34 This I attest for having seen it myself.
35 Those Spanish were also the world’s most effeminate people; it is an easy step from affluence and softness to cruelty.
36 One by one were removed: fingers, toes, feet, hands, teeth, eyes, nose, tongue, all protruberances, virile parts, and the clitoris in the case of women.
37 Once women are in the habit of exciting themselves to pleasure only by giving vent to the cruelty latent within them, the extreme delicacy of their fibers, the prodigious sensitivity of their organs cause them to go a great deal farther than men in this direction.
Notes for Part Five
1 The Neapolitan ounce is worth about eleven French livres ten sous.
2 With what art the workings of the tyrant soul are here developed; and how many revolutions explained by this single word!
3 The reader is herewith notified that the names of the participants in this celebrated conjuration have all been disguised.
4 Say, O genius of the Stockholm revolution, didst thou not go to school in Paris?
5 See, in La Fontaine, the ingenious fable “The Frogs Who Seek a King.” Un happy inhabitants of this globe, there’s the story of you one and all.
6 He was the one Ankerstrom killed in 1789.
7 Those who have had a close view of this woman, famous as much for her wit as for her misdeeds, will here recognize her sufficiently well to agree that this portrait of Catherine could only have been painted from nature.
8 This whip is fashioned from a bull’s pizzle; to it are attached three thongs of moose hide. A single stroke draws blood: these instruments are of incomparable utility to those who cherish, either actively or passively, the pleasures of flagellation. To increase their effectiveness, steel tips may be fitted to the thongs; it then becomes possible to remove flesh virtually without effort; one hundred strokes applied by a vigorous arm will kill anyone. One such whip, more or less studded, is in the possession of every voluptuous Russian.
9 This habit is so compelling that its addicts are unable to do without whipping, and were they to deprive themselves of it, it well might be to their peril. Just prior to those moments when they customarily repeat the ceremony, they are subject to itchings so extreme that sound thrashing constitutes their sole hope of relief. See Abbé Boileau’s history of the Flagellants; and the excellent translation Mercier de Compiegne has given us of Meibomius.
10 Fifty versts make about thirty-five miles.
11 At Tiflis the Christians outnumber the Muslims, there are more churches than mosques.
12 It will be remembered that this is Princess Borghese’s first name.
13 May these excellent principles, taking firm root in good minds, make an end forever of the dangerous prejudices which are the cause for our regarding these passions as enemies, when from them alone is born the only felicity we can hope for on earth.
14 The reader must think back to the period at which this was written.
15 It has not come out so well with those peoples who, through a mistaken impulse of philosophy, thought they were destroying superstition when they pillaged its altars. What remains to them now? The same prejudice, and no more gold. The ninnies! Seeing not by what hand they were being manipulated, they fancied they were abolishing worship, and actually lent it strength; mean instruments of the rascals directing them, the poor fools fancied they were serving Reason, when they were only fattening swine. Religious revolutions are prepared by clever writings, by instruction, and end with the total extinction not of the baubles of religious stupidity, but of the knaves who preach and foment it.
16 Marie Antoinette of France.
17 It has been remarked that there were never so many police regulations, restrictive codes governing morals, etc., as during the closing years of the reigns of Charles I and of Louis XVI.
18 Not until the fatherland was in danger did the Romans name a dictator.
19 This sketch was done from nature.
20 The ounce is worth eleven livrcs ten sous.
21 Called Puteoli in classical times.—Tr.
22 Nature’s primary impulses are invariably criminal; those which steer us toward virtuousness are merely secondary, and never but the fruit of education, of debility, or of fear. The individual Nature molds for kingship, who, once out of her hands, falls into the hands of no educators and who by dint of his new position becomes the most powerful of men and immune to fear, that royal personage, I say, will take his daily bath in the blood of his subjects; and will be the natural man besides.
