Juliette

by Marquis de Sade

  “But without the laws you will be oppressed.”

  “That matters not to me if I have the right to repay oppression in kind: I prefer to be oppressed by a neighbor whom I can oppress in my turn than to be oppressed by the law before which I am helpless. My neighbor’s passions are infinitely less to be dreaded than the law’s injustice, for the passions of that neighbor are held at bay by mine, nothing checks the injustices of the law, against the law there is no reprisal to be taken, no recourse to be had. All the defects in humans belong to Nature; accordingly, man can have no better laws than those of Nature; no man has the right to repress in him what Nature put there. Nature has elaborated no statutes, instituted no code; her single law is writ deep in every man’s heart: it is to satisfy himself, to deny his passions nothing, and this regardless of the cost to others. Think not to hinder this universal law’s impulsions whatever their effects may be; you have no right to curb them; let this be the concern of him they outrage; if strong, he will know how to react. The men who thought that from their necessity to join together was derived a necessity for framing laws to themselves fell into heaviest error; they had no more need of laws gathered in society than dwelling alone in the forest. A universal glaive of justice is of no purpose; everybody naturally possesses one of his own.”

  “But not everyone will wield it appropriately, and iniquity will become general—”

  “Impossible. Never will Tom be unjust toward Dick when he knows Dick can retaliate instantly; but it’s a very unjust Tom you have as soon as he discovers he has nothing to fear except laws that he can elude or from which he can make himself exempt. I go farther, I grant you that without laws the sum of crime increases, that without laws the world turns into one great volcano belching forth an uninterrupted spew of execrable crimes; and I tell you this situation is preferable, far preferable to what we have at present. I envisage a perpetual outpouring of conflict, injury, and aggression; it is nothing beside what takes place under the rule of law, for the law often smites the innocent, and to the total of victims produced by the criminal must be added the mass of those produced by legal miscarriage and iniquity: give us anarchy and we will have these victims the less. To be sure, we will have those crime sacrifices; but the ravages of the law will be a thing of the past. Invested with the right to do his own revenging, the oppressed man will proceed with speed, diligence, economy, and certitude to punish his oppressor and none other.”

  “However, opening the door to the arbitrary, anarchy is necessarily the cruel image of despotism—”

  “Another error; ’tis the abuse of the law that leads to despotism; the despot is he who creates the law, who bids it speak or be still, who uses it to serve his own interests. Deprive the despot of this means for abuse and there’s an end to tyranny. There has never been a tyrant who failed to raise laws for props in the exercise of his cruelties; if everywhere human rights shall be well enough distributed to enable each man to avenge the wrongs done him, no despot shall arise, for he would be overthrown the moment he attempted to make his first victim. Never are tyrants born of anarchy, you see them flourish only behind the screen of the law or attain supremacy by means of it, basing their authority upon law. Viviousness thus reigns under the rule of law; thus, lawful rule is inferior to anarchy: the greatest proof whereof is the government’s obligation to plunge the State into anarchy whenever it wishes to frame a new constitution. To abrogate its former laws it is driven to establish a revolutionary regime in which there are no laws at all: from this regime new laws finally emerge. But this second State is necessarily less pure than the first, since it derives from the earlier one, since, in order to achieve its goal, constitution, it had first to install anarchy. Men are pure only in their natural condition; as soon as they stray out of it their degradation begins. Give up the idea of improving men by laws, give it up. I tell you, by laws you will render them greater scoundrels, more cunning, more wicked, never more virtuous.”

  “But crime is a plague to the world, Monsignor. The more laws there are, the fewer crimes shall there be.”

  “A pretty jest. But seriousness commands us to recognize that it’s the multitude of laws that is responsible for this multitude of crimes. Cease to believe such-and-such a deed is criminal; make no laws to repress it; the crime disappears.

  “But I return to the first part of your proposition: crime, you say, is a plague to the world. What sophism! That which deserves to be called a plague to the world would be some destructive mechanism threatening the existence of all the world’s inhabitants; let us see if crime answers this description.

  “A crime being committed presents the picture of two individuals, one of whom is performing the act called criminal, the other of whom is being made this act’s victim. Two individuals: one happy, the other unhappy; crime is therefore not a plague in the world since, although rendering half the world’s population unhappy, it renders the other half very happy indeed. Crime is nought but the means Nature employs to attain her ends in regard to us and to preserve the equilibrium so indispensable to the maintenance of her workings. This explication alone suffices to make clear that it is not for man to punish crime, because crime belongs to the Nature that possesses every right over us and over which we dispose of none. If, viewing it from another angle, crime is the consequence of passion, and if the passions, as I have just said, must be beheld as the sole springs to great deeds, you should always favor the crime which gives energy to your society over the virtues which disturb its operations and undermine its strength. You cannot now continue to punish crime; you ought instead to encourage it, and thrust virtues into the background where they will be buried forever under the scorn they deserve from you. We must of course take great care not to confuse great deeds with virtues: very often a virtue is farthest of all from a great deed, and more often still a great deed is sheer crime. Well, great deeds are frequently very necessary; virtues never are. Brutus, the kindly head of his family, would have been but a dull and melancholy fellow; Brutus, the murderer of Caesar, simultaneously performs a crime and a great deed: the former personage would have remained unknown to history, the latter became one of its heroes.”

