Juliette

by Marquis de Sade

  I—yes, I confess it: corrupt to the core though I was, before the idea I shuddered; O thou, the fatal start I gave, what wert thou not to cost me! Little impulse, why could I not have suppressed thee?—Saint-Fond caught it with his searching eye. He turned and went away without a word.

  I watched him go and, when the door was shut and the sound of his footsteps died away, waited there yet a certain while; then, for it was late, retired for the night. Long did I lie awake; once fallen asleep I had a troubling dream: in it I saw a fearful figure putting a torch to my belongings—to my furniture, to my house, to everything I owned: all was afire and in the midst of it a young creature stretched forth her arms to me … sought desperately to save me, and in the attempt perished herself in the flames. I awoke all asweat, and consciousness brought back to me the sorceress’ prediction: when vice doth cease, thus had she spoken, woe shall betide. O Heaven, I cried in my heart, I stopped being vicious for a fleeting instant, I shuddered at a proposed horror; misfortune is about to engulf me, it is sure. The woman I saw in my dream, she is the sister, the unregenerate and sad Justine with whom I fell out because she was bent on taking the virtuous way; virtue appeals to me, and in my heart vice falters…. Fatal prognostic … and you who could explain it to me and tell me what I should do, you disappear just when my need for your advice is greatest. … I was still at grips with these lugubrious reflections when, unannounced, a stranger enters my bedroom, tenders me a note, and forthwith steals away. I recognize Noirceuil’s hand:

  “You are ruined,” it reports to me, “never would I have expected frailty in her whom I formed and whose conduct heretofore has been flawless; seek not to repair the want you have exhibited of zeal: it is too late: your impulse betrayed you, and add not insult to injury by supposing the Minister can be further duped. Leave Paris before this day is out; take with you the money you may have by you; count not upon anything else. Everything you have acquired through Saint-Fond’s largesses and aid is forfeited; he is a powerful man, this you know, you also know his wrath when he has been failed: so do not tarry, go. And go with lips sealed: you will not outlive an indiscretion, I leave you the ten thousand livres a year you have from me, your drafts will be honored anywhere. Now fly, and to your friends say nothing.”

  A bolt of lightning would have smitten me less cruelly; but dread of Saint-Fond affected me even more strongly than despair. I rise hurriedly from my bed; having deposited all my valuables and all my savings with Saint-Fond’s notary, I dare not go reclaim them. I ransack drawers, turn purses inside out: five hundred louis is all I can assemble, all I have left. I make several rolls of the notes and hide them upon my person, and then, alone, on foot, in the middle of the night I go quaking out of this house where yesterday I dwelled like an empress, this house upon which I cast one last backward glance, tears in my eyes…. Whither shall I go? To see Clairwil…. But no, it has been prohibited; and moreover is it not she who has betrayed me? is it not she who wishes to usurp my place? Ah, how unjust we are rendered by misfortune, and how wrong I was, as you shall soon see, in rushing to suspect the best friend I had.

  Come now, take hold of yourself, let’s not rely for help upon anybody but ourselves … I’m still young, I said to myself, it’s merely a question of starting afresh; I have learned from my youthful errors…. O fatal virtue! thou tricked me once; never fear, I’ll never again come under thine execrable sway. Only one fault have I committed, only once have I slipped, and it was an infernal impulse to probity that tripped me. Let’s now snuff it out forever within us, virtue is man’s mortal enemy, capable of procuring him nothing but his doom; and the greatest mistake which can be made in a completely corrupted world is to want to put up a lonely fight against the general contagion. And, great God, how often have I told this to myself!

