from the sight of others, I sink again into the embrace of an Elvire almost as aroused as I: we cunt-suck each other by the light of homicidal flames my ferocity has ignited, we discharge to the sound of shrill screams coming from a woe and anguish that are my confection; and never has woman been happier than was I.
At last we regain our feet and stand awhile surveying that panorama of destruction, then move closer to pore over the details. Great is my distress at concluding, as I count the corpses, that two members of the family must have escaped me. I examine the charred bodies one by one, recognize each: these people were alive this morning, I muse, and now, but a few hours later, here they are, dead; killed by me. And why did I do it? Out of fun. To spill my fuck. So this is what murder is! A little organized matter disorganized; a few compositional changes, the combination of some molecules disturbed and broken, those molecules tossed back into the crucible of Nature who, re-employing the selfsame materials, will cast them into something else so that in but a day or so they shall reappear in the world again, only guised a little differently; this they call murder—truly now, in all seriousness, I ask myself, where is the wrong in murder? This woman here, that infant there—in the eyes of Nature does either count for more than, say, a housefly or a maggot? I deprive the one of life, so doing I give life to the other—how can this be made out an offense to Nature?
This little revolt of the intellect against the heart set the electrical globules in my nerves briskly into motion, and once again my companion found her fingers wetted by my running cunt. I honestly do not know to what lengths I might not have gone had I been alone. Who can tell, possessed of a perfectly Caribbean cruelty, I’d perhaps have fallen to devouring my victims: there they lay, strewn invitingly upon the ground: none but the father and one of the children had got away, the mother and the seven others had perished; and as I stared down at them, felt, palpated them, I repeated to myself: I have done this, I. These murders were planned by me, consummated by me, they are my handiwork, my creation … and I discharged afresh.
Of the cottage not a stick remained; it was hard to imagine a dwelling had ever stood there, that human beings had ever inhabited this wilderness.
And now, my friends, what do you fancy was Clairwil’s reaction when she heard of my feat? She listened to the recital in cold silence, one eyebrow raised; and when I was done, she assured me that I had precious little to boast of; indeed said she, I had acquitted myself more like a coward than a criminal.
“In the execution of your undertaking I notice several grave defects,” she declared, and her comments are worth citing, for they reveal the character of that unusual woman; “firstly,” she specified, “you proceeded in slipshod style: had someone chanced to come along, your gestures, your exuberance, very telltale, would have constituted evidence against you. Beware of such loose conduct. Ardor, passion—by all means, but keep it inward; outwardly, nonchalance, phlegm. Circumscribe, contain the lubricious effects, under pressure their temperature mounts.
“Secondly, scope and grandeur are sadly lacking in your conception of the thing, which I am obliged to qualify as mean; for you must admit that with a large town and seven or eight sizable villages plainly visible from your windows, there is a timorousness, undue modesty in exerting yourself upon a single house, an isolated house in a secluded place furthermore … from fear, one is led to suppose, lest the flames, by spreading, extend the dimensions of your petty felony: your nervousness, your anxiety, in committing it are only too apparent. You spoiled your pleasure, for crime’s pleasures brook no restriction; I speak from experience: there where free rein is not given the imagination, where the hand is stayed by some scruple or consideration, the ecstasy cannot possibly be complete, for there always subsists a regret: I could have done more, and I did not. And regrets arising from virtue sting worse than those consecutive to crime: should he who follows in virtue’s train happen to perform a piece of wickedness, he is always able to comfort himself by the thought that a host of good deeds will wipe the blot away, and as it is easy to convince oneself of anything one desires to believe, his conscience is soon at peace. But for those who travel the path of vice matters are not so simple, a missed opportunity is something we cannot forgive ourselves because it cannot be compensated by anything; no virtue comes to our rescue; and the promise we make to do something worse only whets our palate for evil, without consoling us for having let a chance of doing it go by.
