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“We do punish libertinism,” my tutor [ Noirceuil] went on. “Plutarch tells us that the Samnites went daily, under legal supervision, to a place called 'The Gardens,' and that there they abandoned themselves pell-mell to such lascivious pleasures that it was almost impossible to imagine them! The historian goes on to say that in this blessed spot the distinctions of sex and the ties of blood vanished beneath the lure of pleasure: l'ami devenait la femme de son ami; la fille, la tribade de sa mère, et plus souvent encore le fils, la catin de son père, à côté du frère enculant sa soeur.
“We rate the blushing maiden highly. Not so the Filipinos; in their isles are public officials who are paid well to deflower virgins on their wedding eve.
“In Sparta, adultery was publicly permitted.
“We despise girls who have prostituted themselves. The maidens of Lydia, on the contrary, were only valued in proportion to the number of their lovers. The fruits of their prostitution was their one and only dowry.
“The women of Cyprus, to make money, went to sell themselves in public to every foreigner who landed on their island.
“Moral depravation is necessary in a state; the Romans sensed this in establishing brothels of boys and girls the whole breadth of the republic, and theaters whose girls danced completely naked.
“The women of Babylon prostituted themselves once a year in the temple of Venus; the Armenian women were obliged to dedicate their virginity to the priests of Tanaïs, who indulged in primitive sodomy with them, allowing them the favor of being deflowered only in so far as they had sustained the earlier attacks stoutheartedly; a protest, a tear, a movement, a cry—if this escaped them, they were deprived of the second attack, and found no further opportunity to marry.
“The Canarians of Goa make their daughters suffer quite a different torture; they prostitute them to an idol fitted with an iron member of prodigious size; they thrust them forcibly upon this terrible godemiché that they have taken care to heat wonderfully. In this dilated state the child goes looking for a husband, who will not take her without this ceremony.
“The Cainites, second-century heretics, claimed that heaven was only reached by incontinence. They maintained that each infamous act has its tutelary angel, and they worshiped this angel as they abandoned themselves to incredible debauches.
“Ewen, an ancient king of England, had established by law in his counties that no girl could marry unless he had taken her virginity. In the whole of Scotland, and in parts of France, the powerful lords enjoyed this right.
“Women, as well as men, arrive at cruelty through license. Three hundred women of the Inca Atabaliba, in Peru, prostituted themselves at once to the Spaniards, and aided them in the massacre of their husbands.
“Sodomy is general throughout the earth; there is no people that does not practice it; not a great man but is given to it. The cult of Sappho shares this reign. This passion belongs to Nature just as the other one does; it forms in the heart of a girl, at the tenderest age, at the age of candor and innocence, when she has received no alien impression; then, she is the voice of Nature, then, she is stamped with Nature's hand.
“Bestiality was universal. Xenophon tells us that during the retreat of the Ten Thousand, the Greeks made use only of goats. This practice is widespread throughout Italy to this day; le bouc est meilleur que sa femmelle; son anus, plus étroit, est plus chaud; et cet animal, naturellement lubrique, s'agite de lui-même dès qu'il s'aperçoit qu'on décharge: sois bien persuadée, Juliette, que je n'en parle que par expérience.
“Le dindon est délicieux, mais il faut lui couper le cou à l'instant de la crise; le resserrement de son boyau vous comble alors de volupté. 1
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On en trouve dans plusieurs bordels de Paris; la fille alors lui passe la tête entre les cuisses, vous avez son cul pour perspective, et elle coupe le cou de l'animal au moment de votre décharge: nous verrons peut-être bientôt cette fantaisie en action.
“The Sybarites were bestial with dogs; Egyptian women prostituted themselves to crocodiles; American women to baboons. In the end they turned to statues; everybody knows that one of Louis XV's page-boys was found discharging over the backside of the Venus Callipyge. A Greek who came to Delphos to consult the oracle found two marble genii in the temple, and in the night did lustful homage to the one he found more handsome. When all was done, he crowned him with laurel, a reward for the pleasures he had received of him.
“The Siamese not only believe suicide permissible, but they go so far as to think that killing oneself is a sacrifice profitable to the soul, and that this sacrifice assures its happiness in the next world.
“In Pegu, for five days on end they turn and re-turn over burning coals the woman who has just given birth; thus she is purified.
“The Caribbeans purchase children from the very breast of the mother; they dye the bellies of these children with roucou. the day they are born, take their virginity when they are seven or eight, and generally kill them after they have served their purpose.
“In the island of Nicaragua, a father is allowed to sell his children for immolation; and when these people consecrate their maize, they sprinkle it with sperm, and dance around this twin product of nature.
“In Brazil, a woman is awarded to every prisoner who is to be sacrificed; he enjoys her; and the women, often pregnant by him, helps to cut him to shreds and takes part in the meal that is made of his flesh.
“Before being ruled by the Incas, the ancient inhabitants of Peru (that is to say the first pioneers who came from Scythia, those who were the first to people America) had a custom of sacrificing their children to their gods.
“The peoples from round about Rio Réal substituted for the circumcision of their daughters—a ceremony customary in a number of nations—a strange enough practice: as soon as they have reached marriageable age, they thrust into their wombs sticks crawling with huge ants which sting them horribly; they take care to renew these sticks to prolong the agony, which never lasts for less than three months and sometimes considerably longer.
“Saint Jerome recounts that, during a journey he made among the Gauls, he saw Scotchmen eating, with extreme pleasure, the buttocks of shepherd lads and the breasts of maidens. I would rather trust to the first of these dishes than to the second; and in company with all cannibal tribes, I believe that the flesh of women, as the flesh of all female animals, is necessarily very inferior to that of the male species.
“The Mingrelians and the Georgians are the handsomest people on earth and at the same time the most addicted to every variety of indulgence and crime, as if Nature had wished to apprise us in this way that these deviations offend her so little that she wishes to accord all these gifts to those most partial to them. Incest, rape, infanticide, prostitution, adultery, murder, theft, sodomy, lesbianism, bestiality, burning, poisoning, abduction, parricide—to them these are virtuous acts to be proud of. Whenever they come together, it is simply to exchange talk of the immensity or enormity of their crimes; reminiscences or plans for such acts become the core of their most delectable conversations: thus they stir themselves to commit new crimes.