  Without anything like a definite plan in mind, concerned only to escape the vengeance of Saint-Fond, I jumped, as though mechanically, into the first public carriage I found; it was the mail-coach for Angers; in due time I arrived there. Never having been in this city before, not knowing a soul there, I decided to rent a house and to open it for gaming: the nobility from all the countryside around soon came flocking to me…. Countless lovers made their declarations; but the air of modesty and reserve I affected quickly persuaded my suitors that I was not to be wooed successfully save by him who would make my fortune. A certain Comte de Lorsange, the same by whose name I still go today, looked to me to be more assiduous and a great deal richer than the others: he was then forty years of age, pleasing of face and figure; and from his manner of expression I was convinced his intentions were loftier and more legitimate than his competitors’: I heeded his attentions. It was not long before the Comte confided his designs to me: a bachelor, enjoying an income of fifty thousand livres a year, having no near relations, he, if I were to prove worthy of his hand, would prefer to have me inherit his wealth than have it passed on to some distant kin; and if I were willing to be frank with him, to describe my life in fullest detail, omitting nothing, he would wed me and accord me twenty thousand a year. A proposal such as this was too fair not to accept at once; it was a complete confession the Comte must have, it was a complete one he got.

  “Listen to me now, Juliette,” spoke up Monsieur de Lorsange once I had terminated my recital, “the avowals you have just made me evidence an openness I admire; she who owns her sins so candidly is far nearer to never sinning again than she who has been faultless all her life; the former knows what to expect—and the latter may at any time fall prey to the desire to essay something new. Deign to listen to me a little, Madame, I insist that you do, to me your conversion would be a precious thing, I want to guide you into the righteous path; I do not propose to upbraid you in a sermon, no, but to put certain truths before you, truths your passions screened long from your sight, and which you will always find in your heart whenever you wish to inspect it alone.

  “Oh, Juliette! he who was capable of telling you that morals are useless in the world set for you the crudest trap into which it would be possible to snare you, and he who was then able to add that virtue is futile and religion a fraud might better have assassinated you there and then, and been done with it. Killing you outright, he would have caused you only an instant’s suffering; instead, he readied you for griefs and woes beyond number; the misuse of words and the twisting of meanings were responsible for all your errors, let us now strive to make a just analysis of this virtue wicked teachers sought to make you hate. That which is called virtue, Juliette, is constant fidelity in the fulfillment of our obligations toward others; I ask you now, what person can be so thoughtless, so unfeeling as to venture to situate happiness in that which shatters all the ties that bind us to society? Does that person brashly fancy, will he delude himself into believing, that he can be happy all alone when he hurls everybody else into distress? Will he be strong enough, powerful enough, audacious enough to succeed, single-handed, in resisting the will of society, strong and powerful and audacious enough to compel every individual will to make way before the irregularities of his own? Is he so bold as to imagine he alone has passions? And if all the others have them as surely as he, how can he hope to cow the rest into putting theirs into abeyance and serving his only? You will agree with me, Juliette, no one but a madman can entertain such ideas; but even supposing he is ceded to, is he sheltered from the law? Does he doubt but that its blade will cut him down as it would another? Will you place him so high up that he is hindered by none of these checks? Very well; he must still contend with his conscience. Nay, Juliette, believe me, nobody ever escapes from that terrible voice: you have seen it for yourself, you have had the experience: you attempted to slay the conscience in you by imposing silence upon it, and instead, more imperious than your passions, it called them to a halt.

  “Instilling in man a taste for society, the unknown Being who shaped him had necessarily to give him, simultaneously, a taste for the duties whereby he could comfortably maintain himself therein; now, virtue co
nsists precisely in the fulfillment of these duties; virtue is hence one of man’s primary needs, it is the sole means to his felicity on earth. Oh, in what lucid and stately order religious truths proceed from these fundamental verities, and how easy it is to prove the existence of a Supreme Being to the man of virtuous heart; the sublimities of nature, Juliette, those are the virtues of the Creator, as benevolence and humaneness are those of His creatures, and from the relationships knitting them all up together is born the concord of the universe. God is the center of the supreme wisdom whereof the human soul is a ray; the moment you close yourself up against that divine light, your lot upon earth must be to wander in darkness from error to misfortune; cast your glance upon those who have presumed to formulate different principles and analyze their motives coolly; did they desire anything else than to seduce you and abuse your good faith? Were they animated by any other intentions than to flatter their despicable and dangerous passions? And in addition to deceiving you, they deceived themselves; there is the worst of it, there is what never enters into the wicked man’s calculations; to get himself one pleasure he loses a thousand, to pass one happy day he destines himself to a million dismal days; such is the contagion of vice that he who is attacked by it wishes to infect everyone around him: the mere sight of virtue is a reproach to him, and the wretch does not realize that all his efforts to annihilate it become triumphs for it; the delight of the evildoer is to do worse every day; but having done the worst, then he must stop, and is not this the moment which, revealing his limitations, reveals his weakness to him, and his fault? But is it likewise with virtue? The more he improves its delights the more delicate they become, and if he would attain virtue’s farthermost limits, he finds them in the bosom of God, with Whom he unites his existence to live eternally in bliss.

