“Let us eat,” he finally says. “That will do by way of prologue, we shall refine our gestures as we proceed. Juliette,” he asks me, “what is your view? Is there any more divine passion in the world than lust?”
“I would venture to say that there is not; but lust must be carried to excess: in libertinage, he who applies curbs is a fool who denies himself all possibility of ever knowing what pleasure is.”
“Libertinage,” Durand put in, “is a sensual aberrance which supposes the discarding of all restraints, the supremest disdain for all prejudices, the total rejection of all religious notions, the profoundest aversion to all ethical imperatives; and that libertine who has not attained this philosophical maturity, tossing back and forth between his desires’ impetuousness and the bullying of his conscience, will be debarred from perfect happiness.”
“I do not think,” said Laurentia, “that fault can be found with his Lordship upon any of the articles that have just been enumerated, and I am convinced he has intelligence enough to be immune to the effects of commonplace ideas.”
“It is in any case certain,” said Cornaro, “that I acknowledge the sanctity of absolutely nothing in human society, and that for the great good reason that everything men have instituted is absolutely nothing but the product of their self-interest and their prejudices. Is there a single man alive anywhere who can legitimately assure me that he knows more about the world than I do? Once one has ceased to have any belief in religion and therefore in a God’s idiotic confidences to mortals, everything of man’s invention must be subjected to the closest scrutiny and consigned immediately to scorn, if in me Nature’s urgings are to despise and trample upon those lies. Hence, once it is demonstrated that in the spheres of religion, of morals, and of politics, no man can be better informed than I, I may, as of that moment, be as wise as he, and from then on nothing he announces to me can rightfully claim my respect. It is in the lawful power of no human being to force me to believe or accept what he says or thinks; and however little regard I have for these human reveries, however much I flout them, there is no person on earth who can pretend to the right to censure or punish me therefor. Into what chasm of errors or foolishness would we not tumble were all men blindly to adhere to what it suited some other men to establish! And through what incredible injustice will you call moral that which emanates from you; immoral that which I uphold? To what arbitration shall we apply in order to find out upon which side right and reason lie?
“But, some will object, there are certain things so visibly infamous that no possible doubt can exist of their danger and their horribleness. For my part, dear friends, I sincerely declare that I know of no deed answering to this description, none which, recommended by Nature, has not at some time in the past formed the basis of some hallowed custom; and, finally, none which being seasoned by some attractions, does not through that fact alone become legitimate and good. Whence I conclude that there is not one which ought to be resisted, not one without its usefulness, not one which has not had somebody’s sanction in its favor.
“But, it will be most stupidly said, since you were born under this or that latitude, you ought to abide by the usages prevalent there. Bah, enough; you are being absurd in wanting to persuade me that I should put up with wrongs done me because of accidents of birthplace; I am such as I was formed by Nature; and if there be a jar between my penchants and the laws of my country, blame Nature for it, impute no fault to me.
“But, it will be added, you will be a menace to society, society shall have to protect itself, to remove you from its midst. Platitudes. Renounce your senseless curbs, and give equally, equitably, to all persons the right to revenge themselves for the wrong done them, do that and you shall have no more need of codes of law, you will have no more need of the brainless calculations of those bloated pedants that go under the amusing title of criminalists, who, clumsily weighing in the scales of their ineptness actions beyond the grasp of their somber genius, refuse to realize that when Nature is all roses for us, she can necessarily be nothing but thistles for them.
“Abandon man to Nature, she will be a far better guide to him than your legislators. Destroy, above all, these populous cities, where the accumulation of vices drives you to repressive lawmaking. What necessity is there that man live in society? Restore him to the forest wilderness whence he came, and let him do there whatever he likes. His crimes, as isolated as he, will then be an inconvenience to no one, and there will be no further purpose for your restrictive regulations; savage man is subject to two needs only: the need to fuck and the need to eat; both are implanted in him by Nature. Nothing he will do in answer to the one or the other of these needs can possibly be criminal; if ever passions other than these are found in him, only civilization and society engendered them. Well, as soon as it is clear that these recent offenses are nothing but the fruit of circumstances, that they are inherent in social man’s way of life, by what right, if you please, do you blame him for them?
