Juliette

THE MARQUIS DE SADE

TRANSLATED BY AUSTRYN WAINHOUSE

COMPLETE AMERICAN EDITION

SIX VOLUMES IN ONE

Contents

Foreword

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

Part Four

Part Five

Part Six

Bibliography


Foreword

To the final version of Justine—and there are three versions of Justine—Sade 
added, as its complement and to complete it, The Story of Juliette; the two panels
of a diptych, interrelated and yet distinct, they were first published in the year 
1797 as an immense book called La Nouvelle Justine. The bibliographical details 
are these:

La Nouvelle Justine, ou les Malheurs de la Vertu. Ouvrage orné d’un frontispice 
et de quarante sujets gravés avec soin. En Hollande [Paris], 1797. Four volumes, 
18mo. These four volumes comprise the first part of the definitive edition of this 
work, of which the second part, in six volumes, bears the title: La Nouvelle 
Justine, ou les Malheurs de la Vertu, suivie de l’Histoire de Juliette, sa soeur [ou 
les Prospérités du vice]. Ouvrage orné d’un frontispice et de cent sujets gravés 
avec soin. En Hollande [Paris,] 1797.

As for the preceding redactions, the earliest and shortest, Les Infortunes de la 
Vertu, whose manuscript shows the date 1787, was designed for inclusion in a 
volume of those contes, historiettes, and fabliaux, carefully made, inoffensive, 
and eminently regular writings to which Sade attached a special importance. For it
was through his “public” performances—first as a storyteller, later as a 
playwright—that, as he rightly felt, he belonged to the “world of letters.” At the 
same time, and ever more so as he passed his prisoner’s time, along with his 
literary ambitions he nourished others, totally irregular, engendered by a rage no 
ordinary consolations could appease, and that rendered him the mortal enemy of 
the world outside. He wrote Les Infortunes de la Vertu in the Bastille. He was still 
there the next year when, seeing further into his theme, he began those 
variations and expansions upon which he was to remain embarked for a decade.

Justine, ou les Malheurs de la Vertu, printed in 1791, enlarges upon the 
“philosophical tale” without departing from its conventional expression. However, 
the increased violence of her experience is transforming the central figure: she is 
turning into something that neither the postulates nor the language of 
eighteenth-century common sense or “right reason” can securely fix. In her 
resistance to “things as they are,” in her incorrigible unwillingness or her inability 
to learn the lessons of the world, her mysterious absence in a world ruled by laws
of wickedness, where only crime pays, where there are only weak and strong, 
only victims and tyrants, the latter always right and the former wrong 
perforce—in this, the given and the possible world, Justine’s virtue is 
unreasonable and unreasoning: It is not miscalculation, it is aberration. Her 
tormentors, with logic and lucidity on their side, consider her perverse, mad. But 
they do more than consider her; she is of enduring interest to them, they are 
fascinated by her; in the unhappy girl’s nature they encounter something 
irreducible, something insurgent and unconquerable. And, well considered, that 
something is hardly less awesome, it is even more troubling than all the 
barbarities she undergoes.

Again rewritten, the dialectic of the earlier versions now reinforced through 
presentation in two stories, the scenes, the discourses multiplied, the whole 
invaded by excess and now in ten volumes and four thousand pages long, it is a 
masterpiece that appears in 1797, “a work beyond which no other writer, at any 
time, has ever managed to venture; we have, so to speak, a veritable absolute in 
our hands, in this relative world of letters …*

* Maurice Blanchot, “Sade,” in the introductory section to The Marquis de 
Sade: The Complete Justine, Philosophy in the Bedroom, and Other Writings. New
York, Grove Press, 1965.

La Nouvelle Justine has been outlawed in France for the past one hundred 
seventy years. Since the Directory no French government has shown itself 
delinquent in regard to Sade. Like all its predecessors, the Fifth Republic has 
discharged its duty. The law must of necessity respect crime.

It was committed anew, La Nouvelle Justine was reprinted and circulated 
clandestinely under the Third Republic and read, but read, be it understood, by 
the rare readers of-rare books who in Sade beheld everything they for the most 
part were not, a rageur they could approach, could savor and admire in safety, 
protected by the implicit belief that the positions Sade assailed were invulnerable.
Of those positions not one seemed anything like secure when, under the Fourth 
Republic, in 1949, L’Histoire de Juliette was reissued in an edition which, while not
clandestine, was hardly very public, being limited to “475 copies” sold with utmost
discretion and at a dear price. Nonetheless, and although the authorities were 
slow to move, the rules of the game had to be complied with in the end, and the 
publisher was prosecuted by the regime through the intermediary of La 
Commission du Livre and on January 10, 1957, found guilty of “outrage to public 
morals.”

On the question of “public morals,” on the question of in what sense—in what 
final sense—they are outraged by Juliette, and on the question of the final 
sense—the outrageous and revolutionary sense—of Juliette, it would be 
advantageous to reproduce a few lines, written over half a century ago, in which 
Apollinaire, with his sure intuition, exactly grasps what is at issue in Sade’s novel. 
The passage is quoted in the prefatory note to the 1949 Pauvert edition, and 
deserves to be inserted in this first American edition.

The Marquis de Sade, that freest of spirits to have lived so far, had ideas of his 
own on the subject of woman: he wanted her to be as free as man. Out of these 
ideas—they will come through some day—grew a dual novel, Justine and Juliette. 
It was not by accident the Marquis chose heroines and not heroes. Justine is 
woman as she has been hitherto, enslaved, miserable and less than human; her 
opposite, Juliette represents the woman whose advent he anticipated, a figure of 
whom minds have as yet no conception, who is arising out of mankind, who shall 
have wings, and who shall renew the world.

Ten years ago, the publishing of Sade in the United States seemed 
impracticable, seemed practically unthinkable; it was a project to wait and think 
about. The present translation was begun in September of 1956, and not finished 
until September of 1966. Signed by a Pieralessandro Casavini, most of it—to be 
precise, the first five of what were to be seven volumes in all—was brought out in 
Paris over the years 1958–1961. That translation has been reviewed throughout, 
revised here and there; what remained incomplete has been completed; and 
altered circumstances have appeared to authorize the abandoning of a 
pseudonym.

Circumstances aside, the Sade I have frequented is a revolutionary, and his 
importance, in my eyes, is associated with revolutionary perspectives. Let me try 
to specify which ones.

As a thinker, as a pamphleteer, as secretary and then president of his section 
in Paris, as a magistrate, Sade took an active part in the Revolution, and certainly
took his risks: his concern with the Revolution was intense, and yet his attitude 
toward it was divided. Its objectives—the classical objectives, those which despite
all the bitterest controversy remained, by and large, the possible objectives with 
Western revolutionaries down to the other day—were his, but only to a certain 
extent. That is, they fell short of what he was after; and the question of degree 
became a question of the essential. Like Antigone, Sade wanted “everything, and 
all at once”: which is to want the “impossible.” But that is what a revolution is, 
the desiring of the impossible, the striving for the fulfillment of the impossible 
desire; and anything less is too little, it is nothing. For “Those,” as Saint-Just 
warned, “who make their revolutions halfway do but dig themselves a grave.”

The Marquis de Sade wanted what no mere formal rearrangements could 
provide, what no modifications of material and relative conditions can alone 
satisfy; he wanted “a permanent insurrection of the spirit,” an intimate revolution,
a revolution within. He wanted then what today revolution no longer holds 
“impossible” but holds to be a starting point as well as a final end: to change 
man. To change him through and through, cost what it may, be it at the price of 
his “human nature,” and even at the price of his sexual nature—and above all at 
the price of that which, in our communities, has forged all relations between all 
men and denatured them, and merged love and continuity into one disaster, one 
inhumanity.

—AUSTRYN WAINHOUSE


Part One

’T was at Panthemont we were brought up, Justine and I, there that we 
received our education. The name of that celebrated retreat is not unfamiliar to 
you; nor does it require telling that for many a long year the prettiest and most 
libertine women gracing Paris have regularly emerged from that convent. 
Euphrosine, the young lady in whose footsteps I was eager to follow and who, 
dwelling close by my own parents’ home, had fled her father’s household to fling 
herself into libertinage, had been my boon companion at Panthemont. As ’twas 
from her and from a certain nun, a friend of hers, that I acquired the basic 
precepts of the morality which, as you listened to the tales my sister has just 
finished recounting, you were somewhat surprised to find in a person of my young
years, it would seem to me that before anything else I ought to tell you 
something about those women, and to provide you with a circumstantial account 
of those earlier moments of my life when, seduced, corrupted by that pair of 
sirens, the seed destined to flower into vices without number was sown in the 
depths of my soul.

The nun I refer to was called Madame Delbène. For five years she had been the
abbess of the house and was nearing her thirtieth year when I made her 
acquaintance. To be prettier than she were a thing impossible; a fit model to any 
artist, she had a sweet, celestial countenance, fair tresses, large blue eyes where 
shone something tender and inviting, a figure copied after one of the Graces. The 
victim of others’ ambition, young Delbène had been shut up in a cloister at the 
age of twelve in order that an elder brother, whom she detested, might be 
rendered wealthier by the dowry their parents were thus spared from having to 
set aside for her. Imprisoned at an age when the passions begin to assert 
themselves clamorously, although none of this had been of her choosing, for she’d
then been fond of the world and of men in general, it was only by mastering 
herself, by coming triumphant through the severest tests, that she at last decided
to give over and obey. Very precocious, having conned all the philosophers, 
having meditated prodigiously, Delbène, while accepting this condemnation to 
retirement, had all the same kept two or three friends by her. They came to visit 
her, to console her; and as she was exceedingly rich, they continued to furnish 
her all the literature and all the delights she could desire, even those which were 
to do the most to fire her imagination, already very lively and little cooled by the 
effects of seclusion.

As for Euphrosine, she was fifteen when I became attached to her; and she 
had been Madame Delbène’s pupil a year and a half when the two of them 
proposed that I enter their society—it was the same day I entered into my 
thirteenth year. Euphrosine’s complexion was somewhat less than white, she was 
tall for her age, very slender, had engaging eyes, considerable spirit and vivacity, 
but in looks she was no match for our Superior, and was far less interesting.

I have no need to say that among recluse women the thirst for the voluptuous 
is the sole motive for close friendship: they are attached one to the other, not by 
virtue, but by fucking: one is pleased by her who soaks one at sight, one becomes
the intimate of her by whom one is frigged. Endowed with the most energetic 
temperament, I had, starting at the age of nine, accustomed my fingers to 
respond to whatever desires arose in my mind, and from that period onward I 
aspired to nothing but the happiness of finding the occasion for instruction and to 
launch myself into a career the gates unto which my native forwardness had 
already flung wide, and with such agreeable effects. Euphrosine and Delbène 
were soon to offer me what I was seeking. Eager to undertake my education, the 
Superior one day invited me to luncheon. Euphrosine was there: the weather was 
incredibly warm, and this excessive ardor of the sun afforded them an excuse for 
the disarray I found them in: apart from an undergarment of transparent lawn 
maintained by nothing more than a large bow of pink ribbon, they were perfectly 
naked.

“Since you first arrived at this establishment,” Madame Delbène began, kissing
me rather carelessly upon the forehead, her eye and hand betraying a certain 
restlessness, “I have had an unabating desire to make your intimate 
acquaintance. You are very attractive. You appear to me to be in possession of 
some wit and aptitude, and young maids of your sort have a very definite place in
my heart—do you blush, little angel? But I forbid you to blush! Modesty is an 
illusion—resulting from what? ’tis the result of nought but our cultural manners 
and our upbringing, it is what is known as a conventional habit. Nature having 
created man and woman naked, it is unthinkable that she could have implanted in
them an aversion or a shame thus to appear. Had man only faithfully observed 
Nature’s promptings, he would never have fallen subject to modesty: the which 
iron-clad truth, my heart, proves that there are certain virtues whose source lies 
nowhere save in total negligence, or ignorance, of the code of Nature. Ah, but 
might one not give a wrench to Christian morals were one in this way to scrutinize
all the articles which compose it! But we’ll chat about that later on. Let’s speak of 
other matters for the nonce. Will you join us in our undress?”

Then those two minxes, laughing merrily, stepped up to me and soon had me 
in a state identical to theirs; whereupon Madame Delbène’s kisses assumed a 
completely different character.

“Oh, but my Juliette is lovely!” cried she, admiringly; “see how those delicious 
little breasts have begun to heave! Euphrosine, I do declare she’s better fleshed 
there than you are … and, would you believe it? she’s barely thirteen.”

Our charming Superior’s fingers were tickling my nipples, and her tongue 
quivered in my mouth. She was not slow to observe her caresses were having so 
powerful an influence upon my senses that I was in serious danger of being 
entirely overcome.

“O fuck!” she apostrophized, unable to restrain herself and startling me with 
the vigor of her expressions. “Ah, by sweet Christ! what verve, what a fiery 
temper! Let’s be rid of all these damnable hindrances, my little friends, to the 
devil with everything that yet screens from clear view charms Nature never 
created to remain hidden!”

And directly flinging away the filmy costume which had enveloped her, she 
revealed herself to our eyes, lovely as Venus, that sea-risen goddess who exacted
homage from the Greeks. It were impossible to be better formed, to have a skin 
more white, more sweet, to have more beauteous curves, forms better 
pronounced. Euphrosine, who imitated her almost at once, delivered fewer 
charms to my view: she was less plump than Madame Delbène; rather darker in 
her skin, she would perhaps have pleased less universally; but what eyes! what 
vivacity! Stirred by such a quantity of wonders, earnestly solicited by the two 
women they belonged to, besought to follow their example and be rid of all 
modesty’s restraints, you may be very certain that I yielded. Her head reeling 
from sublimest drunkenness, Delbène bore me to her bed and devoured me with 
her kisses.

“One moment,” she panted, wholly ablaze, “one moment, my dears, we had 
best introduce a little method into our pleasures’ madness: they’re not relished 
unless organized.”

So saying, she stretches me out, spreads wide my legs and, lying belly down 
upon the bed with her head lodged between my thighs, she sets to cunt-sucking 
me, the while exposing the world’s most handsome buttocks to my companion’s 
view, from that pretty little girl’s fingers she receives the same services her 
tongue is rendering me. Euphrosine knowing full well what was apt to flatter 
Delbène’s tastes, amidst her pollutions interspersed sharp slaps upon the nun’s 
behind: they had an indubitable effect upon our amiable instructress’ physical 
being. Quite electrified by libertine proceedings, the whore bolted the whey she 
was making squirt in a steady stream from my little cunt. Now and again she 
paused to gaze at me, to contemplate me in these throes of pleasure.

“The beautiful creature!” the tribade exclaimed. “Oh, great God, was there 
ever a more inspiring child! Have at it, Euphrosine, frig me, my love, lay on, I 
want to die drunk on her fuck! Quick now, we’ll change about, let’s vary what 
we’re doing,” she cried a moment later; “you must wish for something in return, 
dear Euphrosine? But how shall I be able to repay you for the pleasures you’re 
giving me! Wait, wait, little angels, I’m going to frig you both at the same time.”

She places us side by side on the bed; following her recommendation, we each
advance a hand and set to polluting each other. Delbène’s tongue first probes far 
into the recesses of Euphrosine’s cunt, and she uses either hand to tickle our 
assholes; from time to time she relinquishes my companion’s cunt so as to pump 
mine, and thus both Euphrosine and I, experiencing three pleasures 
simultaneously, did, as you may be fully persuaded, discharge like muskets. 
Several instants later the resourceful Delbène has us turn over, and we put our 
asses at her disposal; while frigging us beneath, she applies determined lips to 
Euphrosine’s anus, then to mine, sucking with libidinous choler. She praised our 
buttocks’ conformation, spanking them teasingly, and half slew us with joy. When 
done, she drew away:

“Do unto me everything I have done unto you,” spake she in a thickened voice,
“frig me, the both of you. Frig me. I shall lie in your arms, Juliette, I shall kiss 
your mouth, our tongues shall intertwine … shall strain … shall suck. You shall 
bury this fair dildo in my womb,” she pursued, putting the instrument into my 
hands; “and you, my Euphrosine, you shall assume charge of my ass, you shall 
employ this lesser tube to arouse me in that sector: infinitely straiter than my 
cunt, it asks for no bulkier apparatus…. You, my pigeon,” she went on, kissing me 
with inordinate feeling, “you’ll not leave my clitoris unattended, will you? ’Tis 
there the true seat of woman’s pleasure: rub it, worry it, I say, use your nails if 
you like—never fear, I know how to bear a little pressure … and I am weary, 
Christ’s eyes! I am jaded and I require to be dealt with stoutly: I want to melt 
absolutely into fuck, fuck I want to become, if I am able I want to discharge 
twenty times over. Make it so.”

Oh, God, with what liberality we did repay her in the one coin she valued! It 
were not in human power more passionately to labor at giving a woman pleasure 
… impossible to imagine one who had a greater appetite for it. The thing was 
done at last.

“My angel,” that charming creature said to me, “I attempt to express my 
delight at having come to know you, and words fail me. You are a veritable 
discovery, from now on I propose to associate you with all my pleasures and you 
shall find that we may avail ourselves of some very poignant ones, despite the 
fact male company is, strictly speaking, forbidden us. Ask of Euphrosine whether 
she is content with me.”

“Oh, my beloved, allow my kisses to speak for me!” exclaimed our young 
friend as she cast herself upon Delbène’s breast; “’tis you I am indebted to for an 
understanding of myself and of the meaning of my existence. You have trained 
my mind, you have rescued it from the darkness wherein childhood prejudices 
enshrouded it. Thanks alone to you I have achieved being in this world. Lucky 
Juliette, if you will condescend to lavish similar attentions upon her!”

“Yes,” Madame Delbène replied, “why yes, I am anxious to take her education 
in hand. Just as I have told you, I should like to cleanse her of all those infamous 
religious follies which spoil the whole of life’s felicity, I should like to guide her 
back to Nature’s fold and doctrine and cause her to see that all the fables 
whereby they have sought to bewitch her mind and clog her energies are in 
actuality worthy of nought but derision. But now to luncheon, my friends’, we’d 
best refresh ourselves; when one has discharged abundantly, what one has 
expended must be replenished.”

A delicious collation, which we took entirely naked, soon restored to us the 
strength necessary to begin afresh. Once again we fell to frigging one 
another—and immediately were all three plunged back into the wildest excesses 
of lubricity. We struck a thousand different poses; continually altering our roles, 
we were sometimes wives to fuckers whom the next instant we dealt with as 
husbands and, thus beguiling Nature, for the length of an entire day we compelled
that indulgent mother to set the crown of her voluptuousness most sweet upon all
the little infractions of her laws we committed.

A month was so spent; at its end Euphrosine, her brain nicely crazed by 
libertinage, left the convent, then bade farewell to her family and went off to 
practice all the disorders of frenzied whoring and low license. Later, she returned 
and paid us a visit; she figured her situation, and we being too corrupted to find 
anything amiss in the career she was pursuing, pity was farthest from our 
thoughts, and our last wish was to discourage her from forging ahead.

“I must say she has managed very well,” Madame Delbène remarked to me; “a
hundred times over I have yearned to respond to the same call, and indeed I 
surely would have, had my taste for men been strong enough to surmount this 
uncommon liking I have for women. However, dear Juliette, in fating me to inhabit
the cloister all my life long, heaven also had the kindness to provide me with only 
a mediocre desire for any sort of pleasure other than those this sanctified place 
plentifully affords me; that which women may mutually procure one another is so 
delicious that my aspirations do not go very much farther. Nevertheless, I do 
recognize that one may take an interest in men; it is no mystery to me that one 
will now and then do everything under the sun to lay hands on them; whatever is 
connected with libertinage makes powerful sense to me…. My fancy has roved 
very far. Who knows, perhaps I have even gone beyond what one may imagine, 
have been gripped by wants whose satisfaction defies all conception?

“The fundamental tenet of my philosophy, Juliette,” went on Madame Delbène, 
who, since the loss of Euphrosine, had become more and more fond of me, “is 
scorn for public opinion. You simply have no idea, my dear one, to what point I 
am contemptuously indifferent to whatever may be said about me. And, pray tell, 
what beneficial or other influence can the vulgar fool’s opinion have upon our 
happiness? Only our overdelicate sensitivity permits it to affect us; but if, by dint 
of stern and clear thinking, we succeed in deadening these susceptibilities, 
eventually reaching the stage where opinion’s effects upon us are null, even when
it be a question of those things which touch us most intimately—then, I say, then 
that the good or bad opinion of others may have any influence whatsoever upon 
our happiness becomes utterly unthinkable. We alone can make for our personal 
felicity: whether we are to be happy or unhappy is completely up to us, it all 
depends solely upon our conscience, and perhaps even more so upon our 
attitudes which alone supply the bedrock foundation to our conscience’s 
inspirations. For the human conscience,” continued that deep-learned woman, “is 
not at all times and everywhere the same, but rather almost always the direct 
product of a given society’s manners and of a particular climate and geography. Is
it not so, for example, that the same acts the Chinese do not in any sense 
consider inadmissible would cause us to shudder here in France? If then this most
unrigid organ is, depending merely upon latitude and longitude, able to excuse 
and justify any extreme behavior, true wisdom must advise us to adopt a rational,
a moderate, position between extravagances and chimeras, and to evolve 
attitudes which will prove compatible simultaneously with the penchants we have 
individually received from Nature and with the laws of the country we happen to 
dwell in; and these are the attitudes out of which we must elaborate our 
conscience. And that is why the sooner one sets to work adopting the philosophy 
one intends to be guided by, the better, since that philosophy alone supplies its 
form to the conscience, and our conscience is responsible for governing and 
regulating all the actions we perform in life.”

“Heavens!” I cried, “have you carried indifference to the point of not caring in 
the slightest about your reputation?”

“Quite, I do not care about it in the slightest,” Madame Delbène answered. “I 
might even confess that I take a greater inner pleasure from my conviction that 
this reputation is extremely bad than I would reap from knowing it was good. Oh, 
Juliette, never forget this: a good reputation is a valueless encumbrance. It 
cannot ever recompense us for what in sacrifice it costs us. She who prizes her 
good reputation is subject to at least as many torments as she who behaves 
neglectfully of it: the first lives in unceasing dread of losing what is precious to 
her, the other trembles before the prospects opened up by her own carelessness. 
If thus the paths conducting the one to virtue and the other to vice are equally 
bestrewn with briars, why is it that we subject ourselves to such vexations in 
selecting between these ways, why do we not consult Nature and loyally observe 
her directives?”

“But,” I objected, “were I to make these maxims mine, Madame Delbène, I 
greatly fear I should have to flout far too many conventions.”

“Why indeed, my dear,” she retorted, “I believe I’d prefer to have you tell me 
you greatly fear you’d taste too many pleasures. And what precisely are these 
conventions? Shall we inspect the matter soberly? Social ordinances in virtually 
every instance are promulgated by those who never deign to consult the 
members of society, they are restrictions we all of us cordially hate, they are 
common sense’s contradictions: absurd myths lacking any reality save in the eyes
of the fools who don’t mind submitting to them, fairy tales which in the eyes of 
reason and intelligence merit scorn only…. We’ll have more to say on that subject,
you have but to wait a little, my dear. Have confidence in me. Your candor and 
naïveté indicate you are in singular need of a tutor. For very few is life a bed of 
roses: only heed me, and you’ll be one of those who, with the thorns that must be
there, will find a goodly number of flowers in her path.”

Seldom indeed does one come across a reputation in shabbier repair than this 
one of Madame Delbène. A nun who held me in especially high esteem, being 
disturbed by my rapport with the Abbess, warned me that she was a doomed 
woman. She had, I was told, poisoned the minds of nearly every pensionnaire in 
the convent, and thanks to her advice at least fifteen or sixteen of them had 
already gone the way of Euphrosine. It was, she assured me, an unprincipled, 
lawless, a faithless, an impudent brazen creature who flaunted her wicked 
notions; vigorous measures would long ere this have been taken against her were
it not for her influential position and distinguished birth. These exhortations 
meant nothing to me: a single one of Delbène’s kisses, a single phrase from her 
had a greater effect upon me than all the weapons it were possible to employ with
a view to sundering us. Even had it meant being dragged over the precipice, it 
seemed to me I should have preferred definitive ruin at her side to celebrity in 
another’s sight. Oh, my friends! there is a certain perversity than which no other 
nourishment is tastier; drawn thither by Nature … if for a moment Reason’s glacial
hand waves us back, Lust’s fingers bear the dish toward us again, and thereafter 
we can no longer do without that fare.

But it was not long before I noticed our amiable Superior’s attentions were not 
concentrated exclusively on me, and I as quickly perceived that others were wont 
to cooperate with her in exercises where libertinage had a more preponderant 
share than piety.

“And will you take lunch with me tomorrow?” she inquired one day. “I expect 
Elizabeth, Flavie, Madame de Volmar and Madame de Sainte-Elme. We’ll be six in 
all; we ought surely to be able to accomplish some truly startling things, I dare 
say.”

“Goodness!” I exclaimed. “Do you amuse yourself with all those women?”

“Of course. But you mustn’t for one instant suppose I am limited to them. 
There are thirty nuns in our establishment, I have had commerce with 
twenty-two; we have eighteen novices: I have still to make the acquaintance of 
one of them; and of the sixty pensionnaires presently with us, only three have 
resisted me so far. Whenever a new one arrives I simply have to get my hands on
her: I accord her one week, never longer, to think over my proposals. Oh, 
Juliette, Juliette, my libertinage is an epidemic, whosoever is in my vicinity is 
bound to be infected by it. How very fortunate for society that I restrict myself to 
this dilute form of evil-doing: oh, what with my proclivities and principles, I could 
perhaps adopt another which might easily prove more of a nuisance to the world.”

“And what would you do, my gentlest one?”

“Who can tell? Do you not realize that the effects of an imagination so 
depraved as mine are like unto the impetuous waters of a river in flood? Nature 
wouldst that it wreak destruction, and destroy it does, no matter what, no matter 
how.”

“Do you not ascribe to Nature,” I suggested to my interlocutress, “what ought 
rather to be considered the result of your depravation?”

“Now heed me well, little light of my life,” said the Superior; “it’s early yet, our
friends aren’t due to come till six and before they arrive I can perhaps reply to 
some of your frivolous notions.”

We both sat down.

“In that our unique knowledge of Nature’s inspirations,” began Madame 
Delbène, “reaches us through that interior sensory we call the conscience, it is by 
analyzing this latter we shall rationally and profitably sound Nature’s 
operations—which, in us, are impulsions—and which fatigue, torment, or bring 
enjoyment to the conscience.

“The word conscience, my beloved Juliette, denominates that as it were inner 
voice which cries out when we do something—it makes no difference what—we 
are forbidden to do: and this eminently simple definition lays bare, to even the 
most casual glance, the origins the conscience has in prejudices inculcated by 
training and upbringing. Thus it is the child is beset by guilt directly he disobeys 
instructions—and the child will continue to suffer pangs of remorse until such time
as, having vanquished prejudice, he discovers there is no real evil in the thing his 
education has induced him to abhor.

“And so conscience is purely and simply the construction either of the 
prejudices that are insinuated into us or of the ethical principles we ourselves 
devise in our own behalf. So true is this that it is altogether possible, if for 
material we employ sensitive principles, to forge a conscience which will haunt 
and sting and bite us, afflict us most woundingly upon every occasion—it is, I say,
quite possible that we find ourselves possessed of a conscience so tyrannical that,
once having promised ourselves to execute them for the sake of our sensual 
gratification, we then fail to carry out in their fullest and richest details any 
however entertaining schemes, even vicious ones, exceedingly criminal ones. 
Whence it is there is engendered, as antidote to the first, that other sort of 
conscience which, in the person who stands aloof from superstition and vulgar 
claptrap, speaks angrily to him when by miscalculation or self-deception he 
chooses to come at happiness by some other road than the highway which must 
naturally lead him to his object. Hence, in the light of the principles we have 
devised for our own individual use, we may equally well have cause to repent at 
having done either too much evil, or too little, or none. But let us take the word in
its most elementary and most common acceptation: in this case, guilt—that is to 
say, what prompts the utterances of the inner mechanism we have just 
designated as the conscience—in this case, guilt is a perfectly useless debility, a 
weakness whose grip upon us we have got to break with all possible dispatch and 
with all the determination we can muster. For feelings of guilt, once again, are 
nought but the distillations, the effluvia of a prejudice produced by fear of what 
may befall us for having done any conceivable kind of thing forbidden for who 
knows what vague or flimsy reason. Remove the threat of retribution, alter 
opinions, abolish civil codes, shift the felon from one clime to another, and the 
misdeed will, of course, remain exactly in substance what before it was, but he 
who commits it will no longer feel twinges of guilt over his act. Guilt, thus, is 
merely an unpleasant reminiscence; it crops out of the customs and conventions 
one happens to have adopted, but it never results from, never has any connection
with, the character of the deed one happens to have performed.

“Were this not so, how could one ever succeed in stifling remorse, in 
overcoming guilt? And we may be very certain that even when it be a question of 
acts of the broadest consequence, stifled they definitely may be, provided one’s 
mental development is sufficient and provided one has toiled earnestly to 
extinguish one’s prejudices. Proportionately as these prejudices are extirpated by 
maturity, or as habitual familiarity with deeds that initially upset us gradually 
toughens the sensibility and subdues the conscience, the susceptibility to guilt, 
formerly but the effect of the conscience’s frailty, is soon diminished, finally 
annihilated: and thus one progresses, until one arrives at the most appalling 
excesses: they may be repeated as often as one likes. But, it may perhaps be 
objected, guilt feelings are surely more or less intense in keeping with the variety 
of the misdeed perpetrated? Yes, to be sure, since the prejudice against a major 
crime is more powerful than one against a lesser crime, and the punishment 
prescribed by the law commensurately heavier in the one instance than in the 
other; however, discover the strength indiscriminately to do away with all 
prejudices, acquire the wisdom to rank all crimes on a single plane, and, 
becoming swiftly convinced of their resemblance, you will know how to tailor guilt 
to fit the occasion. Which is only to say that, having first learned to cope with the 
guilt consequent upon petty misbehavior, you will soon learn to quell any 
uneasiness over having performed a sizable atrocity, and to learn also to execute 
every atrocity, great and small, with a constant and inviolable serenity….

“And so it is, my dear Juliette, that if one is visited by misgivings after having 
done a fell deed, that is because one clings to some doctrine of freedom or of free
will, saying to oneself: How wretched I am because I didn’t act otherwise! But 
were one really to wish to persuade oneself that this talk about freedom is all 
empty prattle and that we are driven to whatever we do by a force more puissant 
than ourselves; were one to wish to be convinced that everything in this world 
has its purpose and its utility, and that the crime whereof one repents is just as 
necessary to Nature’s grand design as are war, the plague, famine by which she 
periodically lays whole empires waste—and empires are infinitely less dependent 
than Nature upon the acts that comprise our individual existences—were we to 
make these efforts, we’d cease even to be able to conceive of remorse or guilt, 
and my precious Juliette would not say to me that I am mistaken in laying up to 
Nature’s will that which ought only to be regarded as depravity’s handiwork.

“All moral effects,” Madame Delbène went on, “are to be related to physical 
causes, unto which they are linked most absolutely: the drumstick strikes the 
taut-drawn skin and the sound answers the blow: no physical cause, that is, no 
collision, and of necessity there’s no moral effect, that is, no noise. Certain 
dispositions peculiar to our organisms, the neural fluids more or less irritated by 
the nature of the atoms we inhale, by the species or quantity of the nitrous 
particles contained in the foods making up our diet, by the flow of the humours 
and by yet a thousand other external causes—this is what moves a person to 
crime or to virtue and often, within the space of a single day, to both. There’s the 
drumhead struck, the cause of a vicious or of a virtuous act; one hundred louis 
stolen out of my neighbor’s pocket or transferred as a gift from mine to someone 
in need, there’s the effect of the blow, the resultant sound. Are we answerable for
these subsequent effects when the initial causes necessitate them? May the drum 
be beaten without there being a sound emitted? And can we avoid these 
reverberations when they and the blow are themselves the consequence of things
so beyond our control, so exterior to ourselves, and so dependent upon the 
manner in which we are personally constituted? And so ’tis madness, ’tis true 
extravagance to refrain from doing whatever we please, and, having done it, to 
repent thereof. Thus guilt and remorse appear as pusillanimous frailties we ought 
not to encourage, but to combat to the very best of our ability and overcome by 
means of sane deliberation, reason, and habit. Will remorse alter the fact the 
milk’s been spilt? no, and so we might as well dry our tears: remorse does 
nothing to make the act less evil, since remorse always comes after the fact; very
rarely does remorse prevent the fact from recurring. Therefore, I must conclude 
that remorse is futile. The evil act once committed, one of two things must follow:
either the act is punished, or it is not. In the second hypothesis, to feel sorry 
would assuredly be the height of stupidity: for what is the point of repenting any 
conceivable sort of deed which has given us the very completest satisfaction, and 
whence we have endured no painful consequences? In such a case, to regret the 
harm this act may have caused someone else would be to love him more than 
one’s own self, and it is perfectly ridiculous to grieve over the sufferings of others 
when their pain has procured us pleasure, when it has been of some use or profit 
to us, when it has tickled, titillated, aroused, delighted us in whatever may be the
manner. Hence, in this case, there is no earthly excuse for remorse.

“If, on the other hand, the act is discovered and punishment ensues, then, if 
one chooses to view the matter objectively, one will recognize that what we now 
repent is not the hurt caused someone else by our act, but our clumsiness in 
allowing it to be found out—and presently one has grounds for regret, yes, and 
should surely ponder the thing … simply in order, from lengthy reflection upon 
one’s misadventure, to realize that in the future one must be prudent—if the 
punishment inflicted upon one is anything short of capital. But these reflections 
are not to be confused with remorse, for true remorse, real remorse, is the pain 
produced by the hurt one has done oneself: which distinction brings to light the 
vast difference subsisting between these two sentiments, and at the same time 
reveals the usefulness of the one and the inanity of the other.

“When we indulge in a bit of foul play, however atrocious, the satisfaction it 
affords, or the profit it yields, is ample consolation for the trouble, however acute,
which amusing ourselves may bring down upon the head of some one or more of 
our fellow men. Prior to performing the deed, do we not clearly foresee the 
inconveniences it will cause others? Of course; and this thought, rather than 
doing anything to stop us, usually spurs us on. And then the deed once done, 
suddenly and belatedly to fall prey to worry, to start to fret, to sweat, to allow 
scruple to hinder one from savoring pleasure—than this there is no greater nor 
baser folly. If because it has been detected this deed brings us unhappiness in its 
wake, let us bend our keener faculties to ferreting out the reasons why it came to 
public intelligence; and without shedding a superfluous tear over something we 
are powerless to arrange otherwise, let us mobilize every effort so that the next 
time we shall not be wanting in tact, let us turn this mishap to our advantage, and
from this reversal draw the experience necessary to improve our methods: 
henceforth, we will ensure our impunity by swathing our irregularities in thicker 
veils and more entire obscurity. But let us not contrive, by means of purposeless 
remorse, to extirpate sound principles; for this bad behavior, this depravation, 
these vicious and criminal and abominable caprices, are precious attributes, they 
have procured us pleasure, have delighted us, and unwise is he who deprives 
himself of anything he enjoys—that would be similar to the lunacy of the man 
who, merely because a heavy dinner troubled his digestion, were to abjure 
forever the pleasures of good eating.

“Veritable wisdom, my dear Juliette, consists not in repressing, one’s vices, for,
vices constituting, practically speaking, the sole happiness granted us in life, so to
do would be to adopt the role, as it were, of one’s own executioner. The true and 
approved way is to surrender oneself to them, to practice them to the utmost, but
with care enough and circumspection to be secured against the dangers of 
surprise. Fear not lest precautions and protective contrivances diminish your 
pleasure: mystery only adds thereto. Such conduct, furthermore, guarantees 
impunity; and is not impunity the most piquant aliment to debauchery?

“After having taught you how to deal with the remorse born of the pain one 
suffers from having done evil rather too conspicuously, it is of the essence, dear 
little friend, that you permit me now to indicate the manner of totally silencing 
that inner and confusion-breeding voice which, when thirsts have been slaked, 
wakes now and again to upbraid us for the follies into which passions have 
plunged us. Well, this cure is quite as sweet as it is sure, for it consists simply in 
reiterating the deeds that have made us remorseful, in repeating them so often 
that the habit either of committing these deeds or of getting away scot free with 
them completely undermines every possibility of feeling badly about them. This 
habit topples the prejudice, destroys it; it does more: by frequently exercising the
sensibility in the very way and in the very situation which, at the outset, made it 
suffer, this habit at length makes the new state it has assumed wholly bearable 
and even delicious to the soul. Pride lends its aid: not only have you done 
something no one else would ever dare do, you have become so accustomed to 
doing it that you cannot anymore exist without it—there is one pleasure. The 
enacted deed produces another; and who is there doubts that this multiplying of 
delights very speedily induces a soul to adopt the lineaments and character it has 
got to have, however painful at first may have been the difficulties wherewith, 
perforce, it was beset by the deed in question?

“Do we not experience when performing any one of the alleged crimes in which
lust is dominant the very sensations I have cited to you? Why is it one never 
repents a crime of libertinage? Because libertinage very soon becomes habitual. 
Thus may it be in the case of every other extravagance; like lubricity, they may all
be readily transformed into custom, and like lewdness, each of them may provoke
an agreeable vibration in the nerve fluids: this poignant itching, closely 
resembling passion, may become quite as delectable and consequently, like it, 
metamorphose into a primary need.

“Oh, Juliette! if like myself you would live happily in crime—and, my beloved, I 
am wont to indulge heavily therein—if, I say, you would find in crime the same 
happiness that is mine, then strive as time passes to make of evil-doing a habit, 
until, with the passing of time, you have become so endeared to the habit that 
you literally cannot go on without imbibing of this potent drink, and until every 
man-made convention appears so ridiculous to your consideration that your pliant
but nonetheless sinewy soul becomes gradually accustomed to construing as vices
all human virtues, and as virtuous whatever mortals call criminal: do this, and lo! 
as though miraculously, new perspectives, a new universe shall appear before 
you, a consuming and delicious conflagration will glide into your nerves, it will 
make boil the electrically charged liquor in which the life principle has its seat. 
Fortunate enough to be able to dwell in a mundane society whence my sad fate 
has exiled me, with every new day you will form fresh projects, and their 
realization will every day overwhelm you with a sensual euphoria such as none 
but you shall know anything of. All the persons, all the creatures about you shall 
look to you like so many victims destiny has led up in fetters to sate your heart’s 
perversity. No more duties, no more hampering ties, no more obstacles to impede
you, they’ll all vanish in a trice, dissolved by the vehemence of your desires. No 
longer from the depths of your soul shall any voice speak reproachfully, hoping to 
impair your vigor and rob you of joy. Nevermore shall prejudice militate against 
your happiness, wisdom shall abolish every check, and with even stride you shall 
walk along a pathway strewn thick with flowers, till finally you accede to 
perversity’s ultimate excesses. It will be then you’ll perceive the weakness of 
what in days past they described to you as Nature’s dictates; when you shall have
spent a few years winking at what imbeciles term her laws, when, in order to 
become familiar with their infraction, it shall have pleased you to pulverize them 
all, then you’ll behold her, that Nature, a wicked smile on her lips, thrilled half to 
death at having been violated, you’ll see the quean/melt before your impulsive 
desires, you’ll see her come crawling toward you, begging to be shackled by your 
irons … she’ll stretch forth her wrists, plead to be your captive; now a slave to you
instead of your sovereign, subtly she’ll instruct your heart in what fashion to 
outrage her further yet; as though degradation were her whole delight, only by 
showing you how to insult her excessively will she demonstrate her ability to 
impose her governance upon you. Let her. When once you reach that stage, do 
not resist, ever; as soon as you have discovered the way to seize Nature, 
insatiable in her demands upon you, she will lead you on, step by step, from 
irregularity to irregularity: all are preparatory, the last committed will never be 
but progress accomplished toward still another by means whereof she prepares to
submit to you yet again; like unto the whore of Sybaris, who will put on every 
shape so as to excite the lust of him who buys her, she will in like wise teach you 
a hundred ways to soil and vanquish her, and all that the more completely to 
ensnare you in her turn, the more utterly to make you her own. However, one 
single hint of resistance, let me repeat, one reluctant gesture were fatal: it will 
cost you the loss of all you have won by complacency heretofore: yield: unless 
you acquaint yourself with everything, you’ll know nothing; and if you’re so timid 
as to pause in your conversation with her, Nature will escape you forever. Above 
all, beware of religion, nothing is more apt to lure you astray than religion’s 
baneful insinuations. Comparable to the Hydra whose heads grow back as swiftly 
as they are lopped off, it will unceasingly debilitate you if you falter at the task of 
obliterating its principles. There is the danger ever present that some bizarre 
ideas of the fantastical God wherewith they befouled your childhood return again 
to disturb your maturer imagination while it is in the midst of its divinest heats. 
Oh, Juliette! forget it, scorn it, the concept of this vain and ludicrous God. His 
existence is a shadow instantly to be dissipated by the least mental effort, and 
you shall never know any peace so long as this odious chimera preserves any of 
its prize upon your soul which error would give to it in bondage. Refer yourself 
again and again to the great theses of Spinoza, of Vanini, of the author of Le 
Système de la Nature. We will study them, we will analyze them together, I 
promised you authoritative dissertations upon this subject and I am going to keep
my word: both of us shall feast heartily upon these writers and shall fill ourselves 
with the spirit of their sage opinions. Should you be visited by further doubts, you
shall communicate them to me, I will set your mind at rest. Grown as staunch and
doughty as I in your thinking, you’ll soon be imitating me in action, and like 
myself, you’ll never more pronounce this loathsome God’s name save with 
revulsion and in hateful blasphemy. The very conceiving of this so infinitely 
disgusting phantom is, I confess it, the one wrong I am unable to forgive man. I 
excuse him all his whims, his ironies, and his eccentricities, I sympathize with all 
his frailties, but I cannot smile tolerantly upon the lunacy that could erect this 
monster, I do not pardon man for having himself wrought those religious chains 
which have so dreadfully hobbled him and for having crept despicably forward, 
eyes downcast and neck stretched forth, to receive the shameful collar 
manufactured only by his own stupidity. There would be no end to it, Juliette, 
were I to give vent to all the horror waked in me by the execrable doctrine based 
upon a God’s existence; mere mention of him rouses my ire, when I hear his 
name pronounced I seem to see all around me the palpitating shades of all those 
woebegone creatures this abominable opinion has slaughtered on the face of the 
earth. Those ghosts cry out beseechingly to me, they supplicate me to make use 
of all I have been endowed with of force and ingenuity to erase from the souls of 
my brethren the idea of the revolting chimera which has brought such rue into the
world.”

At this point Madame Delbène asked me how far I had myself proceeded in 
these matters.

“I have not yet made my first communion,” I answered her.

“So much the better!” said she, folding me in her arms. “Excellent, my little 
angel, I’ll preserve you from that idolatrous rite. With what regards confession, 
reply, when they question you, that you are not prepared to recite. The mother in 
charge of the novices is my friend, her position depends upon my favor, I shall 
recommend you to her and they’ll leave you strictly alone. As for Mass, we’ve got 
to appear there in spite of our wishes; but, one moment, do you see that pretty 
little assortment of books?” she asked, pointing to some thirty-odd volumes 
bound in red morocco; “I shall lend you those works. Read them during the 
abominable sacrifice. They will in some sort alleviate the obligation of having to 
be witness to the whole miserable ceremony.”

“Oh, my friend!” I exclaimed, “how deeply in your debt I shall be! My heart and
mind were already advanced in the direction your advice indicates I should take. 
… I had a head start—not, to be sure, with respect to morals, for the things you 
have just told me are so very novel, and so engaging—I had no previous inkling 
of them, truly. But at a very early hour I began to abhor religion, just as you do, 
and it was only with extremest aversion I fulfilled its duties. Oh, can you divine 
the pleasure you give me in promising to broaden my understanding! Alas! having
until now heard nothing philosophical said about these matters of superstition, I 
owe all my modest store of impiety to Nature’s liberal suggestions.”

“Ah! obey her promptings, my darling—they’re such as shall never mislead 
you.”

“Do you know,” I continued, “the lecture you have just given me, it is a very 
compelling one … full of bold ideas. May I say that it is rare to find one so well 
informed at your age? Allow me to tell you so, my dear: I find it hard to believe a 
person’s conscience can reach the state which, by your description, it is plain 
yours has attained, without that person having acquitted herself of a number of 
most extraordinary feats. And how—forgive me for putting the question to 
you—how have you found the opportunity to perpetrate outrages capable of 
inwardly toughening you to this degree?”

“The day will come when you shall know everything about me,” said the 
Superior, rising from her chair.

“And why must it be postponed? are you afraid of—”

“Merely of horrifying you.”

“Then fear not, my friend.”

But the approach of company prevented Delbène from enlightening me 
touching what I was afire to know.

“Tush,” said she, putting a finger to her lips, “let’s turn our thoughts to 
pleasure. Kiss me, Juliette. I promise to confide in you on some later day.”

Our associates had arrived; I must portray them for you.

Madame de Volmar had taken the veil only six months before. Just twenty 
years old, tall, slender, very fair of skin, with chestnut hair, the loveliest body 
imaginable: Volmar, blessed with such a host of charms, was understandably one 
of Madame Delbène’s most cherished disciples and, excepting only the latter, the 
most libertine of the ladies who were about to participate in our orgies.

Saint-Elme was a novice of seventeen, very animated, with a charming 
countenance, sparkling eyes, well-molded breasts, and an air of general 
voluptuousness. Elizabeth and Flavie were both pensionnaires: the first could not 
have been past thirteen, the second was sixteen. Elizabeth’s face was sensitive, 
her features were unusually delicate; the lines of her body were agreeable to see,
its curves already affirmed. As for Flavie, she had surely the most heavenly face 
one could hope to find in this world: nowhere did there exist a prettier smile, 
lovelier teeth, more beautiful hair; nor was there another who possessed a more 
engaging figure, a softer and clearer skin. Ah, my friends! had I to paint the 
Goddess of Flowers, ’twould be Flavie I’d select for my model.

The introductions and the customary compliments were without undue 
formality; each member of the society, fully aware of what had motivated the 
forgathering, was impatient to proceed to business; but those ladies’ exchanges 
did, I must declare, astonish me. Even in the middle of a brothel one is not likely 
to overhear libertine language more gracefully and more casually pronounced 
than it was by these young women; and nothing could have been more pleasant 
than the contrast between their modest demeanor, their reserve abroad, and the 
energetic indecency they displayed throughout these luxurious assemblies.

“Delbène,” said Madame Volmar upon making her entrance, “I defy you to 
wheedle me into discharging today—oh, but I’m done up, my dear, I was the night
rioting with Fontenille. I worship the little rascal, in all my life no one ever frigged 
me more competently, I’ve never parted with so much fuck, nor so often, no, nor 
with such delight. Ah, my adorable one, we accomplished marvels!”

“Amazing, aren’t they?” Delbène remarked; “well, I trust we’ll perform a few a 
thousand times more extraordinary this afternoon.”

“Fuck my eyes! then let’s have at it!” cried Sainte-Elme. “I’m stiff—I’m not like 
Volmar, I slept alone,” and, raising her skirts, “do you see my cunt? Isn’t it plain, 
the treatment it desperately needs?”

“Stay,” said the Superior, “be not overhasty. This is an initiatory ceremony: I 
am admitting Juliette into our college, and she must undergo the prescribed 
ritual.”

“Who? Juliette?” said Flavie. “Why, I hadn’t noticed—Juliette? I don’t believe 
I’ve met this pretty thing before,” she murmured, approaching me. “Have you any
skill at frigging, my princess?” she inquired, bestowing a kiss upon my lips. “Are 
you libertine? Somewhat of a tribade, like the rest of us?”

And without further ado, the scoundrel laid hands simultaneously upon my 
breasts and my cunt.

“Let her be,” said Volmar, who, baring my behind, was inspecting my buttocks;
“let her be, she must first be initiated before we put her to use.”

“Well, Delbène,” spoke up Elizabeth, “will you look at that Volmar kissing 
Juliette’s ass! She takes her for a little boy, the slut’s bent on buggering her.” 
(The reader will be pleased to take note that these comments proceeded from the
most youthful member of the group.)

“You know very well,” Sainte-Elme rejoined, “that Volmar’s an arrant male: 
she’s outfitted with a clitoris three inches long and, destined to insult Nature 
whichever be the sex she adopts, the whore’s got either to play the 
nymphomaniac or the sodomite: with her, there’s no median alternative.”

Then, herself drawing near and exploring me from every angle while Flavie 
maintained her inquisitive regard upon my front, and Volmar hers upon my 
hindquarters:

“No doubt of it,” she went on, “the sweet little bitch is trimly made, and I 
swear to you all that before the day’s over I’ll know the taste of her fuck.”

“If you please, ladies, if you please,” protested Delbène, seeking to 
re-establish order, “one moment, I beg of you—”

“Well, bleeding Jesus, be quick!” Sainte-Elme gasped, “I’m ready to run! 
What’s the delay? Or do we have to say our prayers before we frig our cunts? Off 
with your clothes, sweet friends—”

And, had you been there, the next instant you’d have seen six young damsels, 
each more lovely than the day, fall to admiring one another … to caressing one 
another’s naked bodies, and to composing the most varied and diverting groups.

“Very well,” Delbène resumed in an overseer’s tone, “I expect I’ll obtain a little 
obedience from you. Listen to me: Juliette is going to stretch out upon the couch, 
and you shall each in your turn savor with her the pleasure of your individual 
choosing. I, stationed directly opposite the scene, I shall take you one after the 
other as you’ve had done with her, and the lewd activities begun with Juliette will 
be brought to a conclusion with me. But I’ll be in no hurry, my fuck won’t flow 
before I’ve had the five of you in my embrace.”

The extreme respect in which the Superior’s commands were held made for 
the completest punctuality in their execution. All these creatures being libertine to
the core, you shall perhaps not be unwilling to hear what each of them required of
me. As they stepped up by order of age, Elizabeth was the first to present herself.
The fair little wench scrutinized every part of me and after having covered me 
with kisses she slipped in between my thighs, rubbed against me, and we both 
swooned away together. Flavie came next: her operations bespoke a greater 
science. After a thousand delicious preliminaries, we lay down so that each of us 
faced the other’s cunt and, with probing, twitching tongues, we fetched forth 
torrents of whey. Sainte-Elme approaches, she lies down upon the bed, has me sit
astride her face, and while her nose prods spiritedly at my asshole, her tongue 
stabs into my cunt. Bent low over her, I am able to tease and tongue her in like 
fashion: my fingers tickle her ass, and five ejaculations in rapid succession 
convince me that the need she alluded to earlier was roundly authentic. I squirted
myself dry into her mouth; and never before had I been so expertly sucked. 
Volmar will have nought but my buttocks, she devours them with kisses and, 
preparing the narrow passage with her sharp pink tongue, the libertine glues 
herself upon me, buries her generous clitoris in my anus, shakes and rattles away
for a space, turns my head, ardently kisses my mouth, sucks my tongue, and 
frigs while embuggering me. The hussy isn’t content with that, weaponing me 
with a dildo she herself straps around my flanks, she wheels to receive my 
thrusts, and, aiming them at her button, the whore gets herself skewered 
bumwise; I frigged her the while, and she thought herself like to die of pleasure.

After this last incursion, I went to take the post awaiting me upon Delbène’s 
body. Here is how that fury arranged the company.

Elizabeth, on her back, was placed at the edge of the couch. Delbène, reclining
in her arms, was having Elizabeth frig her clitoris. Flavie, kneeling upon the floor 
and her head level with the Superior’s cunt, was tonguing it and squeezing her 
thighs. Above Elizabeth, Sainte-Elme, her ass pressed flush to the latter’s visage, 
presented a yawning cunt to the kisses of Delbène whom Volmar busily 
embuggered with her burning clitoris. Only I was needed to complete the tableau.
Requested to take a crouching position next to Sainte-Elme, I offered for licking 
the reverse side of what Sainte-Elme was having tongued from in front. Delbène 
passed in fickle and rapid style from Sainte-Elme’s cunt to my asshole, licked, 
reamed, pumped with surpassing ardor first the one, then the other, and writhing 
with the most unbelievable agility beneath Elizabeth’s fingers, beneath Flavie’s 
tongue, and before Volmar’s clitoris, the tribade every minute exploded a gush of 
fuck.

“By the Almighty!” Delbène panted, extricating herself from that melee, and 
flushed as red as a bacchante, “by bleeding Jesus, how I’ve discharged! Never 
mind, let’s carry on with the game: each of you is now to take her place on the 
couch, Juliette will dally with you in whatever way she prefers, you’ll have to cede
to her demands. But as she is still new at the sport, I propose to act as her 
mentor: the group will then form around her as it did around me, and we’ll make 
her fuck fly till she begs for quarter.”

Elizabeth is the first to be offered to my libertinage.

“Place her,” says Delbène, “in such a way she can kiss your dear little mouth 
while frigging you, and so that you’ll receive a general stimulation. I’ll take care of
your asshole throughout the episode. Flavie dear, will you take Elizabeth’s place. I
recommend this exquisite creature’s bubs to you,” the Abbess adds, “suck them 
while she tickles you: in view of Volmar’s tastes, you’d best run your tongue into 
her anus while, bending over you, she gives you the benefit of what her mouth 
can do…. As for Sainte-Elme,” the Superior pursues, “yes, I think the following 
arrangement will suffice: I’ll adjust myself so as to be able to suck both her ass 
and cunt while she renders you those same services. And finally, as for 
myself—speak, my beloved, I am here to do your bidding.”

Warmed by the sight of what had been done for Volmar: “I’d love to embugger 
you,” said I, “with this instrument.”

“Then do so, my darling, do whatever your heart desires,” was Delbène’s 
humble reply; she presented her buttocks. “There,” said she, “mark it well. And 
spare it not.”

“Willingly!” I cried, sodomizing my instructress. “Since,” I said while engaged, 
“since the group is to form around me, let’s not tarry. My good Volmar,” I said, 
addressing the latter, “let your clitoris use my ass in the way and manner I am 
about to treat with Delbène’s: you’ve positively no idea how my temperament 
responds to this species of excitation. I’d like to frig Sainte-Elme with one hand 
and Elizabeth with the other; meanwhile, I’ll give Flavie’s cunt a cleaning.”

The Superior having issued instructions to ride me hard, I was not obliged to 
say another word; the situations were seven times varied, and seven times over 
my liberated fuck sprang in answer to divine cajolery.

The pleasures of the table succeeded those of love: a superb repast was 
awaiting us. Divers kinds of wine and spirits put a bright hilarity in our heads, we 
returned to our libertine disporting. We divided into three couples. Sainte-Elme, 
Delbène, and Volmar, the most advanced in years, each chose a fricatrice; by 
chance, or by predilection, Delbène appointed me to be hers; Elizabeth fell to 
Sainte-Elme, Flavie to Volmar. The couples were so disposed that each could 
enjoy a view of the pleasures of the two others. Truly, the reader is little apt to 
imagine the least part of what we did. Oh, that Sainte-Elme, how delicious she 
was! Wildly enthusiastic over each other, our reciprocal friggery continued till we 
were both nigh to prostration. There was nothing we did not contrive, no fancy we
failed to enact; then finally we all six knit again in a compact group, and the 
concluding two hours of this voluptuous riot were so lascivious that one may 
wonder whether so many lewd goings-on are ever matched in any whorehouse.

I was struck by, and must not fail to mention, this: the extreme solicitude 
shown for the pensionnaires’ maidenheads. To be sure, I did not observe the 
same concern manifested for those who had already taken vows; but I could not 
understand why they whose portion was not to be the cloister, but life in the 
world, were treated with such consideration.

“Their honor resides therein,” Delbène explained to me when I questioned her 
about the thing. “We do, by all means, wish to amuse ourselves with these girls; 
but why ruin them? Why cause them to detest the memory of the moments they 
passed in our midst? No, we have that virtue, and however corrupt you suppose 
us to be, we never compromise our friends.”

I found these measures and these ethics proper; but, created by Nature 
someday to attain an excellence in base villainy superior to anything I was to 
encounter, the desire to sully and peradventure to doom one of my companions 
rose up strong in my brain as of this same instant—this desire was at least as 
imperious as that other I had to be degraded myself.

Delbène shortly perceived that I preferred Sainte-Elme to her. Indeed, I did 
adore that charming girl; I simply could not leave her side; but as she had 
infinitely less wit than the Superior, another yearning, equally invincible, always 
brought me back to the latter.

“Consumed as you appear to be by the passion to depucelate a maid, or to be 
depucelated yourself,” the incomparable Delbène said to me one day, “I have no 
doubt but that Sainte-Elme has already decided, or may easily be induced, to 
grant you these pleasures. Need she hesitate? She runs no risk: she is going to 
pass the rest of her life in holy retirement. But you, Juliette, once bereft of your 
token, you’ll be forever debarred from marriage. Think then, and believe me: 
untold misfortunes may well be the consequence of a flaw in the part you perhaps
too lightly think of damaging. However, heed me, my angel, you know that I 
adore you, give up that Sainte-Elme, take me instead and I’ll satisfy all the 
pleasures you long for in a trice. You have only to select her in the whole convent 
whose first fruits you covet, and I myself shall make away with yours…. There’ll 
be some material injuries, needless to say. But fear not, I’ll arrange everything. 
Just how ’tis managed is a great secret; if you would have it revealed to you, I 
must first have your most solemn oath that, as of this moment, you’ll speak not 
another word to Sainte-Elme. And if you break faith with me there will be no limit 
to my vengeance.”

Far too fond of this bewitching creature to wish to compromise her and, in 
addition, burning to taste the pleasures Delbène encouraged me to hope for if I 
abandoned Sainte-Elme, I promised everything.

“’Tis well,” said Delbène a month later, during which interval she had put me to
the test, “have you made your choice? Who is it to be?”

And now, my kind friends, never in your life will you guess upon what object 
my libertine imagination had alighted. Upon that girl, that same one, who stands 
there before your eyes: my own sister. But Madame Delbène knew her too well 
not to attempt to dissuade me from undertaking the thing.

“Have your own way,” said I at last. “My second choice is Laurette.”

Her youth (she was indeed a child of only ten) … her pretty little wide-awake 
face, her liveliness, her high birth, everything about her incensed me … inflamed 
me; and seeing no important obstacle to success—for this young orphan had no 
protector apart from an elderly uncle living at a hundred leagues’ distance from 
Paris—the Superior assured me I could consider as already sacrificed the victim 
my perfidious desires were immolating in advance.

We appointed a day; on the eve of the drama Delbène summoned me to her 
cell to spend the night in her embraces. Our conversation returned to questions of
religion.

“I fear,” said she, “lest you proceed in too great haste, my child. Your heart, 
beguiled by your mind, has not yet reached the stage at which I would prefer to 
see it. These superstitious infamies are still harassing you—I wager ’tis so. Listen 
to me, Juliette, lend me your undivided attention and make an effort so that in 
the future, with an effrontery equal to mine and without any qualms whatever, 
you will be able to carry your libertinage, anchored upon a substructure of reliable
principles, to it matters not what extreme.

“When they begin to chatter about religion, the first of the dogmas they 
trundle forth is the one pertaining to the existence of God: as it is the foundation 
of the whole edifice, I ought logically to begin my examination by focusing upon 
it.

“Oh, Juliette! let us have no doubt, this fantasy about there being a God has its
origins in nothing but the mind’s limitations. Knowing not to whom or what all the 
universe about us is to be attributed, helpless before the utter impossibility of 
explaining the inscrutable mysteries of Nature, above her we have gratuitously 
installed a Being invested with the power of producing all the effects of whose 
causes we are profoundly ignorant.

“This abominable ghost was no sooner envisaged as the author of Nature than 
he had also to be deemed that of good and evil; the habit of regarding these 
opinions as true, and the obvious usefulness of suppositions which conveniently 
flatter laziness and curiosity, quickly made for the tendency most men still have of
according the same degree of belief to a fable as to a geometrical proof, and the 
persuasion became so great, the habit so binding, that from the outset one had 
need of all one’s rational faculties to keep from tumbling into error. There is but a 
single easy step from the extravagance of acknowledging the existence of a God 
to the practice of worshiping him; nothing simpler than imploring the protection of
what one dreads; nothing but what is most natural in the procedure which leads 
to burning incense upon the altars of the magical individual they posit as 
simultaneously the prime mover and the dispenser of everything that is. He was 
thought wicked, because some very disagreeable effects resulted from the 
necessary workings of Nature’s laws; to appease him, victims were needed: 
whence fastings, macerations, penances, and every other sort of idiocy, the fruit 
of the fear of the many and the brazen imposture of the few. Or, if you prefer, the 
perennial, unaltering effects of man’s weakness, for you may be certain that 
wherever you find human frailty you also come upon gods whelped by the same 
men’s terror, and homages rendered unto these gods, the inevitable result of the 
folly that erects them.

“There is no question of it, my dear friend: this opinion which holds that a God 
exists and that he is the omnipotent force responsible for plenty and dearth is at 
the base of all the world’s religions. But which of these multifarious traditions is 
one to prefer? Each claims revelations which argue in its favor, each makes 
mention of texts, sacred books inspired by its divinity, each aims at nothing short 
of eclipsing all the others. Here I find I have a difficult choice to make. For guide 
in the night I have none but my reason, and directly I bring up its light to help me
in the task of examining all these competing aspirants to my belief, all these 
fables, I see no more than a heap of farfetched incongruities and platitudes which
chill and repulse me.

“After devoting a rapid glance to the absurd ideas entertained upon this 
subject by all the peoples of the earth, I finally arrive at the doctrines espoused 
by the Jews and Christians. The former speak to me of a God, but they refuse me 
any account of his origins, they give me no idea, no definite image of him, and 
with what regards the nature of this people’s overlord, I obtain nothing but 
puerile allegories, unworthy of the majesty of a Being whom I am invited to 
accept as the Creator of the All; ’tis only in offensive contradictions this nation’s 
lawgiver talks to me of his God, and the terms and colors he uses to describe him
are much apter to make me abhor than to get me to serve him. Seeing that it is 
this God himself who speaks in the Books they allude to in their struggle to 
explain him, I ask myself how, in providing concepts and images of himself, a God
could possibly have chosen those which can only excite a man to despise him. 
Puzzled by this question, I decide to consult these Books with greater care; and 
what am I to think when I cannot avoid remarking, as I inspect them, that not 
only could they never have been dictated by the mind or spirit of a God, but that 
forsooth they were written down long after the death of the personage who dares 
affirm he transmitted verbatim God’s own phrases. Ha! so that’s the nonsense 
they’re peddling, I exclaim upon completing my investigations; these Holy Books 
they wish to fob off on me as performances composed by the Almighty are no 
more than the confections of some knavish charlatans, and instead of discerning 
traces of the deific, I behold nothing but the issue of stupid credulity and lame 
sleight. And indeed! what more abject ineptitude is there than this of everywhere 
depicting, in these Books, a people chosen of the Lord it has just fabricated for 
itself, of announcing far and wide to all the world’s nations that it is to none but 
these squatters in a desert the Almighty speaks; that it was only in their fate he 
took any interest; that it is for their sake only he tampers with the motions of the 
stars, splits the seas, showers down manna from the skies; as if it would not have
been far easier for this God to penetrate into their hearts, enlighten their minds, 
than to disturb the smooth operations of Nature, and as if this bent in favor of an 
obscure, insignificant, impoverished, unknown people were commensurate with 
the supreme majesty of the Being to whom you would have me ascribe the 
faculty of universal creation. But however compelling might be my urge to assent 
to what these preposterous Books seek to foist upon their reader, what choice 
have I but to demand whether the unanimous silence of all the adjoining 
countries’ historians, who ought surely to have taken note of the extraordinary 
events that crowd Scripture, must not suffice to make me doubt the authenticity 
of the marvels reported in these romances? What, pray tell, am I to think when it 
is precisely amongst the ranks of that very race which so exuberantly celebrates 
its God to me that I discover the greatest quantity of unbelievers? What! this God 
overwhelms his people with blessings and miracles, and this cherished people 
believes not in its God? What! this God, to the tune of the most impressive 
theatrics, upon the peak of a mountain thunders forth his ordinations, upon this 
mountaintop dictates his sublime laws to the legislator of that people who, in the 
plain below, doubt him; and upon that plain idols are raised, monuments of 
cynicism, as though the lawgiving God booming on high deserved nothing better 
than to have his nose tweaked? At last he dies, this exceptional man who has just
offered the Jews such a magnificent God, yes, he expires, a prodigy coincides with
his death: by this abundance of unparalleled occurrences the majesty of this God 
is doubtless to be stamped eternally in the memory of the race which has been 
witness to his greatness—a greatness the scions of those who watched the 
spectacle are later to prove reluctant to acknowledge. But less gullible than their 
forebears, in a few years idolatry uptilts the precariously seated altars of the God 
of Moses, and the unhappy, oppressed Jews remember their ancestors’ chimera 
only once they have regained their freedom. New leaders therewith begin to sing 
the old song, but, unfortunately, their prophesies are not borne out by 
developments: the Jews, these new leaders declare, shall prosper so long as they 
remain faithful to Moses’ deity: never did the Jews show him greater respect, and 
never did sorrow dog them more cruelly. Exposed to the wrath of Alexander’s 
successors, they escaped the Macedonian’s irons only to fall under the yoke of the
Romans who, their patience exhausted at last by the revolt brewing perpetually 
among the Jews, demolished their temple and dispersed their numbers. And that 
then is how their God serves them! that is how this God, who loves them, who 
solely for their benefit meddles with the sacred order of Nature, that is how he 
deals with them, that is how he fulfills his vows to them.

“Ah no, it’s not then to be amongst the Jews I’ll go looking for a universal 
Almighty; finding in that hapless nation nothing better than some repulsive 
phantom, spawn of the uncurbed imaginations of a handful of ambitious rogues, I 
must abhor the contemptible God wickedness dreamt up. And now let’s have a 
glance at the Christians.

“And what a host of further absurdities we have here! It’s no longer a 
mountain-climbing madman’s Tablets that rattle out the rules to me; this time the
God in question proclaims himself through a much nobler envoy: Mary’s meeching
bastard is entitled to a very different kind of respect than that claimed by the 
abandoned son of Jochebed. So let’s peer closely at this sinister little cheat; 
what’s he up to, what does he contrive to demonstrate his God’s truth to me, 
what are his credentials, his methods? Capers and droll antics, suppers with sluts,
fraudulent cures, puns, jests and duperies. ‘I am the Son of God,’ bleats this 
stammering little boor, incapable as he is of uttering one coherent phrase about 
his Father, of penning a line to describe him; yes, ‘I am the Son of God,’ and 
better still: ‘I’m God,’ that’s what I’m to believe simply because the drivel 
emanates from him. The rascal’s hanged up there on a cross, does it matter? His 
followers desert him, it makes no difference at all: there he is, and no one else: 
God of the universe, nailed. Where did he take form? Why, in a Jewess’ womb. His
birthplace? In a stable. How does he gain my belief in him? By abjectness, 
poverty, imposture, he has no other means to win me over. And if I waver, if I fail 
of belief? Woe unto me! eternal tortures are my destiny. There’s a God, I’ve 
omitted nothing from the portrait and in it there’s not one feature that stirs the 
soul or appeals to the heart. Oh, matchless contradiction! ’tis upon the ancient 
law the new one is grounded, and nevertheless the new supersedes, sets at 
nought the old: what then is the basis of the new? This Christ, is he the lawgiver 
we’re to hearken to? All by himself, he alone is going to give me an understanding
of the God who’s dispatched him here; but if it was to Moses’ interest to preach to
me about the God whence his power derived, think of how eager must be the 
Nazarene to tell me about the God from whom he descends! Surely, the more 
modern lawgiver must be better informed than the earlier one; Moses was at best
able to chat familiarly with his master, but Christ is God’s blood offspring. Moses, 
content to ascribe natural causes to miracles, convinces his people that lightning 
blazes forth for the chosen only; the cleverer Jesus accomplishes the miracle 
himself; and if both do indeed merit their contemporaries’ profound scorn, it has 
nevertheless to be admitted that the later of the two was, through his superior 
insolence, the more justified in claiming the esteem of men; and the posterity 
that judges them by assigning a ghetto to the Jews shall definitely be obliged to 
grant the other a priority on the gallows.

“So, Juliette, it is apparent, is it not, the vicious circle into which men fall as 
soon as they begin to rave about this rubbish: religion proves its prophet, the 
prophet his religion.

“This God so far not having shown hide nor hair of himself either to the Jewish 
sect or to that of the otherwise but hardly less contemptible Christians, I 
persevere in my quest for some solid evidence of him, I summon reason to my 
aid, and lest it deceive me I subject reason itself to analysis. What is reason? The 
faculty given me by Nature whereby I may dispose myself in a favorable sense 
toward such-and-such an object and against some other, depending upon the 
amount of pleasure or pain I derive from these objects: a calculation governed 
absolutely by my senses, since it is exclusively through them that I receive the 
comparative impressions which constitute either the pains I wish to avoid or the 
pleasures I must seek.

“Thus, as Fréret says, the reason is nothing other than the scales we weigh 
objects in, and, balancing those of these objects that are external to ourselves, 
the reasoning mechanism tells us what conclusions we are to come to: when the 
scales tip beneath what looks to be the greatest pleasure, it is to that side our 
judgment always inclines. As you observe, this rational choice, in us as in animals 
which are also full of reason, is but the effect of the grossest and most material 
mechanical operation. But as reason is the only touchstone we possess, it must 
be the test whereunto we submit the faith knaves imperiously insist that we 
exhibit for objects which either lack reality or are so prodigiously vile in 
themselves that they can only aspire to our loathing. Well now, Juliette, the very 
first thing this rational faculty essays is, as you sense, to assign an essential 
difference that distinguishes the thing which presents its appearance to the 
perceiver from the thing which the perceiver perceives. The representational 
perceptions of a given object are of still another species. When they show us 
objects as absent now and as having been at some time in the past present to our
minds, that is what we call memory, remembrance, recollection. If these 
perceptions propose objects to us, but do not advise us of their real absence, that
is what we call imagination, and this imagination is the true cause of all our 
errors. Now, the most abundant source of these errors lies in our ascribing an 
independent existence to the objects of these inner perceptions and, more, in our 
supposing that they exist outside of ourselves and separately just as we conceive 
of them as separate from one another. To make myself clear to you, upon this 
separate idea, upon this idea born of the object which makes its appearance 
before the perceiver, I’ll bestow the term objective idea in order to distinguish it 
from the impression the object generates in the perceiver, which I shall call the 
real idea. It is of utmost importance that these two varieties of existence not be 
confused; merely neglect to characterize these distinctions, and the way is open 
to boundless error. The infinitely divisible point, so necessary to geometry, 
belongs to the class of objective existences; solid bodies to that of real 
existences. However abstract this may seem to you, my dear, you must make an 
effort to keep apace with me if you wish to follow my lead to the goal I wish my 
reasonings to bring us both to.

“Before going farther, let us here observe that nothing is commoner than to 
make the grave mistake of identifying the real existence of bodies that are 
external to us with the objective existence of the perceptions that are inside our 
minds. Our very perceptions themselves are distinct from ourselves, and are also 
distinct from one another, if it be upon present objects they bear and upon their 
relations and the relations of these relations. They are thoughts when it is of 
absent things they afford us images; when they afford us images of objects which
are within us, they are ideas. However, all these things are but our being’s 
modalities and ways of existing; and all these things are no more distinct from 
one another, or from ourselves, than the extension, mass, shape, color, and 
motion of a body are from that body. Subsequently, they necessarily bestirred 
themselves to invent terms to cover in general all particular but similar ideas: 
cause was the name given to all beings that bring about some change in another 
being distinct from themselves, and effect the word for any change wrought by 
whatever cause in whatever being. As this terminology gives rise in us, at best, to
a very muddled idea of being, of action, of reaction, of change, the habit of 
employing it in time led people to believe they had clear-cut and precise 
perceptions of these things, and they finally reached the stage of fancying there 
could exist a cause which was not a being nor a body either, a cause which was 
really distinct from all embodiment and which, without movement, without action,
could produce every imaginable effect. They were little concerned to ponder and 
realize that all beings continually acting and reacting upon one another produce 
and simultaneously undergo changes; the infinite progression of beings which 
have been successively cause and effect soon wearied the minds of those who at 
any cost were driven to find a cause in every effect. Sensing their imaginations 
worn to defeat by this long sequence of ideas, they hit upon the short cut of 
skipping in a single great leap back to a primary cause; they fancied it the 
universal cause in regard to which all particular causes are effects and which, 
itself, is the effect of no cause at all.

“Behold it, Juliette: such is the God men have got themselves; behold what 
their enervated imaginations have spawned by way of a grotesque fantasy. 
Linking one sophism to the next, men wound up creating this, ’tis plain to see 
how they did it; and in keeping with the definition I gave you just a while ago, 
you recognize that this grandiose phantom, having a merely objective existence, 
cannot exist anywhere outside the minds of the deluded who rivet their 
hallucinated attentions upon it, and hence it amounts to no more than the pure 
and simple effect of their brains’ heated disorder. Ah yes, behold him nonetheless:
the God of mortals, gaze well upon the abomination they’ve invented and in 
whose temples they have shed whole seas of Mood.

