Juliette

by Marquis de Sade

  However, not for all the world would I have fallen in with that man’s proposals: in them, as I have already told you, I saw risks infinitely outweighing profits; firmly resolved to refuse, I related everything to Durand, who assured me that my decision was wisely taken, since Moberti would undoubtedly cease to treat me as his mistress before three months were out. When he called I had the door shut in his face, and I never saw him again.

  Durand one day besought me to come to her apartments, she had a woman there who ardently desired me; for the attraction I exerted, outrageously if you like, but naturally withal, was stronger upon women than upon men. Signora Zatta, wife of a magistrate, perhaps fifty years of age, was yet in possession of her beauty and endowed as well with a furious fondness for women. No sooner does she clap eyes upon me than the tribade sets to cajoling me as would a man, and her solicitations become such that she deprives me, as it were, of all means to resist her.

  We sup together, and when dessert arrives, the Messalina, half-drunk, flings herself upon me and takes off my clothes. Zatta was one of those idiosyncratic women who, full of clever and original ideas, are drawn to their own sex not so much out of taste as through libertinage, and whose behavior with it proceeds less from the quest for real pleasures than from a wish to indulge lascivious caprices. This creature had nothing but masculine tendencies: I discharged six times beneath her cunning fingers, or rather ’twas but a single ejaculation which lasted for two long hours. Once returned to my senses, I thought to criticize her preliminary tactics, which I held bizarre; but I found her as apt in their defense as she was adroit in performing them. She proved to me that the aberration she delighted in was for her more enjoyable than any other; she added that she carried her manias to their logical conclusion, and that she never discharged more agreeably than when surrendering to them.

  She desired other girls; seven responded to the call; after having frigged herself with all of them, from her pocket she produced a dildo the likes of which I had never before set eyes upon. That singular instrument had four stems. Signora Zatta began by burying one of them in her ass and sodomizing me with a second. We were back to back: the two remaining stems were curved upward in a half-circle: these we buried in our cunts. In this position, we each had a girl between our legs, who sucked our clitoris and who maneuvered the machine with artistry. Employment had to be found for the five others. Two were hence assigned to flog those who were sucking us; two more, perched upon chairs, gave us their cunts to drink from; and the last supervised all the others, moving about the ranks and seeing to it that everything was accomplished in strict accordance with prescription. Zatta and I fought together against the pack, and after having exhausted all our seven women, having had our buttocks lashed raw, she proclaimed her intention of avenging herself upon our whippers. We flogged them unmercifully; they complained, they screamed, ’twas in vain, we were inflexible, and no quarter was granted until floods of fuck had appeased our fury. The indefatigable rascal, aroused rather than calmed by this series of lewd episodes, insisted that we spend the night together, and it was dedicated to a thousand imaginative impudicities, each one more voluptuous and more unusual than the last. That libertine’s greatest skill was probably in the licking of the asshole. She could so lengthen and stiffen her tongue that the longest and most agile finger would not have procured sweeter sensations.

  That day’s requirement of supplementary women led Durand to yield upon a point I had been pressing for quite some time. We added four charming creatures to our household, and retained, outside, more than five hundred others, ready at any hour of the night and day.

  The excesses of turpitude we witnessed in our house, excesses committed by individuals of both sexes, were frequent and outstanding. Experienced though I was, I continued to learn, and I avow that I would never have supposed the human imagination could soar to such incredible heights of corruption and perversity. What I saw achieved there defies belief; ’tis a vast, an endless abyss of horrors and infamies into which libertinage is able to drive the human being. How dangerous he is when aroused! No, I may truthfully say so, the most ferocious and the most savage beasts never attain such monstrosities. The influence we enjoyed, the silence, the orderliness, the subordination which reigned in that asylum, the extreme ease with which the visitor availed himself of the means to undertake every variety of imaginable and unimaginable debauch; everything encouraged the shy man, everything quickened the enterprising man’s enthusiasm; and passions, no matter what form in which they might present themselves, in no matter what kind of brain they might waken, were always sure to be fed, to be favored, and to be satisfied with us.