“There, then, are the only two species of offenses man can be subject to: (1) those imposed upon him by the state of savagery: now, would it not be sheer madness on your part to punish him for these? and (2) those his social existence amidst other men inspire in him; would it not be yet more extravagant to deal severely with these? And so what is there left for you to do, ignorant and stupid moderns, when you see crimes committed? You should admire, and you should hold your tongue; admire … yes, most certainly, for nothing is so fascinating, nothing so arresting nor so beautiful as man swept away by his passions; hold your tongue … even more certainly, for what you behold is the handiwork of Nature, toward whom your proper attitude must be one of breathless awe and silent respect.
“As regards my own self and personal affairs, I concur in your view, my friends, that the world can boast of no more immoral man than me; there is not a single prohibition I have not violated, not a principle out of whose grip I have not delivered myself, not a virtue I have failed to outrage, not one crime I have neglected to commit; and I must confess that ’tis only when I have acted in uttermost defiance of all social conventions, of all human laws, that I have really felt lust throb in my heart and inflame it with its divine fire. Every criminal or ferocious deed excites me; to murder on the highways, that would excite me; to ply the hangman’s trade, that would excite me. And so why deny oneself these deeds, once they hurl one’s senses into such a voluptuous ferment?”
“Ah,” Laurentia murmured, “to murder on the highways….”
“Yes, indeed. That is perpetrating violence, any violence agitates the senses; any sort of nervous emotion, directed by the imagination, essentially quickens pleasure. If, therefore, my prick rises at the prospect of going out and killing somebody on the highway, that action, to which I am impelled by the same principle that moves me to unbutton my breeches or lift a petticoat, must be excused on the same grounds, and I shall therefore commit it with the same indifference, but nevertheless with greater pleasure, because its capacity to irritate is greater.”
“What,” said my companion, “has the idea of God never checked your misbehavior?”
“Ah, do not talk to me about that ignoble chimera, it was already the object of my derision by the time I reached the age of twelve. I shall never be able to understand how any man in his senses can pay an instant’s heed to a disgusting fable which the heart abjures, which reason disavows, and which can win partisans only among fools, low knaves, or imposters. Were there actually any such thing as a God, master and creator of the universe, he would be, incontestably, if one is to judge by the notions widespread among his sectators, the most bizarre, the crudest, the most wickedly spiteful, and the most bloodthirsty of figures; and none of us would have energy enough, force enough, to hate him, to execrate him, to revile him, and to profane him to the degree he would deserve. The greatest service legislators could render humanity would be an ironclad law against theocracy. Few realize how important it is to obliterate that hideous God’s baneful altars; unt
il those fatal ideas can no longer rearise, man will know neither rest nor peace on earth, and the threat of religious strife will always be poised over our heads. A government that permits all forms of worship has not absolutely fulfilled the philosophic objective toward which we must all aim: it must go farther, it must expel from society’s bosom those elements which may hamper its action. Well, I shall demonstrate to you whenever you like that no government will ever be vigorous or stable so long as it allows in the country any worship of a Supreme Being—that Pandora’s Box, that keen-edged weapon destructive of every government, that appalling system in virtue of which everybody fancies he has the right to cut everybody else’s throat every day. Let him die a thousand deaths, the man who thinks to preach a God, in any country however governed. The blessed scoundrel the feebleminded revere has no other purpose than to sap the foundations of the State; inside it he endeavors to form an independent caste, the everlasting foe of happiness and equality; he strives to achieve dominion over his compatriots, he strives to light the fires of discord, and ends up enchaining the people, with whom he is aware he shall be able to do whatever he wishes once he has blinded them by superstition and gangrened them by fanaticism.”