“If,” Madame Delbène continued, “I have dilated upon the essential differences 
between real and objective existences, that is, as, my dear, you understand, 
because I felt it a matter of urgency that I demonstrate to you the varieties 
subsisting in men’s practical and speculative opinions, and that I have you see 
that men are wont to ascribe a real existence to a good many things which 
actually have a no more than conjectural existence. Well, it is to a product of this 
conjectural existence mankind has given the name of God. If faulty reasoning 
were the only result of these exercises, we could dismiss the whole harmless 
affair; but, unfortunately the thing does not stop there: the imagination catches 
fire, the habit develops, and one becomes accustomed to considering as 
something real that which is but the fictive creature of our weakness. One is no 
sooner convinced that this chimerical being’s will is the cause of all that befalls us 
than one sets to employing every means to coddling and cockering him, every 
possible fashion to imploring him.

“Let’s be guided by mature reflection and, deciding upon the adoption of a God
only after careful sifting of what has just been advanced, let’s be persuaded that 
the whole notion of God being unable to occur to us save in an objective manner, 
nothing but illusions and phantoms can result from it.

“Whatever they may serve up of sophistries, those absurd partisans of man’s 
deific bogey actually never say anything more than that there can be no effect 
without a cause. But they’re not prone to insist that if it be causes we’re to 
discuss, we must trace them back to a first and eternal cause, a universal cause 
behind all particular and subsequent causes, an original, creative, and 
self-creating cause, a cause which is independent of any other cause. Admittedly, 
we do not truly understand the connection, the sequence, and the progression of 
all causes; but ignorance of one fact is never adequate grounds for establishing 
and then accrediting another fact. They who want to convince us of their 
abominable God’s existence have the sauciness to tell us that, because we cannot
designate the veritable source of the cause-and-effect series, we must necessarily
acknowledge the universal cause they champion. Can you cite me a better 
example of inane argument? As if it were not preferable to admit ignorance 
instead of acquiescing in an absurdity; or as if the acceptance of this absurdity 
became proof of its existence! Idiots may as well sink in their mental limitations; 
the intelligent run the risk of foundering upon the rocks when it is into the 
phantom’s haven they undertake to steer.

“But, with a cool head, let’s proceed and, if you like, momentarily grant our 
antagonists the existence of the vampire(1) that is the author of their felicity. 
Within this hypothesis, I ask them whether the law, the rule, the will whereby God
supervises beings is of the same nature as our mortal will and power, whether in 
the same circumstances God can want and not want, whether the same thing can 
please and displease him, whether his sentiments are unchanging, whether the 
scheme by which he operates is immutable. If he is subject to a law, his function 
is merely executive; if this be so, he follows instructions and is not autonomous, 
has no power of his own. The unaltering law behind his gestures, what then is it? 
is it distinct from him, or inherent in him? If, on the other hand, this superior 
being can change his sentiments and his will, I wish to know why he does so. 
Certainly, he must have some motive for changing them, a much more logical 
motive than any that impels us, for God to outstrip us in wisdom as he surpasses 
us in prudence; well, can we possibly imagine this motive without lessening the 
perfection of the being who cedes to it? I’ll go farther: if God knows beforehand 
that he shall change his mind and will, why, since the Omnipotent can do 
anything, has he not arranged circumstances in such sort as to obviate the need 
for this mutation, always tiresome and proof always of weakness? And if he 
doesn’t know what’s coming next, what kind of omniscient God is it who cannot 
foresee what he’s going to have to do? If he does have foreknowledge 
thereof—as, if one is to arrive at any notion of him at all, one must suppose—it is 
then fixed and decreed, apart from his will, that he shall act in this manner or in 
that: well, what law determines his will? where is that law? whence does it draw 
its force?

“If your God is not free, if he is compelled to act in obedience to laws that 
govern him, then he amounts to something like destiny or chance which vows 
don’t touch nor prayers melt nor offerings appease and which you’d better 
contemn forever than beseech with such little success.

“But if yet more dangerous, more wicked, more ferocious, your execrable God 
hid from man what was becoming necessary to man’s happiness, his aim was 
then not to make man happy, he thus loves him not, thus he is neither just nor 
benevolent. It should seem to me that a God ought not to will anything 
impossible, and it is not possible that man respect laws that tyrannize or are 
unknown or unknowable to him.

“And there is yet more to it: this scurvy God hates man for being ignorant of 
what he has not been taught; he punishes man for having violated an unknown 
law, for pursuing bents and tastes man cannot have acquired from anyone but his
creator. Oh, Juliette!” my tutor exclaimed, “can I conceive of this infernal and 
detestable God otherwise than as a despot, a barbarian, a monster to whom I 
owe all the hatred, all the wrath, all the scorn my quickened physical and moral 
faculties can excite in me?

“And so even were they to bring off their demonstration, even were they to 
present me with proof of God’s existence; were they to succeed in convincing me 
that he has dictated the laws, singled out certain individuals to attest them to 
mortals; were I to be made to see that in man’s relationship to God there is none 
but the purest consistency and harmony; even so nothing could prove to me that 
I please him by observing his commandments, for if he is not good he can deceive
me, and my reason, which comes to me only from him, shall not be my 
guarantee, for it would not be unthinkable that he endowed me with rational 
powers simply in order that, using a treacherous instrument, I thrust myself all 
the deeper into error.

“To continue. I now ask you deists how this God, whose existence I’ve no 
objection to allowing for the sake of a brief discussion, is going to behave in 
regard to those who are altogether unacquainted with his laws. If God punishes 
the invincible ignorance of those to whom his laws have not been promulgated 
nor announced, he is unjust; and if he is incapable of instructing them, he is 
impotent.

“There is no doubt: the revelation of the Eternal’s laws must bear the hallmark 
of the God whence they emanate. Well, we have been regaled with revelations in 
quantity; which amongst them is stamped with an equally evident and 
indispensable seal of authenticity? Thus it is by religion itself that the 
religion-announcing God is repudiated and destroyed; and what, I wonder, is to 
become of this religion when the God it established no longer exists save in the 
unhinged minds of fools?

“Whether or not human knowledge be real or illusory, true or false, it matters 
little to the happiness of life; but that does not hold in what pertains to religion. 
Once men have as it were got their teeth into the imaginary objects religion 
proposes, they develop passionate enthusiasms for these objects: they come to 
believe that these ghosts flitting about in their heads really do exist, and from 
there on there’s no checking them. Every day, fresh occasion to tremble and more
adepts quaking: such are the sole effects the perilous idea of God produces in us. 
This idea alone is responsible for the most withering and appalling ills in the life of
man; ’tis this idea that constrains him to deprive himself of life’s most delectable 
pleasures, terrified as he is at all times lest he displease this disgusting fruit of his
delirious imagination. You, my good little friend, you must therefore and as soon 
as you can deliver yourself from the frights this goblin inspires; and to achieve 
your liberty you without doubt have but to lift a steady fist to smash the idol into 
small bits.

“The concept of a divinity the priests wish to foist upon us is the concept, 
precisely, of a universal cause whereof every other cause is an effect. The 
imbeciles to whom these impostors have always addressed themselves believed 
that such a cause did exist—could possibly exist separately from the particular 
effects it produces, quite as if the modalities of a body could be separated from 
that body, as if whiteness being one of the qualities of snow, it were possible to 
peel that quality away from snow. Do modifications take leave of the bodies they 
modify? Well then, your God is only a modification of the matter that by its 
essence is perpetually in motion; this motion which you think you can separate 
from it, this energy native to matter, there’s’ your God; and now, you flea-brained
worshiping mice, now inspect this august being who made you in his image, and 
decide for yourselves to what homage he is entitled!

“Those wits that hold the first cause capable of producing no more than the 
local movement of bodies, and who reserve to our human intelligence the power 
of self-determination, curiously limit that cause and, stealing away its universality,
reduce it to the lowest thing in Nature, to, that is, the mean task of keeping 
matter on the move. But as all things in Nature are interrelated, let mental 
feelings produce movements in living bodies, let the movements of bodies excite 
sentiments in souls, all very well, but one cannot resort to this supposition to 
found or defend religious worship; as a consequence of the perception of the 
objects that are there before our consideration, we ask only that these 
perceptions occur when we are prepared to make the most of them, when they 
coincide with a stirring in our organs. Thus the cause of these stirrings is the 
cause of our will and desiring. If this cause knows nothing of the effect these 
stirrings produce in us, then what a puny God you’ve got there! and if he knows, 
then he is accomplice to it and consents thereto; if, knowing, he does not 
consent, he is thus forced to do what he does not want to do; there is thus 
something more powerful than he, hence he is constrained to obey laws. As our 
will always expresses itself in some movement, gesture, or impulse, God is 
consequently obliged to concur in what we will and sanction what at our will’s 
behest we do: God hence dwells in the parricide’s murdering arm, in the 
incendiary’s torch, in the whore’s cunt. God begins to sweat, to say no? Then 
there’s a skimpy, starveling little God, weaker than us, and he’s forced to obey us.
And so, irrespective of what they say, it’s got to be stated that there is no 
universal cause; or if you simply cannot manage without one, we’ll have to let it 
consent to everything that happens to us, we’ll have to suppose it never wills 
anything else, you’ll have also to accept that this shoddy Omnipotence can neither
hate nor love any of the particular beings which emanate from it, because all of 
them obey it equally, and that, this being so, words like punishments, rewards, 
commandments, prohibitions, order, and disorder are merely allegorical terms 
drawn from what transpires in the sphere of human events and intercourse.

“Notice now that as soon as one no longer feels strictly bound to regard God as
an essentially good being, as a being who loves mankind, it is very possible to 
think that God intended to deceive man. Thus even were we to grant the 
authenticity of all the miracles upon which the whole scheme is made to repose 
by those who claim to knowledge of the laws he disclosed to a few individuals, as 
all these prodigious deeds confirm the injustice and inhumanity of God, we have 
no assurance that these wonders were not wrought with the express purpose of 
gulling us, and nothing authorizes the belief that by the most scrupulous 
observance of his commandments we can ever win his friendship. If he does not 
punish those who have observed his decreed law, its observance becomes 
useless; and as this obedience is painful, your God, in prescribing it, showed 
himself guilty of both uselessness and wickedness: whereupon I must again 
inquire whether this being is worthy of our pious attentions. His commandments, 
moreover, are in no wise respectworthy; they are absurd, contrary to right 
reason, they are offensive to our moral sense and are physically afflicting, they 
who proclaim the law violate it night and day, and if indeed there is in the world a 
scattering of personages who seem moved to express faith in this law, let us 
carefully scrutinize their mentalities, we will discover them to be simple-minded or
lunatic. I turn an analytical eye upon the evidence offered in proof of this 
scandalous jumble of mysteries and decrees, the issue of our ridiculous God, and 
I find everything perched upon the pitiable foundations of confused, uncertain 
traditions which seem only to invite regular defeat at the hands of any adversary, 
however unskilled he may be.

“We may declare it truthfully and with confidence: of all the religions edified by
mankind, there is not one which can make any legitimate claim to pre-eminence 
over the rest; not one which is not stuffed with fables, replete with lies, 
overflowing with perversities, not one which is not studded with the most 
imminent dangers lying cheek to jowl with the most glaring contradictions. The 
crazed seek to justify their reveries, and they call miracles to their rescue: 
whence the result that, with the same tedious circular process, it’s now the 
miracle which proves the religion whereas a moment ago ’twas the religion which 
proved the miracle. Nor is it that only one religion requires miracles; they all do, 
miracles are cited in every holy text, and on every page. Leda had a splendid 
swan; to compete with her, Mary had to be served by her dove.

“If nevertheless all these miracles were true, the obvious and necessary result 
would be that God had allowed miracles to occur in behalf of true and false 
religions alike, in which case his impartiality would manifest his unconcern for 
error and truth. The entertaining thing is that every sect is as firmly persuaded as
any of its rivals of the overwhelming reality of the prodigies it recognizes. If they 
are all false, one must conclude that entire nations have been capable of believing
fictions; thus, insofar as the truth of prodigies goes, the unconditional credulity of 
a whole people proves nothing whatsoever. But not one of these alleged facts can 
be proved in any way other than by the persuasion of those who believe them 
already, hence there is not one the truth whereof has been adequately 
established; and as these wonders constitute the sole means by which we might 
be compelled to believe in a religion, we must conclude that not one stands 
proven, and we must deem them all as the handiwork of fanaticism, deceit, fraud,
and arrogance.”

“But,” I interjected at this point, “if there be neither God nor religion, what is it
runs the universe?”

“My dear,” Madame Delbène replied, “the universe runs itself, and the eternal 
laws inherent in Nature suffice, without any first cause or prime mover, to 
produce all that is and all that we know; the perpetual movement of matter 
explains everything: why need we supply a motor to that which is ever in motion?
The universe is an assemblage of unlike entities which act and react mutually and 
successively with and against each other; I discern no start, no finish, no fixed 
boundaries, this universe I see only as an incessant passing from one state into 
another, and within it only particular beings which forever change shape and form,
but I acknowledge no universal cause behind and distinct from the universe and 
which gives it existence and which procures the modifications in the particular 
beings composing it. I affirm indeed that, in my view, the absolute contrary holds,
and I believe I have proven my point. We need not fret if we find nothing to 
substitute for chimeras, and above all let us never accept as cause for what we do
not comprehend something else we comprehend even less.

“After having demonstrated the complete extravagance of the deific system,” 
that talented woman went on, “I’ll surely have little trouble uprooting the 
prejudices and superstitions that have been planted in you ever since the day 
when, at a tender age, you first heard theories expounded on the principle of life; 
is there really anything more extraordinary than this superiority to animals which 
humans arrogate to themselves? Ask them upon what basis their superiority 
rests. ‘We have a soul’—that’s their silly response. Then ask them to explain what 
they mean by this vocable, soul. And then you’ll see them stutter, flounder amidst
contradictions: ‘It is an unknown substance,’ they begin; next: it’s a secret 
incorporeal power; finally, a spirit whereof they have no definite idea. Ask them 
how this spirit, which, like their God, they imagine as totally without extension, 
has managed to wed itself to their material and extensive body, they’ll tell you 
that they frankly don’t know, that it’s passing strange, a mystery, that God’s 
omnipotent dexterity has brought this union about. Such are the admirably keen 
and incisive ideas that stupidity forms of the hidden or rather imaginary 
substance which stupidity turns into the mechanism responsible for all of 
stupidity’s acts.

“To that nonsense I have just this to reply: if the soul is a substance that 
differs essentially from the body and that can have no relation to it, their fusion is
impossible. Furthermore, this soul, being in essence different from the body, 
ought necessarily to act in a different fashion from it; however, we observe that 
the impulses experienced by the body make themselves felt also upon this 
so-called soul, and that these two substances, dissimilar in essence, always act in 
concert. You’ll tell me that this harmony is another mystery, and in my turn I’ll tell
you that I’m not aware of having any soul, that I’m acquainted with and feel 
nothing but my body; that it is the body which feels, which thinks, which judges, 
which suffers, which enjoys; and that all its faculties are the necessary effects of 
its mechanism, organization, and structure.

“Although man is utterly incapable of achieving the faintest idea of this soul of 
his, although everything proves to man that he feels, thinks, acquires thoughts 
and ideas, takes pleasure and suffers pain only by means of the senses or the 
organs of the body, notwithstanding he carries on with his folly and comes to the 
point of believing that this soul about which he knows nothing is exempt from 
death. But even supposing this soul to exist, tell me, if you please, how one can 
avoid recognizing its total dependence upon the body and the fact that it must 
share in all the vicissitudes of the body’s fate. And yet absurdity can bring a man 
so far as to believe that by its nature the soul has nothing in common with the 
body; one would have us think that it can act and feel without the body’s aid; in a
word, one maintains that, deprived of this body and sundered from the senses, 
this sublime soul will be able to live in order to suffer, experience great comfort or
severe torments. It is upon some such loose heap of conjectural absurdities one 
builds the wonderful opinion relative to the soul’s immortality.

“If I ask them their motives for supposing the soul deathless, they pipe up at 
once: ‘Because it is in man’s very nature to desire eternal life.’ ‘But,’ I reply, ‘does
your desire become proof of its fulfillment? By what peculiar logic dare one decide
that something cannot fail to happen because one wishes it to?’ ‘The impious,’ 
they give me back, ‘the impious, lacking the flattering hopes of an afterlife, desire
definitive annihilation.’ ‘Well then, upon the basis of this desire, are they any less 
authorized to conclude that they will be annihilated than you claim yourselves 
authorized to conclude that you are going to go on existing always simply because
that is your desire?’

“Oh, Juliette!” this rigorous logician pursued with all the energy of a passionate
conviction, “oh, my beloved friend, doubt thereof there may be none: when we 
die, we die. Inside and out, through and through; and once the Fates have 
severed the thread, the human frame is no more than an inert mass, unable to 
produce those movements which, collectively, constituted its life. In the dead 
body neither circulation nor respiration nor digestion nor locution nor intellection 
are any longer there; upon death, so they say, the soul quits the body; but to say
that this soul, of which nothing is known, is the principle of life is to say nothing at
all unless it be that an unknown force is the hidden principle of imperceptible 
motions. What is more natural and simpler than to believe a dead man is dead, 
over and done with; and what more ludicrous than to believe that when a man is 
dead he’s still alive?

“We smile at the naïveté of those peoples who have the custom of burying 
provisions and victuals alongside corpses; is it more farfetched to believe men will
eat after death than to fancy they’ll think, have pleasant or unpleasant ideas, 
amuse themselves, repent, feel hurt or joy, be glad or heavy of heart, when once 
the very organs required for transmitting and receiving sensations and ideas shall 
have rotted to bits and these bits crumbled to dust? To say that human souls will 
be happy or unhappy after death is tantamount to declaring that men can see 
without eyes, hear without ears, taste without palates, scent without noses, touch
without fingers. And yet, think of it! they consider themselves exceedingly clever, 
most rational, those societies which uphold such notions.

“The dogma of the soul’s immortality assumes the soul to be a simple 
substance, in short, a spirit, but I haven’t given up wondering what a spirit is.”

“I was taught,” I volunteered, “that a spirit is a substance lacking extension, 
incorruptible, and having nothing in common with matter.”

“That being the case,” my tutor answered at once, “tell me how your soul 
arranges to be born, to grow, to strengthen itself, to agitate itself, and to age, and
all this concurrently with the evolution of your body?

“Like a myriad of fools who have entertained the same notions, you’ll say that 
the whole affair is downright mysterious; but, imbeciles that they are, if all these 
problems are mysteries, they understand nothing about them, and since they 
understand nothing about them, how can they make an affirmative decision about
the coexistence of what they are incapable of conceiving? In order to believe or 
affirm something, need you not at least know in what consists the thing you 
believe and declare to be? Belief in the soul’s immortality, that comes round to 
saying one is convinced of the existence of a thing whereof there is no possible 
means of forming any precise concept whatever; it’s belief in a batch of empty 
words without being able to associate any meaning to them; to maintain that a 
thing is such as it is said to be, that’s the last stage in madness and vanity.

“Ah, but what odd logicians these theologians are! Whenever they cannot 
divine the natural causes of things, they jump straight into improvising 
supernatural causes, they imagine spirits, gods, occult causes, unfathomable and 
uncanny agents, or rather words for all these, words a great deal more obscure 
than the phenomena they labor to account for. We’d best remain within the realm 
of Nature when we wish to appreciate the effects of Nature; let us never stray 
away from Nature when we wish to explain her phenomena, let us cease to worry 
over causes too subtle to be grasped by our organs, let us fully realize that it shall
never be by turning our back upon Nature that we’ll find the solutions to the 
problems Nature poses us.

“Within the terms of theological hypothesis itself—that is to say, supposing that
matter is moved by an omnipotent motor—by what right do the theologians deny 
their God the power to give this matter the faculty of thought? Were we to 
suppose a matter that could think we could at least gain a few insights into the 
subject of thought or into what does the thinking in us; whereas so long as we 
attribute thought to an immaterial being it is impossible for us even to begin to 
understand it.

“We encounter the objection that materialism reduces the human being to a 
mere machine, that materialism is hence a dishonor to our kind; but is it to honor
this species to say that man acts at the behest of the secret impulses of a spirit or
of a certain I don’t know quite what which serves to animate him nobody knows 
quite how?

“One readily perceives that the superiority they accord spirit over matter, or 
the soul over the body, is based simply on our ignorance of the nature of this 
soul, whereas everyone is more familiar with matter and flesh and fancies he 
understands them to the point of knowing precisely how they work. And yet, any 
contemplative mind must be aware that the simplest workings of our bodies are 
as difficult to apprehend as the enigmatic operations of thought.

“Why is it so many people have this inflated esteem for spiritual substance? I 
can offer only one explanation: their total inability to define it intelligibly. The 
slight case in which our theologians hold the flesh comes only from the fact that 
familiarity breeds contempt.

When they tell us that the soul is of greater excellence than the body, they tell 
us nothing unless it be that that with which they have no acquaintance must 
perforce be finer, nobler, than that whereupon they have a few vapid ideas.

“Tirelessly they fill our ears with the usefulness of this afterlife dogma; they 
declare that even if it were all a large fib, it would still have its advantages, for it 
would continue to alarm men and keep them browbeaten on the path of virtue. 
Well, I wonder whether it’s really so, that this dogma renders men better behaved
and more virtuous. I dare say, to the contrary, that it is effective only in rendering
them insane, hypocritical, wicked, despondent, irritable, and that you’ll always 
find more virtues and more civil conduct among those peoples who are not 
burdened with these ideas than among those with whom they are the foundation 
of religion. If they who are appointed to instruct and rule over men had wisdom 
and virtue themselves, realities, and not fantasies, would enable them to govern 
better; but scoundrels, quacksalvers, ambitious ruffians, or low sneaks, the 
lawgivers have ever found it easier to lull nations to sleep with bedtime tales than
to teach truths to the public, than to develop intelligence in the population, than 
to encourage men to virtue by making it worthwhile for sound and palpable 
reasons, than, in short, to govern them in a logical manner.

“Let there be no doubt of it, priests have had their motives for contriving and 
fostering this ridiculous rumor of the soul’s immortality; lacking such devices, how
would they have wrung pennies from the dying? Ah, if these loathsome dogmas of
God and of a soul that outlives us are of no use to humankind, we must at least 
admit that they are indispensable to those who have taken upon themselves the 
chore of infecting public opinion.”

“But,” said I, “is not the dogma of the immortality of the soul comforting to the
downtrodden and unlucky? Illusion though it may be, is it not soothing, is it not 
gladdening? is it not a boon, that man may believe he will be able to survive 
himself and his woes and someday in heaven taste the bliss this world denied 
him?”

“Frankly,” said she, “I fail to see that the desire to set a few ill-starred dolts at 
ease warrants poisoning the minds of millions of respectable people; and, besides,
is it rational to trim the truth to fit one’s wishes? Be a little more courageous, 
abide by the general law, resign yourself to the order of a fate which decrees that 
you, along with everybody else, shall sink back into the crucible of Nature, soon 
to emerge again in some other shape; for the fact is that nothing perishes in the 
womb of this mother of humankind. The elements composing us first decompose 
then straightway re-compose otherwise, in other combinations; an undying laurel 
grows upon Virgil’s grave. I ask you, foolish deists, whether this glorious 
transmigration is not as mild as your heaven-or-hell alternative? For if the thought
of paradise cheers us, few there are who wax ecstatic over that of hell; and you 
Christian idiots, say you not that to be saved one needs have grace your God 
grants to not many folk? Well, there you have some comforting thoughts! Who 
amongst you wouldn’t prefer to be annihilated once rather than burn forever? 
Who then will dare maintain that the attitude which liberates one from these 
dreads is not a thousand times more humane than the uncertainty wherein we 
are left to languish by setting up a God who, proprietor of the favors he 
distributes, gives them only to a small clique of his cronies and who allows that all
the others become worthy of eternal torture? Enthusiasm or madness alone can 
make one reject a lucid and reassuring system and cleave to one where 
improbable conjectures make one despair.”

“But what shall become of me?” I demanded of Madame Delbène. “I am afraid 
of this darkness, this eternal annihilation scares me.”

“And, pray tell, what were you before birth?” inquired that brilliant woman. 
“Several unqualified lumps of unorganized matter as yet without definite form or 
at least lacking any form you can hope to remember. Well, you’re going to turn 
back into those same or similar lumps of matter, you’re going to become the raw 
material out of which new beings will be fashioned, and this will happen when 
natural processes bring it about. Shall you find all this pleasurable? No. Shall you 
suffer? No. Is there anything truly objectionable, here? No; and what is he who on
earth agrees to sacrifice all his pleasures in exchange for the certitude of never 
having to undergo pain? What would he be, if he were able to strike this bargain? 
An inert, motionless being. And after he dies, what will he be? Exactly the same 
thing. What then is the use of fretting, since the law of Nature positively 
condemns you to the same state you’d gladly accept if you were given the 
opportunity to choose? Eh, Juliette, have you existed since the beginning of time? 
No; and does that fact make you grieve and despair? Have you any better cause 
to despair at the fact that you’re not going to exist till the end of time? La la, calm
yourself, my pigeon; the cessation of being affrights only the imagination that has
created the execrable dogma of an afterlife.

“The soul—or, if you wish, the active principle that animates, moves, 
determines us—is nothing other than matter subtilized to a certain degree, by the
means of which refinement it acquires the faculties that so amaze us. Not any 
given portion of matter would be capable of the same effects, to be sure; but, 
through combination with the ordinary portions composing our body, these 
extraordinary ones attain their capacity rather as fire can become flame when 
combined with fatty or other combustible materials. In fine, the soul cannot be 
approached save in two senses: as active principle, and as thinking principle; 
well, whether viewed as the one or the other, we may prove its materiality by two
irrefutable syllogisms. (1) As active principle it is divisible; for the heart, long 
after its separation from the body, preserves its action, continuing to beat; now, 
whatever is susceptible of division is material. The soul, beheld as active principle,
is divisible, hence material. (2) Whatever is susceptible of structural degeneration 
is material, that which is essentially spirit cannot deteriorate; well, the soul is 
affected by the condition of the body, the soul is weak in youthful bodies, decrepit
in superannuated frames; it thus undergoes corporeal influence; however, 
anything that degenerates structurally is material: the soul declines and hence it 
is material.

“Let us say forthrightly and repeatedly: there is nothing marvelous in the 
phenomenon of thought, or at least nothing which proves this phenomenon 
distinct from matter, nothing which indicates that matter, subtilized or modified in 
some or another manner, cannot produce thought; the which is infinitely easier to
comprehend than the existence of God. If this sublime soul were indeed the work 
of God, why should it have to share in all the changes and accidents the body is 
subject to? It would seem to me that, as a divine artifact, this soul ought to be 
perfect, and perfection does not consist in undergoing modifications in order to 
keep pace with so defective a material entity as the human body. If this soul were
a god’s production, it would not have to sense, reflect, or be the victim of the 
body’s gradations; were the soul a thing of divine perfection, it wouldn’t, it 
shouldn’t, be able to; rather, fully formed from the onset, it would conjoin itself to
the embryo, and Cicero would have been able to pen his Tusculanae 
disputationes, Voltaire his Alzire, each in the cradle. If that is not so, and cannot 
be so, it is because the soul ripens step by step with the body’s development, 
then with it descends the farther slope; the soul therefore is constituent of parts, 
since it rises, sinks, augments, diminishes: well, whatever is composed of parts is 
material; hence the soul is material, since it is composed of parts. Am I clear? We
have now to acknowledge the utter impossibility of the soul existing without the 
body, and the latter without the former.

“Nor is there anything to marvel at in the absolute sovereignty the soul exerts 
over the body. Body and soul, they are one, a whole made up of equal parts, yes, 
but in which, howbeit, the cruder must be subordinate to the more refined part, 
this for the same reason that flame, which is material, subordinates the wax it 
consumes and which is also material: there, as in our bodies, you have the 
example of two materials in conflict, the subtler of the two dominating the cruder.

“There, Juliette, I have, so I think, supplied you with more than is needed that 
you be convinced of the nullity of this God they say to exist and of this dogma 
which ascribes immortality to the soul. Oh, but they were shrewd beggars who 
invented this pair of conceptual monstrosities! And what have they been unwilling 
to stoop to, what have they not extorted from the people by calling themselves 
the ministers of God upon whose good or bad mood everything depends in the life
after this! What has not been their influence upon the minds of simple folk who, in
dread of agonies or rewards to come, were obliged to court these cheats, 
self-appointed and sole mediators between God and men, puissant quacks whose 
intervention, swaying the Lord, could arrange fates! All these fables thus are but 
the inspired fruit of self-seeking, of pride, and of the insanity of a handful of 
ambitious individuals nourished upon the ravings of a few others and fit for 
nothing but our contempt, fit only to be extinguished, that they may never again 
reappear. Oh, my dearest Juliette, with what earnestness I exhort you to detest 
them as I do! Such systems as these, it is said, lead to the degradation of morals 
and manners. What’s this! are manners and morals then more important than 
religions? Depending absolutely upon the degree of latitude in which a country 
chances to be located, manners and morals are an arbitrary affair, and can be 
nothing else. Nature prohibits nothing; but laws are dreamt up by men, and these
petty regulations pretend to impose certain restraints upon people; it’s all a 
question of the air’s temperature, of the richness or poverty of the soil in the 
district, of the climate, of the sort of men involved, these are the unconstant 
factors that go into making your manners and morals. And these limitative laws, 
these curbs and injunctions, aren’t in any sense sacred, in any way legitimate 
from the viewpoint of philosophy, whose clairvoyance penetrates error, dissipates 
myth, and to the wise man leaves nothing standing but the fundamental 
inspirations of Nature. Well, nothing is more immoral than Nature; never has she 
burdened us with interdictions or restraints, manners and morals have never been
promulgated by her. Oh, Juliette, you’re going to think me peremptory, somewhat
the rebel and an enemy of yokes and handcuffs; but with uncompromising 
severity I am going to dismiss this equally absurd and childish obligation which 
enjoins us not to do unto others that which unto us we would not have done. It is 
the precise contrary Nature recommends, since Nature’s single precept is to enjoy
oneself, at the expense of no matter whom. It may very possibly follow from the 
observance of this axiom that our pleasures disturb the felicity of others; will 
those pleasures be the less keen for that? This so-called “Law of Nature” with 
which fools wish to manacle us is thus just as fantastical as man-made laws and, 
trampling them all indiscriminately in the mud, we may be intimately persuaded 
that there is no wrong in doing anything we may well please. But at our leisure 
we shall return to these subjects; for the nonce, I flatter myself in the belief that 
my discussion of morality has been as convincing as my reflections upon religion. 
Let’s now put our theories into practice and, after having demonstrated to you 
that you can do everything without committing a crime, let’s commit a villainy or 
two to convince ourselves that everything can be done.”

Electrified by these discourses, I fling myself into my friend’s arms; in a 
thousand little ways I show gratitude for the care she is lavishing upon my 
education.

“I owe you more than life itself, my beloved Delbène,” I cried; “what is an 
existence without philosophy? Is life worth living when one lies crushed beneath 
the yoke of lies and stupidity? Come then,” I said with great warmth, “I feel 
worthy of you at last, ’tis upon your breast I take sacred oath never to return to 
the illusions which through gentle friendship you have just exterminated in me. 
Continue my instruction, continue to direct my footsteps toward happiness; I 
entrust myself to your guidance; do with me what you will, and be sure of this: 
that you have never had a disciple more ardent or more docile than Juliette.”

Delbène was beside herself with delight; for a libertine intelligence, there is no 
more piercing pleasure than that of making proselytes. A thrill marks the 
inculcation of each principle, a multitude of various feelings are flattered by the 
sight of others becoming gangrened by the very corruption that rots us. Ah, how 
it is to be cherished, that influence obtained over their souls, souls which are 
finally re-created by our counsels, urgings, and seductions. Delbène gave me 
back all the kisses I showered upon her; she said I was going to become a 
wayward girl like her, an undisciplined and very disrespectful little whore, that’s 
where I was headed, I’d wind up an atheist, and when God should begin to 
wonder what on earth had happened to good little Juliette, she, Delbène, would 
most gladly step forth and accept the blame for having caused the loss of this 
soul. And her caresses becoming more vibrant, we soon ignited the passions’ fire 
by the bright-burning lamp of philosophy.

“Stay,” said Delbène, “since you’re bent on being depucelated, I’m going to 
satisfy you straight off.”

Crazed with lust, the wench instantly fits herself with a dildo; she frigs me; 
this, says she, will make me overlook the pain she’s about to cause me and then 
she delivers a thunderous blow, then another, and ’tis this one does in my 
maidenhead. Words cannot describe what I suffered; but the lancing pains 
provoked by this terrible operation soon yielded to the sweetest pleasures. The 
indefatigable Delbène’s fury only increased; stuffing me with great cracking bucks
and thwacks, her tongue meanwhile probed far into my mouth, and worrying my 
behind with her two clawing hands, she had me discharging one steady hour in 
her arms, and she only left off when I begged for truce.

“Retaliate, retaliate,” she gasped, “I want to be remunerated in that specie,” 
said she. “I am devoured by lewd desires, fucking you was all work and no play, 
I’ve got to discharge too, Christ knows.”

From a doted-upon mistress I immediately turned into the most passionate 
lover: I encunted Delbène, I set the scraper going. God! what transports! No 
woman fish-flopped more amorously, never was there one carried so far away by 
pleasure’s throes; ten times in succession the slut swooned of ease, I thought her
like to distill into fuck.

“Oh, my soul’s delight!” I said to her, “is it not true that the greater an 
individual’s wit and instruction the better accoutered he is to taste the amenities 
of voluptuousness?”

“Unquestionably,” Delbène replied, “and the eminently simple reason therefor 
is this: voluptuousness can tolerate no inhibitions, it attains its zenith only by 
shattering them all. Now, the stronger a person’s intellectual endowments, the 
more restraints he breaks, and the more decisively: hence, the person of superior
wit and parts will always be found more apt to libertinage’s pleasures.”

“I believe that the exceeding delicacy of highly developed organs must also be 
reckoned as contributory,” I went on.

“Nor is that to be doubted either,” said Madame Delbène; “the more highly 
polished the mirror, the better it receives and the better reflects the objects 
presented it.”

Finally, both of us dry from extreme toil, I reminded my instructress of her 
promise to me to depucelate Laurette.

“I’ve not in the least forgotten it,” she answered, “the deed is for tonight. 
When everyone has retired to the dormitories, you’ll slip away, so shall Flavie and 
Volmar. Leave the rest to me; now you’re initiated into our mysteries. Be bold, be 
firm, Juliette, be staunch; there are wonderful things I design to show you.”

I took leave of my friend to put in an appearance at the house; but fancy my 
surprise when I heard it reported that a pensionnaire had just fled the abbey. I 
asked her name. It was Laurette.

“Laurette!” I cried. Then, to myself: “My God, she upon whom I was counting 
… she the thought of whom has hurled me into this state…. Perfidious desires, 
have I then conceived them in vain?”

I request the details, no one is able to provide them; I fly to inform Delbène, 
her door is shut, I have no way of reaching her before the scheduled hour. Ah, 
how slowly the time drags away! I hear the bell toll at last; Volmar and Flavie 
arrived before me, they were already in Delbène’s quarters.(3)

“Alas,” I say, addressing myself to the Superior, “how shall you keep your word
to me? Laurette is gone, vanished. Who can replace her?”

And then with a certain sourness:

“Ah! ’tis plain I’m not to enjoy the pleasure you promised me—”

“Juliette,” broke in Madame Delbène, and her tone was cool, her look stern, 
“the foremost of amity’s laws is that of trust: if, my dear, you wish to be one of 
us, you can do with more self-control and fewer suspicions. Is it likely—consider 
now—is it thinkable that I would have promised you a pleasure I lack the means 
to have you savor? Ought you not to think me sufficiently clever … ought you not 
to believe my position in this place powerful enough to guarantee that, since the 
arranging of these delights depends exclusively upon me, you have never to fear 
that they be unavailable to you? Tush. Follow us. All’s quiet. Did I not tell you that
uncommon sights await you?”

Delbène lights a little lantern, she walks ahead, Volmar, Flavie, and I follow. We
enter the chapel; to my astonishment I see the Superior bend, a tombstone lifts, 
a way is opened, she descends into the sanctuary of the dead. My initiated 
companions go after her in silence; I betray a certain uneasiness, Volmar 
reassures me. Delbène lowers the stone slab above us. We are now in 
subterranean vaults that serve as sepulcher to all the women who have died in 
the convent. We proceed; another stone is swung aside, some fifteen or sixteen 
downward steps bring us to a low-ceilinged room decorated with much artistry 
and ventilated by air coming from the gardens above by a shaft. Oh, my friends! 
whom do you think I found there … Laurette, clad and decked like the vestals they
used in olden times to immolate in the shrine of Bacchus; the Abbé Ducroz, first 
vicar to the Archbishop of Paris, a man of thirty years, very goodly to look upon, 
his special employment was the supervision of Panthemont—he was there; so was
Father Télème, a handsome dark dog of a Récollet friar, thirty-six, confessor to 
the novices and the pensionnaires.

“She is afraid,” said Delbène, going toward these two men and presenting me 
to them; “hear, young innocent,” she continued, bestowing kisses upon me, “that 
our sole motive for congregating in this place is fuckery, the perpetration of 
sundry horrors, occasional atrocities. If we thus burrow far down into the realm of
the dead, it is to be at the greatest possible remove from the living. When one is 
a libertine, as depraved, as vicious as are we, one likes to be in the bowels of the 
earth so as the better to avoid the interference of men and their ridiculous law.”

Well along as I was in the career of lubricity, these opening remarks, I confess,
disturbed me not a little.

“Heavens!” I cried, much moved, “what are we about to perform in these 
underground tunnels?”

“Crimes,” said Delbène. “We are going to soil ourselves with crimes before 
your very eyes, we are going to teach you to imitate us. Do you think you’ll 
weaken? Am I mistaken in my confidence in you? I’ve told these our colleagues 
that you can be relied upon.”

“Still your doubts,” I replied energetically, “lay on your hands, I swear to it, 
whatever you do, it will stir up not a quaver of fear in me.”

Therewith Delbène orders Volmar to undress me.

“She’s owner to the world’s fairest ass,” was the Vicar’s expressed opinion as 
soon as he saw me entirely naked.

And, instantly, kisses and fingerings were applied to my buttocks; then, 
clapping one hand over my scarcely fledged cunt, the man of God undertook to 
tickle up his member by rubbing it in the cleft between my buttocks and so that it 
grazed my little hole, the which he penetrated forthwith, virtually without effort, 
and at the same moment Télème slid his gear into my cunt. Both discharged 
together and I answered almost at once.

“Juliette,” the Superior announced, “we have just afforded you the two 
greatest pleasures a woman can enjoy; you must be candid now, and tell me 
which of the two gave you the greater delight.”

“Truth to tell, Madame,” said I, “each gave me such pleasure I cannot decide 
which gave me the more. Reverberations are yet going through me of sensations 
at once so confused and so voluptuous that I would be hard put to assign them 
their proper origins.”

“Then we’d best try it again,” Télème observed; “the Abbot and I will vary our 
attacks, the lovely Juliette will have the goodness to interrogate her sentiments 
and to favor us with a more exact account thereof.”

“Most willingly,” I said; “I am of your mind that ’tis only by beginning afresh 
that I’ll be able to decide.”

“Charming, isn’t she?” murmured the Superior. “There’s more than enough 
there to result in the prettiest little whore we’ve developed in decades; but this 
thing must be managed not only in order that Juliette discharge deliciously, but so
that some of the pleasures she is about to taste have their delightsome 
repercussions upon ourselves.”

Pursuant to these libertine projects, the tableau was composed in this manner:

Télème, who’d just fucked my cunt, arranged himself in my ass; his device was
a shade thicker than his confrere’s, but, novice though I was, Nature had 
apparently so well modeled me for these doings that I confronted an increased 
diameter with an accommodating elasticity. I was lying flat upon the Superior, in 
such wise that my clitoris was directly over her mouth, and the gay wench, 
happily sprawled on the hard stone floor, was sucking like a babe on a teat; her 
thighs were wideflung. Between them, Laurette, bent over her, was treating her 
as I was being dealt with and, rocked by pleasure, the lewd thing was frantically 
masturbating Volmar on one side and Flavie on the other. Behind Laurette, Ducroz
was gently frigging his tool on her buttocks, but without penetrating them; the 
question of honor—that of this child’s two pucelages—concerned no one but me.

All these scenes of fuckery were preceded by a moment of suspense, of calm; 
as though the participants wished in stillness and contemplation to savor 
voluptuousness in its entirety, as though they feared lest, by talking, they might 
let some of it escape. I was requested to be attentive, alert in my 
pleasure-taking; for later I should be expected to report on the experience. I 
swam in a wordless ecstasy; and, I confess, the incredible pleasures evoked by 
the strident and persisting activity of Télème’s prick in my ass, the lubricious 
agonies into which I was plunged by the Abbess’ tongue flitting over, needling my 
clitoris, the luxuriant scenes environing me, the combination of so many lascivious
elements gripped my senses in a delirium and in that delirium I wanted to live an 
eternity.

Télème was the first to try to speak; but his stammers, his gasps much better 
expressed his disorder than his ideas. We could make out nothing in this 
incoherence but oaths, although he seemed to be endeavoring to say that the 
extreme heat and constriction of my anus had driven him wild.

At last, mastering himself, he made it known that he was ready to discharge 
into the most divine of all asses: “I know not whether Juliette will be more 
content to receive my fuck in her entrails than she was to feel it spewed into her 
cunt; but, for my part, I swear that, sodomizing her, I feel ten thousand times 
more pleasure than I got in her vagina.”

“Purely a question of taste,” remarked Ducroz, who had augmented the tempo 
and force of his friggery upon Laurette’s ass and who was kissing Flavie’s apace.

“A question of one’s philosophy, of the manner of one’s reasoning,” contended 
Volmar, being sharply frigged by Delbène and tonguing Ducroz; “although a 
woman, my opinion is the same, and I protest that were I a man, I’d never fuck 
anywhere but in assholes.”

Pronouncing these impure remarks, the voluptuous creature discharges. 
Télème follows a moment later; he waxes furious; twisting my head toward him, 
he rams a foot’s length of tongue into my mouth; meanwhile, Delbène is sucking 
me with such telling effect that I cease to struggle. I wish to scream my pleasure,
Télème’s squirming tongue stops my words, the libertine drinks my sighs; I flood 
my suckeress’ lips, fill her mouth, flood her throat, and she herself speeds a 
torrent into Laurette’s gullet; Flavie joins us the next instant and the charming 
thing ejaculates her fuck while swearing like a trooper.

“Now on to something else,” says Delbène, regaining her feet. “Ducroz, encunt
Juliette, she’ll lie in your arms. Volmar, also lying on her belly, will busy herself 
pumping Juliette’s asshole; I’ll slip under Volmar to suck her clitoris; while Télème
encunts me, Flavie will do what she can for his anus as Télème devotes a free 
hand to massaging Laurette’s cunt while he fucks mine.”

Further outpourings in homage to Cypris terminated this second experimental 
affray; and then I was questioned.

“Oh, my heart,” I answered Delbène—it was she conducted the inquiry—“since 
I must reply truthfully, I shall affirm that the member that was introduced into my
hind parts caused me infinitely more intense and more delicate sensations than 
that other which traveled me frontwise. I am young in years and in experience, 
shy, unacquainted with and perhaps ill-made for the pleasures wherewith I have 
just been gratified beyond all common measure; it were wholly possible that I be 
mistaken upon the kind and violence of these pleasures themselves, but you 
demand to know what I have felt and I have told you.”

“Come, give me a kiss, my angel,” spoke Madame Delbène, “you are a 
splendid girl and in fitting company. Ah, no doubt of it,” she proceeded 
enthusiastically, “no doubt whatever can exist, no pleasure can match what you 
have in the ass: woe betide those simple-minded, fainthearted chits who, lacking 
significantly in imagination, dare not attempt the true adventure. Impoverished 
creatures, these, they shall never be worthy to sacrifice to Venus, and never shall 
the Goddess of Paphos reward them with her favors! (4)

“Oh, may I now be embuggered too!” cried the whore, kneeling on a divan. 
“Volmar, Christ’s guts! Where are you, Volmar? Flavie! Juliette! Outfit yourself 
with stout weaponry, and you, Ducroz and Télème, stiffen your pikes and set 
them mischievously to worrying the assholes of these three bitches! And there’s 
my own ass, mark the hole? Fuck it, all of you! Laurette, lie quiet there before me
while I have at you as my impulses bid me.”

The Superior’s orders are acted upon. From the manner in which the libertine 
welcomes her attackers, ’tis plainly to be seen how inured she is to this hard use. 
While one of the actresses is toiling over her, a second, bending beneath her, 
tickles her clitoris or nips her labia; through synchronization of these twin 
activities, the patient’s joy is mightily enhanced, it is never really entire save 
when a steady and soothing frontwise masturbation to the bumwise intromissions 
adds the tart seasoning which can be imparted by a knowledgeable fricatrice. The 
mounting irritation drove Delbène mad: in this woman, passions spoke an 
imperious language. We soon began to notice that the little Laurette was the 
target less of Delbène’s caresses than of her rage: she was becoming covered 
with bites, pinches, scratches.

“O Jesusfuck!” Delbène finally screamed as Télème sodomized and Volmar 
titillated her, “ah fuck! fuck! I’m discharging, you are slaying me with delight, 
enough! Enough, ’tis done … let’s sit down now, let’s talk a bit…. There’s more to 
it than just experiencing sensations, they must also be analyzed. Sometimes it is 
as pleasant to discuss as to undergo them; and when one has reached the limit of
one’s physical means, one may then exploit one’s intellect. We’ll make a circle. 
Calm yourself, Juliette, you have a worried air—are you still afraid that we’ll fail 
you? There’s your victim,” she said, pointing to Laurette, “you’ll encunt her, you’ll 
embugger her, the thing is a certainty. Rely upon a libertine’s promise, as you 
may upon his excessive behavior. Télème, and you, Ducroz, place yourselves 
close by me; while speaking I’d like to handle your pricks, I want to put them 
back in size again, my fingers will infuse them with energy, I want that energy to 
electrify my speech. You’ll see my eloquence swell, not like Cicero’s, in 
accordance with the gestures and movements of the people clustered round the 
tribune, but like Sappho’s, in proportion to the fuck she wrung from fair 
Damophile.

“I do declare,” were Delbène’s next words, spoken once she had reached the 
state appropriate for holding discourse, “in this world I wonder at nothing so 
much as at the moral education girls are commonly given. It would appear as if 
its one aim were to instill notions and doctrines that contradict all the natural 
impulses in our maidens. Is anyone able to tell me, for I sincerely wish to know, 
of what use a prudent, well-behaved woman can be to society? and whether there
is anything more superfluous than the practice of this virtue which, with every 
passing day, only further numbs and mines our sex? We women exist in two 
situations wherein these practices are recommended to us; I am going to 
undertake to prove that, in either phase of a woman’s life, they are of the most 
thorough inutility.

“Up until the time a girl marries, of what conceivable advantage can preserving
her virginity be to her? And how can folly be carried to the point where one 
believes a female creature is worth more or less for having one part of her body a
little more or a little less enlarged? For what purpose has Nature created every 
human being? Is it not for giving mutual aid one to the other, and consequently 
for giving others all the pleasures it is in one’s power to dispense? Well, if it be 
true that a man may expect very great pleasures from a young girl, do you not fly
in the face of Nature’s intentions and laws when you saddle this poor little thing 
with a ferocious virtue that forbids her from lending herself to this man’s 
impetuous desires? Can you allow such barbarity without advancing some 
justification for it? And what justification are you going to propose in order to 
convince me that the child in question does well by remaining a virgin? Your 
religion, your customs, your habits? And, I ask you, what baser drivel, what more 
contemptible arguments can you find? I’ll leave religion aside, I know all of you 
well enough to be certain of the slight credit you accord that trash. But, 
conventions, ah, conventions—may I be so bold as to ask you what they are? If I 
am not mistaken, the term applies to the kind of behavior observed by the 
individuals of a nation at home and in public. Now you will surely agree that these
conventions ought to be based upon furtherance of individual happiness; if they 
do not ensure it, they are ridiculous; if they are harmful to it, they are atrocious, 
and an enlightened nation must set straightway to work rectifying these 
conventions directly it is manifest that they no longer conduce to the general 
welfare. You will now demonstrate to me what, if anything, in French customs and
manners, insofar as carnal pleasure is concerned, can truly be said to conspire to 
our national happiness; in the name of what do you constrain this dear little 
creature to hang on to her maidenhead, this in flagrant disregard of 
Nature—Nature, who advises her to be rid of it—in disregard, likewise, of her 
health—her health which restraint can only wreck! Are you going to reply that all 
this is so that she can be pure when she arrives in her husband’s arms? But is this
fancied necessity that she be pure anything other than the invention of 
prejudice-racked minds? What! To give some fellow the frivolous pleasure of 
plucking first fruits, you’re going to have the wretched lass deny herself for ten 
years? she’s to cause five hundred suitors pain in order to provide one with a 
moment of fool’s delight? Can you think of anything more outlandish, does any 
more ill-conceived scheme exist? Can you, I ask, can you show me a more 
flagrant example of outrage to the general interest? Has the common welfare any 
greater enemy than these abhorrent conventions? Long live those people who, 
dwelling in ignorance of these disgraceful puerilities, to the contrary esteem only 
the young persons of our sex in proportion to the disorderliness they exhibit in 
their conduct! Only in these multiple and iterated extravagances does a girl’s true 
virtue reside; the more she gives herself, the more lovable she is; the more she 
fucks, the more happiness she distributes and the more she is instrumental to her
countrymen’s happiness. They are sordid barbarians, these husbands who stick by
the vain pleasure of plucking a rose: ’tis despotism, they claim this right at the 
expense of other men’s well-being. An end to this disesteem for the girl who, 
having no previous acquaintance with them, has not been able to wait to make 
them a gift of the most precious thing she has and who, if she has heeded 
Nature’s promptings, has had every reason for not waiting. Shall we now 
investigate the necessity of virtue in women whose situation is that of a wife? The
matter is now one of adultery, I should like to go thoroughly into this popularly 
alleged misdemeanor.

“Our customs, manners, religious beliefs, codes, regulations—all these sordid 
local factors merit no consideration in this survey; the point is not to discover 
whether adultery is a crime in the eyes of the Laplander who permits it, or of the 
Frenchman who hammers it, but to make out whether humanity is wronged or 
Nature offended by this act. In order to entertain such a hypothesis, one must 
first be in total ignorance of the scope of the physical desires with which the 
common mother of mankind has endowed both sexes. Obviously, if one man were
sufficient to a single woman’s desires, or if one woman could appease the ardors 
of any single man, then, within the framework of this hypothesis, whosoever 
violated the law would also outrage Nature. But if the fickleness and the 
insatiability of these desires are such that more than one man is necessary to 
women as an abundance of women is to men, you will, I presume, concede that, 
such being the case, whatever law opposes their desires is tyrannical and plainly 
at daggers drawn with Nature. The pseudo-virtue called chastity, unmistakably 
the most ridiculous of existing superstitions in that this mode of being does 
nothing in the slightest to make others happy and wreaks incalculable harm on 
the prosperity of everyone, since this virtue imposes exceedingly cruel privations 
upon all; this pseudo-virtue, I say, being the idol which dread of adultery makes 
us worship, every sane mind ought first of all to give chastity an eminent position 
amongst the most odious devices whereby man has seen fit to encumber and rout
the inspirations of Nature. Let’s probe to the heart of the matter: the importance 
of the need to fuck is no less high than our need to eat and drink, and one ought 
to indulge in them all with equal unrestraint. Modesty, and of this we may be 
perfectly sure, was originally designed as nothing but a stimulant to lust: the 
engaging idea was to postpone desire’s fulfillment in order to increase excitement,
and fools subsequently took for a virtue what was merely a contrivance of 
libertinage.(5) It is as ridiculous to pretend that chastity is a virtue as it would be 
to assert that it is a virtue to deprive oneself of food. May it be clearly noted: it is 
almost, always the stupid importance we assign to something which in the end 
elevates it to the stature of a virtue or of a vice; let us have done with our 
unseemly prejudices: let it become as ordinary and simple a matter to inform a 
girl, a boy, or a woman that one has an inclination to sport about with him or her, 
as it is, when one is in a foreign household, to request means to alleviate one’s 
hunger or thirst—let it become an everyday affair and you’ll see the prejudice 
collapse and disappear, you’ll see chastity cease to be a virtue and adultery cease 
to be a crime. Come, come! what wrong do I commit, what injury do I do when, 
encountering some attractive creature, I say:

“‘Pray avail me of that part of your body which is capable of giving me a 
moment’s satisfaction, and, if you are so inclined, amuse yourself with whatever 
part of mine may be agreeable to you.’

“In what way does my proposal injure the creature whose path I’ve crossed? 
What harm will result from the proposal’s acceptance? If about me there is 
nothing that catches his fancy, why then, material profit may readily substitute 
itself for pleasure, and for an indemnity agreed upon through parley, he without 
further delay accords me the enjoyment of his body; and I have the inalienable 
right to employ force and any coercive means called for if, in having satisfied him 
according to my possibilities—whether it be with my purse or with my body—he 
dares for one instant withhold from me what I am fairly entitled to extract from 
him. Only he offends Nature who refuses what may oblige his fellow; I outrage 
her not in the least, not I, when I offer to buy what arouses my interest and to 
pay the fairly arranged price for what is lent for my use. No, no, I repeat: chastity
is no virtue; it is a conventional form, that’s all. The libertine intelligence, 
perpetually in search of refinements, invented chastity as such; chastity is 
artificial, in no wise natural; and a girl, a woman, and a boy, granting their favors 
to the first comer, prostituting themselves with effrontery and in every sense, 
everywhere, all the time, would possibly—I don’t deny the possibility—be 
committing something contrary to the usages that might be current in their 
country; but in no wise would they or could they thereby be doing wrong either to
their neighbors—whom such behavior does not wrong, but rather serves—or to 
Nature—whose purposes are nought but furthered by all the excesses of 
libertinage it is in our mortal power to indulge in and perpetrate. Continence, be 
very certain of it, is the virtue of fools and enthusiasts; it is laden with perils, has 
not one good or wholesome effect; to men it is just as pernicious as to women; it 
damages health, in that it allows semen to stand and putrefy in the loins, whereas
this semen has been produced to be expelled from the body, like any other 
secretion or excretion. In brief, the most frightful moral corruption is incalculably 
less a threat to one’s well-being; and the most celebrated among the world’s 
peoples, as well as their most illustrious individual representatives, have always 
been the most debauched. The having of women, freely and in common, is the 
express wish of Nature, the arrangement is widespread in the world, animals set 
us the example; it is absolutely contrary to that universal agent’s inspirations and 
intentions to wed a man to one woman, as in Europe it is done, or a woman to 
several men, as in certain regions of Africa, or a man to several women, as in Asia
and European Turkey; all these institutions are revolting, they hobble the desires, 
they dam the humours, they enfetter the impulses and emasculate the will, and 
from all these infamous conventions there results nought but woe, ill, sorrow, and
blight. Oh, those of you who have the temerity to govern men, beware, I say, put 
no bonds upon any living creature! Leave him free to shift for himself, leave to 
him alone the task of seeking out that which suits him best, do that and you shall 
speedily observe the state of affairs ameliorated, for it can only improve. 
Thereupon every rational man will say: ‘Why, simply because I need now and 
then to spill a little seed, must I bind myself indissolubly to a person I’ll never 
love? Of what use can it be that this same need cause a hundred wretches whose 
names I don’t even know to become my thralls? Why must this need, in a woman 
the same save in one or two details, subject her to perpetual slavery and 
humiliation?’ Ye gods, that woebegone girl’s all afire with urges, the need to slake 
twenty thirsts consumes her, and you, what are you going to do to relieve her? 
you’re going to tie her fate to a single man’s … and that man? are you so sure his 
taste in pleasures will correspond so faultlessly to hers? could it not turn out, as 
sometimes does happen, that he lies with her three times, four times in the 
course of his life, or that his employment of her consists merely in submitting her 
to pleasures in which the young thing cannot possibly share? What arrant injustice
on both sides, and how well it is avoided by abrogating your senseless marriages, 
by leaving the two sexes at liberty to consult their wishes and to look for and find 
exactly what they require one of the other. What good does society glean from 
marriages? Far from fortifying attachments, it dissolves them: it manufactures not
friends, but foes; which, in your judgment, seems to be the more firmly united: 
one great family—as might become every nation on earth—or five or six million 
little families whose interests, inevitably personal, inevitably clash, create 
divisions, and forever jar with the general interest? What’s this idle talk about 
liberty, equality, fraternity, what’s this unity and brotherhood among men so long 
as everyone, brothers, fathers, mothers, wives go on struggling against one 
another? Unity means universality; do I hear you object that this universality will 
weaken ties, that there’ll be no more of them owing to the universal bond? Well, 
what does it matter? Is it not far preferable to have none than to retain this sort, 
whose only purpose can be to stir up trouble and spread disaffection? We glance 
at history. What of the leagues, the factions, the numerous parties which have 
reft France owing to the prevailing practice of allying oneself to one’s family and 
with it battling against every other family; do you, I ask, do you suppose we 
would have had all that had there been but one family in France? Would this 
grand family have broken up into men-at-arms, troops fighting tooth and nail, 
some for a tyrant, others for the opposing party? There’d have been no Orléanais 
at the Burgundians’ throats, no Guises pitted against Bourbons, none of all those 
horrors which tore France asunder and whose one source was the pride and 
ambition of individual families. Those passions evaporate with the equality I 
propose; they wither into oblivion once the absurdities known as marital ties are 
destroyed; what remains? a homogeneous, tranquil State, with one attitude, one 
objective, one desire: to live happily together, and together to defend the 
fatherland. The machine cannot possibly avoid breaking down before long if the 
customs and usages in force today are maintained. Wealth and property 
concentrating in the hands of a few, this few becoming fewer through constant 
intermarriage, within a hundred years’ time the State will necessarily be divided 
into two factions, one so powerful and so rich that it will topple and crush the 
other: and the country will be laid waste.

“Ponder the matter and you’ll discover that there has never been any other 
cause for all our difficulties. One power, quietly gathering strength, has always 
ended up trying to overwhelm the other, and has always succeeded. An ounce of 
prevention is worth a pound of cure, my friends: abolish marriages. Away with 
those abhorrent chains; enough of these bitter regrets; no more of these 
hardships, these crimes, the consequences of these monstrous abuses, you’ll be 
rid of them all the day you’re done with these laws: for laws alone create the 
crime; and the crime is gone as soon as the law ceases to exist. No more 
enclaves within the State, no more conspiracies, no more shocking inequalities of 
wealth; but children … population? … We’ll deal with those articles next.

“We begin by establishing a fact which we are prone to consider 
incontrovertible: that, during the carnal act, extremely little thought is devoted to 
the creature which may be its result; he who were stupid enough to preoccupy 
himself with the question would most assuredly cut his pleasure in half. 
Manifestly, he is a blithering ass who with this idea in his head goes to see a 
woman, and no less an ass he who when seeing a woman gets this idea. It is 
erroneous that propagation is supposed to be one of Nature’s laws, if we imagine 
such nonsense our pride alone is to blame. Nature permits propagation, but one 
must take care not to mistake her tolerance for an enjoinder. Nature stands in not
the slightest need of propagation; and the total disappearance of mankind—this 
being the worst consequence of a refusal to propagate—would grieve her very 
little, she would no more pause in her career than if the whole species of rabbits 
or chickens were suddenly to be wiped off the face of the earth. Thus, we no 
more serve Nature in reproducing ourselves than we offend her in not doing so. 
Be amply persuaded of it, this wonderful propagation, inflated into a virtue by our
preposterously overdrawn self-esteem, if viewed from the standpoint of Nature’s 
functionings, becomes entirely superfluous, and a subject over which we ought to 
trouble ourselves as little as possible. Brought together by the instincts of 
pleasure, two beings of unlike sex ought to put their best efforts into enjoying 
themselves as thoroughly as ever they can; their task is to employ all their 
faculties and attentions to improving and increasing their pleasure; and the 
eventual outcome of this pleasure-taking? devil take the bloody consequences, 
that’s the proper attitude, for Nature herself couldn’t care less about them. (7)

“With regard to the father, he is in no wise concerned with whatever issue may
occur, if issue there should be. And, with the assumption that women are held in 
common, which is what they should be and had better be soon, what concern 
could he conceivably have? He spits a little sperm into a receptacle everyone else 
relieves himself into, a womb where what can germinate does germinate; how is 
this gesture to turn into the grave obligation to look after a fertilized egg? No, he 
has no more duties to observe toward a foetus than he would toward something 
deposited by an insect and which some shit he dropped at the foot bf a tree 
caused to hatch several days later; in both cases I have cited, the problem is 
simply one of some matter of which a man needs to get rid and which 
subsequently becomes whatever it happens to become. The embryo is to be 
considered the woman’s exclusive property; as the sole owner of this fruit rather 
jestingly called precious, she can dispose of it as she likes. She can destroy it in 
the depths of her womb if it proves a nuisance to her. Or after it ripens and is 
born, if she is for any reason displeased with it or irked at having produced it, she
can destroy it then; whatever the circumstances, infanticide is her sacred right. 
Her spawn is hers, entirely hers, and no one else can claim this bit of property 
belonging to no one else, utterly useless to Nature, and hence the mother may 
feed it or she may strangle it, depending upon her preference. Ah, you’ve no need
to fear a dearth of children; there will be only too many women who’ll be eager to
bring up what they whelp; and if it’s manpower for defending the country or tilling
the soil you’re anxious about, you will always have more of it than you’ll know 
what to do with, To these ends, create public schools where, as soon as they are 
weaned, the young may be reared; installed therein as ward of the State, the 
child can forget even his mother’s name. After he has grown up, let him in his 
turn couple indiscriminately, democratically, with his mates and brethren, doing as
his parents did before him.

“Given these principles, you now see what adultery amounts to, and whether it
is possible or true that a woman can do wrong in surrendering herself to whoever 
catches her fancy. Determine for yourselves whether everything would not 
continue very nicely even with the overthrow of every last one of our laws. But 
these laws—are they so very general? Do all races and peoples have the same 
respect for these miserable ties? It might serve to make a rapid 
historico-geographical survey if we feel that our attitude would benefit from the 
support of a few precedents.

“So then, we notice that in Lapland, in Tartary, in America, they consider it an 
honor to prostitute their wives to wayfaring strangers.

“The Illyrians hold special conclaves for the purposes of debauchery; at them, 
they force their wives to give themselves to all comers; the thing is performed 
within public view.

“Adultery was publicly authorized among the Greeks. The Romans lent one 
another their spouses. Cato made his available to Hortensius, for the latter had no
fertile wife of his own.

“In Tahiti, Cook discovered a society in which all the women give themselves 
indifferently to all the assembled men. But if a later consequence of this rite is 
pregnancy, the woman smothers the child the instant it is born: splendid 
evidence, this, that there do after all exist people of sufficient intelligence to set 
their pleasures on a higher plane than the futile laws enjoining us to increase 
numerically! Differing only in a few particulars, a similar society thrives at 
Constantinople. (8)

“The blacks of what we call the Spice Coast and of Riogabar prostitute their 
wives to their own children.

“Singha, Queen of Angola, published a law which established the 
vulgivaguibilité of women: one which, that is to say, made their cunts as free 
universally to be fucked as air is to be breathed. A chapter of this same edict 
made it incumbent upon women to take the measures necessary to thwart 
pregnancy; evidence having been adduced thereof, disobedience was punished 
capitally: the culprit was ground in a mortar. A severe law, perhaps, but useful, 
being exceedingly favorable to the conservation of the integrity of the community 
whereof the size is to be limited if the somber consequences of excessive 
numbers are to be avoided.

“But there are milder means for keeping population trimmed to neat and 
sensible dimensions: they would be by encouraging and recompensing sapphism, 
sodomy, and infanticide, as in Sparta theft was honored. Thus might the scales be
maintained in balance, without there being the need to obliterate women’s fruit 
even while it is in the womb, as is common practice in Angola and Formosa.

“For example, in France, where the population is far too large, while 
establishing the vulgivaguibilité I am partisan to, one would also have to set a 
maximum figure to child-production, to drown the surplus, and, as I have just 
said, to venerate the. presently unlawful commerce between persons of the same 
sex. The government, under these ideal conditions invested with entire authority 
over these children and over the regulation of their number, would be able 
automatically to calculate the strength of its defensive soldiery by the number of 
warriors it had raised, and no longer would the State have cities full of thirty 
thousand starving wretches to feed in time of famine. It is going a bit too far 
when one respects a little fertilized matter to the point of imagining that one 
cannot, when need be, destroy it before birth or even a good while after that.

“There is, in China, a society similar to those of Tahiti and Byzantium. I allude 
to the society called that of the Complacent Husbands. They will marry girls only 
upon condition those girls have prostituted themselves to others; their homes are 
asylums of multiform luxury. They drown the offspring begot of this trade.

“In Japan there exist women who, though married, with their husbands’ 
approval frequent the vicinity of

temples and station themselves by the highways; they expose their breasts, as
Italian harlots do, and are constantly prepared to satisfy whatever needs of 
whatever clients chance brings their way.

“At Cambay there is to be seen a pagoda, destination of pilgrims, and thither 
every woman betakes herself with utmost piety: there, they prostitute 
themselves, and no husband carps at their behavior. They who finally accumulate 
a certain capital from their work usually purchase young slaves whom they ready 
for like employment and then take along to the pagoda, and thus are fortunes 
amassed.(9)

“In Pegu, the husband is supremely contemptuous of a virgin wife’s favors; he 
enlists the aid of a friend, who clears the obstructions away; often, he will request
help from a well-disposed and total stranger. But the same traditions do not apply
to the initiation of a young boy. For the inhabitants of Pegu, this pleasure is prized
above all others.

“The female Indians of Darien prostitute themselves to anyone at all. If they 
are married, the husband accepts the charge of the child; if they are unwed, 
pregnancy would dishonor them, so they have themselves aborted or in their 
coupling observe those precautions which are guarantee against this 
inconvenience.

“In faraway Cumana, newly wedded girls lose their maidenheads to priests; the
husband will have nought to do with them until this ceremony has been 
performed. That inestimable treasure, virginity, thus owes its value simply to 
national prejudices, as do so many other things which we are reluctant to view for
what they are in reality.

“For how long did not the feudal lords of several European provinces, in 
Scotland above all, exploit the same right? Prejudices, superstitions, fads … this 
modesty … this virtue … this adultery.

“No, not by any means do all peoples accord in cherishing maidenheads. The 
more gallant adventures a girl in North America has had, the more suitors court 
her. They spurn a virgin, her virginity is a grave handicap to a girl: it 
demonstrates undesirability.

“In the Balearic Islands, the husband is the last to enjoy his wife: every 
acquaintance, every chum, all the relatives precede him in this ceremony; a very 
strange and suspect person he would be thought, who resisted this prerogative. 
The same custom used to be observed in Iceland and by the Nazamaeans, an 
Egyptian tribe: after the wedding feast, the naked spouse went and lay one after 
the other with the wedding guests, and from each received a present.

“We know that among the Massagetes every woman was held in common: 
when a man encountered one who pleased him, he bade her mount his chariot; in
the matter she had no say at all, he hung his weapons on the shaft and that was 
enough to keep others away.

“It was not by devising marriage laws but the reverse, by establishing the 
perfect community of women, that the Norse were powerful enough to humble 
Europe three or four times over, and to flood it with their emigrations.

“Marriage, it thus appears, is noxious to population, and the globe is covered 
with peoples who despise the institution. Hence, in the eyes of Nature, it is 
contrary to individual happiness and generally to all things and practices which 
are capable of promoting and assuring man’s earthly felicity. Well, if it is adultery 
that smashes marriages, adultery that shatters laws, adultery that so 
emphatically concords with Nature’s laws, adultery might very easily pass for a 
virtue instead of a crime.

“Oh, tender creatures, divine artifacts created for the pleasures of men, cease 
to believe that you were made for the enjoyment of only one man; utterly 
unafraid, beneath your proud heel grind to dust these absurd ties which, chaining 
you in the arms of a husband, are bar to the happiness you await from the lover 
you cherish. Consider rather that it is only by resisting his advances that you 
outrage Nature. Having made you the more sensitive, the more fiery of the two 
sexes, in your heart Nature ingrained the desire to indulge unrestrainedly all your 
passions. Did she invite you to be the captive of a single man when she gave you 
force enough to drain the balls of four or five in a row? Scorn the vain canons 
which victimize you; they’re the contrivances of your enemies, for ’tis plain, is it 
not, that they weren’t invented by you? Since it is sure that you’d have been 
ill-disposed to approve them had your opinion been consulted, what right have 
these swine to exact obedience thereto? Remember that after a certain age you’ll 
no longer please, and that in your later years you’ll shed many a bitter tear if 
you’ve let youth go by without enjoying it; and what shall you obtain in return for 
this discretion, this shyness, this self-denial, what will be your reward when the 
loss of your charms robs you of the power to claim any consideration at all? Your 
husband’s esteem?—fie! what an inadequate consolation! what miserly 
recompense for such enormous sacrifices! Furthermore, what assurance have you
of their equity? what’s to prove to you that your constancy is as efficacious and as
valuable as you suppose? Must your husband necessarily imitate your fidelity? Ah,
there you see it for what it is: gratuitous; you feed yourself on pride. Oh, you 
women who are made to be loved, the scantiest pleasure provided by a lover 
outweighs all the relief you’ll derive from self-abuse: sheer illusions, those solitary
pleasure-takings, no one believes in them, no one will recognize your valor, you’ll 
earn no one’s thanks, no one’s gratitude; and in every case destined to be a 
victim, you’ll perish that of prejudice instead of a victim of love. Love? Serve that 
master, young beauties, whilst you are young serve it fearlessly, this bountiful, 
this endearing god who created you to worship him; ’tis upon his altars, ’tis in the
arms of his faithful you’ll earn restitution for the minor annoyances which 
distinguish the debut of your career. Think only of taking the first step, thereafter 
the rest is easy, accomplish the gesture and the scales will fall from your eyes: 
you’ll see that ’tis not modesty puts the bright flush into your youthful fair cheeks,
but rather indignation at having for one instant allowed yourselves to be bound by
the contemptible restrictions atrocious parents or jealous husbands dared impose 
upon you for even the space of a single afternoon.

“In the present lamentable state of affairs—and this composes the second part 
of my exposition—this appalling state of discomfort and pressure and stress, for 
the time being we can do no better than provide some advice to women on how 
to cope with the situation and how best to behave in its light, and then to 
consider, through a probing examination, whether indeed any inconvenience 
results from this alien offspring the husband finds himself constrained to adopt.

“First, let’s determine whether it is not an empty myth, this husband’s notion 
that his honor and peace of mind are hinged to the conduct of his wife.

“Honor! Our honor! Whose is my honor—mine or someone else’s? And what 
has someone else to do with it? Would it not appear that the concept of a 
husband’s honor is but another crafty means husbands have devised and employ 
in order to obtain the more from their wives, in order to bind their wives more 
firmly to them? Oh, honor! Eh, then! ’tis all very permissible and very honorable 
that iniquitous husbands debauch themselves in every way under the sun and 
that, behave as they wish, their honor emerges unscathed? That wife the rakehell
husband neglects, that passionate wife not one fifth of whose desires he bothers 
to satisfy, does she dishonor him when she resorts to another man? And there are
people—can you believe it?—who answer in the affirmative! But this is positively 
the same kind of madness, found among various peoples, which consists in the 
husband tucking into bed when the wife is giving birth. Let’s not be fools: our 
honor is ours, never can it depend upon what someone else does, and it is wild 
extravagance to imagine the faults others commit can in any wise have an impact 
upon us.

“If then it is absurd to suppose that unto a man any dishonor can come 
through his wife’s conduct, what other injury can he possibly sustain therefrom? 
Either one or the other: this man loves his wife or he doesn’t love her. In the 
former instance, as soon as he finds her missing because she has repaired to 
another, it’s that she no longer loves him; well, tell me whether the height of folly 
isn’t to go on loving somebody who has stopped loving you? The man in question 
ought as of this instant to cease being attached to his wife, and within this 
supposition inconstancy must be perfectly acceptable. If we are dealing with 
events arising from the second instance, if, no longer loving his wife, the husband 
has precipitated her inconstancy, what has he to complain about? He gets what he
deserves, what he must necessarily get by behaving in the way he has; he would 
be committing the greatest injustice were he to whine, pule, snarl at his wife or 
condemn her; hasn’t he ten thousand other objects all around him whereupon he 
can vent his feelings or wherewith he can soothe them? Let the good fellow leave 
his wife to amuse herself in peace; has he not made her unhappy enough 
already? hasn’t he forced her to restrain herself while he, cavorting about, 
performed his little felonies in broad daylight and never heard opinion condemn 
them? Let him then leave her in peace, that she taste pleasures he can procure 
her no more, and his complacency may yet someday make a friend of the woman 
whom a contrary attitude enraged. Gratitude will then do what the heart couldn’t 
achieve; confidence will be reborn, and both, reaching the years of their decline, 
will together, clasped in friendship’s embrace, perhaps make up for what love 
denied them earlier.

