Juliette

by Marquis de Sade

  I summon an eighteen-year-old girl, superb; never in my life had I feasted my eyes on a more beautiful body. After having kissed, fondled, licked every part of it, I lead her upon the stage; and working in concert with the executioners, I give her the whip. ’Tis no commonplace whip, but a formidable bullwhip, each stroke brings away a chunk of flesh the size of your hand; she expires, and her torturers fuck me as I lie upon her corpse.

  So pleasant did we find this game that it had inevitably to be played for a very long time. All told, we immolated eleven hundred and seventy-six victims, which made one hundred sixty-eight apiece, among them six hundred girls and five hundred seventy-six boys. Charlotte and Princess Borghese were the only ones who sacrificed none but girls. The individuals for whose destruction I was responsible included an equal number of males and females; the same held true for La Riccia; but Clairwil, Gravines, and King Ferdinand immolated strictly nothing but men, and in the great majority of cases, did their killing personally. Throughout the entire exercise we were fucked incessantly, and our athletes had to be replaced several times over. We retired at the end of forty-five consecutive hours of rare riot and divine pleasures.

  “Madame,” I whispered to Charlotte as I took leave of her, “do not forget the little paper you signed for me….”

  “And you,” was Charlotte’s reply, “don’t forget our appointment. Be as faithful as I in abiding by our bargain, I ask no more of you than that.”

  Once home, I explained to Clairwil in full what I had only been able to hint at before.

  “O delightful project!” she said.

  “And you see, of course, where I want it to lead.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I loathe Charlotte.”

  “My darling! Kiss me … how I share your feelings!”

  “Dear Clairwil, that woman is mad about me, she is forever chasing after me with requests to make her discharge. And nothing bores me so much as these performances. Only you, my angel, in all the world there is no one but you whom I am willing to forgive for loving me.”

  “What a mind you have, Juliette!”

  “It is more than a little like yours.”

  “Oh, indeed it is, my precious. … So then, tell me, what do you plan to do with this Charlotte?”

  “The day after I have the contents of the royal exchequer, I send this note of hers to the robbed Ferdinand: ‘I shall steal all my husband’s treasure, and give it in payment to her who supplies me the poison necessary to send him to the next world’—when the dear man reads that he will, I should hope, condemn Charlotte to death or at least to some frightful prison.”

  “Yes, but an accused Charlotte will reveal her accomplices; she will say that it was to us she turned over his riches.”

  “Will it be presumable that, if we were Charlotte’s correspondents, we would send the note to the King?”

  “Presumable or not, Ferdinand will have searches conducted.”

  “I shall see to it that they are fruitless. Everything shall be buried in our garden. As for the King, I shall go to see him myself. If his suspicions fasten too firmly upon us, I shall threaten to make public the ghastly joke he played the day before yesterday during The Treat. Ferdinand, being weak and stupid, will be frightened, and that will be an end to the matter. And then, too,

  ’Tis an inglorious triumph earned from a victory achieved without peril.

  Gaining wealth means taking risks: is it your opinion that fifty or sixty million are not worth going to some trouble to acquire?”

  “If caught, it will mean death for us.”

  “What is that to me? There is nothing I fear less in this world than the noose. Is it not common knowledge that death upon the gallows is accompanied by a discharge? And discharging is something that will never hold terrors for me. If ever a judge sends me to the scaffold, you will see me go forward with light and impudent step…. But calm yourself, Clairwil, crime is our friend, we are its favorites. In such enterprises as this we cannot fail.”

  “Are you thinking of including Borghese in our scheme?”

  “No, I don’t like that woman anymore.”

  “Fuck! for my part I detest her.”

  “She should be got rid of as soon as possible.”

  “There is the trip we are to make to Vesuvius tomorrow….”

  “Indeed there is; that volcano’s deeps must serve as her grave. What a way to die!”

  “I imagine it as horrible. Otherwise it would not have occurred to me.”

  “I should like something still more cruel.”