“And yet,” Durand remarked, merely for the sake of hearing our man’s conversation, “religion is the cornerstone of morality; and morals, however you have twisted them, none the less remain very essential in a government.”
“Of whatever nature you may suppose this government,” Cornaro rejoined, “I shall prove to you that morality is useless to it. And morality, furthermore, what do you mean by the term? Is it not the practice of all social virtues? Will you then be so kind as to tell me what bearing the practice of any virtue can possibly have upon the workings of government? Are you afraid that the vice which is the opposite of these virtues might upset those workings? Never. Nay, it is far less important that governmental action be exerted against corrupt persons than against moral persons. The latter are addicted to arguing, and you will never have a solid government where men spend their time using their rational faculties: for government is a brake upon men, and the man with a mind wants no brakes upon him. Whence it is that the shrewdest lawmakers were eager to bury in ignorance the men they sought to rule; they sensed that the chains they meant to impose were more apt to keep the imbecile on his knees than the individual of genius. You are going to reply to me that in a free government this cannot be the lawmaker’s desire. And I am going to ask you what government is free; does any such thing exist anywhere on earth? More, can a single free government possibly exist? Is not man everywhere the slave of laws? And, once this is so, does that not mean he is everywhere in chains? Once enchained, is it not the desire of his oppressor, whoever he may be, to maintain man in that state where he can be most easily held captive? Now, is that state not plainly the state of immorality? The kind of drunken rapture the immoral and corrupt man perpetually vegetates in, is that not the state in which his legislator can maintain him most conveniently, paralyze him most easily? Why then should the legislator wish to inject virtues into him? Never save when man purges himself does he grow restive, contentious, examine his governors, and change the regime. For your government’s sake, pinion the citizen by means of immorality, drown him in immorality … and he will never cause you any trouble. I ask you, moreover, looking at things in a broader sense, I ask you whether vices are of any consequence in dealings between men: what matters it to the State whether Peter robs John, or whether, in his turn, John murders Peter? It is perfectly absurd to imagine that these various tit-for-tats can be of the slightest consequence to the State. But there must be laws to keep crime in check…. What need is there to keep crime in check? Crime is necessary to Nature’s right functioning, her laws expect it, it is the counterweight to virtue: and it beseems human beings to undertake to repress it! The man of the primeval forest, say, did he have laws holding his passions in check, and did he lead an any less happy existence than you? Fear not lest strength be ever discomfited by weakness; if the latter always comes away the loser, ’tis because Nature wills that it be thus; and it is not for you to oppose her law.”
“That,” said I, “is a system which opens wide the door to every sort of horror.”
“But they are indispensable, horrors: does not Nature convince us of it when she causes the most virulent poisons to grow cheek to jowl with the most wholesome plants? Why do you object to crime? Not because you find it evil in itself, but because it is prejudicial to you: do you suppose, however, that the man who is served by crime thinks to condemn it? Why, no! If then crime makes for as much happiness in the world as unhappiness, where is the justice of the law that punishes it? The character of a good law must be to promote the welfare of everybody; the law you promulgate against crime will not achieve anything of the sort, it will satisfy no one but the victim of the offense, and will probably supremely displease the agent. The great shortcoming, the final misfortune of men is, in their lawmaking, never to consider more than one fraction of humanity and always to utterly disregard the rest; you wonder that so many blunders are committed, now you know why.”
We had reached that point in the discussion when a servant came to announce to us that a woman plunged in extremest poverty was waiting downstairs, and earnestly desired to have a few words with Signor Cornaro.
“Send her in,” I said before the Venetian had a chance to reply.
The women surrounding the table immediately got up from their knees to make room for the ensuing scene, and joined the fifty sultanas who were exhibiting their asses upon the four stages.
A moment later there entered, with modesty, a pregnant woman of about thirty, as lovely as Venus, and followed by two little boys belonging to her, one of whom was fourteen, the other thirteen, and by two girls, also her children, aged fifteen and twelve.