“To the north of Tartary there is a people that creates a new god for itself every day; this god has to be the first object encountered on waking in the morning. If by chance it is a turd, a turd is the idol of the day; and by hypothesis, is this not as worthy as the ridiculous god of flour worshiped by the Catholics? One is already excremental matter, and the other will soon be; in truth, the difference is very slight.
“In the province of Matomba, they shut children of both sexes in a very dark house when they reach the age of twelve; here they undergo, by way of initiation, every ill-treatment it pleases the priests to impose upon them, without these children being able to reveal anything or to complain when they leave such houses.
“When a girl is married in Ceylon, it is her brothers who take her maidenhead; her husband never has a right to it.
“We consider pity as a feeling that will bring us to do good works; in Kamchatka it is more logically considered a fault. Among this people it would be held a cardinal vice to withdraw someone from the danger into which fate has flung him. If these people see a man drowning, they pass by without stopping, and they are very careful not to give him any help.
“Forgiving one's enemies is a virtue among the idiot Christians; in Brazil, it is a magnificent deed to kill and eat them.
“In Guiana they expose a girl naked to the biting of flies the first time she menstruates; frequently she dies in the process. The delighted spectator on this occasion spends the whole day in exhilaration.
“On the wedding eve of a young woman in Brazil, they make a large number of wounds in her buttocks, so that her husband, already moved by the blood and the climate to revulsion from the physical, will at last be repulsed by the branding set before him.
“The few examples I have collected will be sufficient to show you, Juliette, what those virtues our European laws and religions make so much of really are, what this odious thread of brotherhood, so praised by unspeakable Christianity, is. You can see whether it is or is not in the human heart; would so many execrations be so widespread, if the existence of the virtue they opposed had any reality?
“I will never cease to repeat to you: this feeling for humanity is a fantasy; it can never belong to the passions, nor even to the needs, for in sieges men are seen to devour each other. It is then no more than a feeling of weakness absolutely alien to Nature, an offspring of fear and prejudice. Can we hide from ourselves the fact that Nature gives us our needs and our passions? Yet needs and passions are unmindful of the virtue of humanity; therefore that virtue is not in Nature; and thence it is purely an effect of the egoism that has brought us to desire peace with our kind, in order to enjoy it ourselves. But the man who does not fear retaliation binds himself only with the greatest of difficulty to a duty respectable only to those who are apprehensive of retaliation. Ah, no, no, Juliette, there is no unadulterated pity, no pity which does not turn back on ourselves. Let us analyze ourselves thoroughly at the moment when we catch ourselves commiserating, and we shall see that deep in our hearts a hidden voice cries: You weep over this wretch because you are wretched yourself and you fear you will become more so. Now what is that voice but the voice of fear? And where is fear born but in egoism?”
“My brothers,” said [ Belmor], “I have promised to speak to the society today on love; and although this discourse may appear to be addressed only to the men, the women, I assure you, will learn as well all that is necessary to preserve them from so dangerous a sentiment....”
“Love is the name we give to the inner feeling that draws us, so to speak, in spite of ourselves, towards some object that imparts to us a sharp desire to unite with it, to come close to it time and time again, an object that delights us, that intoxicates us when we achieve that union, and that reduces us to despair and tears us with anguish, when some extraneous cause obliges us to break this union. If this extravagance never did more than lead us to ardent, intoxicated possession, it would only be an absurdity; but since it leads us to a certain metaphysic that, by transforming us into the thing loved, makes its acts, wants, and desires as dear to us as our very own, by this alone it becomes excessively dangerous; for it takes us out of ourselves too much, and causes us to neglect our own interests for those of the thing loved. Identifying us, so to speak, with this thing, we are made to adopt its miseries and vexations and to add them to the sum of ours. What is more, the fear either of losing this object, or of seeing it grow cold, plagues us incessantly, and from a most peaceable state in our life we pass insensibly, by accepting this fetter, to doubtless the cruelest one that can be imagined in the world. If the compensation or indemnity for so many pains were other than ordinary enjoyment, perhaps I would advise risking it; but all the cares, the torments, the thorns of love never lead to anything that cannot easily be obtained without it. Where, then, is the need for its irons?
“When a beautiful woman submits to me and I fall in love with her, I have no object different from that of the man who sees her and desires her without formulating any kind of love. We both wish to sleep with her; he only wants her body; I, by false and dangerous metaphysics that blind me to my real motive, which is that of my rival, persuade myself that it is only her heart that I want, that any notion of enjoyment is out of the question. I persuade myself so well that I should be only too willing to agree to love this woman for herself, and to purchase her heart at the price of sacrificing all my physical desires.
“Here is the grievous cause of my folly; here is what will drag me into that fearful abyss of affliction; here is what will blight my life; in that moment all will be changed—suspicions, jealousies, fears, will become the bitter nourishment of my unfortunate existence. The nearer I get to my happiness, the more certain it will be, and the inevitable fear of losing it will poison my days so much the more.
“By renouncing the thorns of this dangerous feeling, do not imagine that I deny myself its roses. Then I should pluck them securely, I should have the best of the flower, scattering all that was incongruous; likewise I should possess the body I desire, but not the soul that is of no use to me. If man were more enlightened as to his real interests in sensual enjoyment, he would spare his heart the cruel fever that burns and parches it. If he were able to convince himself that there is no need whatsoever to be loved in order to enjoy thoroughly, and that love rather detracts from the ecstasies of pleasure than adds to them, he would renounce these metaphysics of feeling that blind him, would confine himself to simple bodily enjoyment, and would know true happiness, forever sparing himself the grief inseparable from its dangerous scruples.
“This refinement that we locate in the desire to enjoy is an imaginary, quite chimerical feeling, of some value perhaps in the metaphysics of love; but then that is the case with all illusions—they flourish reciprocally. Yet this feeling is useless, and even harmful, in matters that relate simply to the satisfaction of the senses. From this moment, as you see, love becomes completely useless; and the man of reason may no longer see in the object of his enjoyment anything but an object for which his nervous fluid is set ablaze, a creature extremely indifferent in herself, who gives herself up to the purely physical satisfaction of the desires kindled by her in this fluid, and who, once this satisfaction is given and taken, returns, in the eyes of the man of reason, to the category she previously occupied.