  “When the two of us hate, Juliette, oh, we do our hating well!”

  “We must dine with her as usual.”

  “And even fawn upon her.”

  “Let me manage that, you know that my features and my character are well suited to treachery.”

  “We must frig her tonight.”

  “Of course.”

  “Oh, my angel, we are going to be very rich!”

  “This stroke once accomplished, there will be no further tarrying in Naples.”

  “Nor in Italy. We must get us back to France, buy properties, and spend our remaining days together … what delights await us! Nothing will restrict them but the laws of our desires.”

  “The instantaneous satisfaction of them all—oh, dear heart, what happiness money brings! What a fool is he who abstains from employing every means, legitimate and otherwise, for procuring it. Clairwil, they will sooner put me a thousand times to death than deprive me of my taste for theft; it is among my greatest pleasures; ’tis one of the fundamental needs of my existence. When I steal I experience the sensation an ordinary woman feels when she is frigged. In my case, all crimes chafe the nerve endings in the zones of pleasure, just as do fingers or pricks; I discharge merely from plotting a felony. Why, here’s an example, this diamond: Charlotte offered it to me, it is worth fifty thousand crowns. I declined it. As a gift, it displeased me. Stolen, I delight in it.”

  “You took it from her?”

  “I did. It is no wonder to me that some people have surrendered to this passion solely for the voluptuous effects it produces; I would willingly steal for the rest of my life, and I declare to you, that had I an income of two million a year, you would still see me a thief out of libertinage.”

  “Ah, my love,” said Clairwil, “how certain it is that Nature created us for each other. Never fear, we shall not part.”

  We dined with Borghese, the three of us discussed plans for the following day’s excursion to Vesuvius. That evening we were at the Opera; the King came to our box to pay us his respects, all eyes were turned our way. Home again, we proposed to Borghese that a part of the night be given over to eating roasts with Cyprian wine; she took gladly to the idea; and we, Clairwil and I, carried deceitfulness to the point of wringing seven or eight discharges from the woman our villainy had already doomed, and of discharging almost as many times in her embrace. After that we let her go to bed, and the two of us spent the remainder of the night together; and before it was over, we owed another three or four spasms to the enchanting thought that on the morrow we were to make a mockery of every sentiment of trust and friendship. Such mischief, I realize, is inconceivable except to special mentalities like ours; but he is deserving of pity who lacks the capacity for it, great pleasures are denied him; I venture to affirm that he ignores what true happiness is.

  We rose at an early hour. Criminal projects prevent sleep, they sow tumult in the senses; the mind revolves them, explores them from all sides, savors all their ramifications, and through anticipation you delight unendingly in the pleasure with which you know you are going to overflow upon actually committing the atrocity.

  A coach-and-six conveyed us to the base of Vesuvius. There, we found guides who provide the rigs and the ropes whereby visitors are helped to climb the volcano: it takes two hours to attain the summit. The ascent, before it is over, will have ruined a pair of new shoes. We set out in merry spirits; we poked fun at Olym
pia; and the poor creature was far from grasping the double meaning of our persiflage, from divining what lay behind our playful teasing.

  It is a dreadful task, struggling up that mountain: ankle-deep in ashes the whole time, if you advance four paces, you slip back six; and there is the perpetual fear lest you break through some thin crust and drop into molten lava. We arrived exhausted and sat down to rest once we were at the lip of the crater. ’Twas from there we gazed with prodigious interest into the throat of this volcano which, in its moments of wrath, makes all the Kingdom of Naples tremble.

  “Do you think there is anything to fear today?” we asked our guides.

  “No,” they replied, “some brimstone, some sulphur, a few bits of pumice may perhaps come up, but it’s not likely that there will be an eruption.”

  “Well then, my friends,” said Clairwil, “give us the basket containing our refreshments and have the kindness to go back to the village. We are going to spend the day here, our intention is to do some sketching.”

  “But if something were to happen?”

  “Did you not say that nothing will happen?”

  “We cannot be altogether sure.”