“Oh, my Lord!” she cried, she and the rest of her family sinking down at the feet of Cornaro, the perfect dupe of a scene I had arranged with a view to playing upon his susceptibilities, “oh, my Lord, my Lord! ’tis your kindness I implore; in the name of heaven, have pity upon a poor woman abandoned by her husband and the mother of these unhappy children you see begging you for bread. For two years now have we been destitute; without work, without resources, the grave must soon claim us all five if harsh mankind persists in denying us any means to prolong our existence. Oh, good sir! look not unmeltingly upon the wretchedness that invokes your compassion: succor us, else we must perish.”
As I said, this woman’s appearance was delicious; her negligent dress, her pregnancy, graces distributed everywhere about her person, the enchanting looks of her children, the tears bathing the cheeks of everyone in this fascinating family: so incendiary was the general effect, so furiously did it inflame our libertine’s criminal lust, that for an instant I thought he was going to discharge before a finger was laid upon him. But he fought his feelings into line, ’twas for much more piquant scenes the rascal was reserving himself; and ’twas to execute them he took me with him into a chamber nearby, whither the victims I have just described had been promptly directed.
And now that cannibal’s ferocity attains full flower. He is beside himself; incoherent speech declares his extreme disorder, he stammers, babbles, his words are foul, his phrases unconnected, his ideas blasphemous, dreadful. I shall continue to portray him in this distracted mood: no aspect of the subject can be left obscure by the artist who undertakes to portray for mankind the monstrosities of Nature.
“Well then, bitch,” says he upon making his entrance, “I have come to relieve you; you are gravid, I am going to make you whelp. Quickly, strip … naked, naked, and buttocks especially … Juliette, I stiffen, I stiffen considerably … rub alcohol on my balls … but get these sluts out of their clothes, and make haste….”
And, pronouncing these words, he aims a terrible punch at the mother’s face: blackens her eye, breaks one of her teeth, sends her crashing twenty feet away; and the brute, the while leering at her, handles m
y ass so ungently that, fearing lest he turn upon me, I hurriedly remove the rags covering the poor wretch, already fallen to the floor which her tears and her blood are soon to wet. Having to stoop over to undress her, I make the fairest exposition of my behind: lewd Cornaro takes firm grasp upon it and embuggers me.
“Strip her,” he cries, “pull the clothes off her body, tear them off, strangle her if she resists; are you insensitive to my erection?”
Cornaro now demands that the unlucky creature get upon her knees and beg me to undress her; and while she is doing so, he spits in her face. Once she is in the state he desires, he quits my ass, jerks her to her feet, then, himself, in the twinkling of an eye, snatches everything they are wearing off the two boys and the two little girls, and assails those four behinds with the most heavy-handed and the most loathsome caresses. Then, ordering me to sear the mother’s buttocks with a candle-flame for a few moments, “That will do,” he cries, “now give me some switches.”
These instruments having been furnished him, he has the mother stretch out upon her back; then, upon her swollen belly, he establishes the four children, one atop the other, which provides him with a belly and four behinds to flagellate. First, he kisses, paws that pyramid of charms, he praises their beauty, expresses wonder that poverty and privation have made no visible inroads upon these unhappy creatures’ health or plumpness. Then, shifting from surprise to wickedness, and plying his switches with the speed of light, he thrashes the targets set tier on tier, from that overripe, snow-white belly to the uppermost of those eight appetizing buttocks. I frigged him during the operation, and resorted to the most atrocious and sanguinary stratagems to keep his energy from flagging. Now and again, when he would pause to rest, when he would gaze gloatingly at the stripes and slashes his barbarity had inflicted, he would thrust his prick into my ass, withdraw after three or four stabs, and resume his baleful fustigations. Weary of this inaugural pleasure, he gave it up in favor of pressing the young mother’s belly, of kneading it, beating it, hammering it with his fists, and while he did so he was covering the four children’s bloody behinds with his kisses.
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