“She is not the only one of her kind; he can find others as willing and as good. He lived well before meeting her; why should he not live in like fashion afterwards? How could the infidelity of this woman disturb him, whatever form it took? Does she deprive her lover of anything by lavishing her favors on another? He had his turn, so what has he to complain of? Why should another not have her as well? And what does he lose in this creature that he may not find at once in another? Besides, if she deceives him for a rival, she may just as well deceive this rival for him; this second lover will then be no more loved than the first; why, if this is so, should he be jealous, since neither the one nor the other is the better treated? These sorrows would be pardonable, at the very most, if this beloved woman were unique in the world; the moment the loss is reparable, they become extravagances.
“To put myself for a moment in the position of the first lover, what, I ask you, does this creature possess to occasion me such pain? A little attention to my person, some reciprocation of my feelings; illusion alone endowed them with power, and it was the desire to possess this woman, it was interest that adorned her in my eyes, it was—either because I had not had enough pleasure, or through some residue of my early mistakes—that the veil I was accustomed to wear before enjoyment fell about my eyes again, and in spite of myself. And I do not tear it away! Weakness... pusillanimity! Let us evaluate this goddess after taking pleasure, this goddess who blinded me before....
“Let us use this period of calm and exhaustion to consider her in cold blood, to spend a moment, as Lucretius says, behind the scenes of life. Well then, we see this object that turns our head, we see it with the same desires, the same needs, the same bodily form, the same appetities... afflicted with the same infirmities as all the other creatures of its sex, and ridding ourselves in this cold-blooded examination of the ridiculous enthusiasm that drew us towards this object, similar in every detail to all others of its kind, we see that without it we lose nothing that we cannot easily replace....
“Let us go so far as to say this: in no case is woman formed for man's exclusive happiness. From the point of view of enjoyment, she certainly does not completely supply him, since man finds a keener enjoyment with his own kind. As a friend, her duplicity, her submissiveness, or rather her lowness, are opposed to the perfection of the sense of friendship. Friendship demands candor and equality; if one of two friends dominates the other, friendship is destroyed. Now, this authority of one of the two sexes over the other, fatal though it is to friendship, necessarily exists between two friends of different sex; a woman, then, is neither good as mistress nor as friend. Her only real position is in the slavery the Orientals keep her in; she is good only for enjoyment, beyond which, as good King Chilperic said, you must pull out as quickly as possible.
“If it is easily proved that love is only a national prejudice, that three-quarters of the peoples of the world who habitually cloister their women have never known this frenzy of the imagination, then by going back to the source of this prejudice we may readily assure ourselves that it is nothing more, and so arrive at a means of curing it. Now it is certain, as I say, that this turn of mind derives from the age-old respect our ancestors had for women, by reason of the role of prophetess they exercised in towns and in the country; fear led from respect to a cult, and gallantry was born in the heart of superstition. But this respect was never present in Nature, and it would be a waste of time to look for it there. The inferiority of this sex to our own is too well established ever to stimulate in us any real motive for respecting it; and love, which is born of this blind respect, is simply a prejudice. Respect for women increases as the spirit of government moves further away from the principles of Nature; so long as men obey these first laws, they may royally disdain women. When men are debased, women become gods; for it follows necessarily that when men grow weak, the weaker must govern as the stronger are degraded; government is always infirm when women reign. But do not quote Turkey at me; if her government is weak, it is only since plots in the seraglio have curbed its progress. The Turks destroyed the empire of Constantinople when they trailed this sex in chains and when, in full view of the army, Mahomet severed Irene's head, Irene who was suspected of having too great an influence on him. There is meanness and depravity in avowing the slightest worship of women; even in drunkenness it is an impossible cult, and what else can be suspected afterwards? If the usefulness of a thing becomes a reason for worshiping it, you must equally worship your ox, your ass, your chamber pot, and so on.
“In a word, what is called love is nothing else but the desire to enjoy; so long as it lasts, worship is pointless; and as soon as it is satisfied, it is impossible. Which goes to prove most certainly that respect did not arise from worship, but rather worship from respect. Cast your eyes back to those examples of the degradation in which this sex was held formerly, and where it still is among a large proportion of peoples, and you will at last be convinced that the metaphysical passion of love is by no means innate in man, that it is the fruit of his prejudices and customs, and that the object which gave rise to this generally despised passion should never have blinded him....
“Infidelity and libertinage: there, my friends, are the two antidotes to love.... By force of habit, the heart insensibly loses that dangerous softness that makes it liable to impressions of love; it turns indifferent, hardens, and the cure soon follows. Why should I tremble at the severities of this insolent creature when, if I thought a little, I should see that a couple of louis can procure me a body as beautiful as hers, and with no difficulty?
“Let us never lose sight of the fact that the woman who most tries to charm us is certainly concealing faults that would most certainly disgust us if we did but know them. Let us imagine them, suspect them, guess at them—these details; and this first process, at the very moment love is born, will perhaps extinguish it. If she is a maiden, be assured she will reek of some unhealthy odor, if not at one period, then at another: is it really worth while going into raptures over a cloaca? If she is a woman, the traces of some other man may, I do agree, arouse our desires for a moment—but our love? And what is there to be worshiped there... the cavernous mold of a dozen children. Put yourself in mind of her, this divinity of your heart, as she is giving birth; look at this shapeless mass of flesh coming out foul and viscous from the center where you think to find happiness; and last, undress the idol of your soul, at any time—are these the short and crooked thighs that turn your head? Or the fetid, infected pit that they support? Or perhaps her crumpled apron, falling in folds about these same thighs, will heat your imagination? Or those two flaccid globes hanging down to the navel?