  “Why, when something happens, we will make our way down to the village where we hired you, we can see it from here.”

  And with the distribution of three or four gold coins the conversation was brought quickly to an end.

  As soon as they were some four hundred yards away, Clairwil and I exchanged glances. “Shall it be ruse?” I murmured to my friend.

  “No, force,” she answered.

  We leapt upon Olympia the next instant.

  “Slut,” she was told, “we are tired of you; we led you to this place with a view to your destruction. There is a volcano below: you are going to be thrown into it alive.”

  “Oh, my friends!” she gasped. “What have I done?”

  “Nothing at all. We are tired of you. Is that not quite enough?”

  So saying, we stuffed a pocket-handkerchief into her mouth, to avoid her screams and jeremiads. Clairwil then tied her hands with scarves we had brought for this purpose; I tied her feet; and When we had reduced her to helplessness, we contemplated her and laughed. Tears flowed from her beautiful eyes, splashed down in pearly drops upon her beautiful bosom. We undressed her, we laid hands on her, stroked and molested every part of her body; we mistreated her snowy breasts, we spanked her charming ass, we pricked her buttocks with hatpins, we plucked hairs from her bush; and I bit her clitoris almost in two.

  At length, after two hours of unremitting vexations, we picked her up by her bound hands and feet, carried her to the brink, and let her fall. Down she went into the volcano, and for several minutes we listened to the sounds of her body crashing from ledge to ledge, being torn by the sharp outcropping rocks: gradually the sounds subsided, and then we heard nothing more.

  “That is that,” said Clairwil, who had been frigging herself with both hands ever since letting go of Olympia’s body. “Ah, fuck, my love, let’s both lie down on the edge of this volcano and discharge now; we have just committed a crime, one of those heavenly deeds which mortals deem atrocious. Well, I say, if what we have done is a true outrage to Nature, then let her avenge herself, for she can if she wishes; let an eruption occur, let lava boil up from that inferno down there, let a cataclysm snuff out our lives this very instant….”

  I was in no state to speak. My head reeling already, my only reply was to my friend’s pollutions, which I paid back tenfold. She too fell silent. Hugged tight in each other’s arms, writhing with joy, frigging each other like frenzied tribades, we seemed bent on exchanging souls through the medium of our panted sighs. A few lewd words, a few blasphemies, no other utterances came from us. Through our deed we were insulting Nature, defying her, baiting her; and triumphant in the impunity in which her unconcern left us, we looked to be profiting from her indulgence only in order to irritate her the more grievously.

  “And so,” said Clairwil, the first to be restored to reason, “you see, Juliette, how little Nature is disturbed by mankind’s alleged crimes; she does not want the power to swallow us up, she could destroy us even if it were in the depths of delight. Has she done so? Ah, be easy, there is no crime on earth capable of drawing Nature’s wrath down upon us; rather, all crimes are to her advantage, all are useful to her, and whenever she inspires it in us, be certain that it is because she has need of crime.”

  Clairwil had no sooner finished than a shower of stones shot up out of the volcano and rained down around us.

  “Ah ha!” said I, not even deigning to get to my feet, “Olympia’s revenge! These bits of sulphur, these pebbles are her farewell to us, she notifies us that she is already in the entrails of the earth.”

  “Nothing more readily explained than this phenomenon,” Clairwil remarked. “Whenever a weighty body falls into the volcano, by agitating the matter eternally boiling in its depths, it provokes a slight eruption.”

  “Come, let us have our lunch, and be assured when I tell you that the rain of stones which we have just witnessed is nothing else, my dear, than Olympia’s request for her clothes; we must not refuse it.”

  And after having sorted out the gold and precious stones, we made the rest into a bundle and threw the telltale evidence into the same crater which had just received our friend. Then we opened our lunch-basket. No further sound came from below; the crime had been consummated, Nature was content. We made our descent and found our guides again at the foot of the mountain.

