“Well,” said I to my friends, “we are all three in that enviable case; for over and above the immense wealth we possess, Ferdinand guarantees us the most entire impunity.”
“Fuck,” said Clairwil, “how that agreeable certitude inflames my passions! …” And the hussy drew up her skirts, spread her legs, inserted her fingers between her labia and offered us a vermilion and panting cunt which seemed to be calling all the pricks in Naples to combat.
“I hear the engines are superb in these parts,” she went on, “we must make some arrangements with Sbrigani in order not to miss any.”
“I finished attending to all that yesterday,” that charming man declared, “I have put twelve purveyors into the field and shall see to it that two dozen pretty lads between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five are regularly presented to you every morning; I shall also see to the verifications; if in spite of my rigorous specifications any shoddy specimens happened to be included in the deliveries, they would be weeded out, rejected—”
“What were the sizes you ordered?” asked Clairwil, whom Raimonde was now frigging.
“You will never be given anything under six inches in circumference by eight in length.”
“For shame, Sbrigani! Those dimensions may be good for Paris, but in Naples, where monsters grow…. For my part, I do not intend to accept anything less than eight inches around and a foot long.”
“Neither shall we,” Olympia and I declared, almost simultaneously; “we may end up with fewer, but we shall have better—”
“Fewer!” cried Clairwil. “I see no reason to reduce the number. To the contrary, in addition to quality I demand quantity. Therefore, Sbrigani, I shall ask you to furnish us thirty men each morning, and with the proportions I cited a moment ago: that will give us ten apiece. Let’s say we get three fuckings out of each—that, surely, is not asking too much; and which is the one among us who is unable to ride ten mounts into the ground before drinking her breakfast chocolate? She who speaks assures you that getting off to an early start will not prevent her from accomplishing some startling little infamies in the course of the day; indeed, ’tis only by a good deal of fucking one puts oneself in proper fucking form; and for what else but to fuck did Nature create us?”
And, pronouncing these last words, the spirited creature discharged where she lay in Raimonde’s arms.
“While waiting for me to fill your prescription,” said Sbrigani, “see whether these six valets please you; I believe they exceed the measurements you have just indicated.”
Thereupon appeared six great strapping fellows nearly six feet tall, half-naked, and prick in fist.
“Bloody-fuck,” exclaimed Clairwil, her skirts still gathered up around her waist, “what members I see. Here, let me heft them”—but her two hands were not enough to encircle any of those bludgeons—; “they are bulky, my friends. Take your choice; these are the two I am keeping.”
“One moment!” cautioned Sbrigani. “Permit me to regulate your pleasures, they will be better directed by someone who is calm than by you, fuck-blinded already.”
“He’s right, he’s right,” Clairwil assented, nevertheless pulling off her clothes in great haste, “let him arrange, let him organize. While he does, I shall be getting myself ready.”
“Clairwil, you shall begin,” said Sbrigani, “you seem in the greatest hurry.”
“That is only too true,” our companion confessed, “I don’t know what it is about the air in this city, but it makes me more libertine than ever.”
“Filled with nitrous, sulphorous, and bituminous particles,” I replied, “it must necessarily irritate the nerves and produce a greater than ordinary commotion in the animal spirits. I too feel that I am going to behave atrociously here in Naples.”
“Although I ought to be more accustomed to it than you,” said Olympia, “Naples and my native city lying not very far apart, even so, like you, I am dreadfully overwrought in this atmosphere.”
“Then make the most of it,” said Sbrigani, “fall to, whores, and count upon me to lend a helping hand. This then,” he continued, “is the arrangement I recommend for the opening scene: Clairwil, I repeat, will begin; though burning to be fucked, I want her sincerely to desire the engine that is to pierce her. Juliette, take this handsome prick your friend has already chosen, frig it in the near vicinity of her cunt, rub her clitoris with the tip, but don’t drive it in. You, Olympia, lightly tickle the entrance to the patient’s cunt; tease it, warm it, infuriate it, and when rage flames in her eyes, we’ll satisfy her, but she must be lying in one of these young gentlemen’s arms: the while he supports her, the brave fellow must frig her asshole with one hand, her nipples with the other, and he must kiss her in the meantime, lewdly. Further to arouse our friend’s senses, we shall have her, with either hand, stuff a prick into Raimonde’s cunt and into Elise’s, where they will merely gather heat for a moment; the two remaining youths will encunt the two of you before Clairwil’s eyes, to complete the tumult we wish to create in her soul.”