  It is there, my friends, I have said it before, I proclaim it again, yes, if one wishes to understand men, it is there one must follow his behavior: it is in his hour of lubricity, in his lubricious expressions that his character, laid absolutely bare, yields itself, in all its truest colors, to the appreciations of the philosophic student; and it is after having scrutinized him in these moments of intimacy that one can estimate and predict the consequences of the impulsions of his execrable heart and of his terrifying hungers.

  In the matter of lust-murders our policy was severe; however, this fantasy’s adepts were so numerous, requests for permission to indulge in it were so frequent, and the price people were willing to pay was so high, that we were forced to establish a rate for this only too common mania in sanguinary mankind. For one thousand sequins you obtained in our house the right to do to death, in the manner of your choosing, either one young boy or one young girl.

  But to enjoy all these extravagances and to benefit from the intellectual stimulation they afforded, we had, Durand and I, set up observation posts, secret alcoves whence, without being seen, we commanded a perfect view of everything that transpired in the boudoirs used by our libertines; and ’twas from those vantage points we absorbed the richest instruction in a wide range of curious refinements. Whenever individuals desiring objects of libertinage struck us as worth the trouble observing, we would remove to our concealed loges, and there, at leisure, having ourselves fucked, or having ourselves frigged, we would dwell profitably upon the lascivious details untrammeled debauchery offered to our gaze. With my age and my looks, it often fell out that I was chosen in preference to one of the creatures the house had for hire; and in that case, if the client suited me and the figure seemed to justify it, I would prostitute myself unhesitatingly. Likewise, Durand’s originalities, her curious caprices and pronounced bent for crime, her charms, though somewhat on the decline, often brought in a demand for her services; and there were still other times when the two of us were contracted for, or when we were included along with one or more other girls, and then God knows what orgies they were!

  A member of one of Venice’s most distinguished families presented himself one day. The libertine’s name was Cornaro.

  “It is a consuming passion that brings me here,” he announced to me, “I must reveal its particulars to you.”

  “Speak forth, my Lord, make your orders known; we do not turn anybody away from this house.”

  “Why then, my dear, the thing is this: I require to embugger a little boy of seven, lying in the arms of his mother and of his aunt. And those two women must themselves sharpen the instruments which will be used by a helper I shall myself supply: he will trepan the child while I am sodomizing it. The operation once over, I shall have to embugger the mother, lying upon the body of her son; my helper, still using the instruments sharpened by the aunt and the mother, will ablate the latter’s buttocks; these, cooked upon a grill, will be eaten by me, by the two women, and by you too, and with this meat we shall none of us drink anything except fine brandy.”

  “What a horror, my Lord!”

  “Yes, yes, ’tis a horror, I know; but only horrors give me an erection, my dear; the worse they are, the more they excite me; and but for the fact they are never so horrible as I would like, I consider myself a happy man.”

  An appointment
was fixed. His surgeon arrived with him, as did a pair of vigorous fuckers; Cornaro retired with them into a room, telling me that he would call when he needed me. And so I withdrew, and went promptly to one of the hiding places whence, as I mentioned to you, we were able to watch those of our guests from whose capers we expected to derive some pleasure: Cornaro set to work, and the effect the spectacle obtained upon me is something hardly to be described.

  Two hours later, he summoned me back, I entered. The little boy lay sobbing in his mother’s arms while she covered him with her caresses and wet him with her tears. The surgeon, the fuckers were drinking, and the young aunt was weeping in the company of her sister.

  “Fuck!” expostulated the Venetian, “have you ever, I ask you, beheld a more sublime scene?” Then, after contemplating it for a moment, “Why,” he said, feigning surprise, “are those tears I see? You weep, whore, because I am going to kill your son? But what interest can you have in this little chap, since he is no longer in your womb? Come, let us operate, Juliette, let us operate; do some ass-fucking where I can see you while I am in action, take one of these bucks, I’ll keep the other: I am unable to do anything unless I have a prick in my ass.”