“But perhaps you pay homage to the reverse of the medal. And these are two pieces of flabby, yellowish flesh closing over a ghastly hole that joins on the other. Oh! yes, these are certainly the attractions your mind feasts on! And it is to enjoy them that you set yourselves below the most stupid of beasts! But I am mistaken; none of this attracts you. You are snared by very much finer qualities. It is that treacherous, double character, that everlasting state of lying and deceit, that shrewish tone, that voice that sounds like a cat's, that sluttishness or prudery—for no woman escapes one of these two extremes—that slander... that wickedness... that contradiction... that irrelevance.... Yes, yes, I do see how binding these attractions are, and without a doubt their turning your head is well worth the trouble....
“But I daresay someone will object that their adoration always existed; the Greeks and the Romans made gods of Love and his mother. To that I reply that this worship must have had the same principle as ours; among the Greeks and Romans women predicted the future too, and from this was born respect and the cult of respect.... In any case, not much reliance is to be placed on Greeks and Romans as to objects of worship; the people who adored excrement under the name of the god Stercutius and the sewers under that of the goddess Cloacina may well have worshiped women, so often linked by smell to these ancient divinities.
“So, then, let us be wise to the end, and treat these ridiculous idols as the Japanese treat theirs when they do not get what they want. Worship, or appear to worship if you will, until what is desired is obtained; and despise them as soon as you gain it. If you are refused, give the idol a hundred blows with a stick, to teach it not to disdain your wishes; or if you prefer, imitate the Ostians who thrash their gods with all their might the moment they are dissatisfied. The worthless God must be smashed....
“Love is a physical need; beware of ever thinking of it otherwise. 'Love,' says Voltaire, 'is the fabric of Nature embroidered by the imagination.' The aim of love, of its desires and pleasures—all is physical. Never go near the thing that might seem something more than that. Absence and variety are sure remedies for love; you soon forget the one you have stopped seeing, and new pleasures consume the memory of the old. Remorse for loss is soon forgotten. Those pleasures that are irrecoverable may cause bitter regrets, but those that are readily replaced, those that are born minute by minute, at every street corner, should not cost us a tear.”
[Juliette, who tells the story, is traveling in Italy with her friends. One day, in Lombardy, as they are viewing a volcano, they are addressed by a giant, seven feet and three inches tall, wearing enormous twisted-up mustaches, and with a face as dark as the devil's. His name is Minski, and he invites them to visit his castle where he promises to show them some “astonishing things.” They accept, and their host leads the way.]
Leaving the volcanic plain of Pietra-Mala, we spent an hour climbing a high mountain lying to the right. From the peak of this mountain we caught sight of abysses more than two thousand fathoms deep, and to these we directed our steps. All that region was shrouded in woods so clustered, so prodigiously thick, that we could scarcely see our way through. After a sheer descent lasting nearly three hours, we reached the shores of a vast lake. On an island in the middle of that water was to be seen the stronghold that was our guide's lair; the height of the outer walls surrounding it was the reason for our only being able to make out the roof. For six hours we had walked without coming across a habitation of any kind.... We saw no one.
A ferry, black like the Venetian gondolas, awaited us at the edge of the lake. It was from here that we were able to survey the fearful hollow we were in; on all sides it was surrounded by mountains as far as the eye could see, and their summits and barren sides were covered with fir, larch, and ilex. No more dismal and uncouth sight could have met the eye; you would have thought it the edge of the world. We stepped into the ferry; the giant steered it singlehanded. From the haven to the castle was still three hundred fathoms. We arrived at the foot of an iron gate cut into the solid wall that ran round the castle; here we encountered moats ten feet across, and crossed them by a bridge that lifted as soon as we had passed. A second wall appeared, again we went through an iron gate, and we found ourselves in a woody mass so compact that we thought it impossible to proceed farther. In truth we could go no farther, because the mass, formed of a quickset hedge, offered only sharp points. In its heart was the château's last enceinte, ten feet thick. The giant lifted a stone of enormous size that he alone could grapple. A winding staircase was revealed; the stone closed to, and by way of the bowels of the earth, ever in shadows, we reached the center vaults of the house, from which we ascended by means of an opening guarded by a stone similar to the one just mentioned. So here we were, in a low room entirely lined with skeletons; the seats in this place were constructed only of the bones of the dead; and whether one liked it or not, one sat down on skulls. Fearful cries seemed to us to emanate from below ground, and we quickly learned that the dungeons where this monster's victims groaned were situated in the vaults of this room.
When we were seated, Minski said to us, “You are in my power: I can do with you what I please. However, don't be frightened; the actions I have seen you commit are so close to my way of thinking that I believed you worthy of knowing and partaking of the pleasures of my retreat. Listen to me; I have time to instruct you before supper, which will be prepared while I talk to you.
“I am a Muscovite, born in a village on the banks of the Volga. My name is Minski. When my father died he left me immense riches, and Nature shaped my physical faculties and tastes to meet those favors Fortune bestowed upon me. Feeling myself in no wise made to vegetate deep in an obscure province like that in which I had first seen the light of day, I traveled. The whole universe did not seem vast enough for the span of my desires; it offered me limits, and I wanted none. A born libertine, impious, debauched, bloody, and ferocious, I roved the world only in order to learn its vices, and acquired them only to refine upon them. I began with China, the kingdom of the Great Mogul, and Tartary; I went over all Asia; proceeding to Kamchatka, I entered America by the famous Bering Strait. I passed through that vast quarter of the world, now with civilized peoples, now with savages, and never imitating anything but the crimes of the one lot, and the vices and atrocities of the other. So dangerous were the tendencies I brought back to your Europe that I was condemned to be burned in Spain, broken in France, hanged in England, and clubbed to death in Italy. My wealth protected me against all that.
“I went to Africa, and it was there that I fully realized that what you are so foolish as to call depravation is never anything but the natural state of man, and more frequently the result of the soil Nature has thrown him on. These hardy children of the sun laughed at me when I wanted to reproach them with their barbarity towards their wives. 'And what,' they replied, 'is a wife unless the domestic animal Nature provides us with to satisfy both our needs and our pleasures? What rights has she to deserve more from us than our farmyard beasts do? The only difference we see in it,' these judicious peoples told me, 'is that our domestic animals may deserve some indulgence by reason of their meekness and submission, while the women deserve only severity and barbarity for their perpetual state of deceit, naughtiness, betrayal, and perfidy. And then we sleep with them too, and what better can you do with a woman you have slept with than treat her like an ox or an ass, or slaughter her for food?'