Indeed, five minutes of this was all the rascal could stand; she foams at the mouth, she curses, she raves, and seeing that it is becoming impossible to defer satisfying her any longer, the six valets, in the space of less than an hour, relay one another atop her body and almost kill her with pleasure. Directly it emerged from our friend’s cunt, Olympia and I would worry and squeeze each prick; Elise and Raimonde frigged us, flogged us, titillated us, licked us. Sbrigani orchestrated all these movements, and we discharged like fieldpieces. Every manner of fucking, every species of debauchery, all imaginable refinements were put into practice; among them, the one we employed the most frequently and to best purpose was to receive three pricks simultaneously, two in the cunt, one in the ass. Few people realize the pleasure this can give, with adroit fuckers; there were several times when everybody forgathered upon a single woman. Thrice did I withstand the weight of that general assault. I was lying upon one man who was embuggering me; Elise, squatting over my face, gave me her pretty little cunt to suck; another man embuggered her above me, while frigging my cunt; and Raimonde was stimulating that man’s asshole with her tongue. Within reach of my two hands were Olympia to one side, on all fours, Clairwil to the other side: I introduced a prick into the asshole of each, and each of them sucked a prick belonging to the fifth and sixth man. The six valets, after having discharged eight times each, were finally received without difficulty. It was impossible to refuse them admission after such ordeals.
A week or so after this adventure a courier brought a new invitation from Ferdinand, who requested all three of us to come to visit him at Portici. The King, we saw, had intended that this be a far more brilliant scene than the first one. We were led into magnificently decorated apartments, deliciously cool despite the heat outside. Charlotte, attired like Flora, was awaiting us in the company of Prince La Riccia, a handsome fop of twenty-four, who was the familiar of all the royal couple’s private pleasures. A quartet of pretty children, two little girls of ten and eleven, two little boys of twelve and thirteen, dressed as the Greeks were wont to costume their victims in ancient days, stood still and in respectful silence at a farther side of the room where the festivities were to be celebrated. Clairwil’s noble and majestic figure, the classic regularity that distinguished her features although she was no longer in the first blush of youth, the excessive libertinage in her eyes—the Queen of Naples was impressed by it all.
“There,” she affirmed, “is a beautiful woman indeed.”
And as with creatures of our libertine temper it is always but a single step from encomiums to caresses, the two wenches were soon in each other’s arms. La Riccia lays hands on Olympia, and I continued to be the King’s favorite.
“Before acting in concert,” said Ferdinand, “my suggestion is that we first move off two at a time, paired as we are, into the boudoirs adjoining this room. After a few minutes of intimate conversation we shall convene again.”
Charlotte sets the example;
followed by Clairwil and with one of the two little female victims in tow, she enclosets herself in a boudoir. La Riccia selects one of the little boys and disappears with Olympia; to Ferdinand remain two children, one of either sex, and he shuts himself up in privacy with them and with me. And now the Neapolitan’s heavy-handed, dull-witted libertinage is revealed in all its energy. But just as a few rays of sunshine will sometimes pierce the gloomiest clouds, bringing cheer to mortal hearts, so it was that some rather pretty nuances of lubricity made their way through the masses of awkwardness characterizing that oaf’s behavior.
After some brief preparatory horrors in which each of us indulged individually with the subjects taken along for that purpose, we all collected in a superb salon; and there, having heated one another’s imaginations with detailed accounts of our late infamies, we plunged forthwith into a new ocean of lewd doings, and executed, unrestrictedly, everything that derangement could inspire in minds so libertine and mischievous as ours. Physical exhaustion alone brought these voluptuous orgies to an end, and we took leave of their Highnesses.
