“Since I must pronounce in my turn,” said I to the assembly, “I humbly submit that another serving of omelette be eaten off this engaging little thing’s face, that we so manage our silverware as to pluck out her eyes, that she then be impaled in the center of the table, for a decoration.”
All these proposals are put into howling effect; we four swill and eat ourselves giddy while watching the divine spectacle of that charming little girl writhing and slowly expiring in hideous pain.
“How did you find my dinner?” Borghese asked us as we reached dessert.
“Splendid,” we replied.
And truly, it had been no less sumptuous than delicate.
“Why then,” said she, “let’s swallow some of this.”
It was a liqueur which immediately brought splashing up all we had just filled ourselves with, and in the space of three minutes our appetite was as keen as it had been before sitting down to dine. A second feast is brought on, and we fall to like wolves.
“A sip now of this other liqueur,” says Olympia, “and it will all flush out below.”
This ceremony is scarce over when pangs of hunger make themselves felt. In comes a third dinner, more succulent than either of the preceding two; we begin to feed anew.
“No ordinary wine this time,” Olympia says; “let’s start with Aleatico, we’ll end with Falernian, and spirits after cheese.”
“And the victim?”
“Jesusfuck,” Chigi declares, “there’s still life in her.”
“Never mind, let’s get her off the table and buried, dead or alive. We shall replace her with a fresh one.”
No sooner said than done: the first of the girls is prised loose and removed and the same great skewer is run into the second girl’s asshole, she serves as our centerpiece for the rest of the third meal. New to these excesses of the table, I feared I would not be able to bear up under them, but was mistaken; emptying the stomach, the elixir we were taking soothed it too; and although we had each eaten of the ninescore plates offered to our voracity, none of us felt any the worse for it. The second victim was still breathing when we came to this final dessert; irritated, our libertines had at her hammer and tongs. Foaming from fuckshed and drunkenness, there was nothing they did not inflict upon her bedraggled body, and I must own that I was in the forefront of the general assault. Bracciani made a number of physical experiments upon her, the last consisted in producing an artificial thunderbolt: it smote her, such was the cruel end she came to. Life had just seeped out of her when the arrival of Cornelia and her family wakened in us desires for new and more frightful horrors.
If Cornelia’s beauty was without peer, neither was there anything to match the majesty of feature, the elegance of figure, that distinguished her unfortunate mother, aged thirty-five. Leonardo, Cornelia’s brother, was only fifteen and in no respect inferior to his kin.
“Ha,” Bracciani exulted as he grabbed the lad to him, “here’s the prettiest bardash I’ve laid eyes on in a long time.”
But this ill-starred family seemed so laden down by an air of suffering and sorrow that one could not help but pause a moment to consider it in this state; the criminal, you know, always delights in battening upon the grief his wickedness has caused the virtuous.
“I spy a light kindling in your eyes,” Olympia murmured to me.
“That may well be,” said I, “only a heart of stone would be left unmoved by such a spectacle.”
“I know none more delicious,” the Princess agreed, “in all the world not one so stirs my bowels and warms my womb.”
“Prisoners,” spoke forth the magistrate, affecting a solemn and awful tone, “you are, I believe, fully aware of your crimes?”
“We have never committed any,” Cornelia replied.
“For a moment I thought my daughter guilty of a theft but, enlightened by your behavior, I have seen through your schemes.”
“Madame, you’re going to see them even more clearly later on.”
And we conducted our three captives into the little garden prepared for the executions. There Chigi submitted them to a thorough questioning; I frigged him meanwhile. You cannot imagine with what art he would lure them into a hundred snares, nor the subterfuges he employed to trip them up, and notwithstanding the candor, the naïveté of their defenses, Chigi found all three guilty, very guilty, and pronounced sentence on the spot. Olympia pinions the mother, I seize the daughter, the Count and the magistrate leap upon the youth.
