Juliette

by Marquis de Sade

  I was not however obliged to remind him of his promise; Gustavus himself summoned me to his palace and along with my fee of a million gave me the order to get out of his States immediately.

  “I pay traitors,” he said to me, “they are useful, I need them; but I despise them and, once they have served their purpose, prefer to have them out of my sight.”

  What does it matter to me, said I to myself as I went away, whether this clod esteems or detests me; he has money, that is what I was after. As for the character he reproaches in me, he’ll not correct it: I delight in treason and am going to commit a little more of it very soon.

  Ten minutes later I fly to Steno.

  “My wife let it out,” I tell him, “she is a monster; I have just learned the entire story, she received money for this horror. Thanks to her treachery I have orders to leave Sweden. I shall go, for I must. But before I do I’d like to settle my score with her. The town is quiet, nothing prevents us from meeting together this evening, let us do so; and let us punish the creature, that is all I ask of you.”

  Steno consents. I conduct Emma to the Society without her knowing for what reason it is gathering; all the men, all the women rise in fury against her whom I accuse, unanimously condemn her to the most atrocious death. Emma, bewildered at such charges, seeks to recriminate against me; she is reduced to silence. While lubricious scenes are enacted around the scaffold raised for her destruction, the luckless wretch, entrusted to my tender mercies, is flayed alive, and one by one I slowly grill each part of her whence I have removed the skin. Throughout it all I was being sucked, and my four friends, each fucking a bardash, were whipped by their wives whom young girls were cunt-sucking; never in all my days had I discharged so deliciously. The operation over with, the company mingled; ’twas then that Amelia, Volf’s wife, accosted me.

  “I like your firmness,” she declared. “It was long ago I noticed this woman was not the sort you need; I am more suitable for you, Borchamps. But I am going to surprise you: swear to me that I too shall someday become your victim. I cannot help it, my imagination is what it is: delirious. My husband is too fond of me to satisfy it; I can stand no more: since the age of fifteen the idea of perishing the victim of libertinage’s cruel passions has been gnawing my brain. No, I do not want to die tomorrow, my extravagance does not go that far. But that is how I want to die, and only in that manner. To become, as I expire, the occasion of a crime—ah, my head reels at the thought; and in the morning I leave Stockholm at your side, if you vow to satisfy me.”

  Deeply stirred by this so uncommon proposition, I protest to Amelia that she will have cause to be content with me: arrangements are made, she slips away to join me before the night is over, and at sunrise we set forth from the city together.

  I went out of Stockholm with riches that by now had become immense: I had inherited from my wife, I had the King’s million, and my new friend handed over to me a further six hundred thousand francs, which she had stolen from her husband and insisted that I take.

  Saint Petersburg, Amelia and I agreed, was to be our destination, and thither we took ourselves. She demanded that we marry, I consented; and it being needless, in view of our means, that we deny ourselves anything we desired, we rented a splendid mansion in the finest quarter of the city. Valets, retinue, equipages, choice wines and good meat, we stinted not, and soon the flower of society was honored^ to obtain entry to my wife’s house. The Russians are fond of display, lavishness, luxury; but, in everything taking their guidance from us, just as soon as a French lord appears with some magnificence in their midst, they all rush off to copy him. The Empress’ minister came in person to invite me to present myself to his sovereign; and knowing I was born for great adventures, I accepted his propositions.

  Always familiar with those who pleased her, Catherine asked me several particular questions about France, and my replies having satisfied her, she gave me permission to pay her frequent court. Thus did two years pass, during which we, Amelia and I, swam in all that noble city could offer in the way of pleasures. A note from the Empress finally clarified the reasons lying behind her willingness to see me so often. In this missive she besought me to accompany the man who delivered it to me: at nightfall he would escort me to one of her country residences, situated a few leagues outside the town. Amelia, whom I told of this stroke of good luck, did all she could to dissuade me, and was much aggrieved to see me set forth.