“Unjust husbands, an end then to harrying your wives because they are 
faithless. Take the trouble, have the manliness to cast critical eyes upon your own
selves, and you will always discover that the initial fault was yours, and what will 
convince the public that this first fault is always on your side is that all the 
prejudices disfavor infidelity in wives: thus, in order to be libertine, they have 
countless obstacles to surmount and ruptures to effect, and it is neither natural 
nor logical that the timid and gentle sex go so far unless impelled by irresistible 
causes. Is my hypothesis fallacious? Is the wife alone guilty? Well, even so, what 
good will it do the husband to believe it? What idiot will have his whole tranquillity
depend upon what a wife does? Do his wife’s idle little carryings-on cause him any
physical pain? Alas, no. All the injury he sustains is imaginary; his sufferings, 
what are they? they are mental. And their cause? Some activities which are 
admired five hundred leagues from Paris. Why does he suffer then? Because local 
prejudices train him to. What should he do? Free himself of those prejudices, spit 
upon them, and at once. Does one worry about wrongs done to one as a husband
when as a man one plunges into the thick of fuckery’s pleasures? Hardly; why 
then, that’s what he’d better do, plunge, and all his wife’s carousings will be 
speedily forgotten.

“Then it is not the act she’s committed, but its material consequences … this 
that’s hatched from an egg Monsieur didn’t fertilize, this chick Monsieur’s got 
nevertheless to admit into his brood; is this the cause of his sorrow? What 
childishness! Here we have a brace of alternatives: you continue to cohabit with a
wife, unfaithful though she be, so as to have heirs; or you don’t live with her 
anymore. Or again you live with her, as do certain libertine husbands, proceeding 
in such wise as to be sure that any infants she bears aren’t yours. Don’t let this 
latter possibility alarm you, your wife will prove astute enough not to present you 
with any children, give her a chance, rest assured, she’ll know what to do, 
children you’ll have none: no woman who has sufficient intelligence to conduct an 
intrigue will ever commit that blunder. In the former case, you have only, like your
rival, to labor at multiplying the species—and who’ll be able to convince you that 
the eventual results won’t have been brought about by you? The chances are as 
good for as against, and you’ll be a very ass if you don’t adopt the more 
comforting conclusion. Either do that, or stop altogether consorting with your wife
directly you suspect she has an intrigue afoot—that’s the surest and best manner 
to preserve mastery of the situation—; or if you continue to cultivate the same 
garden her lover is spading, don’t blame him any more than you blame yourself 
for having sown the seed that ripens into growth.

“There then are the objections put forth and the replies to them: either, Sir, 
you shall surely have no children; or if you have any, it is an even wager whether 
they are yours or your competitor’s. In support of this latter statement there is a 
further probability: I refer to the inclination your wife is apt to have to mask her 
liaison behind a pregnancy, and this, you may be certain, will make her do 
everything on earth to get herself into your bed, for ’tis obvious she’ll never be at 
ease until she has felt you put balm on what ails her and until this treatment has 
guaranteed her freedom, from here on, to do as she likes with her lover. Your 
anxiety is hence utterly baseless, the child is yours, you may set your mind at 
rest; it is infinitely to your wife’s interest that it belong to you, you’ve toiled at its 
conception. Well, combine these two reasons and you obtain certainty concerning 
what you are so eager to know: the child is yours, no doubt of it, and it’s yours by
the same reckoning which must make that one of two runners who is paid cross 
the finish line first, defeating his comrade who stands to gain nothing in the same 
race. But, nevertheless, let’s suppose for a moment that the child isn’t yours. 
Well, what do you care? You wanted an heir, did you not? Now you have one. Not 
Nature but upbringing creates filial sentiments. Be persuaded that this 
child—whom nothing makes doubt that he is your son, accustomed to seeing you,
to pronouncing your name, to loving you for his father—will revere you, cherish 
you as much and possibly more than if you had a hand in bringing about his 
existence. Well, what now? Do you still tremble? Your imagination sickens you; 
however, there’s nothing easier to cure than these ills. Give that imagination of 
yours a good jolt, agitate it with something whose grip, whose sway, is more 
potent, whose effect upon it is stronger, you’ll soon knock it round into the shape 
and tenor you wish, and you’ll have drubbed it into health. No matter what the 
case or its details may be, my philosophy offers you everything you need. Nothing
is so much ours as our offspring—good: you’ve just been given a boy, there he is,
he’s yours. Nothing belongs so much to us as what we’re given. Exercise your 
rights, and remember that a few pounds of organized matter, whether it belong to
us or be the property of someone else, is of slight worth in the eyes of Nature 
who at all times bestows upon us the power to disorganize it whenever and 
however we please.

“’Tis now for you, charming wives, for you, my dear friends, to set the 
example. I have put your husbands’ minds at rest, I have taught those gentlemen
that, irrespective of what you do, they need not lose a wink of sleep on your 
account; I am ready now to instruct you in that art of adroitly deceiving them, but
first I’m going to make you shudder before the dreadful picture of all the penalties
reserved for adultery—I show you this picture in order that you see what 
enormous pleasures this alleged crime must afford if everyone punishes it with 
such exceptional rigor, and in order also that you be moved to be thankful for 
having been born under a benign regime where opinion, leaving your conduct to 
your own conscience, penalizes you, if your conduct is not good, by attempting to 
make you feel some frivolous sentiment of shame for having dishonored 
yourselves…. And this dishonor … come, let’s admit it, ’tis, for the majority of us, 
an added charm.

“A law proclaimed by the Emperor Constantine prescribed for adultery the 
same punishment meted out for parricide, to wit: the culprit was burned alive, 
either that or sewn in a sack and cast into the sea; those luckless women found 
guilty of the crime were deprived even of the right to appeal their case.

“A governor of a province had exiled a woman found guilty of adultery; 
Majorianus, deeming the punishment too light, expelled the woman from Italy and
decreed that whoever were to slay her had the Emperor’s permission so to do.

“The ancient Danes punished the adulteress with death, while among them 
homicide meant the payment of a mere fine; that reveals which of the two 
offenses they considered the graver.

“The Mongols cleave an adulteress in two with a sword.

“In the Kingdom of Tonkin, she is trampled by an elephant.

“But in Siam, their ways are more lenient: she is otherwise delivered unto the 
elephant. A specially prepared contraption into which she is placed allows it to 
enjoy her in the belief it is tuppering a female elephant. Lewdness may well have 
been behind the invention of this procedure.

“In similar cases, the Bretons of long ago, and perhaps also with lewd 
motivations, were wont to flog the adulteress to death.

“Luango is an African kingdom, and there they have the custom of hurling her 
and her lover too from the top of a craggy mountain.

“The Gauls used to smother her in mud and filth, then drag her body around in
it awhile.

“In Juida, the husband himself condemned his wife: he had her executed 
immediately, there before his eyes, if he found her guilty, all of which was a 
tradition of extreme convenience to husbands who were weary of their wives.

“In other countries, the law empowers the husband to execute his spouse with 
his own hand if he finds that she has wronged him. This custom was notably that 
of the Goths.(10)

“Members of the Miami tribe hacked off an adulteress’ nose; the Abyssinians 
drove her from the house clad in rags and tatters.

“The savages of Canada made an incision running round her head, then 
removed the strip of skin.

“In the Eastern Roman Empire, the adulterous woman was prostituted in the 
market place.

“At Diyarbekir, the criminal was executed by her assembled family, all of whose
members had to deliver at least one thrust of a dagger.

“In several Greek provinces where, in contrast to Sparta, this crime was 
unauthorized, anyone at all could kill an adulteress with impunity.

“The Guax-Tolliams, as our French explorers call that American tribe, led the 
adulteress before the feet of their chief, and there she was cut to pieces, and the 
pieces were eaten by the witnesses.

“The Hottentots, who allow father-murder, matricide, and child-killing, frown 
upon adultery. They punish it by death; the delation even of a child is accepted as
proof of the fact.(11)

“Oh, voluptuous libertine women! if, as I should imagine, these examples serve
only to inflame you the more, because the hope become a certainty that an act is 
criminal is always but one further pleasure for minds organized like ours, oh, my 
friends, hark unto my lessons, heed them, profit therefrom; to your lascivious 
intelligence I am going to expose the whole theory of adultery.

“Be never so unctuous, so complacent with your husband as when you plan to 
deceive him.

“If he is libertine, accommodate his desires, submit to his caprices, flatter all 
his whims however fantastical, even of your own accord present him with 
lust-inspiring objects. According to his bent and tastes, have either pretty girls or 
pretty boys about, cater to his requirements. Bound by gratitude, he’ll never dare 
reproach you; and what, moreover, can he ever possibly accuse you of, whose 
other edge you cannot turn against him?

“You need a confidante: acting alone, the risks of disaster are great; so find 
yourself a woman you can trust, and omit nothing that will identify her interests 
with yours and your passions. Above all, pay her well.

“For the satisfaction of your wants look rather to hired help than to a lover. The
former will serve you well and in secrecy, the latter will fly about town boasting of
his conquest and he’ll dishonor you without giving pleasure.

“A lackey, a valet, a secretary, no one takes any notice of such creatures; but 
get yourself a little master and then you’re lost, often without having gained much
from it.

“Do not breed. Nothing gives less pleasure than childbearing. Pregnancies are 
damaging to health, spoil the figure, wither the charms, and it’s the cloud of 
uncertitude forever hanging over those events that darkens a husband’s mood. 
There are a thousand means to avoid conception, five hundred more to forestall 
childbirth; ass-fuckery is by far the best and surest of all; have someone frig your
clitoris meanwhile, and this manner of amusing yourself will soon prove 
incomparably more pleasant than the other: your fuckers’ pleasure will probably 
increase too, your husband will notice nothing, and everyone will be content.

“Perhaps your husband himself will propose sodomy to you. If so, don’t be 
overhasty accepting the invitation: one must always have the look of refusing 
what one covets. If fear of having children forces you to suggest the thing 
yourself, advance the excuse that you are afraid of dying in labor; maintain that 
one of your friends has told you that her husband manages matters with her in 
that fashion. Once you’re broken in to these pleasures, taste no others with your 
lovers—and now you’ve dissipated half the suspicions anyone could have, and 
you’re rid of all worry with pregnancies.

“Put spies on the track of your tyrant, have his movements watched; you must 
never lie in fear of being surprised if you wish to know an authentic joy.

“If, however, you were to be found out, and were so flagrantly caught in the 
act as to be unable to deny your conduct, put on a show of remorse, redouble the
care and attentions your husband wishes lavished upon him. If as a preliminary to
your adventures your complacency and thoughtfulness have won you his 
friendship, he’ll soon come back for more; if he persists, be the first to lodge a 
complaint; make it clear you know his secrets, threaten him with their divulgence;
and it is so that you will always have this hold over him that I urge you to study 
his tastes, to encourage and to serve them from the outset of your marriage. 
Finally, approaching him from this angle, he’s yours, he’ll return unfailingly. When 
he does, make things up with him and hand him whatever he wants, provided he 
pardons you too: but don’t be abused by this reconciliation, multiply your 
precautions, more shrewdly veil your activities; a prudent wife must always be on
guard lest she excessively irritate her husband.

“Enjoy yourself to the limit. The limit? Discovery. If discovered, yield on every 
score, refuse nothing.

“Keep away from libertine women, insofar as that is possible today. Their 
company won’t procure you many pleasures and may cause you considerable 
harm; they display themselves more visibly than lovers, for it is known that one 
must conceal oneself with a man and that is not thought necessary with a woman.

“If you indulge in foursomes, let the other woman be your trusted friend: have 
a sharp eye out to discern what bonds, what commitments there are she must 
respect; don’t enter the party if she does not have roughly the same duties and 
obligations as you to observe, for then she’ll be less discreet than you, and her 
imprudences will be your undoing.

“Always find some means for obtaining entire control over others, over, that is,
their lives. Should a man betray you, don’t hesitate to take the straight way with 
him. There is no counterpoising that man’s life against your tranquillity; whence I 
conclude that it’s a hundred times better to dispatch him than be made a show of 
or compromised by him. Not that reputation is essential; it serves purely to 
consolidate one’s pleasure opportunities. A woman generally thought to be 
well-behaved regularly enjoys herself far more and better than one whose overly 
publicized misconduct has cost her consideration.

“However, respect your husband’s life. I recommend that not because there is 
any individual on earth whose existence must be preserved if it conflicts with our 
private interest; but because, in the present case, our personal interest consists 
in safeguarding that husband’s days. ’Tis a long and wearisome study for a wife, 
to come to know her husband; once the job’s done, there’s no need for her to 
have to begin anew with another; and it is not sure that the second will be any 
improvement upon the first. It’s not a lover she wants in her husband, it’s a 
complacent, understanding, and understood creature; and success is better 
assured by long habit than by novelty.

“If the antiphysical pleasure-taking techniques I referred to a short moment 
ago are not able to arouse you, then cunt-fuck, I really don’t mind; but empty the
vessel as soon as it has been filled; never let the embryo get a start, that’s of 
great importance if you don’t sleep with your husband and hardly any less 
important if you do, for, as I have told you, incertitude gives rise to every 
suspicion, and suspicion nearly always brings on scissions and commotion.

“Above all, subdue any respect you have for the civil or religious ceremony that
welds you to a man for whom you have no love or whom you love no longer or 
who does not suffice you. A Mass, a benediction, a contract, this mumbo 
jumbo—has it the force, the sanctity to make you willing to crawl in irons forever?
That word given, that pledge, ’tis nought but a formality which confers upon a 
man the right to lie with a woman, but which is binding neither upon the one 
party nor upon the other; and these alliances must appear the less serious to her 
who, of the twain, is, by this agreement’s terms, accorded the fewer means to 
unbind herself. You who are destined to go forth from here and live in the world,” 
said the Superior, fixing her glance upon me, “you, my dear Juliette, scorn these 
driveling inanities, flout them contemptuously, they merit nothing else. They are 
man-made conventions whereunto, irrespective of your wishes, they’d compel you
to adhere: a costumed charlatan flutters round a table, waves his arms, mutters a
little while peering at a big book, a second knave who gets you to sign your name
in another—think ye this be stuff to engage or impress a woman? Use the rights 
Nature has given you; what sayeth Nature? Drown these despicable customs in 
thy scorn, go be a whore to thy desires. Your body is the church where Nature 
asks to be reverenced. Nature sneers at the altar where that sottish priest has 
just brayed his ritual through; the oaths Nature demands of you aren’t those 
you’ve just repeated to this abject juggler or those others you’ve set your name 
to pursuant to the instructions of his aide, that lugubrious man over there. What 
Nature would that you swear unto is that you surrender yourself to men, for so 
long and to that extent you have the human strength so to do. The god Nature 
proffers you isn’t that circular chip of dried dough that a harlequin has just 
launched along the way to your bowels; but ’tis pleasure she gives you for a 
divinity, pleasure, sweet joy; and ’tis in neglecting your duties toward that god 
and your own desires that you’ll excite the. ire of a mother who would be tender 
to her children.

“Granted a choice of partner, you’ll every time select a married person; it being
to the advantage of all concerned to keep the thing a secret, you’ll have less to 
fear by way of indiscretion; but preferable even to these individuals are those in 
your hire. I’ve already told you so: they’re beyond comparison the best, you can 
change them like linen; variety, multiplicity are the two most powerful vehicles of 
lust. Fuck with the maximum possible number of men; nothing so much amuses, 
so much heats the brain as profusion; no one in this crowd will be unable to afford
you some new pleasure, be it but the pleasure of one conformation or gesture the
more, and, my child, you know nothing at all if all you are acquainted with is one 
prick. Were you to be served by an army, it could make no difference to your 
husband: you’ll agree that he won’t be more dishonored by the thousandth than 
he was by the first, indeed, he’ll be less dishonored, for it does seem that one 
somehow effaces the other. Furthermore, if he is reasonable, the husband is 
always much more prone to excuse libertinage than love; the one offends 
personally, the other assumes the look of a mere flaw in your physical make-up. 
’Tis altogether possible he have a flaw in his, it’s all one; as for you and your 
principles, either you’re no philosopher, or you must necessarily feel that, once 
the first step has been taken, one commits no graver sin as one accomplishes the 
ten thousandth than at the start. Thus, there remains the matter of the world at 
large. Well, the public belongs entirely to you. Everything depends upon the art of
feigning and the other of imposture; if you are skilled in each—and your main 
task is to become so—you’ll do absolutely whatever you wish, and to both the 
public and your husband. Never cease to bear in mind that it’s not an error that 
ruins a woman, but the uproar occasioned by it, and that ten million crimes that 
remain unknown are less dangerous than the least slip which glares in the eye of 
everybody.

“Be modest in your dress: dash and finery do much more to exhibit a woman 
than can her twenty lovers; a more or less elegant hair style, a more or less 
costly gown, none of that furthers happiness; but frequent, extensive, and 
intensive fucking works wonders therefor. With a prudish or humble air, you’ll 
never be suspected of anything; were someone to dare criticize your character, a 
thousand champions will spring to break lances in your defense; the public, 
lacking enough time to pursue its investigations very far, never judges save by 
appearances: it costs hardly anything at all to wear those it wants to see. Give it 
satisfaction and when you need it, the public will be on your side.

“If you have sons, then when they are grown remove them from your 
immediate vicinity: they have only too often appeared in the role of betrayers to 
their mothers. Should they tempt you, resist the desire; the discrepancy in age is 
sure to breed a disgust, its victim will be you. There’s nothing very piquant to that
variety of incest, and it can have a negative influence upon much solider delights;
frigging yourself with your daughter, if she pleases you, presents many fewer 
risks. Include her in your debauches and she’s less apt to discuss them in public.

“And now I think I had better add a word of conclusion to all this advice: the 
self-restraint some women exercise means a loss to society, a curse to society; 
there ought to be a form of punishment for the absurd, wrongheaded creatures 
who, for whatever the motive, fancy that by preserving their loathsome virginity 
they are acquitting themselves brilliantly in this world and readying themselves 
for laurels in the next.

“Youthful, appetizing exemplars of the female sex,” Delbène went on 
panegyrically, “’tis to you I’ve until now addressed myself, ’tis to you I say once 
again: devil take this uncivilized virtuousness which fools dare confection into an 
ornament for you to wear, give up the outlandish, the barbaric habit of immolating
yourselves upon the altars of this grotesque virtue whose pitifully meager rewards
will never offset the immense sacrifices you shall be called upon to make in its 
name. And by what earthly right do men require so much self-abnegation in you, 
when they deny themselves so precious little? Do you not plainly see that it’s they
who’ve concocted the rules and that they were drawn up under the oversight of 
their pride, their insolent pride or their intemperance?

“Oh, my companions, I say it unto you: Fuck! you were born to fuck. To be 
fucked Nature created you; let bawl the mad, let blither and snivel the judges, let 
whine and gripe the hypocrites; they have their own reasons for condemning 
those delicious heats, those joyous frenzies which confer all their charm upon 
your days. Unable to wring more from you, envious of all you can give to others, 
they heap discredit upon you and censure because they have nothing further 
themselves to expect and because they are no more in a position to ask you for 
anything; but go consult the children of love and of pleasure, go put the question 
to the whole of that society, and myriad voices will answer you in chorus: you will 
be exhorted to fuck, because Nature would that you fuck, and it is a crime against
Nature not to fuck. Do not be intimidated by that empty epithet whore, an idiotic 
slut is she who declines the glory of that title. A whore is a lovable creature, 
young, voluptuous, who, less interested in her reputation than in the welfare of 
others, on those grounds alone merits every praise. The whore is the beloved 
child of Nature, the abstinent girl is Nature’s execration; the whore is deserving of
altars, the vestal of the stake. And what more potent insult can a girl fling in 
Nature’s teeth than to waste herself by flagrantly keeping, and in defiance of all 
the injury that may thereby result to her own self, an illusory virginity whose 
entire value derives from nothing but the most preposterous, the vilest, the 
meanest of all irrationalities? Fuck, my friends, fuck, I repeat, with effrontery 
sneer at the counsel of those who aim to make you captive in the despotic irons 
of a virtue whence no conceivable good ever has or ever shall come. Forswear 
them forever, all modesty and reserve; make haste to fuck, be quick, there is only
one age for discharging, take advantage of it. For time flies. If you allow the roses
to fade, you’ll reap a whirlwind of remorse and rue; and the day may come when,
belatedly possessed of the desire to have a petal plucked, you’ll find no lover who 
wants it—and then, and then you’ll never forgive yourself for having let go by 
those moments when love would have welcomed your favors. But, do you say, 
such a girl renders herself infamous, and the weight of this infamy is 
insupportably onerous? Can such a trifling objection be made in good faith? Let’s 
be frank then: prejudice is the sole author of infamies: how many acts are so 
qualified by an opinion forged out of nought but prejudice! The vices of theft, of 
sodomy, of poltroonery, for example—are these not dubbed infamies? and that 
shan’t prevent you from admitting that, viewed through Nature’s optic, they are 
completely legitimate, and whatever is lawful cannot possibly be infamous. For it 
is impossible that something urged by Nature be anything but lawful. Well, 
without—for the time being—subjecting these vices to a searching scrutiny, is it 
not certain that every man has been infused with the idea of acquiring wealth? 
That being so, the means he employs to become rich are just as natural as they 
are lawful. Similarly, are not all men given to seeking the greatest amount of 
delight in their pleasure-taking? Well, if sodomy is the unfailing means to this 
acknowledged end, sodomy is no infamy. Finally, does not everyone sense a 
desire to preserve himself, has he not been blessed with that instinct? Unto 
self-preservation poltroonery is one of the surest means; hence ’tis no infamy, 
poltroonery, and whatever may be our baseless prejudices concerning any of 
these three vices, it is clear that not one of them can be regarded as infamous, 
since all three are natural. It is likewise with libertinage as practiced by individuals
of our sex. Since nothing so well serves Nature, this libertinage cannot possibly be
infamous.

“But let’s for a moment suppose that this infamy authentically exists: what 
intelligent woman’s career is going to be hampered thereby? What the devil does 
she care if others consider her infamous? If in fact she is not so viewed by 
rational eyes, and if it is impossible that any infamy exist in the case she is in, 
she’ll laugh at the injustice and at the lunacy of her neighbors, she’ll cede as 
willingly as ever to Nature’s proddings, and she’ll cede to them more confidently 
and more easy in her mind than would someone less libertine: for everything 
thwarts, everything affrights, stays, diverts her who trembles lest she lose her 
good name; while she who has already bade her reputation farewell, having 
nothing further to lose, being out of danger and fearlessly surrendering herself to 
whatever she wishes to do, must necessarily be the happier.

“We may go farther still. The act whereunto this woman gives herself, the 
habits into which her proclivities lead her, were she truly infamous from the 
standpoint of the rules and regulations current in the area where she lives, if, I 
say, this act, whatever it be, is so vital to her felicity that she cannot forego it 
without becoming unhappy, then would she not be mad to renounce the intention 
of committing it whatever the risk of covering herself with infamy? For the burden
of this imagined infamy will not discomfort her, will never affect her so much as 
not indulging in her favorite sin; the former suffering will only be intellectual, 
capable of registering itself only upon certain minds, whereas what she deprives 
herself of is a pleasure accessible to everybody. Thus, as between two 
indispensable evils one must necessarily elect the lesser, the woman we are 
speaking of must unarguably brave the charge of infamy, and continue to live as 
she did before, in defiance of idle criticism; for, at worst, she’ll lose extremely 
little by incurring this ill fame, while, at best, she’ll lose a great deal by foregoing 
what will earn her a wicked renown. She must therefore accustom herself to 
opprobrium, learn to outstare it, she must achieve supremacy over this puny 
antagonist, dominate it, from earliest childhood she must habituate herself to 
blushing at nothing, to spurning the modesty, to vanquishing the shame which will
always wreak havoc with her pleasures and add nothing to her happiness.

“Once having attained this high level of development, she’ll make an 
astonishing but nonetheless eminently true discovery: that the stings and nettles 
of this infamy she dreaded have metamorphosed into goads to pleasure, and that,
far from wishing to avoid these hurts, she’ll wound herself most voluntarily, she’ll 
redouble her efforts to seek out ways to feel a delectable pain, and it shan’t be 
long before she carries things to the point of desiring to broadcast evidence of her
turpitude. Observe the ravishing libertine! the sublime creature wants to 
libertinize herself before the whole wide world, shame is nought to her, she flouts 
horror and scandal, her single complaint is that to her errors there are not 
witnesses enough. And the remarkable thing is that only now does she truly come
to know the pleasure which heretofore was wrapped in the anesthetizing cloud of 
her prejudices; that she be transported to the ultimate extreme of drunkenness, 
she had first to destroy every last obstacle preventing these needles from 
penetrating to the agonizing delight of her heart. But, sometimes you hear it said,
but there are awful things, there are things which defy common sense, that 
conflict with all the seeming laws of Nature, of conscience, of decency, things that
seem not only properly to arouse a general horror but such as to be unable to 
procure one any pleasure. … Surely, in the eyes of fools; but there are certain 
minds, my friends, certain spirits which, having rid these things of what makes 
them in appearance horrible, and doing so by annihilating the prejudice which 
caused filth and wrong to adhere to them, behold these same things as nought 
but the occasion of mighty joy, and these delights are all the keener the greater 
the gulf between these things and approved behavior, the more radically they 
countercarry every practice, and the more sternly they are proscribed by vulgar 
law. Strive to cure such a mind in such a woman: try it, I defy you. By pitching 
her soul to this tone, the throbbing vibrations that assail her become so 
voluptuous and so intense that she is blind to all else save the need to march ever
onward along the divine path she has chosen. The more appalling the thing to be 
done, the more it pleases her, and you’ll never hear her complain that she lacks 
the mettle and the will to endure the brand of infamy—the infamy she cherishes 
and whose terrible heat only further raises the temperature of her pleasures. This 
explains to you why she-devils of this breed are forever gone in quest of excess 
and why they are stung by no pleasure save when ’tis spiced with crime; no 
longer visualizing crime as the vulgar do, in whose sight it is repugnant, with 
other eyes they behold another vision, and it is one of infinite charm. The habit of
stopping at nothing, of overcoming every barrier causes them ever and again to 
find eminently easy and good what was formerly forbidding and bad; and, 
progressing from extravagance to extravagance, they attain at length to 
monstrosities … monstrosities whose execution lies a step ahead of them, 
because these women must perpetrate real crimes to obtain real spasms of joy, 
and because, unfortunately, there is no such thing as a real crime, do what you 
will, desire what you please. Thus, always mounting in the track of the speeding 
star, eternally distanced by desire, ’tis not that these women perform too few 
horrors, but that there are too few horrors to be performed. Take care not to 
believe, my friends, that the delicacy of our sex somehow serves as lee shelter to 
the wind of wickedness: more sensitive than men, we are quicker than they to 
sense the storm, more eager to heed the high cry of wrong. Thus ’tis 
unimaginable what we do, after what excesses we lust, men have no idea what a 
woman is capable of when Nature goes unchecked, when religion’s voice is 
throttled, when the law’s sway over her is broken.

“Frequently we hear the passions declaimed against by unthinking orators who 
forget that these passions supply the spark that sets alight the lantern of 
philosophy; who forget that ’tis to impassioned men we owe the overthrow of all 
those religious idiocies wherewith for so long the world was plagued. ’Twas nought
but the fires of emotion cindered that odious scare, the Divinity, in whose name 
so many throats were cut for so many centuries; passion alone dared obliterate 
those foul altars. Ah, had the passions rendered man no other service, is this one 
not great enough to make us indulgent toward the passions’ mischievous pranks? 
Oh, my dears, steel yourselves to brave the aspersions they’ll always be ready to 
cast upon you, and so as to know how to scorn infamy as it must be scorned, 
familiarize yourselves with all that can attract the charge, multiply your little 
misdeeds; ’tis they that will gradually habituate you to braving come what may … 
that will crush remorse in you before the seed of remorse can germinate. As basis
and rule to your conduct adopt that which seems in nicest agreement with your 
penchants; trouble yourselves not to inquire whether or no that concurs with our 
drab conventions, for you would be most unfair to your own selves were you, by 
depriving yourselves, to punish yourselves for not having been born in a clime 
where the thing is applauded. Heed only what most flatters or delights you, ’tis 
this suits you best, all else not at all. Be imperturbably indifferent to the style in 
vices and virtues that’s the rage today in town; vice, virtue, the words have no 
real signification, they’re arbitrary, interchangeable, express only what is locally 
and temporarily in vogue here and there. Once again, be firm in your conviction 
that infamy soon transforms itself into voluptuousness. I remember having read 
somewhere, in Tacitus, I believe, that infamy is the highest and last of pleasures 
for those who are jaded by the excessive use they have made of all others; a 
most dangerous pleasure, I believe, since one must find a means, a puissant 
means, for reaping enjoyment from this species of self-abandon, from this sort of 
degradation of sentiment whence every other vice is born; since it withers the 
soul, or rather robs it of every atmosphere save the pale of utter corruption, and 
that without leaving the tiniest outlet to remorse. Indeed, it absolutely 
extinguishes remorse; better, it works a thoroughgoing change in remorse: for 
now we have a person who has lost all esteem save for what gives rise to 
remorse, and who much amuses himself with reviving this feeling in order to 
relish the pleasure of quashing it, and who, step by step, accedes to the most 
unheard-of excesses; and the ease with which he arrives at these excesses is only
increased by the number of transgressions he must commit and the quantity of 
virtues he must contemn preparatorily; and so many obstacles over-leapt are so 
many voluptuous episodes, often more stimulating to a perfidious imagination 
than is the very atrocity he designs. What is most wonderful about it all is that he 
believes himself happy—and is. If, reversibly, the virtuous individual is happy too, 
happiness necessarily ceases to be a situation every person can achieve by 
behaving well; happiness is thus proven to depend uniquely upon our individual 
organization, and may be as readily encountered in the triumph of virtue as in the
abyss of vice…. But what is this I say? in the triumph of virtue…. Ah, has virtue 
this maddening sting? What chill, toughened soul could ever be cheered by 
virtue’s meager rewards? No, my friends, no, virtue shall never make for our 
happiness. He lies who pretends to have found happiness there; he seeks to have 
us call happiness what are rather pride’s illusions. For my part, this do I declare to
you: that with all my soul I detest, I hate virtue, I despise it today as in the past I
did cherish it, and to the joys I taste in outraging virtue constantly I’d like to add 
the supreme delight of assassinating it in every heart where it has an abode. How
often, freighted with images, my accursed brain waxes hot, so hot that I want 
nothing but to be drowned in the infamy I’ve just portrayed for you! Yes, I’d have 
it known, inscribed, permanently decided that I’m a whore; I’d like to forswear, 
rend this veil, break these disgraceful oaths which prevent me from prostituting 
myself publicly, from soiling myself like the lowest of the low. I confess to you 
that I’m capable of envying the fate of those heavenly creatures who ornament 
street corners and slake the filthy lust of whoever strolls by; they squat in vile 
degradation, in ordures and horror do they wallow; dishonor is their lot, they are 
insensible to it, to everything … what fortune! and why should we not labor thus 
to become, all of us? In the whole world is not the happiest being he in whom 
there beats a heart rock-hardened by passions … who has by passion been 
brought to where he is immune to all save pleasure? And what need has he to be 
susceptible of any other sensation? Ah, my friends, were we advanced to that 
degree of turpitude, we’d no longer have the look of vileness, and we’d make 
gods of our errors rather than denigrate ourselves! ’Tis thus Nature points out to 
us all the gate to happiness: let us go that way.

“Eh? Godsfuck! see, they’re stiff erect,” cried the tempestuous Delbène, 
“they’re aloft, resurrected, these divine pricks I’ve been palpating while 
addressing you. Behold, they’re hard as steel, and my ass covets them. Come, 
good friends, come fuck my ass, this insatiable thirsty ass of mine; into the 
utmost depths of this libertine ass spill fresh jets of-sperm which, if such a thing 
be possible, will cool the burning ardor consuming my entrails. Hither, Juliette, I 
want to cunt-suck you while our wights embugger me; squatting over your 
visage, Volmar will present her charms to you, you’ll lech them, you’ll sup on 
them while with your right hand you pollute Flavie and with your left you give 
Laurette’s buttocks a smart spanking.”

The play is staged, Delbène’s two lovers sodomize her in turn. Awash with 
Volmar’s fuck, mine runs very abundantly into the Superior’s mouth, “and at last 
the time comes to turn our attentions to deflowering Laurette.

Appointed to the high priestess’ role, I am fitted out with an artificial member. 
It is a great-sized thing: the cruel Abbess has ordered me to don the massiest in 
the arsenal; and here is a description of the at once lubricious and ungentle scene
that followed:

Laurette occupies the center of the stage. Motionless, she reposes upon a tall 
stool: beneath her buttocks is a hard cushion, her position is horizontal, only her 
behind is supported. Her widely spread legs are so maintained by cords fastened 
to rings sunk in the floor; her arms, flung over her head and outward, are 
similarly fixed. This attitude places the strait and delicate part of the victim’s body
in the most admirable situation to be penetrated by the glaive. Seated before her 
is Télème, who is to hold up her pretty head … and to exhort her to patience; and
this idea of putting her into the confessor’s keeping, quite as if she were about to 
be decapitated, infinitely amuses the cruel Delbène, whose passions, I see, are as
ferocious as her tastes appear to be libertine. While I depucelate the cunt of this 
Agnes, Ducroz is to embugger me. There is an altar in the room; it stands next to
and dominates that other altar upon which the little lass is going to be immolated,
and it will serve as a couch to our voluptuous Abbess. ’Tis as she reclines there 
between Volmar and Flavie that the rascal is going lewdly to savor both the 
thought of the crime she is having committed and the delicious spectacle of its 
consummation.

Before stoppling my ass, Ducroz busies himself readying the terrain for the 
aggression I am about to commit; he moistens the borders of Laurette’s vagina 
and anoints my weapon with an oily preparation which enables it to coast in 
almost at once. However, it provokes some truly awesome stretching and tearing:
Laurette’s not yet ten years old and my lance must be eight inches in its 
circumference and a dozen long. The encouragement proffered to me, the 
irritated state I am in, the great desire I have to carry out this libertine act, 
everything combines to make me put as much zeal into this operation as might 
the most energetic lover. The engine penetrates, but the torrents of blood that 
leap from the bursting hymen, the victim’s lusty screams, all these are indicative 
that the enterprise is not unaccompanied by its perils; the poor little thing’s hurt, 
far from being negligible, consists in a wound of such gravity as to make one feel 
some concern for her life. Ducroz, aware of the possibilities, glances toward the 
Abbess; she, being voluptuously frigged by her confederates, nods, and that is 
the signal to continue.

“The bitch is ours!” she cries; “don’t let’s spare her. I am not answerable to 
her, no, nor to anyone, I do as I please!”

You will readily conceive how these utterances emboldened me. Be sure of it, 
the woe occasioned by my clumsiness and by that unwieldy machine only made 
me ply it in a livelier style: now the whole affair is engulfed, Laurette swoons, 
Ducroz buggers me, and Télème, enchanted, frigs his device upon the fair visage 
of the stricken child whose head he grips between his thighs….

“Madame,” says he to Delbène, the while rubbing his prick, “a certain 
individual here has need of succor—”

“’Tis of fuck she’s in need,” the Abbess retorts, “yes, fuck’s all the treatment I’ll
have given the bitch.”

I continue to grind away, electrified by Ducroz’ prick, it is only a quarter of an 
inch from being entirely engaged in my asshole; I deal as severely with my victim
as I am being dealt with myself. Ecstasy overtakes all of us at virtually the same 
instant. The three tribades sprawled on the altar discharge like a battery of 
mortars while along the length of the dildo I’ve buried in Laurette my own sperm 
trickles, while Ducroz fills my anus with his, and while Télème mixes his own with 
the victim’s tears, for he has just ejaculated all over her face.

Our weariness, the necessity of reviving Laurette if we want to extract further 
pleasure from utilizing her, all this obliges us to bestow a little attention upon her. 
She is unbound; surrounded, slapped, pummeled, pinched, fiddled over, Laurette 
soon shows a few signs of life.

“Well, what’s the matter with you?” Delbène uncharitably inquires; “are you 
then such a feeble thing that so mild an attack sends you nigh to the doors of 
hell?”

“Alas, Madame, I can bear no more,” protests the poor bedraggled little girl 
whose blood is still flowing copiously; “I’ve been sore hurt, I’m going to die—”

“Not so fast,” the Superior said laconically, “patients a good deal younger than 
you have successfully weathered these same assaults, we’ll carry on.”

And without other precautions being taken than to stanch her blood, Laurette 
is tied anew, and this time she lies upon her belly instead of on her back; her 
asshole comfortably within range, Delbène and her two aides installed upon the 
altar again, I ready myself to attack by another breach.

Nothing can equal the luxurious manner in which Delbène was having herself 
masturbated by Volmar and Flavie. The latter, stretched out upon Madame 
Delbène, was giving her cunt to be sucked while frigging her mistress’ clitoris and 
tickling her nipples; Volmar, a little farther down, was manipulating the lusty 
Abbess’ asshole, into which she’d dug three of her fingers; every part of that 
slut’s body was being submitted to pleasure, and throughout it all her gaze was 
fixed upon what I was about. She exhorted me to get on with the affair. So I 
presented myself. This time ’tis Télème who’s to embugger me while I am 
sodomizing Laurette; and Ducroz is to prepare this introduction and to frig my 
clitoris at the same time. The difficulties are formidable, they look 
insurmountable; already two or three times repulsed, my instrument either 
strikes awry or slips astray, despite my guidance, niching itself in Laurette’s cunt 
again, and this accident is not unattended by further distress to the unlucky 
victim of our libertinage. Delbène, losing patience at these delays, bids Ducroz 
blaze the trail by himself embuggering the lass, and, you understand, this 
commission is not displeasing to him. Less awesomely proportioned that the 
bowsprit I’m wearing, steadier with a tool that’s more securely attached to him 
than mine is to me, the libertine has lodged himself the next instant deep in the 
maid’s ass; he harpoons a virginal turd, fetches it out, is about to enter again and
spray fuck about the cavity when the Abbess orders him aside and summons me 
to resume operations.

“Sweet Jesus!” says the Abbot, drawing out his prick all glistening with lust and
all sullied with dark proof of his victory, “ah, doublefucked Jesus, very well. As you
say; but I’m bent on revenge. Give me Juliette’s ass instead.”

“No,” says Delbène who, in spite of the pleasures wherewith she is besotting 
herself, is nonetheless paying keen attention to ours, “no, my Juliette’s ass 
belongs to Télème, he’s the one who’s to enjoy it this time and I’ll brook no 
infringement upon his rights. But, you great scoundrel, since you’re so bloody 
fucking stiff, go bury your stave in Volmar’s hungry bum. Eh, do you see the 
thing? Embugger this superb wench here, I tell you, stuff her ass and she’ll frig 
me the merrier.”

“Godsfuck, yes!” Volmar exclaims, “come here, mark this asshole, get inside, 
bugger, be quick about it, I’ve never had greater need of a sodomizing.”

The persons of the drama take their places, the curtain rises upon a new act. 
The breach already blasted in Laurette allows my instrument relatively easy 
access, a minute later and the poor little dear feels it lodged deep in her anus. 
Therewith she redoubles her weeping and wailing, her screams are dreadful; but 
Télème, having gained a solid foothold in my ass, and Delbène, swimming in fuck,
both give me such lusty encouragement that Laurette soon experiences hindwise 
what not long before I made her feel frontwardly: blood streams, and a second 
time the child faints away. ’Tis at this point Delbène’s ferocious character becomes
very manifest.

“Don’t slacken—go on! go on!” cries she, upon seeing me about to retire; 
“have we discharged yet? We have not! Keep at it till then, hear?”

“But she’s dying,” say I.

“Dying? Dying? Nonsense, pure histrionics, all a comedy. And if ’tis so? Eh 
then? One whore more or less—do you think it matters to me? The bitch is here 
to entertain us and, by fuck! entertain us she shall!”

My resolve fortified by this Megaera, and not being anyhow much inclined to 
weak-spirited sentiments of commiseration wherewith Nature did not overly well 
provide me, I set to work again and keep at it until the signal for a legitimate 
retreat is given by the unequivocal evidence of a general pandemonium whose din
I soon hear coming from all sides; I’ve already had my third emission by the time 
I quit my post.

“Let’s have a look at all this,” says the Abbess, stepping up to Laurette. “Is the 
life gone out of her?”

“Oh, la! She’s no worse off than when the fun began,” Ducroz says chidingly, 
“and if you doubt it, a stout re-encunting from me will bring her around in a 
trice.”

“Better yet, we’ll administer the treatment jointly,” Télème proposes. “While I 
embugger her, Delbène will frig my asshole and I’ll mouth Volmar’s; Juliette can 
likewise socratize Ducroz and he’ll put a diligent tongue to Flavie’s cunt.”

Approved, the project is put into execution; and the rapid movements of our 
two fuckers, their impetuous lust, quickly bring the sorely beset Laurette back to 
her senses.

“My best beloved,” I then inquire of the Abbess, whom I draw aside, “however 
shall you repair all the damage that’s just been done?”

“That which you’ve sustained shall be very soon, my angel,” Delbène 
answered, “tomorrow, I’ll massage you with an ointment that so wonderfully 
restores their whole order to things that afterward no one would ever guess 
they’d been exposed to rude usage. As for Laurette—have you forgotten that ’tis 
generally believed she fled the convent? She’s ours, Juliette. She’ll not reappear 
in the world.”

“What are you going to do with her?” I wondered, much mystified.

“Make her the victim of our lewdness. Dear Juliette I you are yet so very much 
a novice. Do you still not understand that the only serious ones are the criminal 
excesses? and that the more horror one enwraps pleasure in, the more charming 
pleasure becomes?”

“Truthfully, my dear, I can make nothing of what you say—”

“Have patience then. You shan’t have long to wait ere all comes clear. But now,
let’s have some supper.”

The company removes to a little room adjacent to the salon where the orgies 
have been celebrated. Here, spread upon tables, is a profusion of dainties, the 
rarest delicacies in meat, wine of the very best. We take our places … Laurette 
serves us! I soon remarked, from the manner the group adopted with her, by the 
harsh tone in which she was addressed, that the poor little wretch was considered
nothing more than a victim whose doom was already sealed. The merrier spirits 
grew, the worse she was treated; there was nothing our youthful waitress did that
wasn’t rewarded by a pinch or a tweak, a slap or a blow; and if she was remiss, 
however slightly inattentive to instructions, she was often more severely punished
yet. I’ll not linger, kind reader, over the doings and utterances which distinguished
that lavish bacchanal; be content to know that, for horror, for foulness, they 
equaled the worst I’ve since seen by way of the utmost in libertinage.

Down there, the air was very warm, we women were nude; the men were in 
the same disorder and, mixed in amidst us, were with complete unrestraint giving
themselves over to whatever of the filthiest and most crapulous their delirium 
could egg them into undertaking. Wrangling over my ass, Télème and Ducroz 
looked about to come to blows in their efforts to obtain its use; supine beneath 
the pair of them, I was quietly awaiting the contest’s outcome when Volmar, 
drunk already and in her drunkenness more lovely than Venus, seized the two 
pricks and started to frig them into a bowl of punch, all this, she explained, 
because she wanted fuck to drink.

“Let’s have an end to this,” said the Abbess, almost as lightheaded as the 
others about her, for wine had been flowing very freely, “I’m against it unless 
Juliette agrees to piss into the mixture—”

I piss; the tureen goes from hand to hand, the whores all drink their fill, the 
men do the same and, the riot being at its apogee, the extravagant Abbess, at a 
loss what to invent next to reawaken desires her libertinage has foundered in 
exhaustion, announces that she wants to go to the vault where the mortal 
remains of the women of the house repose, that she wants to find the coffin of 
one of those her jealous rage brought lately to destruction, that she wants to 
have herself given five or six thumping fuckings upon her victim’s corpse. The 
idea stirs the company; we get to our feet, we locate the spot, candles are set 
upon the coffins ranged round that of the young novice whom three months 
previously Delbène had poisoned, after having idolized her. The infernal creature 
lies down upon that sepulcher and, baring her cunt to the two ecclesiastics, she 
challenges first the one, then the other. Ducroz is the first to ensocket his spar. 
We were all spectators and our sole employment, throughout this gruesome 
scene, was to kiss and fondle her, finger her clitoris and submit ourselves to be 
handled by her. Delirious, Delbène was battening avidly upon these horrors when 
a dreadful shrill screech was heard, all the candles snuffing out that very instant.

“My God, what is this!” cried the intrepid Abbess, alone among us all to 
preserve her courage in the midst of tumult and affright. “Juliette! Flavie! 
Volmar!”

But we’re all deaf, struck dumb, no one gives her answer; and were it not for 
the details our Superior supplied us on the morrow, I, who half-swooned away 
when it happened, would probably still know nothing of what brought this fracas 
about. A wood owl hidden in those underground places was the cause of it all; 
startled by the light to which its eyes were unaccustomed, it had taken flight and 
its beating wings created a draft that had blown the candles out. When I 
recovered my wits I found myself in my bed and Delbène, who came to visit me 
as soon as she learned I was better, told me that after she’d calmed the two men,
who’d been nearly as terrified as we, it was with their aid she had transported us 
to our cells.

“In supernatural occurrences I have no belief at all,” Delbène asserted. “Never 
is there an effect without its cause and my first concern, whenever surprised by 
some effect, is to trace out its cause without delay. I promptly located that of our 
adventure the other night; the candles lit once again, we, the men and I, just as 
promptly restored everything to order.”

“And Laurette, Madame?”

“Laurette? She’s in the cellars, my sweet. We left her there—”

“What! Then you—”

“Not yet. It will be our first piece of business the next time we assemble. She 
underwent yesterday’s experience more successfully than one might have 
thought.”

“Oh, indeed, Delbène, you’re a very debauched thing … a cruel thing—”

“Now, now, not at all. It’s simply that I’ve got very exigent passions, and that I
heed nothing else. And, persuaded as I am that they are the most faithful 
interpreters of Nature’s will, I heed whatever counsel they give me, and do so 
with as little fear as remorse or regret. But you look to be whole again, Juliette; 
get up, my darling, come dine with me in my apartment, we’ll chat together.”

Later, when we had finished our meal, Delbène asked me to settle myself in a 
chair beside her. “You are surprised to find me so calm in the midst of crime? Let 
me then say a few words apropos. I fain would have you become as apathetic as 
I—and I think you soon shall. I noticed yesterday that you were struck, even 
startled, by my equanimity in the thick of the horrors we were committing and I 
seem to remember that you accused me of lacking pity for that poor Laurette our 
debauchery sacrificed.

“Oh, Juliette, banish all doubt thereof: Nature has arranged everything, 
informed everything, hers is the responsibility for all you see and all there is. Has 
she given equal strength, equal beauty, equal grace to all the creatures wrought 
by her hand? Of course not. Since she desires that each particular thing or 
constitution have its particular contour or hue, so also she wills that fates and 
fortunes be not alike. The luckless ones chance puts in our clutches, or who excite
our passions, have their place in Nature’s scheme as do the stars in the 
firmament and the sun that gives us light; and ’tis as certain an evil one commits 
in meddling with this wise economy as ’twould be were one to confound cosmic 
operations, were that crime within the scope of our possibilities….”

“But,” I interrupted, “were you in distress, Delbène, would you not yearn for 
succor and kindness?”

“I? I’d know how to suffer uncomplainingly,” the stoical thinker gave me 
answer, “and I’d implore the aid of no one.

“If indeed I am Nature’s favorite, if I have no misery to dread, have I still not 
fever and pestilence and war and famine and the disruptions of an unforeseen 
revolution and all the other plagues that blight mankind and mankind’s ease, do 
not these threaten me too? Well, let them all occur, come what may, I’ll bear it 
dauntlessly. Believe me, Juliette, oh yes, be firmly persuaded that when I consent
to let others suffer and when I refrain from interfering with their sufferings, it is 
because I myself have learned to suffer, to endure suffering, and alone. 
Resistance is foolhardy and fruitless; so let’s abandon ourselves to Nature’s 
keeping, that is to say, to our fate; it’s not to a career of mercifulness Nature 
appoints us; her voice cries to us only this, that it is for us to develop the strength
necessary to withstand the trials she holds in store for us. And commiseration, far
from steeling our soul for what is to come, shakes it, unreadies it, softens it, 
definitively robs it of the courage that is no longer there when, later, it needs 
courage to cope with its own afflictions. He who learns how to be insensible to the
ills that besiege others soon becomes impassive in the face of his own woes, and 
it is far more necessary to know oneself how to suffer than to accustom oneself to
shedding tears in others’ behalf. Oh, Juliette, the less one is sensitive, the less 
one is affected, and the nearer one draws to veritable autonomy; we are never 
prey save to two things: the evil which befalls others, or that which befalls us: 
toughen ourselves in the face of the first, and the second will touch us no more, 
and from then on nothing will have the power to disturb our peace.”

“Yet,” I pointed out, “the inevitable consequence of this apathy will be crimes.”

“And so? ’tis neither to crime nor to its virtuous contrary we ought to become 
especially attached, but rather to whatever renders us happy; and were I to 
discover that my only possibility of happiness lay in excessive perpetration of the 
most atrocious crimes, without a qualm I’d enact every last one of them this very 
instant, certain, as I have already told you, that the foremost of the laws Nature 
decrees to me is to enjoy myself, no matter at whose expense. If Nature has 
constituted my intimate structure in such a way that it is only from the infelicity of
my fellows that voluptuous sensations can flower in me, then ’tis so because 
Nature would have me participate in the destruction she desires—and she desires 
destruction, an end quite as essential to her as any other aim; if she made me 
wicked, ’twas because she has pressing need of wickedness and of beings like me 
to serve her policy.”

“Arguments of that kind can lead far….”

“And one should keep in step with them,” Delbène rejoined. “Take them as far 
as you like and I defy you to show me the point at which they become dangerous;
one has enjoyed oneself the whole way along the journey, and that’s all, one 
cannot ask for more.”

“May one take enjoyment at the expense of others?”

“The thing that interests me least in this world is what happens to others; I 
haven’t the slightest germ of belief in that bond of fraternity I hear fools prate 
about unendingly, and it’s not without having closely analyzed these ties of 
brotherhood that I reject the lot of them.”

“What! do you doubt this, the most primary of Nature’s laws?”

“Listen to me, Juliette … oh, truly, ’tis astounding the need this girl has of 
instruction … of guidance….”

We were at this stage in our conversation when a lackey, sent by my mother, 
arrived to inform Madame the Abbess of the dreadful state of affairs at our home 
and the grave illness of my father; my sister and I were requested to return at 
once.

“Great heavens!” exclaimed Madame Delbène. “But I’ve entirely forgotten your
maidenhead, which needs repair. One instant, my angel, here, this jar contains an
extract of myrtle, rub yourself with it in the morning and before retiring at night, 
nine days of that ought to suffice. On the tenth you’ll find yourself as much a 
virgin as you were emerging from the womb of your mother.”

Then, sending someone in search of Justine, she entrusted us both to the 
servant who’d come to fetch us away, and she besought us to return as soon as 
we could. We embraced her, and left.

My father died. You know what disasters ensued upon his passing: my 
mother’s death a month later, and the destitution and abandonment we found 
ourselves in. Justine, who knew nothing of my secret liaisons with the Abbess, 
knew nothing either of the visit I paid her several days after our ruin, and as the 
behavior and sentiments she then exhibited reveal what remained to be 
discovered of this original woman’s character, it were well, my friends, that I 
recount that interview. Delbène was short with me that day. She began by 
refusing to open the gate to me, and only consented to talk for a moment through
the grillwork dividing us.

When, surprised by this chilly reception, I reminded her of our at least carnal 
attachments, she said:

“My child, all that grubby nonsense is over and done with when two persons 
cease to dwell together; so my advice to you is to forget it. For my part, I must 
assure you that I cannot recall a single one of the facts and circumstances you 
allude to. As for the indigence threatening you, recollect the fate of Euphrosine: 
she didn’t even wait to be beckoned by necessity, but of her free will leaped into a
career of libertinage. Since now you have no choice, imitate her. There’s nothing 
else for you to do. I therefore confine my suggestions to that one; but once 
you’ve made the choice, refrain from calling upon me: the role may, after all, not 
suit you, may not bring you success, you might need money, credit, and I shall 
not be able to supply you the one or the other.”

So saying, Delbène turned on her heel and walked away, leaving me in a state 
of bewilderment … a state which, of course, would have been less distressing had 
I been more philosophical; my meditations were cruel….

I left immediately, firmly resolved to follow the wicked creature’s advice, 
perilous though it was. Luckily, I remembered the name and address of the 
woman Euphrosine had mentioned to us long ago, at a time when, alas! I never 
dreamed I would someday have to avail myself of her: an hour later I stood at 
her door.

Madame Duvergier gave me a heart-warming welcome. Her connoisseur’s eye 
deceived by the wonder Delbène’s most excellent remedy had wrought, Duvergier
came to a conclusion that was to allow her to deceive many another. ’Twas two or 
three days before assuming a post in this house that I took leave of my sister in 
order to pursue a calling very different from the one she elected.

After the reverses I had sustained, my existence depended solely upon my new
hostess, I confided myself entirely into her hands and accepted the conditions she
imposed; but no sooner was I alone and given opportunity to ponder events than 
I began to dwell anew upon Madame Delbène’s desertion of me and upon her 
ingratitude. Alas! said I to myself, why did her heart harden before my 
misfortune? Juliette poor, Juliette rich—are these two different creatures? What 
then is this curious capriciousness that leads one to love opulence and fly from 
misery? Ah, I was still to comprehend that poverty must necessarily be 
distasteful, abhorrent to wealth, at the time I was still unaware of how much 
prosperity dreads misery, of how it loathes misery, I was still to learn that from 
this fear of relieving suffering results prosperity’s hatred for it. But, I went on to 
wonder, but how can it be that this libertine woman—this criminal, how is it that 
she does not fear the indiscretion of those whom she treats so cavalierly?—further
childishness on my part; I as yet knew nothing of the insolence and the effrontery
that characterize vice when seated upon foundations of wealth and reputation. 
Madame Delbène was the Mother Superior of one of the most renowned convents 
in the He de France, her annuities came to sixty thousand pounds, she had the 
most powerful friends at the Court, no one in the City was more admired: how 
she must have detested a poor girl like me who, orphaned and without a penny to
her name, to oppose her injustices could only submit appeals which would soon 
be dismissed with a laugh if ever they were heard or which, more probably, would
be immediately branded as calumnies and could well earn the plaintiff impudent 
enough to demand her rights the indefinite loss of her liberty.

Astonishingly corrupted already, this striking example of injustice, even though
’twas I who had to suffer from it, pleased rather than redirected me into better 
ways. So then! said I to myself, I have but to strive after wealth too; rich, I’ll 
soon be as impudent as that woman, I’ll enjoy the same rights and the same 
pleasures. Let’s beware of virtuousness, ’tis sure disaster; for vice is victorious 
always and everywhere; poverty’s to be avoided at all costs, since it’s the object 
of a universal scorn…. But, having nothing, how am I to elude misfortune? By 
criminal deeds, obviously. Crime? What’s that to me? Madame Delbène’s 
teachings have already rotted my heart and infected my brain; I see evil in no 
action, I am convinced that crime as nicely serves Nature’s ends as can goodness 
and decency; so let’s be off into this perverse world where success is the one 
mark of triumph; let no obstacle check us, no scruple hinder us, for misery is his 
who tarries by the wayside. Since society is composed exclusively of dupes and 
scoundrels, let’s decidedly play the latter: it’s thirty times more flattering to one’s 
amour-propre to gull others than to be made a gull oneself.

Fortified by these reflections—which may perhaps strike you as somewhat 
precocious at the age of fifteen, but which, granted the education I had had, will 
surely not seem unlikely to you—I set myself to waiting resignedly for whatever 
Providence might bring me, fully determined to exploit every opportunity to better
my fortune at no matter what price to myself or to others.

To be sure, I had a rigorous apprenticeship to undergo; these often painful first
steps were to complete the corruption of my morals and rather than alarm yours, 
my friends, it would perhaps be better were I to withhold details which, if laid out 
realistically, would only dazzle your eyes, for my performances were in all 
probability rather more wonderfully wicked than those you yourselves accomplish 
every day—

“Madame, I protest, that I am not entirely able to believe,” the Marquis broke 
in. “Knowing of us what you do, I declare, Madame, I declare that I am 
dumbfounded that you allow yourself for one single instant to harbor such a fear. 
Our performances, our behavior—”

“Forgive me,” said Madame la Comtesse de Lorsange, “but it is here a question
of corruption manifest in both sexes—”

“Madame, Madame, say on—”

“—for Duvergier catered indiscriminately to the fancies of men and of 
women—”

“Indeed,” said the Marquis, “you cannot have intended to deprive us of 
descriptions which for being heteroclite and composite would only entertain us the
more? We are acquainted with virtually all the extravagances whereof individuals 
of our sex are capable, and you can but delight us by instructing us in all those 
which individuals of yours are prone to essay.”

“So be it,” rejoined Madame la Comtesse. “I’ll nevertheless be careful to detail 
only the most unusual debauches and, to avoid monotony, I’ll omit any that strike
me as too simple, too banal.”

“Marvelous,” said the Marquis, showing the company an already lust-swollen 
engine; “but are you bearing in mind the effect these narrations may produce in 
us? Behold the condition brought about by the mere promise of what is to come.”

“Well, my friend,” the charming Comtesse said, “am I not completely at your 
disposition? I’ll reap a twofold pleasure from my pains; and as self-esteem is 
always of much account with women, you’ll permit me to suppose that, regarding 
the general rise in temperature about to take place, while my speeches may be 
one cause therefor, my person shall also share in the responsibility?”

“But you are quite right, I must convince you this very instant,” the Marquis 
said. Very moved indeed, he drew Juliette into an adjoining chamber; there they 
remained long enough to taste gluttonously all the sweetest joys of unbridled 
lewdness.

“For my part,” said the Chevalier, whom the departure of the others had left 
encloseted with Justine, “I must confess I’m not yet stiff enough to have to 
lighten ballast, not yet. Never mind, come hither, my child, kneel down, there’s a 
good little girl, and suck me; but pray so do as to show me a lot more of your ass 
than of your cunt. ’Tis good, ’tis very good,” he said, seeing Justine, more than 
adequately trained in these turpitudes, grasp, most skillfully, howbeit with regret, 
the spirit of this one, “oh, yes, yes, she does it suitably enough.”

And the Chevalier, singularly well sucked, all sighs and gladness, was perhaps 
about to abandon himself to the gentle, honey-sweet sensations of a thus 
provoked discharge when the Marquis, returning with Juliette, besought her to 
take up the thread of her story again, and his confrere, if he could, to postpone 
until some later moment the crisis toward which the drama appeared to be 
hastening.

Quiet being restored and attentions fixed again upon Madame de Lorsange, 
she resumed her tale, and spoke as follows:

Madame Duvergier had but six women aboard; but these were seconded by 
reinforcements numbering three hundred, all at her beck and call; two strapping 
lackeys five feet and eight inches tall, membered each like Hercules, and two little
grooms of fourteen and fifteen, heavenly to see, were likewise furnished to 
libertines who wanted a mixture of sexes or who preferred antiphysical antics to 
the enjoyment of women; and in cases where those limited masculine effectives 
would not have sufficed, Duvergier could increase them by drawing upon a 
reserve corps of over eighty individuals who were domiciled outside the house, all
of them ready, at any hour, to present themselves anywhere their services were 
required.

Madame Duvergier’s house was cunning, it was delightful. Situated between 
courtyard and garden, and having two exits, one on either side, rendezvous took 
place there under conditions of secrecy which no other arrangements could have 
afforded; within, the furnishings were magnificent, the boudoirs voluptuous, 
lavishly decorated; the cook in the establishment was a master in his art, the 
wines were of quality, and the girls were charming. The use of these outstanding 
facilities was not to be had for nothing. And, indeed, nothing in Paris cost 
anything like what one paid for an evening’s rout in these divine surroundings; 
Duvergier never asked less than ten louis for the simplest kind of tête-à-tête. 
Without morals and without religion, enjoying the wholehearted and unfailing 
support of the police, panderess to the greatest lords of the realm, Madame 
Duvergier, having nothing and no one under the sun to fear, created new fashions,
made new discoveries, specialized in things which none of her calling had ever 
attempted anywhere, things which would make tremble both Nature and 
mankind.

For six weeks in a row, that adroit rascal sold my maidenhead to above fifty 
buyers and, every evening, employing a pomade in many respects similar to 
Madame Delbène’s, she scrupulously effaced the ravages wrought pitilessly all day
long by the intemperance of those to whom her greed delivered me up. As those 
devirginizers without exception had a heavy hand and usually a beef’s wit to 
match a beef’s pizzle, I’ll spare you a good many tedious particulars, pausing only
to give you an account of the Due de Stern, whose manic eccentricity I consider 
downright unusual.

The simplest apparel conformed best with the requirements of this libertine’s 
lubricity; I went to him got up as a little street girl. After traversing numerous 
sumptuous apartments I reached a mirrored room where the Due was waiting for 
me, his manservant at his side, a tall young man of eighteen he was, handsome 
as they come and with the most interesting face. Thoroughly coached in the role I
was expected to play, I was taken aback by none of the questions the lewd dog 
posed me. I stood before him; he was seated on a sofa and was frigging his 
valet’s prick. The Due spoke to me in this wise:

“Is it true,” he demanded, “that you are in the most direly necessitous 
circumstances, and that in coming here your sole purpose and one hope is to earn
means indispensable simply to keep body and soul together?”

“Aye, Sire, and the truth is that for three days neither I nor my mother has 
tasted bread.”

“Ho! Excellent then!” said the Due, taking his man’s hand to be himself frigged.
“The thing is of importance, I’m hugely pleased that matters stand thus with you. 
And ’tis your mother who sells you?”

“Yes, alas!”

“Splendid! Eh … and have you any sisters?”

“One, my Lord.”

“And how is it she’s not been sent to me?”

“Sire, she has left home, misery made her flee. We don’t know what has 
become of her.”

“Eh, fuck my eyes! It’s got to be found, that! Where do you suppose she could 
be? What’s her age?”

“Thirteen.”

“Thirteen! Appalling, appalling—knowing my tastes as by God they must by 
now, why do they keep this creature back from me?”

“But no one knows where she is, Sire.”

“Thirteen! Appalling. Well, I’ll locate her, I’ll find her somehow. Lubin, hey 
there, off with her clothes, let’s to the verification.”

And while this order is being carried out, the Due, continuing the work begun 
by his Ganymede, sets complacently to rattling at a dark, flabby little device, so 
small it’s barely to be seen. As soon as I am naked, Lubin examines me with 
extremest diligence and then declares to his master that everything is in the very 
best condition.

“Show me the other side,” the Due says.

And Lubin, bending me down over a couch, spreads my thighs and, whether or 
not convinced himself of the inexecution of any previous assault, is, in view of the
admirable repair it is in, able to assure the Due that no evidence warrants belief 
that anything grave has befallen me in this sector hitherto.

“And in the other?” murmurs Stern, drawing my buttocks apart and testing my 
asshole with a finger.

“No, my Lord, surely not.”

“’Tis well,” says the lecherous nobleman, taking me in his arms and sitting me 
upon one of his thighs; “but you see, my child, don’t you, that I’m incapable of 
doing the job myself? Touch that prick … soft, eh? as limp as a rag, no? If you 
were Venus herself you’d not manage to get it any harder. And now kindly 
consider this awful article of weaponry,” he went on, having me take hold of his 
manservant’s resplendent prick. “This matchless member here will depucelate you
much better than mine ever could. You do agree, do you not? Then take your 
stance, I’ll be your pimp. Unable to do anyone any harm myself, I adore having 
others do it in my stead. The idea comforts me—”

“Oh, Sire!” said I, terrified by the inordinate proportions of the prick flourished 
at me. “Oh, Sire, this monster will make a shambles of me, I’ll not be able to 
endure its attacks!”

I sought to break away, to dodge, to protect myself; but the Due de Stern 
would have none of it.

“Come, come, no shilly-shallying there, what I like is compliance in little girls, 
they who lack it in their conduct with me don’t remain long in my good graces…. 
Come nearer…. Before anything else I’d like to have you kiss my Lubin’s ass.”

And presenting it to me:

“A handsome ass, no? Kiss it, then.”

I obey.

“And a kiss for that goad he’s got upstanding on this other side? Kiss his prick.”

Again I obey.

“Now, make ready … lie thus….”

He holds me, his valet moves up and into the operation puts such address and 
vigor that, with three mighty heaves, he sinks his massive engine to the bottom 
of my womb. A terrible scream bursts from my throat; the Due, who has me 
pinioned and who is frigging my asshole throughout it all, is feeding avidly upon 
my sighs and tears; the muscular Lubin, master of me, no longer requires his own
master’s assistance, so that now the Due is able to go round behind my lover and 
to embugger him while he depucelates me. Those blows his patron is delivering to
his posterior soon, I notice, contribute to augmenting the force of the blows the 
valet is delivering to me; I was about to collapse beneath the sheer weight of 
their coordinated attacks when Lubin’s discharge saved the day for me.

“Godsfuck!” cried the Due who, himself, was not yet done, “you’re driving too 
fast today, Lubin, what ails you? Why must fucking a cunt make you lose your 
head every time?”

And this event having disordered the plan of the Due’s attacks, he fetched out 
that mischievous little prick which, furious at having been displaced, seemed only 
to be looking for an altar whereupon to vent its sordid rage.

“Hither, young girl,” commanded the Due, depositing his mean tool in my 
hands, “and you, Lubin, lay yourself belly down upon that sofa. You, you silly little
goose,” he said to me, “plant this angry machine in the aperture whence it’s just 
been ejected, then, camp yourself behind me while I’m at work, you’ll facilitate 
the task by inserting two or three fingers in my bum.”

Everything the lecher desires is promptly done; the operation terminates, and 
the whimsical libertine pays thirty louis for the hire of parts the mint condition of 
which he never once had any doubt of.

Back in the house, Fatima, that one of my companions I was fondest of, 
sixteen years old and lovely as the day, laughed merrily when I related my 
adventure. She had had the same one but, more fortunate than I, had profited 
from it to the tune of the fifty louis that had been in the purse she’d stolen from 
off the mantel.

“What?” I said, “you permit yourself such things?”

“Regularly or, rather, every chance I get, my dear,” was Fatima’s reply, “and 
altogether without hesitation or scruple, believe me. Those rascals are rich: and 
to whom if not to us is their money destined? and why should we be so stupid as 
not to take it whenever we can? Are you still so lost in the woods of ignorance 
that you suspect there is anything wrong in theft?”

“I do definitely think it is very wrong.”

“Why, that’s an odd notion, it is,” Fatima assured me, “and a very misplaced 
one, granted your trade. It shan’t take me long to disabuse you. Tomorrow I dine 
with my lover in the country, I’ll ask Madame Duvergier’s leave to include you in 
the party and you’ll hear Dorval’s reasoned arguments on the subject.”

“Bitch!” I exclaimed. “You’re going to corrupt what little in me is not yet 
attainted—oh, as things now are I am only too well disposed toward all those 
horrors…. Very well, ’tis agreed. Never fear, either, you’ll have an excellent pupil 
in me. But will Duvergier let me go?”

“Nor have you anything to fear,” said Fatima. “Leave it all to me.”

Early the next morning there comes a carriage to fetch us, we drive to La 
Villette. The house we enter is secluded, but its appearance is not unseemly. A 
valet greets us and, having shown us into a very well-furnished apartment, he 
retires and dismisses our carriage; ’twas then Fatima began to make things clear.

“Do you know where we are?” she asked, smiling.

“I have no idea.”

“In the house of an exceedingly unusual man,” my companion affirmed. “I lied 
when I told you that he’s my lover; I’ve been here often—but on business. Of it, 
and of what I earn, Duvergier knows nothing; my pay is thus my own. But the 
work is not without its risky elements—”

“What do you mean?” I demanded. “You’ve aroused my … curiosity.”

“This,” said Fatima, “is the house of one of the most accomplished thieves in all
Paris; the gentleman steals for his living—and from stealing derives his keenest 
pleasures. He’ll explain it all to you, he’ll outline his philosophy for your 
benefit—he’ll even convert you to practicing what he preaches. Completely 
indifferent to women before he’s done his day’s work, it’s only after he’s robbed 
that he comes alive, only then are his lusts aroused hotly; and as he would have 
the image of his favorite passion reflected in everything that accompanies it, it is 
only when once we’ve stolen that he’ll accept our favors—and, furthermore, he’ll 
try to steal them from us; it’s a subtle game, you’ll understand it perfectly, 
however. It will seem as if we’ve gained nothing for our trouble … mind you, I’ve 
already been paid for this in advance. Here’s the proof: ten louis. They’re for you.
I’ve kept an equivalent sum for myself.”

“And Duvergier?”

“But I told you: she’s not in the game. I swindle our beloved mother—am I so 
wrong to do so?”

“No, I dare say you’re not,” I agreed. “Whatever we earn here belongs to us, 
none of that damnable dividing the booty, which, God knows, drives me wild. But 
go on, at least explain the thing to me. Whom are we going to rob, and how?”

“Listen,” my companion said. “Spies, and he has a swarm of them posted 
everywhere throughout Paris, inform him of the arrival of foreigners and 
simpletons who land by the hundre

d in the city; he makes their acquaintance, he gives them dinners with women 
of our category who filch their purses while satisfying their needs; all the loot is 
turned over to him and, whatever be the nature of the article stolen, the women 
obtain a fourth part of its value, this being in addition to anything they have been 
paid by the clients.”

“But,” said I, “are there not dangers entailed? How is it the fellow hasn’t been 
arrested?”

“He would have been ages ago had he not taken measures to prevent any such
inconvenience. Be sure of it, no danger threatens him.”

“And his house?”

“Houses, rather. He has thirty of them. We’re in this one today; he sets foot in 
it once every six months, perhaps only once a year. Act your part intelligently; 
two or three foreigners are to come to dinner; after the meal’s over, we’ll 
entertain these gentlemen in separate chambers. Be nimble, get the purse of 
yours, I promise you that with mine I’ll not miss the mark. Hidden, Dorval will be 
watching us. The trick done, the dupes will be put to sleep by a potion slipped into
their drink; we’ll spend the remainder of the evening with the master of the house
who, shortly after we’ve left, will leave also, go somewhere else and repeat the 
same infamies with other women. And our precious idiots, when tomorrow they 
wake up, they’ll be only too happy to have got away with whole skins.”

“Since we’ve been paid in advance,” I asked Fatima, “why need we go through 
with the bargain?”

“It would be a miscalculation not to: he’d be finished with us; whereas, if we 
serve him well, he’s likely to have us in twelve or fifteen times a year. And, what’s
more, following your suggestion, wouldn’t we deprive ourselves of all we may 
earn from robbing these cretins?”

“Right you are. For, had you omitted the first part of your argument, I’d 
perhaps have reminded you that we can do our own stealing without him, and 
that it’s not to our advantage to surrender three-quarters of what we filch.”

“Tend though I still do to abide by mine, I very much admire your way of 
reasoning which,” said Fatima, “demonstrates that you are equipped with those 
very dispositions required for success in our calling.”

Scarcely had we ended our discussion than Dorval entered. He was a man of 
forty years, his face was extremely fair to look upon, his air and demeanor gave 
me the impression of a clever and amiable person; above all, he was endowed 
with the gift of seductiveness, of such great importance in a profession like his.

“Fatima,” speaking to my companion, casting an engaging smile at me, “I 
suppose you’ve instructed this pretty young thing in the nature of our combined 
undertaking? Then I have but to tell you that we’re soon going to receive two 
elderly Germans, our guests for tonight. They’ve been a month in Paris and are 
burning to meet some attractive girls. One of the two has on him diamonds worth 
some twenty thousand crowns; Fatima, I recommend him to you. The other 
seems to wish to buy a property in this village. I’ve assured him I can procure 
him a fine one at a very low price provided he’s willing to pay cash; he ought 
therefore to have over forty thousand francs in his pocket, whether in specie or in
letters of credit; Juliette, I leave him to you. Show an aptitude for the task and I’ll
seek your collaboration in the future, and often.”

“What! For shame, Sir,” I said, “can such horrors arouse you sensually?”

“Charming girl,” replied Dorval, “I see that you know nothing of this matter: of,
I mean to say, the shock imparted by criminal impressions to the nervous system.
You require enlightenment upon these lubricious phenomena, we’ll supply it in 
due time; until then we’ve other things to occupy us. Let’s pass into this room, 
our Germans are about to appear, kindly remember to employ all your skill at 
seducing them, at … undertaking them; that’s all I ask of you, upon that 
everything shall depend.”