A few preliminary tortures seemed in order before turning to the final one with which these orgies were to conclude. Olympia must take a whip to Cornelia’s belly, with rods Bracciani and Chigi beat Leonardo’s fair buttocks all to tatters, and I mauled the mother’s breasts. In due time we bound their arms behind their backs and attached the fatal ropes. Again and again they were hoisted a goodly distance into the air and dropped nearly to the ground; fifteen consecutive bounces wrench their shoulders from the socket, break their arms, split their breast-bones, tear their chests amain, at the tenth the infant in Cornelia’s womb drops out and flies into Chigi’s lap, whose member I am frigging upon Olympia’s hinder parts, while Bracciani is working the windlass. The sight of this accident made us all discharge, and the frightful truth is that we kept right on with the game. Though our sperm was spent and our heads calm, none of us thought to beg quarter; and the bouncing continued until we had bounced the ghost clean out of those wretches. Thus it is crime will sport with innocence when, having wealth and influence on its side, nought remains for it to do but combat misfortune and poverty.
The appalling project planned for the morrow was carried out brilliantly. From a terrace Olympia and I surveyed the disaster, frigging ourselves as the conflagrations spread. By evening the thirty-seven asylums were all in flames and the dead already exceeded twenty thousand.
“Godsfuck!” I exclaimed to Olympia, discharging at the enchanting spectacle of her and her confederates’ crimes, “how divine it is to perform such pieces of mischief! Inexplicable and mysterious Nature, if ’tis true these evil acts outrage thee, why makest thou me to delight in them? Ah, wench, thou deceivest me perhaps, as of old I was by the foul deific chimera to which they said thou wert subordinate; and what if we were no more thy bondsmen than a god’s? Causes, may be, are unnecessary to effects, and we all, through some blind force that is in us, a force both irrational and essential, we are but stupid machines of the vegetation whose secret workings, explaining the origin of all motion, also demonstrate the origin of all human and animal activity.”
The fire lasted eight days and nights during which we had no glimpse of our friends; they reappeared on the ninth morning.
“It is all over,” said the magistrate; “the Pope has ceased wringing his hands; I have been granted the privilege I was seeking: my profit is as well as in the bank, and here are your rewards. Dear Olympia,” Chigi continued, “that which would most surely have touched your benevolent heart was the burning of the conservatorios; had you only been able to see all those little maids, panic-stricken, naked, trampling one another in their maddened efforts to escape the flames, and the horde of ruffians I had stationed at the entrances, pitchforks in hand, while pretending to rescue them driving the greater part back into the fire but saving a few, the prettiest of the lot, to be sure, who shall live until the day they are sacrificed to my tyrannical lust…. Ah, Olympia, Olympia, had you been witness to all that you’d have died of pleasure.”
“Villain,” said Madame Borghese, “how many have you preserved?”
“Nearly two hundred; for the time being they are under guard in one of my palaces and shall later on be parceled out to my farms in the country. The best twenty specimens shall be yours, I promise them to you, and by way of thanks ask only that from time to time you bring me other such creatures as this charming person,” Monsignor said, pointing to me.
“Why,” said Olympia, “from what I know of your philosophy upon this article, it surprises me that you still think of her.
”
“I admit,” said the magistrate, “that my sympathies do not by any means go with the giving of my prick; signs that to the fucking she gets from me a woman is responding by love is enough for me to cease paying her in any coin save that of scorn and hate. Indeed, I have very often conceived both those sentiments for the object about to become of service to me, and my pleasures, taken in this manner, have gained considerably therefrom. All this relates to my beliefs touching gratitude; I do not like having a woman imagine I am somehow indebted to her because I soil myself from contact with her; of her I demand nothing beyond submission, and the same insensibility as the convenience upon which I sit every day when I clear my bowels. I have never thought that from the junction of two bodies there need or indeed can result that of two hearts: this physical connection, in my view, is fraught with great possibilities for contempt, for disgust, for loathing, but with none at all for love; I know of nothing so gigantic as that sentiment, nothing so apt to pall pleasure, nothing, in a word, that is farther from my heart. However, Madame, I dare assure you with a degree of warmth,” Chigi went on, taking my hands in his, “that the mentality you have shown yourself to possess sets you apart in my estimation, and that you will always merit consideration from all libertine philosophers; having credited you with intelligence, I take it for granted that you are eager to please only them.”