23 See, on this subject, the speech of the Bishop of Grenoble in the fourth volume of La Nouvelle Justine, pp. 275 ff.
24 It is the common practice in Italy to make one’s confessor one’s pimp; in high-ranking circles, these two offices are closely knit, and the priests, given a little to intriguing anyhow, usually exercise them admirably and simultaneously.
25 Certain carping critics complained that, in Justine, we introduced only masculine villains onto the stage; here, thank heaven! we are in no danger of hearing the same withering reproaches. The truth, alas, is that evil-doing, one of the fundamental elements in the workings of Nature, is in an approximately equal degree manifest throughout the entire range of Nature’s creatures; the more sensitive an individual, the more sharply this atrocious Nature will bend him into conformance with evil’s irresistible laws; whence it is that women surrender to it more heatedly and perform it with greater artistry than men. But all, men and women alike, are wicked because they have to be: if in any of that there is anything absurd or unjust, it is the law made by the man who dares have the idiotic and vain pretension of repressing or combating the law of Nature.
Notes for Part Six
1 Whores of that nationality are greatly sought after in foreign lands. Their extreme indulgence, their accomplishments, their libertinage, and their beauty have won them a position of privilege among the world’s harlots, who in other countries are almost always ugly, inept, and unclean.
2 The most famous in all Italy.
3 Few men know how to have themselves cared for following discharge; exhausted, prostrated, they sneak off into a corner, listless and empty-headed. Nevertheless, upon post-ejaculatory care depends the vigor necessary to tasting further enjoyments, and to emerging from former ones in a less collapsed state. This care consists in having oneself sucked without delay, in having one’s balls comforted and fondled, and in the application of very hot cloths. It is also helpful, after the crisis, to absorb restoratives, or spirituous liquors. The latter employed as lotions upon the testicles will also produce excellent effects.
4 Never is one’s desire for a prick in the behind so keen as directly after a whipping; and never does one more keenly desire the whip than just after an ass-fucking. ’Tis incredible how these two pleasures hang together and mutually feed each other.
5 These charming creatures, of whom fools are wont to have a low opinion, bring to society the same qualities they demonstrate in pleasure: they are always more original, more intelligent, more agreeable than others; almost all of them have graces, talents, imagination: why therefore hold against them a failing for which only Nature is responsible? Clumsy, dull-witted devotees of ordinary pleasures, you censure them only because they reject your advances; but if one pauses to analyze the women who appreciate you, they will always be found to be almost as stupid as yourselves.
6 It is, of course, at this point that we should examine the revolting absurdity of weeping over the dead. Sooner than lament, one should rejoice; for by perishing, this dear one you loved obtained his deliverance from all life’s tribulations. Furthermore, our grief, our tears can be of no use to him, and they affect us unpleasantly. The same applies to burial ceremonies, and to the respect one might still have for the deceased: useless, superstitious, all of it. To a cadaver one owes nothing other than to deposit it in good soil, where it can germinate at once, swiftly metamorphose into worm, housefly, or vegetable, which is difficult in cemeteries. If one wis
hes to render a last service to a dead man, then place him at the foot of a fruit tree, or in some fertile meadow; that is all you owe him, all the rest is absurd. (Touching this matter, see the remarks on p. 959.)
Notes for Bibliography
1 See the “Bibliographie des Œuvres de Sade” drawn up by Robert Valençay in Les Infortunes de la Vertu, Paris, Les Éditions du Point du Jour, 1946.
2 In a letter of March 6, 1791.
3 An earlier edition of The 120 Days; edited by Dr. Eugen Dühren, was published in 1904. The version is so riddled with errors, however, that Maurice Heine’s 1931–1935 edition must rightly figure as the original edition of this work.
4 Numbers 1 through 17 represent works mentioned in the 1788 Catalogue raisonné; numbers 18 through 20 are works seized at Sade’s publisher, Massé, on 15 Ventôse, An IX; number 21 is the projected ten-volume work burned at the Préfecture de Police after Sade’s death; numbers 22 through 25 correspond to works mentioned in the “general catalogue” that appears in Cahiers personnels (1803–04).
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