  “A perfectly frightful misfortune has befallen us,” we said, going up to them with tears in our eyes, “our unlucky companion ventured too near to the edge and … alas! she tumbled over it. Oh, good people, is there anything to be done?”

  “Nothing,” they all said; “you ought to have let us remain with you, this would not have happened. She is lost. You will never see her again.”

  Upon hearing that cruel announcement our feigned tears flowed the faster and, wringing our hands, we stepped into our coach. Three-quarters of an hour later we were in Naples.

  We published our misfortune the very same day; Ferdinand came in person to console us, believing we were truly sisters and devoted to one another. Depraved though he was, the thought never entered his mind that foul play might have overtaken Olympia; we did not disturb his illusions. We sent the Princess’ retinue back to Rome with certificates of her accident, and we sent to inquire of her family what disposition it wished to have made of her jewelry, valued, we wrote, at thirty thousand francs, although in fact she left behind better than one hundred thousand francs worth of spoils, seven-tenths of which we had appropriated, you understand; but we had left Naples by the time the family’s answer arrived there, and were able to assume undisputed possession of the entirety of our friend’s property.

  Olympia, Princess Borghese, was a gentle, trusting, affectionate woman, willful in her pleasures, libertine by temperament, with imagination, but who lacked depth and rigor in her principles; timorous, still in prejudice’s grip, apt at any moment to give way before a reverse, and who, owing to nothing more than this one weakness, was unsuitable company for a pair of women as corrupt as ourselves.

  A more important affair lay before us. The next day was the one I had chosen with Charlotte for the attack upon her husband’s treasure. Clairwil and I therefore spent the rest of the evening preparing a dozen big chests and trunks, and having a large hole dug in our garden: this was done in utmost secrecy and the workman, whose brains we scrupulously blew out once he had completed his task, was the first object buried in that pit: “Either have no accomplices,” Machiavelli advises, “or get rid of them as soon as they have served their purpose.”

  Then came the moment to appear with the wagon beneath the specified windows. Clairwil and I, disguised as men, drove the vehicle ourselves; for we had dismissed our servants for the night, and sent them out to a party in the countryside. Charlotte was at her post and waiting: in her eagerness for the promised pois
on, her reward if all went well, she did not wish to be guilty of the slightest negligence. For four hours she lowered out bags which, as fast as they came down, we stowed into our chests; and finally we heard her say that there was nothing more left.

  “Until tomorrow,” we replied.

  And we drove quickly to our mansion, lucky enough not to have met with a living soul during the whole time the operation lasted. A second man helped us unload and bury the trunks and chests, and he was buried on top of them when his usefulness was at an end.

  Weary, fretful, anxious now that we were so rich, we went to bed this one time without thinking of pleasures. We woke the next morning to find all the town talking about the robbery that had been committed at the Royal Palace; this seemed the propitious moment to have the Queen’s note delivered to Ferdinand, and it was brought to him by an anonymous hand. No sooner had he read it than, flying into a mighty rage, he himself placed his wife under arrest, turned her over to the captain of his guard with orders to take her to Sant’ Elmo, where she was given the coarsest raiment to wear, the simplest fare to eat, and placed in solitary confinement. A week passes without his going to see her. She beseeches him to come. At last he appears. The villainous creature blurts out everything and compromises us in the most thorough manner. Ferdinand rushes to our address, furious; and as the conversation we had with him is interesting, I shall give it in dialogue form.

  FERDINAND: You are guilty of a horrible deed; how could I have expected such a thing from persons whom I took to be my friends!

  CLAIRWIL: What is the matter?

  FERDINAND: The Queen accuses you of having stolen my treasure.

  JULIETTE: Us?

  FERDINAND: You.

  CLAIRWIL: Likely story!

  FERDINAND: She admits to having momentarily entertained the thought of taking my life, and she affirms that you promised to supply her the poison necessary to that end, my treasure being the payment you demanded of her in return.

  CLAIRWIL: You have found the poison she claims she bought for that exceedingly high price?

  FERDINAND: No.