We entered. Scheffner, the swain who was to be mine, was an authentic baron 
of forty-five, authentically ugly, authentically be-pimpled, and authentically stupid 
as, insofar as I can determine, every authentic German is if one excepts the 
illustrious Gessner. The goose my friend was to pluck was called Conrad; he was 
indeed covered with diamonds; his mind, his figure, his face, and his age 
rendered him almost identical to his compatriot, and his sheer witlessness, as 
imposing as Scheffner’s, guaranteed Fatima a success no less easy nor any less 
complete than, by every indication, mine was to be.

The conversation, general at the outset, and dull enough, swiftly became very 
particular. Fatima was not only pretty, she was amusing; she soon had poor 
Conrad befuddled and spellbound; while my air of shy innocence soon brought 
Scheffner squarely under my thumb. Dinner came on. Dorval saw to it that his 
guests’ glasses were filled and often replenished with the most delicious wines, 
and we were scarcely midway through dessert when both our Teutonic friends 
were giving plain evidence of an extreme desire to converse with us in private.

Dorval, wishing to oversee each of these operations, therefore did not wish 
them to transpire simultaneously; declaring that there was but one boudoir, as 
best he could he calmed Conrad, chafing dreadfully at the bit, and had me lead 
Scheffner away and into action. His enthusiasm was unbounded, that good 
German had an insatiable desire for caresses. It was warm in the boudoir, I 
invited him to remove his clothes, I removed mine in order to inflame him 
further; and placing his discarded garments within reach of my right hand, while 
the dear Baron fucked me, while, the better to beguile him, I amorously hugged 
his head to my breast, concentrating rather more upon my project than upon his 
pleasures, I expertly rifled all his pockets, one after another, A thin little purse 
seeming to contain all the money he had upon his person, I concluded that the 
treasure was cached in his paper case and, adroitly snatching it out of the 
right-hand pocket of his coat, I slipped it under the mattress of the bed we were 
toiling on.

Having attended to the crucial part of the affair and finding the rest little to my
taste, being under no further obligation to pamper the great stinking lout 
wallowing on top of me, I ring; a woman appears, helps the German dignitary 
readjust himself and gives him a properly dosed glass of liqueur; he quaffs it off, 
and she guides him to a bedchamber where he falls straight into a profound sleep 
that had him still snoring eight hours later.

A moment after he’s gone, Dorval enters.

“You are a wonder, my angel,” he cries, embracing me, “a wonder, a delight! I 
missed not a thing. Oh, you maneuvered him artfully! And, believe me, I 
appreciate such performances. Look here,” he goes on, showing me a prick hard 
as a bar of iron, “if I am in such a state ’tis owing to your skill.”

And as he leaped onto the bed with me, I discovered that this libertine’s 
idiosyncrasy was, with his mouth, to pilfer the fuck lately shot into my cunt. He 
pumped it so cleverly, so deliciously ran a swift and active tongue along its outer 
edges, darted the instrument inside, all the way inside my womb, so well did he 
proceed that I flooded him myself—thanks a thousand times more, it may be, to 
the unusual deed I had just accomplished and to the character of the man who 
had got me to commit it than to the pleasure I was receiving from him; for, to 
whatever degree he may have affected me physically, I cannot deny that, morally,
I was much more deeply stirred by the gratuitous horror Fatima’s and Dorval’s 
enticements were bringing me to undertake with such delicious results.

Dorval did not discharge a drop. I turned the purse and the paper case over to 
him; he took them both, didn’t pause to examine either, and I ceded my place to 
Fatima. Dorval led me away with him, and while, peering through a spy-hole, he 
observed the technique my companion was employing to achieve the same 
object, the libertine had me frig him, and frigged me in return. Now and then he’d
thrust his tongue into my very gullet, he looked to be in seventh heaven. 
Marvelous effects wrought by the conjuncture of crime and lust, oh, the energy 
they impart to the passions’ delirium! Fatima’s nimble proceedings finally 
determine Dorval’s ejaculation; thrusting hard against me, he encunts me to the 
hilt and washes me with the unequivocal testimonies of the ecstasy he has just 
succumbed to.

A vigorous man, Dorval returns to my companion. I clap my eye to the 
spy-hole, I see every last detail: as he did with me, so now he bends down 
between Fatima’s thighs and presently drains her cunt of Conrad’s fuck as 
previously he relieved me of Scheffner’s; next, he accepts the booty and, the two 
good Germans being tucked away for the night, we move into an exquisite little 
cabinet where Dorval, after having spat a second charge of seed into Fatima’s 
cunt while tonguing mine, delivers the apology for his originalities of taste that is 
here very exactly reproduced:

“Kind friends, by a single feature alone were men distinguished from one 
another when, long ago, society was in its infancy: the essential point was brute 
strength. Nature gave them all space wherein to dwell, and it was upon this 
physical force, distributed to them with less impartiality, that was to depend the 
manner in which they were to share the world. Was this sharing to be equal, 
could it possibly be, what with the fact that naked force was to decide the matter?
In the beginning, then, was theft; theft, I say, was the basis, the starting point; 
for the inequality of this sharing necessarily supposes a wrong done the weak by 
the strong, and there at once we have this wrong, that is to say, theft, 
established, authorized by Nature since she gives man that which must 
necessarily lead him thereto. On the other hand, the weak revenge themselves, 
they put their wits to work, their cunning to use, in order to recover possession of
what force has wrested from them, and there you have deceit, theft’s sister and 
likewise daughter to Nature. Were theft offensive to Nature, she would have 
accorded equal physical and mental capacities to all men; all men existing on an 
equal footing, Nature would thus have ensured that to every man a fair share in 
the things of this world would fall and would thus have prevented anybody from 
enriching himself to the detriment of his neighbor. Under these conditions, theft 
would be impossible. But when from the hands of the Nature who creates him 
man receives a conformation which necessitates both the inequality of what is 
allotted to each and hence theft, how then may one persist in ignorance and 
suppose that Nature is loath to have us steal? To the contrary, she so plainly 
indicates that to steal is her fundamental commandment that she makes theft the
basis of all animal instinct. Only by constant thefts do animals manage to 
preserve themselves, only by countless usurpations do they maintain their 
existences. And how ever has man—himself, after all, but an animal—been able to
delude himself into thinking that what Nature implanted in the very soul of 
animals can be a crime in her eyes or for him?

“When the first laws were promulgated, when the weak individual agreed to 
surrender part of his independence to ensure the rest of it, the maintenance of his
goods was incontestably the first thing he desired, and so to enjoy in peace 
whatever little he had, he made its protection the prime object of the regulations 
he wanted formulated. The powerful individual assented to these laws which he 
knew very well he would never obey. And so the laws were made. It was decreed 
that every man would possess his heritage, undisturbed and happy; and that 
whosoever were to trouble him in this possession of what was his would be 
chastised. But in this there was nothing natural, nothing dictated by Nature, 
nothing of what she inspires, it was all very brazenly man-made, by men 
henceforth divided into two classes: those who yielded up a quarter of the loaf in 
order to be able, undisturbed, to eat and digest what was left; and those who, 
eagerly taking the portion proffered to them and seeing that they’d get the rest of
the bread whenever they pleased, agreed to the scheme, not in order to prevent 
their own class from pillaging the weak, but to prevent the weak from despoiling 
one another—so that they, the powerful, could despoil the weak more 
conveniently. Thus, theft, instituted by Nature, was not at all banished from the 
face of the earth; but it came to exist in other forms: stealing was performed 
juridically. The magistrates stole by having themselves feed for doing the justice 
they ought to render free of charge. The priest stole by taking payment for 
serving as intermediary between God and man. The merchant stole by selling his 
sack of potatoes at a price one-third above the intrinsic value a sack of potatoes 
really has. Sovereigns stole by imposing arbitrary tithes, dues, taxes, levies upon 
their subjects. All these plunderings were permitted, they were all authorized in 
the precious name of right, and where are we today? we observe men take legal 
action against what? Against the most natural right of all, that is, against the 
simple right of every man who, lacking money, demands it at gunpoint of those 
whom he suspects to be wealthier than he. This fellow they call a criminal, and 
never once do they remember that the first thieves, of whom and to whom no 
one breathed a word of reproach, against whom no one protested, were uniquely 
responsible for the crimes of the second—were and are uniquely responsible for 
the obligation of this second man to find himself a weapon and by force to 
recuperate what the first usurper tore so unceremoniously away from him. For, if 
all these thieveries can be perfectly well understood as usurpations which 
necessitated the indigence of subordinate beings, these same inferiors’ 
subsequent thefts, rendered inevitable by the earlier thefts of their betters, can 
scarcely be viewed as crimes; but rather as secondary effects ineluctably 
precipitated by primary causes; and the moment you assent to that primary 
cause, you forego the possibility of lawfully punishing its effects. To be sure, you 
may punish them, but only unjustly. If you elbow a servant against a costly vase, 
if, as he slips and falls, he breaks the vase, you have no right to penalize him for 
clumsiness; instead, you must direct your wrath upon the cause that drove you to
mistreat him. When that wretched peasant, reduced to beggardom by the 
immense weight of the taxes you load on him,(12) abandons his plow, gets hold 
of a pistol, and goes off to waylay you along the highway, you may punish him, 
yes, but if you do, I say that you commit a very great infamy; for he’s not at 
fault, he’s the valet your roughness made upset the vase: don’t push him about 
and he’ll not break anything; and if you do push him, don’t be surprised when 
things get broken. Thus when he sets out to rob you this poor fellow commits no 
crime; he’s merely striving to recover some of the substance you and others like 
you had previously snatched away from him. He is doing nothing that isn’t 
completely natural, he is trying to redress the balance which, in the moral as well 
as the physical realm, is Nature’s highest law: the peasant become desperado is 
perfectly right and what he does, perfectly just. But that isn’t quite what I was 
aiming to prove; however, proofs aren’t needed, there’s no need of arguments to 
demonstrate that the weak individual is doing nothing more nor less than what he
must when he attempts his utmost to recover things which were once torn from 
his grasp. What I should like to convince you of is that neither does the powerful 
individual commit a crime or an injustice when he strives to despoil the weak. I 
should like to convince you of that, for it is my own case, and I indulge in this act 
every day. Well, this demonstration is easy enough: theft perpetrated by a strong 
man is assuredly a better and more valid act, within the terms and from the 
standpoint of Nature, than the weak man’s theft; for Nature prescribes no 
reprisals which the weak may take upon the strong; these reprisals may exist in 
the moral form, but certainly not in the physical, since, to take physical reprisals 
the weak man must make use of physical forces he does not possess, he must 
adopt a character that has not been given him, in short, he must in some sort fly 
in the face of Nature. That sage mother’s laws unambiguously stipulate that the 
mighty harm the feeble, since for what other purpose have their powers been 
invested in the mighty? The strong individual, unlike the weak, never dons masks,
he at all times acts true to his own character, his character is the one he has 
received from Nature, and whatever he does is an honest and direct expression 
thereof and in the highest sense and degree natural: his oppression, his violence, 
his cruelties, his tyrannies, his injustices, all these outbursts are of the character 
instilled in him by the power that gave him life on earth; all these are then 
simple, straightforward, and therefore pure emanations of what he is, as pure as 
the hand that engraved the necessity for them in him; and when he exercises all 
his rights to oppress the weak, to strip and ruin the weak, he therefore does the 
most natural thing in the world. Had our common dam desired this equality that 
the weak long to establish, had she truly desired that property be equally shared, 
why would she have divided the mighty and the weak into two classes? By so 
differentiating men has she not made her intention amply clear, to wit, that the 
discrepancies between physical faculties have their counterpart in material 
discrepancies? Does she not make manifest her design, that to the lion goes the 
whole share and to the mouse nothing; and this precisely in order to achieve the 
equilibrium that is the single basis to her whole system? For, in order that 
equilibrium reign in the natural scheme, it must not be men who install it there; 
Nature’s equilibrium is disturbance unto men: what to us seems to unsettle the 
grand balance of things is precisely what, in Nature’s view, establishes it, and the 
reason therefor is as follows: this that we take to be lack of equilibrium results in 
the crimes through which order is restored in the universal economy. The mighty 
make away with everything—that, men agree, is unbalance. The weak react and 
pillage the strong—there, redressing the scales you have the crimes which are 
necessary to Nature, So let us never have qualms over what we will be able to 
snatch from the weak, for it isn’t we who in acting thus qualify our gesture as 
criminal; it is the weak man’s reaction or vengeance which so characterizes it: 
robbing the poor, despoiling the orphan, fleecing the widow of her inheritance, 
man does no more than make rightful use of the rights Nature has given him. 
Crime? Ha! The only crime would consist in not exploiting these rights: the 
indigent man, placed by Nature within the range of our depradations, is so much 
food for the vulture Nature protects. If the powerful man looks to be causing 
some disturbance when he robs those who lie at his feet, the prostrate restore 
order by arising to steal from their superiors; great and small, they all serve 
Nature.

“Tracing the right of property back to its source, one infallibly arrives at 
usurpation. However, theft is only punished because it violates the right of 
property; but this right is itself nothing in origin but theft; thus, the law punishes 
the thief for attacking thieves, punishes the weak for attempting to recover what 
has been stolen from him, punishes the strong for wishing either to establish or to
augment his wealth through exercising the talents and prerogatives he has 
received from Nature. What a shocking series of inane illogicalities! So long as 
there shall be no legitimately established title to property (and never will there be
any such thing), it will remain very difficult to prove that theft is crime, for the 
loss theft causes here is restitution there; and Nature being no more concerned 
for what happens on the one side than on the other, it is perfectly impossible for 
anyone in his right mind to affirm that the favoring of either side to the 
disadvantage of the other can constitute an infraction of her laws.

“And so the weaker party is quite correct when, seeking to recover his usurped
goods, he deliberately attacks the stronger party and, if all goes well, forces him 
to relinquish them; the only wrong he can commit is in betraying the character, 
that of weakness, with which Nature has stamped him: she created him to be a 
slave and poor, he declines to submit to slavery and poverty, there’s his fault; and
the stronger party, without that same fault because he remains true to his 
character and acts only in strait accordance therewith, is also and equally right 
when he seeks to rob the weak and to enjoy himself at their expense. And now let
each of them pause a moment and inspect his own heart. In deciding to assault 
the strong, the weak individual, whatever may be the rights justifying his 
decision, will be subject to mild doubts and waverings; and this hesitation to 
proceed and gain satisfaction comes from the fact he is just about to overstep the
laws of Nature by assuming a character which is not native to him. The strong 
individual, on the contrary, when he despoils the weak, when, that is to say, he 
enters actively into the enjoyment of the rights Nature has conferred upon him, 
by exercising them to the full, reaps pleasure in proportion to the greater or 
lesser extent he gives to the realization of his potentialities. The more atrocious 
the hurt he inflicts upon the helpless, the greater shall be the voluptuous 
vibrations in him; injustice is his delectation, he glories in the tears his heavy 
hand wrings from the unlucky; the more he persecutes him, the happier the 
despot feels, for it is now that he makes the greatest use of the gifts Nature has 
bestowed upon him; putting these gifts to use is a veritable need, and satisfying 
that need an incisive pleasure. Moreover, this necessary pleasure-taking, which is 
born of the comparison made by the happy man between his lot and the unhappy 
man’s, this truly delicious sensation is never more deeply registered in the 
fortunate man than when the distress he produces is complete. The more he 
crushes his woe-ridden prey, the more extreme he renders the contrast and the 
more rewarding the comparison; and the more, consequently, he adds fuel to the 
fire of his lust. Thus, from hammering the weak he gleans two exceedingly keen 
pleasures: the augmentation of his material substance and resources and the 
moral enjoyment of the comparisons which he renders all the more voluptuous 
the more suffering he inflicts upon the miserable. So let him pillage, let him burn 
and ravage and wreck; to this wretch he fastens on let him leave nothing but the 
breath which will prolong a life whose continuation is necessary to the oppressor if
he is to be able to go on making the comparison; let him do as he likes, he’ll do 
nothing that isn’t natural and sanctioned by Nature, whatever he invents will be 
nought but the issue of the active powers entrusted to him, the more he puts his 
potentialities into play, the more pleasure he’ll have; the better the use to which 
he puts his faculties, to Nature the better servant will he be.

“Allow me, dear girls,” Dorval pursued, “to cite a few precedents in support of 
my theses; the two of you have benefited from the sort of education that will 
enable you to understand the examples I am about to set forth.

“Theft is held in such lofty esteem in Abyssinia that the chief of a robber band 
purchases a license and the right to steal in peace.

“This same act is commendable among the Koriacks; it is the sole means to 
winning honor and a name in that nation.

“Among the Tohoukichi, a girl cannot marry until she has shown her mettle in 
this profession.

“With the Mingrelians, theft is a mark of skill and sign of courage; there, a man
will publicly boast of his outstanding feats in this sphere.

“Our modern voyagers have found it flourishing in Tahiti.

“In Sicily, it is an honorable calling, that of brigand.

“Under the feudal regime, France was scarcely more than one vast den of 
thieves; since, only forms have changed, the effects remain the same. It’s no 
longer the great vassals who steal, they’re the ones who’re plundered; and, in 
their rights, the nobility have become the slaves of the kings who forced them to 
their knees.(12a)

“The celebrated highwayman Sir Edwin Cameron for a long time held Cromwell
at bay.

“The well-remembered MacGregor made a science of stealing; he used to send
his creatures about the countryside, he’d extort the rents owed by the farmers 
and give them receipts in the landowners’ names.

“You may set your minds at rest, there is no conceivable manner of 
appropriating to oneself the belongings of others that is not wholly legitimate. 
Craft, cunning, force—so many astute means for attaining a valid end; the weak 
individual’s objective is to see to the more equitable distribution of what is worth 
having; that of the powerful is to get, to have, to accumulate, to engross, no 
matter how, at no matter whose expense. When the law of Nature requires an 
upheaval, does Nature fret over what will be undone in its course? All men’s 
actions are only the result of Nature’s laws; this should be of comfort to man, this
should dissuade him from trembling before any deed—this should engage him 
calmly to perpetrate every deed, whatever its kind or magnitude. Nothing occurs 
accidentally; everything in this world is of necessity; well, necessity excuses no 
matter what; and as soon as an action demonstrates itself necessary it can no 
more be considered infamous.

“A son of the remarkable Cameron, whom I mentioned a moment ago, 
perfected the system of theft: the leader’s orders were blindly obeyed by his men,
every stolen article was stored in a general depot, the swag was ulteriorly split 
with impeccable fairness.

“In olden days, great exploits of thievery were the stuff of legendry and 
considered heroic; honored was he who excelled in this domain.

“Two famous thieves took the Pretender under their protection; they went 
about stealing to maintain him.

“When an Illinois commits a theft, conforming to tradition he presents his 
judge with half of what he has stolen, the judge acquits him therewith, and no 
Illinois judge would ever dream of proceeding otherwise.

“Lands there are where theft is punished by lex talionis: if caught, the thief’s 
robbed, then he’s set free. That law seems very mild to you? So it may appear as 
applied in this case; there are others, however, where its effects are atrocious, 
and I shall have you notice its iniquity. This little demonstration won’t be at all 
irrelevant. But, before continuing our dissertation, I’ll make one or two very 
simple comments upon this law of the talion.

“We suppose that Peter insults and mistreats Paul; next, in the court where tit 
for tat holds sway, Peter is made to suffer everything he has inflicted upon Paul. 
This is crying injustice; for when Peter perpetrated against Paul the injury in 
question, he had motives which, consonant with all the laws of natural equity, in 
considerable measure lessened the heinous quality of his offense; but when to 
punish him you treat him in the same way he treated Paul, you have not the same
motive that inspired Peter, yet you wrong him just as deeply. Thus, there is a very
significant difference between him and you: he committed an atrocity that was 
based upon motives, and you commit the same atrocity with none at all. What I 
have just said ought to illustrate the extreme injustice of a law which is so greatly
admired by fools.(13)

“There was a time when the German magnates counted among their rights 
that of highway robbery. This right derives from the earliest and most 
fundamental institutions in societies, where the free man or vagabond got his 
livelihood in the manner of the beasts of the forests and the birds of the air: by 
wresting food from whatever convenient or possible source; in those times, he 
was a child and student of Nature, today he is the slave of ludicrous prejudices, 
abominable laws, and idiotic religions. All the good things of this world, cries the 
weak individual, were equally distributed over the surface of the globe. Very well. 
But, by creating weak and strong, Nature with sufficient clarity announced that 
she intended these good things to go to the strong alone, and that the weak were
to be deprived of all enjoyment of them save that pittance which would befall 
them as so many crumbs from the table around which sit the mighty, despotic, 
and capricious. Nature bade the latter enrich themselves by stealing from the 
weak and the weak take redress by stealing from the rich; so spoke she unto men
in the same language wherein she advised wild birds to steal the seed from out of
the ploughed furrow, the wolf to devour the lamb, the spider to spin webs to 
snare flies. All, all is theft, all is unceasing and rigorous competition in Nature; the
desire to make off with the substance of others is the foremost—the most 
legitimate—passion Nature has bred into us. These are the basic laws of conduct 
that her hand has writ in our bone and fiber, theft is the underlying instinct in all 
living beings and, without doubt, the most agreeable one.

“Theft was held in honor at Lacedaemon. Lycurgus’ constitution made it 
mandatory; stealing, said that great lawgiver, rendered the Spartans supple, 
quick, bold, and brave; it is still admired in the Philippines.

“The Germans considered it an exercise very suitable to youth; there were 
festivals during which the Romans smiled upon it; the Egyptians included it in 
their educational curricula; every American is much addicted to theft; nothing is 
more widespread in Africa; beyond the Alps it is hardly discouraged.

“Every night, Nero used to quit his palace and go abroad to steal in the streets;
on the morrow, what he had robbed his countrymen of was put on public sale in 
the market place, and the profits went to the Emperor.

“The Président Rieux, son of Samuel Bernard and Boulainvilliers’ father, stole 
through inclination and with our own purposes in view: on the Pont-Neuf, a pistol 
in his hand, he waylaid passers-by and emptied their pockets. Coveting a watch 
he saw on the person of a friend of his father, he, so the story goes, awaited him 
one evening when this friend was leaving Samuel’s house after a supper, and 
robbed him; straightway the friend returns to the brigand’s father, complains, 
identifies the thief; Samuel denies it, says the thing is impossible, swears his boy 
is asleep in his bed; they repair to the son’s bedchamber, Rieux isn’t there. A little
later he comes home; they are sitting waiting for him, he is reproached, accused, 
he confesses this and many other thefts, promises to mend his ways and does: 
subsequently, Rieux becomes a very great magistrate.(14)

“Nothing more readily conceivable than theft as debauch: it occasions the 
indispensable shock upon the nervous system and thence is born the 
inflammation which determines the lubricious mood. Everybody like me—and 
who, like me, quite needlessly, has stolen through libertinage—is acquainted with 
this secret pleasure; one may also experience it by cheating at the gaming table, 
or while playing games of any other sort. A thoroughgoing cheat was the Comte 
de X., he would be subject to the most imperious irritations when gambling; I 
once saw him obliged to fleece a young man to the tune of a hundred louis; the 
Comte, I believe, had an extraordinary desire to fuck the young man and simply 
couldn’t obtain an erection except by stealing. The game of whist starts, the 
Comte steals, up soars his prick, he embuggers the youth—but, as I distinctly 
recall, did not by any means return his money.

“Governed by the same principles and for identical purposes, Argafond steals 
whatever he can lay hands upon; he has established a bawdyhouse where a 
complement of charming creatures despoil all the clients. The insolent rogue does
very nicely.

“But who are greater thieves than our financiers? Let me give you an example;
it comes from the last century:

“There were then in all the realm nine hundred millions in specie; toward the 
close of the reign of Louis XIV, the people were paying 750,000,000 in taxes per 
annum and, of this sum, only 250,000,000 found the way into the royal 
exchequer; which means half a billion went yearly into the pockets of thieves. 
They were thus very great thieves; do you suppose these thefts weighed heavily 
upon their conscience?”

“Well,” was my reply to Dorval, “I am not unimpressed by your catalogue, I 
savor your arguments, but I do declare I am far from being able to understand 
how someone as rich as, for example, you yourself can derive pleasure from 
stealing.”

“Because, when performed, the act has a strong impact upon the nervous 
system, I’ve told you so, and this impact, as it would seem to me my erection 
ought to have demonstrated to you,” Dorval answered, “is extremely voluptuous 
in my case, rich though I happen to be; rich or not, I am constructed like any 
other man. I may add, howbeit, that, in my view, I possess no more than is 
necessary to me, and having what is necessary doesn’t make one rich. What 
does, is having more than is necessary; my thefts cause my already filled cup to 
overflow. No, I repeat, ’tis not through satisfying our primary needs that we 
achieve happiness, ’tis through acquiring and exercising the power to appease our
avid little whimsies, and they tend toward insatiability; he who has only what he 
requires to supply his wants, he cannot be called happy. He is poor.”

The night was advancing, Dorval had further need of us, there were further 
lubricious episodes he wanted to expose us to, the enterprises he had in mind 
called for rest, silence, and calm.

“Throw those Germans into a carriage, will you,” said he to one of his hirelings,
a man who was accustomed to doing what was needed under these 
circumstances, “get them out of here, they’ll not wake up. Strip them and dump 
them naked in some out-of-the-way street. God takes care of his little children.”

“Sir!” I cried, “what wanton cruelty!”

“Do you think so? Never mind. They’ve satisfied me, I never for one instant 
wanted more than that from them; can you tell me what use I have of them now?
So we’ll deliver them into the safekeeping of Providence; that’s what Providence is
there for, after all. If Nature has any use for that pair you may rest assured they’ll
not perish; but if she hasn’t, very likely they shall.”

“But it is you who exposes them to disaster—”

“I? I only cooperate with Nature: I carry things to a certain stage, there I stop,
her puissant arm does the rest. Let them go. Fortunate they may count 
themselves that I do not do still worse; perhaps, indeed, I ought to….”

Dorval’s command was executed without delay; transported to the carriage, 
the two Germans, sound asleep, were removed. Of what happened to them I can 
recount this: that, as we learned afterward, they were deposited in a blind alley 
near a boulevard and, the next morning, taken to the commissary of police, finally
to be released when it was clear to the authorities that neither of the men could 
provide the faintest explanation of the strange adventure that had befallen them.

Once the Germans had been carted off, Dorval gave us exactly one-quarter of 
what we had taken from them; then he left the room. Fatima warned me that yet 
another redoubtable scene of lechery lay ahead; she couldn’t predict just what 
the drama would consist in, but she was sure nothing grave would happen to us. 
Scarcely had she finished whispering those words when a woman appeared in the 
doorway and summoned us to follow her; we did as we were told; after mounting 
some flights of stairs and walking down some corridors in the uppermost part of 
the house, she pushed us into a dark room where, until Dorval arrived, we could 
make out nothing of our surroundings.

It was shortly after that Dorval came in. He was accompanied by two big 
rascals, moustached, of extremely sinister mien; they were bearing candles, their 
light revealed the strange furniture in this room. It was as I heard the door being 
bolted that my gaze fell upon the scaffold at the far end of the room. There stood 
two gibbets; deployed about was all the equipment needed for execution by the 
rope.

Dorval spoke in a brusque tone: “Mesdemoiselles, you are going to receive 
punishment for your crimes. You will undergo it here.” Thereupon, settling himself
in a large armchair, he bids his acolytes remove every stitch of clothing from our 
bodies—“Yes, stockings, shoes, everything.” Our garments are laid in a heap at 
his feet. He rummages through them, takes all the money he finds in our pockets;
then, rolling everything into a bundle, he tosses it out the window.

His face is impassive, his voice phlegmatic. As though to himself, but his eyes 
fixed upon us, he murmurs: “Useless, that stuff. A shroud for each of them. And 
I’ve got the two coffins ready.”

From beneath the scaffold one of Dorval’s agents does indeed drag out two 
coffins. He arranges them side by side.

“Duly aware as both of you are,” Dorval then said, “of having earlier this same 
day, and in this same locality which is my house, wickedly robbed two good 
people of their gems and of their gold, I am nonetheless under obligation to 
represent that truth to you and to inquire of you: Are you or are you not guilty of 
this fell deed?”

“We are guilty, my Lord,” Fatima replied.

I however was speechless. So terrifying were these proceedings that I was 
beginning to lose my wits.

“Since you avow your crime,” Dorval resumed, “further formalities would be to 
no purpose; be that as it may, I must have a full confession. Is it not so, Juliette,”
the traitor continued, addressing me and thus forcing me to speak, “is it not true 
that you are responsible for their death, in the course of the night did you not, 
inhumanly, have them cast naked into the street?”

“Sir!” I stammered, “you yourself—”

Then, checking myself, I said:

“Yes. We are guilty of that crime, too.”

“Well then, I have but to pronounce sentence. You will both hear it upon your 
knees. Kneel, I say. Now approach.”

We knelt, we approached. ’Twas then I spied the effect this horrible scene was 
producing upon that libertine. Obliged to give freedom to a member whose 
swelling proportions could no longer endure confinement in his breeches, he 
opened his fly and, as when one releases a young sapling which one has bent and
tied down to the ground, so now this prick sprang upright and towered aloft.

Dorval set to frigging himself. “You’re going to be hanged … you’re going to be 
choked absolutely to death, the two of you! The whores Rose Fatima and Claudine
Juliette are condemned to die for having villainously, odiously robbed and 
despoiled and then exposed, with clear intent to destroy, two-individuals who 
were guests in the home of Monsieur Dorval: justice in consequence requires that 
the sentence be executed immediately.”

We stood up and, at a signal from one of his myrmidons, first I, then Fatima 
advanced up to him. He was in a lather. We frigged his prick, he swore and 
stormed: his hands roved distractedly over every part of our bodies and with 
curses and threats he mixed jibes.

“How cruel I am,” said he, “to consign such lovely flesh to the dungheap. But 
there’s no hope of reprieve, the sentence has been pronounced, it’s got to be 
carried out; these cunts, so inviting today, will be the abode of maggots 
tomorrow…. Ah, doublefuck the Almighty, what pleasures….”

Then his two lieutenants laid hands on Fatima—and I continued to frig Dorval. 
The poor girl was bound in a trice, the halter was slipped around her neck, but 
everything was so arranged that the victim, after hanging the briefest instant in 
the air, would fall to the floor where a mattress was spread. Then came my turn; I
tremble, fear blinds me—of what they’d done to Fatima I’d seen only enough to 
be terrified, the rest had escaped me, and it was only after my own experience 
that I realized how little danger had been involved in this curious ritual. And so, 
when the two men came for me, overcome with fear, I cast myself at Dorval’s 
feet: my resistance aroused him: he bit my flank with such violence the marks his
teeth left were still there two months later. They dragged me away and several 
seconds afterward I was lying motionless beside Fatima. Dorval comes over to 
where we are, peers at us.

“Sacred bugger-fucking Christ!” he expostulates, “do you mean to say the 
bitches are still alive?”

“Begging your pardon, Sir,” one of his men informs him, “’tis done, they 
breathe no more.”

And it is at this point Dorval’s dark passion reaches its denouement: he leaps 
upon Fatima—who takes care not to stir a muscle—he encunts her with a prick 
gone mad and after several ferocious strokes he springs away and assails 
me—and I too am lying still as death; swearing like one of the damned, he drives 
his member to the hilt in my vagina and his discharge is accompanied by 
symptoms of pleasure more resembling fury than joy.

Was he ashamed? Or was he disgusted? Whichever, we saw no more of Dorval.
As for the valets, they’d vanished the moment their master had bounded upon the
scaffold to belabor us in his frenzy. The same woman who had introduced us into 
this attic chamber now reappeared, released us; she brought us refreshments, 
assured us our ordeal was over but also advised us that nothing of what had been
taken away from us would be given back.

“My instructions are to restore you naked to where you came from,” she 
continued. “You’ll do whatever complaining you wish to Madame Duvergier, she’ll 
look into the matter as she sees fit. So let’s be off, ’tis late, you must be home 
before dawn.”

Angry, I ask to speak to Dorval, I am told I cannot—although the odd fellow 
was in all likelihood surveying us through one of his peepholes. The woman 
repeats that we must make haste; a carriage is there awaiting us, we climb in, 
and a little more than an hour later we enter our matron’s house.

Madame Duvergier was still in bed. Retiring to our rooms, we each found ten 
louis and a complete new costume, in quality far superior to those we’d lost.

“We’ll not say anything. Agreed? For we’ve been paid, our clothing has been 
better than replaced,” Fatima pointed out, “and there would be no advantage to 
having Duvergier know about our outing. I told you, Juliette, these things go on 
behind her back and they’d best stay there. When we’re not obliged to share our 
earnings with her, there’s no need to mention our employment.” Fatima gazed at 
me for a moment. “My dear,” she went on, “you’ve just paid a very cheap price 
for a very great lesson; be easy, the bargain you’ve struck was good. With what 
you’ve learned at Dorval’s hands, provided you don’t forget it, you are now in a 
way to make every one of your adventures yield triple or four times what they’d 
be worth to the uninitiated.”

“I really don’t know whether I’d dare without having someone else along to 
bolster my courage,” I told my companion.

“You’d be a fool to let a single opportunity pass,” Fatima asserted; “bear 
Dorval’s ethics and advice ever in mind; equality, my beloved, equality, that’s my 
one guiding principle, and wherever it’s not been established by chance or fate, 
that’s where it is up to us to create it by our ingenuity.”

Several days later I had an interview with Madame Duvergier. After inspecting 
me, she said:

“It looks to me as though your natural deflowerings are just about complete; 
well, Juliette, you must now start earning your way hindwise, and you’ll have an 
even greater success than you did when we took toll for transit in your frontward 
avenue. The state of affairs, I tell you, requires that we reverse our approach 
henceforth. I trust you’ll not raise any silly objections; in the past I’ve had some 
preposterous little simpletons here who, affirming that it is criminal to give 
oneself thus to men, brought no good repute to my house and considerable harm 
to my commerce. Untutored as you may be, rather than utter infantile nonsense 
which you’ll later blush at having pronounced, pray be still for a moment and 
listen to me.

“I must inform you, my child, that it boils down to the same thing: a woman is 
a woman everywhere, she does as well—and certainly no worse—when she cedes 
her ass as when she opens her cunt to traffic, she has as great a right to take a 
prick in her mouth as to fondle one in her hand, if her thighs clasped together can
be of service to one man, why should she deny her armpits to another? It’s all 
one and the same, my angel; the essential thing is to earn money, how it’s got is 
a matter of indifference.

“There are even those—incurable fools for the most part, the rest are 
clowns—who dare maintain that sodomy is a crime against society because it 
negatively affects the birth rate. This is absolutely false; there will always be more
than enough human beings on earth whatever may be the progress of sodomy. 
But, supposing for an instant that the ranks of the population were to begin to 
thin, would one not have to lay the blame upon Nature? for ’tis from no other 
source that those individuals who incline to this passion have received not only 
the taste and the penchant which draw them into practicing buggery, but also the 
faulty or thwart constitution which renders them ill-adapted to sensual pleasure in
the ordinary manner we women procure it for them. And is it not Nature, once 
again, who, after we have acted for an extended period in accordance with the 
so-called laws of population, finally deprives us of the wherewithal to give men 
any real pleasure? Now, if Nature so operates as simultaneously to make it 
impossible for men to taste legitimate pleasures on the one hand, and on the 
other to constitute women in precisely the opposite fashion to that which would 
be necessary to the continued tasting of even an insipid pleasure, it is amply 
clear, so it seems to me, that the alleged outrages which, oafs would have it, man
commits when he seeks pleasure elsewhere than with women, or with them 
elsewhere than cuntwardly—these fancied outrages, I say, rather than being 
offensive to Nature, can be no other than of that same Nature’s inspiration. To 
offset the privations her primary laws impose upon man, Nature, subsequently, is 
nothing loath to grant him certain facilities, especially since, as may very well be 
the case, she herself is eager, or obliged, to limit the increase of population whose
excessive size can but be to her disadvantage. And this latter idea is all the more 
evident in the fact that Nature has limited the time during which women can bear.
Why these limitations and deadlines, if perpetual increase were so necessary as is
sometimes fancied? and if Nature has set these limits, why shouldn’t she have set
others? She has posed a term to every woman’s fecundity; in man, her wisdom 
would also have inspired varying passions or certain distastes: while some 
members of the community do their duty, others, differently made, must go 
elsewhere to relieve themselves of the seed for which Nature herself has no use. 
Why, without going far afield in search of explanations, we can confine ourselves 
to an immediate, palpable, and conclusive one: the sensation itself; and, without 
further discussion, ’tis there the place where Nature wishes to have her bidding 
done. Well, Juliette, you may rest assured of this,” Duvergier continued, little 
realizing that the person she was speaking to was not without experience in the 
matter, “that it is infinitely more pleasurable to be had in the hinder part than in 
any other; sensual women, once they have made the experiment, either forget 
about or revolt at the thought of cunt-fuckery. Ask around, you’ll find that they all
say the same. Therefore, my child, try the thing for the sake of your pocketbook 
and in the interests of your pleasure; and you may be perfectly sure that men are
willing to pay a very different price to have this eccentricity of theirs flattered 
than for common belly-bumping; if today I have an income totaling thirty 
thousand pounds a year, I can honestly assure you that I owe three-quarters of it 
to the assholes I’ve rented to the general public. Cunts don’t bring a penny 
anymore, my dear girl, they aren’t in fashion these days, people are tired of 
them, you simply cannot sell a cunt to anyone, and I’d give up this business 
tomorrow if I couldn’t find women favorably disposed to rendering this essential 
courtesy.

“Tomorrow morning, dear heart,” the shameless creature concluded, “your 
masculine maidenhead goes to the venerable Archbishop of Lyon, who pays me 
fifty louis apiece for these articles. Look sharp, see to it you offer no resistance to 
the good prelate’s enervated desires, they’ll faint entirely away at the first hint of 
skittishness on your part. It shall be far less to your charms than to a docile 
eagerness to please that you’ll owe your conquest and proofs of an already much 
impaired virility; whereas if the old despot doesn’t find a slave in you, you’ll get 
no more out of him than you’d have from a statue.”

Having been perfectly trained in the role I am to play, on the morrow I arrive 
at nine o’clock at the Abbaye de Saint-Victor, where the holy man lodged when 
stopping in Paris; he was attending me in bed.

He turned toward a very beautiful woman of about thirty and whose function 
there, I guessed, was to act as a kind of administrator during the Archbishop’s 
lubricious frolickings. “Madame Lacroix, will you have that little girl I see there 
step nearer.” He peered at me for a while. “Eh, no, it’s not bad, truly not bad. And
how old is my little cherubim?”

“Fifteen and a half, Monseigneur.”

“Why then, Madame Lacroix, you might undress her. You will remember to be 
careful, omit none of the customary precautions.”

No sooner was I naked than I readily divined the purpose of these precautions.
The devout sectator of Sodom, what with his extreme apprehensiveness lest the 
anterior charms of a woman upset the illusion he was laboring to form, required 
that these attractions be screened so completely from his view that the possibility
of even suspecting their existence be circumvented. And, indeed, Madame Lacroix
swaddled me up so thoroughly that not the least trace of them remained to be 
seen. This done, the accommodating creature led me to Monseigneur’s bedside.

“The ass, Madame, the ass,” said he, “and, I beseech you, nothing but the ass.
Pause for a moment: have you taken every necessary step?”

“I have, Monseigneur, and your Eminence will notice that as I expose to him 
the part he desires to behold, I offer to his libertine homage the prettiest virgin 
ass it were possible to embrace.”

“Yes, yes, upon my soul,” Monseigneur mutters, “’tis rather handsomely 
turned; stand back there, I’m going to caress it a little.”

Lacroix maintaining me at the elevation and in the posture required in order 
that the dear Archbishop be able to kiss my buttocks at leisure, he fondles and 
rubs his face everywhere upon them for the space of a quarter of an hour. You 
may be sure that the caress most favored by people addicted to this taste—the 
caress, I wish to say, consisting in the profound insinuation of the tongue into the 
anus—is one of the central features of the Archbishop’s routine; and his most 
uncompromising aversion for the neighboring aperture is at one point manifested 
when, my cunt lips yawning ever so slightly, by mischance his tongue glides 
between them and, instantly recoiling, he thrusts me away with a look of such 
prodigious disgust and disdain that, had I been his mistress, I’d have fled twenty 
leagues away from his Eminence. This preliminary examination over, Lacroix 
undresses; when she is nude, Monseigneur rises up from his bed.

“Child,” says he, now placing me on the bed and adjusting me in the attitude 
his pleasures necessitate, “I trust that you have received somewhat by way of 
preparatory counsel. Docility and thoughtfulness, there are two qualities we 
cannot forego.”

Gazing at him with innocence’s wide-open eyes and candor, I assured 
Monseigneur that he’d not find me wanting in willingness to do his whole bidding.

“Very well, let us hope so. For the least disobedience will displease me beyond 
measure and, considering my extreme difficulty in getting the task properly 
started, you’ll appreciate how distressed I am apt to become if, showing a lack of 
cooperation, you bring all our efforts to nought. I can say no more to you. 
Madame Lacroix, oil the passage and try to pilot my prick into the channel with 
skill enough, once we’re in there, we’ll attempt to stick fast for a few moments 
before the discharge that will reward us for all this damnable trouble.”

The amiable Lacroix seemed ready to move heaven and earth, so painstaking 
were her attentions. The Archbishop was not overly furnished; my complete 
resignation joined to Lacroix’ knowing maneuvers swiftly crowned the undertaking
with success.

“Ah, there, that would seem to be it,” said the saintly man. “Faith, it’s been 
ages since I’ve had anything like so tight a fuck, oh, indeed! this is a virgin 
asshole I’m in, damn me if it’s not…. Lacroix, here, Lacroix, take your place, for 
everything indicates that my sperm is readying to spill into this celestial stoup.”

That was the signal: Madame Lacroix rings and there arrives a second woman, 
at whom I had time only to glance quickly. Her sleeve is rolled up, in her hand she
grasps a bundle of switches, she falls to belaboring the pontifical behind whilst 
Lacroix, leaping astride me, bends forward and offers her hind quarters to be 
colled and nuzzled by the lewd sodomite. He, rapidly vanquished by this 
combination of libidinous episodes, ejaculates into my anus a copious mead the 
cadence of whose spurts is determined by the stout blows ravaging his backside.

And that is that. Spent, Monseigneur climbs into bed again; his breakfast 
chocolate is ordered brought in; his governess puts her clothes back on, she bids 
me go with the second woman. The latter, she of the sinewy arm, shows me to 
the door, hands me the fifty louis for Duvergier and two more for myself, puts me 
in a cab and instructs the coachman to take me home.

At the house the next day there’s pointed out to me a man of about fifty, very 
pale, with a very somber eye. That countenance augurs nothing good.

Before leading me into the apartment where he has been waiting, Duvergier 
cautions me not to refuse anything this individual may ask of me. “He is one of 
my best patients, and if you disappoint him, my practice will suffer irreparably.”

The man is given to sodomy; after some characteristic preliminaries, he turns 
me over, has me stretch out flat on the bed, and readies to embugger me. His 
hands grope about my buttocks, clutch them fast, spread them, the bugger is 
already in an ecstasy before the sweet little hole—and then it strikes me as very 
odd, indeed, the way he keeps himself out of sight, or at least this way he has of 
concealing his prick. Suddenly alarmed by some premonition, I twist around … 
and what do my eyes behold! Great God, an instrument positively covered with 
pustules … seeping, oozing sores … chancres, etc., abominable and only too 
eloquent symptoms of the venereal malady that is fairly consuming this ugly 
personage.

“Sir!” I cry, “are you mad? Look at the condition you are in! Have you any idea 
what you are about? Do you want to ruin me definitively?”

“What!” says the lecher, muttering through clenched teeth and making as if to 
take me by force, “what’s this! Objections! You’ll do your protesting to the 
mistress of this house, she’ll tell you whether I know what I’m about. Do you 
suppose I’d pay such a price for women if it wasn’t for the pleasure of infecting 
them with my disease? I delight in nothing else; madness indeed! Do you suppose
I wouldn’t get myself cured if I didn’t enjoy this?”

“Oh, I can assure you, Sir, no one told me of this—” and I rushed out of the 
room, found Duvergier and, as you may well imagine, upbraided her very 
energetically. The client overheard our argument, he came to where we were; he 
and Duvergier exchanged glances.

“Calm yourself, Juliette—”

“Ah no, damn me if I’ll be calm, Madame,” said I, furious. “I’m not blind, I’ve 
seen what that gentleman—”

“Come, come now, you’re surely mistaken. Be a good girl, Juliette, and 
return—”

“Never,” said I, “I know what you’re up to. To think! That you were willing to 
sacrifice me—”

“My dear Juliette—”

“Your dear Juliette’s advice to you is to find someone else for the job. Hurry … 
the gentleman’s waiting….”

Duvergier sighed, shrugged her shoulders.

“Sir—” she began.

But he, having sworn to himself he’d ruin me, was greatly reluctant to accept a
substitute; only after long and heated discussion did he cede and agree to poison 
someone else. In the end, however, everything was arranged, a new girl 
appeared, and I withdrew. My replacement was a little novice of thirteen or so, 
they blindfolded her, she suspected nothing, the operation was performed. It was 
a success: a week later she had to be sent to the hospital. Notified, the libertine 
betook himself there to contemplate her sufferings. Such was his keenest delight;
Duvergier assured me that ever since she’d first become acquainted with him he 
had never cared for anything else.

Fifteen or sixteen others, of similar tastes but in good physical health, passed 
through my hands and over my body in the course of a month which I remember 
as one distinguished by some rather unusual episodes; and then came the day 
when I was dispatched to the home of a man, also a sodomite, whose buggeries 
were distinguished by details I simply must not pass over. And you’ll be all the 
more interested in them when I tell you that this individual is our own Noirceuil, 
who’s just left us for a few days. He’ll be back by the time I’ve completed my 
narrative; not that he would be disinclined to listen to such adventures. But he 
already knows mine by heart.

Through an incredible excess of debauchery altogether worthy of the engaging 
individual you all know and with whom I shall perhaps be able to make one or two
of you a little better acquainted, Noirceuil liked to have his wife be witness to his 
libertinage, to have her collaborate in it, and then to subject her to it. I should 
remark that Noirceuil, when we first met, thought I was a maid, and that he 
wished to deal only with girls who were virginal, at least in that sector.

Madame de Noirceuil was a very gracious and gentle woman and she could not 
have been beyond twenty years old. Given at a very tender age to her husband, 
he a man of about forty and of a libertinage which simply knew no limits, I leave 
you to suppose for yourselves what this appealing creature must have had to put 
up with since the first day she became the slave of that roué. Husband and wife 
were in the boudoir when I entered; a moment after my arrival, Noirceuil rang, 
and two lads of seventeen and eighteen came in by another door. They were 
nearly naked.

“My dear, I have been given to understand that you possess the world’s most 
splendid ass,” Noirceuil said to me once the company was assembled. “Madame,” 
he continued, addressing his wife, “do please have the kindness to unveil this 
marvel.”

“Oh, indeed, Monsieur de Noirceuil,” replied that poor little woman, all 
confused and ashamed, “the things you demand of me….”

“They are of an eminent simplicity, Madame; it’s strange, one would suppose 
you’d have become accustomed to them, since you’ve been performing them for 
quite some time now. Your attitude mystifies me. Does not a wife have her 
duties? and do I not allow you the amplest opportunities to fulfill them? Passing 
strange, so I think, that as yet you have not taken a rational approach to the 
matter.”

“Oh, I never shall!”

“So much the worse for you; when one is under unavoidable obligation to do 
some particular thing, a hundred times better to do it with a good grace than turn
it into a daily torture. But that is your own affair. Will you, Madame, promptly 
attend to mine: unclothe this child.”

Out of sympathy for the poor woman, to spare her needless affliction, I was 
about to take off my clothes myself when Noirceuil, interceding, bade me stop 
and, raising a threatening hand to his wife, left her no choice but to obey. While 
his wife proceeded with her task, Noirceuil, the object of his two comrades’ 
affectionate by-play, used both hands to excite them; in return, one youth 
massaged his prick, the other stimulated his asshole. As soon as I am naked, 
Noirceuil has his wife steer my ass toward him: she holds my buttocks for him to 
kiss, and kiss them he does, with surpassing lewdness; next, he has the two lads 
stripped—stripped by Madame de Noirceuil who, once she has collected and 
folded the clothing lying on the floor, takes off her own. Noirceuil, naked also, 
thus finds himself in the center of a group comprised of two attractive women and
a pair of pretty boys. At this stage indifferent to the pricks and cunts which are 
there displayed and very available, he concentrates upon ministering to his 
favorite altar, masculine and feminine buttocks alike receive this effusion of 
wholehearted homage, and I doubt whether behinds were ever more lasciviously 
kissed. The rascal arranged us in many different ways, sometimes placed a boy 
atop a woman so as to create powerful and luxurious contrasts. Sufficiently 
aroused, he finally orders his wife to stretch me belly down upon the boudoir’s 
couch and herself to steady his prick along its course into my entrails; first, 
however, he has her prepare his entry by tonguing my vent. As you know, 
Noirceuil has a prick measuring seven inches around, in length it exceeds eleven; 
’twas hence not without excruciating difficulty I managed to incorporate it: but 
thanks to much determination and the deft assistance furnished by his wife, he 
buries himself up to the height of his balls. Meanwhile, now the prick of one 
acolyte, now that of the other disappeared into his own ass. Then, placing his wife
beside me and in an identical posture, the libertine bade his youthful aides subject
her to the same lubricious exercising he was giving me; one prick lying idle, 
Noirceuil grabbed it and, the while embuggering me, stuffed it into the delicate 
anus of his gentle helpmeet. There was a moment when she strove to resist—but,
reaching his hand forward, the cruel husband brought her immediately to heel.

“Excellent,” says he contentedly once the whole complex operation is under 
way, “what more could I ask? My ass is being fucked, I’m fucking the ass of a 
virgin, I’ve got someone fucking my wife’s. Indeed, unto my pleasure now nothing
wants.”

“Oh, Sir!” groans the libertine’s conscience-stricken lady, “do you then derive it
from my despair?”

“I do, Madame, and in significant measure. You know me to be frank in these 
matters and so you will believe me when I affirm that my enjoyment would be far
less were you any more willing to comply with it.”

“Shameless man!”

“Bless my soul, yes, a faithless, godless, unprincipled, unscrupulous man, that 
is to say, a frightful fellow, I don’t deny it. Say on, say on, sweet nightingale, sing 
thy invectives in my ear; doth she realize how these feminine plaints, as though 
possessing a very magic, steel my prick and speed my discharge? Juliette, hold 
steady there, be firm, squeeze a little: it flows.”

And, fucking, fucked, watching fuck, into the depths of my bowels the 
thrice-happy rascal hurls his thunderbolt. The entire company discharges, the 
knot of convulsing participants unties itself; but Noirceuil, the avid Noirceuil, ever 
the tyrant to his wife, Noirceuil, who, to arouse himself afresh, already feels in 
need of imposing a further vexation, this Noirceuil inquires, “Madame is ready to 
proceed to the next item on the program?”

“Is there then some divine necessity that requires you forever to repeat this 
execrable—”

“A divine necessity, Madame, precisely. My happiness decrees it.”

And the infamous Noirceuil, having his wife lie full length upon the couch, 
summons me, has me straddle her, and deposit in her open mouth the fuck he 
has lately injected into my ass. Obliged to obey, I unloose a generous load and, I 
admit, not without a little tremor of wickedness I gaze down to see virtue thus so 
cruelly humiliated by vice; the woebegone lady gobbles up the soup and had she 
not swallowed every drop away, I dare say her husband might have strangled her.

’Twas from witnessing this outrage that the unkind husband, much inspirited, 
discovered the strength to commit still others. In position once again, Madame de
Noirceuil’s ass was successively sounded by her husband’s prick and by those of 
his gallant young friends. You cannot imagine the speed those three sodomites 
worked with, one leaping to the breach, thrusting, retiring, to be replaced in a 
flash by another and he the next instant by the third, and so was waged the war 
whilst Noirceuil fingered my buttocks. After this, his narrowed eyes trained upon 
his wife’s slightly parted buttocks, Noirceuil embuggered each of the youths. 
While bum-stuffing the first of them, he enjoined the second and me to lay hands 
upon his wife’s buttocks, he to fist one and I the other, and vigorously to knead, 
to worry those richly fleshed half-spheres, and whenever Noirceuil chanced to 
discharge into the one or the other of those boys’ behinds, he’d straightway have 
his fuck decanted into the mouth of his unfortunate wife.

And the tempo of these infamies increased apace; Noirceuil promised two louis
to whoever of us three most successfully teased the victim: the rules of the game 
admitted blows of the fist, kicks, bites, slaps, pinches, indeed, there were hardly 
any rules at all; and the scoundrel, exhorting us to play fiercely, frigged himself 
while observing the contest. There’s no imagining the tricks those lads and I 
invented; we only left off our practical jokes when Madame de Noirceuil lost 
consciousness. Then, approaching Noirceuil, who was all afire, we environed him 
with our asses and rubbed his fuming prick upon the ill-starred lady’s bruised and 
lacerated body. Next, Noirceuil turned me over to his tireless boys: now one of 
them would ass-fuck me while the other tendered me his prick to suck, and now, 
sandwiched between the two of them, I sometimes had both their tools wedged in
my cunt, or, at other times, I simultaneously entrapped one prick in my anus and 
the other in my vulva.

We were in the midst of working these wonders when, I remember, Noirceuil, 
reluctant to see a single one of my orifices vacant, stabbed his member into my 
mouth and there let fly with his final discharge while my cunt and bowels were 
washed by the two little pederasts’ exhalations; the four of us went off all at 
once: great God, never have I been rent by such pleasures.

My looks and my evil little aptitudes had taken Noirceuil’s fancy, he invited me 
to stay to supper with his two young playmates. We ate in charming 
surroundings; the table was served only by Madame de Noirceuil, all unclad, 
whom her husband promised a scene that would outdo the recent one if she failed
to perform suitably her menial chores.

Noirceuil, of course, is a wit. You’ll agree that where it comes to constructing 
rational bases to one’s irrational extravagances, the man has few peers. I’d 
thought to hazard some reproaches for his comportment toward his wife: “Truly,” 
said I, “’tis rare, the injustice you subject that poor creature to….”

“Rare? Why, I’m not so sure. But as for the injustice, you’re quite right,” he 
replied. “What she has to put up with is dreadfully unjust—but only from her point
of view. From mine, I assure you, nothing could be more just, the proof thereof is
that nothing so delights me as what I wreak upon her. There are two sides to 
every passion, Juliette: seen from the side of the victim upon whom pressure is 
brought to bear, the passion appears unjust; whereas, do you know, to him who 
applies the pressure, his passion is the justest thing imaginable. When the 
passions speak, unjust as it may sound to him who is going to have to suffer, their
voice is nonetheless that of Nature; from no one, from nowhere but Nature have 
we received these passions; nothing but Nature’s energy inspires them in us; and 
yet, they make us commit injustices, but these injustices are in Nature necessary;
and Nature’s laws, whose motivations may escape us but whose mechanical 
workings are plainly accessible to the alerted understanding, betray a vicious 
content which is at least the equal of their virtuous content. He amongst us who 
has no innate propensity for virtue, what else is he to do but blindly submit to the
hand of a tyrant, knowing full well that this hand is Nature’s and that he is the 
being she has delegated to do ill in order that the harmonious scheme be 
preserved.”

“But,” I inquired of the black-hearted libertine, “when the delirium in you has 
abated, do you not sense some subtle, some obscure virtuous impulses—which, 
were you to obey them, would without fail incline you in the direction of good?”

“Yes,” Noirceuil admitted, “I do occasionally sense impulses of that sort. The 
storm of passion rages, then subsides, and in the ensuing calm they are 
sometimes engendered, and ’tis a strange thing. However, I think I can account 
for it in this way.

“I pause, I reflect. Is it really virtue that has just clashed with the vice in me? 
and, supposing it is virtue, ought I to yield and do its bidding? To resolve the 
question, and to resolve it impartially, I undertake to put my mind in a state of 
completest possible calm so as to prevent myself from favoring either of the 
contending parties, and then I ask myself: what is virtue? If I find that it has 
some real existence, I will go on to analyze that existence; and if it seems to me 
preferable to vicious existence, there’s a bare chance I’ll adopt it for myself. 
Meditating, I thus observe that by the title of virtue one honors all the various 
manners or modes of being by means of which a given creature, setting his own 
pleasures and interests aside, dedicates himself primarily to furthering the 
happiness of society: whence it results that, to be virtuous, I must renounce 
everything pertaining to my own self and welfare so as from there on to be 
concerned exclusively with the welfare of others; and this I must do in behalf of 
people who most certainly would never do the same for me; but even were they 
to, would that suffice as a reason why I should necessarily have to act like them if
at the same time I discovered that every disposition in my being urged me 
against assuming such a manner or mode of existing? If, for that matter, if you 
call virtue that which is helpful to society, by narrowing the definition one must 
give the same name to that which serves one’s own interests, whence it will come
out that individual virtue is often the very opposite of social virtue, for the 
individual’s interests are nearly always opposed to society’s; thus, negatives 
enshroud the discussion, and virtue, purely arbitrary, ceases to have any positive 
aspect. Returning to the cause of the conflict I sense when I lean toward vice, 
once well convinced that virtue lacks any real existence, I’ll easily discover that it 
is not virtue which is struggling to make itself heard in me, but that this faint 
voice which now and then pipes up for a brief interval is no other than that of 
education and prejudice. This much established, I proceed to compare the 
pleasures vice and virtue procure; I start with virtue, I sample it, savor it 
thoughtfully, thoroughly, critically. How dull, how vapid! how tasteless, how bland!
it leaves me cold, nothing moves me in this, nothing stirs me, virtue makes me 
listless, it bores me; looking more closely at the matter, I perceive that all the 
pleasure has gone to him I have served and, in return, for reward, I have nothing 
but his distant and aloof gratitude. Now, I wonder: is this pleasure? And what a 
difference between this virtuous exercise and the next one of vice! How my 
senses, my nerves are brought alive, how my organs bestir themselves! I have 
just to caress the mere thought of the misdemeanor I am plotting and lo! the 
divine sap starts up and rushes through my veins, I am all afire, fever assails me;
the thought hurls me into ecstasy, a delicious illusion spreads aureate across the 
whole landscape of this world I am about to conquer through a crime; in its 
premeditation I voluptuate, it transports me; all its ramifications come one by one
under my avid scrutiny, I wax drunk upon the spectacle; ’tis a new life surging in 
me, a new soul animates me; my mind is blended in pleasure, identifies with it, 
and if now there is yet breath in me, ’tis for none but the sake of sweet lust I 
live.”

“Monsieur,” I said to this libertine whose discourse, I admit, inflamed me 
extraordinarily and with whom I was moved to quarrel only insofar as, by seeming
unconvinced, I might spur him to say on, “ah, Monsieur, to refuse an existence to 
virtue is, so it seems to me, to hasten with undue dispatch toward the objective 
and perhaps to incur the danger of going astray by paying too scant attention to 
principles, those guideposts which are there to lead us regularly along toward a 
consequential irregularity.”

“Why,” replied Noirceuil, “as you like. We’ll reason more methodically then: 
your remarks announce that you are framed in a way to understand; I much 
delight in conversations with interlocutors of your stripe.

“In all of life’s events,” he went on, “at least, in all those wherein we have 
freedom to exercise choice, we experience two impressions or, if you prefer, two 
inspirations: one invites us to do what men call good—and to be virtuous—the 
other to elect what they call evil—or vice. What we must examine is this conflict; 
we must find out why we are of two minds and hesitate. There would be no 
hesitation, the law-abiding citizen assures us, were it not for our passions; they 
hold in check those impulsions to virtue which, he reckons, Nature ingrained in 
our souls: master your passions and you’ll hesitate no more. But how has he 
come to suppose, this righteous man who addresses me, that the passions are 
the effects only of these latter wicked inspirations, and that virtues are always the
effects of the former? what incontrovertible evidence has he to prove his 
hypothesis? To discover the truth, to determine to which of these two warring 
sentiments there does indeed belong the priority which is to decide the character 
of my behavior (for one may be sure that of the two voices, the one which speaks
first to me is that which will speak loudest and which I must heed, considering it 
an authentic because immediate, spontaneous inspiration of Nature, whereas the 
other voice only corrupts and distorts Nature’s message to me); to recognize this 
primacy, I say, I examine not separate peoples, for national customs have 
denatured their virtues, but I observe the entire mass of mankind. I study the 
hearts of men, of savages first, then of civilized beings: where better than in this 
book shall I learn whether ’tis to vice or virtue I ought to give my preference, and
which of these two inspirations can rightly claim ascendancy over the other. Now, 
opening my investigation, I first encounter the patent opposition between 
self-interest and general; I see that if a man prefers, to his own, the general 
well-being and if, consequently, he is virtuous, he is bound to be very unhappy his
whole life long; and that if, on the other hand, he allows his personal interest a 
greater importance than the Commonweal, he is perfectly happy, provided the 
laws of society leave him in peace. But the laws of society have nothing to do with
Nature, are very foreign to her; hence, they should be accorded no weight or 
place at all in our investigation; which investigation, the laws having been 
eliminated from the picture, ought then infallibly to demonstrate man happier in 
vice than in virtue, whence I shall conclude that, pre-eminence belonging to the 
stronger impulse, to, that is to say, the impulse leading to happiness, this impulse
must incontrovertibly be natural and the contrary impulse, leading to misery, 
must with equal certainty be unnatural; it is thus demonstrated that, as a human 
sentiment, virtue is not by any means spontaneous or naturally sanctioned; it is 
rather nothing but the sacrifice the obligation to live in society squeezes out of a 
man, an infernal enforced sacrifice he makes to considerations the observation 
whereof will bring him, in return, a certain minimal pittance of happiness, this in 
some sort to offset his privations. And so, it is for each man to choose: either the 
vicious inspiration which, most clearly and most decidedly, is that which comes 
from Nature but which, in the light of human legislation, may perhaps not procure
him an unmitigated happiness, may perhaps bring him somewhat less than he 
may properly expect; or the factitious way of virtue that is in no wise natural but 
which, constraining him to forego certain things, by means of others will perhaps 
recompense him to some extent for the cruelty he must inflict upon himself when 
in his own heart he murders the first inspiration. And in my view the value of the 
virtuous sentiment further deteriorates when I remember not only that it is not a 
primary natural impulse, but that, by definition, it is a low, base impulse, that it 
stinks of commerce: I give unto you in order that I may obtain from you in 
exchange; whence you do plainly see that vice is eminently inherent in us and it is
so invariably Nature’s most fundamental commandment, the key to her operation 
in us, that the noblest of all virtues when subjected to analysis reveals itself but 
consummate selfishness and thus a vice. And so I say unto you that all is vice in 
man; vice alone is therefore the essence of his nature and of his constitution. 
Vicious is he when above the interest of others he sets his own; and vicious still 
and yet as much when he lies in the very bosom of virtue, since this virtue, this 
sacrifice of his passions, is in him nothing else than indulgence of his pride, either 
that or the desire to purchase for himself a draught of happiness more mildly 
brewed than the potent happiness he drinks while on the road to crime. But 
willy-nilly and by whatever shifts, ’tis forever his happiness he seeks, never is he 
concerned for anything else; absurd it is to propose that there be any such thing 
as disinterested virtue whose object would be to do good without a motive: this 
virtue is illusory. You may rest assured that man does not practice virtue save for 
a purpose, and that is the advantage he hopes to reap therefrom, or the gratitude
that puts others in his debt. I’ll not listen to that prattle about virtues ingrained in 
temperament, as elements of character; these are as self-seeking as the others 
bred of calculation, since he in whom they find expression has no merit beyond 
giving his heart over to the sentiment that cheers him most. Analyze whatever 
splendid deed you wish and see if you do not always recognize some motive of 
self-interest there. The vicious individual labors toward the same end, but less 
deceitfully, and unashamedly, and is more to be esteemed, surely, for this 
forthrightness of his; he’d attain that end, otherwise and far more surely than his 
underhanded adversary, were it not for the law; but these laws are odious since, 
eternally encroaching upon the territories of possible individual happiness in the 
name of safeguarding the general happiness, they take away infinitely more than 
they confer. From this definition you may now induce, as consequence, that since 
virtue in man is only the second and subsidiary impulse existing in him, apart 
from and above all others is the will to achieve his happiness at the expense of 
whomsoever it may be; that since the impulse which clashes with, or counteracts,
or thwarts, or diverts the passions is no better than a pusillanimous wish to buy 
the same happiness at a cheaper price, that is, at a minimum of sacrifice and 
without risking the rope; that since virtue, when rightly apprehended, shows itself
to be no more than meek slavish conformance to the laws which, varying from 
one climate to the next, effectively deny any consistent and objective existence to
this virtue, one cannot have anything but the completest scorn and the most 
thoroughgoing hatred for this virtue; and the best one can do nowadays is to 
resolve under no circumstances to adopt this much inflated and highly 
recommended scheme of being and conduct fabricated by local ordinances, 
superstitious and sickly temperaments, the vile, mean, shrewd way of the 
wretched, which, if we elect it, must surely make us all the more unhappy in as 
much as it is impossible, once a man has engaged himself in this low and 
shameful traffic, to extricate himself therefrom: live virtuously? do so if you are ill
or a fool, ’tis the fool’s solution and the grave of the debilitated.

“I know the arguments sometimes advanced in favor of virtue: ’tis of such 
beauty that even the wicked are all confounded at the sight, and its radiance 
makes them respect it. Do not, Juliette, be the dupe of this sophistry. If the 
wicked respect virtue, ’tis because virtue serves them, because they avail 
themselves usefully of it; only the laws’ authority disturbs the excellent relations 
between wickedness and goodness, for virtue never resorts to physical violence. 
’Tis never the virtuous man who resists the criminal man’s passions; ’tis a very 
vicious man who contrives to thwart them because, both having the same 
interests, the two men are in competition and must obligatorily clash and hurt 
each other in the course of their operations; whilst, in his dealings with the 
virtuous man, the criminal never has such controversies. Altogether possible that 
they do not agree over principles; but their discord is pacific, in their actions they 
are able to avoid giving each other hurt; the wicked one’s passions, on the 
contrary, requiring nothing but imperious domination, content with nothing less, 
everywhere and continually run headlong into those of his counterpart, and there 
must be perpetual strife between them. The homage the villain renders to virtue 
is token, once again, of sheer selfishness: ’tis not an idol he bows worshipfully 
down before; no, virtue offers him the opportunity to enjoy himself in peace, and 
this the libertine prizes. But, they will sometimes tell you, he who adores virtue 
takes wonderful pleasure therein; doubtless; any kind of madness can afford a 
little; it’s not the pleasure-taking I deny, I simply maintain that so long as virtue 
procures pleasure, not only is it vicious, as I have shown, but it is weak, and 
when I have a choice between two vicious pleasure-takings, do you suppose I’ll 
select the less intense?

“The degree of violence to which one is moved alone characterizes the essence
of pleasure. He who is only to a mediocre extent agitated by a passion can never 
be as happy as he who is rent by a grandiose passion; and consider how vast it is,
the emotional difference between pleasures afforded by virtue and by vice! He 
who declares how very happy he was to deliver over to an heir, let us say, the 
million which was privily put into his trusteeship, can this personage conceivably 
claim that the amount of happiness he has experienced is anything like as great 
as the joy that would be known to another who devoured that million after having
discreetly liquidated the beneficiary? Regardless of how dominant the position of 
the idea of happiness in our way of thinking, it is however only through realities 
that it inflames our imagination, and however much his good deed may flatter 
your honest man’s imagination, his ideal happiness has most assuredly not 
afforded his real self as many piquant sensations as he could have experienced 
from the reiterated and manifold delights a victim’s million would physically have 
procured him. But the robbery—but the murder of the heir, do you say, will spoil 
his happiness? Not at all; granted a lucid mind and a firm doctrine, robberies and 
murders can impair happiness only in as much as they excite remorse; but the 
man who has ripened his philosophy, who is strong in his principles, he who has 
entirely vanquished the vexing and baneful leftovers of the past, impeded by 
nothing, he will relish an unalloyed pleasure; and the difference between our two 
individuals consists in this: that over and over again in the course of his whole life
the first will be unable to prevent himself from wondering, deeply distressed: Ah! 
that million, would it not have given me much pleasure? whilst the other, tranquil,
will never once pause to ask: Indeed, why ever did I take it? The virtuous act 
could thus give rise to regrets, whereas the wicked, being what it is, must 
necessarily preclude them. To be brief, the only happiness virtue procures is 
fancied and fantastical; there is no veritable felicity other than personal, and 
virtue flatters not one of the senses. Is it by any means, I ask you, to virtue that 
we attach position, fame, honors, wealth? do we not every day behold the wicked 
prosper exceedingly, and the good languish in chains? To expect to see virtue 
rewarded in another world, this folly is no longer pardonable. To what end then, 
this worship of a false—of a tyrannical—of an almost egoistical, an always vicious 
divinity (vicious, I repeat, and I have proven why) who has nothing to spare now 
for those who serve him and who but promises impossible or fictitious payments 
deferred to the future? Need I mention, moreover, the danger in wishing to be 
virtuous in a very corrupt age? Thus to isolate oneself from others is to withhold 
from them the happiness they await from virtue, and, quite absolutely, better to 
be vicious along with everyone else than to be a good man alone. ‘So great is the 
discrepancy between the manner in which we do live and the other in which we 
ought, that he who spurns what is done and would have nought but what should 
be done,’ says Machiavelli, ‘seeks rather his undoing than his salvation, and hence
it is that a man who professes to be entirely good in the midst of such a host of 
others who are not, must shortly perish.’ If there be virtuous wretches, have a 
care lest, mistakenly surprised to find this trait in them, we be deceived by it: 
fearfully reduced, they may be allowed to take what pride they can in the pathetic
enjoyment of virtue, it perhaps consoles them, there you have their secret.”

During this learned dissertation, Madame de Noirceuil and the two Ganymedes 
had fallen asleep.

Noirceuil glanced their way. “Feeble-minded creatures,” he murmured; 
“pleasure-machines, sufficient to our purposes, but, truly, their appalling 
insensibility depresses me.” His eyes now rested meditatively upon me. “You, 
Juliette, your subtler mind conceives me, understands me, yes, anticipates me, I 
relish your company. And,” he added, further narrowing his eyes, “you cannot 
hide it: you are in love with evil.”

I trembled. “I am, Monsieur, I am, very much so. It—it dazzles me, it—”

“You will go far, my child. I am fond of you. I should like to see more of you.”

“Your sentiments flatter me, Monsieur, I might even venture to say that I merit
them, so straitly do mine conform to yours…. I have had some education, ’twas at
a convent that my mind was trained by a friend. Alas, Sir, my birth is not mean, it
ought to have guaranteed me against the humiliation I am in now by hard 
circumstance.”

And thereupon I recounted my story to Noirceuil.

“Juliette,” said he after having heard me out, listening to every detail with keen
attention, “I am sorely distressed by all this you tell me.”

“Why so?”

“Why? Because I knew your father. I am the cause of his bankruptcy, ’twas I 
who ruined him. There was a moment when I was in control of his entire fortune, 
I had the choice of doubling it for him or dispossessing him utterly; having 
consulted my principles, I found I had, indeed, no choice at all but to prefer my 
welfare to his. He died a pauper; and I have an income of three hundred 
thousand pounds a year. After all you have said, I ought of course to make 
reparation to you, since if you have suffered adversity ’tis owing to my crimes; 
but such a gesture would be virtuous. Do you see, I have a very great horror of 
virtue, I could never indulge in such a thing. I fear that past events have raised 
impenetrable barriers between us two; I regret it, but it looks as though our 
acquaintance were come to its term.”

“Execrable man!” I cried, “however much I am the victim of your vices, I adore
them … yes, I adore your principles—”

“Oh, Juliette, there is yet more to be told,” he said in a quiet tone.

“I want to hear everything.”

“Your father … your mother.…”

“Yes?”

“Their existence was a threat to me. To avoid betrayal, I had to sacrifice them. 
They went in swift succession to the grave. That could be ascribed to a poison … 
they once dined at my home—”

A sudden quaking laid hold of me, to the core of me I shuddered; but 
straightway upon Noirceuil I bent a stare, the phlegmatic, apathetic stare of the 
wickedness with which, in spite of me, Nature was at once burning and freezing 
my heart:

“Monster,” I repeated in a thickened voice, and speaking slowly, “thou art an 
abomination, I love thee.”

“The murderer of your parents?”

“Can that matter to me? Sensations are my means for judging everything; 
none were stimulated in me by those persons of whom your crimes have rid me 
forever, and to hear you confess what you have done sets me all afire, transports 
me … ah, I may become delirious….”

“Charming creature,” said Noirceuil, “your naïveté, the candid purity of your 
soul, everything about you conspires against my principles; I am going to violate 
them and keep you by me, Juliette, I’ll not part with you. You shall not return to 
Duvergier, I’ll not hear of it.”

“But, Monsieur—your lady?”