From these flatteries, whereof I made no great case, we passed on to more serious things. Chigi wished for yet another glimpse of my ass, declaring that his interest in it was positively indefatigable. So he and I, Bracciani, and Olympia removed into the secret sanctuary of the Princess’ pleasures where further infamies were celebrated and, upon my honor, I blush at describing them to you. That accursed Borghese was prone to the most fantastic practices. A eunuch, a hermaphrodite, a dwarf, an eighty-year-old woman, a turkey, a small ape, a very big mastiff, a she-goat, and a little boy of four, the great-grandchild of the old woman, were the lust-objects presented us by the Princess’ duenna.
“Great God,” I cried at beholding this menagerie, “what depravation!”
“It’s the most natural thing in the world,” Bracciani reminded me; “as you wear out one pleasure you are obliged to look for another; this leads far. Tired of commonplace things, you desire unusual ones, and that is why crime becomes the final station of lust. I know not, Juliette, what use you will find for these bizarre objects, but you may be certain that the Princess, my friend Monsignor Chigi, and I shall enjoy ourselves mightily among them.”
“Why, I must simply accommodate myself,” said I; “you’ll never see me hang back where it is a question of debauchery or incongruities.”
Even as I was speaking, the mastiff, doubtless trained in the trick, began to snuffle beneath my petticoats.
“Ah ha! Lucifer is under way,” said Olympia with a laugh. “Undress yourself, Juliette; surrender your charms to this superb animal’s libidinous caresses, it can prove a memorable experience.”
I consent, needless to say; for what horror could have revolted me, I who devoted every one of my days to the quest of every kind of horror? Getting down on all fours I take up my position in the center of the room; the dog circles me, sniffs me, licks me, mounts me, and finishes by encunting me as nicely as you please, and discharging into my womb. But a rather peculiar thing happened: the beast’s member had swollen to such proportions in the course of our conversation that his attempts to withdraw now caused me enormous discomfort. Failing to extricate himself, he seemed disposed to start in again; we decided that the simpler way would be to let him do so; sufficiently reduced by a second discharge, he pulled out a still colossal engine after having twice washed me with his sperm.
“There’s a fine fellow,” said Chigi; “you’re going to see my lord Lucifer deal as handsomely with me as he has with Juliette. Extremely libertine in his tastes, this charming animal honors beauty wherever it is to be found: I wager he will fuck my ass with no less delectation than he has just fucked madame’s cunt. But I propose to do more than dreamily endure an assault. Bring me that nanny, let me fuck it while playing whore to Lucifer.”
I had never seen anything as bizarre as this play. Chigi, sparing of his seed, loosed none; but had nonetheless the look of taking wonderful pleasure from this voluptuous extravagance.
“Now watch me,” said Bracciani, stepping to the fore, “I shall put on a different spectacle for you.”
He has himself embuggered by the eunuch and embuggers the turkey. Olympia, her bare buttocks turned toward him, held the bird’s neck wedged between her thighs; she beheads it the same instant the physician ejaculates.
“That,” Bracciani assured us, “can afford exquisite pleasure; there is no describing the effect of a turkey’s anus contracting as you cut off its head at the critical instant.”
“I have never tried it,” said Chigi, “but so loudly and so often have I heard this manner of fucking praised that I believe the time has come to see for myself. Juliette,” he went on, “be a dear and hold this child between your thighs while I embugger it; blasphemies will announce my delirium, that will be the signal for you to cut the little rascal’s throat.”
“All very well,” said Olympia, “but Juliette must have some pleasure in return for facilitating yours. I shall place the hermaphrodite to her mouth: caressing its two sexes at once, she’ll suck out proof first of its virility and then of its female existence.”