“In a word, it was there that I observed man vicious by temperament, cruel by instinct, ferocious by education; this disposition pleased me; I found it more akin to Nature; and I liked it more than the American's unadorned vulgarity, than the European's imposture, than the Asiatic's shameless sensuality. Having hunted men to death with the first, drunk and lied with the second, and fornicated with the third, I now ate human beings with these others. I have retained this taste; all the debris of bodies you see here is simply the remains of creatures I eat; I only feed on human flesh; and I hope you will be pleased with the feast of it I propose to have prepared for you. A boy of fifteen I had yesterday has been killed for our supper, he should be delicious.
“After ten years of travel, I returned to make a tour of my homeland. My mother and my sister were still alive. I was natural heir to both of them. Not wishing to set foot in Muscovy again, I considered it vital to my interests to reconcile these two successions; I ravished and murdered them both on the same day. My mother still retained her beauty, and was as tall as myself; and my sister, although only six feet tall, was the most superb creature to be seen in the two Russias.
“I gathered all that could come to me from these inheritances; and finding I had something like two millions to squander every year, I returned to Italy with the intention of settling there. But I wanted an unusual, mysterious situation in the wilds, where I could abandon myself to all the treacherous waywardness of my imagination; and such deviations are no trifling matters, my friends, as I hope you will see, however few days we spend together. There is no single dissolute passion that is not dear to my heart, not a crime that has not beguiled me. If I have not committed more crimes than I have, it has been for want of occasion; I cannot reproach myself with having neglected a single opportunity; and I have forced those [situations] that were not coming to a head with sufficient energy. If I had been so fortunate as to have doubled the sum of my crimes, I should have had all the happier memories of them; for memories of crime are delights that cannot be overincreased.
“This aim will make me appear a villain in your sight, and I hope that what you will witness in this house will confirm this reputation to me. Have no doubts as to the extent of these accommodations; it is immense, et renferme deux cents petits garçons, dans l'âge de cinq à seize ans, qui passent communément de mon lit dans ma boucherie, et à peu près le même nombre de jeunes gens destinés à me foutre. J'aime infiniment cette sensation; il n'en est pas de plus douce au monde que celle d'avoir le cul vigoureusement limé, pendant qu'on s'amuse soi-meme de telle manière que ce puisse être. Les plaisirs que je vous ai vus goûter tantôt sur le bord du volcan me prouvent que vous partagez cette façon de perdre du foutre, et voilà pourquoi je vous parle avec autant de franchise; je ferais, sans cela, tout simplement de vous des victimes.
“I keep two harems. The first comprises two hundred girls aged from five to twenty, whom I eat when, by dint of lechery, they are sufficiently mortified. Two hundred women aged from twenty to thirty are in the second, and you shall see how I treat them. Fifty valets of both sexes are employed in the service of this considerable number of objects of lust; and to recruit them, I have a hundred women agents dispersed through the cities of the world. Would you believe that with the colossal coming and going all this demands, there is nevertheless only the one way of entering my island, the way you have just come? There should be no doubt, certainly, as to the quantity of creatures who tread this mysterious path.
“The veils I draw over all this will never be torn apart. Not that I have the slightest thing to fear; this place is part of the States of the Grand Duke of Tuscany; they know everything about the irregularity of my conduct; and the money I spread about shelters me from everything.
“And now for you to make my complete acquaintance, you must have a little more about myself. I am forty-five, my lecherous talents are such que je ne me couche jamais sans avoir déchargé dix fois. Il est vrai que l'extrême quantité de chair humaine dont je me nourris contribue beaucoup à l'augmentation et à l'épaisseur de la matière séminale. Whoever tries this regime will certainly multiply his libidinous abilities threefold, quite apart from the strength, health, and freshness this food will maintain in him. I am not speaking of his pleasure: suffice it for you to know that once it has been tasted, it is no longer possible to eat anything else, and that there is not a single meat, animal, or fish, that can compare. It is only a matter of getting over the first revulsions; and once the barriers are down, you can never have enough. Comme j'espère que nous déchargerons ensemble, il est essentiel que je vous prévienne des effrayants symptômes de cette crise en moi; d'épouvantables hurlements la précèdent, l'accompagnent, et les jets du sperme élancés pour lors s'élèvent au plancher, souvent dans le nombre de quinze ou vingt: jamais la multiplicité des plaisirs ne m'épuise; mes éjaculations sont aussi tumultueuses, aussi abontantes à la diexième fois qu'à la première, et je ne me suis jamais senti le lendemain des fatigues de la veille; à l'égard du membre dont tout cela part, le voici, dit Minski, en mettant au jour un anchois, de dix-huit pouces de long, sur seize de circonférence, surmonté d'un champignon vermeil et large comme le cul d'un chapeau. Oui, le voici: il est toujours dans l'état où vous le voyez, meme en dormant, meme en marchant.”
“Mais, mon cher hôte, vous tuez donc autant de femmes et de garçons que vous en voyez.”
“Almost,” replied the Muscovite, “et comme je mange ce que je fouts, cela m'évite la peine d'avoir un boucher. You need a great deal of wisdom to understand me, I realize. I am a monster, spewed up by Nature to assist her in the destructions she demands. I am a being unique to my species... a... Oh, yes, I know all the invectives conferred upon me, yet strong enough not to need anyone, wise enough to be satisfied in my solitude, to detest all men, to brave their censure, and to care nothing for their opinion of me, learned enough to crush all cults, to flout all religions, and to give not a damn for all the gods, proud enough to abhor all governments, to put myself above all ties, restraints, moral principles; I am happy in my little kingdom. Here I exercise every sovereign right, I taste all the pleasures of despotism, I fear no man, and I live contented. I make few visits, none, even, unless in my walks I come across beings like yourselves who appear to me philosophical enough to come and entertain themselves for a time in my place; these are the only people I invite, and I meet few of them. The powers Nature has endowed me with make me stretch these walks very far; never a day but I do twelve or fifteen leagues....”