  “Oh, Juliette, manifold and deep are the joys of virtue and religion! I have lived like other men—yes, it is in a pleasure-house I have had the fortune of your acquaintance; but even in the flings of my youth, even in the fiery noon of my hot-blood days, virtue never lost its beauty in my eyes, and it was in discharging the duties she imposes I always found the sweetest of my satisfactions. Come Juliette, be honest with yourself, how are you able to think there is greater charm in causing the tears of distress to flow than in relieving the miserable in their hard plight? I am willing enough to grant you, for the sake of discussion, that there may be souls so depraved as to allow a delight in the first case: do you believe it can compare with the delight produced in the second? That which is excessive, that which affects for a brief instant only, must it not seem poor indeed beside a pure, mild, and enduring pleasure? The hatred and the curses of our fellow man, can they outvalue his love and blessings? O! immoral and warped spirit, are you immortal, are you unimpressionable? do you not drift like us upon this peril-strewn sea of life, and have you not our own need of rescuers the day you drive upon a rock? think you men will heed your call after you have insulted them? and do you think yourself a god, to be able to dispense with men? Only grant me these first principles, and how easily I shall lead you from love for the virtues to belief in the Being who combines them in the ultimate degree…. Oh, Juliette, what is the atheist’s dreadful quandary! Do but contemplate the beauties of the universe, do only that and you will realize the necessity of its Divine Author’s existence; it is pride in his passions that prevents vainglorious man from recognizing his God. He who has done a guilty deed is wont to doubt the existence of his judge; is readier to deny Him than to fear Him, finds it more consoling to say There is no God than to have to dread the retribution of Him he has outraged; but banishing these deceiving prejudices, let him glance impartially at nature, he will discover God in all the infinite art of nature’s Author. Ah, Juliette, theology is a science for the vicious only; it is the voice of nature for the man whom virtue animates: the image of the God he. worships and serves, he would be sore troubled if virtue’s consolation were but a fable; yes, the universe bears everywhere throughout it the stamp of an infinitely powerful and industrious Cause; and chance, the paltry and unsure resource of dishonest thinkers, that is to say, the fortuitous concurrence of necessary and irrational causes, could not have formed anything; the Supreme Being acknowledged, how abstain from the worship that is His due? Is not our homage owing to that which in all the world is most sublime? He from Whom all our joys derive, is He not entitled to our thanks? And at this point how soon I shall be able to convince you that of all the world’s creeds, the most reasonable is the one you were born into. Juliette, if you love virtue, you shall quickly come to love the wisdom of the Divine Author of your religion; consider the sublime morality that characterizes it, and say, was there ever an ancient philosopher who preached one so pure, so beautiful? Self-interest, ambition, ulterior motives lie back of all those other ethical systems, only Christ’s is based upon love of mankind: Plato, Socrates, Confucius, Mohammed seek reputation and followers; the humble Jesus awaits only death, and his death itself is an example.”

  I listened to that sensible man…. Good heavens! said I to myself, this must surely be the angel Durand alluded to, and these the incomprehensible truths that were to be divulged to me … and I pressed the hand of this new-found friend: tears were gathering in his eyes, he hugged me gently to his breast. “No, my Lord,” said I, hanging my head, “I do not feel worthy of the happiness you hold out to me … my sins are too many, my fate cannot now be reversed.”