  “Concerning your person,” the Empress began as soon as we were alone together, “I have gathered all the information necessary. I know of your behavior in Sweden, and whatever others may have said about it, or thought, I strongly approve it. For you may be perfectly certain, my good young Frenchman, that it is wiser to stand for kings than against, theirs is the better side: those who embrace it and to it remain faithful are never sorry. Behind a mask of popularity Gustavus sought to fortify despotism’s position on its throne; exposing the conspiracy threatening to foil his designs, you served despotism well; I praise you therefor. Your age, your mien, what they publish of your wit, everything appertaining to you excites my interest; and to your fortune I may be able to make solid contributions, if you rally to my projects….”

  “Madame!” said I, truly touched by this woman’s charms, superb though forty years old, “the good fortune of pleasing Your Majesty is reward enough for the services she enables one to render her, and in advance I swear that her orders shall henceforth be the duties cherished of my heart and my heart’s sole delights.”

  Catherine gave me her hand, I kissed it with feeling; a fichu slips aside, and the world’s most gorgeous bosom appears before my eyes; Catherine, covering it over again, speaks of her thinness, as if any living man had ever spied anything plumper, more delicious, than what I have just had a glimpse of. When the Empress observed that I could not contain my enthusiasm, she soon allowed me to convince myself that all her other features matched the quality of the sample I had just detected. Eh, my friends, what else would you have from me except the truth? I showed prick to the Empress before the day was out; and as she found me infinitely to her liking I was promptly admitted to the honors of the imperial bed. Few women of her day could rival Catherine for beauty; fleshly parts and forms are not more richly made nor more prettily turned; and when I’d come to know a little of her temperament I ceased to wonder at the multitude of my predecessors. All manners of enjoyment were desired by Catherine, and you will of course understand that I refused her none of them: her ass especially, the fairest ass I’d seen in my life, caused me no end of sweetest comforts and cheer.

  “These little malpractices are very prevalent in Russia,” she told me, “and I am careful not to proscribe them; the size of this swarming population is responsible for the wealth of the nobility, and their power interferes with mine, I must use every means to weaken it; this one is of effective value and amuses me too, for I like vice and its practitioners; promoting it is among my principles. I could easily prove to any sovereign that he can ill afford not to do as I. Borchamps, I am enchanted to see you treating my behind with such deference and attention”—I was kissing it even as she spoke—“and declare to you that it is at your disposal whenever you are of a mind to fuck it….”

  I made much use, that evening, of the license granted me.

  It was here the Empress, who was not altogether without prudence, drew the line during our first interview, she did not open herself farther; the second transpired a week later, and in the same way. But at the third Catherine spoke to me in this wise: “I now feel confident enough in you to associate you with my plans. Before disclosing them, however, I require a sacrifice of you, and I want you to subscribe to it this instant. Who is the pretty Swede you have in your train, Borchamps?”

  “She is my wife.”

  “Be that as it may, I do not want to see her alive tomorrow.”

  “The swelling prick you are holding in your hand, Princess,” was my reply, “is ready to sign her death warrant in your ass….�
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  “Good,” said Catherine, lodging my instrument inside her, “but I am cruel; this woman has roused my jealousy to a dangerous point, and since I wish her to endure sufferings proportional to the uneasiness she has caused me, I wish that, while you and I look on, she be tonged tomorrow, with heated pincers; every quarter of an hour the procedure will be interrupted in order that she be suspended in this or that manner and half-broken on the wheel; my executioners will fuck her at each stage, I’ll have her bathed in quicklime before all the life is gone out of her. In the meantime I shall be examining your countenance: if you prove steadfast, brave, the secret shall be revealed to you. Otherwise, it shall not be.”