“She’ll be no better than your slave, you’ll reign over my household, everyone 
in it will be under your orders, you shall have but to give them and be obeyed. 
Crime does indeed hold a mighty sway over my soul: whatever, whoever bears 
the evil brand is dear unto me. Nature made me to love it; abhorring virtue, 
despite myself I fall ever and ever down to my knees before crime and infamy. 
Oh, Juliette … Juliette, come hither, I’m hard, show me your beauteous ass—slut, 
give me that ass of yours, I’m of a great mind to fuck it, I’m going to expire from 
the pleasure of imagining my lust is making a victim of my greed’s offspring.”

I approached him, bidding him have furiously at me. “Yes, Noirceuil, fuck me, 
fuck me, you swine, I adore the idea of whoring to the assassin of my kin. Eh, 
come bugger-fuck that hole, wring the fuck out of my cunt, for tears I’m in no 
mood to spill: fuck, that’s the only homage I’m disposed to offer to the loathsome
ashes of the family you destroyed.”

We waked the acolytes; sodomizing me, Noirceuil caused himself to be 
bum-stuffed and, having had his wife clamber atop me and deploy her buttocks, 
he bit and chewed them and gnawed and worried them and slapped them too, 
and all that with such vehemence that the poor creature’s hind parts were all 
bloodied before Noirceuil was done shedding his fuck.

As soon as I was installed in his town house, Noirceuil expressed his reluctance
to have me venture out of it and would not even consent to let me go recover the 
effects I’d left at Duvergier’s; on the morrow he presented me to his domestics, 
to his acquaintances, saying I was a cousin, and from then on I was entrusted 
with the direction of the house.

However, I could not resist seizing the first occasion to pay a quick visit to my 
former employer; indeed, I had no intention of cutting myself off altogether from 
her, but neither did I think it prudent policy to seem too eager to see her.

“My dear Juliette!” cried Duvergier as soon as she clapped eyes on me, “how 
glad I am to have you back! Come in, do, I’ve been so impatient, for I’ve a 
thousand things to talk to you about.”

We encloseted ourselves in her apartment; she embraced me with utmost 
cordiality and congratulated me upon having had the luck to please so wealthy a 
man as Noirceuil; “And now,” said she, “listen to me, my dear.

“I don’t know just how you view your new situation; but I should think it a 
most unfortunate mistake were you to go and suppose that in your present 
position of a kept whore you need in any wise be bound by some exaggerated 
fidelity to a man who converses with seven or eight hundred women each year. 
However rich a man may be, however liberal to us, we never owe him anything in
return, thanks least of all; for ’tis in his own behalf he toils even if he bestows the
whole treasure of the Indies upon us. He showers us with gold; why? either 
because of the pride he takes in having us all to himself, or because of the 
jealousy that spurs him to lavish money so that no one else will share in the 
object of his affections; but, Juliette, I ask you, do any man’s extravagances ever 
warrant our catering to his folly? Granted that it must grieve a man to see us in 
the arms of another; does it follow that we must suffer inconvenience simply to 
spare him the sight? I am willing to go farther: though one loves to the point of 
madness the man one lives with, whether as his wife or as his most cherished 
mistress, it would be nonetheless completest absurdity to chain oneself 
gratuitously to his bedpost. One can fuck every day in every conceivable manner 
without diminishing the sentiments of the heart, and without their help. ’Tis the 
most commonplace thing in the world, to love one man to distraction and to fuck 
frenziedly with another; you don’t give your heart to him, just your body. The 
most extensive, the most intensive, and the most oft-repeated riots of libertinage,
having no connection whatever with love, cannot possibly betray its delicacy. In 
what consists the wrong one does a man whom one outrages by prostituting 
oneself to somebody else? You’ll agree with me that at the very most ’tis a moral 
affront; and so you’ve but to take the greatest precautions to prevent him from 
ever finding your infidelity out; and now what can he complain of? Indeed, one 
may fairly say that a marvelously well-behaved woman who nonetheless lets 
some suspicions take root against her, whether these suspicions be bred of 
imprudence or of calumnies, will be, even were she a perfect saint for virtue, 
infinitely guiltier in the view of the man who loves her than she who, getting 
herself fucked nigh to death from dawn to dark, was clever enough to attract no 
attention to her doings. Yes, and I shan’t have it end there, I’ll assert that a 
woman, however sound her reasons for handling a man gingerly and with 
thoughtfulness, yea, even for worshiping him, can give another not only her body 
but her heart too; she may even while loving one man a great deal also love a 
great deal the person with whom she chances to lie; this then is fickleness, and to
my consideration nothing more nicely sorts with grand passions than fickleness. 
There are two manners of loving a man: morally and physically. A woman can 
morally idolize her husband and physically and momentarily love the young blade 
who pays her court; she can cavort with him without in any sense or degree 
offending the moral sentiments she entertains for and owes him she worships: 
every individual of our sex who is of a different opinion is an idiot who is steering 
nowhere but toward disaster. A mettlesome-spirited woman, how can you expect 
her to possibly subsist, or rather avoid starving, upon the caresses of only one 
man? The thing is unthinkable; and thus you discover Nature in perpetual conflict 
with your alleged precepts of constancy and fidelity. Now tell me, if you please, 
what importance can be ascribed by any right-thinking man to a sentiment that is 
in necessary and unending contradiction with Nature? A man ridiculous enough to 
demand that a woman never give herself to anyone except himself would be 
behaving quite as absurdly as he who would not tolerate his mistress or wife ever 
once dining with someone else; not only would such an attitude be downright 
queer, it would be tyrannical; for by what right, being incapable of satisfying the 
woman single-handed, can he require that this woman suffer and not seek to 
console herself by whatever means at her disposal? Oh, there is here a 
selfishness, an incredible harshness, a monstrous ungenerosity, and the very 
instant a woman detects such traits in him who claims to love her, that ought to 
suffice to make her decide there and then to compensate herself for the dreadful 
circumstances to which her jailer wishes to reduce her. But if, in that other case, 
only interest or convenience attaches a woman to a man, her motive will be all 
the stronger in no wise to curb either her penchants or her desires: she is under 
no obligation to cede to her keeper save when he pays for her services, and while
she does definitely owe him the use of her body when he contracts for it, before 
the bargain is struck and after she has fulfilled her part of it, she is free, the rest 
of her hours are hers to employ as she likes, and it is then that, business 
attended to, she may devote herself to pleasure and the inclinations of her heart; 
and why should she not, since her only commitment to her keeper is physical? 
The paying lover, or the husband, must perfectly well understand that he cannot 
exact from the object of his doting those feelings of the heart which obviously 
cannot be bought; these gentlemen are too intelligent not to know what is and 
what is not for sale. And therefore, provided the woman who is in the hire of 
either or, as the case may be, of both men cooperates in the satisfaction of their 
desires, they would pass for lunatics if they were to demand more of her. For, to 
frame it succinctly, from a woman a husband or a lover expects not virtue but the 
appearance of virtue. Put case she fucketh not with others, but seemeth to, then 
she’s lost; let her fuck a whole empire to death, but if she be not seen, lo! ’tis 
there a reputable lady.(15) There exist examples enough to illustrate my 
assertions, Juliette; you have chosen a good moment to visit me, and I shall 
employ the occasion to convince you; waiting in the next room I’ve some fifteen 
women whom I’m going to pack off to be fucked somewhere outside town; look 
closely at them, each has her story. But if I am committing a grave imprudence in
talking about them and in allowing them to be seen, I do it for your sake, and 
would not for someone else’s.”

So saying, Duvergier slid aside a little secret panel which exposed the entire 
room to our view without ourselves being visible to those within it.

“Did I say there were fifteen ladies in the circle? Count them for yourself.”

Fifteen women, all charming to behold but differently dressed, were indeed 
waiting, in silence, for the instructions they were to receive.

“We’ll move round from right to left,” said Duvergier, “beginning with that 
superb blonde you see there by-the fireplace. She is the Duchesse de Saint-Fal, 
whose conduct is surely not to be blamed; for, lovely as you must admit she is, 
my Lord the Due cannot bear her. Although you see her here, she is nonetheless 
rumored to be of spotless virtue; her family is very jealous of its name, watches 
her closely and, were news of her activities to leak abroad, they’d have her 
confined.”

“But,” I remarked, “these women must all run a grave risk by showing their 
presence here to one another. Might they not meet elsewhere? A slip of the 
tongue—or a little malice—”

“Firstly,” said the matron, “they are not mutually acquainted; but if later they 
should so become, what could one tell of another that she could not instantly turn
against her accuser? All having the same concern, thus bound to discretion, there 
is no danger of denunciation; I’ve been purveying to these persons or their like 
for five and twenty years, and I’ve yet to hear tell of a single betrayal; they 
themselves fear no such thing. Do they look uneasy? Let me continue.

“That tall woman next to the Duchesse, she who appears to be about twenty 
and whose heavenly countenance resembles that of the purest virgin, she is wild 
about her husband; notwithstanding, she has an equally wild temperament; she 
pays me to put her in touch with youths. Would you believe it? she’s such a 
libertine, even at her age, that despite the money I am willing to spend, I simply 
cannot locate pricks big enough to satisfy her.

“Look at that other angel just to the left. She’s the daughter of a member of 
parliament; she’s clever too, and comes here on the sly, escorted by her 
governess. I doubt whether she is yet fourteen. I only involve her in scenes of 
passion where fuckery is omitted. Mind you, I’ve several bids of five hundred louis
for her membrane, but I don’t dare. She’s waiting for a gentleman who discharges
merely from putting his mouth in the vicinity of her ass; one thousand louis is the 
fee he’s offered me for leave to sink his prick into it. The danger being much 
slighter, I’ll arrange the affair by and by.

“That other child is thirteen years old: a little bourgeoise I’ve suborned. She’s 
to marry, she adores her intended; but she’s had a schooling rather like your own.
Yesterday, Noirceuil and I concluded negotiations for the sale of her antiphysical 
pucelage; he’ll be here tomorrow to exploit his purchase. A young bishop should 
soon arrive, he’s contracted to loosen her up a little in the same part; but, you 
see, his device is dimensioned so modestly that your abundantly furnished lover 
will never know the difference.

“Glance closely at that other woman, that one there. I believe she is 
twenty-six. She lives with a man who is beyond words devoted to her, who denies
her nothing her heart desires; they’ve both done incredible things for each other; 
but that doesn’t prevent the little rascal from fucking every man in sight, it’s men 
she loves, all men, and with a rapacity that takes one’s breath away. Formerly, 
her lover permitted her to indulge herself, if anyone’s to blame for the disorders 
she wallows in, ’tis he: she but profits from the examples he once set before her, 
and unbeknownst to him she has her daily fling of fuckery under my roof.

“The pretty brunette beside her is the wife of an elderly individual who wedded
her for love; she exhibits prodigious consideration for him, and there are few who 
can boast of so wonderful a reputation for virtue. Here her patience is rewarded: 
she’s waiting for a pair of young men; later on in the day she’ll come back again 
to meet the man she loves. Of mornings she dedicates herself to debauchery; the
longings of her heart are satisfied after lunch.

“That one next to her is of an extreme piety. Notice her costume. The 
scoundrel divides her time between reading sermons, attending Mass, and 
frequenting brothels; she has a husband, he adores her but is powerless to 
change her ways. Stubborn, shrewish, domineering at home, she reckons all that 
mummery must induce him to forgive her the rest. The poor devil has made her a
wealthy woman; and nonetheless she has made him the most miserable of men. I
too have a frightful time with her, for she’ll only fuck clerics. True, age and looks 
and manners matter not one whit to her; the whore’s happy so long as the prick 
in her cunt belongs to a man of God.

“Over there beyond her is a kept woman who receives a wage of two hundred 
louis a month; she spends it here, and if her allowance were doubled she’d 
probably never leave my place at all. She’s a former pupil of mine. Her old 
archbishop would stake his emoluments that she’s chaster than the Virgin—who, 
by the way, being much worshiped by the folk of his diocese, brings in those same
two hundred louis which, destined for Mary, go next to the prelate, then to his 
concubine, finally to me. All that, my Juliette, is how things transpire in this silly 
world of ours; one swims with the current or drowns battling it.

“Now we come to that middle-class girl over there, she’s nineteen, and tell me 
if you’ve ever seen a more comely creature. Her lover has done everything under 
the sun for her: he rescued her from poverty, settled her debts, maintains her on 
the finest footing; if she took a fancy to the very stars, he’d attempt to steal them
out of heaven for her, and the little whore hasn’t a single moment to herself she 
doesn’t employ in fucking. But libertinage is not what guides her, no, ’tis greed: 
she does whatever is asked of her, she’ll consent to any match I make so long as 
she’s paid for her trouble, and her price is high. Is she wrong to ask all the 
market will stand? The brute I’m going to turn her over to will leave her 
bedridden for six weeks, and she knows it; but she’ll earn her ten thousand francs
this morning, and for the rest she doesn’t care a fig.”

“And her lover?”

“Oh, she’ll improvise some excuse or other, never fear. She slipped and fell. Or 
she was run down by a carriage. With that brain of hers, she’s clever enough to 
make a dunce of God Almighty.

“That little minx there,” Duvergier continued, pointing out a gorgeous creature 
of twelve, “is a more unusual case: her mother sells her, they are needy folk. The 
two of them could, to be sure, find other work, they’ve even been offered it, but 
they refuse: only libertinage suits them. Once again it’s Noirceuil who’ll have the 
first shot at that child’s asshole.

“And now behold the triumph of conjugal love. In all the world there’s not a 
wife who cherishes her husband as that woman does,” Duvergier declared, 
indicating a creature of some twenty-eight years, a perfect Aphrodite. “Yes, she 
adores him, she is jealous too, but she cannot withstand her urges; she disguises 
herself, she’s taken for a vestal, but every week she enters the lists with fifteen or
a score of men.

“I consider that other one quite as attractive,” my informant went on, “and her
position is truly extraordinary: her own husband prostitutes her. Mark you, he is 
passionately fond of her, and that could provide the explanation: he’s witness to 
her proceedings, he’s ready to pimp for his lady, but he embuggers her fucker.

“It’s the father of that engaging and so very well-favored maiden who in like 
manner brings his child here; but he’ll not have her fucked; anything at all may 
be done to her provided the two pucelages are left intact. He’ll also be the third 
member of the party, I’m expecting him at any moment, for the man who’s to 
sport with his daughter is already here. You’d enjoy watching the scene, ’tis a pity
you can’t stay. There’d doubtless be a role for you.”

“And what is going to happen?”

“The father will want to thrash the man who is to lay hands on his child; her 
ravisher will decline to be whipped; pleadings, obstinacy: the father grovels, the 
other refuses and finally, catching up a cane, he gives the father a fierce 
thwacking and in the midst of it squirts his fuck all over the girl’s ass. And papa? 
He’ll creep over and lap up the spilled seed, then unleash his own while 
wrath-fully gnawing the buttocks of the man who, the moment before, was 
administering a beating to him.”

“A complicated passion, upon my soul. And in it what part would I play?”

“For the blows he’d sustained the father would avenge himself upon you. You’d
have to count on a few superficial scratches, a cut or two; they’d be worth one 
hundred louis.”

“Continue, Madame, continue. You know I cannot participate today.”

“Well,” said she, “only two remain. Consider now that very attractive person. 
She enjoys an annual income of over fifty thousand pounds and an excellent 
reputation; her taste is for women, notice how she ogles the others. She is also 
fond of buggers; and she is deeply in love with her husband withal. But well does 
she realize that the moral and the physical are two very distinct domains. She 
fucks her husband with the best will in the world, she comes here to satisfy her 
other needs; it is simply a matter of managing one’s affairs properly.

“Finally, the last of those ladies is unwed, she has great pretensions, is one of 
our most celebrated prudes; in society, were a man so much as to murmur the 
word love within her hearing, I believe she’d strike him; whilst here in my little 
house she pays fortunes to get herself fucked fifty times a month.

“How now, Juliette? Do you need further examples? Or are these enough to 
make you decide?”

“I think you’ve persuaded me, Madame,” I replied; “in future, I’ll fuck here for 
pleasure and profit, yes, I’ll not turn up my nose at whatever little libidinous 
adventures you prepare for me. But I must give you fair warning: don’t put 
yourself to any trouble on my account unless, where money is concerned, a 
minimum price of fifty louis is acceptable to whoever wishes my services.”

“Fifty? My dear, you’ll have your fifty louis a throw, never fear,” cried Duvergier,
overcome with joy. “I only wanted your agreement. Money? Money presents no 
problem. Be gentle, be docile, be obedient, never say no; I’ll find you mountains 
of money.”

Since it had grown late and I feared lest Noirceuil become alarmed at the 
length of this first promenade I’d taken, I hastened back to be in time for dinner, 
most sincerely upset at not having seen some of those fifteen women in action or 
having been able to participate in it with them.

Madame de Noirceuil was not entirely unmoved to see her rival established in 
her house; the uncouth and imperious tone in which her husband had enjoined 
her to obey me contributed not a little to her resentment of my presence; not a 
day passed when she did not weep from sore chagrin and envy: I was 
incomparably better lodged than she, better served, better fed, more 
magnificently dressed, having a carriage to myself whereas she was scarcely 
allowed the use of her husband’s; little wonder that this woman developed a 
hatred for me. But so great was my appeal to Noirceuil’s intellect that, whatever 
her feelings, and they must truly have been strong, I dwelt in perfect security 
from the least of their effects.

I hardly need stress, however, that love was not Noirceuil’s motive for acting in
this manner. He valued my company, for in his eyes I represented the means to 
committing crimes; did he, what with his perfidious imagination, did he need 
another reason for keeping me by him? That villain’s disorders were faultlessly 
systematized. Every day, and nothing could have interfered with the ritual, 
Duvergier furnished him a maiden whose age, according to the requirements he 
laid down, was not to exceed fifteen nor be less than ten; for each of these girls 
he paid one hundred crowns; and their agreement further specified that if 
Noirceuil could supply proof positive that any one specimen was not absolutely 
mint, Duvergier must pay him twenty-five louis in damages and for breach of 
contract. Despite all these precautions, the example of my own self suggests to 
what an extent he could be deceived, and I dare say he very often was.

This libertine session was ordinarily scheduled for every afternoon; we were all
convoked, the two young pederasts, Madame de Noirceuil, and I, and every day 
Noirceuil’s susceptible and hapless wife was the victim of those piquant and 
unusual practices I have described already. The children would be dismissed and 
Noirceuil and I would sup together; he usually drank himself into a stupor and 
would end up asleep in my arms.

Now I must avow, my friends, that for a long time I’d been mightily eager to 
test Dorval’s theories in action; my fingers were nigh to itching from impatience; I
simply had to steal at any cost. I had yet to determine what I could do: I didn’t 
doubt my abilities, but I needed someone to try them upon. Situated there in 
Noirceuil’s house, conditions would have favored a stunning performance: his 
confidence in me was as complete as his wealth was immense and his disorders 
extreme: I could at any time and every day have laid hands on ten or twelve 
louis, he’d never have noticed their disappearance. But by some quirk of the 
imagination, by some curious way of reckoning, thanks to some feeling I’d 
perhaps have difficulty explaining clearly, even to myself, I never wanted to wrong
anyone as corrupt as I. It is doubtless here the old story of honor amongst 
thieves, or of mutual respect; but it was operative in me. I had another reason 
also, an important one, for restraining myself; I wanted to steal, and I wanted my
victim to sustain grave hurt: the idea wonderfully heated my brain. Well now, 
what crime would I be committing in plundering Noirceuil? I considered his 
property mine: I would simply be making off with what I already owned; thus, 
robbing Noirceuil would be mere reappropriation, lacking the faintest trace of 
larceny. In short, had Noirceuil been a good man, I’d have bled him white; he was
a wicked man, I respected him. In a moment or two you’ll hear how I was 
unfaithful to him; you’ll perhaps wonder why my veneration for the man did not 
inhibit my fuckeries; but fuckery is something else again, and between my 
principles and infidelity there lay not so much as a shadow of contradiction. I 
loved Noirceuil for his libertinage, for his mental qualities; I was not by any 
means captivated by his person, I did not consider myself so firmly attached to 
him as to be deterred from fucking anyone else whenever I pleased. I was 
ambitious, I took the longer view: the more men I saw, the greater my chances of
finding one better than Norceuil. And even if that luck should not befall me, 
collaboration with Duvergier must necessarily be profitable; and I could not throw
away that money in the name of a quaint chivalric sentiment for Norceuil in whom
no manner of delicacy could in any fundamental or even superficial sense exist. In
observance of this scheme of behavior, I, as you may very well imagine, accepted 
an invitation I received from Duvergier several days, after the interview I 
described a little while ago.

The party was to be given at the home of a millionaire; he was not prone to 
stint on his pleasures, it was in their weight in gold he recompensed those 
accommodating creatures who were disposed to satisfy his shameless whims. 
However extensive one’s acquaintance with the question may be, libertinage 
forever holds surprises in store for us; and there is no predicting to what degree it
can degrade a man who heeds only the mischievous urgings quickened by ever 
astonishing vice.

Six of Duvergier’s most winning protégées were to accompany me to the house
of that Croesus; but I being the most distinguished of the troupe, his finer 
attentions were concentrated upon me, and my companions really officiated only 
as priestesses in the ceremony.

We arrived and at once we were introduced into a chamber hung in brown 
satin, a color and a material chosen, no doubt, to emphasize the fairness of the 
skin of the sultanas who were summoned there; straightway, the woman who had
led us thither bade us undress. She swathed me in a black and silver gauze gown,
this costume setting me apart from the others: this tire, the divan I was 
instructed to recline upon while the others, remaining standing, quietly awaited 
orders, the special attention shown me—I was speedily convinced that I was to 
occupy a central position in the festivities.

Mondor enters. He was a man of seventy, short, squat, but keen of eye, and 
libertine. He gazes around, examining my companions; he utters words of praise 
for each, then he comes up to me and pays me some of those compliments such 
as are to be heard from none but a slave trader’s lips.

“Very well,” says he to his aide, “if these young ladies are ready, I believe we 
can get on with the job.”

That libidinous drama was comprised of three scenes: first of all, whilst with 
mouth, lips, and nibbling teeth I strove to rouse the deeply slumbering activity in 
Mondor, my six colleagues, grouped in pairs, were to strike the most suggestive 
sapphic poses for Mondor’s contemplation; no two of their attitudes were to be 
alike, they were all to keep in continual motion. Gradually, the three couples 
merged and our six tribades, who had spent several days training for the 
occasion, finally composed the most original and the most libertine configuration 
you could hope to imagine. We had already been half an hour at play and I was 
only beginning to detect a few faint hints of progress in our septuagenarian.

“My angel,” said he, “I do believe these whores are putting the wind in my sail.
Turn around, give me a sight of your cheeks, for were I to find myself able to 
perforate the noble asshole you’ll offer up to my kisses like a good little girl, why 
then, without further ado we’d proceed to the conclusion of the affair.”

But, swept away by optimism, Mondor had neglected to take Nature into 
account.

They failed, the several attacks he therewith delivered, though they helped 
apprise me of what he wished to achieve. “Well,” he sighed at last, “it won’t do. I 
need further encouragement.”

All seven of us surrounded him. To each the duenna handed a bundle of sturdy 
withes; then, one after the other, we belabored the wrinkled and seamed backside
of that poor Mondor who, while being flayed by one girl, fondled the charms of the
six others. We lashed him till blood flowed; and still no sign of success.

“Oh Lord!” the sorry old dog groaned, “I’m apparently reduced to taking 
desperate remedies.”

Sweating, bleeding, breathless, the knave cast a troubled eye about the 
company.

At that point the amiable duenna spoke up, busying herself applying eau de 
cologne to her master’s lacerated buttocks. “Ladies,” said she, “I am afraid there 
remains but one means to bring his Honor back to life.”

“And what may that be?” I inquired. “For truly, Madame, have we not 
exhausted every device that would bring his Honor forth from slumber?”

“Nay, there is yet this we may attempt,” she answered. “I shall stretch his 
Honor comfortably upon this couch; you, my kind Juliette, kneeling before him, 
you will go on imparting the warmth of your pink mouth to my dear master’s 
glacial tool. You, only you can succeed in its resurrection, of that I am convinced. 
As for you other ladies, will you one by one step forward and perform these three 
little services: first, briskly slap his Honor’s face, then spit upon it, and finally fart 
thereupon: as soon as all six have completed these exercises we may, I believe, 
see his Honor wonderfully revived.”

She spoke, the prescription was followed out, and I swear to you I am still 
amazed at the efficacy of these combined expedients: in my mouth, as the 
treatment advanced, the balloon inflated until I nigh to choked on that swelling 
morsel. True, all went at great speed: those slaps, that spittle, and the farts, 
perfectly orchestrated, rained down a very tempest upon the patient; passing 
strange it was, and most entertaining, to listen to the music wherewith the air 
resounded, a symphony of eructations, bass and tenor, the sharp percussive 
sounds of the blows, the flat notes of the expectorations. Well, the sluggardly 
member at last woke up, as I say, filled out, waxed wroth, and I thought it was 
about to explode between my lips when, springing away from me, Mondor 
signaled to the duenna, and she readied everything for the finale: ’tis within my 
ass the opera is to end. She adjusts me in the posture sodomy prefers; Mondor, 
helped, guided by his assistant, plunges instantly into the arcanum where the 
bugger takes his sweetest pleasures—but wait, there’s more to tell; I’d fail to give
an honest portrait of these goings-on were I to omit the crapulous episode with 
which Mondor crowned his ecstasy. While the lecher ass-fucked me, it was 
necessary:

1) that his governess, outfitted with a gigantine dildo, render him the same 
service;

2) that one of the girls, crouched beneath me, cause a great racket and stir in 
my cunt by sucking and licking it and blowing air thereinto and smacking her lips 
together;

3) that two dainty asses be placed where I could fondle them vigorously;

4) and finally that two other girls, the first sitting astride me and bent low over
my back, and the second likewise seated upon the first, both simultaneously shit, 
the former delivering a gobbet of excrement into his Honor’s mouth, the latter 
smearing another over his brow.

But everyone took her turn accomplishing this last-mentioned task; everybody 
shat, even the duenna; everybody frigged me, everybody donned the dildo and 
impaled Mondor who, overwhelmed by lubricious titillations, at last darts the 
deplorable jets of his quavering lust to a good depth in my anus.

“What is this, Madame! What is this strange tale you are telling us!” cried the 
Chevalier, suddenly interrupting Juliette. “Do you mean to say that the duenna 
shat also?”

“She very certainly did, Sire,” our historian insisted, a hint of vexation in her 
voice, another of reproof in her glance. “I fail to apprehend how, with an 
imagination so matured as your own, Chevalier, you can find anything strange in 
that: the more worn and weary, the more wrinkled a woman’s ass, the more meet
it is for such an operation; seasoning makes the salts more acrid, the vapors 
richer, the odors stronger. … In general, I might add, there persists a very great 
error in what pertains to the exhalations emanated from the caput mortuum of 
our digestions; there is nothing unwholesome about them, nothing that is not 
altogether agreeable … shit-hatred is unfailingly the mark of the simpleton, that 
you will admit; but need I tell you that there is such a thing as 
shit-connoisseurship, shit-gourmandise? No habit is more easily acquired than 
mard-savoring; eat one, delicious, eat another, no two taste exactly alike, but all 
are subtle and the effect is somewhat that of an olive. By all means, yes, one 
must allow one’s imagination free play; but shit gleaned from antique and 
much-traveled assholes … ah, a supper for the gods, one of the culminating 
episodes of the libertine experience….”

“Which I shall willingly undergo before very long, Madame, I swear it unto 
you,” declared the Chevalier as he complacently stroked a prick which the idea 
just broached was causing to stiffen horribly.

“Whenever you please,” Juliette replied, “and may I offer my own product for 
your delectation? Indeed, hold … this instant, if you wish; your palate’s whetted, 
my sphincters are stirring.”

And the Chevalier, taking Juliette at her word, led her away into an adjoining 
cabinet whence they did not return for a good thirty minutes, which in all 
likelihood were employed to acquaint the Chevalier with the most voluptuous 
aspects of this patrician passion; and the Marquis devoted the same interval to 
harrying the much-weathered buttocks of the unfortunate Justine.

The door opened; “True!” cried the Chevalier, “’tis delicious!”

“Did you eat—?” inquired the Marquis.

“I feasted. And gluttonously, I am afraid. There’s none left, my Liege.”

“I too am surprised, Chevalier; but what strikes me as strange is that you’d not
familiarized yourself with the practice long before this. Nowadays you’ll not find a 
single child of eighteen or twenty who’s not had shit aplenty out of whores. But 
proceed, Juliette, ’tis very pleasant, the way you kindle our passions with your 
engaging stories and then appease them with such singular consideration and 
art.”

“Heavenly creature,” said Mondor, drawing me into a secluded room after 
having dismissed the other women, “there is yet another service you may 
perform for me and that is the one from which I await my divinest pleasures. I 
would have you imitate your friends, you’re to shit as did they, and to deposit 
here in my mouth both the celestial turd I pray to God you have reserved for me, 
and with that succulent viand, the fuck-gravy I injected not long ago into your 
ass.”

I inclined and in a tone at once dignified and respectful announced that my one
desire was to comply with his.

“But can you?” he cried.

“I can indeed,” I assured him.

“Is it so? Adorable child, wonderful child,” he stammered, “it is then within 
your power to grant my request? Great God, this shall be the discharge of my 
life.”

When we had entered that little room my eyes had immediately lit upon a 
package of some size, containing, so I guessed, things which would be very 
instrumental to the improvement of my pecuniary situation; that same instant I 
had conceived an overpowering wish to steal it—but how? I was nude. Where 
could I conceal the package? Although it was not long, it was bulky, about as thick
as a man’s arm.

“Your Honor,” I asked, “are you going to call in someone to help us?”

“No,” the financier answered, “my custom is to taste this final delight in 
solitude; so lubricious are my sensations, so voluptuous the gestures which they 
wring out of me….”

“Nonetheless,” I broke in peremptorily, “it cannot be done without some 
assistance.”

“It can’t, my dear?”

“It cannot, Monsieur.”

“Eh then, if that is the case, pray go and see if one of the women is still about. 
If they’re all there, bring the youngest back with you: her ass got me quite 
palpably erect, and of them all ’tis she I fancy the most.”

However, I had not budged. “Sir,” I pointed out, “I am not familiar with your 
house; and I am, furthermore, little disposed to move for, do you see, the state I 
am in….”

“The state? Ah, yes, the state. I’ll ring then—”

“I beg you under no circumstances to ring. You surely cannot expect me to 
appear before your servants thus?”

“But my woman is out there, she’ll come.”

“Not at all. She is escorting the girls home.”

“Damn my eyes!” he cried. “I cannot bear these delays.”

And Mondor dashed from the room, vanishing into the apartment we’d just 
come from; and thus the idiot left me alone amidst his treasures. No need to 
think twice: in Noirceuil’s house I had had the very best reasons for restraining 
myself, here in Mondor’s I could give vent to this immense longing I had to 
commit a theft: I seize the opportunity, the instant my man’s back is turned I 
pounce upon the package, my hair is done up in a large chignon, that is where I 
cache my prize. No sooner had I stowed it away out of sight than Mondor called 
me. The girls had not left; would I please come into the apartment? For he 
preferred to have this final scene enacted in the same surroundings where the 
earlier ones had taken place. We were given instructions and work began: the 
youngest of the girls sucked the patient’s member, he filled her mouth with sperm
while simultaneously into his I deposited the victual whereof he was so 
uncommonly fond. All went well, nothing was remarked, I readjusted myself, two 
carriages were waiting for us, and, hugely contented, Mondor bade us farewell 
after having distributed generous largesse to us.

When I had returned to the house of Noirceuil and shut myself up in privacy, I 
said to myself, even before I set to opening the package, “Great God, can Heaven
itself have viewed my theft with favor?”

Wrapped up in that parcel were sixty thousand francs in notes of credit payable
to the bearer, already signed and requiring no further endorsement.

It was then, as I was about to put these spoils away, I noticed that by some 
extraordinary coincidence while I’d been off stealing, somebody had been robbing
me: my secretary had been forced open, missing were five or six louis I’d kept in 
a drawer. Advised of the fact, Noirceuil assured me that only one Gode could have
been responsible for it. This Gode was an extremely pretty girl of twenty whom 
Noirceuil had attached to my service since my entry into his household, whom he 
quite often had make a third in our pleasures, and whom, in the spirit of jollity 
such as the libertine intelligence conceives it, he had got one of his homosexual 
juveniles to impregnate. She was now in her sixth month.

“Gode! Do you really believe it could have been she?”

“I am certain of it, Juliette. Had you noticed her nervous manner? How 
uneasily she withstood our interrogating glances?”

Therewith, heedless of all save my perfidious selfishness, completely forgetting
my resolution never to work injury upon those who were my kinsmen in villainy, 
with tears in my eyes I besought Noirceuil to have the culprit arrested.

“I am perfectly willing to do as you suggest,” Noirceuil replied with a chilly lack
of expression which I should have interpreted accurately had my preoccupied 
mind permitted me to remark it; “however, you’re not to be deprived of any 
pleasure her punishment might afford you. She’s gravid, that will retard justice 
and while they fiddle-faddle the scoundrel may very well wriggle out of her plight.
She’s young and attractive, you know.”

“Ah, Christ!” I cried, “I am in despair.”

“I dare say you must be, my beloved,” Noirceuil pursued quietly, “for you 
ambition to see her hanged; but it will be a good three months before they get 
her to the scaffold. Supposing now, Juliette, that you are ever able to enjoy the 
spectacle which, I fully appreciate, would have a very incisive effect upon a 
sensibility as highly organized as yours, I must remind you that such pleasures 
are over and done with in fifteen or twenty minutes. I recommend that we 
somewhat prolong the wretch’s sufferings; what say we make them extend over 
the rest of her life? It’s a simple matter. I’ll have her confined to a dungeon in 
Bicêtre; how old is she? Twenty? She could rot half a century in prison.”

“Ah, my friend, a splendid plan!”

“I only ask that you let me postpone putting it into operation until tomorrow; 
which would give me time to clothe this scheme with all the details and adjuncts 
needed to enhance its charm.”

I embrace Noirceuil; he has his carriage sent for and two hours later returns 
with the writ necessary to our enterprise.

“She’s ours,” says the traitor; “we may now amuse ourselves. Let’s play our 
parts convincingly.” Later, after we have dined and gone to his dressing room, he 
summons the poor girl. “Gode, my dear Gode,” says he, “you know what my 
feelings for you are, the time is approaching when I shall want to demonstrate 
them: I am going to unite you to that young man who left in your womb the 
tokens of a noble affection for you; two thousand crowns a year, that shall 
guarantee the future of your ménage.”

“Oh, Sire, you are too kind—”

“No, my child, I really am not, please, expressions of thanks embarrass me. 
You owe me none, of that you may be absolutely sure; this that you take for 
kindness is pure self-indulgence, the pleasure is all my own. From now on you 
have nothing to fear, everything has been settled owing to the steps I have lately 
taken; whereas you may not live in regal style, you shall never lack for a crust of 
bread.”

Failing entirely to perceive the underlying significance of these words, Gode 
sprinkled tears of joy upon the hands of her fancied benefactor.

“Eh then, Gode,” said my lover, “I ask for your cooperation this one last time; 
though I am not much taken by pregnant women, let me embugger you while 
kissing Juliette’s buttocks.”

We assumed our stances; never had I seen Noirceuil so aroused.

“A criminal thought excites most wondrously, does it not?” I whispered to him.

“Incomparably,” he replied; “but whose would the crime be, and what would 
become of that thought, if she had truly robbed you?”

“You are quite right, my dear.”

“Take comfort, Juliette, take comfort, if crime there be, Gode is not its author. 
No, this wretch is as innocent of theft as are you; ’twas I stole your money, you 
see.”

And as he spoke he had his prick hilt-driven into her ass, and he was kissing 
my mouth and paddling my buttocks. I confess that this triumph of wickedness 
fetched a discharge from me in a trice; grasping my lover’s hand, pressing it to 
my clitoris, by the fuck that beslimed his fingers I bade him judge of his infamy’s 
powerful effect upon my heart; he came the next moment, two or three furious 
jerks and a string of horrible blasphemies heralded his delirium…. But he had 
scarcely withdrawn his prick from Gode’s ass when, knocking softly at the door, a 
valet announced that the police constable Was asking Noirceuil’s leave to carry 
out the mission he had been charged to execute.

“Very good, have the officer wait a moment,” said Noirceuil, “I’ll hand the 
culprit over to him, tell him so.” The valet disappeared; Noirceuil turned 
complacently toward Gode. “Make haste there,” said he, “dress yourself. Your 
husband has come himself to fetch you away to the little country house which I 
have arranged for you to inhabit the remainder of your days.”

Gode, trembling with anticipation, puts on her clothes, Noirceuil thrusts her out
of the room. Heavens! what must her terror be as she catches sight of the 
black-clad man and his retinue, as they put manacles on her as though she were 
a criminal, as, above all else, she hears (and this, it would seem, made the 
deepest impression upon her) all the domestics, acquainted with the fact, cry out:

“Aye, ’tis she, sergeant, don’t let her get away, she’s a very bad one, beyond 
all doubt she broke into her Ladyship’s secretary and in doing so she brought 
suspicion to hang over all the rest of us—”

“I, break into Mademoiselle’s secretary!” Gode protested, her knees about to 
buckle. “I! God be my witness, but I am incapable of any such thing.”

The constable paused, looked inquiringly at Noirceuil.

“Eh,” said the latter, “do-you shirk your duty, Sir? Justice will be done, you 
understand, you are employed for that.”

The wretch was dragged off and flung into one of the most cheerless of the 
unhealthy Bicêtre dungeons, where upon her arrival she had a miscarriage which 
came within an ace of putting an end to her life. But she did not succumb. No, 
there is breath in her yet; which, by the simplest computation, means that for 
many a long year she has been lamenting her errors, and they can be said to 
consist in having stirred up powerful desires in Noirceuil, who goes at least once 
every six months to savor her tears and to issue recommendations to her 
wardens that, if possible, they tighten the irons that bind her.

“Tell me now,” said Noirceuil, as soon as Gode had been led away, and as he 
returned to me double the sum removed from my secretary, “isn’t that a hundred 
times better than if she had been confided to an uncertain and perhaps merciful 
justice? We’d not have been able to exert any control over her destiny, whereas,” 
he smiled, “this way it is in our hands forever.”

“Oh, Noirceuil, thou art an evil man … and what joys thou hast fashioned for 
thyself!”

“Yes,” my lover acknowledged, “I knew the constable was waiting at the 
threshold, and believe me, I discharged deliciously into the ass of the prey I was 
about to surrender to him.”

“A very evil man you are, a very wicked man … but why is it that I too could 
not help but taste the wildest pleasures in the infamy you committed?”

“Precisely because it is one,” Noirceuil answered; “there is no imaginable 
infamy that does not give pleasure. Crime is the soul of lubricity; there is no real 
lubricity without crime: there are, thus, passions which are the massacre of 
humaneness and … of humanity.”

“If that be so, they must obviously have no connection with Nature, those 
tiresome humane sentiments upon which moralists constantly expatiate. Or could 
it be that there are moments when an inconsistent Nature countermands with one
voice what she enjoins with another?”

“Ah, Juliette, become better acquainted with her, this profoundly wise, this 
sweetly bountiful Nature, never would she have us aid others save our motive for 
doing so be profit or fear:

“Fear, because we dread lest the woes our weakness leads us to relieve in 
others befall us in our turn.

“And profit—we succor others in the hope that we will gain thereby, or in order 
to flatter our lustful pride.

“But as soon as a more imperious passion than charity makes itself heard, all 
the other passions fall mute, egoism then reclaims its sacred rights, our lips curl 
scornfully at the torments others have to endure; what sympathies can these 
torments awake in us? They are never any of our concern except in as much as 
we may ourselves have to undergo them; well, if pity is bred of fear, it is then a 
weakness whence with all possible dispatch we ought to protect, to purge 
ourselves.”

“This calls for a fuller development,” I remarked to Noirceuil. “You have 
demonstrated the inexistence of virtue, will you kindly explain to me what crime 
is; for if on the one hand you annihilate what I am advised to respect and on the 
other you belittle what I ought to fear, you shall surely put my soul in the state I 
desire it to be in so as henceforth to dread the undertaking of nothing.”

“Will you then sit down, Juliette, and make yourself comfortable,” Noirceuil 
suggested, “for this requires a serious dissertation, and if what I shall have to say
is to be intelligible to you, you must lend me your whole attention.

“Crime: the term is applied to any formal violation, whether fortuitous or 
premeditated, of what in the human community goes under the name of law; 
whence we have but one more arbitrary and meaningless word: for laws are 
relative, depending upon customs, upon considerations varying according to time 
and place; they are utterly different every few hundred miles, and so it is that 
were I to take ship or board the mail-coach I could, for having performed one and
the same deed, find myself condemned to death on Sunday morning in Paris and 
a public hero on Saturday of the same week in some land on the frontiers of Asia 
or on the coasts of Africa. Faced with this towering absurdity, philosophy has 
returned to the following fundamental propositions. I enumerate:

“1) That in themselves all acts are indifferent; that they are neither good nor 
bad intrinsically, and if man now and then so qualifies them, the sole criteria by 
which he performs his judgment are the laws he has elaborated for himself or the 
form of government under which he chances to live; but from the standpoint of 
Nature, and barring all else from consideration, all our acts are as one, none 
better, none worse than the rest.

“2) That if from somewhere within us there arises a murmur of protestation 
against the acts of wickedness we concert, this voice is nothing whatever but the 
effect of our prejudices and education, and that if we had been born and reared in
some other climate, it would address us in a very different language.

“3) That if in changing country we were still to be subject to these inspirations,
that would in no wise demonstrate their goodness but merely that one’s earliest 
impressions are only with some effort effaced.

“4) That, lastly, remorse, or the sentiment of guilt, is the same thing, that is to
say, purely and simply the effect of the earliest impressions one receives, which 
habit alone can neutralize and which one ought to labor determinedly to destroy.

“And indeed, to find out whether something be truly criminous or not, one 
must first find out what harm it can do to Nature; for one can rationally describe 
as a crime only that which might conflict with her laws. Nature being constant, 
this crime must hence be uniform: the deed must prove to be of some sort or 
other that all the races and nations of the earth hold it in equal and tremendous 
horror, and the loathing it inspires must be as universal in man as his desire to 
satisfy his elementary needs; well, of this species of deed there is not one that 
exists; that which unto us has the most atrocious and execrable aspect has been 
a cornerstone to ethics elsewhere.

“Crime, thus, is not in any sense real, there is thus, veritably, no crime, no 
thinkable way or means for outraging a Nature in ceaseless flux and action … 
eternally so superior to us as, from where aloft she superintends the general 
order, to be infinitely above worrying about us or what we do. There is no act, 
however awful, however atrocious, however infamous you like or can imagine it, 
which we cannot perform every time we sense the urge, why! which we have the 
right not to commit, since Nature puts the idea in our heads; for our usages, our 
religions, our manners and customs may easily and indeed must perforce deceive 
us, whilst we shall certainly never be misled by the voice of Nature: it is upon a 
mixture combining strictly equal parts of what we term crime and virtue that her 
operations and laws are based: destruction is the soil and light that renews her 
and where she thrives; it is upon crime she subsists; it is, in a word, through 
death she lives. A totally virtuous universe could not endure for a minute; the 
learned hand of Nature brings order to birth out of chaos, and wanting chaos, 
Nature must fail to attain anything: such is the profound equilibrium which 
holdeth the stars aright in their courses, which suspendeth them in these huge 
oceans of void, which maketh them to move periodically and by rule. She must 
have evil, ’tis from this stuff she creates good; upon crime her existence is 
seated, and all would be undone were the world to be inhabited by doers of good 
alone. Now, Juliette, I inquire of you: once evil is indispensable to Nature’s major 
designs, once she is helpless to function, once she is impotent without it, how can
the individual who does evil help but be useful to Nature? and what doubt remains
but that the wicked man is he whom Nature has deliberately so framed in order to
achieve her ends? Why do we decline to acknowledge that she has done with men
what she has done with beasts? are not all classes, like all species, in perpetual 
strife, do they not mutually batten one upon the other, does not one or the other 
weaken, wilt, perish away, depending upon the state or shape which Nature’s laws
must give to the natural order? Who can deny that Nero’s gesture, when he 
poisoned Agrippina, was one of the effects of those selfsame laws, as rigidly 
everlasting as that other law whereby the wolf devours the lamb? who doubts 
that the prescriptions of a Marius or a Sulla are anything other than the plague or 
the famine Nature sometimes unleashes over the length and breadth of a 
continent? She does not, I know, assign to mankind as a whole the perpetration 
of a given crime, but each man is allotted a certain talent and a certain propensity
for a certain crime, thus does she ensure a certain harmony: from the sum of all 
these misdeeds, from the entirety of all these lawful or unlawful destructions, she 
extracts the chaos, the decline, the decrepitude she must have to recast order, to 
renew growth, to restore vigor. Why did she give us poisons if she was not 
anxious to have men employ them? why ever did she cause Tiberius to be born, 
or Heliogabalus, or Andronicus, or Herod, or Wenceslas, or all the other great 
villains or heroes (they are synonymous) who have been the scourges of the 
earth—why, if the devastations wrought by these bloody men did not answer her 
requirements and promote her ends? Why does she send, concurrently with these
scoundrels and to act in concert with them, plagues, wars, blights, and dearths, if 
it were not essential that Nature destroy, and if crime and destruction were not 
inseparable from her laws? If then it be essential that she destroy, why does he 
who feels himself born to destroy resist his penchants, neglect his duties? Might 
one not say that if there were an evil thing in this world, if there could be, it 
would be visibly that which one commits in resisting the destiny Nature has 
prepared for each of us? In order that crime, which neither does nor can offend 
anyone or anything but our fellows, irritate Nature, one would have to pretend 
that she takes a greater interest in some persons than in others, and that, though
we be all equally formed by her hand, we are not however all equally her children.
But if we are all alike, save for our greater or lesser strength; if Nature goes to no
more trouble shaping an emperor than a chimney sweep, the different activities of
high conquest and menial service are simply the necessary accidents that derive 
directly from the initial impulsion, and both conquering and the cleaning of flues 
have got to be done, for we have been expressly formed and intended to do 
them. When next we see that Nature has physically distinguished individual 
persons, that she has made some strong, others weak, what could be more 
patently evident than that, in so making them, she expects the strong to commit 
the crimes she needs to have committed, just as it is of the essence of the wolf 
that he devour the lamb, just as the essence of the mouse is to be devoured by 
the cat?

“And so it was very correctly that the Celts, our earliest ancestors, held that 
the highest and most sacred of our rights was that of might, which is to say, that 
of Nature; and they considered that when Nature deems wise to assign a superior
quality of potential to some one of us, she does so only to confirm the prepotency
over the weak which she invests in us strong. Thus, it was by no means 
mistakenly that these same people, whence we descend, claimed not only that 
this right was sacred, but that Nature’s express intent, in granting it to us, was 
that we exploit it; that, in order to conform to her wishes, the greater had 
perforce to despoil the lesser; and that these latter ought best bow before what 
was irresistible and relinquish what they were in no position to defend. If since 
Celtic days matters have changed physically, they haven’t morally. The opulent 
man represents what is mightiest in society; he has bought up all the rights; he 
ought therefore to enjoy them; with their enjoyment in view, he ought to the 
fullest possible extent pave the way for the satisfaction of his caprices by exacting
discipline, forbearance, and compliance from the other, the subordinate, class of 
men; and this he may, he must, do without in any sense wronging Nature, since 
he but uses the right he has been either materially or conventionally awarded. Let
me repeat: had Nature intended to bar us from crime, she would have been very 
able to withhold from us the means for committing it. She furnished us those 
means at the outset, and she gives them to us still: for she is nothing loath that 
we possess them; she looks upon our crimes as either of no account or as 
necessary: as of no account if they be petty; as always and eminently desirable if 
they be capital; for ’tis all the same thing, whether I filch my neighbor’s purse, 
rape his son, his wife, or his daughter: these are mere pranks, of too slight 
importance and scope ever to be of any major utility to Nature; but it is very 
necessary to her that I kill that son, that wife, or that daughter when, giving me 
the idea, Nature suggests the crime. And that is why the penchants—the desires 
we sense—to undertake great crimes are always more intense than those we 
sense for the small ones, and why the pleasure we reap from enormities is always
a thousand times keener. Would she have composed a gradated schedule of the 
pleasure afforded by all crimes if it were not to her interest that we commit them?
does she not indicate by the regularly mounting charm she has attached to 
progressively awful crimes that her intention is to encourage us ever farther up 
the slope? These unspeakable quiverings of delectation we are subject to when 
we prepare a crime; this wild intoxication which possesses us when we perform it;
this secret joy which lingers in us long after it has been perpetrated: does all this 
not prove that she has so cunningly baited the deed because she yearns to have 
us commit it? and that, since our reward increases in proportion to the magnitude
of its wickedness, ’tis because the crime of destruction, conventionally regarded 
as the most atrocious of all, is howbeit the very one which most contents 
her?(16) For whether the crime results from vengeance, or from ambition, or 
from lubricity, we shall, if we scrutinize ourselves clear-sightedly, see that this 
attractiveness I speak of is always greater or lesser depending upon the greater 
or lesser violence or blackness of the deed; and when the destruction of our 
fellow beings is the effect of the cause, murder’s charm becomes limitless, 
because this is the necessary and very grave form of mischief which most benefits
Nature.”

“Oh, Noirceuil!” I cried, unable to contain myself, “it is certainly true that what 
we have just done has given me vast pleasure, but I’d have had ten times more 
had I seen her hang—”

“Come now, admit the whole truth: had you hanged her yourself.”

“Christ, yes, yes! I admit it! The mere thought is making me discharge.”

“And the pleasure you have felt was doubled, wasn’t it, Juliette, by your 
knowledge of her innocence? Had she been guilty, our deed would have been in 
the service of the law: and we would have been cheated of all that is delicious in 
evil.

“Ah!” Noirceuil continued, “it cannot be overstressed: would Nature have given
us passions if she had not known that these passions’ results would enact her will,
enforce her laws, further her aims? So well did man recognize this that he too felt
moved to compose laws whose object would be to check this invincible urge 
which, driving him to crime, would bring about the ruination of everything; but 
man behaved unjustly, for his laws are repressive, taking away infinitely more 
than they bestow; in return for the scanty security they afford him, they deprive 
him, perhaps, of all that is worth having.

“But these laws, originating with mere mortals, merit no consideration from the
philosopher; never shall they be allowed to halt or influence the gestures Nature 
dictates to him; the one effect they can have upon a man of intelligence is to 
encourage him to cover up his movements and maintain vigilance: laws? let’s use 
them for our own purposes, as a shield, never as a brake.”

“But, my friend,” I remarked to Noirceuil, “if that were everybody’s attitude, 
there’d be no shield.”

“Very well,” my lover replied, “in that case we shall revert to the state of 
uncivilization in which Nature created us: that, surely, would be no great 
misfortune. It will then be up to the weak man to devise a policy for avoiding 
collisions with the strong and for averting open warfare; he will at least have a 
clear view of what’s to be dreaded, and shan’t be any the more unhappy for that, 
since as things now stand he has the same struggle to wage but, in his 
self-defense, he is unable to employ the meager store of weapons Nature has 
armed him with. Institute this little regression, and every State would be far 
better off, it’s been proven, and there would be no further necessity for laws. But 
we stray afield.(17)

“One of our foremost prejudices attaching to the subject under discussion is 
bred of the sort of tie we gratuitously suppose to exist between other men and 
ourselves: an illusory tie—an absurd tie whence we have confectioned this curious
sort of brotherhood sacralized by religion. I should now make a few elucidating 
observations, about this brotherhood affair, for the course of my entire experience
has shown me that the fabulous notion of fraternity hinders and hobbles the 
passions a great deal more than one would suppose; owing to the weight it exerts
upon human reason, I’d best lose no time discrediting it in your eyes.

“All living creatures are born isolated; from birth, they have no need one of the
other: abstain from tampering with men, leave them in their pristine natural 
state, refrain from civilizing them, and each will find his own way, his food, his 
shelter, without his fellow beings’ help. The strong will see to their livelihoods 
wholly unaided; the weak alone may need some assistance; but Nature has given 
us these weak individuals to be our slaves: they are her gift to us, a sacrifice: 
their condition is proof thereof; the strong man may hence use the weak as he 
sees fit; may he not aid them in some instances? No; for if he does, he acts 
contrary to Nature’s will. If he enjoys this inferior object, if he harnesses him into 
the service of his whims, if he tyrannizes him, oppresses, vexes, sports with him, 
wears him out, or finally destroys him, then he behaves as Nature’s friend; but, I 
say unto you once again, if, in reverse, he aids the abject, raises the lowly to a 
level of parity with himself by sharing some of his power or some of his substance
or placing some of his authority at the disposal of the mean, then he necessarily 
disrupts the natural order and perverts the natural law: whence it results that 
pity, far from being a virtue, becomes a real vice once it leads us to meddle with 
an inequality prescribed by Nature’s laws and lacking which she cannot function 
properly; and that the ancient philosophers, who behold it as a flaw in the soul, as
one of those illnesses one had speedily to cure oneself of, were not in error, since 
pity’s effects are diametrically opposed to those produced by Nature’s laws, 
whereof the fundamental bases are differences, discriminations, inequalities.(18) 
This fanciful bond of brotherhood could have been dreamt up only by some feeble
individual; for it to have occurred to one of the mighty, in need of nothing, would 
not have been natural: to bind the weak to his will, he already had what the task 
required: his strength; what to him would have been the utility of this bond? ’twas
invented by some puny wretch, and it is founded upon arguments quite as futile 
as would be this one addressed by the lamb to the wolf: You mustn’t eat me, I am
four-footed too.

“The weak, proclaiming the existence of the bond of brotherhood, were bidden 
by such obvious motives as to eliminate in advance any possibility that the pact 
established by this bond be taken seriously. Moreover, no pact ever acquires any 
force save through the sanction of the two contracting parties; and this pact has 
been proposed and decreed unilaterally; what could be plainer than that the 
strong would never have consented and never will consent to it: what in the 
devil’s name was that remote pygmy thinking of when he imagined this bond! 
What good did he suppose it would do him? When one gives something, it’s to 
receive something in return: that’s the law of Nature; and, here, in giving 
assistance to the weak, in stripping off some quantity of one’s strength so as to 
clad one’s inferior in it, what does the strong get from the bargain? How can one 
ascribe any reality to a contract when, essentially, one of the parties must, in the 
light of his own highest interests, denounce it for a hoax or a joke beforehand? 
For, by taking it seriously and accepting it, the strong cedes a lot and gains 
nothing; which is why he never once subscribed to this nonsense; it being 
nonsense, some sort of misbegotten notion, it deserves no respect from us. We 
may unhesitatingly repudiate an arrangement proposed by our inferiors, by which
we would only be in a way to lose.

“The religion of that wily little sneak Jesus—feeble, sickly, persecuted, 
singularly desirous to outmaneuver the tyrants of the day, to bully them into 
acknowledging a brotherhood doctrine from whose acceptance he calculated to 
gain some respite—Christianity sanctioned these laughable fraternal ties; what 
else could have been expected? Here we see Christianity in the role of the weaker
party; Christianity represents the weak and must speak and sound like them; 
nothing surprising in this, either. But that he who is neither weak nor Christian 
subject himself to such restrictions, voluntarily entangle himself in this mythical 
snarl of brotherly relationships which without benefiting him in the least deprive 
him enormously—it’s unthinkable; and from these arguments we must conclude 
that not only has the bond of fraternity never authentically existed amongst men, 
but that it never could have, for it is even contrary to Nature, who could never for
an instant have intended to have men equalize that which she had differentiated 
so energetically. We may, we should, be persuaded that this bond was, in truth, 
proposed by the weak, was sanctioned by them when, as it so happened, 
sacerdotal authority passed into their hands; but we must also be persuaded that 
its existence is frivolous and that we must not under any circumstances submit to 
it.”

“Therefore, it is false that men are brothers?” I interrupted excitedly. “There is 
then no kind of real bond between another human being and myself? Is it then 
so, that the only manner in which I need act with this other individual is to wrest 
from him all I possibly can and cede him as little?”

“Precisely,” Noirceuil replied. “For whatever you give to him is lost to you, and 
you gain proportionately as you take.

“I may add, indeed, that, searching into my soul for the laws of comportment 
which are signed there in the indelible script of Nature, I find this the most 
primary, the most fundamental injunction: do not love, certainly do not give aid 
to, these so-called brothers; instead, make them serve your passions. And that is 
the text I heed. According to it, if the money, if the enjoyment, if the lives of 
these purported brothers are instrumental to my well-being or useful to my 
existence, then, my dear, as quick as ever I can, I grab what I want by main force
if I am the stronger, and if I am the weaker, by stealth; if for these things I want I
am obliged to pay something, then I try to get them for the lowest possible price 
if I have no way of stealing them; for I tell you once again, this neighbor is 
nought to me, between him and myself there is no positive relationship whatever, 
and if I establish one, it’s with the object of having from him, by cunning, what I 
cannot wring from him by violence; but if I can succeed through violence, I use 
no artifice, since artifices are nuisances and where they can be dispensed with I 
personally feel they should be.

“Oh, Juliette! study then to seal your heart against the fallacious accents of 
woe and indigence. If the bread that this wretch eats is wet by his tears, if a day’s
drudgery scarcely enables him to carry home at eventide enough to keep his 
exhausted family’s body and soul together, if the taxes he must pay soak up the 
better part of his meager savings, if his naked, untaught children are driven into 
the depths of the forest in search of a vile aliment whose having they must 
dispute with wild beasts, if his own helpmeet’s breast, withered from toil, dried by
want, cannot furnish her suckling that initial subsistence capable of giving him 
size enough and strength to go tear the rest from the jaws of wolves, if, bent 
under the weight of the years, of ills, of griefs, he sees nothing but the 
doom-sped end of his career lunge his way in great sure strides, and if in all his 
life he has never beheld a single star for one instant rise pure and serene above 
his downcast head; why, tush, it is a simple matter, common enough, altogether 
natural, nothing in it that doesn’t sit appropriately within the order and the law of 
that great universal mother who governs us all, and if you have decided that this 
man is unhappy, ’tis because you have compared his lot with yours; but, at 
bottom, he isn’t, you’re mistaken. Were he to tell you that he so considers 
himself, then he too is wrong. He likewise has made an instant’s comparison 
between his case and yours: let him crawl away, and once he’s in the company of 
his peers, there’s an end to his whimperings. Under the feudal regime, treated 
like an animal, domesticated and beaten like one, sold like the dirt he trudged 
upon and delved, was not his plight a good deal sorrier? Instead of taking pity on 
his sufferings, of mitigating them and turning them ridiculously into a burden to 
be borne by your own sympathies, be sensible, my dear, and view him merely as 
a creature Nature has designed for your entertainment, as one she offers for 
whatever use you deign to put him to; rather than wipe his tears, redouble the 
cause of his weepings, if you like, if it amuses you: lo! here are human beings 
Nature’s readied for the scythe of your passions; reap a goodly harvest, dear 
Juliette, Nature is bountiful; emulate the spider, spin your webs, and mercilessly 
devour everything that Nature’s wise and liberal hand casts into the meshes.”

“My beloved!” I cried, hugging Noirceuil to me, “how enormous is my debt to 
you for dissipating the miasmas of ignorance childhood instruction and prejudice 
brewed in my spirit! Your sublime lessons are unto my heart what the healing dew
is to sun-scorched vegetation. O, light of my life, I see no more, I comprehend no
more save through your eyes, with your mind; but, annihilating the fear I had of 
its danger, you kindle in me an ardent desire to hurl myself into crime. Will you be
my guide in this delicious journey? Will you hold aloft the lamp of philosophy to 
light the way? Or perhaps you’ll abandon me—after having led me far astray; and 
then, putting myself in jeopardy by having put in action principles as stern as 
these you’ve taught me to cherish, ringed round by the exceeding peril of these 
maxims, and alone, in this fair land of roses I’ll be exposed only to thorns, 
unshielded by your influence, undirected by your advice. I wonder….”

“Juliette,” said Noirceuil, “these reflections demonstrate your weakness—and 
betray your sensibility. My child, one must be strong and hard when one decides 
to be wicked.

“You will never be the victim of my passions; but neither shall I ever assure 
your status nor serve as your protector; one has got to learn to manage by 
oneself, to rely upon one’s own solitary resources if one is to travel the road of 
your choosing; one must, all alone, discover the means for eluding the pitfalls 
thick-strewn the whole length of the way, one must develop keen perceptions to 
spy them out in advance, one must know what to do in case of miscarriage and 
indeed how to face the ultimate catastrophe if it cannot be averted; no matter 
what, Juliette, you will never be threatened by anything worse than the scaffold 
and, in truth, it’s not so very dreadful. Once one has realized that we must all die 
someday, does it make any real difference whether it be on a platform or in a 
bed? Shall I make you a little confession, Juliette? Then I’ll tell you that execution,
a minute’s affair, terrifies me infinitely less than dying what they are pleased to 
call a peaceful death accompanied by what may very well be hideous 
circumstances. To hang is shameful? Not in my view; and even if it were, in order 
of their importance, I’d rate shame last on the list of factors involved. And so, my 
dear, put your mind at rest and to fly depend only upon your own wings. It’s 
safer, always.”

“Ah, Noirceuil, you’ll not, even for my sake, set your principles aside.”

“In all of Nature there is not a single creature in whose favor I can turn my 
back upon them.

“However, let’s proceed with the demonstration of crime’s inexistence. I should
like now to cite some examples in support of my thesis, that’s the likeliest way to 
convince you. We’ll cast a quick glance at how matters stand in this world and 
we’ll see whether what is termed criminal in one area doesn’t crop up as virtuous 
somewhere else.

“We dare not wed our wife’s sister; Hudson Bay savages do so whenever they 
are able: they recognize no other match. Jacob married Rachel and Leah.

“We dare not fuck our own children even though there are few more delicious 
pleasures; in Persia, intrigues are exclusively of that variety, and ’tis the same in 
three-quarters of Asia. Lot lay with his two daughters and got them both with 
child.

“We consider the prostitution of our wives a very great indelicacy: in Tartary, in
Lapland, in America it’s a courtesy, it’s an honor to prostitute your wife to a 
stranger; the Illyrians take them to assemblies of debauchery and, the while 
supervising the proceedings, force them to fuck whoever takes a fancy to them.

“We think it an outrage to modesty when we expose ourselves naked to the 
sight of others: almost all southern peoples go about thus unclad without any 
subtle intentions; the Priapic and Bacchic festivals of antiquity were so celebrated.
Lycurgus, by a law, obliged girls to appear nude when they attended public 
theaters. The Tuscans, the Romans had nude women serve them at table. There 
is a country in India where respectable women are never seen in clothes; these 
are only worn by courtesans, the better to excite concupiscence. Think of that; 
quite the opposite, isn’t it, of our conventional notions concerning modesty?

“Our generals forbid the rape of the defenders of a captured fortress; Greek 
commanders gave their soldiers the right as a reward for valor. After the capture 
of Carbines, the army of Tarentum collected all the boys, the virgins, and the 
young women who could be unearthed in the town, stripped and exposed them in 
the market place, where everybody chose what he wanted, either to fuck or to kill
it.

“The Indians of Mount Caucasus live like brute beasts, they couple 
indiscriminately. The women of the Isle of Homes prostitute themselves to men in
broad daylight, doing so even on the steps of their god’s temple.

“The Scythians and Tartars revered a man who through debauchery wasted 
himself into impotence while yet in his prime.

“Horace portrays the Britons, the English of today, as being most libertine with 
foreigners; this folk, says the poet, had no native modesty; they lived all aheap in
a promiscuous community, brothers, fathers, mothers, children, anyone suited to 
the satisfaction of Nature’s needs, and the resulting fruit belonged to whoever had
been the first to lie with the mother when she had been a virgin. These people ate
human flesh.(19)

“The Tahitians satisfy their desires publicly, would blush at the thought of 
enacting them in hiding. Before them, Europeans displayed their religious 
ceremonies, consisting in the celebration of that ridiculous mummery they call 
Mass. They in their turn asked to be allowed to display theirs: it was the rape of a
little girl of ten by a grown boy of twenty-five. What a difference!

“Debauchery itself is worshiped: temples are raised to Priapus; Aphrodite is at 
the start beheld as the goddess of fertility and increase, later as the principle of 
the most depraved lusts, adoration concentrates upon her ass, and she who 
initially was regarded as the idol of generation soon becomes the tutelary divinity 
of the grossest outrages man can perpetrate against population. Man, you see, 
grew ever in knowledge and intelligence: he had inevitably to progress: he ended 
up vicious. This cult, sinking into desuetude along with paganism’s eclipse, revives
in India; and the lingam, a sort of virile member Asiatic girls wear suspended 
from their neck, is nothing but an article of furniture whose use is required in the 
temples of Priapus.

“A traveler arriving in Pegu rents a girl for the duration of his stay in the 
country; with her he does whatever he pleases; afterward, much enriched by her 
experience, she returns to her family and if anything finds a surfeit of suitors 
eager to marry her.

“Indecency itself can become modish: witness France, where for a long time 
male genitals were represented in brocade-work applied to the vest and where 
brightly colored codpieces were very fashionable.

“Among nearly all the peoples of the north one meets with the traditional 
prostitution of sisters and daughters, a custom which strikes me as altogether 
reasonable; he who practices it calculates to receive something in return from the
man he panders to, or at least to watch him in action, and this lubricity is 
delicious enough to be worth going to considerable trouble to obtain. There is 
another, an exceedingly delicate, sentiment connected with prostitution of this 
type, and it is enough to induce certain men to make their wives’ favors generally 
available, as do I; that which usually motivates our gesture is this: we derive 
unheard-of stimulation from covering ourselves with an especially poignant 
obloquy; the more one multiplies the effects of one’s shame, the greater the 
pleasure one extracts from it. Thus it is we like to degrade, besmirch, mistreat the
object that we amuse ourselves giving over to be fucked; we delight in dragging it
through mud, making it wallow in filth, in fine, in doing rather as I do: carrying 
one’s wife and daughter to the brothel, forcing them to solicit in the streets, 
holding them oneself during the act of prostitution.”

“Excuse me, Monsieur,” I broke in, “but did I understand you to say that you 
have a daughter?”

“I had one,” Noirceuil replied.

“By the wife whom I know?”

“No, by my first wife; the one I have in the house at present is my eighth, 
Juliette.”

“But with tastes like yours, however could you have become a father?”

“I have been one several times, my dear. There are no grounds here for 
surprise. The thing can be done, one sometimes overcomes one’s repugnances 
when pleasures may be the reward of an honest effort.”

“I believe I understand you, Monsieur.”

“Like almost everything else, this is ridiculously simple. And yet I’ll have first to
acquire a high opinion of you before, in giving you an explanation, I disclose how 
little I merit one myself.”

I gazed at him admiringly. “Unusual man, charming individual,” I exclaimed, 
“my devotion to you shall only grow as you give me accumulating proof of your 
disdain for vulgar prejudices; the more criminal you exhibit yourself to these my 
avid eyes, the deeper my heart’s veneration for you shall be. The irregularity of 
your imagination sets mine in a ferment; I aspire only to imitate you.”

“Ah, by God,” murmured Noirceuil, running his tongue into my mouth, “I have 
never beheld a creature more analogous to me; I’d adore her if ’twere in my 
power to love a woman…. Would you imitate me, Juliette? I defy thee to do so. If 
what were enclosed in my heart could be opened to the light, it would so horrify 
the race of men there’d perhaps not be one amongst them all who’d dare come 
within sight of me. Impudence and crime, libertinage and foul infamy, I’ve carried 
them to the last degree; and if I know the taste of regret, ’tis, I do swear with 
utmost sincerity, owing to nothing but despair at having done so little, so very 
much less than I ought.”

Noirceuil was in a state of prodigious agitation, sufficient to convince me that 
the avowal of his errors excited him almost as much as their very performance. I 
drew aside the ample robe he was wearing and, seizing his more than iron-hard 
member, I set to juggling it, to dandling and palpating it gently: from the scarlet 
orifice fuck dribbled in a steady stream.

“What a tale of crimes that prick has cost me!” he cried, “what a host of 
execrable things have I done in order that it might surrender its sperm a slight 
shade more hotly. Upon this globe’s whole extent there is not a single object I’m 
not ready to sacrifice to its comfort: this tool is my god, let it be one unto thee, 
Juliette: extol it, worship it, this despotic engine, show it every reverence, it is a 
thing proud of its glory, insatiate, a tyrant; I’d fain make the earth bend its knee 
in universal homage to this prick, I’d like to see it guised in the shape of a terrific 
personage who would put to a death of awful torments every last living soul that 
thought to deny it the least of a thousand services…. Were I king, Juliette, were I 
sovereign lord of this world, supreme here, my supremest sovereign pleasure 
would be to walk about with killing henchmen in my train, to massacre instantly 
whatever displeased my very sensitive glance. … I

’d tread the full length and breadth of my domain everywhere upon a carpet of 
corpses, and I’d be happy; I’d wade across an infinite scene of destruction, and to
the sea of blood wherein my feet would steep I’d add my flowing seed.”

Drunk also, I sink down before this wondrous libertine; incontinently, I do 
enthusiastic worship to the spring of so many fell deeds whereof the mere 
recollection incomparably aroused him who had committed them; I take that 
article in my mouth, for fifteen delicious minutes I suck upon it. …

“Stay, stay, we are too few,” says Noirceuil, who was little fond of solitary 
pleasures. “Leave me be; that prick could be your undoing were you to pretend to
the honor of fetching a discharge from it all by yourself: concentrated upon a 
single point, my passions are like the sun’s rays a magnifying lens collects into 
focus: they straightway cinder the object in their path.”

And, foam flecking his lips, Noirceuil’s strong hands began to worry my 
buttocks.

That was the moment when one of Gode’s captors returned with news of her 
entry into the prison of Bicêtre and of the stillborn infant she foaled shortly 
afterward.

“Excellent,” said Noirceuil, sending the man on his way with a tip of two louis; 
“one cannot,” he confided to me in a whisper, a smile on his lips, “overpay the 
messenger bringing tidings of such welcome events. Two louis—that matches the 
little prank we’ve just treated ourselves to … and notice, Juliette, look here! see 
how my prick takes on an air of increased majesty.”

And immediately summoning into an antechamber his wife and the youthful fop
who’d sired the child just destroyed, Noirceuil advised him of what had come to 
pass, embuggering the youth as he spoke, while Madame de Noirceuil, kneeling, 
mouthed the Ganymede’s member, and while, under instructions, the pederast 
kissed my buttocks; and in the midst of this, Noirceuil caught firm hold of his 
wife’s breasts from below and gave them so fair a wrenching as to nearly tear 
them loose from her body; the lady’s screams soon brought the fuck spitting in a 
torrent from his prick.

“Tell me Juliette,” he continued, ordering the young man to evacuate into his 
cupped palm the fuck he’d squirted into his bowels, and rudely smearing that rich 
paste all over the face of his wife, “tell me, is not my sperm pure? Have you ever 
seen such fine sperm? Am I wrong in having you worship the god whose 
substance is so magnificent? Never did he whom fools designate prime mover to 
the world possess a more active or refined, a nobler; this be very godsfuck—but 
have them get out of here,” he cried, “away with them all. I regret having had to 
interrupt our conversation.

“We today punish libertinage,” my master resumed when we were alone again;
“and from Plutarch we learn that the Samnites daily and in conformance with 
legal prescriptions betook themselves to a place known as the Gardens, and that 
in a promiscuous confusion they there comported themselves in a manner almost 
too lascivious to be imagined. In that blissful locality, the historian goes on to say,
the heat of pleasure melted distinctions of sex and blood ties altogether away: 
one became husband to the wife of one’s friend; the daughter communicated 
intimately with her mother; and yet more often one saw the son play the whore 
to his sire alongside the brother busily embuggering his sister.

“The first fruits of a young girl are highly prized by us. The inhabitants of the 
Philippines make thereof no case at all. In those islands there are public officers 
who are very handsomely paid to devirginate girls on the eve of their nuptials.

“Adultery was publicly authorized in Sparta.

“Our opinion of women who take to whoring is low; on the other hand, the 
esteem in which a Lydian female was held corresponded to the number of her 
lovers. Their earnings from prostitution made up their dower, they had no other.

“The ladies of Cyprus, in quest of riches, would go down to the ports and 
publicly lie for pay with whatever foreigner disembarked upon that island.

“Moral depravation is vital to a State; the Romans were aware of this, and 
throughout the Republic consequently set up brothels stocked with boys and girls 
and built theaters where girls danced naked.

“Babylonian women were prostituted once a year in the Temple of Venus; 
Armenian women were obliged to deliver themselves in virginal condition to the 
priests of Tanais who, firstly, bum-fucked them and only accorded them the favor 
of a frontal deflowering provided they had with seeming courage withstood the 
inaugural assaults: an imprudent gesture, a tear, a twitch, a sob or a scream was 
enough, they were deprived of the honor of the subsequent ministrations and 
hence of the possibility of marrying.