“And consequently make a few captures,” I broke in.
“Captures, thefts, fires, murders, every criminal possibility presented to me, I commit, because Nature has given me the taste and ability for all crimes, and there is not one that is not dear to me, and from which I do not derive the fondest pleasures.”
“And justice?”
“It is nowhere in this land. That is why I have set myself here; with money you can do all you want—and I circulate a great deal of it.”
Two of Minski's male slaves, swarthy and repulsive, came to announce that supper was ready. They fall on their knees before their master, lui baisèrent respectueusement les couilles et le trou du cul—and we passed into another room.
“There are no special preparations for you,” said the giant. “All the kings on earth might come visiting me, but I would not deviate from my habits.”
Yet the place and the properties of the room are worth describing.
“The furniture you see here,” our host told us, “is alive. It will move at a mere sign.”
Minski made this sign, and the table came forward. From a corner of the room, it took up a position in the middle; similarly, five armchairs spaced themselves about it, two chandeliers came down from the ceiling and overhung the center of the table.
“An elementary mechanism,” said the giant making us look closer at the substance of this furniture. “You will notice that this table, these chandeliers, and chairs are simply made up of groups of girls, artistically arranged. My dishes will be laid, hot as they are, on the backs of these creatures; mes bougies sont enforcées dans leurs cons; et mon derrière, ainsi que les vôtres, en se nichant dans ses fauteuils, vont être appuyés sur les doux visages ou les blancs tétons de ces demoiselles; c'est pour cela que je vous prie de vous trousser, mesdames, et vous, messieurs, de vous déculotter, afin que, d'après les paroles de l'écriture, 'la chair puisse se reposer sur la chair.'”
“Minski,” I pointed out to our Muscovite, “the girls' role is wearying, especially if you are too long at table.”
“The very worst that can happen,” said Minski, “is that some of them die, and these losses are too easily replaced for me to bother my head over it for a moment.”
Au moment où nous nous troussions, et où les hommes se déculottaient, Minski exigea que nos fesses lui fussent présentées; il les mania, il les mordit, et nous remarquâmes que, de nos quatre culs, celui de Sbrigani, par un raffinement de caprices facile à supposer dans un tel homme, fur celui qu'il fêta le plus; il le gamahucha pendant près d'un quart d'heure; cette cérémonie faite, nous nous assîmes à cru sur les tétons et les visages des sultanes, ou plutôt des esclaves de Minski.
A dozen naked girls, between twenty and twenty-five years old, served the dishes on to the living tables, and since they were of silver and extremely hot, by burning the buttocks or nipples of the creatures who composed these tables, there resulted a most pleasant compulsive motion, like the swelling of the sea. More than twenty entrées or roasts embellished the table; and on sideboards made of girls in groups of four, who likewise came up at the slightest signal, were laid wines of every kind.
“My friends,” said our host, “I warned you that only human flesh is eaten here; none of the dishes you see here but is made of that.”
“We will try it,” said Sbrigani. “Revulsions are absurdities; they arise only in defect of habit. All meats are made to nourish man, all are offered us to this end by Nature, and it is no more extraordinary to eat a man than a chicken.”
With these words, my husband plunged his fork into a gammon of boy that seemed to him to be done to a turn, and after helping at least two pounds onto his plate, he ate it. I followed suit. Minski encouraged us; and as his appetite was the size of his passion, he had soon cleared a dozen dishes.
Minski drank as he ate; he was already on his thirtieth bottle of Burgundy when they served the second course, which he washed down with champagne. Aleatico, Falernian, and other rare Italian wines were drunk at dessert.
More than thirty more bottles had made their way to the guts of our anthropophage when, his senses sufficiently heightened by all this physical and moral rioting, the brute announced to us that he wanted to unload.
“I won't have any of your four,” he said, “because it would kill you, but at least you can assist my pleasures... you shall scrutinize them; I hold you worthy to be excited by them.... Well then, whom do you want me to have?”
“I wish,” I said to Minski, who was leaning lustfully over me and seemed very desirous of me, “I wish you to....”
“Eh quoi! dis-je aussitôt qu'il eût déchargé une seconde fois, vous ne goûtez donc jamais ce plaisir qu'il n'en coûte la vie à un individu?”
“Au moins, répond l'ogre, il faut qu'une créature humaine meure pendant que je fous; je ne déchargerais pas sans l'alliance des soupirs de la mort à ceux de ma lubricité, et je ne dois jamais l'éjaculation de mon foutre qu'a l'idée de cette mort que j'occasionne.
“But let us go into another room,” the anthropophage went on, “Ices, coffee, and liqueurs await us....”
We went in. From the prevailing odor of the place, we readily guessed the kind of ices that were offered us. In five bowls of white porcelain, there were set a dozen or fifteen étrons of the most elegant shape, and very newly laid.
“Here are the ices,” the ogre told us, “that I consume after dinner. Nothing is so good for the digestion, and at the same time, nothing gives me so much pleasure. These étrons come from the best seats in my seraglio, and you may eat them with every confidence.”
“Minski,” I replied, “a great deal of practice is necessary for that dish; we might perhaps take to it in a moment of aberration, but in cold blood, never.”
“Exactly so,” said the ogre, taking hold of a bowl and swallowing the contents, “do just as you wish, you are under no constraint from me. Here, there are liqueurs; I will have mine afterwards.”
Nothing was so baleful as the lightning of this room, and it was in perfect harmony with the rest. Twenty-four death's-heads enclosed a lamp whose beams shot through the eyes and jaws. I had never seen anything so frightening. At eleven o'clock, Minski sent word to us that we would be accorded the honor of visiting him in his bed. We entered; his bedroom was very large; and we saw there superb frescoes representing ten licentious tableaux whose composition could well pass for the nee plus ultra of lewdness.