“Another observation has to be made,” Clairwil went on. “To even the most superficial glance your scheme betrays a very glar
ing error; had I been in your place I would surely have brought an action against that Des Granges. Nothing simpler than to have had him charged with arson and burned at the stake; oh, yes indeed, I would have included that item on the program. For are you unaware that when fire breaks out in the house of a tenant—and Des Granges is one of your tenants—you have the right to summon the authorities and launch an inquiry to determine whether the tenant is the culprit? Who knows, perhaps the fellow wished to get rid of his wife and children and then go off and play the shiftless beggar somewhere else? The moment he bolted from the house you should have had him arrested while attempting flight, don’t you see; you spend a few louis collecting witnesses; to begin with, Elvire, she was there: she affirms that the very same morning she saw the guilty one skulking distractedly about in the barnyard, climbing up to the hayloft, she spoke to him, questioned him, got only gibberish for answer; and the courts would have done the rest: inside a week you’d have been treated to the voluptuous spectacle of your man being burned alive at your gate. Let this be a lesson to you, Juliette, profit from it, as soon as the idea for a crime occurs to you, concert its amplification, its aggravation; and while putting it into execution, further elaborate upon your idea.”
There, my friends, those, textually, are the cruel additions Clairwil would have had me join to my miscreancy; and why deny it? deeply stirred by her arguments, forced to recognize that I had performed shabbily, I promised myself that in the future my enterprises would defy criticism. I was aggrieved above all by the peasant’s escape; what would I not have given to see him roasted on my doorstep! The mere recollection of that loss pains me to this day.
At last came the time appointed for my reception into Clairwil’s club. Its name was the Sodality of the Friends of Crime. On the morning of that day my sponsor brought for my study a copy of the Sodality’s bylaws; here, let me read them to you, I believe you will find them intriguing.
STATUTES OF THE SODALITY OF THE FRIENDS OF CRIME
Deferring to the common usage, the Sodality admits the serviceability of the word crime; but makes plain declaration that in its employment thereof with reference to any kind of act of whatever sort or color, no condemnatory or pejorative sense is ever intended. Thoroughly convinced that man is not free, and that, bound absolutely by the laws of Nature, all men are slaves of these fundamental laws, the Sodality therefore approves and legitimates everything, and considers as its most zealous and most estimable Members those who, unhesitatingly and unrepentantly, acquit themselves of the greatest number of those vigorous actions fools in their weakness call crimes; because it is the Sodality’s belief that through accomplishing these actions the individual serves Nature, that their performance is dictated by her, and that if such a thing as crime there be, it is characterized by the reluctance or refusal to do any of the very various things Nature may inspire and hence enjoin. The Sodality therefore stands protectively behind all its Members, guaranteeing all of them aid, shelter, refuge, allies, funds, counsel, everything needed to counter the maneuvers of the law; all Members who violate it are safeguarded and championed automatically by the Sodality, which considers itself above the law because the law is of mortal and artificial contrivance, whereas the Sodality, natural in its origin and obediences, heeds and respects Nature only.
1. No distinction is drawn among the individuals who comprise the Sodality; not that it holds all men equal in the eyes of Nature—a vulgar notion deriving from infirmity, want of logic, and false philosophy—but because it is persuaded and maintains that distinctions of any kind may have a detrimental influence upon the Sodality’s pleasures and are certain sooner or later to spoil them.1
2. The individual presenting himself for membership in the Sodality must forswear whatever religious faith he may happen to be encumbered with; his contempt for these crack-brained beliefs and for the fictitious object of worship they revolve around will be judged by means of tests to which he ought to expect to be put; the penalty of immediate expulsion is prescribed for those who, however mildly, and even in the spirit of jest, backslide into these abject practices.
3. God, in the view of the Sodality, does not exist; sound evidence of atheism is a prerequisite for entry into it; the sole divinity it recognizes is pleasure; to pleasure it sacrifices everything; it considers voluptuous activities, all imaginable voluptuous activities, and nothing but voluptuous activities, sacred; whatever delectates, it considers good; within the Sodality all forms of pleasure-seeking and of pleasure-taking are authorized, it frowns on none, there is not one it does not applaud, encourage, and promote.