  Lovely though Amelia was, two years of enjoying her had furiously calmed my desires. In her there were overmuch tenderness, overmuch affection, and a mind far less cruel than at first I had supposed. What she had told me about the way in which she wanted to end her days, this, the more I pondered it, had simply been an effort on her part to be ingratiating; it did not correspond to her real feelings. What was more, Amelia was without all the gracious condescension I expected in a woman; she refused to suck me, and as for her behind, while I do not for a moment deny that it had had its very great charms, I would ask you, does a woman’s still have any after you’ve fucked it for two years? Everything was therefore promised to Catherine, who was greatly entertained by the possibility of satisfying the desire my wife had once expressed touching on the death she wished to die: the very next day, Amelia was brought to one of the Empress’ houses, a very obscure one and far away from the city, and presented to Her Majesty.

  There is no imagining the transports of this woman, who was accustomed to seeing everything and everyone yield to her will. There is no believing the harshness, the tyranny she displayed toward the unlucky Swedish girl; she exacted the most debasing services from her; had Amelia lick and frig her, submitted her to the most trying vexations, and then, surrendering her to her executioners, the monster watched her actually undergo every one of the tortures prescribed in the plan she had elaborated. She insisted that I embugger the hapless victim during the intervals; such was her delirium, she demanded that I fuck the executioners even as they were at work torturing Amelia; and pleased to see my prick keep at an even stand the whole while, of my character she formed the opinion that answered to her desires. My poor bedraggled wife expired after eleven hours of varied and violent agonies. Catherine discharged twenty times at least; she herself lent the executioners a hand; and she said that a week hence, she would unfold her grand scheme to me, and I was dismissed.7

  Hitherto I had been the Empress’ guest at her country establishments only; this time it was into the Winter Palace I had the honor to be admitted.

  “From what I have observed of you, Borchamps,” Catherine declared to me, “I can be in no doubt about the energy of your character. No longer under the influence of childhood prejudices toward what fools call crime, the attitude you exhibit is plain and enlightened; but if this mode of action is frequently useful to ordinary folk, how often it becomes indispensable to rulers and to statesmen! The private individual, laying sturdy foundations for his worldly well-being, has seldom to go beyond one or two crimes in the course of his existence; those persons who oppose his desires are in number so few that to combat them he needs little in the way of arms. But we, Borchamps, perpetually surrounded by flatterers seeking only to deceive us, or by powerful enemies whose unique aim is to destroy us, how many are the different circumstances under which we are obliged to employ crime! A sovereign who is jealous of his prerogatives ought never to go to sleep without his mace under his pillow.

  “The famous Peter fancied he was performing a great service for Russia when he struck off the chains of a people who had never known nor cherished anything but its bondage; but Peter, more mindful of his reputation than of the lot of those who were to follow him on his throne, did not realize he was tarnishing monarchy’s diadem without making the people happier. And what in fact did this great change he instituted gain him? He increased the territories of Russia; but what could the greater or lesser extent of his dominions matter to him, who lived only upon a few acres of it? Why, at great expense, import arts and sciences from abroad and plant them in a native soil where he wished to see corn grow? What pleased him in the semblance of a freedom which only added to the weight of his subjects’ shackles? It may be unhesitatingly affirmed: Peter was as certainly the downfall of Russia as will be her liberator he who reimposes the yoke upon her: enlightened Russia perceives what she lacks, Russia restored to slavery would see nothing beyond her physical needs. Now, in which of the two situations is man more fortunate: in the one where, the blindfold removed from his eyes, he is able to discern all his privations? or in the other, where his ignorance prevents him from suspecting any of them? These bases once established, does one deny that the most violent despotism better befits the subject than the fullest independence? And if you grant me this point—which I think it impossible to contest—do you blame me for resorting to every conceivable device in order to arrange affairs in Russia as they were before the baneful advent of Peter?