Upon our return we found Sbrigani wounded and in bed. Insults had been pronounced within his hearing, their object had been ourselves; the exchange had taken place in a café, a Frenchman who claimed to know who we were had called us whores. Although in point of fact it would have been hard to say anything truer, Sbrigani, out of attachment, had stoutly refused to admit it, and for his lies the foolish fellow had got himself two good sword-thrusts in the belly.
After having tended his cuts, our conversation had naturally to treat of dueling.
“Bah, sheer madness,” Clairwil opined, “to go and risk one’s life in single combat with someone who did decidedly wrong us. If this man,” our friend continued, asking our leave to put herself temporarily in the position of a sex whose functions she was so able to perform when called upon, “if, I say, this man has been essentially disrespectful toward me, how is it that I owe him such a favor as to consider him a fit adversary to measure myself against? And why must I put myself in a position from which, injury added to insult, I may emerge hurt, crippled, nay, from which I may not emerge alive? After all, I am the one to whom reparation is due, and to obtain it, what! I must endanger my life? If I adopt another comportment, or, going to fight with this man, since fight I absolutely must, I pad my chest and so ensure my safety that my opponent is obliged to give all his care to defending himself and must renounce any hope of insulting me again, if, I say, I behave thus, I shall be called a scoundrel—and the logic that comes forth here, ah, I would be hard put to think of anything that so flies in the face of common sense.
“Let him who has done the insulting arrive naked at the dueling ground, and let the insulted party come there in armor—that is what reason and the laws of good sense demand. The aggressor must obviously be placed at a disadvantage: through his acts he has, following the customs which prevail everywhere else on earth, earned himself assassination at the hands of the person he has slighted; hence, in such a situation, the frivolous rules of honor can be trimmed down to prescribing simply that the fight you so earnestly want take place, but with a prodigious inequality between the combatants; and that the offending party, instead of endeavoring to cause yet further damage, be prevented from concerning himself otherwise than with the problems of strict self-defense. For what right has he to attack a second time, after what he has already done? Our usages, in this article, are atrociously unjust, and make us the laughingstock of those other three-quarters of the world where they are wise enough to understand that, when you are finally driven to the point where you must avenge yourself, you should do it without imperiling your life.”
“Our views upon this matter concur,” I replied to Clairwil, “and I, who also hold dueling both absurd and ridiculous, can but add to what you have just said. I find it odious that a man go and jeopardize his life because of an insult: in such instances, reason and Nature dictate only one course to us, which is to dispatch our enemy, not to expose ourselves to being killed by him, when it is reparation he owes us. Our forefathers, far wiser than we, fought by proxy; champions, in return for a fixed sum, came forward to settle the quarrel, and the might of the stronger made him right: that arrangement at least eliminated the unfairness of having to undergo risk oneself, and although to that usage no end of extravagance and nonsense attached, it was infinitely less unacceptable than the one we observe nowadays. But here is the ludicrous part: the professionals who used to fight on behalf of others were generally regarded as vile persons; we today have taken their place, and risk opprobrium, think of it! if we shun the role of despicable individuals. What furious inconsistencies are these! Going back to the origin of things, we see that, first of all, these champions were merely hired assassins, such as you still meet with in several cities in Spain and Italy, whom the offended man engaged to rid him of his enemy, and that, next, to mitigate the kind of murder this custom seemed to authorize, the accused was allowed to defend himself against the assassin hired to kill him, and to employ an assassin of his own, and send him into the lists. Such was dueling in its infancy, whose cradle was the wise law permitting any man mortal vengeance upon his enemy. That excellent practice has given way to license, has been replaced by a stupidity which distorts the ancient institution, and which makes common sense shudder. And so, let not the man who has an enemy and who has some intelligence rush off and fence with him on an equal footing, for it is perfectly ridiculous to stoop to the level of somebody who has lowered himself beneath you. If the offended party must absolutely fight, well and good; but let him, in advance, take every precaution to avoid sustaining further hurt; and if he wishes to use his head, let him use assassination which, as Molière says, is the safest way.