“Wait,” said Bracciani, “positions may so be arranged as to enable me to bum-stuff the hermaphrodite and take an ass-fucking from the eunuch, the crone’s bum being posed above my face so that she splatters shit over my features.”
“What nastiness!” said Olympia
“Madame,” said the Count, taking her up very quickly, “it has its explanation; there is not a single taste, not a single penchant which may not be shown to have a cause.”
“Since this is to be a collective enterprise,” said Chigi, “I’ll have the monkey sodomize me while the dwarf, straddling the child, presents me his ass for kissing.”
“But there remains Lucifer, the goat, and myself,” Olympia bade us notice.
“We can easily find a place for everybody,” said Chigi. “If you and the goat stand close enough to me I’ll insert myself now in your ass, now in the animal’s, Lucifer embuggering the one while I am busy with the other; but I still hold to my intention of discharging in the youngster’s fundament, and do not forget, Juliette, you’re to play the butcher when I am overtaken by my spasm.”
The tableau is composed; never was anything so monstrous achieved in lubricity; we discharged none the less for that, all of us; off came the child’s head at just the right moment; and when we quit our complex formation it was for each to extol the heavenly pleasures by which our originality had just been rewarded.20
The rest of the day was spent in more or less similar lewd doings. I was fucked by the ape; once again by the mastiff, but asswardly; by the androgyne, by the eunuch, by the two Italians, by Olympia’s dildo. All the others frigged me, licked me, teated me in every part, and it was only after ten hours of piquant enjoyment I came out of those peculiar orgies. A delicious supper crowned the holiday; a Greek sacrifice was celebrated: firewood was collected, all the animals we had frolicked with were slaughtered ritually and lubriciously, their bodies thrown upon the pyre and, atop the holocaust, bound hand and foot, the crone was burned alive; only the eunuch and the hermaphrodite were left, and with them we flew on to other pleasures.
Five months had I been in Rome and I was nigh to wondering whether I should ever obtain the audience with the Pope that Cardinals Bernis and Albani had led me to hope for, when at last, several days after the adventure I have just related, I received a gallant little note from Bernis who besought me to come to him early the following morning, he would present me to His Holiness who, though he had wished to see me long ere this, had been unable to satisfy his desire until now. I was advised to array myself simply but at the same time with eleg
ance, and to avoid all perfumes. “Braschi, like Henry IV,” the Cardinal wrote, “prefers that each thing smell as it should smell; he abominates art, stands fast for Nature. Hence it is essential that you abstain even from the bidet.”
Obedient in all these points, I reached the Cardinal’s palace by ten o’clock. Pius was awaiting us at the Vatican.
“Holy Father,” Bernis said, presenting me to him, “here is the young Frenchwoman you have wished to see. Singularly honored by the favor you do her, she promises unquestioning compliance with all it may please Your Holiness to demand of her.”
“She shall not repent her complacency,” said Braschi. “Before turning to the impurities wherewith we shall be occupied I welcome this opportunity for a private interview with her. Go, Cardinal, and tell the chamberlains that the gates shall be closed to everybody today.”
Bernis retires and His Holiness, taking me by the hand, escorts me through immense apartments until we come to a remote chamber where luxury and effeminacy, under the drab colors of religion and modesty, offered everything that most flatters the lascivious disposition. It was all blurred outlines, melting distinctions: next to a Theresa in ecstasy one saw a Messalina embuggered, underneath an image of Christ there crouched a Leda….
“Repose yourself,” Braschi said to me. “In this place of ease I forget distances, and smiling upon vice when it appears in shapes as amiable as yours, I permit it to sit at virtue’s side.”
“Brazen fraud,” I said to that old despot, “you are so in the habit of deceiving others that you seek even to deceive yourself. What the devil is this prattle of virtue when your sole purpose in bringing me here is to sully yourself with vice?”
“I am not of those who can be soiled, dear girl,” the Pope replied to me. “Successor of the disciples of God, the virtues of the Eternal gird me round, and I am not a man even when for a moment I adopt human failings.”
Juliette Page 88