At the end of this room was a huge alcove encircled with mirrors and ornamented with sixteen pillars of black marble, to each of which was bound a young girl, her back being visible. By means of two cords placed, like bell ropes, at our hero's bed head, he could have a different torture fall on each of the backsides pointed at him, and which lasted as long as the cord was not pulled a second time.... He asked us if we would like to see the way in which he could simultaneously injure the sixteen girls tied to the pillars. I urged him to show us this strange contrivance. He pulled on these fatal ropes and, as they all cried out together, these sixteen wretched creatures sustained a different wound apiece. These found themselves pricked, burned, flagellated; those, torn with pincers, cut, clipped, scratched, and all with such vehemence that blood flowed from every part.
“If I redoubled the effect,” said Minski, “and that does sometimes happen, selon l'état de mes couilles, as I was saying, if I redoubled my efforts, these sixteen whores would perish in my sight at one and the same blow. I love to fall asleep toying with the notion of being able to commit sixteen murders at once, at my slightest whim.”
[During the course of an orgy, Minski kills one of Juliette's companions. This, together with their other frightening experiences in the castle of the ogre, makes Juliette and her friends resolve to attempt to get out alive. They feed Minski some chocolate into which they have put a sleeping potion; and when he falls asleep, they take as much of his treasure as they can carry and make good their escape.]
Conversation became general, and was soon enlivened by philosophy. Albani showed us a letter from Bologna, in which he was informed of the death of one of his friends, who, although highly placed in the Church, had always lived licentiously, and even in his last moments had not wished to be converted.
“You knew him,” he said to Bernis, “there was never any preaching to him. He kept his head and his fine wit to the last, and died in the arms of a niece he adored, assuring her that what vexed him in being constrained to deny the existence of heaven was the despair it left him in, the despair of not meeting her again one day.”
“It seems to me,” said the Cardinal de Bernis, “that such deaths are becoming frequent; the author of Alzire and d'Alembert have made them fashionable.”
“To be sure,” said Albani, “there is considerable weakness in changing your mind on your deathbed. Have we not time to make up our minds in the course of so long a life? The years of vigor and vitality should be used in choosing some system or other, and living and dying by it once it has been adopted. To be still uncertain at this age is to bring upon oneself a fearful death. Perhaps you will tell me that the crisis deranges the organs and so weakens that system. That is so, if such systems are embraced newly or lightly, but never when they are stamped on the mind early in life, when they have been the fruits of labor, study, and reflection, because then they form habits, and habits do not leave us in our lifetime.”
“To be sure,”' I [ Juliette] replied, flattered with being able to impart my way of thinking to the famous libertines in whose presence I found myself, “and if contented stoicism, to which I, like you, adhere, deprives us of a few pleasures, it spares us many pains, and teaches us how to die. I do not know,” I went on, “whether it is because I am only twenty-five and that time that should return me to the elements I am formed of is perhaps still far-off, or whether it is really my principles that sustain and encourage me, but I view the disintegration of the particles of my existence without any fear. Most firmly decided not to be more unhappy after life than I was before being born, it seems that I am returning my body to the earth, as calmly and indifferently as I received it.”
“And what gives rise to such peace in you?” said Bernis. “It is the deep distrust you have always had for religious mummery. A single backward step towards it and you would have been lost. You can never be too soon in trampling it underfoot.”
“Is that as easy as is thought?” asked Olympe.
“It is easy,” said Albani. “But the tree must be cut from the root. If you merely labor to remove the branches, buds will always be growing.”
“I have nothing to fear,” said the Count. “I operate from the heights of a hill in the center of Rome. The thirty-seven invisible bombs that I aim at the thirty-seven hospitals shall be repeated, and such are my methods that no one will see them. I shall project them at intervals so that fire will be spread by the very means used to extinguish it, and fire will always break out in proportion to the precautions taken to soak it up.”
“You would set a whole town aflame, Count,” asked Olympe, “by these terrible methods?”
“Indeed,” answered the doctor, “and very likely half the town will perish simply by what we are doing. Ghigi says there are hospitals situated in the poorest quarters of Rome, and these parts will most assuredly perish.”
“Do such considerations stop you?” asked Olympe.
“Not in the least, madame,” the two instigators of this atrocity replied together.
“The gentlemen seem quite inflexible,” I said to Madame de Borghèse. “I believe they have thought it over, and the crime they are going to commit is but a very mild thing to them.”
“There is no crime in what we plan,” said Ghigi. “All our moral blunders arise from the unreasonableness of our ideas on good and evil.
“If we were convinced of the neutrality of all our acts, if we really believed that those we call right are no less than that in the eyes of Nature, and that those we call iniquitous are perhaps, by her lights, the most perfect standard of reason and equity, then surely we would make far fewer miscalculations. But childhood prejudices deceive us, and will never stop leading us into error so long as we are weak enough to listen to them. It seems that the torch of reason only lights our way when we are no longer able to profit from its beams, and that it is only after folly on folly that we come to discover the source of all those follies ignorance has caused us to commit.”
All three of us were seated in Faustine's grave, and Olympe spoke to us in somewhat this manner:
“My friends, there are two things that I have never understood,” this lively and lovable woman said, “reverence for the dead, and respect for their wishes. There is no doubt that both of these are due to current conceptions of the immortality of the soul; for if people were thoroughly convinced of the principles of materialism, if they truly believed that we are only a sorry compound of material elements, and that once struck by death, dissolution is complete, then the homage paid to these disorganized scraps of matter would certainly be so palpable an absurdity that no one would wish to make it. But our pride will not bend to the certainty of ceasing to exist. We believe the shades of the dead still hover about their corpses and are sensible of devotions made to these hulks; we fear to offend them, and so fall imperceptibly into impiety and absurdity in the extreme. Let us then be certain of the scheme of things in which absolutely nothing more of us exists when we are dead, and the remains we leave on earth are no more than our excrement was when we laid it at the foot of a tree. Full of this scheme, we would feel that no respect or obligation was due to a corpse, and that the only attention it deserved was to be buried, and that more for our sakes than its own. Or have it burned, or thrown to the beasts for food; but these reverences, tombs, prayers, praises, are not proper to it at all; they are only the tributes stupidity pays to pride, and are made to be destroyed by philosophy. Here is something that quite contradicts ancient and modern religions; but you are not the ones to whom it must be proved that there is no absurdity like religions, founded as they are on the obnoxious falsehood of the immortality of the soul and on the ridiculous existence of God. No stupidity but that they have reverenced it; and you, my friends, you know better than I that in examining a human institution, the first thing to do is to put any religious idea on one side, as the poison of philosophy.”