  While I adopt the libertine’s suggestion, he, laying firm hands upon the child, camps him atop his mother’s back and fucks him while being fucked and while the young aunt, kneeling, sharpens the tool needed for the forthcoming operation, under the inspection of the surgeon who flogs her in the meantime. I was so placed as to be able to miss nothing: although my ass, stoutly perforated, stood positively under Cornaro’s nose, he had given orders that my fucker retire from time to time and tender him his prick for sucking, which, having sucked it, he would then reinsert in my fundament. Everything had been proceeding as he wished, when, sensing his sperm about to boil over, he turns his head and nods to the surgeon. That artist snatches the blade out of the aunt’s hands, and in less time than it takes to tell, he slices the crown off not one skull, but all three, scoops the brains out, and braying like a donkey, our Venetian notable discharges deep inside the entrails of one of the masses he has just deprived of thinking being. He withdraws, the three wretched individuals, not yet dead, thrash about in the center of the room, and scream.-Does the wildest jungle beast commit atrocities of this kind?

  “Ha!” exults Cornaro, “nothing has ever given me such pleasure; let us finish these victims off,” he goes on, clubbing at their heads with a bludgeon, “yes, by fuck, let’s finish them off and treat ourselves to a little grilled buttock.”

  “Villain!” I say to this barbarian, “do you not repent the horrors you have just perpetrated?”

  “Juliette,” he sighed, “when you reach the point where I am, the only thing you rue is an act of virtue.”

  Beside myself from lust, I hugged that divine scoundrel to my breast; I frigged him, by imparting delightsome sensations I strove to restore the energy he had lost with his ejaculation. He teased, he nibbled my teats, sucked my mouth. I whispered disgusting things in his ear, horrible things; to material titillations I added the provocation of lascivious conversation. When I heard him ask for my ass I thought my triumph certain; he knelt before my buttocks, he toyed with them, squeezed them while tonguing the hole for a quarter of an hour: but his prick did not lift out of its sagging condition.

  “A discharge leaves me limp for a week,” he apologized; “the enormous amount of time required before I become aroused, the copiousness of my seminal loss, the entire thing exhausts me. Let us have supper; my forces may return amidst the lewdnesses with which we shall punctuate the meal, and perhaps, stuffed with food and drink, we shall consummate some further crimes. In the meantime, have yourself fucked within my full view, for there is libertinage aglitter in your eyes, Juliette, and I should suppose your need for a discharge is urgent.”

  “No,” said I, “since you intend to wait, I shall wait too; you alone excite me, the others do not: it is your sperm I wish to see flow, and nothing else will cause the ejaculation of mine.”

  “If that be the case,” said Cornaro, “let our supper be as impure as possible, let us transform it into a frightful orgy. I need not specify the details; by now you know my tastes, you will leave me nothing to desire.”

  Garbed as a bacchante, Durand, when everything was ready, announced to us that supper was served. We removed into a vast feasting hall, in whose middle stood a table set for four: Cornaro, Durand, myself, and a fifty-year-old woman named Laurentia, reputed to be the most profligate, the most corrupt, the most lascivious creature in the whole of Italy. Laurentia, like the rest of us, elected to eat human flesh, watched philosophically while it was brought on, and devoured it without repugnance.

  Nothing so delicate as the various dishes that accompanied those sanguinary viands. Eight courses, composed of everything of the rarest and most succulent, preceded and followed the grillades; but, as had been agreed from the beginning, nothing was drunk but the finest old brandy. Eight stewardesses of fourteen, with delicious faces, served the brandy: they had it in their mouths, and when beckoned, they would step forward and from between their rosy lips squirt it down the guest’s parched gullet. A pair of fifteen-year-old bardashes stood at attention directly behind each guest’s chair, eight in all, ready to execute whatever orders they might happen to receive. Deployed at each of the four corners of the table was a group made up of two old women, two female blackamoors, two vigorous fuckers, two more catamites, two girls of eighteen, and two children of seven. A simple gesture to the nearest group brought it up to the actor who cared to dally with any or all of the subjects composing it. At the four sides of the room were that many raised platforms, upon each of which a couple of Negroes lashed a girl of sixteen or seventeen who, once torn to shreds, would vanish through a trap door, to be replaced the same instant by a fresh one; to right and to left of each fustigator, and upon the same stages, were other Negroes embuggering mulatto bardashes, aged between twelve and thirteen. Four girls, fifteen years of age, hovered underneath the table: their function was to suck Cornaro’s prick and our cunts. From the ceiling depended a great candelabrum which at the same time spread throughout the hall a light as pure and bright as sunlight, and, uncommon particularity, also shot a concentrated and fiery beam at a choir of children stationed upon balconies under the arch of the ceiling, and, burning them, produced an incessant shrill complaint from on high. It was that phenomenon which most struck Cornaro, the one which amused him more than anything else, and for which he had the most fulsome praise. Our man, enraptured, after having glanced at everything warranting his notice, sat down, protesting that he had never seen anything so lubricious.