“The Canarese of Goa expose their daughters to a very different ordeal: they 
prostitute them to an idol equipped with a member of iron, and its bulk is huge; 
they forcefully hurl, or impale, the girls upon this dreadful dildo which has first 
been heated to a suitable temperature: it is thus conventionally and very 
significantly enlarged that the poor child sets out in search of a husband, who’ll 
not have her unless she’s been prepared through this ceremony.

“The Caïmites, you will recall, were a second-century heretical sect; they held 
that one attains paradise only through incontinence. Every infamous act, it was 
their belief, had a tutelary angel, and, worshiping these angels one by one, they 
would give themselves over to incredible debaucheries.

“Owen, that ancient English king, by law had it established in his realm that no 
girl could wed unless she had been devirginated by him. In the whole of Scotland 
and in some districts of France the great barons enjoyed this privilege.

“Women no less than men arrive at cruelty by way of libertinage; think of the 
three hundred wives of the Incan Atabaliba, who, of their own accord and as one, 
prostituted themselves in Peru to the Spanish and aided them in the massacre of 
their own husbands.

“Sodomy is general everywhere in the world; there is not a single tribe, race, 
or nation unacquainted with its practice; in all history not one great man who was
not addicted to it. Sapphism is equally universal. This passion, like the former 
one, is natural because in Nature; at the earliest age, at the period of greatest 
candor and innocence, before she has come under alien influence, it takes shape 
and deep root in the little girl’s heart; thus, Lesbian behavior and proclivities, 
implanted by Nature, bear her ratifying seal of lawfulness.

“And bestiality used to be popular everywhere. Xenophon tells us that during 
the retreat of the Ten Thousand the Greeks used goats exclusively. This custom is 
very widespread in Italy today; the buck surpasses the female of this species: its 
narrower anal canal is warmer; and this animal, very lusty by nature, needs no 
prompting, it will begin to agitate itself as soon as it notices that one is about to 
discharge: I know whereof I speak, Juliette, for it is from experience.

“The turkey is delicious, but you must cut its throat at the critical instant; time 
the operation carefully, and the constriction of the bird’s bowels will cause you a 
fairly overwhelming pleasure.(20)

“The Sybarites embuggered dogs; Egyptian women gave themselves to 
crocodiles; American women appreciate being fucked by monkeys. By late report 
statues have also been put to use: everyone has heard of the page boy of Louis 
XV who was found discharging on the fair-assed Aphrodite. And there was a 
Greek who, arriving at Delphi to consult the Oracle, found in the Temple two 
marble genii and during the night rendered his libidinous homage to that one 
which he considered the lovelier. At dawn, spent, he lay a crown of laurel upon 
the effigy, in thanks for the pleasures he had received.

“Not only do the Siamese consider suicide justifiable, they even believe that 
self-slaughter is a beneficial sacrifice to the soul and that, by this means, the way 
will be opened to happiness in the next world.

“In Pegu, when a woman has given birth, she is turned for five days over a 
charcoal fire; it’s to purify her.

“The Caribs purchase infants while they are yet in the mother’s womb; with a 
certain dye they mark the child’s belly straightway it is born, depucelate it later, at
the age of seven or eight, and not infrequently slay it after having made this use 
of it.

“In the island of Nicaragua a father is permitted to sell his children for 
purposes of immolation. When this folk consecrate their grain, they sprinkle fuck 
upon it and dance around this twofold product of Nature.

“To every prisoner in Brazil destined to be executed, a woman is given; he 
takes his pleasure with her, and the same woman, whom he sometimes 
impregnates, assists in hacking him to pieces and participates at the meal that is 
made of his flesh.

“Before they came under the suzerainty of the Incas, the ancient 
Peruvians—that is to say, the earliest Scythian settlers who were the first 
inhabitants of America—had the custom of sacrificing their offspring to the gods.

“The people who dwell by the banks of the Rio Real for the circumcision of 
females (a ceremony common to several nations) substitute a rather curious 
practice: when girls become nubile, sticks covered with large ants are thrust into 
their womb; the insects sting and bite horribly; the sticks are carefully replaced in
order to protract the torture which never lasts less than three months and is apt 
to go on for a good while longer.

“Saint Jerome reports that in the course of his travels amongst the Gauls he 
saw the Scots with great relish consume the buttocks of young shepherds and the
breasts of young maids. Personally, I’d have much more confidence in the first of 
these dainties than in the second and, along with every anthropophagic people, I 
believe that woman-flesh, like that of all female animals, is necessarily much 
inferior to what may be cut from males.

“The Mingrelians and the Georgians are renowned for being the most beautiful 
races on earth and simultaneously for being the most addicted to every sort of 
luxury and crime; ’tis quite as if Nature had contrived thus to advise us that, far 
from being displeased by this misbehavior, she wished to lavish all her gifts upon 
those with whom it was most positively chronic. Amongst these folk abandoned to
joy, incest, rape, child-murder, prostitution, adultery, assassination, thievery, 
sodomy, sapphism, bestiality, arson, poisoning, rape, parricide—these and a 
quantity of others of the same kind are virtuous prowesses and are proper to 
boast of. Do they meet in assemblies, ’tis for nought save to chat about the 
enormity of their base achievements: reminiscences of past and designs for future
undertakings compose the matter of their favorite conversations; and it is thus 
they arouse one another to the accomplishment of further exploits.

“There are tribesmen in northern Tartary who erect for themselves a new god 
every day: this god must be the object first come across by the individual upon 
awakening in the morning. If perchance it be a mard, that mard becomes the idol 
for the day; and put case it be a mard we’re to reverence: is not a bit of shit 
worth quite as much as the comical flour-paste god adored by the Catholics? The 
Tartar divinity is excrement already, the Catholic will be in a few hours; truly, I 
find no ready distinction to be made between the two.

“In the province of Matomba, ’tis within a noisome and very dark hut the 
children of both sexes are enclosed when they have reached the age of twelve; 
and there, by way of initiation, they suffer all the ill-treatment the priests are 
pleased to mete out to them, nor when they emerge from the hut may the 
children either reveal what has been done to them nor complain thereof.

“When a girl marries in Ceylon, it is her brothers who depucelate her; the 
husband hasn’t the right to do so.

“We regard pity as a sentiment sure to guide us to good deeds; with greater 
reason, it is considered a fault in Kamchatka: amongst the people of that 
peninsula it would be vicious to rescue someone from a peril into which fate has 
led him. If these clear-minded individuals see a man drowning, they pass calmly 
on about their business without stopping; no one would dream of rescuing him.

“To forgive one’s enemies, that’s a virtue among Christian imbeciles; in Brazil, 
it is thought a splendid act to kill and eat them.

“In Guiana, when her menstruating first begins, a young girl is exposed naked 
to flies to feast upon; she often perishes during the operation. The enchanted 
spectators will then spend the whole day in merrymaking.

“In Brazil once again, on the eve of a young woman’s wedding they inflict a 
great number of cuts and gashes upon her buttocks, the object being to waken 
some measure of revulsion in a husband who, thanks to a fiery temperament and 
the tropical climate, is only too apt to incline to an antiphysical attack.(21)

“These few examples I have cited suffice to indicate what in reality are the 
virtues whereof our European laws and religions make such frantic to-do; what is 
that loathsome bond of brotherhood our vile Christianity is forever sniveling 
about. For your own self you may determine whether or not it exists in the heart 
of man; would such a host of execrations be the general rule if the virtue they 
contradict really did exist?

“I say to you over and over again: humane sentiments are baseless, mad, and 
improper; they are incredibly feeble; never do they withstand the gainsaying 
passions, never do they resist bare necessity: go examine a besieged city where 
within the walls hungry humans devour each other. Humanity? A sentimentality; it
has nothing whatsoever to do with Nature. Humanity? The child of dread, debility,
and unwholesome prejudice. Can one ignore the fact that ’tis Nature which gives 
us both our passions and our needs? or that, in seeking fulfillment, these passions
and needs proceed with total disregard for humane virtues? These humane 
virtues are thus foreign to Nature; they are thus no more than the blatant result 
of the egoism that has brought us to wishing to be at peace with our fellows in 
order to exploit them for our own pleasure. But he who has no fear of reprisals 
must be at great pains to subordinate himself to a duty which only those who 
tremble can possibly respect. Ah no, Juliette, no, there is no such thing as 
genuine pity, there is no pity save that wherefrom we calculate to profit. If at the 
moment we are in the throes of commiseration we pause and think and study 
ourselves deeply, then from the inward regions of our heart we’ll detect a hidden 
voice cry: Thou dost shed tears to behold the sore plight of thine unhappy 
neighbor; thy tears bear witness to thine own wretchedness, or to thy dread of 
being more miserable still than him for whom thou thinkest to weep. Well, what 
voice is this, if not that of fear? whence is this fear born, if not of egoism?

“So let us then thoroughly destroy this pusillanimous sentiment where we find 
it in ourselves; it must always be dolorous, since it cannot arise save through a 
comparison that plunges us back into woe.

“Labor at the task; and when, beloved child, thy mind shall have perfectly 
apprehended the nullity, nay, the rank criminality that would subsist in 
acknowledging the existence of a bond linking thine own self up in brotherhood 
with others, then proudly declare with the philosopher:

“‘Eh, to satisfy myself, why should I hesitate when the act I meditate, 
whatever the ill it cause my fellow creature, may procure me the most palpable 
pleasure? For, tentatively supposing that by performing whatever may be this act 
I do this fellow a wrong, by not performing it I must ineluctably do a wrong unto 
myself. In despoiling my neighbor of his wife, of his inheritance, of his child, I 
may, as I have just said, be committing an injustice toward him; but in depriving 
myself of these things whence I derive extremest delight, I commit one toward 
myself: well, between these two inevitable injustices, shall I be so great an 
enemy of mine own self as not to prefer that from which I can extract a few 
agreeable little sensations? If I do not act thus, ’twill be out of compassion. But if 
surrender to such a sentiment may have the dire consequence of causing me to 
renounce joys I covet so, I must summon up all my forces and cure myself of this 
painful, this disastrous sentiment, I must neglect nothing in order to prevent it, in
future, from obtaining any access to my soul. Once I have succeeded (and of 
success I am certain if I gradually accustom myself to the sight of the sufferings 
of others), I’ll never yield to any but the charm of satisfying myself; that charm 
will have no rivals, no other will beckon to me, I’ll have no further fear of 
remorse, for remorse cannot be but the aftermath of compassion, and this 
compassion I shall have extinguished in myself; I’ll therefore follow my bent, all 
unafraid honor my penchants; I’ll value my own welfare, or my own pleasure, 
above woes which no longer touch me; and I’ll sense that to let slip a real good 
from my grasp, because the having thereof would mean putting some other 
individual in an unhappy situation (a situation whose effects cannot make 
themselves felt upon me anymore), would be sheer ineptness, since it would be 
to love this stranger more dearly than I love myself, and that would be to violate 
every last law of Nature and every last element of good common sense.’

“Nor ought you to view familial ties as more sacred than these others, they are
all equally fictitious. It is not true that you owe anything to the being out of whom
you emerged; still less true that you are obliged to have any feeling whatever for 
a being that were to emerge from you; absurd to imagine that one is beholden to 
one’s brothers, sisters, nephews, nieces. Upon what rational basis can 
consanguinity establish duties; for what, for whom do we toil in the act of 
procreation? For ourselves; for anyone else? Certainly not. What can be our debt 
to a father who, amusing himself, incidentally created us? can we owe some debt 
to a son because once upon a time for the sake of diversion we spattered a little 
fuck into some womb or other? to a brother or a sister because the same womb 
was exercised upon more than one occasion? To the devil with the lot of these 
ties; needless to discriminate, they’re none of them serious.”

“Oh, Noirceuil!” I cried, “how often have you provided proof of it…. And still 
you are loath to tell me—”

“Juliette,” that amiable personage replied, “such avowals can be fitting reward 
for your behavior. I shall open my heart to you—in due time: when I feel you are 
truly worthy to hear the secrets I have to disclose. But before then you shall have
to undergo several tests.”

And his manservant having come to announce that the Minister, an intimate 
friend of Noirceuil, was waiting in the drawing room, we separated.

I lost no time making a most advantageous investment of the sixty thousand 
francs I had stolen from Mondor. However sure I was that Noirceuil would have 
approved of the theft, I could not have mentioned it to him without also divulging 
my infidelity and, had he learned of that, my lover would surely have worried lest 
his own property become subject to my depredations; prudence counseled me to 
hold my tongue, and I turned all my thoughts to increasing, by like expedients, 
the sum of my revenues. The occasion soon presented itself in the form of 
another party organized by Madame Duvergier.

The present enterprise was a mission to the home of an individual whose 
mania, as cruel as it was voluptuous, consisted in girl-whipping. We were four; at 
a cafe near the Porte Saint-Antoine I was joined by three charming creatures; a 
carriage was there waiting for us, and we were soon in Saint-Maur, at the 
delightful house of Due Dennemar. My companions were of rare beauty, youthful 
and as fresh as they were sweet to behold: the eldest was under eighteen, 
Minette was her name; she pleased me so wonderfully well I could not resist 
caressing her passionately; another was sixteen years old, the last fourteen. Very 
exacting in the choice of her victims, from the woman who conducted us to 
Saint-Maur I learned that I was the only courtesan of the quartet; my youth, my 
looks had persuaded the Due to suspend self-imposed rules which forbade him 
commerce with worldly women. The other three were seamstresses who had 
absolutely no experience in the work we were about to perform; they were decent
girls, properly brought up, had been seduced only by the large sums the Due 
offered, and by the assurance that, restricting himself to fustigation, he’d not 
impair their virginity: each of us was to receive fifty louis; you shall decide 
whether or not we earned our pay.

We were ushered into a magnificent apartment; our guide bade us undress and
await the orders it would please his Lordship to signify to us.

That was my opportunity to examine at leisure my three young colleagues’ 
naive graces, their delicate and gentle charms. What supple, willowy figures, what
faultless skins, breasts that made one’s mouth water, thighs appetizing beyond 
words; for pink plumpness, for sweetness, their charming behinds were beyond 
comparison; I devoured all three and especially Minette with the most tender 
kisses, which they reciprocated so innocently, so movingly that I discharged in 
their arms. For the better part of an hour, awaiting the time when we’d have his 
Grace’s desires to cope with, we dallied there, frolickingly, and impetuously too, 
satisfying our own; and then at last a tall lackey, almost naked, came with 
instructions that we all four make ourselves ready, but that the eldest would be 
first. This placed me third on the list; when my turn came, I entered the pleasure 
sanctuary of this contemporary Sardanapalus; and the experience I am going to 
relate is in no particular different from that which befell each of the other three 
girls.

The cabinet in which the Due received me was circular and everywhere 
paneled with mirrors; in the center was a column of porphyry, rising to a height of
some ten feet, and before it was a dais. I was told to mount upon it; the valet 
we’d seen before and who served his master’s pleasure-ceremonies, attached my 
feet to bronze rings fastened to the block I was standing on, then he raised my 
arms, secured them by cords, drew them high above my head. It was only then 
the Due approached; hitherto he had been reclining on a couch, quietly 
massaging his prick. Totally nude from waist down, a simple vest of brown satin 
covered his torso; his arms were bare to the shoulder; under his left arm he had 
a bundle of withes, thin and flexible, held together by a black ribbon. Of some 
forty years, the Due had an exceedingly somber and harsh physiognomy, and I 
judged that his moral character was not much less severe than his outward 
appearance.

“Lubin,” said he to his valet, “this one looks better than the others. A rounder 
ass, finer skin. A more interesting face. ’Tis a pity. She’ll but suffer the more.”

So saying, the villain pokes his muzzle between my buttocks, first snuffles, 
then kisses, finally bites. I emit a shriek.

“Goodness! She’s not insensitive. Too bad. We’ve scarce begun.”

Thereupon I feel his talon-like fingernails dig deep into my buttocks, he rakes, 
he hauls, he tears my skin in several places. More screams from me only animate 
this scoundrel who next inserts his fingers into my vagina; they come out bringing
with them the skin he has scraped from the walls of that delicate part.

“Lubin” he then murmured to his valet, exhibiting his bloodied fingers, “my 
dear Lubin, I triumph. Cunt-skin.”

And he deposited it upon the head of Lubin’s prick, which therewith sprang up 
very stiff. It was at that point he opened a small cabinet the mirrors concealed; 
he drew out a long garland of green foliage, I’d no idea what it was nor of what 
kind of leaves it was composed. Alas! he came near me and I saw at once that 
these were thorns. Seconded by the cruel agent of his pleasures, he twined them 
thrice or more times round my body and ended by fastening them in a very 
picturesque but also very afflicting manner, for they lacerated the whole of my 
body and especially my breasts, against which he pressed them with the most 
ferocious affectations; my buttocks, however, were spared this accursed fire, for 
they were reserved for other use: the full expanse of the flesh his lashes were to 
belabor lay completely exposed to that libertine’s mercies.

“We are about to begin,” said Dennemar when at last the arrangements were 
complete; “I earnestly request you to be patient, in as much as these proceedings
may last a certain while.”

The terrible storm about to break over my ass is heralded by ten relatively mild
strokes.

These delivered, he lets out a shout: “Now, by Jesus! let’s see what we can 
do.”

Bringing both my buttocks under fire with a redoubtable arm, he applied two 
hundred cuts, never once pausing for breath. During the operation, his valet, 
kneeling before him, sought by sucking to extract the venom that rendered this 
beast so extraordinarily vicious; and all the while he went on plying his withes, 
the Due bawled at the top of his lungs:

“Ah! the buggeress … the bitch, the slut, the whore…. By the guts of Almighty 
God, I have no great fondness for women; if God made them, why can’t I 
exterminate them, whip them to shreds and tatters? Bleeding, is she? Well, at 
last…. By bloody fucking God, ’tis good, she bleeds…. Suck, Lubin, suck, my lad, 
’tis very good, I see blood and I am happy.”

And pressing his open mouth to my behind, he lapped up what he was so 
thrilled to see flow; then, continuing:

“But, as you see, Lubin, I’m not stiff, and I’ve got to whip until I am, and once 
I’m stiff, to go on whipping till I discharge; well, that’s the program and our 
whore’s young. She’ll endure.”

The gruesome ceremony starts off again; but with certain modifications: Lubin 
has ceased sucking his master; armed with a bull’s pizzle, he attacks the Due 
who, while continuing to have at me, receives a hundred blows for every one he 
delivers. I am covered with blood, it streams down my thighs, I see it spreading 
in a crimson pool at my feet, staining the dais; punctured by the tight-wound 
thorns, slashed by the withes, I no longer know in what part of my body the pain 
is worst; and then it is that my persecutor, weary of torturing me and, all asweat 
with lust, subsiding upon the couch, finally orders me to be unbound. Swaying, 
only half-conscious, I totter toward him.

“Frig me,” says he, kissing the traces of his savagery, “or, no, rather than that, 
frig Lubin, I prefer seeing him discharge even to discharging myself. And, what’s 
more, pretty as you are, I doubt whether you’d succeed.”

Lubin lays hands on me straight off. I am still decked in that terrible garland; 
the barbarian deliberately presses it against my skin while I pollute him; his 
position was such that, when he ceded to my wrist’s supple encouragements, his 
fuck would splash upon the face of his master who, steadily continuing to drive 
the splines into my flesh, to pinch my behind, was quietly frigging himself alone; 
the effect occurs: the valet discharges, the Due’s features are drenched in sperm,
but his own remains sealed in his balls, held in reserve for a more lubricious 
scene still: I’ll give you its details.

“Get out of here,” he told me the moment Lubin had performed, “I’ve got to 
put your youngest companion to work before I call you back.” The door opened, 
in the adjoining room I discovered the two others who’d gone before me: but, 
great heavens! what a state they were in! It outdid mine; the sight of their 
bodies—so pretty, so fair, so delicious—was now enough to inspire horror; the 
poor creatures were weeping, moaning at having consented to such a party; and 
I, prouder, of sterner stuff and more

vindictive, I thought of nothing but material revenge. A door stands ajar, I peer
through it into the Due’s bedchamber, I stealthily enter. My glance falls at once 
upon three objects: a fat purse bulging with gold, a superb diamond, and a very 
fine timepiece. Hastily, I open the window; I notice, below and opposite, a little 
outbuilding forming an angle with the wall and close by the gate we entered when
we came. Quick as a flash, I strip off one of my stockings, wrap the three objects 
in it, drop the bundle into the bush growing in the corner I’ve just mentioned; the
bundle sinks down into the leaves, it’s out of sight. I return to my companions. 
The very next moment Lubin came in to fetch us: to consummate his sacrifice, 
the high priest needed all four victims at once. The youngest had already passed 
under the lash, and her ass seemed to have been treated no less severely than 
ours had been; she was bleeding from head to toe; the dais had been removed. 
Lubin directed the four of us to lie down on the floor in the middle of the 
chamber; so skillfully did he adjust us that little apart from our eight buttocks 
remained visible, I leave you to imagine the picture they presented. The Due 
approaches this group; with his left hand Lubin caresses his Lord’s prick, with his 
right he drips boiling oil upon our asses; fortunately, the crisis shortly supervenes.

“Burn them, sear them, scorch them, fry them!” cried his Grace as he 
ejaculated his fuck and blended it with the fiery liquid roasting our mutilated 
rumps, “burn these fucking whores, I’m discharging!”

From this ordeal we arose in a condition which could be better described by the
surgeon who was ten days laboring to efface the insignia left by this abominable 
scene; and he had a much easier time of it with me, upon whose behind, by good 
chance, only two or three drops of that boiling oil had fallen, than with the 
youngest of the quartet, whom our tormentors, for some probably evil motive, 
had singled out to be treated to a veritable bath.

Despite my hurts, and they were not inconsiderable, I kept my wits about me 
as we were leaving and, seizing a favorable moment, slipped over to the bush, 
plucked out my treasure, tucked it under my skirts, and thus recompensed for 
what I had suffered, was able to reckon the outing a success. Confronting 
Duvergier, I gave her a sharp scolding for having exposed me to such an insulting 
experience; what right had she to do so, I demanded, when knowing full well that
I was no longer interested in being sacrificed to her greed. I went home, installed 
myself in my bedroom and had Noirceuil notified that I was unwell and would like 
to keep to my bed undisturbed for a few days. Not one whit in love with me—or 
with anyone else—still less given to wasting his time comforting the infirm or the 
languishing, giving evidence of a superb and doctrinal unconcern, Noirceuil never 
once presented himself at my bedside; his wife, milder of temper and more 
politic, visited me twice but abstained from shedding tears on my account; by the 
tenth day I was so well mended that I looked to be, if anything, in better 
condition than before. I then bent my gaze upon my catch: the purse contained 
three hundred louis, the diamond was worth fifty thousand francs, the watch a 
thousand crowns. As I had the other sum, I invested this one too; combined, they
fetched nearly twelve thousand pounds a year; and it seemed to me that, thus 
endowed, it was high time I set to work for myself instead of continuing to be the 
toy of the avarice of others.

Thus did a year go by; during it I made my own arrangements and from what 
a number of adventures earned me pocketed the entirety. But, as chance so had 
it, none of these parties provided me an opportunity to exercise my thieving 
abilities; for the rest, I remained ever the pupil to Noirceuil, ever the butt of his 
lewd sports, ever the hated enemy of his wife.

Although our relationship was characterized by indifference, Noirceuil, who, 
without loving me, had a wonderful fondness for my mind and conversation, 
continued to pay me a very handsome allowance; all my needs were supplied, 
and in addition I had twenty-four thousand francs a year for my pleasures; join to
that the twelve thousand livres annuity I had bought for myself, and you’ll agree I
was not badly off. Caring rather little for men, it was with two charming women I 
satisfied my desires; they had two female friends who now and again were of the 
company, and we’d then execute every imaginable species of extravagance.

One day, a friend of the woman I was most attracted to solicited my sympathy 
in behalf of a kinsman who had run into some major difficulties; I was told that I 
had merely to say a word to my lover, whose influence with the Minister would be 
enough to save the situation at once; if I wished, the young man would be very 
willing to come and recite the whole story to me. Moved, despite myself, by the 
desire to make someone happy—a fatal desire wherefor the hand of Nature, who 
had not created me to be virtuous, was to see to my speedy chastening—I 
accept; the young man appears. My stars! what is my surprise to behold Lubin. I 
make an effort to conceal my emotion. Lubin assures me that he has left the 
Due’s employ, he spins out a wild and utterly confused yarn; I promise to do what
I can for him; the traitor walks out, very satisfied, says he, to have found me 
again, for he’d been hunting a year after me. For several days I heard nothing; I 
fretted over the unpleasant consequences this encounter might well have, I even 
felt a growing resentment against the friend of my boudoir companion who had 
lured me into this trap, although I had no way of knowing whether or not she had 
done so intentionally. Such were my preoccupations when one evening, as I 
emerged from the Comédie Italienne, six men halted my carriage, leveled pistols 
at the servants accompanying me, instantly forced me to get out, then pushed me
into a waiting fiacre, shouting to the driver, by way of instruction: “To the 
Hôpital!”

“My God!” I said to myself, “I am lost.”

Gathering courage at once, however, I turned to my captors:

“Sirs,” I demanded, “have you not made a mistake?”

“I beg your pardon, Mademoiselle, we may perhaps be making a mistake,” 
replied one of those knaves whom I soon recognized as Lubin himself, “yes; we 
are in all likelihood gravely mistaken, for ’tis to the scaffold we ought to conduct 
you; but if, until final inquiries have been made, in sending you no farther than 
the Hôpital, the police, out of consideration for Monsieur de Noirceuil, are 
reluctant to give you what you deserve immediately, we nonetheless trust the 
delay will be brief.”

“Why, very well,” said I in a bold tone, “we’ll see. But take care, my young 
blade, take care above all lest they who, for the moment fancying themselves in 
the stronger position, dare attack me so imprudently now do not come soon to 
regret their insolence.”

I am cast into a foul little dungeon where for thirty-six hours I remain 
absolutely alone, hearing nothing but the coming and going of my jailers.

You might perhaps be amused, dear friends, to know what my frame of mind 
was during this incarceration. I shall be frank with you: the following description 
is, I believe, exact.

As in prosperity, calm in adversity; dismayed, no, coldly furious to discover 
myself a dupe for having given virtue’s case a single instant of heed; 
resolved—profoundly determined—never again to permit it the faintest entry into 
my heart; some amount of chagrin, perhaps, to see my fortunes temporarily ebb;
but not a grain of regret, no remorse at all, not the shadow of a resolution to turn
over a new leaf if I were ever to be restored to society; not the tiniest intention to
compose my differences with religion if I were to have to die. Such was I 
inwardly-; what I say is true. Still in all, I was not absolutely free of anxiety—but 
in bygone days, when I was well-behaved, had I been any freer? Anxiety! ah, ’tis 
an old story. I prefer not to be pure and to put up with these familiar and tedious 
worries; I prefer having surrendered myself to vice than to discover myself 
blessed by a cowlike tranquillity, simple and stupid and full of an innocence I 
detest. O crime! yea, thy very stinging vipers are joys unto me: their penetrating 
fangs inject the venom that creates the divinest frenzy wherewith thou consumest
thy faithful; all these quakings and fevers are pleasures; souls like ours have got 
to be subjected to shocks, affected; they cannot possibly be by virtue, whereof 
they have a loathing that surpasses what words can convey; and so we who wish 
to live, and who must be moved powerfully, we thirst after the maddening drink….
O divine excesses! lacking which, life there is none! Yes, yes, let me be evil; let 
new possibilities for wicked deeds be offered me, and they’ll see how avidly I fly 
to commit them!

Such were my thoughts; you were curious to know them. I sketch them for 
you; and who is fitter to hear these confessions than you, my dearest friends?

“Oh, Noirceuil!” I cried upon recognizing my lover, “what god led you here to 
find me? And, after all the grievous things I have done, how could I still be of 
interest to you?”

He gazed at me. “Juliette,” said he a little later when we had been left in 
privacy, “I have nothing to reproach you for: the manner in which we have been 
living together eliminates the disagreeable circumstances that make reproaches 
possible. You were free. Love had no share in our arrangements. The single 
question was of confidence. Whatsoever might have been the similarity between 
my attitudes and yours, you judged it expedient or necessary to refuse me that 
confidence. That’s all there was to it, nothing could be more natural, more 
acceptable. But what is neither natural nor acceptable is that you be punished for 
a bagatelle like this one they have arrested you for. My child, I admire your 
intellect, and you know it, you’ve known it a long time, and so long as the 
schemes it invents sort well with mine I shall always consent to them, better still, 
actively cooperate in their realization. Do not for one instant suppose t

hat it is either from sentiment or from pity I am having you released from 
behind bars; you know me well enough to be persuaded that I could not be 
moved by either the one or the other of these two weaknesses. In this I have 
acted solely through selfishness, and I swear to you that if my prick were to get 
one ace stiffer from seeing you hang than from delivering you, by bleeding Christ,
I’d not hesitate a second. But your company pleases me, I’d be deprived of it if 
they hanged you; you’ve done enough to deserve the rope, by the way—they 
were ready to use it on you; and I respect you precisely for that reason, you are 
entitled to my respect, it would be all the greater had you merited the wheel…. 
Come along with me, you’re free. No demonstrations, please, above all no 
expression of gratitude, I abhor it.”

And remarking that, overcome, I was in spite of myself about to express 
thanks, Noirceuil backed off a pace and addressed these words to me:

“Since you will persist, Juliette,” said he, his eyes flashing, “you’ll not leave this
place until I have proved to you the utter absurdity of the feelings to which, in 
defiance of your intelligence, your heart’s impoverishment seems to be causing 
you to succumb.”

Then, having me sit down, and seating himself in a chair facing me, he entered
into the matter:

“My dear girl, you also know that I am loath to let pass an opportunity to 
shape your heart or to enlighten your mind; therefore allow me to teach you what
gratitude is.

“Gratitude, Juliette, is the word by which they denominate the sentiment felt 
and expressed in return for a boon whereof one has been the beneficiary; now, I 
must inquire into the motives of him who bestows a boon. Is he acting in his own 
behalf, or in ours? If in his, then you’ll concede that we owe him nothing; if in 
ours, the ascendancy he thereby obtains over us, far from exciting gratitude, will 
certainly only arouse our jealousy, our rage: for this purportedly good deed has in
actuality simply wounded our pride. But what is his ulterior design in putting us in
his debt? Why, the dog’s behavior is transparent. He who obligates others, he who
draws a hundred loins from his pocket to hand them to a man in distress, has, 
appearances aside, in no wise acted in the name of the needy wretch’s welfare; 
let him peer into the depths of his heart, he’ll discover he has done nothing but 
flatter his vanity, he has labored for no one’s benefit but his own, whether it be 
that from giving the money to the beggar, he derives a mental pleasure which 
outstrips the pleasure he’d receive from keeping it for himself, whether he 
imagines that this act, become notorious, will win him a reputation; but no matter
what the case, I see nothing but sheer grubby self-seeking and egoism here. Tell 
me, if you will, what I owe a person who does nothing save in his own interest? 
Well, rack your brains, finally endeavor to succeed in proving to me that he was 
thinking exclusively of the man he obligates by acting in the manner he has, that 
no one else knows anything of his deed, that report of it will never leak out, that 
he cannot have derived any pleasure from parting with that hundred louis since, 
to the contrary, the gift inconvenienced him, yes, acutely discomforted him, that, 
in a word, his deed is so damnably disinterested that not a grain of selfishness 
can be located anywhere in it or behind it; tell me all that and in reply I’ll tell you,
firstly, that it’s impossible and that, closely analyzing this benefactor’s gesture, 
we’ll inevitably and invariably strike upon some fugitive, some hidden delight 
somewhere which will diminish the value of the deed and qualify its purity; but, 
even supposing this disinterestedness impeccable, you never need lie under the 
curse of gratitude, for by this deed, or trick, maneuvering himself into a position 
of superiority and you into one of inferiority, this man, in the best of cases, inflicts
hurt upon your pride and his act mortifies something in you which, when 
offended, obliges you not to be thankful, but never to forget or forgive this that is 
unpardonable injury. From now on, this man, regardless of what he has done for 
you, acquires no right save, if you be just, to your undying enmity; you will profit 
from his service—by all means—but you will detest him who renders it; his 
existence will weigh burdensomely upon you, you will ever flush at the sight of 
him. If you learn news of his death, you’ll inwardly mark the date as a jubilee, 
you’ll feel as though delivered from a curse, from a bondage, and the assurance 
of being rid of a person before whose eyes you cannot appear without sensing a 
kind of shame will necessarily become like a promise of joy—indeed, if your soul 
is truly independent and proud, you’ll perhaps go farther, perhaps you’ll take 
certain measures … perhaps you’ll feel obliged out of duty to yourself…. Why yes, 
you may well, you certainly shall, go to the point of destroying the being whose 
existence plagues you; what other alternative have you? by all means yes, you’ll 
extinguish the life of this man as you would liquidate an eternally fatiguing 
burden; the service rendered you, instead of having provoked friendly sentiments 
for this benefactor, will, don’t you see, have produced the most implacable hatred.
Consider well what I say, Juliette, and judge for yourself how incredibly ridiculous,
and dangerous, it must always be to do good unto your fellow men. In the light of
my analysis of gratitude, observe, my dear, how precious little I want yours, and 
think how eager I must be not to find myself in the grave position of having 
rendered you any service at all. I repeat it once again: in liberating you from this 
prison I do nothing for your sake, it is in nobody’s interest but mine own that I 
act; believe that, absolutely; now let’s be off.”

We betook ourselves to the office of the clerk; Noirceuil spoke:

“Your Honor,” said he, addressing one of the magistrates there, “this young 
lady, recovering her freedom, does not intend to conceal the name of the culprit 
who committed the theft of which she has been erroneously accused; my friend 
has just assured me that the individual you seek is one of the three girls who 
were there with her at the residence in Saint-Maur of Due Dennemar. Speak, 
Juliette, do you recollect the girl’s name?”

“I do indeed, Monsieur,” I answered, instantly perceiving what the perfidious 
Noirceuil was about. “She was the prettiest of the three, her age must be 
eighteen or nineteen, and she is called Minette.”

“That is all we want to know, Mademoiselle,” said the man of the law; “will you
seal your deposition under oath?”

“I shall, your Honor, of course,” I replied, raising my right hand toward the 
crucifix: “I do solemnly swear,” I intoned in a loud and clear voice, “and before 
God do hereby take sacred oath, that she who goes by the name of Minette is 
guilty and alone responsible for the theft committed in the house of Monsieur le 
Due de Dennemar.”

We left and promptly settled ourselves in Noirceuil’s coach.

“Well, my dove, without me you’d never have been able to play that nasty little
trick. And yet, my role in the thing was modest: indeed, I merely set the stage; I 
felt certain, and I was right, that there was no need to prepare you for what was 
to come. You carried it off faultlessly. Kiss me, my angel. … I love to suck this 
lying tongue. Ah, you behaved like a goddess. Minette will be hanged; and, when 
one is guilty, ’tis delicious not only to wriggle out of a scrape but to have an 
innocent person put to death in one’s stead.”

“Oh, Noirceuil,” I cried, “I do love you so! verily, of all the men in this world, 
only you were a fit companion for me; I failed you, and you shall make me regret 
it.”

“Come, Juliette, have no fear,” Noirceuil replied; “you have committed a crime,
do me the favor of feeling no guilt therefor; it is a virtuous act I expect you to 
repent. You had no cause to do this thing behind my back,” continued my lover as
we drove toward his mansion. “I have no objection if you wish to do a little 
whoring, provided you are motivated by greed or lust; whatsoever has its origin in
such vices is totally respectable, according to my view. But you ought to be 
cautious in your dealings with Duvergier’s clientele: she traffics with and procures 
for none but libertines whose cruel passions could easily bring you to your 
downfall: Had you specified your tastes to me, I myself could have arranged 
exceedingly profitable encounters wherein the dangers would have been relatively
slender and you would have been able to steal your fingers to the bone. For theft 
is an everyday affair, of all the whims to be found in man not one is more natural;
I myself long had the habit; and I only rid myself of it by adopting others which 
are far worse. For petty vices there is no better cure than major crimes; the more
one diddles virtue, the more one becomes accustomed to outraging it; and in the 
end, nothing short of enormity can wake the slightest sensation in us. Really, 
Juliette, you’ve missed acquiring whole fortunes at a stroke; unaware of your 
caprices, in the past year I’ve refused you to at least five or six friends who were 
burning to have a fair shot at you and with whom you’d have been quits after 
having simply bared your ass. Anyhow,” Noirceuil went on, “the source of all this 
trouble is that deplorable Lubin who, suspected by his employer, swore to make 
the most thorough investigation. But, don’t fret, my beloved, you’re avenged: 
Lubin entered Bicêtre yesterday, he’ll stay there the rest of his life. You must 
know that it is to the excellent Saint-Fond, Minister and my great friend, you owe 
your deliverance and the suitable conclusion of the affair. The case against you 
was made up, watertight; they were going to have you in the dock tomorrow; 
twenty-two witnesses had been assembled to testify. Well, had there been five 
hundred, our influence would still have drowned them out; this influence is 
immense, Juliette, and between the two of us, Saint-Fond and I, we can regularly 
expect, by means of a word, a gesture, and whenever we like, to untie the rope 
knotted around the neck of the worst criminal on earth, and to have a saint 
mount the scaffold and die in his place. That’s how things are when idiot princes 
are on the throne. Everyone in their vicinity leads them around by the nose, 
mulcts them, and those drab robots, while fancying they do their own governing, 
actually reign through us, as our instruments; or, if you prefer, our passions are 
the sole sovereign in this kingdom. We could take our revenge upon Dennemar 
too, I’m equipped with all that’s needed for that; but he’s as libertine as we, his 
eccentricities prove it. Never attack those who resemble us, that’s my creed, you 
might subscribe to it too. The Due knows he was wrong in behaving as he did; 
he’s ashamed of himself today, he relinquishes title to the stolen goods and would
even be very happy to see you again; I conferred with him, all he asked was that 
someone hang, and, you see, someone shall: he’s satisfied, so are we. My advice 
is, however, that you not visit the old miser; we know perfectly well that if he 
desires to see you it is only to persuade you to take pity on Lubin: well, don’t. I 
too once had that Lubin in my service, he fucked me very badly, cost me a great 
deal of money, and so disgusted me that I have, more than once, thought of 
having him packed off to some jail; he’s in jail now, it seems to me right that he 
stay there. As for the Minister, he’d like to meet you; it will be this evening, you’re
to sup with him. He’s an excessively libertine individual…. Tastes, proclivities, 
fantasies … passions, vices ad infinitum; I hardly need recommend the extremest 
submissiveness—it is the one way in which you can demonstrate the gratitude 
whose effects you very mistakenly wished to shower upon me.”

“My soul is being cast in the mold of yours, Noirceuil,” I answered coolly, “I 
cease offering you thanks now that you have made it plain that what you did, you
did in your own behalf; and it would seem I love thee better and more since I’ve 
come to see that I owe thee nothing. As for the submission you request of me, it 
shall be entire; dispose of me, I am yours; a woman, I know my place and that 
dependence is my lot.”

“No, not absolutely,” Noirceuil rejoined, “your easy circumstances, your wit, 
your character set you very definitely outside that form of slavery. To it I only 
submit wifely women and whores, and in this I comply with the laws of Nature 
who, as you must observe everywhere, requires that such beings crawl and fawn;
intellect, talents, parts, wealth, and influence separate some from the other 
creatures whom Nature made to comprise the class of the weak; and when these 
exceptions merit inclusion in the class of the strong, they automatically fall heir to
all the rights and perquisites of the latter: tyranny, oppression, impunity, and the 
liberal exercise of every crime—these are entirely permitted to them. I would 
have you a woman and a slave unto me and my friends; a despot unto everyone 
else … and I here and now swear that I shall avail you of the means. Juliette, hast
passed a day and a half in prison? You deserve some sort of restitution. Rascal, I 
know of your twelve thousand a year—you hid that from me; it matters not, I was
aware of your transactions, I’ll get you ten thousand more tomorrow, and the 
Minister has asked me to give you this document: it entitles you to an annual 
pension of a thousand crowns, interest upon capital bequeathed to the hospitals; 
the sick will have a few less bowls of soup and you a few fripperies more, the 
universal scheme shan’t be dislocated for that. Which, it appears to me, makes 
five and twenty thousand pounds a year for you, not counting your appointments,
which will continue to be paid to you in full and punctually. And so, my heart, you 
do well perceive that the consequences of crime are not always unhappy: a 
virtuous scheme, that of aiding Lubin, got you hurled into a dungeon; the theft 
executed in Dennemar’s house determines and motivates your prosperity; do you 
hesitate any more? Ah! commit your fill of crimes and more, we are presently 
acquainted with the workings of your imagination, we expect much of you, and 
we guarantee that whatsoever you do, it shall be done with impunity.”

“Can human laws be so incredibly unjust, Noirceuil? The innocent Gode groans 
in one prison cell, from another the guilty Juliette emerges covered with the 
blessings of fortune.”

“And it’s quite as it ought to be, all according to order, my sweet girl,” Noirceuil
rejoined; “the luckless are the toys of the affluent, Nature’s laws subordinate the 
ones to the others; the weak are necessarily fodder to the mighty. Glance 
inspectingly at the universe, at all the laws which regulate its operations: tyranny 
and injustice, sole principles of every disorder, must be the fundamental laws of a 
cause which functions only through disorders.”

“Oh, my friend!” said I, carried away by enthusiasm, “legitimizing all these 
crimes in my eyes, affording me, as you do, all the means I need for committing 
them, you so fill my soul with delight, with restlessness … with a delirium such as 
no words can express—and you still do not wish to have me thank you?”

“For what? You owe me nothing. I am in love with evil. I will hire anyone to do 
it. I am acting selfishly in this instance as I do in every other.”

“But I must show a token of my feelings for all you are doing for me—”

“Then commit crimes in plenty and hide none of them from me.”

“Hide a crime from you? Never. My confidence shall be absolute, you shall be 
master of my thoughts as of my days, in my heart there shall be no desire born 
save I communicate it to you, every pleasure I shall know shall be shared with 
you…. But, Noirceuil, there is yet one little favor I’d beg of you: the woman who 
betrayed me by bringing that Lubin to see me, she powerfully excites my ire—I 
thirst for revenge. The creature must be punished; will you look to the matter at 
your earliest convenience?”

“Give me her name and address, we’ll have her behind bars tomorrow. Her 
residence there will be permanent.”

We reached Noirceuil’s house.

“Here’s Juliette,” said Noirceuil, presenting me to his wife whose air was cool 
and reserved. “She’s back with us again, safe and sound. The charming creature 
was the victim of a calumny; she’s the world’s best beloved girl and I beseech 
you, Madame, to continue to hold her in the high regard she for a quantity of 
reasons is entitled to expect from you.”

Great Heaven! I said to myself, when once re-established in my luxurious 
quarters, I began to take stock of the splendid situation I was going to enjoy—and
to contemplate the revenue I was to become mistress of. Oh, great Heaven! the 
life I am to lead! Fortune, Providence, Fate, God, Universal Agent, whoever thou 
art, whatever be thy name, if ’tis thus thou dost treat those who surrender 
themselves into the arms of wickedness, how can one help but follow that career?
Eh. ’Tis done, I’ll never enter into any other. Divine excesses which they dare call 
crimes, you shall from now on be my gods, my only gods, my unique principles 
and my whole code of laws; I’ll cherish only you so long as there is breath unto 
me.

My maids were waiting with my bath. I spent two hours there, two more at my
toilette; fresh as a rose, I appeared at the Minister’s supper, and, so they assured 
me, looked more lovely than the very sun itself, of whose light a few abject 
rogues had cheated me for the space of two days.


Part Two

Monsieur de Saint-Fond was a man of some fifty years: endowed with a keen 
wit, with much intelligence and much duplicity, his character was very traitorous, 
very ferocious, infinitely proud; it was in the supremest degree he possessed the 
art of robbing France, and that of distributing warrants for arbitrary arrest—the 
which he both sold at a goodly price and himself made use of, according to the 
dictates of his most idle fancy. Above twenty thousand persons of both sexes and 
all ages were at that moment, owing to his instructions, languishing in the various
royal dungeons with which the kingdom is studded. “Of these twenty thousand 
souls,” he confided to me one day, a smile upon his lips, “not a single one is guilty
of anything.” D’Albert, Chief Justice of the Parlement at Paris, was also at the 
Minister’s supper. It was only as we, Noirceuil and I, were arriving that he told me
of D’Albert’s presence there.

“You ought,” he counseled me, “to show as much deference to that gentleman 
as to the other, your fate was decided by him a mere twelve hours ago; he spared
you. I had Saint-Fond extend an invitation to him so as to give you an opportunity
to repay him for his thoughtfulness.”

The seraglio at the disposal of the three men included, in addition to Madame 
de Noirceuil and myself, four charming whores. Of Duvergier’s selection, these 
creatures were still virgins. The youngest was called Eglée—she was thirteen, 
honey-haired, a little enchantress. Then there was Lolotte, fair as Flora; such a 
glow of health as distinguished her has become rare indeed; she was only lately 
turned fifteen. Henriette was sixteen years old and combined about her person 
more charms than did ever poet ascribe to the Three Graces. Lindane was the 
eldest, she was seventeen, superbly made; the expressiveness of her eyes 
positively took one’s breath away.

On hand as well were six youths ranging in age from fifteen to twenty; naked, 
their hair arranged in feminine style, they served the table. And so it was that 
each libertine had at his bidding four objects of lust, two of one sex and two of 
the other. None of the corps had as yet put in an appearance when Noirceuil led 
me into the salon and introduced me to D’Albert and Saint-Fond, who, after 
embracing me, dallying with me, praising me for a quarter of an hour or more, 
declared themselves well pleased to have me of the company.

“It’s a delicious little rascal, this one,” said Noirceuil, “who through her 
unconditional submission to them would indicate to her judges how thankful she is
they saved her life.”

“I’d have regretted depriving her of it,” said D’Albert. “However, it is not 
without good reason Themis is represented wearing a

blindfold. And you’ll agree with me that we ought always to have one over our 
own eyes whenever it is one such pretty little thing as this we have to judge.”

“I promise her lifelong impunity,” said Saint-Fond, “total impunity. She is at 
liberty to do absolutely anything she likes, without fear. Regardless what she is 
guilty of, she shall be protected by me, and I swear to avenge her according to 
her wishes upon whosoever seeks to spoil or in any wise interfere with her 
pleasures, however criminal they may be.”

“Let me take the same oath,” said D’Albert. “Indeed, I shall go farther: 
tomorrow there will be delivered to her a letter from the Chancellor, which will in 
advance nullify any court action any tribunal in the realm might eventually be 
induced to take against her. But, Saint-Fond, I have yet something else in mind. 
So far we have tended to dismiss crime, to connive at it; we ought rather 
encourage it, don’t you think? I’d like to have you arrange to have Juliette 
rewarded for the misdeeds I expect her to commit: bonuses in the form of 
pensions running from, let us say, two thousand to twenty-five thousand francs a 
year, the sums depending upon the feats she proves capable of.”

“It should seem to me, Juliette,” said Noirceuil, “that you have just now been 
given the solidest motives both to allow your passions the broadest scope 
possible, and to hide none of your extravagances from us. But I really must say, 
gentlemen,” my lover continued before I had a chance to reply, “you put to 
wonderful purpose the authority vested in you by the laws and the monarch of 
this our beloved country.”

“Eh, we do what we can with the means we possess,” was Saint-Fond’s candid 
response; “one always labors best in one’s own behalf. Our office is to safeguard 
and promote the welfare of the king’s subjects; in ensuring our own and this 
engaging child’s, are we not carrying out our duties?”

“Permit me to expand upon those remarks,” said D’Albert. “When accorded 
these powers we were not instructed to concern ourselves for the welfare of this 
or that isolated individual, we were merely informed: the authority we grant you 
is to further the happiness of the community. Now, it is impossible to render all 
men equally happy; therefore we hold our mission fulfilled when we have been 
able to satisfy several among the many.”

“Yet,” said Noirceuil, whose sole aim in pursuing the conversation was to 
provide his friends an opportunity to shine, “by shielding the guilty and dooming 
the innocent, your efforts conspire rather to the ill of society than to the good.”

“I very stoutly deny that,” Saint-Fond rejoined. “To the contrary, vice makes 
many more people happy than ever does virtue; and hence I am a far better 
servant of the public weal in my protecting the vicious than I would be in 
rewarding the virtuous.”

“Fie! Such arguments are appropriate only in the mouths of scoundrels—”

“My friend,” said D’Albert, “they are also your joy. It does not beseem you to 
contradict them.”

“You are quite right,” was Noirceuil’s answer. “I think, though, that after all this
talk we might do well to act a little. Would you care to have Juliette to yourselves 
before the others get here?”

“No, not I,” D’Albert said. “I am not prone to tête-à-têtes. What with the 
extreme need I have to be aided in these proceedings, I prefer to keep patience 
and wait till the assembly is complete.”

“For my part,” said Saint-Fond, “I rejoice at Noirceuil’s suggestion. Come along
with me, Juliette; we shan’t be long.”

He led me into a boudoir, closed the door, invited me to undress. He spoke to 
me while I removed my clothes. “I have been assured you are very compliant. My
desires are a bit loathsome, I know, but you are intelligent. I have done you 
outstanding service; I shall do more: you are wicked, you are vindictive—very 
well,” said he, tendering me six lettres de cachet which required only to be filled 
in with the names of whomever I chose to have imprisoned for an indeterminate 
period, “here are some toys, amuse yourself with them; and here, take this, it is 
a diamond worth about a thousand louis, payment for the pleasure that is mine in
making your acquaintance this evening. What? No, no, my dear, take it all, it is 
yours, it cost, me nothing. Money for purchasing the gem came from State funds, 
not out of my pocket.”

“Indeed, my Lord, your generosity leaves me confused—”

“Oh, it will go farther still. I’d like to have you in my household. I need a 
woman who will stop at nothing. I give dinners from time to time; you strike me 
as the ideal person for handling the poisoning.”

“What, my Lord, do you poison people?”

“There’s often nothing else to do with them. There are so many individuals one
must put out of the way, you see. Scruples? I? Surely not. It’s simply a technical 
problem. I shouldn’t suppose you have any objections to poison?”

“None at all,” I returned, “not in principle. I can swear to you that no 
conceivable crime affrights me, that every one I have perpetrated so far has 
delighted me unspeakably. It is merely that until now I have never administered 
poison; only afford me the chance, I ask no more.”

“Charming creature,” Saint-Fond murmured. “Come, Juliette, kiss me. And so it
is agreed? Good. Once again I give you my solemn oath: never shall you have 
any punishment to fear. Do in your own interest whatever you esteem profitable 
and pleasurable, dread no reprisals; should the blade of the law be turned against
you, I shall deflect its edge, I shall do so every time, I promise that. Believe me. 
But you must prove—prove right now—that you are fit for the employment I have 
in mind. Look here,” and he tendered me a little box, “tonight at supper I shall 
seat next to you that one of the whores I have selected for the test; ingratiate 
yourself, caress her thoroughly, feint is the sure cloak of crime, deceive her as 
artfully and as entirely as you can, and at dessert cast this powder into one of the
glasses of wine that will be placed before her: its effect will be swift; by that 
token I shall learn whether you are or are not the woman I need. Succeed, and 
the post I propose is yours.”

“Ah, my Lord,” said I with warmth, “I am at your orders. Issue them, issue 
them, let me show you what I can do.”

“Delightful, delightful…. But now let us distract ourselves, Mademoiselle, your 
libertinage fetches my prick to a pretty stand. Eh, not too fast, however; we must
undertake nothing until I have impressed upon you the high importance of 
observing very strictly this formula: you must be respectful. Respectful in all 
things, constantly, unfailingly. My titles to respect are many, I demand that they 
be acknowledged; I am a proud man, Juliette. Under no circumstances shall I use 
the familiar second person with you; never say thou to me. Address me, instead, 
as my Lord, speak to me in the third person so far as possible, and when you are 
in my presence study to assume a reverent attitude, posture, and mien. Apart 
from the eminent position I occupy, my birth is illustrious, my fortune enormous, 
and my credit superior even to the King’s: my station and condition make vanity 
unavoidable: the powerful man who, beguiled by the always meretricious 
popularity he may sometimes enjoy, allows himself to be approached too nearly, 
suffers as a consequence a loss of face, of prestige, is humiliated, abased, sinks 
into the estateless ruck. Nature put the great on earth as she did the stars in the 
sky: they are to shed light upon the world, never to descend to its level. Such is 
my pride that I like servants to kneel before me, prefer always to employ an 
interpreter when holding parley with that vile rabble known as the people; and I 
detest everybody who is less than my peer.”

“In that case,” said I, “my Lord must despise a great share of society, since 
there are very few persons in this world who can pretend to be his equal.”

“Precious few, Mademoiselle, that is correct; which is why I despise everybody 
on earth except the two friends who are here this evening, and a very limited 
number of others: for all the rest my hatred is unbounded.”

“But, my Lord,” I took the liberty to say to this despot, “do not your libertine 
caprices now and again constrain you to step down from the pinnacle upon which,
so it does seem to me, you would prefer to remain at all times?”

“No,” Saint-Fond replied, “there’s no contradiction here, it’s all of a piece: for 
minds conformed like mine, the humiliation implicit in certain acts of libertinage 
serves only as fuel to the fire of our pride.”(1)

By then I was standing naked before him. “Ah, Juliette, it is a magnificent ass I
see there,” praised the haughty lecher, exposing himself. “They told me it was 
superb, but upon my soul it surpasses its reputation. Bend forward, let me put my
tongue to it…. O God!” he cried, all dismayed, “it’s spotlessly clean! Did Noirceuil 
neglect to tell you in what state asses are to be when presented to me?”

“No, my Lord, of this Noirceuil told me nothing.”

“I like them unwiped, beshat. … I like them perfectly foul—but this one is 
scrubbed, fresh as new-driven snow. Well, we shall have to resort to another; 
here you are, Juliette, behold mine—it is the way I wanted yours to be, you’ll find 
shit in there aplenty. Kneel facing it, adore it, consider the honor I accord you in 
permitting you to do my ass the homage an entire nation, nay, the whole wide 
world aspires to render it—oh, how many people would be overcome with joy 
could they but exchange places with you! if the very gods were to descend into 
our midst it would be to vie for this favor. Suck, lick; drive deep your tongue; 
seize your chance, my child, this is not the moment for backwardness.”

And though my misgivings were not negligible, I vanquished them; it was to 
my interest to prove myself mettlesome. I did all this libertine desired of me, I 
sucked his balls, I let him fart into my mouth, shit on my breasts, spit and piss all 
over my face, tweak my nipples, slap me, kick me, pinch me, stoutly fuck my ass,
and in doing so become much aroused, then discharge into my mouth, and I 
swallowed his sperm, for he had ordered that I swallow every drop. I did 
everything, and owing to my docility all went well. Divine effects of wealth and 
influence! Your desires obliterate virtue and will, wither all power to resist; and 
the hope of being kindly received by you causes everyone, whosoever he be, to 
fawn at your feet, mindful only to do your least bidding. Saint-Fond’s discharge 
was admirable, forceful, convulsive; it was accompanied by the most vigorous, 
the most impetuous blasphemies, pronounced in a very loud voice; quantitatively 
his expenditure of sperm was considerable, the temperature of that sperm was 
high, in consistency it was dense, it was savory to the palate, his ecstasy was 
energetic, he thrashed violently about, intense was his delirium: a handsome 
figure of a man was he, his skin was very fair, his ass as shapely as any to be 
found, his balls the size of a hen’s eggs, and his well-muscled prick was probably 
six inches in circumference and seven in length, ending in a head measuring at 
least two inches long, and ’twas far, far thicker there than at the stem. Saint-Fond
was tall, nicely proportioned, his nose was aquiline, he had long lashes, fine dark 
eyes, strong white teeth, and his breath was sweet; when done he asked me 
whether it were not true that his fuck was exquisite.

“Pure cream, my Lord, pure cream, I’ve never swallowed any to equal it.”

“You may expect to be granted the honor of that fare from time to time,” said 
he, “and you will likewise feast upon my shit when we become truly well 
acquainted. So now, Juliette, kneel down, kiss my feet, and thank me for all the 
favors I have condescended to bestow on you today.”

I obeyed, and Saint-Fond embraced me, vowing himself positively enchanted 
with me: the filth I was swimming in was got rid of with the help of a bidet and 
some perfumes. We quit the boudoir; as we were traversing the apartments 
separating it from the assembly hall, Saint-Fond reminded me of the box I was 
carrying.

“Indeed,” said I, laughing, “does crime linger in your brain even after the 
illusion has been dissipated?”

“What,” the dreadful man retorted, “did you then mistake my proposal for 
something conceived in a moment of excitement, and destined to be forgot 
straightway the moment was over?”

“I presumed it was only that.”

“You were wrong; this is one of those necessary things whose anticipated 
doing very certainly stirs up our passions but which, though conceived during a 
transport, must nonetheless be calmly carried out afterward.”

“But are your friends privy to it?”

“Can you doubt?”

“There will be a scene.”

“Not at all. We are accustomed to this. Ah, if the rose bushes in Noirceuil’s 
garden could speak and say to what nutriments they owe their crimson 
magnificence … Juliette, my dear Juliette, such ones as are we consider that there
is not, that there cannot be, one execution too many.”

“Then be easy, my Lord. I have sworn obedience to you, I shall keep my oath.”

We reappeared in the others’ midst; they had been waiting for us, all the 
women were by now there. We had no sooner returned than D’Albert signaled the
desire to repair to the boudoir with Madame de Noirceuil, Henriette, Lindane, and 
two youths, and it was not until later when I saw him in action that I was able to 
form a precise idea of his tastes. Those of us who were left after the departure of 
D’Albert and his troupe fell to lewd frolicking: the two little girls, namely Lolotte 
and Eglée, by means generally similar to those I had employed shortly before, 
endeavored to stiffen Saint-Fond afresh; they succeeded; Noirceuil, watching, had
himself bum-fucked while kissing my buttocks. Saint-Fond caressed one of the 
lads and held several minutes of private conversation with Noirceuil; when they 
came back both seemed in high fettle, and the rest of the company having joined 
us, we all betook ourselves to supper.

Imagine, good friends, imagine my surprise when I beheld Madame de 
Noirceuil guided very ceremoniously to the table and invited to take the chair next
to mine. I leaned toward Saint-Fond, who had placed himself to my left, and 
whispered, “My Lord, is this the woman you have designated to be the victim?”

“She is,” replied the Minister, “and pray master your dismay, it does you scant 
credit in my eyes—another hint of this pusillanimity, let me warn you, and you 
shall lose my esteem forever.”

So I sat down; the meal was no less delicious than libertine, the women, only 
partially and loosely clad, to the lechers’ fingerings exposed all the charms the 
Graces had lavished upon them. One had a new-budding breast to hand, another 
fondled a buttock whiter, than alabaster; it was only about our cunts there was 
not much ado made, such objects seldom proving of any real concern to men of 
that breed; firmly of the opinion that to apprehend Nature one must seduce her, 
and that to seduce her one must often outrage her, these rascals are often wont 
to perform their devotions at those very shrines which Nature, so it is alleged, 
forbids us to approach. When wine of the finest vintage and the most succulent 
viands had heated the imaginations of the company, Saint-Fond laid hands on 
Madame de Noirceuil: the atrocious crime that dastard’s perfidious brain had been
meditating against the luckless creature was stiffening his device prodigiously; he 
bears her off to a couch at the farther end of the room and embuggers her, 
bidding me shit into her mouth in the meantime; four youths are disposed in such
wise he can frig two, one with his right hand, one with his left, a third is encunting
Madame de Noirceuil, and the fourth, perched above me, gives me his prick to 
dandle and pump; a fifth bum-stuffs the Minister.

“Ah, Jesusfuck!” Noirceuil exclaims, “’tis an enchanting sight. To my knowledge
there is nothing prettier than to see your wife fucked this way. My dear 
Saint-Fond, I beseech you not to coddle her.”

And raising Eglée’s buttocks to mouth height, he has a morsel of shit fresh out 
of the little one, the while sodomizing Lindane, and the sixth boy penetrates him 
anally. ’Tis Saint-Fond in the center, Noirceuil on the right; D’Albert on the left 
now completes the picture: he sodomizes Henriette as he colls the ass of the boy 
busily fucking the Minister and with both hands gropes about and kneads 
whatever is within reach.

But words cannot describe that divinely voluptuous scene; only an engraver 
could have rendered it properly, and yet it is doubtful he would have had time to 
capture those many expressions, all those attitudes, for lust very quickly 
overwhelmed the actors and the drama Was soon ended. (It is not easy for art, 
which lacks movement, to realize action wherein movement is the soul; and this 
is what makes engraving at once the most difficult and thankless art.)

We returned to table.

“Tomorrow.” said the Minister, “I am to prepare and dispatch a lettre de 
cachet; the man concerned is guilty of some rather unusual misconduct. He is a 
libertine who like you, Noirceuil, adores giving his wife to be fucked by strangers; 
this wife—it will strike you as incomprehensible, I know—this wife has been so 
silly as to complain about usage that a good many other women crave. The 
respective families have become entangled in the affair, I have been asked to 
have the husband confined.”

“Excessively severe punishment,” Noirceuil muttered.

“Far too lenient in my opinion,” said D’Albert; “there are dozens of countries 
where such fellows are put to death.”

“Hear that, will you! ’Tis but too typical. You gentlemen of the law,” said 
Noirceuil, “are happy only when blood is shed. For you, Themis’ scaffolds are 
boudoirs: pronouncing the death sentence, your pricks harden; and you discharge
when it is carried out.”

“True, that not uncommonly happens,” D’Albert admitted, “but where is the 
disadvantage in converting one’s duties into pleasures?”

“Quite,” said Saint-Fond. “Common sense is on our side. But to return to the 
case of the man we were discussing a moment ago. You will agree with me that it 
is shocking, the number of wives who are behaving like fools nowadays.”

“It is lamentable,” said Noirceuil. “One comes across nothing but women who 
fancy that fulfilling their duty to their husbands begins and ends with preserving 
their own honor, and who, in order that they acquire and remain in possession of 
this shoddy virtue of theirs, expect those husbands to pay the price of constantly 
foregoing everything that stands at variance with conventional pleasures. Forever 
garbed in the silly raiments of a good name and mounted astride the hobbyhorse 
of virtue, and supposing they are beyond reproach, whores of this category 
imagine they are entitled to unbounded and unconditional respect, that they are 
therefore at liberty to act like utter cretins and certain to be forgiven every piece 
of stupidity and clumsiness. It is disgusting, I say; who would not a thousand 
times over prefer a wife who, though the most arrant slut, were to camouflage 
her vices behind absolute complacency, behind utter submission to every one of 
her husband’s caprices? Ha! fuck, fair ladies, fuck to your hearts’ delight; fuck 
your pretty heads off, we couldn’t care less; we have only one concern, and it is 
this: that you anticipate our desires, that you satisfy them all with alacrity and 
unscrupulously; endeavor to please us, metamorphose yourselves, assume many 
roles, play at this sex and that, be children so as to afford your husband the 
passing great delight of whipping you, and you may be sure of it: treat him thus 
thoughtfully and comprehendingly and he will take little heed of anything else. 
The course of action I have just outlined is to my knowledge the only one capable 
of mitigating the horror of wedlock, the most appalling, the most loathsome of all 
the bonds humankind has devised for its own discomfort and degradation.”

“Ah, Noirceuil, there is gallantry lacking in you,” reprimanded Saint-Fond, 
somewhat forcefully squeezing the breasts of the wife of his friend; “you are after
all speaking in the presence of your spouse.”

Noirceuil grimaced. “Eh, so I am. That situation will be altered before long.”

“But what’s this?” cried the mischievous D’Albert, casting a look of feigned 
surprise at the poor woman.

“We are due to be separated.”

“Due to be separated! How dreadful,” said Saint-Fond, greatly aroused, and 
while frigging a youth with his right hand, continuing to paw and to wring Madame
de Noirceuil’s pretty dugs with his left. “Do you mean to say you are going to 
sever your ties, ties so sweet?”

“Have they not lasted long enough?”

“Very well then,” Saint-Fond replied, still frigging a prick, still molesting two 
bubs, “if you really intend to leave your wife, I’ll take her—I’ve always thought 
very highly of her, of her gentleness, of the humane quality about her…. Kiss me, 
bitch!”

She was weeping from the pain Saint-Fond had been inflicting on her for a 
good quarter of an hour; they were of her sighs the libertine paused to drink, her 
tears he licked away before resuming: “Bless me, Noirceuil, to separate from so 
lovely a wife”—and he bit her—“so sensitive a wife”—and he pinched her—“why, 
my dear Noirceuil, it’s sheer murder.”

“You know,” said D’Albert, “between the two of us I believe that’s exactly what 
Noirceuil has in mind, a murder.”

“How ghastly!” Saint-Fond exclaimed; he had got Madame de Noirceuil to rise 
and was now clawing her buttocks while she fisted his tool. “There’s nothing for it,
my friends. Plainly, I’d best embugger her afresh; it may help her forget her other
woes.”

“Yes,” said D’Albert, just then taking hold of her frontwise, “and in the 
meantime I’ll encunt her. Come, let’s hem her in and do her between us.”

“And what would you have me do, pray tell?” Noirceuil asked.

“Meditate,” said the Minister. “You’ll hold the candle, you’ll meditate, you’ll 
plot.”

“I can put my time to better use,” rejoined the barbarous husband; “leave my 
beloved helpmeet’s head alone, I wish to have her tearful countenance within 
view, I’ll bestow an occasional slap upon that image of distress the while I 
embugger this dear little Eglée; and two of the boys will take turns sounding my 
bum, and I’ll pluck hairs from Henriette’s cunt and Lolotte’s, and will watch 
Lindane and Juliette being served, one cuntwardly and the other in the asshole, 
by the two lads remaining.”

And it was so, very hot was the affray and very prolonged; the three libertines 
discharged at last, Dame Noirceuil emerging from their clutches all battered and 
bruised—D’Albert, for instance, had taken a great bite out of one of her breasts. 
Following the example of those gentlemen, and stoutly fucked by two of the 
pederastic youths, I swear that I too discharged unspeakably: flushed, my hair all
disordered, I heard my performance and looks praised when we had done; it was 
Saint-Fond who caressed me especially.

“Is she not superb in this state!” he repeated. “How crime embellishes her!” 
And he applied his lips to most every part of my body, sucking them 
indiscriminately.

We did not return to the table, but everybody continued to drink there where 
he lay; very agreeable, this, and one is much quicker drunk that way. Alcohol 
began to have its effect almost at once, the women began to tremble; blazing 
glances were bent upon them, and I noticed that when they were spoken to the 
terms employed were threatening as well as foul. However, two facts were readily
to be perceived: firstly, that the storm then gathering would pass me by, and that 
Madame de Noirceuil was to bear the brunt of its fury; I dismissed my fears.

Shunted out of Saint-Fond’s hands into those of her husband and from his into 
D’Albert’s, the unhappy lady was in sorry straits already; her breasts, her arms, 
her thighs, her buttocks, in short, every fleshy part of her was beginning to 
exhibit palpable evidence of the ferocity of those blackguards, when Saint-Fond, 
his prick of great size again and purple, seized her and gave her twelve 
resounding thwacks about the shoulders and the behind, then six equally vigorous
slaps upon the face, that being in the way of prelude; next, he placed her in the 
center of the dining room and immobilized her, her feet were fastened to the floor,
there being eyebolts sunk there; ropes attached to the ceiling held her arms 
raised above her head. As soon as she was thus tied a dozen lighted candles were
set between her thighs, in such wise that some of the flames scorched the interior
of her vagina, others the vicinity of her anus, singeing her pubic hairs till they 
smoked, and searing her flesh; whereof the visible result was much writhing and 
many tremors and, upon the lady’s lovely face, a sublime expression that 
declared all the voluptuous anguish of dolor. Holding up another candle, 
Saint-Fond considered her attentively during her Ordeal, having his prick sucked 
by Lindane throughout and his asshole tongued by Lolotte; nearby, Noirceuil, 
being fucked while nibbling Henriette’s buttocks, announced to his wife that she 
was going to go thus to her death; and D’Albert, embuggering a youth and 
fondling Eglée’s ass, exhorted Noirceuil to deal yet more rudely with his 
unfortunate spouse—that unfortunate creature, she who was bound to him in holy
matrimony. Catering to the diverse needs of the company at large, for that was 
my role, I remarked that the candle-ends being too short, the victim was not 
suffering anywhere near the desirable degree of pain; so I raised the candlesticks 
by setting them upon a stool; Madame de Noirceuil’s frantic screams earned me 
the hearty applause of her torturers. And now Saint-Fond, who was becoming 
giddy, ventured an atrocity: the rogue caught up a candle, waved it beneath the 
lady’s nose for a moment or two, then burned her eyelashes and indeed almost 
the entirety of one eye; D’Albert too picked up a candle, and he toasted one of 
her nipples, while her husband set her hair afire.

Greatly moved by this dramatic spectacle, I egged the actors on and induced 
them to essay another stunt. Upon my recommendation Milady was drenched with
brandy; for a brief instant she resembled a living torch, and when the blue flames
died out, lo! it was not a pretty sight to behold, from head to toe one great burn 
covered her body. My idea had been a great success; there is no imagining how I 
was praised for having conceived it. Fearfully aroused by that piece of villainy, 
Saint-Fond forsook Lindane’s mouth and with Lolotte still in tow, for he would not 
have her leave off sucking his vent, he embuggered me straightway.

“And now what shall we do to her?” Saint-Fond asks me, running his tongue 
deep into my mouth and plunging his prick far into my bowels. “Think, Juliette, 
invent something; you are inspired, whatever you propose is divine.”

“There are yet a thousand tortures she could be made to undergo,” I reply, 
“one more piquant than the other.” And I am about to suggest a few when 
Noirceuil approaches us and points out to Saint-Fond that it might be wiser to 
have her swallow the dose immediately lest from exhaustion she lack strength 
enough to enable us to appreciate and enjoy the effects of the poison. D’Albert’s 
opinion is consulted, he agrees with Noirceuil most emphatically; the lady is 
untied and turned over to me.

“Poor wretch,” I say to her after having introduced the powder into a glass of 
Alicante, “drink this, it will refresh you. It will improve your spirits. You’ll see.”

Without a murmur the precious fool does as she is told and once she has 
imbibed all the fatal mixture, Noirceuil, lodged to the hilt in my ass hitherto, 
withdraws and moves nearer the victim, eager to feast his eyes upon her antics 
from close on.

“You are going to die,” he informs her; “you are, I suppose, reconciled to the 
fact?”

“I am confident,” D’Albert remarks, “that Madame is sensible enough to realize
that when a wife has lost her husband’s affection and esteem, when she no longer
but wearies and is offensive to him, the simplest course open to her is to bow 
gracefully out of the picture.”

“Oh yes! Oh yes!” the unlucky woman shrieks. “I ask only to die, kill me, that 
is my one request! In the name of Heaven, be quick!”

“The death you crave, foul buggeress, is already brewing in your guts,” says 
Noirceuil, his prick being frigged by one of the catamites; “Juliette did the thing. 
Such is her attachment to you she would never have forgiven us had we deprived 
her of the joy of administering the coup de grâce.” And, utterly blinded by lust, 
quite unhinged, Saint-Fond embuggered D’Albert who, bending complacently 
before his friend’s sodomistic onslaughts, delivered to a pretty lad the equivalent 
of what he was receiving from the Minister, whose anus I was tonguing 
industriously.

“Come, we are proceeding in too disorderly a fashion,” said Noirceuil, seeing 
from his wife’s contortions, now begun in earnest, that she merited closer 
watching.

He has a carpet spread in the middle of the room, upon it the victim is made to
recline and we group in a circle around her. Saint-Fond bum-stuffs me while 
frigging a boy with either hand. D’Albert is sucked by Henriette, he sucks a prick 
while frigging another with his right hand; with his left he molests Lindane’s ass; 
Noirceuil’s prick enters Eglée’s rectum, a prick passes into his own, he sucks yet 
another and inserts three fingers in Lolotte’s ass while the sixth youth fucks her 
amain. The crises begin; most horrible they are, for there is no describing the 
effects of that poison: so violent were the poor woman’s thrashings that at certain
moments she was quite rolled up in a ball, then it was as though an electrical 
shock were paralyzing her entire body, foam flecked her lips, her screams were 
perfectly horrible; but they were not to be heard save by us, the necessary 
precautionary measures had been taken.

“Ah, but it is delicious,” Saint-Fond sighed the while he toiled in my ass; “I 
don’t know what I wouldn’t give to sodomize her in that state.”

“Nothing easier,” said Noirceuil, “just have a try. We’ll hold her still.”

Firmly grasped by the youths, the patient, her efforts notwithstanding, is 
forced into position and there gapes her asshole; and into it Saint-Fond plunges 
his member.

“Godsfuck!” he exclaims, “I must discharge!” And discharge he does. D’Albert 
replaces him in the breach, then Noirceuil; but when his stricken wife feels him 
there, her strugglings become so furious, she escapes away from those who have 
her pinioned and, quite out of her mind, hurls herself at her torturer; alarmed, 
Noirceuil backs off, the circle is formed anew.