  “And so, according to you, one may feel at complete ease amidst the blackest crimes?”

  “’Tis in virtuous surroundings comfort is impossible since it is clear that you then exist in an unnatural situation, in a state contrary to the Nature which cannot exist, renew herself, preserve her energy and vitality save through the immensity of human crimes; and so the best course for us is to endeavor to make virtues out of all human vices, and vices out of all human virtues.”

  “It has been to that end,” said Bracciani, “that I have toiled since the age of fifteen, and I may truthfully report that I have enjoyed every minute of my career.”

  “My friend,” Olympia said to Chigi, “with the ethical beliefs you have just laid before us you must have very lively passions. You are forty, the age when they speak most imperiously. Oh, yes, you have surely achieved horrors!”

  “In the position he holds,” said Bracciani, “with the inspection-general of the Rome police, occasions for doing evil must certainly not be lacking.”

  “There is no denying it,” said Chigi, “I am in an exceedingly favorable position for doing evil, and it would be yet harder to claim that I let pass many occasions for doing it.”

  “You commit injustices … you suborn witnesses, you falsify evidence,” asked Madame Borghese, “you use the instruments of Themis entrusted to you to doom a good many innocent persons?”

  “And having done all you say, do no more than act pursuant to my principles; which I believe is to do well. If I suppose virtue a dangerous thing in this world, am I wrong to immolate those who practice it? If, reciprocally, I consider vice useful on earth, am I wrong to let escape from the law those who profess it? They call me an unjust man, I know, they may, for all I know, call me worse yet; their opinion matters not to me: provided my behavior accords with my principle
s I have an easy conscience. Before acting according to those principles I began by analyzing them, then based my conduct thereupon; let the entire world blame me, little do I care, I have done well by my own lights, and for my actions I am accountable to no one but myself.”

  “There’s the true philosophy,” Bracciani remarked, “I have not developed my principles as much as Chigi, but I assure you that they are absolutely the same, and that I put them into practice just as often and just as faithfully.”

  “Monsignor,” said Olympia to the first magistrate of Rome’s police, “you are accused of making much too extensive use of the strappado; you apply it, they say, to numerous innocents and especially to them, prolonging the torture, so we commonly hear, to the point where it invariably costs the guiltless party his life.”

  “I am going to elucidate the enigma,” said Bracciani. “The torture you mention composes this scoundrel’s pleasures; he stiffens watching it exercised, he discharges if it does away with the patient.”

  “Count,” Chigi retorted, “I fail to notice anything constraining you to celebrate my tastes here, nor do I recall having charged you to unveil my foibles.”

  “We are much obliged to the Count for this disclosure,” I put in with vivacity; “it announces glad tidings to Olympia, for from such a man much can be expected and I will frankly confess that what he has reported has already touched me deeply.”

  “And we should be yet more deeply touched,” said Olympia, “were Chigi to care to enact his favorite game before us.”

  “Why not,” the libertine replied; “have you an object to hand?”

  “I’ll have no difficulty finding one.”

  “Yes, but it may not have all the required qualities.”

  “What might the required qualities be?”

  “Those of material indigence,” said Chigi, “of blamelessness, of the submissiveness due to a supreme judge.”

  “Are you able to combine all that?” Olympia asked.

  “Oh, yes,” the magistrate assured her, “my prisons are teeming with such individuals and at your demand, in less than an hour I’ll have produced you something suitable to the pleasures you intend to procure yourselves.”

  “Could you describe the article?”

  “A young woman of eighteen, a Venus for beauty, and eight months pregnant.”

  “Pregnant!” I expostulated. “And you will subject her in that state to such rough handling?”

  “If worse comes to worst, it will kill her, and as a matter of fact it is pretty certain to. But that’s how I like to have them: pregnant. You get two pleasures instead of one: it’s what they call ‘cow and calf.’”

  “And this poor creature,” said I, “I’ll wager she is guiltless….”

  “I’ve had her ripening two months in prison. Her mother suspects her of a theft I myself had committed in order to get hold of the girl; the trap was nicely laid and succeeded irreproachably. Cornelia is safe and sound behind bars, and you need but say the word and I’ll have her do a better rope-dance for you than ever was done by any acrobat. Afterward I shall have it bruited that out of compassion I had her spirited away to save her from punishment, and while covering up what fools call a crime I’ll have the merit a superb deed confers.”

  “Excellent,” I said; “however, this mother you are leaving alive, I fear she may someday reveal everything, and won’t that bring on no end of difficulties? It should surely be easy enough to persuade her that she is her daughter’s accomplice and that she was party to the theft for which she wishes to see the guilt remain on the girl’s shoulders.”

  “And who knows, the family may include a few other members,” the Count suggested.

  “Were there twenty,” said Olympia, “it seems to me that Chigi’s personal safety would require murdering them all.”