  “That woman,” he said, his eyes falling upon Laurentia, “what is she?”

  “A bon vivant like yourself,” said Durand, “a slut capable of surpassing you in infamy and whose cunt is being frigged at this very minute, just as your prick is being sucked.”

  “All very pleasant indeed,” said Cornaro, “but it seems to me that before sitting down at the same table with me, that woman and Durand ought to have shown me their behinds.”

  “You are quite right,” the two of them answered, rising promptly and bringing their asses to within a few inches of Cornaro’s face.

  The libertine palpated them, kissed them; with his connoisseur’s discerning gaze still fixed upon them, “These,” he opined, “are asses whereupon libertinage has more than once placed its stamp; they are in degraded condition, I like it: it is the result of the years and the work of lubricity; these blemishes delight me. Oh,” he continued, addressing the company at large, “oh, how beautiful is corrupted Nature in its details, and how the poppies of age are, in my estimation, to be preferred to the roses of childhood! Kiss me, heavenly asses! Waft your scented zephyrs toward me, and then get back to your places so that we can all prostitute ourselves in concert.

  “And these women I see hereabout me?” Cornaro inquired next, considering the suppliants surrounding the table.

  �
��They,” I replied, “are victims who are under sentence of death and who, knowing the authority you wield in these parts, are on their knees to implore your mercy.”

  “They shall certainly not obtain any,” the barbarian declared, glancing fiercely at them; “many a time have I caused people to die, but I have never granted one reprieve or pardon.”

  Therewith we fell to eating, and everyone and everything with a role to perform entered into action.

  Cornaro, being sucked uninterruptedly, was halfway stiff already; he demanded that each of the victims step forward and receive some abuse at his hands. One by one those charming creatures rise, begin by presenting their ass to the lewd dignitary, and afterward submit humbly to what he is pleased to mete out to them. Slaps, pinches, hair-pullings, nose-tweakings, bites, burns, buffets, ass-spankings, breast-twistings, scratches, little is omitted, and once they have got what is due them, they return to their former places and resume their kneeling position. These preliminaries over with, Cornaro leans my way, having me take hold of a prick whose state I was beginning to feel rather proud of.

  “Those sluts are affecting me,” he confided in my ear, “I may soon begin to misbehave.”

  “The means are all there, my friend,” I replied, “we simply await the impulses of your heart and your mind’s instigations; speak, and an exemplary submissiveness will give you proof of our devotion.”

  Then Cornaro, somewhat rudely, passed his two hands beneath my buttocks and, pulling me toward him, lifted me a little into the air: he called one of the fuckers’ attention to my ass. “Over here,” said he, “sodomize her as I hold her aloft.”

  A prick sounds my bum, Cornaro’s tongue probes my mouth; one of the young servants grasps his prick, another worries his ass.

  “Off with you, Juliette,” he says; “hither, Laurentia, take her place.”

  The same ceremony; Laurentia is embuggered, Cornaro sucks, at intervals, the prick which is fucking her. Durand’s turn comes next; identical episodes. All the women undergo the same fate, all are ass-fucked by a fresh fucker who, as before, periodically interrupts his tupping in order to allow the libertine to lick away the maculations acquired during intercourse. The fricatrices are changed, and I dispatch the youngest and prettiest girls one by one to fondle the rake’s member and to lend their buttocks to his slaps and pounding.