“Let her be, let her be,” says Saint-Fond, just returned into my ass; “it is wise 
to keep clear of a rabid beast when it is in death’s throes.”

Howbeit, Noirceuil, stung, insulted, wishes to have his revenge; he is in the 
midst of devising fresh torments but Saint-Fond stays his hand, explaining to his 
friend that anything further done to the victim now must only detract from the 
pleasure of beholding the action of the venom.

“Gentlemen,” say I, “it’s not only watching she needs; I believe the services of 
a confessor are about to be required.”

“Let her go to the devil, he’ll shrive the whore,” said Noirceuil, at that point 
being sucked by Lolotte; “aye, let her go to all the devils there be. If ever I 
desired that a hell exist it was hoping that her soul would make its way there, and
to be able, so long as there is breath in me, to relish the thought of her 
suffering.”

It was that imprecation, so it appeared, that precipitated the final crisis. 
Madame de Noirceuil yielded up her soul, and our three rascals discharged 
concurrently, vying with one another in shameless blasphemy.

“This,” said Saint-Fond, squeezing his prick, evacuating the last drop of fuck 
therefrom, “this that we have just accomplished shall surely stand as one of our 
finest deeds; I am highly pleased. Ridding the world of that prude has long been 
one of my ambitions; her husband was no more tired of her than I.”

“Faith,” D’Albert put in, “you surely fucked her no less often than he.”

“Indeed, more often,” my lover rejoined.

“In any case,” Saint-Fond said to Noirceuil, “I intend to honor our agreement; 
you have sacrificed your wife, you shall have another: my daughter is yours. I am
by the way delighted with this poison we have used; it gives excellent results, and
I think it a great pity we cannot witness the deaths of all the people we destroy 
by this means. Alas! one cannot be everywhere at once. But as I was saying, my 
daughter is yours, gentle friend; and may heaven bless this occasion on which I 
acquire a most amiable son-in-law and the assurance of not being betrayed by the
woman who supplies me with these poisons.”

Here Noirceuil leaned toward Saint-Fond and whispered what I guessed was a 
question in his ear; the latter nodded affirmatively. The Minister then turned in my
direction. “Juliette,” said he, “you will come to see me tomorrow, I will more 
thoroughly discuss with you what I have only touched upon today. Remarrying, 
Noirceuil may dispense with your presence in his house; I propose to establish 
you in mine; and I trust that the reputation which dwelling in my proximity will 
confer upon you, the money and the comforts I design to shower upon you, will 
prove ample compensation for the loss you are about to incur. You please me 
mightily; your imagination is brilliant, your phlegm in crime is exemplary, your ass
is splendid, according to my belief, you are ferocious and libertine; thus do I 
judge that you possess the virtues I admire.”

“My Lord,” said I, “most gratefully I accept all you deign to offer me, but I 
must tell you, since I cannot hide the fact, that I love Noirceuil: I do not relish the
prospect of losing him.”

“Nor shall you lose me, my child, we shall see each other frequently,” was the 
reply of Saint-Fond’s intimate friend and future son-in-law, “we shall spend the 
better hours of our lives together.”

“So be it,” I said, “under those circumstances there is nothing I am not willing 
to consent to.”

To the youths and whores the drastic and certain consequences of the slightest
indiscretion on their part were made abundantly clear; much impressed, they 
swore never to speak a word of what had passed that evening; Madame de 
Noirceuil’s remains were buried in the garden; and those of the company bade 
one another farewell.

An unforeseen contingency was to delay Noirceuil’s marriage and the 
realization of the Minister’s schemes as well; nor when I went to see him the next
day toward noon was he there to greet me. The King, singularly content with 
Saint-Fond, and trusting him unreservedly, had summoned him that same 
morning, confided a secret mission to him, and Saint-Fond had taken his 
departure from the city immediately; later, upon his return, he was awarded the 
cordon bleu, and an annuity of one hundred thousand crowns.

Oh yes, I said to myself when I learned of these favors, how very true it is that
fate awards the evildoer, and how very much the imbecile he who, enlightened by 
such examples, were not all the more ardently to forge ahead in crime and to its 
furthermost limits.

In letters Noirceuil received from the Minister during his absence, I was 
enjoined to locate a house and to array it splendidly. And so, as soon as I was in 
command of the necessary funds, I rented a magnificent mansion on the rue du 
Faubourg-Saint-Honoré; purchased four horses, two charming carriages; hired 
three lackeys, strapping tall fellows and very handsome; found a cook, two 
scullions, a housekeeper, a reader, three chambermaids, a hairdresser, two 
downstairs maids and a pair of coachmen; I acquired quantities of the finest in 
furnishings; and the day the Minister came back to Paris I betook myself to his 
home. I had just attained my seventeenth year, and I think I can say that for 
looks I compared very satisfactorily with the prettiest women in the capital; my 
figure was like unto that of the Goddess of Love, and art heightened what was 
mine of natural beauty. The contents of my wardrobe were worth well above one 
hundred thousand francs, a hundred thousand crowns was the value of the 
jewelries and diamonds I wore. Wherever I went every door was open to me; and
that day the Minister’s domestics bowed low. He was awaiting me, he was alone. I
began by mentioning the tokens of royal esteem which had been showered upon 
him, my congratulations were of the sincerest, and I sought leave to kiss his 
hand; he accorded it provided I kneel while doing so; familiar with the dimensions
of his pride, his arrogance, I catered to them and adjusted my behavior to his 
wishes: it is by base flattery and abjectness that the courtesan, like the courtier, 
buys the right to be insolent to everybody else.

Spoke he: “Madame, you see me in the hour of my glory; the King has dealt 
largely with me, and I dare say according to my deserts; my position has never 
been so solid nor my fortune so great. If, as I propose to do, I make you the 
beneficiary of some small part of His Majesty’s bounty, it shall be upon the 
obvious conditions; in view of the projects we have executed jointly, I believe I 
can rely upon you, you have acquired my total confidence. But before I descend 
to particulars, kindly look at these two keys, Madame. This first one opens the 
vault where is stored all the gold due to be yours if you serve me well; and this 
other is to the Bastille: in it there is a vacant cell, it is reserved for your lifelong 
occupancy should you fail of obedience or discretion.”

“Confronted by such alternatives, one of doom, the other of glittering 
prosperity—I hardly need indicate which of the two I elect unhesitatingly. So place
your whole trust in her who shall be absolutely your slave, and put away all 
doubts of her loyalty.”

“You will have the charge of two important functions, Madame. Be seated 
please, and heed me.” Not thinking what I was about, I was taking an armchair 
when Saint-Fond gestured me toward an ordinary straight-backed chair; he cut 
me short in the middle of my profuse apology, and continued in this wise:

“The post I hold, and in which it is my aim to remain yet a good while, for it is 
a rewarding one, obliges me to sacrifice no end of victims; in this casket there are
various poisons, you shall employ them pursuant to the instructions I issue you. 
Upon those individuals who come actively at cross purposes with me the cruelest 
are used—see, they are labeled; the speedy upon those whose existence is 
merely a vexation to me and whom I prefer to waste no time dispatching from the
world; and these, marked slow, are for those with whom I am obliged to proceed 
unhurriedly, whether because of political reasons or simply to divert suspicion 
away from myself. Depending upon the specific case, the envenoming will be 
accomplished either here in Paris, at your home or at mine, or in the provinces, 
or, again, abroad.

“Now as to the second of your functions—in all likelihood the more arduous of 
the two; it will also prove the more lucrative, however. Endowed with a very 
puissant imagination, everyday pleasures meaning nothing to me any more, 
Nature having given me a very fiery temperament, eminently cruel tastes, and 
where means are concerned all that is needed to satisfy these furious passions, I 
shall, whether at your residence or at Noirceuil’s or at the home of some one or 
other of my friends, sup in the libertine manner twice a week; at each of these 
routs a minimum of three victims must infallibly and obligatorily be sacrificed. Per 
year, if we deduct the time spent in traveling—you will accompany me on some of 
my journeys—that comes, I believe, to approximately two hundred whores, the 
procuring whereof is to be your concern only; howbeit, these victims must meet 
certain specifications. Firstly, Juliette, the ugliest of them all has got to be at least
as well-favored as yourself; I accept none younger than nine, nor above sixteen 
years of age; each must be a virgin, of excellent birth, titled if possible, wealthy in
any case—”

“And you mean to say, my Lord, that you destroy all those?”

“Indeed I do, Madame. Murder is the sweetest of all my voluptuous practices, 
there are no limits to my fondness for blood, shedding it is the foremost of my 
passions; and to satisfy them all, come what may and hang the price, there’s the 
foremost of my principles.”

Seeing that Saint-Fond was waiting for my response, I said, “My Lord, what I 
have revealed to you so far of my character must, I should think, be sufficient 
proof that I cannot possibly fail you; my self-interest and tastes are your 
guarantee of my good faith. Yes, my Lord, it is very true, Nature gave me the 
same passions she gave you … the same cast of mind, too; and he who indulges 
in these things out of love of them will surely serve you better than he who obeys
in order to please you rather than himself: the bond of friendship, a similarity of 
taste: such, be sure of it, such are the ties that most powerfully bind a woman 
like me.”

“As regards friendship, bah! refrain from alluding to it, Juliette,” the Minister 
said very sharply; “I hold that sentiment as empty, as illusory as love. Whatever 
originates in the heart is false; for my part, I believe in the senses alone, I believe
alone in the carnal habits and appetites … in self-seeking, in self-aggrandizement, 
in self-interest. Aye, self-interest, of all possible bonds, shall always be the one in 
which I shall place the greatest faith; and I would therefore have it that the 
arrangements I am going to conclude with you be overwhelmingly to your 
personal advantage. Should taste develop later on as decoration to the 
self-interest structure, well and good; but tastes are fickle, they change with the 
years, the time may even come when one is guided by them no longer—but one 
always is by self-interest. So let us reckon up your little fortune, Madame: 
Noirceuil has assured you ten thousand livres per annum, I’ve provided you with 
three, you had twelve before; that makes twenty-five; and here are twenty-five 
thousand more—put this contract in a place of safekeeping—where are we now? 
Fifty? Fifty. Now let’s enter into a few details.”

The Minister was not displeased to have me prostrate myself before him; when
I was done airing my thanks he bade me return to my chair and hear him out.

“I am quite as aware as you, Juliette, that with such a slender revenue you 
could not hope to provide for the two weekly suppers I shall require, nor dream of
maintaining the house I ordered you to take; hence, I shall give you a million to 
defray the cost of those suppers; but bear it well in mind that they are to be of 
unparalleled magnificence, the most exquisite meats, the rarest wines, the most 
extraordinary fowl and fruits will be served at them always, and immense quantity
must be joined to the finest in quality: even if we were only two to dine, fifty 
courses would obviously be too few. You will have twenty thousand francs apiece 
for the victims, and that is not overmuch in view of the standards they shall have 
to meet. You will be allotted a further thirty thousand francs gratuity for every 
ministerial victim you immolate personally; there will be roughly fifty of these 
each year, this article thus coming to some fifteen hundred thousand francs 
annually, to which I am adding a monthly twenty thousand francs for your 
appointments. Unless I have erred in my computations, this, Madame, totals to a 
yearly six million seven hundred ninety thousand francs; we shall throw in two 
hundred ten thousand more for your pocket money, supplementary charges, and 
divers trifles, so rounding the sum out to an even seven million, whereof, if you 
like, you may bank fifty thousand, yours by contract. Will this do, Juliette?”

Suppressing all outward signs of a tremendous elation, for greater yet was the 
greed consuming me, I was silent a moment, pursing my lips and seeming to take
counsel with myself; then I ventured to draw the Minister’s attention to certain 
facts: the duties he was prescribing me were, to say the least, quite as onerous 
as the sums of which he was making me mistress were considerable; I was eager 
that he never be caused the slightest disappointment; it seemed to me altogether
possible, nay, likely, that the huge expenses I was going to have to incur would 
largely exceed the resources at my disposal; and that, besides….

“You need say no more,” the Minister interrupted; “you have spoken in an 
idiom I apprehend perfectly, and you have persuaded me that you have your own 
interest ever in view. That, Juliette, is precisely what I wish; for I now know that I
shall be irreproachably served. Stint on nothing, Madame, and you will have ten 
million a year; we have no reason to be niggardly. A contemptible fool, that 
statesman who neglects to have the State finance his pleasures; and if the 
masses go hungry, if the nation goes naked, what do we care so long as our 
passions are satisfied? Mine entail inordinate spending; if I thought gold flowed in 
their veins, I’d have every one of the people bled to death.”(2)

“Adorable man,” I cried, “your philosophy positively inflames me. A moment 
ago you detected the motive of selfishness in me; it is now doubled by that of 
taste, believe me, and be persuaded also, that my zeal in your service shall be 
owing a thousand times more to worship of such pleasures than to any other 
cause.”

“I have witnessed you in action,” Saint-Fond rejoined; “your conduct augured 
well. And indeed, how could you help but be enamored of my passions? The 
human heart is capable of engendering none more delicious than they. And he 
who is in a position to say—No prejudice hinders me, I have overcome them all; 
on the one hand, I possess the influence that legitimates my every gesture; on 
the other, the means necessary to committing every crime—I tell you, Juliette, 
such a one is the happiest of mortals. Ah. That reminds me, Madame, of the 
patents of impunity D’Albert promised you when last we supped together. I have 
the papers here, they arrived this morning; it was I who requested them of the 
Chancellor, not D’Albert—whose habitual forgetfulness, you understand, goes with
his post.”

This multitude of favorable developments, this windfall, the prospects opened 
up to me—I was as though spellbound, and quite speechless. Saint-Fond brought 
me forth from my trance when he drew me to him and, asking, “How long shall it 
be ere we begin, Juliette?” kissed me and ran his hand down my behind, into 
which he promptly popped a finger.

“My Lord,” said I, “I must have three weeks at least to ready all the 
organization.”

“Three weeks then. Today is the first of the month, Juliette. I shall sup at your 
residence on the twenty-second, at seven.”

“There is something else, my Lord,” I went on. “You have deigned to describe 
your tastes to me; I may perhaps tell you something of mine. You are already 
aware of those concerning the crimes I shall be able to commit with you; this 
document allows me to steal to my heart’s desire; pray furnish me the 
wherewithal to revenge myself against an eventual enemy.”

“Come with me,” said Saint-Fond.

We entered the office of a clerk.

“My good sir,” said the Minister, “your attention, please. “Look closely at this 
young lady; remember her. I order you to sign and to deliver to her, upon her 
simple request, as many lettres de cachet as she wishes, whenever, and for 
whatever places of detention she chooses.”

We returned to the chamber we had formerly been in. “There, you are prettily 
equipped,” said the Minister, “now show what you can do. Burn, trample, hack 
away, all France is yours; and whatever crime you perpetrate, regardless of its 
magnitude, its gravity, perpetrate it intrepidly, for fear you need not, you shall get
away scot-free, you have my word. You shall have more: as I have told you 
already, thirty thousand francs for every crime you commit on your own initiative,
on your own behalf.”

My friends, I shall not attempt to describe the impact these promises, these 
prospects had upon me.

It is well nigh incredible, said I to myself. From the outset blessed by Nature 
with an imagination tending to extravagance, here am I now, rich enough to 
satisfy my every whim, to achieve my every ambition, strong enough to defy any 
retaliation. No; there are no inward joys comparable to this knowledge that I am 
powerful and hence free; no lubricity to equal the effect of this one upon the soul.

“So now, Madame, let us seal the bargain,” said the Minister. “Here’s a little gift
for you, a mere bauble,” he went on, handing me a casket where there were five 
thousand louis in gold, and twice that in gems and jewelry; “take it along, and 
don’t forget the box of poisons.”

Then he led me into a secret room where the furnishings were both sumptuous
and bizarre.

“Henceforth upon entering this place, and while you are here, your condition 
will be that of a common whore; and at all other times you will be one of the 
greatest ladies in the kingdom.”

“Wherever I am, my Lord, I shall be your slave, your admirer eternally, and the
very soul of your most exquisite pleasures.”

I undressed. Thrilled at having found a suitable accomplice at last, Saint-Fond 
performed horrors. Of his ways I have told you something, I now discovered 
more; leaving his house I might feel as though I had not my peer in all the world, 
but when I was in his company, he degraded me unutterably; when it was a 
question of lust, he was truly the filthiest man that can be conceived, the most 
despotical, the crudest. He had me do reverence to his prick, his ass; he shat, I 
had to make a god of his very mard; but he also had this curious mania, he had 
me soil those very things that symbolized all that his pride was founded upon; he 
insisted that I shit upon various honorific insignia and badges and he wiped my 
ass with his cordon bleu. I owned to him my surprise at this last gesture.

“I would have you see, Juliette, that such rags and ribbons designed to dazzle 
fools do not overawe a philosopher.”

“But a short moment ago you obliged me to kiss them?”

“True enough, but just as I pride myself on what these little fripperies 
represent, so it also flatters my pride prodigiously to profane them. All this—’tis 
just a quirk such as makes sense only to libertines of my species.”

Saint-Fond’s prick was up in extraordinary size; I discharged in his embrace: 
for those with an imagination like mine, the question is never whether this or that
is repulsive, irregularity is the sole valid consideration, and anything is good 
provided it be excessive. Something told me he had a burning desire to have me 
eat his shit, I sought his permission to do so, obtained it, he was in ecstasies; he 
devoured mine, between mouthfuls tonguing my vent at length. He showed me a 
portrait of his daughter, scarcely fourteen years old, and as lovely a creature as 
one could behold; I begged him to include her at one of our forgatherings.

“She is not here,” he told me; “were she, you’d have already seen her in our 
midst.”

“I take it you are not sending her to Noirceuil without having enjoyed her 
first?”

“That is quite correct,” he replied; “I would be heartbroken to allow someone 
else to pluck such delicious first fruits.”

“So you have ceased to love her?”

“Love her? Juliette, I love nothing, nobody, none of us libertines loves anything
at all. That child gave me a good many erections; she no longer excites me 
nowadays, I’ve wearied myself toying with her. I am giving her to Noirceuil, whom
she heats exceedingly—it is a matter of mutual convenience, that’s all.”

“But when Noirceuil tires of her?”

“Why, you know the usual fate of his wives; in all likelihood I shall participate 
in the ceremony myself. I have in others; they are always stimulating. They are 
always worthwhile. That’s the sort of thing I like….”

And his prick soared another inch.

“My Lord,” said I, “it seems to me that if I were in your position, I’d be 
tempted to abuse my authority at certain moments.”

“When stiff, you mean to say?”

“Yes.”

“It sometimes happens.”

“Oh, my Lord,” I began. Then: “Let’s massacre some innocents, shall we? The 
idea makes my brain whirl.”

I was frigging him, one of my fingers was tickling his asshole.

“One moment,” said he, removing a sheet of paper from his pocket and 
unfolding it, “I have but to put my signature to that, and a very attractive person 
dies tomorrow. She is in prison at the moment; I issued the warrant upon the 
request of her family. Their single grievance is that she prefers women to men. I 
have seen her; she is charming; I amused myself with her the other day, and 
since then I have been so anxious lest she blab that my one thought, or rather 
desire, has been to get rid of her.”

“Ah, my Lord, she’ll talk if given the chance, she’ll talk, your fears are only too 
well founded; so long as that girl is alive, you will be in constant danger. 
Therefore, and if I implore you to do so, it is because your safety depends on it, 
sign that paper.” And taking it from his hand, I placed it flat against my buttocks. 
“There is a quill on that desk, and an inkhorn.”

He signed his name.

“I am quite willing to carry it to the clerk myself,” I said.

“As you like,” said he, “but one thing at a time, presently I must discharge, 
Juliette. That all reach its proper climax I have need of further assistance.” He 
rang. “Pray be not alarmed,” he went on, “it is a ritual.” And the next moment a 
pretty youth appeared in the doorway.

“Kindly kneel, Juliette, this young man is to bestow three blows of a cane upon
your shoulders, the traces will last only a few days; afterward he will hold you 
steady while I embugger you.”

And the newcomer, having stripped off his pantaloons, straightway gave his 
behind to be colled by the Minister who licked it complacently.

In the meantime, I knelt down; the youth picks up his cane and so smart were 
the three cuts he gave me the marks showed for the space of a fortnight. While 
the boy was laying on, Saint-Fond, sitting opposite me, watched with lewd 
curiosity; then he came up and examined the stripes on my skin, grumbled about 
their faintness, bade the boy take hold of me; and while sodomizing me 
vigorously, very vigorously, kissed the hinderparts belonging to him who was 
accessory to the operation.

“Ah, fuck my eyes!” he cried, loosing his seed, “ah, God be double-fucked, the 
whore’s marked.”

The mysterious youth withdrew. It was not until long afterward that an event I 
will relate in due course shed light on his character and identity.

Saint-Fond escorted me out of the boudoir; and once we had left it, reassumed
his former thoughtful air.

“Take the caskets with you, Madame,” said he, “and remember that our 
schedule calls for operations to begin three weeks from today. Very well. 
Libertinage, crime, discretion, Juliette, and your welfare is assured. Adieu.”

The very first thing I did was examine the order of execution whereof I was the
bearer. Great heavens, what was my amazement to discover that here in black 
and white were instructions to the supervisor of the convent-prison in question 
secretly to poison—whom? None other than Sainte-Elme, that charming novice I 
had fairly worshiped during my sojourn at Panthemont. Another person would 
perhaps have torn up that baneful piece of paper; not I. For I was too far 
advanced in my criminal career to quail; I did not even pause, no, nor waver for 
an instant, with determined step I betake myself to Sainte-Pélagie, where 
Sainte-Elme had been languishing three long months behind bars; I transmit the 
order into the hands of the head warden, ask to see the culprit; I interrogate her, 
she declares the Minister offered to arrange her liberation in return for her favors,
and that she did with him all that it is possible for a woman to do. The lecherous 
monster had omitted not a single episode in his repertory of abominations; 
mouth, ass, cunt … the beast had defiled her everywhere, and as consolation for 
this evil treatment she had been given nothing but the hope of having her 
freedom restored to her.

“I have with me the document that will put an end to your misery,” I say, 
kissing her.

Sainte-Elme thanks me, repays my caresses tenfold. … I notice that betraying 
her is moistening my cunt…. The following day she was dead.

Faith, said I to myself upon learning of the outcome of my scurvy deed, I can 
do better than that. I was made for great things. I feel it.

And setting myself promptly to work preparing the stage for the scenes 
Saint-Fond was to enact, within the space of three weeks I was, as I had 
promised, able to provide the first of his suppers.

Six excellent procuresses I had taken into my employ supplied me, for my 
debut, three young sisters spirited away from a pious retreat in Meaux, twelve, 
thirteen, and fourteen years of age, and positively celestial in face and figure.

That first evening the Minister appeared in the company of a man in his sixties.
Upon arriving he encloseted himself for several minutes with me, inspected my 
shoulders, and appeared irritated at finding no traces left of the stripes he had 
had inflicted upon me at our last encounter. Scarcely did he touch me; but he 
advised the greatest respect and the profoundest submissiveness in my behavior 
toward the individual who had come with him, he being one of the foremost 
personages at the Court, a prince. The latter entered the room as soon as 
Saint-Fond left it. Forewarned by my lover, I turned and exhibited my behind as 
soon as he had shut the door. He approached, a spyglass in his hand. “Fart,” he 
commanded, “or be bitten.”

Unable to satisfy him with all the celerity he desired, I felt a sudden pain in my
left buttock: his teeth had caused it. They left deep marks in my flesh. He walked 
around to in front of me; it was a severe and unlovely visage I looked into.

“Put your tongue in my mouth.”

I did so. Whereupon he said: “Belch or be bitten.”

But seeing that I couldn’t obey, I backed away quickly enough to avoid the 
trap. The old rascal flies into a fury, he catches up a bundle of withes and belabors
me for a quarter of an hour; then he stops and walks around to in front of me 
again.

“You behold the little effect even these activities I am fondest of have upon my
senses nowadays; consider,” said he, “this limp prick nothing hoists. Nothing. To 
bring it at all aloft I’ll be obliged to cause you much hurt.”

“There’ll be no need for that, my Prince,” said I, “since you’re soon to have at 
your disposal three delicious objects whom you can torment in whatever way you 
like.”

“Aye, but you are attractive … your ass,” said he, fondling it apace, “pleases 
me infinitely; I’d like to stiffen for its sake.”

So saying he rids himself of his clothing and upon the mantel lays a 
diamond-studded timepiece, a gold snuffbox, his purse overflowing two hundred 
louis, and two superb rings.

“Let’s have another try now. Here, take hold of my ass, you must pinch and 
bite it hard, fearfully hard, and while you do that, frig me with the supplest 
possible wrist. Good, excellent!” he cried upon perceiving some slight 
improvement in his state; “now stretch out on this couch, will you, and let me 
prick your buttocks with this hatpin.”

I lie down. “Steady,” says the Prince. But when I emit a loud scream and seem 
about to faint away at a second thrust, confused and aflutter and dreading lest by
using his mistress somewhat too roughly he give offense to the Minister, the 
Prince scurries from the room, hoping his departure will quiet me. I fling his 
clothes into an adjoining chamber, pounce upon his valuables, and hurriedly rejoin
Saint-Fond, who inquires of me, “Is there anything amiss?”

“Nothing at all,” say I, “but from being in too great haste fetching his Highness’
clothes I let the door to my boudoir shut to, the key is inside and these English 
locks—there’s no opening them. But never mind; Monsieur has his shirt and 
breeches here, we can defer the interview he desires until some later time.”

And I draw my two guests out into the garden where everything has been put 
in readiness to receive them; the Prince forgets his belongings, dons the costume 
I tender him, and is mindful only of the pleasures yet to come.

The weather that evening was faultless, we were beneath a bower of roses 
with lilac bushes all around us; a multitude of candles furnished the light, our 
seats were three thrones supported on artificial clouds whence came the scent of 
the most delicious perfumes; in the center of the table was a very mountain of 
the rarest flowers, set amongst which were the jade and porcelain cups and 
plates we were to drink from and dine off; the service was of gold. No sooner had
we taken our places than the bower opened overhead and before our eyes there 
descended a fiery cloud: upon it, the Three Furies and, prisoned in the coils of 
their serpents, the three victims destined to be sacrificed at this feast. The Furies 
alighted from their aerial car, each chained the victim in her keeping to boxwoods 
near where we were sitting, then stood by in readiness. No previously established
program decided the order of that meal, it was to shape itself according to the 
wishes of my guests; anything you happened to wish you simply demanded, and 
the Furies brought it to you instantly. Above eighty widely varying dishes are 
called for, every one is served up in a trice; ten kinds of wines are requested, all 
ten flow, everything is there in plenty, in profusion!

“Nicely done,” my lover remarked. “I trust your Grace is satisfied with my 
directress’ initial effort?”

“Enchanted,” answered the sexagenarian, his head reeling from the abundance
of food and spirits, and his tongue thick already. “Indeed, Saint-Fond, I envy you 
your divine Juliette—I have never clapped eyes on a fairer ass.”

“Nor have I,” the Minister owned; “but I suggest we leave it alone for a while 
and concern ourselves with those belonging to our Furies who, if I’m not greatly 
mistaken, are superbly fleshed also.”

And at that hint, the three goddesses, impersonated by the three loveliest girls
my purveyors had been able to locate for me after ransacking the whole of Paris, 
immediately bared their be-hinds to the two libertines, who kissed them, licked 
them, gnawed them with much relish and complete abandon.

“My good Saint-Fond,” the Prince stuttered, “shall we have ourselves flogged 
by these Furies?”

“With rose branches,” Saint-Fond proposed.

And there are our lechers’ backsides exposed, being cruelly lashed now by 
garlands of flowers, now by the Furies’ snakes.

“Very lubricious indeed, these exercises,” remarked Saint-Fond, resuming his 
chair and pointing to his towering device; “say now, my Prince, are you stiffening 
a little?”

“No,” the hapless old dotard answered, “I require more potent stimulants than 
any of these; immediately when I enter into debauch, I like to be environed by 
atrocities in uninterrupted sequence, I like to have all that men hold sacred 
violated in the interests of my pleasure, all that is holy soiled by my doing—”

“You are not a humanitarian then, my Prince?”

“I abhor mankind.”

“I strongly doubt,” Saint-Fond continued, “whether at any moment in the day I
for my part am not animated by the most vehement impulse, or caressing some 
black scheme, to cause harm to humankind; there is no more execrable species. 
Be he powerful,

then man is dangerous, and no tiger in the jungle can match him for 
wickedness. Is he puny, weak, woebegone? then how base he is, how vile, how 
disgusting within and without! Oh, many a time have I blushed at having been 
born in the midst of such creatures. My one comfort is that Nature loathes them 
no less than I, for she destroys them daily; I wish only that I had as many means 
as she at my command for contriving their undoing; had I, I’d wipe the lot off the 
face of the earth.”

“But you—august beings that you are,” I broke in, “do you really think of 
yourselves as human? Why no! no, when one bears so little resemblance to the 
common herd, when one dominates it so absolutely, it is impossible to be of its 
race.”

“You know,” said Saint-Fond, “she is quite right; we are so many gods; as it is 
with them, so is it with us—do we not have but to formulate desires to have them
satisfied instantly? Ah, is it not obvious that among men, or rather, above men, 
there is a class so superior to the weaker sort as to be what of old the poets 
termed divinities?”

“As for myself, I am no Hercules, I sense that I am not,” said the Prince, “but I
fain would be Pluto; it would please me mightily to have the task of dismembering
mortals in hell.”

“And I should like to be Pandora’s box, that the ills emergent from the depths 
of me might destroy them all piecemeal.”

Some groans were heard at this point; they had been uttered by the three 
chained victims.

“Unloose them,” said Saint-Fond, “and bring them hither.”

The Furies detached them and led them before my two guests; and since no 
females can combine grace and beauty in a higher degree, I leave you to imagine 
to what lecherous attentions they were subjected straightway.

“Juliette,” said the Minister, transported, “you are a charming and able 
creature; plainly, you have the touch of a master, these results authorize the 
statement…. Come, let’s lose ourselves amongst these arbors, amidst these 
flowers, come, in shadow and silence let us give ourselves up to all our brains 
may dictate…. You had some ditches dug?”

“Suitably close by every spot likely to become a theater for your atrocities.”

“Good; and no lights along the pathways?”

“None; darkness beseems crime, you shall enjoy it in its full horror. Let us be 
off, my Prince, and stray into these labyrinths, and accept the challenge to do our 
worst.”

We all of us set forth together, the two libertines, the three victims, and I. 
Entering an alley flanked by hedges, Saint-Fond exclaimed that he could not 
proceed another step without first fucking; and seizing the youngest of the girls, 
the villain blasted both her maidenheads before rejoining us ten minutes later. 
During his absence, I sought to excite the old Prince; but in vain. Nothing seemed
able to rouse his prick.

“Do you then intend not to fuck?” Saint-Fond asked him, laying hands on the 
second girl.

“No, no, go on, depucelate,” answered the old lecher, “I’ll restrict myself to 
vexations; pass them on to me one by one when you’re through with each.”

And getting the youngest of those little girls into his clutches he torments her 
in the unkindest manner while I suck him with might and main. The while 
Saint-Fond carries on with his deflowering, and having put the second girl in the 
same state as the first and turned her over to the Prince, he grabs the 
fourteen-year-old.

“You have no idea how much I enjoy fucking in darkness this way,” says he; 
“the shades of night are a goad to crime and enormously facilitate committing it 
satisfactorily.”

Saint-Fond, who had got this far without discharging, now let fly into the eldest
girl’s ass; and then he and the Prince held parley. It was agreed between them 
that Saint-Fond should retain for himself her who had just drained out his sperm; 
in exchange, he ceded the two other girls to the Prince, and that worthy, armed 
with all the equipment necessary for the tortures he was contemplating, 
staggered off in an ecstasy, leading his victims by their chains; while I 
accompanied my lover and the one who was to die by his hand. When we were 
gone off a distance, I told him of my theft, we both laughed heartily, and he 
assured me that, as was his custom, the Prince, prior to coming to our party, had 
visited a brothel with a view to putting himself in the appropriate mood; and that 
nothing would be easier than to convince him his treasures had been stolen there.

“You are a friend of this man, I suppose?”

“I am friend to no one,” the Minister gave me answer; “my connections with 
this original have been advantageous so far, he is on the best of terms with the 
King; but when that changes, let him fall into disgrace tomorrow, and I’ll be the 
first to tread upon him. He divined my tastes, I don’t know how; he gave me to 
understand his were similar, he proposed we collaborate, I acquiesced—that’s the 
extent of our relationship. What is it, Juliette, do you dislike the fellow?”

“I find him unbearable.”

“Upon my soul, were it not for the political considerations I’ve just mentioned, 
I’d be only too happy to see him in your power. Nevertheless we can perhaps 
arrange his downfall. For, my dear, you please me to such a degree, there is 
nothing I am not willing to do for you.”

“You were saying, were you not, that you have obligations toward him?”

“I have a few.”

“Well then, how, in the light of your principles, how can you for one instant 
tolerate being in his debt?”

“Leave everything to me, Juliette.” And then Saint-Fond, changing the subject, 
praised me anew for the manner in which I had conducted this feast. “You are,” 
said he, “a woman of taste and wit and the better I come to know you, the more I
am persuaded that I must attach you to me.”

And then for the first time he addressed me in the familiar tu, and he granted 
me the yet greater favor of employing that term with him.

“I shall serve you my whole life long if such be your wish, Saint-Fond,” I 
replied; “I know your tastes, I shall satisfy them and if you desire to bind me 
more closely to you, you will concur in the satisfying of mine.”

“Kiss me, heavenly creature, one hundred thousand crowns shall be delivered 
to you tomorrow morning—see if I do not guess your heart’s desires!”

It was at that point an old beggarwoman accosted us, asking for alms.

“What’s this!” cried Saint-Fond, surprised. “Do they let the rabble in?” The 
Minister gazed inquiringly at me; he detected the smile upon my lips and grasped 
the jest at once.

“Delicious, delicious,” he murmured. “Eh then, what is it you wish?” he went 
on, turning to the crone.

“Alas, my Lord, a few pennies out of charity,” replied she; “come, deign to look
upon my misery.”

And catching the Minister by the hand, she guided him into a mean little hut lit 
by a lamp hung from the ceiling, and where two children, one male and the other 
female, and no older than eight or ten, were lying naked on some rotten straw.

“Behold this unhappy family,” the pauper said to us; “it’s been three days since
I was able to give them a crust of bread. Have the kindness, you who are reputed
so very rich, to give me the wherewithal to sustain my children awhile in their 
sorry existence. Oh, my Lord, I know not who you are; but are you acquainted 
with Monsieur de Saint-Fond?”

“I am,” said the Minister.

“Ah then! you see his handiwork before you. He had my husband taken off to 
jail; he deprived us of the little that we possessed of goods; such are the cruel 
circumstances we are reduced to since above a year….”

The great thing about this scene, my friends, the thing in which I could take 
pride, was its complete authenticity: I had unearthed these wretched victims of 
Saint-Fond’s injustice and rapacity, I now presented them to him in the flesh, to 
reawaken his wickedness.

“Ah, the scoundrel!” exclaimed the Minister, staring fixedly at the humble 
woman, “yes, I know him well, by God I do, and you shall come to know him too: 
he stands before you…. Oh, Juliette, ’tis cleverly you have prepared this 
confrontation, my soul is in a very ferment…. How then, what is your complaint? 
I’ve sent your husband to prison, he is innocent—that is true. I’ve done better 
yet: your husband is no more. Until now, you have eluded me; for I meant to 
treat you likewise.”

“What wrong have we done you, my Lord?”

“That of dwelling in my neighborhood, and of owning a small property you 
were not disposed to sell to me. But it is mine now, ruining you I have 
dispossessed you. And now you come begging to me. Do you think I care if you 
die of starvation?”

“But these poor children?”

“France contains about ten million too many of them: weeding the garden is to 
render society a service.” Peering down at the children, he rolled first the one, 
then the other over with his foot. “Not bad stuff, though. It needn’t go entirely to 
waste.”

Whereupon, his prick prodigiously stiffened by all the foregoing, the wag 
bends, seizes the little boy, and embuggers him on the spot; next catching hold of
the little girl, he does the same with her. Then, very heatedly he cries: “Lousy old 
bitch, show me your bewrinkled bum, I require the sight of your flapping buttocks
in order to unload.”

The old woman weeps, she resists; I lend Saint-Fond my aid. Having heaped 
insults upon that woebegone ass, the libertine penetrates it, while trampling on 
the brats, literally crushing them beneath his boots as he sodomizes their mother,
and at the moment of his discharge he fires a bullet into her brain. And we depart
from that den of misfortune, dragging along the fourteen-year-old victim, whose 
buttocks Saint-Fond had been kissing the whole time he was in action.

“Well, Sire,” I said as we were strolling away, “from now on that family’s 
property is yours to do with as you like; that was not the case until this evening. 
Those people had solicited help, their pleas had obtained a hearing, trouble was 
brewing; not, to be sure, that they could have caused you any serious worries; 
but they would have proved a nuisance. I found them out at work, I lured them 
here; now you’re rid of them.”

Saint-Fond was in a state of inconceivable exaltation. “Ah, how sweet is crime,”
said he, the sincerest feeling manifest in his tone, “and how voluptuous its 
aftermaths! Juliette, you cannot imagine how my every fiber has been electrified 
by the deed you have just led me to commit…. My angel, my divine creature, my 
one god, only say: what is it you would have me do for you?”

“You are pleased, I know, when one gives voice to one’s longing for 
money—will you then increase the promised sum?”

“It was a hundred thousand crowns, I believe?”

“Yes.”

“You’ll have twice that amount, Oh, Juliette. But wait, what is this?” cried the 
Minister, recoiling at the sight of two masked men who were approaching us, 
pistols in their hands. “I shudder; I am not one of your courageous fools…. Ho 
there, gentlemen! What do you want?”

“You’ll soon see,” replies one of the two, binding Saint-Fond fast to a tree and 
pulling his breeches down to his heels.

“But what do you intend to do?”

“To give you a lesson,” said the other man; he is brandishing a 
cat-o’-nine-tails, and already swinging it at the ministerial behind, “to teach you 
to deal as you have just done with those poor folk in the cottage.”

And after he has laid on three or four hundred strokes, which serve mainly to 
bring Saint-Fond’s wearied tool into the air again, the other hoves up and 
completes his ecstasy by introducing a gigantean prick into his anus. Having 
fucked, the fucker takes up the whip in his turn and whips; when he is done 
whipping, his companion bum-tups my lover—who, throughout, palpates the 
young girl’s buttocks to the right and mine to the left; Saint-Fond is untied, the 
two men vanish into the night, and we wander off again down obscure lanes.

“Oh, Juliette, I must say it to you ever and ever again, you are divine…. But, 
you know, that last episode gave me a fright—there’s nothing like subjecting 
one’s nerves to an initial commotion before imparting that of voluptuousness to 
them: the average man will always remain in total ignorance of such contrasts 
and gradations.”

“Fear acts powerfully upon you?”

“Prodigiously, my dear. I’m probably the greatest coward on earth, the which I 
own without the least twinge of shame. Being afraid is an art, it is a science, the 
art and science of self-preservation, and of capital importance to man; so that it is
a patent absurdity to link honor to bravery in the face of dangers. I place my 
honor rather in dreading them all.”

“Ah, Saint-Fond, if fear can have such an effect upon your senses, think what 
must be its effect upon those who are the victims of your passions!”

“Exactly, and it is thence comes my keenest pleasure,” the Minister rejoined; 
“the very essence of my enjoyment is in making those victims so suffer in the 
selfsame way from the thing which plagues my existence…. But where are we? 
this garden of yours, Juliette, is vast indeed.”

“We are at the edge of one of the pits prepared for the victims.”

“Ah yes,” said Saint-Fond, stooping and reaching out a hand, “the Prince must 
have performed a sacrifice hereabouts, I do believe I feel a corpse.”

“Let’s pull it out,” I suggested, “and see who it is…. She seems to be the 
youngest of the three sisters—and not quite dead either. I dare say the rascal 
throttled her, then buried her alive. Well, we’ll revive her, and you’ll have the fun 
of slaying two.”

Our attentions did indeed bring the poor child back to life, but she was unable 
to tell us what the Prince had done to her once she had lost consciousness. The 
two sisters hugged each other, shedding many tears; and the barbarous 
Saint-Fond informed them that he was about to kill them both. Which is what he 
went ahead and did; however, since I have a good many adventures of this kind 
to relate, rather than risk being tedious, I shall forego a description of this one. 
Suffice it to say that the monster discharged into the ass of the younger of the 
two creatures while finishing her off; we tossed some dirt into the pit; and we 
pursued our way.

“Innumerable are the fell deeds which may afford pleasure; but to my 
knowledge there is none that causes it more deliciously than destruction, wanton 
murder,” that arch-libertine affirmed. “No, there is no ecstasy to compare with the
one you taste as you indulge in this divine infamy: were this amusement to 
become more generally widespread, I can assure you the earth would be 
depopulated inside a dozen years. Dear Juliette, your performance of a moment 
ago encourages me to suppose that you are as fond of crime as I.”

And I gave Saint-Fond plainly to understand that it stimulated me not one whit 
less, and if anything, more, than it did him. It was then we perceived, in a 
clearing among the trees, and by the light of the moon, what appeared to be a 
little convent.

“And now what have we here?” asked Saint-Fond. “Does she mean to drown 
me in delight?”

“Truth to tell,” said I, “I do not know where we are.” I knocked on the door.

It was opened by a nun advanced in years.

“Venerable and beloved mother,” I said to her, “will you show your hospitality 
to two strangers who have wandered off the beaten path?”

“Enter,” the good lady replied; “though this be a nunnery, the virtue you invoke
is not alien to our hearts, and we shall as willingly practice it with you as we have 
done with an elderly seigneur who a short while ago made the same request: he 
is with the women of the house who have just risen for matins.”

From what she told us, we realized that the Prince was there too. We joined 
him; he was surrounded by a group made up of another nun and half a dozen 
pensionnaires aged from twelve to sixteen. Yet covered with the blood of his 
latest victim, the old lecher was already beginning to behave disrespectfully.

Quickly we entered the room, the nun who was there addressed herself to 
Saint-Fond.

“Monsieur, will you put a halt to this ungrateful person’s effrontery. In return 
for the kindness we have shown him he has done nought but insult us.”

“Madame,” replied the Minister, “my friend, scarcely more moral than I and like
myself detesting virtue, is very little disposed to reward it; your pensionnaires 
look exceedingly attractive to me; either we set your damned convent afire this 
instant, or by God, we rape the six of them.”

Thereupon, with one hand seizing the smallest, and with his fist lashing out at 
two nuns who seek to protect her, Saint-Fond violates her there and then, 
frontwardly. Need more be said? The five others had soon undergone the same 
fate, except that Saint-Fond, fearing lest his tool weaken, ignored cunts and 
perforated assholes only. As one by one they emerged from his clutches, the 
Prince took charge of them and flogged them till they bled, synchronizing that 
ceremony with the other of kissing my buttocks which, he oft repeated, he prized,
he cherished, he adored. Saint-Fond, keeping a firm grip upon himself, had 
discharged not a drop; he has at the two nuns, one of whom is over sixty, shuts 
himself up with them in an adjoining cell, and comes back thirty minutes later, 
alone.

“Eh, my friend, what have you done with those duennas?” I inquire of the 
Minister, who rejoins us in a very overwrought state.

“Remaining in control of this establishment,” he informs us, “meant getting rid 
of those warders: I started by sporting with them in that cell, I have a passion for
weather-beaten asses. Then, discovering a stairway that leads down to a well, I 
cast them in.”

“And these pullets, what’s to be done with them? I trust we aren’t going to 
leave them alive,” says the Prince.

Further horrors were perpetrated, whereof I’ll say only that they were ghastly; 
the convent was emptied.

The two libertines, having by now emptied their balls also, and seeing day 
about to break, desired to return to my house. There, a sumptuous breakfast, 
served by three naked women, was awaiting us; we all had hearty appetites. The 
Prince asked Saint-Fond’s leave to spend a few hours in bed with me; and my 
lover, flanked by two manservants, had himself fucked until the sun was well up in
the sky.

The old nobleman’s struggles and wigglings constituted no great threat to my 
modesty; after going to great pains and lengths he contrived to introduce himself 
into my asshole, though 

twas not for long he stuck there; Nature dashed my hopes, the instrument 
bent, and the villain, who hadn’t even the strength to discharge—for he had, he 
maintained, shed his fuck twice in the course of the evening—fell asleep, his snout
wedged in my behind.

As soon as we rose, Saint-Fond, more enchanted with me than ever, gave me a
draft for eight hundred thousand francs, payable at the Royal Treasury; and he 
and his friend quitted my house.

Generally speaking, all the succeeding parties resembled that inaugural one, 
save for particular episodes I with my fertile imagination took care to vary 
constantly. Noirceuil was almost always present, but apart from the Prince I had 
not seen any strangers at any of them.

I had been at the helm of that great vessel for three months, steering it with 
all possible success, when Saint-Fond informed me I had a ministerial crime to 
commit on the morrow. Oh, dread consequences of a barbarous policy! The 
victim? Surely, my friends, you would be hard pressed to guess his identity. ’Twas 
Saint-Fond’s own father, a gentleman of sixty-six, in every way the soul of 
respectability; he had been disturbed at his son’s irregularities of comportment, 
dreading lest they prove his undoing; he had argued with him, warned him, even 
spoken to his disadvantage at Court, with the aim of constraining him to leave the
Ministry, very rightly believing that it were better for this scoundrel his son to 
retire of his own accord, rather than be banished from the stage.

From the outset, Saint-Fond took his interference ill; he stood to gain a yearly 
three thousand from his father’s death and accordingly did not long delay coming 
to a decision. Noirceuil arrived with the particulars; and noticing that I appeared 
somewhat to waver at the prospect of this major crime, he thought by means of 
the following speech to cleanse the projected deed of the taints of atrocity my 
weakness idiotically ascribed to it.

“The evil you fancy you do in killing a man, and the further evil you imagine 
exists where the question is of parricide—these, it seems to me, my dear, are the 
two notions I ought to endeavor to combat. However, I need waste no time 
examining the former of the two; a mind such as yours can only scorn the 
prejudices that hold criminal the destruction of one’s fellow beings.(3) This 
homicide is a simple affair for you, since between your existence and the victim’s 
no tie exists; it only becomes complicated for my friend; you are awed by the 
stain of parricide he is only too willing to incur, and therefore it shall be from this 
viewpoint alone I’ll consider the deed.

“Parricide: is it or is it not a crime?

“Assuredly, if there is in all the world a single deed I esteem justified, 
legitimate, it is this one; and, pray tell me, what relationship can there be 
between myself and him who brought me into the world? How would you have me
think myself in any way beholden to a man, merely because, once upon a time, 
some whimsy moved him to discharge into my mother’s cunt? Nothing is more 
preposterous than this piece of foolishness; but what now if I am unacquainted 
with him, what if I do not know the identity of this individual, this father of mine 
who sired me? Does the voice of Nature perhaps speak up in me and tell me who 
he is? Never. So should I not be as distant in my attitude toward him as toward 
anybody else? If this fact is sure, and thereof I do not believe any doubt can 
subsist, parricide in no wise increases the supposed evil in homicide, one does no 
worse murdering one’s own father than murdering some other person. If I kill the 
man who, unbeknownst to me, begot me, the fact that he is my father contributes
nothing to my remorse; hence, it is merely because I am told we are kin that I 
pause or repent; well, I ask you, how can opinion worsen a crime? and can 
opinion possibly alter its nature? What! I am free to slay my father and feel no 
remorse provided I am not aware he is my father, but cannot in that other case 
where I know him to be? See the implications of such reasoning: even if it be an 
arrant lie, others have but to convince me it is the truth, that the man I have just 
slain was my father, and lo! I am to be filled with regrets and dread 
discomfort—’tis sheer nonsense.

“And further: if remorse exists, though grounds therefor do not, that remorse 
cannot properly exist when the alleged grounds for it are present. If you can so 
very easily deceive me in all this, then I tell you, the crime you speak of is no 
crime at all, it is illusory; since Nature herself does not give me certain indication 
of who the author of my days is, ’tis surely because she would not have me feel 
any greater tenderness for him than for some other person who is of no particular
concern to me; if your opinion alone creates occasion and cause for remorse, and 
if your opinion can deceive me, then this remorse is a paltry business, 
insignificant, null; and I am a fool if I consent to succumb to it. Do animals cleave
worship-fully to their fathers? Have they even a bare inkling of which male begot 
them? Searching for motives to warrant filial gratitude, will you cite the care my 
father took of me during my infancy and childhood? Another error. Complying with
them, he ceded to the customs of the country, to his pride, to a sentiment which, 
as a father, he managed to conceive for his handiwork but which there is no need 
whatever that I conceive for the artisan; for that artisan, acting uniquely at the 
behest of his own pleasure, had no thought at all for me when it so pleased him 
to proceed to the act of propagation with my dam; his sole concern was for 
himself, and I fail to see therein any basis for especially ardent feelings of 
gratitude.

“Ah! let us entertain no more illusions on this article, the prejudice is unworthy 
of mature minds: to the person who gave us life we owe no more than we do to 
the remotest, chilliest stranger. In us Nature prompts absolutely no feeling for 
him, none; I shall go farther: she could not possibly imbue us with any feeling for 
him, friendship is not something that can be imposed upon us from outside; it is 
false that one loves one’s father, it is equally false, indeed, that we can love him: 
you fear him, yes, but love him you do not; usually a threat to you, always 
onerous, his existence cannot but disquiet and inconvenience you; personal 
interest, the most sacred of the laws of Nature, puts us under invincible 
compulsion to desire the death of the man from whom we await our inheritance; 
and the problem envisaged from this angle, not only would we hate that man as a
matter of course, but, very probably, it would be even more natural still to 
attempt his life, for the excellent reason that everybody deserves to have his 
turn, and that if my father has for two score years enjoyed the fortune come 
down to him from his father, and that if I find myself growing old in everlasting 
expectancy of the substance whereupon my welfare dances attendance, I should 
definitely, and without a trace of remorse, aid a Nature that is sometimes 
behindhand or remiss, and myself, employing whatever means, accelerate the 
process whereby I enter into the exercise of rights Nature accords me but may 
well delay transmitting to me, out of some caprice neither I nor anyone else in his
senses will refrain from taking steps to counteract. If self-interest is the general 
rule by which man measures all his actions, there is, necessarily, much less evil in
killing one’s father than in killing some other human being; for our personal 
reasons for ridding ourselves of him who brought us into the light must always be 
stronger and more valid than those we have for putting any other person out of 
the way. Here also there exists another metaphysical consideration we ought not 
lose sight of: old age is the road to death; causing a man to age, Nature speeds 
him toward his grave: he, therefore, who slays an oldster does nought but carry 
out her intentions: whence it is, that among many nations, murder of the aged is 
accounted a virtue. Useless to the world, so much excess baggage in society, 
consuming provender that is scarce already, that is lacking to the young or which 
the young must buy dearly because of the overgreat demand, their existence is 
demonstrably to no purpose, it is harmful, and the wisest course is to liquidate 
them, that is self-evident. Hence, not only is it no crime at all, to kill one’s father, 
it is an excellent thing to do; it is a meritorious deed from the point of view of 
oneself, whom it serves; having regard now to Nature, it is also meritorious, for it 
is to free her of an unwelcome burden; and it is praiseworthy, since it supposes 
that a man be vigorous enough, philosophical enough to value himself, who may 
be of some use to humanity, above that dotard humanity has all but forgotten.

“And so, Juliette, you are about to perform a handsome deed in destroying the 
enemy of your lover who, I am sure, serves the State to the utmost of his ability; 
for if, as I would be the last to deny, he is now and again guilty of some petty 
prevarication, some petty peculation, Saint-Fond is a very great minister 
nonetheless: he is bloodthirsty, he is rapacious, fierce is his grip, he considers 
murder indispensable to the maintaining of good government. Is he mistaken? 
Sulla, Marius, Richelieu, Mazarin—all history’s great statesmen, have they thought
otherwise? Did Machiavelli lay down different principles? There is no room for 
doubt: bloodshed there must be if any regime, a monarchical one especially, is to 
survive; the throne of the tyrant must be cemented with blood, and Saint-Fond 
has yet to begin to spill anything like the quantity of it that should be flowing this 
very minute…. Finally, Juliette, perform this gesture and you remain in the good 
graces of a man who keeps you in what I believe may be accurately termed a 
state of prosperity; you increase the fortune of him who is responsible for yours: I
really wonder that you even hesitate.”

“Noirceuil,” said I very pertly, “who told you I was hesitating? ’Twas merely 
some involuntary reflex in me, no more. I am young yet. I am but a fledgling, my 
career has only just begun; that I stumble a little, backslide now and 
then—should this surprise my mentors? But they’ll soon see I am worthy of the 
pains they take with me. Let Saint-Fond make haste and send his father to me, 
he’s a dead man two hours after he crosses the threshold of my house. However, 
my dear, there are three categories of poison in the assortment your friend 
entrusted to me; do you know which I am to employ?”

“The crudest, the one that causes the greatest suffering,” answered Noirceuil; 
“I am glad you reminded me. Saint-Fond was adamant on that score. He wishes 
that, in going to his death, his father be punished for having intrigued to his 
detriment, he wishes his agony to be hideous.”

“I understand,” I said, “and you may tell him that the thing shall be handled to 
his satisfaction. But what is the plan?”

“As follows,” Noirceuil replied. “As the friend of the Minister, you will invite the 
old man to dinner; that is, you will send him a note, in it you will make it clear 
that your design is to bring about a conciliation: you yourself sharing his views 
regarding his son’s retirement from public office, you’d like to discuss the matter 
with Saint-Fond senior. He will come; ill, he will be borne out of your house; 
Saint-Fond junior will attend to the rest. Here’s the sum agreed upon for the 
execution of the crime: a draft for one hundred thousand crowns on the Treasury. 
Will that suffice, Juliette?”

“Saint-Fond gives me that much for a supper,” said I, handing back the scrap 
of paper; “tell him I’ll do this for nothing. I simply wish to be helpful.”

“And here is another draft for the same amount,” Noirceuil went on; “your 
lover anticipated your objection—indeed, he would have been disappointed had 
you made none. ‘I want her to be paid, and paid according to her desires’—often 
has he repeated that to me. ‘So long as she evinces selfishness, and so long as I 
satisfy that selfishness, I am sure not to lose her.’”

“Saint-Fond seems to know me very well,” was my reply; “I have a liking for 
money, I don’t hide the fact from myself, neither do I from you. But I shall never 
ask him for more than is necessary. These six hundred thousand francs will go 
into carrying out the project; I want six hundred thousand more for myself the 
day the old man expires.”

“You’ll have them, never fear. Oh, Juliette, what a splendid situation is yours! 
Do nothing to spoil it, do everything to deserve it, enjoy it, and if you know how 
to conduct yourself intelligently, you’ll soon be the wealthiest woman in Europe; I 
have given you a marvelous friend.”

“Out of respect for your principles, Noirceuil, I refrain from thanking you; 
arranging this liaison pleased you, you gain therefrom as well, it flatters you to 
have among your intimate acquaintances a woman whose social position, riches, 
and name have already started to eclipse those of the Court princesses…. I’d be 
ashamed to show myself at the Opera dressed as the Princesse de Nemours was 
yesterday evening; not a soul so much as glanced at her. Everybody’s eyes were 
upon me.”

“And you are relishing all this, Juliette?”

“Infinitely, my dear. To begin with, I am rolling in gold, which, for me, is the 
foremost of enjoyable things.”

“But are you doing sufficient fucking?”

“A great deal; precious few are the nights when the best Paris can boast in the 
one and the other sex does not come to offer me the greatest homage.”

“And your favorite crimes?”

“They are being committed, they are being committed. I steal every chance I 
get—I don’t let an odd franc get by. You’d think, from my graspingness, from my 
thievery, I was in imminent danger of starving to death.”

“And vengeance?”

“I have been particularly active on that score: the fearful unpleasantness that 
has befallen Prince de X.—you’ve heard the news? the whole town is talking about
nothing else—’twas I alone arranged that. Five or six ladies who in the past few 
months have thought to challenge my social position are presently lodged in the 
Bastille.”

Next, we entered into a few details touching the parties I gave for the Minister.

“I must tell you,” said Noirceuil, “that of late there are signs you are relaxing 
your efforts, Saint-Fond has noticed it. There were fewer than fifty dishes at the 
last supper; you are of course aware that only by eating well can one hope to 
discharge copiously,” he continued, “and for us libertines, the quality and the 
quantity of our sperm is of crucial importance. Gluttony fares wonderfully well 
with all the tastes it has pleased Nature to instill in us; and experience shows that
the prick is never so rigid, the heart never so staunch, as after one has 
sumptuously dined. I would say a word, too, about the choice of girls. Although 
those you place before us are without doubt very pretty, Saint-Fond feels that 
more research would improve the selection. I cannot but attempt to impress upon
you the care that must be taken in this matter. We require that the game 
furnished us not only be of the finest breed, but that in addition it possess all 
those qualities, moral as well as physical, which make bagging it interesting.”

For answer to this, I outlined the excellent measures I was taking: instead of 
six, now I had two dozen women working around the clock, and under them they 
had an equal number of subalterns combing the provinces; I was the mainspring 
of the entire mechanism; and I was putting forward a great effort.

“Before contracting for an object,” Noirceuil recommended, “even if it involve a
thirty-league journey, make it: there is no substitute for personal inspection; and 
never accept anything but what meets with your total approval.”

“All very well,” said I, “but that formula is not always so easy to follow. The 
object is frequently kidnapped before I have had a description of it.”

“Why then,” Noirceuil rejoined, “kidnap twenty to obtain a yield of five.”

“But what am I to do with the rejects?”

“Whatever you wish: sport with them yourself, sell them to your friends, to 
procuresses, to panders. With the apparatus you will have built up you should be 
able to traffic on a broad scale and, it would seem to me, even create a virtual 
monopoly; at any rate, there ought to be a good hundred thousand a year in this 
for you.”

“True, if Saint-Fond paid me for every object acquired. As things stand, he only
remits for three per supper.”

“I think I can induce him to pay for the lot.”

“He’ll be far better served if he does. Now, Noirceuil,” I said, “there are some 
other matters I should like to discuss, and they relate to me. You know the kind of
mind I have: I need hardly tell you that with all these means for mischief-making,
I indulge very heavily in it; the ideas which occur to me, the things I imagine are 
beyond description—but, my friend, I require your advice. Don’t you suppose 
that, ultimately, my behavior may make Saint-Fond jealous?”

“Never,” Noirceuil answered at once. “Saint-Fond is an exceedingly reasonable 
person, as such he senses you cannot attain self-expression save through much 
wrongdoing; the idea itself amuses him, and only yesterday he was telling me 
that he was afraid you were not enough of a trollop.”

“Oh, in that case, let him be easy; you may assure the Minister that it is 
seldom one finds a person with a more pronounced taste for every sort of vice.”

“I have now and then heard it asked,” said Noirceuil, “whether the jealousy she
inspires speaks in favor of or against a woman, and I have always thought the 
question odd: for my part it has from the beginning been obvious to me that the 
impulse leading to this mania being purely personal, women assuredly have 
nothing to gain from the tumult it produces in their lovers’ breasts. It is not by 
any means fondness for a woman that brings on jealousy; it is dread of the 
humiliation her change of heart would cause one; and to prove there is nothing 
but sheer egoism in and behind this passion, I have simply to remind you that no 
lover, if he be of good faith, and sincere, will deny he would prefer to see his 
mistress dead than unfaithful. Hence, it is rather her fickleness than the loss of 
her that afflicts us, and ’tis hence our own selves we are thinking of when the 
event takes place. Whence I conclude that, second only to the inexcusable folly of
falling in love with a woman in the first place, the greatest extravagance a man 
can commit is to be jealous of her. With regard to her, this sentiment is dishonest,
demonstrating, as it does, one’s lack of esteem for her; with regard to oneself, it 
is regularly painful and inevitably useless, since the surest way to breed in a 
woman the wish to fail us is to intimate to her our fear lest she do so. Jealousy 
and the terror of cuckoldry are two things based entirely upon our prejudices 
pertaining to the enjoyment of women; were it not for this accursed habit of 
stubbornly and idiotically wanting, whenever it is a question of woman, to 
associate the moral and the physical, we’d long ago have had done with these vile
notions. What? It is not possible, you say, to lie with a woman without loving her?
And it is not possible to love her without lying with her? But why must you 
embroil the heart in something where it is exclusively the body that acts? They 
are two desires, they are two very different needs, so it seems to me. Araminthe 
has the world’s most beautiful figure, her face is endearing, her big brown sultry 
eyes promise an ample ejaculation of her sperm once the walls of her vagina or 
the interior of her anus are electrified by friction from the rubbing of my prick: I 
poke her and sure enough, behold! I was right, she squirts a quart. Why, pray tell,
need anything heartfelt accompany the act whereby I take this creature’s body? It
does appear to me once again, that loving and enjoying are distinct and separate 
affairs, and that not only is it unnecessary to love in order to enjoy, but that it 
suffices to enjoy in order not to love. For dreamy, tender sentiments rise out of 
compatibility of humor and expediency, but are in no wise due to the beauty of a 
bust or the pretty contours of a bum; and I would not allow these latter objects, 
which depending upon our peculiarities of taste can sharply excite the physical 
affections, to be able to exert a similar prise upon the moral affections. To 
complete my comparison: Belinda is ugly, she’s forty-two, not one hint of the 
gracious anywhere about her person, not a single attractive feature, no, she’s a 
slug, grossly ill-favored. But Belinda is clever, she has wit, a delicious character, a 
million things which mate nicely with my sentiments and tastes; I’d have no 
desire to bed with Belinda, but I’d be wild about her conversation nonetheless. I’d
intensely desire to have Araminthe, but I’d cordially detest her the moment the 
fever of desire had abated, because in her I have found a body only, and none of 
the moral qualities which could win her a place in my heart. All this however is 
quite irrelevant to the present case; in Saint-Fond’s tolerant attitude toward the 
infidelities you commit there is an element of libertine sentiment for which none 
of the foregoing provides an adequate explanation. The idea of you lying in 
another’s arms entrances Saint-Fond, he himself puts you there, knowing you 
there, imagining you there, seeing you there hardens his prick; you’ll multiply his 
pleasures as proportionally you augment the size and number of your own, and 
Saint-Fond will never cherish you so much as when you do to the utmost that 
which would earn you the hatred of a clod. Here it is a question of one of those 
mental anomalies comprehensible, and indeed common, only to cerebral 
individuals like ourselves, but which are not on account of their rarity any the less
delectable.”

“What you tell me is reassuring,” said I; “Saint-Fond will love my tastes, my 
mind, my character, and shan’t be at all jealous of my person? Very great is my 
relief to hear you say it, for, I confess to you, continence would be impossible for 
me, my temperament requires satisfaction, my thirst requires to be slaked at all 
costs; hot-blooded as I am, energetic and imaginative as you know me to be, with
this colossal wealth at my command, how ever could I resist passions aroused by 
everything, inflamed continually?”

“Surrender to them, Juliette, surrender to them, you cannot do more, you 
should not do less; but in your dealings with the public at large, I would urge you 
to be somewhat the hypocrite. Remember that in this world hypocrisy is an 
indispensable vice for him who has the fortune of possessing all the others; with 
art and deceit, one succeeds at anything, for it isn’t your virtue society needs, it is
simply a pretext for supposing you virtuous. For every two occasions when this 
virtue will be necessary to you, there will be thirty others when you’ll only have to
simulate it; therefore don the mask, debauched women, study to perfect the 
appearance expected of you, but only to the point of indifference to crime, never 
so far as enthusiasm for virtue, because the former attitude leaves the 
amour-propre of others in peace whilst the latter exasperates it. Moreover, it is 
quite enough to hide what one loves without having to feign what one detests. If 
all men were vicious in better faith, there’d be no need for hypocrisy; but, falsely 
persuaded that from virtue there are advantages to be reaped, they must 
absolutely cling to some shred or vestige of it. One must do as they, and, to 
secure their good opinion, conceal all one can of one’s misconduct under the cloak
of that worm-eaten and ridiculous idol; quits, of course, to revenge oneself for 
this enforced homage by making that many the more sacrifices to its rival. In 
addition, hypocrisy, teaching one craft and guile, facilitates countless crimes; your
disinterested air invites trust, the adversary lowers his guard, and the less you 
give him to suspect you are armed with one, the easier it is to drive home the 
dagger. This covert and mysterious manner of thus satisfying the passions 
increases a thousandfold the enjoyment you derive from them. Cynicism has its 
piquancy, I am aware of it, but it does not lure into your net, it does not assure 
you victims as certainly as hypocrisy does; and then too, effrontery, all that 
comes under the head of the criminally crapulous, is not truly to be savored 
except in debaucheries. These the hypocrite, secure within the four walls of his 
house and his solid reputation, may perfectly well indulge in once he has 
answered the requirements of his libertinage—surely; who’s to stop him? But it 
will be generally agreed that elsewhere than in the sanctuary of the home 
cynicism is out of place, it is bad form, in poor taste, and by creating a breach 
between society and yourself, it incapacitates you for the enjoyment of all society 
has to offer. The crimes of debauchery are not the only ones that afford delight, 
you understand, there are quantities of others, of the highest interest and often 
very lucrative, which hypocrisy makes available to us, but cynicism unattainable. 
Was there ever a falser, adroiter, more unscrupulous wench than Madame 
Brinvilliers, that pillar of society in her day? It was in the charity hospitals she 
used to make trial of her poisons, it was behind the shield of piety and the screen 
of philanthropy she would experiment with the delicious means to her crimes. Her
father said to her, as he lay upon his deathbed where he had been brought by a 
poisoned drink administered by her, ‘Oh, my beloved daughter, my one regret in 
taking leave of life is that I shall no longer be able to do for you all the things I 
would like.’

“And the daughter’s response was a supplementary dose in the cup of tea she 
handed to the sinking patient.(4) The world boasted no more artful, more subtle 
creature; she played at devotion, she was ever at Mass, she distributed a fortune 
in alms, and did all that to cover her crimes; and so it was a long time before she 
was found out, and perhaps she never would have been but for the incaution and 
misfortune of her lover.(5) Let that woman serve as an example to you, my dear, 
I couldn’t propose a better.”

“I know the whole story of that famous creature by heart,” I replied, “and you 
may be sure I aspire to follow in her footsteps. But, kind friend, I’d like to have a 
more contemporary model; I’d wish her to be somewhat older than me, I’d want 
her to love me, to have tastes like mine, passions like mine, and, though we’d 
masturbate together, I’d want her to allow me all my other follies without being in
the slightest bit jealous; be that as it may, I’d want her to have a certain 
ascendancy over me, but that without seeking to dominate me; I’d want her to 
give me sound advice, to cooperate at all times in my caprices, to be profoundly 
experienced in libertinage; to be irreligious as well as unprincipled, as much a 
stranger to good manners as to virtue, to have great warmth of wit and a heart of
ice.”

“I have just what you are looking for,” Noirceuil replied; “a widow of thirty, 
lovely, nay, beautiful, criminal to the core, arrayed with all the qualities you list, 
and who will be of invaluable aid to you in your chosen career. She can replace 
me as your tutor; for, you realize, separated as we are, I can no longer attend to 
your needs with the same ardor as before: Madame de Clairwil, that is the name 
of the person I have in mind, and she is a millionaire, knows everybody worth 
knowing, everything that can possibly be known, and I am convinced she will 
agree to take you under her wing.”

“Charming Noirceuil, you are too good; but there’s yet more to it, my friend, 
I’d like to share my knowledge with another; I keenly sense my need of 
instruction, I no less keenly desire to educate someone: I must have a teacher, 
yes, and I must have a pupil too.”

“Of course. My fiancée?”

“What!” I cried enthusiastically, “would you entrust me with Alexandrine’s 
education?”

“Could I put her in better hands? I’d be delighted to have you take charge of 
her. Moreover, it is Saint-Fond’s wish that she keep the most intimate company 
with you.”

“And what is causing the delay in this marriage?”

“I am in mourning for my last wife, you know.”

“Do you defer to conventional usages?”

“Occasionally, for the sake of appearances; though it goes fearfully against the 
grain.”

“One further word, dear Noirceuil: you are very sure this woman you propose 
to introduce me to will not become my rival?”

“You are thinking of your position with Saint-Fond? Fear not. Saint-Fond knew 
her long before he met you, he still amuses himself with her; but Madame de 
Clairwil would not consent to undertake your functions, and, for his part, the 
Minister would not obtain anything like the same pleasure from having-her 
exercise them.”

“Ah,” I exclaimed, “you are divine, both of you, and your generosity toward me
will be very fully rewarded by my zeal in the service of your passions. Issue me 
orders, I shall be only too happy, always, to be the instrument of your debauches 
and the main accessory to your crimes.”

I was not to see my lover again until after I executed the task he had assigned 
me; on the eve of the appointed day I was exhorted to be firm; and on the 
morrow the dear old gentleman appeared. Before we sat down at table I 
employed all my skill to mend his opinion of his son, and was quite taken aback to
discover that, indeed, it would not be at all difficult to set things straight between 
them. Therefore I hastily shifted my tack. ’Tis not a reconciliation we want now, 
said I to myself; if that happens, I lose both the opportunity for the crime I am in 
a perfect itch to commit, and the twelve hundred thousand francs promised me 
for bringing it off; let’s cease negotiations and start to act. Administering the drug
was child’s play; the old man collapses, he is trundled out, and two days later I 
learn to my considerable satisfaction that he is no more, his death having been 
hideously painful.

It was but an hour or so after he expired that his son arrived for one of his 
semiweekly suppers at my house. Poor weather forced us to hold it indoors; and 
Noirceuil was the one other guest present. I’d readied three little girls of fourteen 
or fifteen, prettier than you can imagine; a Paris convent had supplied them to me
at the price of a hundred thousand francs a head—I’d stopped bargaining ever 
since Saint-Fond had agreed to cover costs.

“These,” said I, presenting them to the Minister, “will console you for the loss 
you have just sustained.”

“It does not overly affect me, Juliette,” said the Minister, kissing me, “I’d 
willingly send fifteen such blackguards to their death every day, and without an 
ace of compunction. My one regret is that he suffered so little; he was a most 
contemptible clown.”

“But, you know,” I said, “it wouldn’t have taken much to change his attitude?”

“You acted properly in not encouraging him to do so. I shudder at the thought 
of still having to endure the beggar’s existence. I even resent having to bury him;
but for some loathsome prejudices, I’d have the pleasure of flinging his corpse on 
the dung heap and watching it devoured by vermin.”

And, as if eager to forget, the libertine turned immediately to the job, my three
maids were assessed. There was nothing the fiercest critic could find fault with: 
size, shape, birth, mint condition, youth, looks, they were all there; but I noticed 
that neither of the two friends was stiffening in the least, and satiety is not easy 
to please: ’twas apparent they were not content, but did not, however, dare 
complain.

“Speak up,” said I, “if these objects don’t satisfy you, you must tell me what 
you want. For you must admit, I cannot hope to guess what it would be that 
outdoes this.”

“No,” sighed Saint-Fond, who was having himself handled by two of the little 
girls, whose efforts were proving fruitless, “there’s no one to blame unless it’s 
Noirceuil and myself. We’re exhausted, we’ve just been performing horrors, and I 
haven’t the faintest idea what’s to be done to revive us now.”

“Perhaps,” I suggested, “if you were to recount your feats, you might, from the
telling, rediscover the strength to commit fresh infamies.”

“We can at least try,” said Noirceuil.

“Well then, off with the clothes,” said Saint-Fond, “you too, Juliette, undress 
yourself, and listen to us.”

Two of the girls converged upon Noirceuil, one sucked him, he tongued the 
other and palpated both their asses; the frigging of the narrator was confided to 
me, and while speaking, he spanked the third maiden’s behind; and here follow 
the atrocities Saint-Fond divulged:

“I led my daughter to where my father lay dying. Noirceuil was with me; we 
drew the shutters, we bolted the doors, and then”—and the lecher’s prick rose, 
nodding as though in confirmation of what he was saying—”and then I most 
barbarously announced to my father that this that had befallen him, and the 
agonies he was undergoing, were my work; upon my instructions, I told him, you 
had poisoned him and I advised him to think on death. Then raising my 
daughter’s skirts, I sodomized her before his eyes. Noirceuil, who adores me 
when I commit infamies, had been fucking me very briskly; but when the rascal 
saw Alexandrine’s ass bared to the light, he soon replaced me in the breach … 
and I, bending over the bed, forced the old man to frig me, and while he fisted 
my prick, I slowly strangled him: I gave up my fuck at the same moment he gave 
up the ghost, and Noirceuil simultaneously discharged into my daughter’s 
fundament. Ah, the joy that was mine! Foul accursed unnatural son who all at one
stroke was guilty of parricide, incest, murder, sodomy, pimping, prostitution. Oh, 
Juliette, Juliette! never in my life had I been so happy. See what it does to me 
just to recite those voluptuous exploits, my prick’s as stiff as it was this 
afternoon.”