  “You people are insatiable,” the magistrate sighed, “I merely ask you not to lay up to your concern for my welfare what really originates in your perfidious lust. Alas, there’s nothing to do but content it. Cornelia has a brother in addition to a mother; I promise to have all three of them die before our eyes and under the torture with whose use the Count wishes to identify the source of my pleasures.”

  “It is just that we had in mind,” Olympia said; “once you go so far as to indulge in such bloody pranks as these, I feel you should carry them to the limit; I know nothing worse than stopping halfway. Oh, fuck,” the whore grunted, rubbing her cunt through her dress, “I declare to you I’m leaking already.”

  Therewith Chigi rose to his feet and went to issue the necessary orders. A little garden ringed by dense cypress trees and adjoining Olympia’s boudoir was chosen for the place of execution, and we fondled one another while waiting for the merriment to begin. Chigi and Olympia were thoroughly acquainted with each other, but Bracciani had never had anything to do with my friend and I was unknown to both of the men. So the Princess took it upon herself to make the initial advances; such libertines never stand long on ceremony. The hussy sets straight to undressing me and soon turns me over naked to my two admirers. They devour me, but in the Italian style: my ass becomes the unique object of their caresses, they both kiss it, tongue it, nibble it, worry it; they make tireless and prolonged to-do over it, cannot get their fill of it; and behave for all the world as if they are unaware I am a woman. After fifteen minutes of these nasty preliminaries some order is restored. Bracciani approaches Olympia who has just cast aside her every stitch, and I become Chigi’s prey.

  “Do not be impatient, charming creature,” that infamous libertine says to me, his face glued to my rump; “my capacity for pleasure dulled from long habituation to its sensations, I must struggle before I feel the blunted needle’s prick. It will take time, I may weary you, and it may be that I finally fail to do myself honor; but you shall have given me pleasure, and that, I think, is quite enough for any woman to strive after.”

  And the lecher rattled and banged his tool with all his might, the while continuing to savor my bum.

  “Madame,” said he to Olympia in whose posterior Bracciani was foraging, “I am not too fond of having thus to do the job all alone; it appears to me that the Count would also appreciate some assistance; you surely have some little girls or boys somewhere about, pray send for them. Frigged, licked, pumped, socratized, we shall reach the altars of the Callipygian Venus ready and fresh.”

  Olympia rings, two girls of fifteen promptly answer the summons; the libertine always kept the likes within call.

  “Ah, very good, very good,” said the magistrate, “tell them to busy themselves promptly at these chores it is disagreeable to have to undertake oneself.”

  No sooner heard than obeyed, into the maidens’ hands Chigi deposits the unglorious vestiges of his failing manhood, and my buttocks continue to be the object of his kisses; his tongue soon penetrates; but success is not yet in sight. A luckier Bracciani is already inside Olympia’s anus while his young satellite, on her knees behind him, sucks his vent. Peering at this group in action, Chigi takes heart; he spreads my buttocks, lays his half-stiffened member between them, and has himself flogged to brace his attack…. The traitor! He dishonors my charms; lacking consistency enough to hold his ground, he is put to rout. And for his discomfiture blames the little girl; she had been fustigating him.

  “Had you laid on harder,” he cries, very wroth, “this would never have happened.” So saying he gives the child such a mighty buffet he sends her flying three yards away.

  “What’s this, Monsignor, what’s this!” Olympia exclaims. “Be a little harsher with the slut, take a lash to her, that’s what I always do when they disappoint me.”

  “Right you are, Madame,” says Chigi, catching up a whip.

  And despite the graces, the mildness, the gentleness of that sweet child and despite the beauty of her ass, the barbarian smites it with such force that great patches of skin are gone off it by the sixth blow. Noticing his glance wander to my behind and that he has taken a firmer grip on the whip
, “Strike, libertine,” I say, “be bold and strike; I surmise your intentions, I defy your blows. Lay on, dear friend, and spare me not.”

  Chigi does not reply to me, he whips me; he whips me so soundly that his flabby tool, brought back to life at last, is in sufficient fettle to perforate me. I get myself hastily into the proper stance, he embuggers me, he is embuggered in his turn, and there we are on the threshold of joy.

  “Shall we discharge?” inquires Bracciani, still bum-fucking my companion.

  “No,” is Chigi’s answer, “no; we must remember the great operation ahead of us, and restrict ourselves for the moment to getting into form: only to the agonies of Cornelia and her family, to that atrocity alone must we accord our fuck.”

  This resolution is adopted; without concern for our feelings, the two libertines instantly dismount and the pleasures of the table create a diversion to those of lubricity. In the middle of the meal, Chigi, almost drunk, suggests that one of the girls, she whom he did not whip, be placed flat upon the table and that we eat a dozen sugared omelettes hot off her buttocks. It’s done; burned to the quick, the poor child emits ringing screams, which does not prevent the company from digging their forks all the more vigorously into bits of food they lift from a platter of bleeding and scorched flesh.

  “It would be amusing to sup a little off her breasts,” Bracciani observes.

  “To this you have my agreement,” says Chigi, “provided I am allowed to clyster her. With boiling water, be it understood.”

  “And I shall clyster her too. A pint of acid into her cunt,” said Olympia in the shrill tone that would enter her voice whenever some infamous idea entered her head.