  “Ah,” he replied, “how little you know of virtue and of the mighty God whence it emanates! never was entry into His fold denied the repentent; implore the mercy of the Lord, Juliette, implore His forgiveness and your prayers shall be heard. Vain formulas, superstitious practices—ah no, I require none of this of you; it is faith, it is virtue, it is your behavior as manifested in all the things you do which may ensure the happiness of the long life you have yet to live. They who have loved you only for your vices, because their own found stuff there to feast upon, they spoke to you in no such terms as I have used; nobody but the friend of your soul would take it upon himself to address you thus, and you will pardon these effusions, they stem from my ardent desire to see you happy.”

  Needless to say, my friends, Monsieur de Lorsange’s pretty little diatribe persuaded me of nothing unless it was his innocence and striking inaptitude as a controversialist. For indeed, what grossly inadequate means were these for swaying someone whom the habit of logic had by now rendered inaccessible to prejudice or superstition, and what more ludicrous than to establish the necessity of virtue to human happiness—and this for my benefit! Virtue, eh! Whence came all my misfortunes if not from my weakness in having listened to it for one accursed instant; I ask you next whether Lorsange’s captious induction could impress anyone with a head on his shoulders. If virtue is proven necessary, said he, then religion is equally necessary; my informant’s construction of lies piled on bigotries collapsed the moment its bases were undercut. Ah no, said I to myself, virtue is by no means necessary, it is merely harmful and a menace—have I not found it out from fatal experience!—and all the religious fairy tales they seek to found upon virtue can only rest, like it, upon basements of absurdity, selfishness is the sole law of Nature; well, virtue contradicts selfishness, since it consists in the incessant sacrifice of one’s leanings and preferences in the interest of the welfare of others: if, as Lorsange argues, virtue’s existence proves God’s, what sort of God is this that perches atop a system raised upon Nature’s deadliest foe? Oh, Lorsange, your whole edifice crumbles of itself, and you have built on nothing solider than sand. Virtue is of no advantage to man, and the God you establish thereupon is the absurdest of all absurd phantoms; man, created by Nature, should heed none but the impulses he receives directly from her; his mind once freed of confusing prejudices and his vision clear, his natural understanding will discover neither any necessity for God nor any virtue either. However, pretense is obligatory here, my situation demands it; I must get me out of the mire and back onto the road of prosperit
y, Lorsange’s hand is indispensable to that end; so let’s seize it, and never mind the rest; let guile and treachery be the weapons I place heaviest reliance upon, the weakness of my sex dictates the choice of them, and my individual principles must make them the basis of my character.

  My skill as a liar, acquired over long years of practice, was such that I could dissemble with ease and success in any circumstances whatsoever, I put on the appearance of espousing Lorsange’s point of view and counsels; I ceased receiving people in my house, each time he called on me he found me alone, sewing, and so wonderful was the progress he was making toward the salvation of my soul that I was soon noticed at Mass. Lorsange tumbled happily into the trap; the twenty thousand livres’ annuity was written out to me and the marriage contract signed a mere six months after I had first set foot in the city of Angers. As I was on good terms with the neighborhood, and as my former errors were known to nobody there, Monsieur de Lorsange’s choice was generally applauded and I saw myself mistress of the finest house in town. Hypocrisy restored to me an affluence which dread of crime had stripped me of not long before; and here again stood vice at the top of the tree. Oh, my friends, say what they will, it shall ever be so until humanity’s final hour.

  There is little I can relate touching my conjugal pleasures with Monsieur de Lorsange; of these the good man was acquainted with none but the most banal; as untaught in lubricity as in philosophy, during the two dreary years I spent as his wife, the poor devil never once took it into his head to vary his routine: soon suffocating from the monotony of it, I put out a watchful eye to see whether this city might not have something in the way of satisfactions to offer. I had no particular requirements as to sex and, provided it gave signs of imagination and verve, the object could be of any sort. I was long in searching; the strait and strict upbringing one encounters in the provinces, the moral rigidity, the mediocrity of the population, that also of its means, everything complicated my efforts, everything posed an obstacle to my pleasures.