“I am in perfect agreement with our friend,” said Clairwill, “but the strange thing is that there have been libertines who have been passionately addicted to this scheme. I frequently saw in Paris a man who paid their weight in gold for the bodies of boys and girls who had met with violent death and had just been laid in the earth. He had these fresh corpses fetched to his house and committed endless horrors on them.”
“Il y a longtemps, dis-je, que l'on sait que la jouissance d'un individu récemment assassiné est véritablement très voluptueuse; le resserrement de l'anus y est, pour les hommes, infiniment plus entier.”
“What is more,” said Clairwil, “there is in that a sort of imaginary desecration that is most exciting, and I should certainly try it if my sex were not against me.”
“This eccentricity must lead to murder,” I said to my friends.
“The man who finds worthwhile pleasure in a corpse is very close to the act that increases them.”
“That may be,” said Clairwil, “but what matter! If killing's a great pleasure, you will agree that it is but a very small ill.”
And, as the sun was sinking, we hurried to return to Pozzuoli, through the ruins of Cicero's magnificent house.
A carriage and six brought us to the foot of the volcano. There we found guides whose practice is to attach you to supporting braces, and by these you ascend the mountain; it takes two hours to reach the summit. The new shoes you bring for this climb are scorched at the end of it. We climbed in good heart, bantering with Olympe, and the unfortunate creature must have completely misunderstood the double meaning, as treacherous as it was involved, of the sarcasms we let fly at her.
This mountain journey was a dreadful task. We were in ashes to the neck all the time; and for every four paces gained, we fell back half-a-dozen, and with the perpetual fear that some lava stream would engulf us alive. We arrived worn out, and we rested as soon as we were at the mouth. It was here that we contemplated, with considerable interest, the placid opening of this volcano that could make the kingdom of Naples tremble in its moments of fury.
“Do you think,” we asked our guides, “that there is anything to fear today?”
“No,” they replied, “a few pieces of bitumen, sulphur, or pumice stone might perhaps come up, but in all likelihood there will be no eruption.”
“Well,” said Clairwil, “give us the basket with our refreshment in it, and go down to the village. We are spending the day here, we want to sketch and survey the district.”
“But what if something happens?”
“Didn't you say that nothing is happening?”
“We cannot be sure of that.”
“Well, if anything does happen, we can see the village where you joined us, and we will be down there in no time....”
And four or five coins that we slipped into their hands soon decided them to leave us.
They were barely four hundred paces away when I [Juliette] whispered to my friend,
“Shall we use cunning?”
“No,” she replied, “force.”
And the two of us hurled ourselves on Olympe:
“Whore!” we cried, “we are tired of you. We only brought you here to get rid of you.... We are going to throw you into the heart of the volcano alive.”
“Oh, what have I done?”
“Nothing. You bore us, isn't that enough?”
And as we said that we gagged her with a handkerchief and promptly stifled her cries and jeremiads. Then Clairwil tied her hands with silk cord she had brought for this purpose, and I did the same to her feet. When she was defenseless, we diverted ourselves by Watching her; tears escaped from her splendid eyes and came falling on her lovely breast. We undressed her, handled and tormented her everywhere; nous molestâmes sa belle gorge, nous fustigeâmes son charmant cul, nous lui piquâmes les fesses, nous épilâmes sa motte; je lui mordis le clitoris jusqu"au sang.
At last, after two hours of the most fearful inflictions, we raised her by the cords and threw her into the middle of the volcano, from out of which we could hear the sound—for more than six minutes—of her body hurtling and plunging by starts and bounds over the sharp angles that tossed it from one to the other, tearing her to shreds. Gradually the noise subsided... in the end we could hear nothing more.
“It's over,” said Clairwil, qui n'avait cessé de se branler depuis qu'elle avait laché le corps. “Oh! foutre, mon amour, déchargeons maintenant toutes deux, étendues sur le bourrelet même du volcan. We have just committed a crime here, one of those delightful acts that men think to call atrocious; well, if this act really outrages Nature, let her revenge herself if she can; let an eruption occur at once under our feet, a lava stream open and swallow us....”
I was in no state to reply, already being in a state of intoxication; je rendais au centuple, à mon amie, les pollutions dont elle m'accablait. Nous ne parlions plus. Etroitement serrées dans les bras l'une de l'autre, nous branlant comme deux tribades. It was as if we would exchange souls by means of our hot sighs. A few lewd words, a few blasphemies were the only utterances to escape us. We reviled, dared, and defied Nature; and in all the triumph of impunity her weakness and indifference left us, we seemed only to use her indulgence to provoke her more sorely.
“So you see, Juliette,” Clairwil said to me, as she was the first to recover from our frenzy, “if Nature is provoked by the socalled crimes of man, she could swallow us, and we would both die wrapped in pleasure.... But has she done so? Oh, rest assured, no crime in the world is capable of drawing the wrath of Nature upon us; all crimes serve her purpose, all are useful to her; and when she inspires us, do not doubt but that she has need of them.”
Clairwil had scarcely finished when a cloud of stones shot from the volcano and rained upon us.
“Aha!” I exclaimed, without troubling to rise, “Olympe's revenge! These scraps of sulphur and bitumen are her farewells, to tell us that she is already in the bowels of the earth.”
“Quite a simple phenomenon,” replied Clairwil. “Whenever a solid body falls to the heart of the volcano, it sets up a slight eruption by stirring the matter that perpetually seethes deep in its womb.”
“Let nothing disturb us, let us dine, Clairwil, and consider yourself mistaken over the cause of that rain of stones that has just showered on us. It is no other than Olympe asking for her clothes. We must give them back.”
And after taking the gold and the jewels, we made a packet of the lot, and threw it into the same hole that had just admitted our unfortunate friend. Then we dined. There was silence, the crime was achieved, and Nature content. We went down, and found our attendants at the foot of the mountain.