“As regards those who place the point of honor there, I find them at least as ridiculous as those who fancy it is to be placed in the virtue of their wives; both are barbarous prejudices and do not even deserve cool-headed discussion. Honor is a chimera, bred by certain human customs and conventions which have never had anything but absurdity for basis; it is just as false that a man acquire honor through assassinating his country’s enemies as it is false that he dishonor himself by massacring his compatriots; never can like proceedings warrant unlike consequences: if I do well in going forth to avenge my nation for the wrongs it has endured, I do better still when I avenge myself for those done to me. The State, which retains in its year-round hire some four or five hundred thousand assassins to serve its cause, can neither naturally nor legitimately punish me when I, following its example, pay one or two to revenge me for the infinitely more real insults I may receive from my adversary; for, after all, insults addressed to this nation never affect its members personally, whereas those I have received decidedly do touch me directly; and therein lies a very great difference. But let someone dare say such things aloud: society damns him straight off for a coward, a poltroon, and the reputation for wit or wisdom he has built up over the years is taken away from him in three minutes by a few miserable whippersnappers, humorless imbeciles whom a few prudes, fit to be spanked in the streets, have persuaded that there is nothing finer than to risk one’s life when one has the right to take the lives of others.”
“My position on dueling squares wonderfully with yours,” said Olympia; “and I do not believe I have given you grounds for mistaking me for one of those mentally deficient women whose opinion of a man is dependent upon his willingness, because of an alleged slight, to hie himself off to a corner of a meadow and ape the vile gladiator. I have only scorn for your bravoes and fellows of fire. Combativeness may be delicious in a flunkey or a soldier, good for nothing but to be out bloodying noses all day long. But that a man of parts, of means … that he abandon his studies, his comfort, to go and bare his throat to a bully without any other talent than for plying a hanger, and who only insulted him because he knew he could run him through…. Stake one’s honor upon bravely bringing such rascals to heel…. What a contemptible fellow one must b
e to venture into such situations! Aye, contemptible: there is baseness in giving others an advantage over oneself, and in risking the loss, for one instant and for nothing, of all the amenities, of all the favors one has received from Nature. Let us leave this preposterous merit to the uncouth ages of knight errantry; it is not to play the ruffian like a vulgar trooper that gifted people are made, ’tis to honor and cultivate the arts, to encourage them, to serve the homeland when necessary, and to sacrifice for nothing less the blood that flows in their veins. When a man of that condition has an enemy who is his inferior, let him have him assassinated: Nature hints at no other means for getting rid of such encumbrances; if he has been offended by someone of his own rank, let the two take their complaints before a lenient tribunal, set up for such arbitrations, and let the dispute be judged there: between people of the better sort there are no jars that cannot be settled amicably; he who is in the wrong must yield, ’tis the law. But blood … blood shed on account of a stray remark, a jealousy, a quarrel, a persiflage, a rebuke: revolting anachronism. The duel was unknown until the principles of honor displaced those of vengeance, and, consequently, was accepted only once men became civilized. Never did Nature grave it in the human heart to seek vengeance for an offense at the risk of one’s life; for it is in no wise just, neither is it natural to expose oneself to a second blow merely because one has been dealt a first. But it is very equitable, very commendable to wash the first away in the blood of the aggressor, without risking the loss of any of one’s own, if he is our inferior, and to reach a peaceful settlement with him if he is our better or our peer. There is no reason to be taken in by the courtesies of women touching this matter; it is not bravery in a man they desire, it’s the triumph their pride obtains from being able to say that such-and-such a lout has carved up rivals for their charms. Nor is it by means of legislation this odious usage is to be extirpated; once there are laws there is restlessness, opposition, bitterness, and nothing is gained. ’Tis beneath ridicule, this lamentable custom must be buried. All women must shut the door to a dueling scoundrel; he must be snubbed, jeered at, fingers must be pointed when he goes by, at the sight of him everyone must cry, ‘Ho, there’s the wretched fellow base enough, craven enough, to adopt the vile part of a champion, and who was fool enough to think that words which the wind wafts away, or cuts which sting but for a moment, were to be acquitted at the price of a life, which is to be enjoyed only once. Avoid him; he is mad.’”
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