  “Basilovitch reigned as I mean to reign; his tyranny is the model I propose to adopt. He used to amuse himself, they say, dashing out his captives’ brains, raping their wives and daughters, mutilating them with his own hands, rending them into pieces, and after that burning them; he assassinated his son; at Novgorod he punished an insurrection by having three thousand human beings thrown into the Volga; he was the Nero of Russia. Well, I shall be her Theodora or her Messalina; whatever the horror that enables me to strengthen my hold on the throne, I shall not falter, and the first of those I must consummate is the killing of my son. You, Borchamps, are the man I have in mind to accomplish this political atrocity. He among my compatriots whom I were to select for the task might have a sentimental attachment to this prince, and instead of an accomplice I would be engaging my betrayer; only too well I recall the legitimate grievances I had of the Russian to whom I entrusted the slaying of my husband; I want no more such unpleasant experiences. Nothing necessitates that it be one of my countrymen whom I charge with these great commissions; a remnant of the loyalty he imagines due one of his nation’s princes could deter him, and crime is always bungled when prejudices are operative. With you I have no such fears; I have here the poison I want you to employ…. I have spoken, Borchamps; how do you decide?”

  “Madame,” I replied to this woman whose greatness of character has been admitted universally, “even had I lost the taste for crime I was born with, even had crime ceased to be my element and very sustenance, this one that you propose would flatter me, and the mere idea of ridding the world of a meek and debonair prince in order to preserve there the tyranny whereof nobody is a more zealous partisan than I, this idea, Madame, would alone suffice to cause me to undertake, joyfully, the project you outline to me: count upon my obedience.”

  “This profound resignation makes you mine forever,” said Catherine, folding me in her arms. “I intend, tomorrow, to treat you to an orgy of delights, to make all your senses boil. I want you to behold me in pleasure’s throes; and I want to behold you in them; and when we are both very merry and very high from lewd sights and lewd doings, you shall be given the venom that is to put an end to the abhorrent existence of that contemptible creature I failed to avoid bringing into this world.”

  The rendezvous was at the country house where I had seen the Empress previously. She was awaiting me in a magical boudoir, a veritable garden where, in the warm air, exotic flowers were blooming in mahogany benches agreeably scattered throughout this exquisite chamber. Turkish sofas, surrounded by mirrors and beneath mirrors affixed to the ceiling, cried to be put to voluptuous use. From there a more lugubrious alcove was visible; in it was to be seen a quartet of twenty-year-old youths. They were in irons, helpless, held at the mercy of Catherine’s unbridled passions.

  “What you are looking at in there,” the Empress said to me
, “is the climax to the entertainment. A preliminary series of ordinary pleasures will fettle us gradually; we shall not come to grips with those boys until our fever has attained its final pitch. Would victims of my sex please you better?”

  “Why, ’tis a matter of indifference to me,” I assured her; “I will share your pleasures, and whatever the individual upon whom murder is committed, it is always certain to stimulate my senses.”

  “Ah, Borchamps, nothing else in the world is worth the candle! It is so sweet to behave unnaturally—”

  “But what is more natural than murder?”

  “I know; but it constitutes an infraction of the law, and I adore the idea.”

  “The law? What can she care for the law who makes the law? Tell me: has Your Highness already enjoyed these four fine young men?”

  “Would they be in my chains otherwise?”

  “Do they realize what fate lies in store for them?”

  “Not yet; we shall announce it while utilizing them. I shall pronounce the sentence of each while your prick is in his ass.”

  “I would also like that to be the moment when you carry it out.”

  “Ah, you’re a villain, an adorable villain!” Catherine exclaimed.

  And the lust-objects appointed for the impending games appeared forthwith. They were six lasses of fifteen or sixteen years, of rarest beauty; and six men, each five feet ten inches tall, all with members as thick as your forearm and at least as long.

  “Install yourself there where you have a clear view of me,” Catherine instructed me, “and consider my pleasures, keeping your distance; frig yourself if you like, but do not disturb me. I am going to taste the supreme delights of offering you a display of thorough whorishness; cynicism is part of my character, I like to make a discreditable parade of myself, scandal excites my mind.”