4. The Sodality dissolves all marital ties and ignores those of blood; under its roof one should disport indiscriminately with the wife of one’s neighbor as with one’s own, should for enjoyment consult one’s own brother, sister, children, nephews, quite as one would do with the brothers, sisters, children, nephews of somebody else; and any unwillingness to comply with these rules constitutes strong grounds for expulsion.
5. A husband is bound to present his wife for admission; a father, his son or daughter; a brother, his sister; an uncle, his nephew or niece; etc.
6. Entry into the Sodality is barred to those unable to indicate a minimum yearly income of twenty-five thousand livres, dues of membership being ten thousand francs per annum. This sum is the equivalent of average estimated costs per Member, and out of it are paid expenses entailed by the upkeep of the Sodality’s seat, rentals, maintenance of the seraglios, carriages and equipages, offices, and functionaries’ salaries, outlay for the Assemblies, suppers, and lighting; and when the Treasurer reports a favorable balance at year’s end, he divides it among his fellow Members; and in that other case where disbursements have exceeded revenue, a tax is levied and the deficit made up to the Treasurer, whose word in these matters is always accepted without question.
7. Twenty artists and literary figures are to be admitted upon remittance of the modest fee of a thousand livres per annum; this special consideration is part of the Sodality’s policy of patronizing the arts; it regrets that its means do not permit it to welcome, at this insignificant price, a larger number of these gifted persons to whom it would give every kind of encouragement.
8. The Members of the Sodality, united through it into one great family, share all their hardships as they do their joys; they aid one another mutually in all life’s various situations; but alms, charities, help extended to widows, orphans, or persons in distress are rigorously forbidden, both within the Sodality and above all without; should proof be brought forward, or the simple suspicion arise, that a Member has indulged in such so-called good works, he will be expelled.
9. An emergency fund of thirty thousand livres is kept in constant reserve and is at the disposition of any Member who by accident or ill fate finds himself in difficulties of whatever sort.
10. The President is elected by ballot, and his period of office is one month; he may be of either sex; and presides at twelve Assemblies, whereof there are three per week. His duties are to see that the Sodality’s laws are respected, to supervise the correspondence executed by a Permanent Committee whose chairman is the President. The Treasurer and the Sodality’s two Executive Secretaries sit on this Committee; but as with the President, each Executive Secretary’s term of office expires after one month.
11. Each Assembly is opened by a speech delivered by one of the Members; the tenor of his address is always contrary to polite custom and religion; if it is deemed worthy thereof, it is printed forthwith, at the Sodality’s expense, and deposited in its Archives.
12. During those hours devoted to corporative frolicking, all Members, male and female, are naked; they intermingle, in the melee partners are chosen indiscriminately, and there is no such thing as a valid refusal whereby one individual would deny his pleasure to another. Once called upon, each individual must cooperate instantly, unreservedly, gladly; has he not the right to demand the same a few minutes later? Should an individual attempt to shirk his obligations t
oward his brethren, he will be forcefully constrained to fulfill them and then be driven ignominiously out of the Sodality.
13. During Assembly, no cruel passion, save whipping inflicted upon the buttocks only, may be given vent to; the Sodality possesses seraglios, and there dangerous passions may be exercised with entire freedom; but when amongst his fellows each Member must confine himself to crapulous, incestuous, sodomistic, and benign merrymaking.
14. The completest confidence reigns among Members of the Sodality; they may and ought to avow to one another their tastes, their foibles, chat intimately, and employ the exchange of confessions as a further spur to pleasure. Were anyone to disclose Sodality secrets, or in one of his fellows to criticize ungenerously the failings or predilections which make for the success of his pleasure-seeking, he would be expelled Straightway.
15. Hard by the public pleasure hall are located private cells whereunto one may repair solitarily to indulge in all the debaucheries of libertinage; these cells are available to groups of any size, they are appropriately and fully equipped, and each contains a youth and a young lass with whom, at all times, Sodality Members may execute any passion whatsoever, including those allowed only inside the seraglios, for these children being of the same species as the seraglios are stocked with, and indeed belonging to the seraglios, they may be treated similarly.
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