Whereupon the lecher has at one of the little girls, and while he proceeds to 
maculate her in every part, he would have Noirceuil and me abuse another of the 
children within his view. We improvise awful things; Nature, outraged in those 
girls, becomes frenziedly operative in Saint-Fond, and the scapegrace is near to 
shedding his fuck, when, so as not to squander his forces, he prudently withdraws
from the ass of the novice in order to perforate the other two. Exercising faultless 
self-control that day, he triumphed six times in a row, and for his share Noirceuil 
had no buds, but full-blown roses only. Howbeit, the latter made the most of the 
little that was left to him, and the whole while he fucked, and he fucked at a 
leisurely pace, he kissed my ass and Saint-Fond’s too, he pumped them both, and
drank up the farts we amused ourselves producing for him.

Then ’twas suppertime, I alone was invited to partake of the feast, but nude; 
the little girls lay scattered about the table, light was provided by the candles we 
had stuck in their asses; and as these candles were none of them very long, and 
as the supper lasted on and on, all their thighs were severely scorched. Earlier we
had bound them fast to the table to hold them still, and the gags of wadded 
cotton we had inserted in their mouths saved our conversation from being 
disturbed by their clamorings. The three candelabras diverted our libertines 
throughout the meal; and I, reaching out from time to time to verify their state, 
found them both in very merry form indeed.

“Noirceuil,” said Saint-Fond, while our little novices were aroasting, “do, 
please, explain to us, manipulating your metaphysics prettily as you are wont to 
do, do explain to us, how ’tis possible we arrive at pleasure in the one case 
through the sight of others undergoing pain, and in the other, through suffering 
pain ourselves.”

“Pay me close heed,” said Noirceuil, “I’ll give you the thing detailed and 
demonstrated.

“‘Pain,’ logically defined, ‘is nothing other than a sentiment of hostility in the 
soul toward the body it animates, the which it signifies through certain 
movements that conflict with the body’s physical organization.’ So says Nicole, 
who perceived in man an ethereal substance, which he called soul, and which he 
differentiated from the material substance we call body. I, however, who will have 
none of this frivolous stuff and who consider man as something on the order of an
absolutely material plant, I shall simply say that pain is the consequence of a 
defective relationship between objects foreign to us and the organic molecules 
composing us; in such wise that instead of composing harmoniously with those 
that make up our neural fluids, as they do in the commotion of pleasure, the 
atoms emanating from these foreign objects strike them aslant, crookedly, sting 
them, repulse them, and never fuse with them. Still, though the effects are 
negative, they are effects nonetheless, and whether it be pleasure or pain 
brewing in us, you will always have a certain impact upon the neural fluids. Now, 
what prevents this painful commotion—infinitely sharper and more active than the
other—from exciting in the said fluid the same conflagration propagated there by 
the impact of the atoms emanating from objects of pleasure? and, stirred for the 
sake of being stirred, what prevents me from becoming accustomed, through 
habit, to being no less suitably agitated by the atoms that repel than by the 
others that blend? Weary of the effects that only produce a simple sensation, why
should I not become accustomed to receiving the same pleasure from those that 
produce a poignant sensation? Both categories of shock are sustained in the same
place; the only difference between them is that one is violent and the other mild; 
but from the standpoint of the blasé individual, is not the first greatly to be 
preferred to the second? Is there anything commoner than to see, on the one 
hand, people who have accustomed their palates to a pleasurable irritation, and 
next to them, others who couldn’t put up with that irritation for an instant? Is it 
not now true—my hypothesis once accepted—that man’s practice, in his 
pleasures, is an attempt to move the objects which procure him his enjoyment in 
the same way he himself is moved, and that these proceedings are what are 
termed, in the metaphysics of pleasure-taking, effects of his delicacy? What then 
should appear odd in the man who, endowed with organs of the kind we have just
depicted, through the same procedures as his adversary, and through the same 
principles of delicacy, fancies he moves the pleasure-procuring object by means 
whereby he himself is affected? He is no more wrong than the other, he has only 
done what the other has done. The consequences are different, I grant you; but 
the initial motivations are identical; the first has been no crueler than the second, 
and neither of them is open to blame: upon the pleasure-procuring object both 
have employed the same means they themselves use to procure their own 
pleasure.

“‘But,’ replies he who is subjected to a brutal emotion, ‘but this doesn’t please 
me.’ ’Tis altogether possible; it now remains to be seen whether force will 
succeed with you where persuasion has failed. If not, then begone, leave me 
alone; if, to the contrary, my wealth, my influence, or my station gives me either 
some authority over you or some certainty of being able to stifle your complaints, 
then submit without a murmur to everything it pleases me to impose upon you, 
for have my enjoyment I must and shall, and I can obtain it only by tormenting 
you and seeing your tears flow. But in no case have you the right to be surprised 
or to reproach me, because I am acting in accordance with the way Nature 
designed me, am following the bent she imparted to me, and because, in a word, 
in forcing you to accede to my harsh and brutal lusts, they alone which are 
capable of leading me to the uppermost pitch of pleasure, I act pursuant to the 
same principle of delicacy as the tepid swain who knows nought but the roses of a
sentiment whereof I recognize only the thorns; for I, torturing you, rending you 
limb from limb, I am merely doing the one thing that is able to move me, just as 
he, sorrowfully encunting his mistress, does that which alone moves him 
agreeably; but he can have his effeminate delicacy, it’s not for me—why? because
it cannot possibly move organs so solidly made, of such tough fiber as mine.

“Yes, my friends,” Noirceuil went on, “it is, you may be sure, impossible for any
person who finds authentic pleasure in lewd and voluptuous activities ever really 
to combine their practice with that of delicacy, which unto these delights is nought
but the very kiss of death and which is based upon the premise that joy is to be 
shared, a premise no one who intends seriously to enjoy himself can ever accept: 
shared, all enjoyment becomes dilute, the wine becomes watered. The truth is 
generally recognized: encourage or allow the object which serves for your 
pleasure to take enjoyment therein, and straightway you discover that it is at 
your expense; there is no more selfish passion than lust; none that is severer in 
its demands; smitten stiff by desire, ’tis with yourself you must be solely 
concerned, and as for the object that serves you, it must always be considered as
some sort of victim, destined to that passion’s fury. Do not all passions require 
victims? Well then! in the lustful act the passive object is that of our lubricious 
passion; spare it not if you would attain your end; the intenser the sufferings of 
this object, the more entire its humiliation, its degradation, the more thorough 
will be your enjoyment. They are not pleasures you must cause this object to 
taste, but impressions you must produce upon it; and that of pain being far 
keener than that of pleasure, it is beyond all question preferable that the 
commotion produced in our nervous system by this external spectacle be created 
by pain rather than by pleasure. There you have it explained, the mania common 
to that crowd of libertines, who, like us, must, if they are to obtain successful 
erections and emit sperm, commit acts of the most atrocious cruelty, gorge 
themselves on the blood of victims. Some there are whose pricks are not even 
faintly to be stirred, save when they contemplate that doomed object of their 
lubricious fury—and save when they themselves are uniquely responsible for the 
violent sufferings it is undergoing. You wish to subject your nerves to a powerful 
agitation; you very rightly suppose that the painful commotion will prove stronger
than the pleasurable; so you employ it with favorable results. ‘But beauty,’ I hear 
some sentimental imbecile protest, ‘beauty melts, interests, it invites to 
sweetness, to forgiveness: how is one to resist the tears of the pretty girl who, 
clasping her hands together, implores mercy of her executioner?’ Indeed! This is 
precisely what one is after, it is from this agitation, this terror the libertine in 
question extracts his most delicious enjoyment; would he not be in a sorry plight 
if he were to have to act upon an inert, insensible body? and the objection cited is
quite as ridiculous as that of the man who maintained you should never eat 
mutton because sheep are mild animals. Lust’s passion will be served; it 
demands, it militates, it tyrannizes, it must therefore be appeased, and to its 
satisfaction all other conditions are totally irrelevant. Beauty, virtue, innocence, 
candor, misfortune, the object we covet will not be sheltered by any of these. To 
the contrary. Beauty tends to excite us further; virtue, innocence, candor 
embellish the object; misfortune puts it into our power, renders it malleable: 
hence, all those qualities tend only to inflame us the more, and we should look 
upon them all simply as vehicles to our passions. More, these qualities afford us 
the opportunity of violating another prohibition: I allude to the variety of pleasure
derived from sacrilege or the profanation of objects that expect our worship. That 
beautiful girl is an object of reverence for fools; making her the target of my 
liveliest and rudest passions, I experience the double pleasure of sacrificing to 
that passion both a beautiful object and one before which the crowd bows down. 
No need to expand upon this idea, it has only to enter the mind and one’s brain 
whirls. But one does not always have such objects ready to hand; however, one 
has habituated oneself to achieving pleasure through tyranny; and one is anxious 
to enjoy oneself every day—what then? Why, one must learn to delight in other, 
lesser pleasures: hardheartedness toward the downtrodden, the refusal to succor 
them, the act of plunging them oneself into misery if one possibly can—these in 
some sort substitute for the sublime pleasure of causing a debauchery-object to 
suffer. The sight of these wretches is a spectacle which very well lays the 
groundwork for the commotion we are accustomed to experience upon receiving a
dolorous impression; they reach out to us, implore our aid, we withhold 
it—there’s the spark; a further step, and there’s the fire lit, thence are crimes 
born, and nothing is surer to touch off the explosion of pleasure; but I have 
fulfilled my task. How, you wanted to know, how can one accede to pleasure 
through suffering pain, or making others suffer it? I have answered you with a 
theoretical demonstration. Let’s now confirm it in practice, and hewing to the line 
of the argument, I would request that the tortures inflicted upon these young 
ladies be piercing, that is to say, as piquant as it is within our power to make 
them.”

We rose from the table, and rather more in the spirit of jest than of charity, the
victims’ hurts were briefly looked to. I can’t say why, but that evening Noirceuil 
seemed more than usually enamored of my ass; he could not leave off kissing it, 
toying with it, praising it, sucking and fucking it; twenty times over he 
embuggered me; he would suddenly snap his prick out and give it to be sucked 
by the little girls; next, he would return to me and slap my flanks and buttocks 
with extraordinary force; he forgot himself even to the point of frigging my 
clitoris. All this heated me prodigiously, and my behavior must have appeared 
frightfully whorish to my friends. But how was one to satisfy oneself with a trio of 
exhausted children and two worn-out, shrunk-pizzled libertines? I proposed the 
idea of having myself fucked before them by my valets; but Saint-Fond, reeling 
with wine and aboil with ferocity, objected, saying that he’d have nothing brought 
in from the outside unless it was a brace of tigers, and that since there was fresh 
meat available, it ought to be devoured before it spoiled. Thereupon, he set upon 
those three charming maids’ little asses: he pinched them, bit, scratched, tore 
them; blood was already flowing left and right when, whirling toward us, his prick 
glued up against his belly, he declared very bitterly that it was a bad day, he 
simply could not think up the means to make the victims suffer in the way he 
wished.

“Everything that enters my mind today,” he said, “falls short of my desires; 
can’t we put our heads together and invent something that will keep these whores
three days in the most appalling death agonies?”

“Ah,” I said, “you’d discharge before they were halfway to the grave, and the 
illusion dispelled, you’d come to their rescue.”

“I am vexed, vexed indeed, Juliette,” Saint-Fond retorted, “to see that you do 
not know me better than that; how very gravely you are mistaken, my angel, if 
you believe my passions are the sole aliment to my cruelty. Ah, like Herod, I 
should like to prolong my ferocities beyond life itself; I am frenziedly barbaric 
when I’m stiff, yes, and cold-bloodedly cruel when I’ve shed my fuck. Very well, 
Juliette,” the villain continued, “look here: I’m going to discharge, we’ll begin the 
serious torturing of these sluts once every drop of fuck is out of my balls, and 
you’ll see whether or not I relent.”

“Saint-Fond, you seem greatly aroused,” said Noirceuil, “your speech makes 
that amply clear. Sperm is to be darted, there’s the crux of the thing; it can be 
accomplished right away if you take my advice. ’Tis this and ’tis simple: we shall 
impale these young ladies on spits, and while they roast there over the fire, 
Juliette, frigging us, will baste three handsome joints of beef with our fuck.”

“Oh, by Christ,” said Saint-Fond, rubbing his member on the bleeding buttocks 
of the youngest and prettiest of the trio, “I swear to you that this one here will 
suffer worse than that.”

“Yes? What the devil are you scheming to do to her?” asked Noirceuil, who had
just scabbarded his weapon anew in my ass.

“You’ll see,” was the rascal’s reply.

And he sets to work upon her with his powerful hands, he breaks her fingers 
one by one, dislocates her arms and legs, and runs the point of a little stiletto 
about a thousand times into her, to the depth of about an inch.

“I think,” said Noirceuil, still housed in my bowels, “she’d have suffered quite 
as much from a spitting. 

“And spitted she is going to be,” Saint-Fond rejoins, “now she’s been gashed a 
bit. Punctured thus she’ll be more sensitive to the heat than if she’d been put to 
turn over the fire intact.”

“I dare say you’re right,” Noirceuil agrees; “let’s prepare the other two in the 
same manner.”

I seize one, he takes the other, and still solidly implanted in my ass, the rascal 
puts her in the same state as she whom Saint-Fond has martyrized. I imitate him 
and we soon have all of them roasting before a blazing fire, while Noirceuil, 
damning every god in the sky, discharges in my bum, and I, gripping Saint-Fond’s
prick, spray his fuck upon the three charred bodies of the unhappy victims of lust 
most dreadful.

All three corpses were flung into a pit.

We resumed our drinking.

Invaded by new desires, the libertines called for men; my lackeys were 
summoned, they were the whole night long laboring in Saint-Fond’s and 
Noirceuil’s insatiable asses; and for all that weren’t able to lift the pricks of those 
gentlemen, whose verbal outbursts, however, were astonishing; and it was in the 
course of that séance that I recognized more clearly than ever before how certain 
it was these monsters were as cruel upon cold principle as in the greatest heat of 
passion.

A month after this adventure, Noirceuil introduced me to the woman he wished
to have become my soul-mate. As his marriage to Alexandrine had been 
postponed yet again, this time owing to Saint-Fond’s bereavement, and because I
think best not to describe that charming girl before I reach the appropriate point 
in my story—the point, that is, at which she came into my full possession—we’ll 
now turn our attentions to Madame de Clairwil and the arrangements I made with
that unusual person to cement our liaison.

Representing her to me, Noirceuil had been authorized in his use of 
superlatives. Madame de Clairwil was tall, splendidly proportioned; her glance, 
always keen, was often too fiery to withstand; but her eyes, large, dark, were 
more imposing than pleasing, and in general the aspect of this woman was more 
majestic than agreeable: her mouth, somewhat rounded, was fresh, her lips 
sensual, her hair, jet-black, fell to her knees; her nose was modeled to perfection,
her brow was regal, rich were the lines of her bust, wonderfully smooth was her 
skin, though ’twas not untinged a little with sallowness, her flesh was ripe but 
firm; in short, this was the figure of Minerva adorned with Venus’ amenities. 
Nevertheless, whether because I was the younger, or because my physiognomy 
had in grace what hers had in nobility, men invariably found me the more 
pleasing. Madame de Clairwil astonished, I was content to beguile; she compelled 
men’s admiration, I seduced them.

To these imperious looks Madame de Clairwil joined a very lofty intelligence; 
she was exceptionally knowledgeable, I have never known her peer for an enemy 
to prejudices … which she had rooted out of herself while yet a child; and I have 
never known a woman to carry philosophy so far. As well, she had numerous 
talents, her command of English and Italian was complete, she was a born 
actress, danced like Terpsichore, was an accomplished chemist, physicist, made 
verse prettily, drew nicely, was well read in history, had geography at her 
fingertips, was no mean musician, wrote like Sévigné, but went perhaps a trifle 
too far in her witty sallies, the regular consequence being an insufferable 
overbearing way with those who failed to come up to her level; and almost no one
ever did; she used to say that I was the one female in whom, until now, she had 
detected a trace of true intelligence.

This splendid personage had been five years a widow. She had never borne 
any children, to them she had an aversion which, in a woman, always denotes 
lack of feeling; one might fairly say that for lack of sensibility Madame de Clairwil 
had not an equal. She indeed prided herself upon never having shed a tear, upon 
never having been touched in the least by the fate of the unlucky. “My soul is 
callous, it is impassive,” said she, “I put any sentiment whatever at defiance to 
attain it, with the exception of pleasure. I am mistress of that soul’s movements 
and affections, of its desires, of its impulsions; with me, everything is under the 
unchallenged control of mind; and there’s worse yet,” she continued, “for my 
mind is appalling. But I am not complaining, I cherish my vices, I abhor virtue; I 
am the sworn enemy of all religions, of all gods and godlings, I fear neither the 
ills of life nor what follows death; and when you’re like me, you’re happy.”

With such a character, Madame de Clairwil, one was swift to guess, might have 
adulators in good number, but very few were her friends; she no more believed in
friendship than in benevolence, and no more in virtue than in gods. Along with all 
this went enormous wealth, a splendid house in Paris, an enchanting one in the 
country, luxuries of every kind, the age when a woman is at her peak, an iron 
constitution, faultless health. If there be any happiness at all in this world, then it 
cannot but belong to the individual in command of all these advantages and 
attributes.

At our very first meeting Madame de Clairwil confided in me, giving evidence of
a frankness I found startling in a woman who, as I have just done telling you, was
so proudly persuaded of her superiority; but she was never aloof toward me, I 
must say it out of fairness to her.

“Noirceuil described you accurately,” she said; “’tis evident we have similar 
minds, similar tastes; we seem made to live together, so let us join forces, we 
shall go far. But above all, let’s banish all restraints—from the start they were 
invented for fools only. Elevated characters, proud spirits, quick intelligences like 
ours make short shrift of all those popular curbs; they are aware that happiness 
lies on the farther side, they march courageously to its attainment, flouting the 
paltry laws, the sterile virtues, and the harebrained religions of those abject, 
worthless, swinish men who, so it does seem, exist only in order to dishonor 
Nature.”

Several days later, Clairwil, with whom I was already grown infatuated, came 
to supper. We were two and alone. It was then, at this second encounter, we 
poured out our hearts to each other, acknowledged our peculiarities, detailed our 
sentiments. Oh, what a soul she had, that Clairwil! I believe that if vice itself 
could dwell in this world, it would have chosen the depths of that perverse being 
for the seat of its empire.

In a moment of mutual confidence before we were to betake ourselves to 
table, Clairwil leaned close to me; we were indolently reclining in a nook paneled 
by mirrors, velvet-covered pillows supported our heaving flanks; the soft light 
seemed to beckon to love and to favor its pleasures.

“Is it not true, my angel,” said she, kissing my breasts, licking my nipples, 
“that ’tis through masturbating each other two such women as ourselves must 
become acquainted?”

And drawing up my skirts and petticoats as she uttered those words, the 
tribade darted her tongue deep into my mouth; and libertine fingers touched the 
mark.

“It is,” she observed, “there pleasure lies, it slumbers there, on that bed of 
roses. My sweetest love, wouldst have me wake it? Oh, Juliette, I shall put you in 
ecstasies, will you permit me to catch fire from their heat? Little minx! your 
mouth gives me answer, your tongue hunts mine, invites it to voluptuousness. Ah!
do unto me that which I have done unto you, and let’s die in pleasure’s embrace.”

“Let us undress,” I suggested to my friend, “lewd debauch calls for 
nakedness—and, do you know, I’ve not the faintest idea how you are made, I 
wish to see everything, I must, I must. Let’s be rid of these inopportune 
raiments—ah, I want to see your heart throb, your breast quiver from the 
excitement I cause in you.”

“What an idea,” Clairwil murmured, “it hints at your character, Juliette, I adore 
it; we’ll do just whatever you like.”

And in a trice my friend was as naked as I; several minutes went by during 
which we studied each other in silence. The sight of the beauties nature had 
lavished upon me began to inflame Clairwil; I feasted my eyes upon hers. Never 
has there been such a lovely figure, never such a bosom…. Those buttocks! O 
God! ’twas the ass of that Aphrodite the Greeks reverenced; and how deliciously it
was cleft, unwearyingly I kissed those wonders; and my friend, at first letting me 
most obligingly have my way with her, proceeded next to pay back my caresses a 
hundredfold.

“Now don’t fret, leave everything to me,” she said, having me lie down on the 
ottoman and spread my legs wide, “let me show you I am capable of giving a 
woman pleasure.”

Whereupon two of her fingers began to work my clitoris and my asshole, the 
while her tongue, plunged a goodly depth in my cunt, avidly lapped up the fuck 
these titillations started. Never before had I been thus frigged; three times in a 
row I discharged into her mouth with such transports I thought I’d faint away. 
Clairwil, insatiable in her thirst for my fuck, and making ready to procure herself a
fourth round, deftly and knowingly altered her approach; so that it was now one 
finger she inserted into my cunt, another wherewith she played trills on my 
clitoris, and her agile, her voluptuous tongue probed into my anus….

“What skill! What consideration!” I exclaimed. “Ah, Clairwil, you are like to be 
my undoing.”

And further spurts of whey were the product of that divine creature’s industry.

“Eh then?” she demanded, when I had returned somewhat to my senses, 
“what say you, do I not know how to frig a woman? I adore women; is it then any
wonder that I am versed in the art of giving them pleasure? What else could you 
expect? I’m depraved, dear heart. Is it my fault if Nature gave me tastes that 
differ from the ordinary? I find nothing more unjust than a law that prescribes a 
mingling of the sexes in order to procure oneself a pure pleasure; and what sex is
more apt than ours in doing unto each other that which we do singly to delight 
ourselves? Must we not, of necessity, be more successful in pleasing each other 
than that being, our complete opposite, who can offer us none but the joys at the 
farthest remove from those our sort of existence requires?”

“What! Clairwil, do you mean to say that you dislike men?”

“I use them because my temperament would have it so, but I scorn and detest
them nonetheless: I’d not be adverse to destroying every last one of those by the
mere sight of whom I have always felt myself debased.”

“What pride!”

“It’s a characteristic of mine, Juliette; that pride is coupled with frankness. I 
am plain-spoken; it is a means to facilitate our early acquaintance.”

“Cruelty is implied in what you say; if your desires were to be translated into 
actions—”

“If? But they very often are. My heart is hard, and I am far from believing 
sensitiveness preferable to the apathy I luckily enjoy. Oh, Juliette,” she continued,
donning her clothes, “you perhaps entertain illusions regarding this dangerous 
softheartedness, this compassion, this sensibility, the having whereof is thought 
creditable by so many churls.

“Sensibility, my dear, is the source of all virtues and likewise of all vices. It was
sensibility brought Cartouche to the scaffold, just as it caused the name of Titus 
to be writ gilt-lettered in the annals of benevolence. Owing to excessive 
sensibility, we behave virtuously; owing to excessive sensibility, we take joy in 
misbehaving; the individual lacking sensibility is an inert mass, equally incapable 
of good or evil, and human only insofar as he has the human shape. This purely 
physical sensibility depends upon the conformation of our organs, upon the 
delicacy of our senses, and, more than all the rest, upon the nature of our 
nervous humours within which I locate all the affections of man in general. 
Upbringing and, afterward, habit mold in this or that direction the portion of 
sensibility everyone receives from Nature; and selfishness, or the instinct of 
self-preservation, aids upbringing and habit to settle permanently upon this or 
that choice. But as the sort of education we are apt to receive unfailingly prepares
us ill and indeed misleads us, the moment that education is over with, the 
inflammation produced in the electrical fluid by the impact of foreign objects, an 
operation we term the effect of the passions, begins to determine our habitual 
bent for good or for evil. If this inflammation is slight, whether because of the 
organs’ denseness, which softens the impact and lessens the pressure of the 
foreign object upon the neural fluid, or because of the brain’s sluggishness in 
communicating the effect of this pressure to the fluid, or again because of this 
fluid’s reluctance to be set in motion, its turgidity, then the effects of our 
sensibility dispose us to virtue. If, in that other case, foreign objects act in a 
forceful manner upon our organs, if they penetrate them violently, if they stir into 
brisk motion the neural fluid particles which circulate in the hollow of the nerves, 
then our sensibility is such as to dispose us to vice. If the foreign objects’ action is
stronger yet, it leads us to crime, and finally to atrocities if the effect attains its 
ultimate intensity. But we notice that in every case the sensibility is simply a 
mechanism, that some degree or other of virtue or vice originates with it, that it 
is the sensibility which is responsible for whatever we do. When we detect an 
excess of sensibility in some young person, we may predict his future with 
confidence, and safely wager that some fine day this sensibility will see him a 
criminal; for it is not, as some may be prone to imagine, the species of sensibility,
but the degree of sensibility that leads to crime; and the individual in whom its 
action is slow will be disposed to good, just as, very certainly, he in whom this 
action wreaks havoc will do evil, evil being more piquant, more attractive than 
good. Therefore ’tis toward evil that violent effects tend, following the general 
principle according to which all like effects, moral no less than physical, seek each
other out and combine.

“And so there appears to be no doubt that the necessary procedure with a 
young person one was endeavoring to train up for life would be to blunt that 
sensibility; blunting it, you will perhaps lose a few weak virtues, but you will 
eliminate a great many vices, and under a form of government which severely 
castigates all vices and which never rewards virtues, it is infinitely better to learn 
not to do evil than to strive to do good. There is nothing dangerous whatever in 
not doing good, whereas the doing of evil may be fraught with perils when one is 
still too young to appreciate the importance of concealing those acts of 
wickedness invincible Nature constrains us to commit. I may go farther: doing 
good is the most useless thing in the world and the most essential thing in the 
world is not doing evil, and this, not from the standpoint of one’s self, for the 
greatest of all joys is often born in excessive evil only, nor from the standpoint of 
religion, for nothing is so irrelevant to worldly well-being as what relates to this 
mummery about God, but solely from the standpoint of the law of the land, 
whereof the infraction, delightful as it may be, always, when discovered, 
precipitates the beginner into serious difficulties.

“Hence there would be no danger developing in our hypothetical young 
individual a heart oriented in such wise that he would never perform a good deed,
but at the same time would never feel the impulse to perform an evil one 
either—until, at least, he had attained the age when experience would make him 
realize the indispensability of hypocrisy. Now, in such a case, the appropriate 
steps to take would be radically to deaden the sensibility immediately when you 
noticed that, too lively, it was threatening to lead to vicious conduct. For here I 
suppose that from the very apathy to which you would reduce his spirit some 
dangers could issue; these dangers, however, will always be far smaller than 
those his excessive sensibility might breed. Granted a sufficient subduing of 
sensibility, a consequent lowering of sensitivity and temperature, what crimes are 
committed will always be committed dispassionately, and hence the hypothetical 
pupil will have time enough to cover up his traces and divert suspicion, whereas 
those committed in a state of effervescence will, before he has the opportunity to 
collect his wits, tumble him into the gravest trouble. The cold-blooded crimes will 
be perhaps less splendid than somber, but they will be less ready of detection, 
because the phlegm and premeditation wherewith they will be perpetrated will 
guarantee leisure to so arrange them as not to have to fear their consequences; 
the other category, those perpetrated barefacedly, brashly, thoughtlessly, 
impulsively, will speedily bring their author to the gibbet. And your chief concern 
shall not be whether your pupil, when a mature man, commits or doesn’t commit 
crimes, because in fact crime is a natural occurrence to which this or that human 
being is the accidental and often involuntary instrument, for whether he will or 
no, man is as a toy in Nature’s hands when his organs put him there; your chief 
concern, I say, must be to see to it that this pupil commits the least dangerous 
offense, having regard to the laws of the country wherein he resides, in such sort 
that if the pettiest is punished and the most frightful is not, then ’tis very 
assuredly the most frightful you must let him commit. For, once again, it is not 
from crime you must shelter him, but from the sword that smites the perpetrator 
of crime: crime entails no disadvantages, its punishment entails many. To a man’s
welfare, it is all one whether he does or does not commit crimes; but it is most 
essential to this same welfare that he not be punished for those he commits, 
whatever their kind or degree of wickedness. A teacher’s foremost duty to the 
pupil in his care would then be to cultivate in him a disposition toward the less 
dangerous of the two evils, since, unfortunately, it is but too true that he must 
incline in the one direction or in the other; and experience will make it very clear 
to you, that the vices proceeding from hard-heartedness are much less dangerous
than those caused by excess of sensibility, the excellent reason for this being that 
the lucidity and calm characteristic of the former ensure the means to avoid 
punishment, whereas there is nothing more obvious than that he will be punished 
who, lacking the time to make suitable provisions, to take the basic precautions, 
flies blindly into action in the heat of passion. Thus, in the first case, that is, 
where the young person is left to be impelled by his whole sensibility, he will 
perform a few good deeds which practice reveals utterly futile; in the second, he 
will perform no good deeds, which will mean not the slightest loss to him; and 
owing to the way you have shaped him, he will commit none but those infractions 
which may be committed without risk. But your pupil will become cruel—and what
shall the effects of this cruelty be? With one who has a little substance to him, 
they will consist in a stout refusal to act at the behest of a pity his mind and 
heart, molded by you, will not acknowledge or even register; I see no danger in 
that. ’Tis but a matter of one or two virtuous performances the fewer, and there is
nothing more useless than virtue, since unto him who exercises it, it is a cross to 
bear, and since, in our climes, it is never rewarded. With a bold and rigorous 
spirit, this cruelty in action will consist in furtive crimes, whose sharp impact will, 
by its friction, heat the electrical particles in the fluid in his nerves, and will 
perhaps mean death for a number of persons of little account. Where’s the danger
here? for, in full possession of his faculty of judgment and right reason, he will 
proceed coolly, carefully, with such secrecy, with such art that the torch of Justice 
will never be able to bring the thing to light; thus will he be happy, and at no risk;
what else does he want? It isn’t evil, but the news thereof leaked out, that is 
perilous; and the most odious crime of all, if well concealed, causes infinitely less 
embarrassment than the slightest foible become public. Now consider the other 
case. The entirety of his sensitive faculties at his command and operative, this 
pupil espies an object and takes a liking to it; he would have it, his parents stand 
in his path: accustomed to giving the freest possible rein to his sensibility, he’ll 
poison, he’ll butcher everyone who, keeping him from that object, frustrates his 
purposes, and he’ll perish broken on the wheel. You observe that in treating of 
both cases I have supposed the worst coming to the worst; I have merely offered 
one example of the dangers inherent in either situation, and I leave you to 
imagine as many others as you like. If after you have done calculating you end by
approving, as I am very sure you shall, the extinction of all sensibility in a pupil, 
then the first branch to lop off the tree is necessarily pity. And actually what is 
pity? A purely egotistical sentiment: seeing others beset by woe, we pity them 
because we fear lest that same woe befall us. Show me the man who, owing to 
his nature, is exempt from all the ills that afflict humankind, and not only will that
man have no pity whatever, he won’t even know the meaning of the word. A yet 
greater proof that pity is no more than a purely passive commotion excited in 
persons of the skittish hysterical sort, owing to, or in proportion to, the 
misfortune of our fellows, is that, if we are immediate witnesses to it, we are 
always more sensitive to this misfortune, even though the sufferer be a total 
stranger, than we are to the calamity sustained a hundred leagues away by our 
very best friend. And how explain the difference in our reactions save by the fact 
that this feeling is nothing but the physical result of the accidental commotion 
inspired in our nervous system? Well, I ask whether such a feeling can be 
deserving of any respect and whether it can be viewed otherwise than as 
feebleness? More, it is an exceedingly painful feeling, since it occurs only through 
a comparison which harks us back to misfortune, and causes us to brood thereon.
Contrariwise, its extinction procures us joy, since, as we extinguish it, in our 
sang-froid we glimpse a situation we are exempted from, and this permits us a 
favorable comparison—destroyed the moment we soften to the point of pitying 
the unlucky, which we do when tormented by the cruel thought that perhaps we 
ourselves may be in a similar plight tomorrow. Defy this annoying fear, learn to 
confront this danger undreadingly, and there’s an end to your pity for others.

“A further proof that this feeling is nought but sheer weakness and 
pusillanimity is the particular frequency with which it is found in women and 
children, and its rarity in those individuals whose organs have acquired all suitable
strength and vigor. For the same reason, the poor man is commonly he of the 
open heart; dwelling closer to misfortune than the rich man, more familiar with it,
he is of readier sympathy. All of which thus demonstrates that pity, far from being
a virtue, is but a weakness born of fear and of woe, a weakness which must be 
combated with especial severity when one sets about the task of blunting 
excessive nervous sensitivity, this sensibility that is so completely incompatible 
with every tenet of philosophy.

“There, Juliette, there they are, the principles that have led me to this 
tranquillity, this equanimity, to this stoicism which now enables me to do anything
and to endure anything without batting an eyelash. Make haste to initiate yourself
into these mysteries,” continued that charming woman, as yet unaware of the 
point I had advanced to in these articles. “Make haste to annihilate this stupid 
commiseration which will upset you every time you catch sight of woe howsoever 
trivial. Arriving at that stage, my angel, by dint of continued tests which will soon 
have you convinced of the extreme difference between yourself and the alien 
object whose sad fate you lament, be persuaded the tears you shed over that 
individual cannot meliorate his circumstances one iota, and can only cause you 
affliction; be equally sure that the succor you were to give him would mean no 
more than an insipid sensual pleasure for you, whereas the refusal of aid may 
produce a very keen one. Be furthermore persuaded that you will be tampering 
with the natural scheme by rescuing from the indigent class those persons Nature
deliberately placed there; that, wise and entirely logical in all her operations, her 
designs regarding human beings are neither for us to fathom nor to thwart; that 
her designs are substantiated by the unequal distribution of puissance among 
men, this necessarily implying unequal means, resources, conditions, and 
destinies. Avail yourself of examples out of history, Juliette, consult the authority 
of the ancients; you have been trained in the classics, recollect your reading. 
Remember the Emperor Licinius who, prescribing the harshest penalties, forbade 
all compassion toward the poor, and any sort of charity toward indigence. 
Remember that sect of Greek philosophers who maintained there was crime in 
seeking to meddle with the various shades in the Nature-ordained spectrum of 
social classes; and when you have developed your thought to the point I have, 
cease to deplore the loss of pity-prompted acts of virtue; for these virtuous acts, 
founded on egoism exclusively, are utterly unworthy of respect. Since it is by no 
means sure that there is good in extricating from misfortune the wretch Nature 
put there, it is far simpler to nip in the bud the sentiment whereby we are 
rendered sympathetic to his sufferings than to let it flower; and be all the while 
apprehensive lest our compassion, interfering with the order of things, be 
outrageous to Nature; the best course is to cultivate in ourselves such a frame of 
mind as will enable us to look upon those sufferings with indifference and 
unconcern. Ah, dear friend! were you, like me, strong enough to advance one 
step further, had you the courage to take pleasure contemplating the sufferings of
others, merely from the agreeable thought of not experiencing them yourself, a 
thought which necessarily produces a very decided joy—were you able to go that 
far, no doubt but that it would represent a great achievement, since you’d have 
succeeded in turning some of life’s thorns into roses. Be equally certain, my 
heart, that men of the stamp of Denis, Nero, Louis XI, Tiberius, Wenceslas, 
Herod, Andronicus, Heliogabalus, Retz(6) based their happiness upon similar 
principles, and that if they were able without shuddering, without qualms to do all
they did in the line of atrocity, it is obviously because they had mastered the 
technique of exploiting crime for lustful purposes. ‘Those men were monsters,’ a 
fool will tell me. So indeed they were, according to our ways of thinking and 
behaving; but from the point of view of Nature and in terms of her dictates, they 
were simply the instruments of her intentions: endowing them with their ferocious
and bloodthirsty characters, she appointed them to execute her laws. Thus, 
though they appear to have performed much evil, as that is defined by man-made
law, they acted in admirable conformance to the law of Nature, whose aim is to 
destroy at least as much as she creates. No, no, those worthies wrought a 
substantial weal, since they put her desires into effect; whence it results that the 
individual who has a character like these so-called tyrants’, or he who manages to
raise his character to this level, will not only not steer clear of evil, but may even 
discover in the fulfillment of his designated or elected role a source of very potent
joy which he will savor all the more fearlessly, the more certain he is that, by 
means either of his cruelties or his disorders, he is rendering Nature a service no 
less useful than that a saint performs through the exercise of his capacities for 
good-doing and virtue. Fortify all this with examples, feed it upon practice; gaze 
often and long upon spectacles of woe; accustom yourself to refusing aid to the 
downtrodden, to the unlucky, so that you become habituated to the idea and the 
sight of sufferers abandoned to their sufferings; be the direct cause of some, of a 
few which are somewhat crueler, more atrocious than the everyday; and it won’t 
be long before you recognize that between the sufferings you provoke, and which 
do not affect you in the least, and the voluptuous vibration of your nerves, thrilled
by the impact of these sufferings, even if this be merely the thrill that comes of 
contrasting weal and woe and finding the comparison heavily in your favor—you 
have no cause for a moment’s hesitation. Little by little your sensibility will 
deaden; you’ll not have prevented great crimes, since, to the contrary, you’ll have
caused some to be committed and will yourself have perpetrated not a few, but at
least you’ll have done so phlegmatically, with this apathy which permits the veiling
of the passions, and which, safeguarding lucidity, indispensable to the avoidance 
of disagreeable repercussions, is your guarantee against all dangers.”

“Oh, Clairwil, I can’t imagine that with such attitudes you have impoverished 
yourself through good works.”

“I am rich,” that extraordinary woman replied, “so rich that I am not even sure
how much I have. Well, Juliette, I swear to you that I would prefer to throw all 
the money I own into the river than employ a penny of it in what fools call 
charities, prayers, or alms; I believe such things are most harmful to humanity, 
fatal to the poor whose energies are sapped by the practice of bestowing 
largesses, and more dangerous yet for the wealthy man who believes he has 
secured title to every virtue once he has given a crown or two to some priests or 
shiftless rascals, a certain means for masking his every vice the while 
encouraging the vices of others.”

“Adorable woman,” I said to my friend, “knowing the position I hold in the 
Minister’s entourage, as I think you must, you cannot doubt that my moral 
outlook as regards the subjects you have been discussing is not a great deal purer
than yours.”

“Certainly,” said she, “I know all the services you render Saint-Fond; I have 
been his friend as well as Noirceuil’s for ages—how could I help but be familiar 
with those two scoundrels’ debauches? You collaborate in them, and that is 
laudable; were I needy I’d do the same, and I’d do it happily, for I positively 
worship crime. But I also know, Juliette, that by laboring much in behalf of others 
you have, so far, labored little in your own; and with but two or three petty thefts 
to your credit you can still benefit from examples and lessons; so let me 
encourage you and steel you to more considerable undertakings, if indeed you 
really wish to be worthy of us.”

“Ah,” said I, “I am already much in your debt; pray continue to instruct me, 
and rest assured you will nowhere find a more attentive nor an apter student. I 
am in your hands, there is nothing I’ll not attempt at your side, guided by your 
advice; and from now on my whole ambition shall be someday to surpass my 
teacher. But, my best beloved, we are already forgetful of our pleasures: I 
received divine ones from you, you’ve not yet given me a chance to reciprocate, 
and I am keenly impatient to instill into your soul some spark of the heavenly fire 
you lately caused to blaze in mine.”

“Juliette, you are delicious, truly. But I am too old for you. Are you aware that I
am thirty? Ordinary things have long since palled…. To be moved ever so slightly, 
I must have recourse to refinements so coarse, episodes so potent—ere the sweet
sap rise in me there must be such a quantity of preliminaries, of monstrous 
thoughts, of obscene gestures, actions; and if I am to discharge, I require…. But 
enough; my habits will affright you, my transports will shock you, my exigencies 
will fatigue you….”

And then a brightness entered her eyes, a lewdness wetted her lips; she 
asked:

“Have you women in the house? Are they lascivious? Pretty or not, that doesn’t
matter; you’ll arouse me. But I could use a bevy of tolerably roguish, immodest, 
patient, vigorous, foul-mouthed creatures; and they needn’t bother to come into 
the room if they’re wearing a stitch of clothing. How many such women can you 
provide me?”

“I have only four in my permanent hire,” I answered. “Four being enough for 
my emergency requirements.”

“That’s exceedingly few. You can’t pretend to be poor. My dear, you ought to 
maintain a staff of at least twenty and change them all every week, furthermore. 
Ah, ’tis clear I’ll have to teach you how to use the money you’re swimming in. Are
you miserly? Not that there’s anything wrong with that. I idolize money, I’ve often
frigged myself sitting amidst the heaps of louis d’or I’ve amassed, it’s the idea 
that I can do whatever I like with the money before my eyes, that’s what drives 
me wild. I find it quite natural that others have the same taste; but nevertheless I
won’t have you deprive yourself: only fools are unable to understand that one can
be simultaneously niggardly and lavish, that one can love wasteful squandering 
upon one’s pleasures and refuse a farthing to charity. Well, then. Send for your 
four women; and if you wish to see me discharge, find some switches.”

“Switches?”

“Switches, rods, lashes, however you please to call them.”

“Do you whip, my dear?”

“Until blood flows, my darling. And I endure like treatment. It’s the most 
delicious passion I know of; none surer to inflame my entire being. Nobody 
doubts nowadays but that passive flagellation is of prime efficacity; it is a 
matchless restorative, supplying new vitality to the frame wearied by 
overindulgence. No wonder then that all those who have worn themselves to a 
frazzle in riot and sport have regular and avid recourse to the painful and 
invigorating operation of flagellation, supreme remedy for exhaustion from 
feebleness about the loins or total loss of strength, or for a cold, vicious, and 
oddly organized constitution. This operation necessarily implies a violent 
commotion in the lax or deficient parts, it procures a voluptuous irritation which 
heats them, and causes the sperm to leap with infinitely increased force: the keen
sensation of pain in the parts upon which the blows are applied subtilizes the 
blood and accelerates its circulation, quickens the spirits by furnishing excessive 
heat to the genitals, in short, to the libidinous person in quest of pleasure 
provides, at such times as they are not naturally forthcoming, the means for 
consummating the libertine act, and for multiplying his impudicious joys beyond 
the limits imposed by that unkind Nature. As regards active flagellation, in all the 
world can there be a greater delight for hardhearted, tough-minded individuals 
like us? Is there another that so clearly bears the stamp of ferocity, that, briefly, 
more fully satisfies our Nature-given penchant for cruelty? Oh, Juliette! to break 
in to this degradation some youthful object, appealing and mild and who when 
possible is somehow related to us, harshly to inflict upon her this form of torture, 
all the characteristics whereof are so emphatically voluptuous, to be amused by 
her tears, excited by her distress, irritated by her capers, inflamed by her 
writhings, by that voluptuous dancing(7) performed to the music of pain, to make
her blood flow, her sweat, her tears, to feast upon them, upon her pretty face to 
mark and exult at contortions of sufferings and the twitching caused by despair, 
with one’s tongue to lap up those floods incarnadine so nicely contrasting with the
lily fairness of a soft white skin, to feign to relent for an instant only to inspire 
terror the next by threats, to carry them out, and in doing so, to use yet more 
outrageous and more atrocious means, to spare nothing in your rage, to have at 
the most delicate parts, those very ones Nature seems to have created to be 
venerated by fools, such as the breasts or the interior of the vagina, such as the 
face itself—Oh, Juliette! that is joy. ’Tis it not, as it were, to encroach somewhat 
upon the public hangman’s domain? is it not to play his role, and by itself does 
not this idea suffice to provoke an ejaculation with people who, unspeakably 
jaded as are we, indifferent to everything simple and commonplace, must study 
deeply and seek far if we are to find again that which our excesses have caused 
us to lose? Nor ought you be surprised to discover this taste in a woman. That 
same Brantôme, from whom we borrowed a term a moment ago, with charming 
candor and naïveté offers us various examples in support of these theses.(8) 
There was, says he, a fashionable and distinguished lady, equally beautiful and 
rich; for several years she had been a widow, and her moral corruption was 
astonishing. She used to hold parties; to them she would invite girls of high social
rank, and always of exceptional beauty, it was her pleasure to undress her guests 
and give them fierce spankings. To obtain the right to punish them she would 
accuse them of imaginary misbehavior; would then beat them with switches, and 
her whole joy consisted in seeing them quiver and squirm beneath the blows: the 
more they capered about, the louder their plaints, the more abundantly they bled 
and wept, the happier was the whore. Sometimes she was content to bare their 
behinds instead of stripping them altogether naked, from the act of lifting their 
skirts and keeping them raised deriving yet more satisfaction than that afforded 
her when they were nude and hence easy prey.

“A great nobleman, Brantôme tells us farther on, also indulged in this same 
pleasure of fustigating his wife, either nude or with her skirts pulled up.

“A mother, the same writer assures us, had the habit of whipping her daughter 
twice every day, not for anything the girl had done, but uniquely for the pleasure 
of contemplating her sufferings. When the young thing reached the age of 
fourteen, she so inflamed her mother’s concupiscence that she wouldn’t let four 
hours go by without flogging her cruelly. Of contemporaries we have examples 
enough, do we not, and better ones at that; and could not your friend Saint-Fond,
who never misses giving his daughter her daily lashing, serve as the subject for 
an entire corpus of modern research?”

“I’ve been the victim of that taste,” I observed, “but I rather fancy it 
nonetheless, and may well adopt it some day in my turn. Oh yes, Clairwil,

I’ll acquire all your tastes, I wish if I possibly can to become identical to you; 
henceforth Juliette shall know no happiness until she has taken on all your vices.”

The four women made their entrance; they were naked in accordance with my 
friend’s desire, and as a group they surely presented a stirring sight to lewdness. 
The eldest was not quite eighteen, the youngest fifteen; there were lovely bodies 
and most agreeable faces.

“They will do,” said Clairwil, glancing briefly at each.

Each had a bundle of switches in her hand; these Clairwil examined rather 
more closely.

“Very well, we shall proceed by order of age. Approach,” she said to the 
youngest, “come here and prostrate yourself at my feet. Now humbly beg pardon 
for your clumsy behavior yesterday.”

“Clumsy behavior? Madame, I don’t believe I—”

And Clairwil gave her a resounding slap across the face.

“I tell you you behaved clumsily. I order you to kneel and ask forgiveness.”

“Oh indeed, Madame,” said the little girl, falling to her knees, “I ask it with all 
my heart.”

“But I don’t intend to forgive you without first punishing you. Stand up and 
turn your ass obediently this way.”

Thereupon, having softly stroked the pretty ass with the palm of her hand, 
Clairwil smote it so forcefully that she left there the impress of her five fingers; 
tears began to flow down the girl’s cheeks. The poor thing had had no 
forewarning of what was in store for her, she had never experienced anything like 
it, this reception was affecting her dolorously. Clairwil peers at her and licks her 
eyes as soon as she sees the tears well forth; from her own eyes flames dart, her
breathing quickens and becomes hoarse, her breasts heave in cadence with the 
beating of her heart. She stabs her tongue into the girl’s mouth, sucks her 
tongue, then, further animated by this caress, applies another blow to her ass, 
and this one is harder than the first.

“You’re a little slut,” says Clairwil. “I saw what you were doing yesterday, I did 
indeed: frigging pricks, and don’t deny it. I’ll not have you committing such 
outrages. I favor morality, I do, I expect modesty in young girls.”

“Madame, I swear to you—”

“No swearing, whore, and no excuses either,” Clairwil interrupted, punching the
girl’s flank; “guilty or not, you’re due to be vexed, for I aim to amuse myself. 
Wretched little creatures of your sort are no use whatever except for providing 
entertainment to women of mine.”

So saying, Clairwil pinches the fleshier parts of the victim’s pretty body, this 
wrings shrieks from her, each of which gets no farther than her lips, for our 
libertine is there to collect them in her mouth. Her wrath grew apace, she gave 
utterance to the foulest words, they came forth spasmodically, like her gasps of 
joy; she bent her victim down over the couch, lubriciously investigated her bum, 
pried it open, thrust her tongue thereinto, then concentrated on her buttocks 
afresh, bit them in four places, the which the girl did not endure without much 
jerking to and fro and sudden starts that greatly diverted my friend and made her
laugh one of those wicked laughs wherein the mischief outweighs the gaiety.

“Little bugger-fucker, you’re in for a thrashing,” says she, “yes, by the 
bum-stuffed Almighty, I’m going to flay you, and this cunning little shit-sump of 
yours is going to show every stripe for an age.”

Catching up a bundle of switches, she pulls the girl to her feet, takes her 
around the waist with her left arm, and thrusting a knee against her belly, bends 
her so that her ass is in the fairest position; Clairwil pauses for a minute, seems 
to reflect, to brood, then, without a word, begins to lay on and applies five and 
twenty stinging cuts so nicely distributed that every square inch of this formerly 
fresh pink ass is covered with welts. That done, she summons the other three 
women one after the other, has each stick her tongue in her mouth, ordering each
to fondle her buttocks while embracing her, to tickle her asshole, to poke into it, 
to approve her punishment of the delinquent, and above all to furnish additional 
information upon her misconduct. After she was finished with the three girls, my 
turn came, I kissed her in similar wise, socratized her, praised her firm handling of
the victim, and by means of a string of arrant calumnies fanned her lubricious 
rage against the unfortunate creature. When I kissed her, she wanted me to fill 
her mouth with my spittle, I did so, and she swallowed it; next, returning to work,
she laid on a second series of blows, twice as numerous as the first; then, 
immediately, a third series, bringing the total to one hundred and fifty strokes: 
the little girl’s ass was but one bleeding wound. She bade the three other women 
lick it and convey the blood into her mouth; and she kissed me, transferring that 
blood into mine.

“Juliette,” said she, “the fever of delirium is taking fast hold of my senses; I 
must warn you that these other hussies are going to be more uncompromisingly 
dealt with.”

She looses the little girl and from her receives a light tonguing about the cunt 
and anus.

“Very well,” says she, pointing to the second, “I believe your age puts you next
in line. Step up, whore.”

The latter, terrified by what has just been done to her comrade, instead of 
obeying, shrinks back. But Clairwil, who was in no merciful mood, seizes her by 
the arm and gives her several very violent slaps. She begins to weep.

“Good,” says Clairwil. “That’s what I like.”

And since this charming creature, sixteen years of age, had prettily formed 
breasts already, Clairwil squeezed them until she screamed; then, kissing them 
the very next moment, she worried them with her teeth.

“And now,” she said with a curse, “we’ll have a look at your ass”; it proved 
very pleasing to Clairwil’s eye and she could not help but exclaim, before bringing 
them under the fire of her scourge, “what splendid cheeks!”

Greatly impressed by their excellence, she rendered them new courtesies: she 
stooped forward, nuzzled that miracle of Nature, and sucked the hole; she rolled 
the girl onto her back, sucked her clitoris; then promptly returned again to her 
ass. But they are not slaps she now applies, they are jarring blows of her 
clenched fist she drives home, pounding this frail body until it is all black and blue
from thigh to shoulder.

“Bugger-fuck!” cries she, “I’m going out of my mind! This little slattern has one
of the loveliest asses I’ve seen in my life.”

She seizes the switches and lays frantically on; but after a few score strokes 
she employs a tactic she has not used hitherto. Clairwil pries open the patient’s 
buttocks with her left hand, so that the blows she is delivering with her right hand
fall upon the exposed asshole and the sensitive sector adjoining it; wherefore it is 
that the entire area is soon bloody. And while all this was going ahead Clairwil 
required kisses upon her mouth and fingers in her bum. The three other girls and 
I attended to these matters; however, she would allow no one but me to swallow 
her saliva. The third girl was treated like the first, the fourth like the second; they
were all flogged virtually to ribbons. When these ceremonies were over, Clairwil, 
in an ecstasy and as beautiful as Venus to behold, ranged the four girls in a line 
so as to compare their asses and verify whether they were all sufficiently 
lacerated. Finding that one had been somewhat neglected, she rained another 
fifty blows upon it, looked, and satisfied herself that it was presently in a state as 
deplorable as the others.

“Juliette, do you wish me to thrash you too?”

“By all means, yes,” I answered at once. “How can you suspect me of not 
passionately desiring whatever adds to the sum of your delights? Fie! Whip away, 
here’s my ass, here’s my body, my whole being is yours to do with as you like.”

“In that case,” she said, “climb upon the shoulders of the youngest of these 
tarts and while I flog you the three others will heed my orders. Take up your 
switches,” she went on; “which of you has the stoutest arm? You’ll be the last to 
operate, and you,” she said, nodding to the most slender of the three, “you shall 
be the first. So listen to me. This is what you are to do: You will kneel facing my 
ass, you will praise it loudly, unr

eservedly, you’ll kiss it, you’ll divide my buttocks, will introduce your tongue far
into the hole, while doing so rubbing my clitoris with one finger; then you will 
stand up, and to the tune of threats and invectives, you will bestow two hundred 
strokes upon my ass, they must come in swift succession and in steadily 
mounting force; and you over there, you’ve heard what I’ve just said: when this 
girl is done, you will promptly imitate the performance; we begin.”

With nips, pinches, scratches, Clairwil was harrying the behind of the little girl 
upon whose shoulders I was perched, and in the meantime was flailing me in the 
most determined fashion; concurrently, the others were carrying out her 
instructions to the letter, and the whore, anxious to make use of everything 
available, was kissing the mouths of those who were not whipping her. As the 
stripes accumulated upon my ass the ferocious creature kissed and licked the 
marks avidly, and when she herself had received the number of strokes she had 
specified, she ordered positions to be shifted.

The eighteen-year-old girl knelt in front of her; advancing her cunt, Clairwil 
pushed it into the girl’s face, grinding the lips of her vagina and her clitoris 
against the girl’s nose, mouth, and eyes, and bidding her lick all her tongue could 
reach. Another girl stationed to the right, a third to the left, were vigorously 
scourging my friend who, swinging a bundle of switches in either hand, was 
avenging herself upon the pair of asses ahead of her; squatting astride the head 
of the girl busy licking her cunt, I offered Clairwil mine to suck; and here the 
whore discharged. And that discharge, accompanied by shouts and shrieks, 
convulsions and blasphemies, was one of the most lubricious and most voluptuous
frenzies I have ever observed in all my days; the tribade fired point-blank at the 
pretty visage fairly engulfed in her cunt, and drenched it with fuck.

“Come along, by Jesus, on to something else,” Clairwil cried, not so much as 
pausing for breath, “I never take time out when my sperm is started; so you 
whores, belabor me, rack me, suck me, whip me, frig me as hard as ever you 
can.”

The girl of eighteen lies down upon the ottoman, I seat myself upon her face, 
Clairwil camps herself on mine. I sucked, and was sucked; above me the 
youngest girl gave her buttocks to be kissed by Clairwil whom another girl was 
embuggering with a dildo; the slenderest of the quartet, bending over, was 
finger-frigging Clairwil’s clitoris, which was established hard by my mouth, and in 
the meantime was presenting her cunt to my friend whose hands were polluting it
in similar style. So it was our libertine was simultaneously arousing an asshole by 
lecheries, having her anus tongued, being sodomized, and getting her clitoris 
teased.

Several minutes of this had gone by when she said to me, “Juliette, I told you 
that if I am to stiffen, I must be imaginatively moved; one of the things that best 
excites my imagination is to hear much foul language uttered all around me. Your 
whores, are they dumb?”

We were arrived at an awkward pass; for these girls, chosen out of the best 
ranks of the bourgeoisie, and never having been libertine except with me, had 
poor acquaintance with any idiom apt to be agreeable to Clairwil’s ears; they did 
the best they were able, however, but I was obliged to aid them, and virtually all 
alone had to supply the caustic insults she was pleased to hear addressed to the 
Supreme Being in whose existence the jade had no more belief than I. 
Consequently, she who had been clitoris-frigging replaced me at my cunt-sucking 
post; and I concentrated on vilifying each member of the scurvy Christian trinity 
as they had never been blasphemed in all their lives. The tribade squirmed and 
sighed incontinently, but nothing came of it, postures and episodes had to be 
changed once again. I have never seen anything so majestic, nor so beautiful, nor
so animated as that superb woman at the conclusion of this scene; were you of a 
mind to paint the very goddess of lewd love, you could not have looked elsewhere
for your model; she throws her arms about my neck, hugs me, tongues me for a 
quarter of an hour, exhibits her ass to me; it was scarlet all over and contrasted in
the most agreeable manner with the alabaster whiteness of the rest of her body.

“Thrice bum-stuffed, holy God of buggery,” said she, over-wrought, “how hot I 
am in the cunt, Juliette, and what things I could achieve in this state; there’s not 
a crime of whatever sort or extent you can imagine I’d not commit on the spot. 
Oh, my love—oh, my whore—oh, my dearest little companion … oh, thou whom I 
love infinitely and in whose embrace I want to shed a lifetime’s fuck, oh, Juliette, 
you must admit that nothing paves a surer or a smoother way to horror than the 
calm self-confidence, impunity, capital, and good health we enjoy; so suggest to 
me the idea for a few crimes … I’ll accomplish them while you look on…. Let’s, oh,
I beseech you, let’s perpetrate an infamy.…”

Noticing that the youngest of the girls was arousing her and that she was going
from her mouth to her ass to her cunt, sucking them one after the other, I 
inquired in a whisper, “Would you care to abuse her?”

“No,” was her reply, “it wouldn’t satisfy me; I’ve nothing against giving a 
woman an occasional pummeling, but as for total material dissolution, you 
understand … I’d have to have a man. Only men rouse me to serious cruelties; I 
adore revenging my sex for the horrors men subject us to when those brutes 
have the upper hand. You can’t imagine with what delight I’d now murder a male.
Any male at all. My God, the tortures I’d inflict upon him; the slow, winding, 
obscure path I’d find to bring him to his final destination…. Alack, ’tis plain to see,
your mind has yet to reach full flower, you haven’t any men about for me to kill; 
and so let’s end the evening with a few exercises in libidinous nastiness since we 
cannot close it with crimes.”

The libidinous acts, performed with great precision and all the desired 
conclusions, finally exhaust her; she refreshes herself in a bath of rose water, is 
dried, perfumed, draped in the most immodest of gowns; and we sit down to 
supper.

Clairwil, quite as eccentric in her comportment at table as in bed, quite as 
intemperate, no less curious in the article of eating than in the other of fucking, 
fed only on fowl and game, and they had to be boned and then served up 
disguised in all sorts of forms; her usual drink was sweetened water and it had to 
be iced regardless of the season, and to every pint of this liquid she added twenty
drops of essence of lemon and two spoonfuls of orange flower extract; she never 
touched wine, but consumed large amounts of coffee and liqueurs; she ate in 
excessive quantity; furthermore, of the better than fifty dishes put before her she
attacked every one. Advised beforehand of her tastes, I saw to it that her desires 
were accommodated, and it defies belief, the tale of all she made away with. That
charming person, whose custom was whenever and wherever possible to secure 
the adoption of her private tastes, recommended them to me so heartily that she 
induced me to observe her diet, but not her abstinence from wine; I still indulge 
very heavily in it and shall doubtless continue to do so for the rest of my life.

While we were supping I confessed to Clairwil my amazement at her 
libertinage.

“You haven’t seen much yet,” she replied, “little beyond a faint sketch of what I
regularly accomplish in lewd debauchery. I am most eager that we essay truly 
extraordinary things together; I shall have you admitted into a society I belong 
to, and whose members specialize in obscenities of a much superior dimension. To
its meetings each husband must bring his wife, each brother his sister, each 
father his daughter, each bachelor a friend, each lover his mistress; and gathered 
in a spacious hall each takes his pleasure with what pleases him most, subject to 
no rule save that of his desires, to no limit save that of his imagination; the most 
praiseworthy is he who acquits himself of the greatest and most numerous 
extravagances, and cash prizes are awarded to those who distinguish themselves 
in infamy or who invent new ways and means for procuring oneself pleasure.”

“Oh, dearest friend,” I cried, taking Clairwil in my arms, “you simply have no 
idea how those few details excite me, nor how happy I would be to join your 
circle.”

“Yes, but will you be considered eligible? Candidates are submitted to the most
arduous tests.”

“Do you doubt of. my capacity, of my determination? And whatever these 
initiations may be, do you suppose I will flinch, knowing as you do all that I have 
performed intrepidly in the company of Noirceuil and Saint-Fond?”

“True enough,” she conceded, “you’re not shy, it must be owned. Your chances 
of being admitted are better than fair.” Then a note of enthusiasm entered her 
voice. “Oh, Juliette, as it is always to the disgust, to the restlessness, to the 
despair at not ever having found either a mutual understanding or mutual 
pleasure with the object to which we are conventionally bound that are owing all 
of wedlock’s miseries, to remedy this hideous situation, to counteract the hideous 
social practices whereby mismatched individuals are imprisoned all their lives in 
nightmarish unions, it would be necessary that all men and all women federate 
into such clubs. A hundred husbands, a hundred fathers, corporatively with their 
wives or daughters, are availed thereby of all they lack. When I cede my husband 
to Climène, she obtains everything her own husband cannot give her and from 
the one she abandons to me, I derive all the delights mine is incapable of 
providing me. These exchanges multiply and thus, you see, in a single evening 
every woman enjoys a hundred men, each man as many women; in the course of
these forgatherings characters develop; one has an opportunity to study oneself; 
the most entire freedom of taste or fancy holds sway there: the man who dislikes 
women amuses himself with his fellows, the woman who is fond of persons of her 
own sex simply follows the dictates of her penchants also; no constraint, no 
hindrances, no modesty, the mere desire to increase one’s pleasures ensures that
each will offer all his resources. Thereupon the general interest maintains the 
pact, and particular interest coincides straitly with the general, which renders 
indissoluble the ties forming the society: ours has been fifteen years

in existence, and all that time I have never witnessed a single squabble, no, 
not one instance of ill-humor. Such arrangements annihilate jealousy, forever 
destroy the fear of cuckoldry, two of life’s most pernicious poisons, and for that 
reason alone merit preference over those monotonous partnerships in which 
husband and wife, pining their lives away one in the presence of the other, are 
doomed either to everlasting boredom and displeasure, or to grief at being unable
to dissolve their marriage save at the price of dishonor for them both. May our 
example persuade mankind to do as we. There are, I am aware, some prejudices 
to overcome; but prejudice cannot long survive when one of these groups, as is 
the case with ours, is injected with a strong philosophical temper. It was during 
my first year of marriage I was granted membership, I was just sixteen then. Oh 
yes, making my debut, I confess I did indeed blush at having to appear naked 
before all those men and to participate in their carryings-on and in those of the 
women who, because of my age and figure, were drawn to me like flies to sugar; 
but in three days I was acquitting myself like a veteran. The example of the 
others seduced me; and I can honestly affirm that no sooner did I see my 
lascivious companions vying for honors in the choice and the invention of 
lubricities, no sooner did I see them wallowing in filth and infamy, than I plunged 
into the competition with ardent good will and shortly surpassed them all in 
theory and practice alike.”

The description of this delicious association had such an effect upon me that I 
was unwilling to take leave of Clairwil until she had sworn to secure my entrance 
into her club. The oath was sealed with fresh outpourings of fuck we both 
released before the eyes of three strapping lackeys: they held candelabras while 
we frigged each other, and though they were moved by the spectacle, Clairwil 
forbade them from participating in it save as bystanders.

“There you have an instance,” said she, “of how one accustoms oneself to 
cynicism, a Habit of mind whereof proof will be required of you before you are 
accepted into our society.”

We separated, enchanted with each other and promising to meet together 
again at the very first opportunity.

Noirceuil was impatient to find out how my liaison with Madame de Clairwil was
progressing; the warmth wherewith I spoke of her translated my gratitude. He 
wanted graphic particulars, I supplied them; and, as Clairwil had done, he 
criticized me for not having a more numerous complement of women in my 
household. I increased them by eight the very next day, which gave me a seraglio
of twelve of the prettiest creatures in Paris; I exchanged them against a dozen 
fresh ones every month.

I mentioned the society Clairwil belonged to; did Noirceuil attend its meetings?

“In the days when men were in the majority there,” he replied, “I never missed
a single one; but I have given up going since everything has fallen into the hands 
of a sex whose authority I dislike. Saint-Fond felt the same way and dropped out 
shortly after I did. But that is not particularly relevant,” Noirceuil continued; “if 
those orgies amuse you, and since Clairwil enjoys them, there is no reason why 
you shouldn’t join in: everything vicious must be given a fair try, and only virtue 
is thoroughly boring. At those meetings you will be frigged to perfection, 
exquisitely fucked; you’ll be nourished upon the very best principles only; and so 
I would advise you to gain admission as soon as you possibly can.” Then he 
inquired if my new friend had recounted her adventures to me in detail.

“No,” said I.

“Philosophical in spirit though you are, and the fact cannot have escaped her 
notice,” Noirceuil remarked, “she probably feared lest you be scandalized. For that
Clairwil is a very paragon of lust, cruelty, debauchery, and atheism; there is no 
horror, no execration wherewith she is not soiled profoundly; her social position 
and boundless wealth have always saved her from the rope, but she’s merited it 
twenty times over: reckon up the sum of her daily activities and there you have 
the total of her crimes, and had she been hanged every day of her life it would 
never have been without cause. Saint-Fond thinks very highly of her; 
nonetheless, and this I know, he prefers you for a number of reasons: therefore, 
Juliette, continue to be deserving of the confidence of a man in whose power it is 
to make your life a happy one, or an unhappy.”

“Rest assured,” I rejoined, “all my efforts shall be bent in that direction.” 
Noirceuil had come to fetch me for supper at his little house, and we betook 
ourselves there and spent the night carousing with two other engaging persons, 
executing all the extravagances that occurred to that specialist in lubricious 
practices.

It was shortly afterward that, mightily stirred by what I had been witness to, 
by the things I had been hearing, I reached the point where I simply could not 
restrain myself any longer, I had absolutely to commit a crime of my own; and I 
was eager to learn, moreover, whether I could truly rely upon the impunity that 
had been promised me. So I took counsel with myself, and decided to enact one 
such horror as I was being schooled in day in and day out. Wishing to put both 
my daring and my savagery to the test, I got into man’s attire and, a brace of 
pistols in my pocket, went out alone, stood in a back street, and waited for the 
first comer, with the aim of robbing and murdering him for my pleasure. I was 
leaning against the wall; I was in that state of inner turmoil great passions 
provoke, and whose impact upon the animal spirits is necessary to the elementary
criminal delight. I listened, asweat. Every murmur, every footfall raised my hopes.
The very faintest movement in the shadows made me think my prey was nigh; 
and then I heard sounds of lamentation. I sped in the direction whence they 
came, they were groans; I approach, ’tis a poor woman huddled upon a doorstep.

“And who are you?” I inquired, drawing close to the creature.

“The most unfortunate of women,” is her tearful reply; and I observe that she 
cannot be over thirty years of age; “and if you are death’s messenger, you bring 
me glad tidings.”

“But your difficulties are of precisely what kind?”

“They are frightful,” she said, and as she sat up, the lamplight revealed her 
mild inviting features. “Yes, few have ever been so unlucky as I. We’ve had no 
work for a week, no money, we had a room in this building, we weren’t able to 
pay the rent, nor able either to buy milk for the baby—they’ve taken it away from 
me and put my husband in jail. I too would have been arrested had I not run 
away from those monsters who treated us so brutally. You see me lying on the 
threshold of a house that belonged to me once, for I have not always been poor. 
In those days, when I could afford to, I helped the needy; will you do for me now 
what I used to do for them? I do not ask much.”

A subtle glow stole through my veins as I heard those words, savored that 
accent. Oh, by God, I said to myself, what an occasion for a delectable crime, and
how the idea stung my senses.

“Get up,” said I. “I’m a man as you can see. You have a body left to you, don’t 
you? I intend to amuse myself with it.”

“Oh, Sir! Here am I beset by sorrow and distress—can such a state kindle 
lust?”

“It kindles mine all right; so do as I tell you, else you’ll regret it.”

And taking strong hold of her arm, I forced her to stand still while I proceeded 
to an investigation. It brought agreeable things to light, those skirts harbored 
charms very fair, very firm, very appetizing.

“Frig me,” I ordered, conveying her hand to my cunt, “I am a woman, but one 
who stiffens for her own sex. Put your fingers in there and rub.”

“Oh, Lord! Leave me be, leave me be, I shudder at all these horrors, Though 
poor, I am honest; don’t humiliate me, for pity’s sake!”

She endeavors to break away from me, I seize her by the hair, raise a pistol to 
her temple: “Be off, buggeress,” I say, “off to hell with you, and tell them there 
that Juliette sent you.”

And she fell, blood gushing from her head. Yes, my friends, I shot her dead, I 
won’t deny it, neither will I pretend that this deed did not cause a sudden rise in 
the temperature of my neural humours, for, as I enacted it, my fuck fairly spat 
forth.

And so these are the fruits of crime, I mused, how right they were to describe 
it to me in such glowing terms. God! what sovereign influence it can exert upon a 
brain like mine, and what gigantic pleasures it can afford!

Hearing the pistol-shot, people had come to their windows; I saw a few heads 
and now began to think of my safety. Cries of “Police, police!” went up on all 
sides. It was just after midnight, I was hailed, ordered to halt; the discovery of 
my weapons eliminated all doubt; I was asked my name.

“You’ll be informed at the Minister’s,” I said brazenly. “Take me to the Hotel de 
Saint-Fond.”

Dumbfounded, the sergeant does not dare refuse; I am manacled, I am 
pinioned … and still the fuck seeps down my thighs: delicious are the fetters of 
the crime you adore, and wearing them causes one long spasm of joy.

Saint-Fond had not yet retired; a servant notified him, I was led in, the 
Minister greeted me with a smile.

“That will do,” he said to the sergeant; “had you not brought this lady here to 
my house you were as good as hanged. You may go now, sir, and resume your 
functions, consider that you have done your duty. What has just transpired shall 
remain a mystery. You are not to intrude into it; I presume I need say no more.”

Alone with my lover, I related all that had passed, my account set his prick in 
the air; he wished to know when the woman had fallen to the ground, had I been 
able to appreciate the effects of her contortions?

I answered that I had not had enough time.

“No, I suppose not. That’s the trouble with performances of that sort, you 
aren’t able to obtain any enjoyment from the victim.”

“To be sure, my Lord—but a street crime—”

“I know, I know, I’ve a few of them to my credit—disturbance of the peace, 
scandal, the street … the highway—the additional severity of the law toward such 
offenses; and they can be profitable as well … on top of it all, that particular 
woman’s circumstances, her indigence, her misery…. No, it’s not to be scoffed at. 
You could have taken her home with you, it would have been an evening’s 
entertainment for us both. … By the way, did not that sergeant mention having 
identified the corpse?”

“Unless I am mistaken, my Lord, her name was Simon.”

“Simon. Of course. I handled that affair four or five days ago. That’s it, Simon. 
I had the husband jailed and the infant removed to the poorhouse. My stars, 
Juliette, I remember the woman too: she was very pretty and very well-behaved. 
I was reserving her for your pimps; and she told you the truth, that family was 
once quite prosperous, bankruptcy altered all that. Well, you’ve simply added the 
finishing touches to my crime, and this conclusion makes the story delicious from 
beginning to end.”

I said Saint-Fond’s standard was raised, my masculine dress was completing 
his delirium. He led me into the boudoir where he had received me the first time I
had come to his house. A manservant appeared, and Saint-Fond, his fingers 
trembling from delight, unbuttoned my breeches and had his valet fondle my 
buttocks; he took charge of the fellow’s prick and prodded my asshole with its tip,
then introduced his own thereinto; and the lecher embuggered me, hotly 
enjoining me to suck his valet’s prick the while, and when I’d got it stiff as a 
poker he packed it away in his ass. The operation over with, Saint-Fond told me 
that the excellence of his discharge was in large measure due to the knowledge 
that the ass he was fucking merited the scaffold.

“That lad who fucked me,” the Minister assured me, “is a rascal of the first 
order: six times over I’ve had to save him from the wheel. Did you notice his 
prick? ’Tis a magnificent article, he plies it masterfully. Here, Juliette, before I 
forget: the sum I promised you for crimes of your personal commission. A 
carriage is waiting for you, go home now, tomorrow you will leave for the estate 
outside Sceaux which I bought for you last month; take only a few companions 
along, four of your female domestics should suffice—the prettiest of the lot, 
however—your cook too, your butler, and the three virgins listed for the next 
supper. Installed in the country, you’ll await further instructions from me; that’s 
all I’ll tell you for the time being.”

I left very content with the success of my crime, full of pleasure at having 
committed it; and departed from Paris on the morrow.

Scarcely was I established in that rural domain, completely isolated, as solitary
as the Thebaïd hermits, when there came one of my servants to inform me a 
stranger had arrived, a person of condition who said he had been sent by the 
Minister and wished to speak with me.

“Ask him to wait,” said I, and unsealed the message he had brought from 
Saint-Fond. It read as follows: “Have your domestics seize the bearer of this letter
straightway, he is to be confined in one of the dungeons I have caused to be built 
in the cellars of your house. This individual is not to be allowed to escape; I hold 
you responsible for him. His wife and daughter will also appear: you will deal with 
them in the same manner. These are my orders. Execute them promptly, 
scrupulously, and do not hesitate to employ such treachery, such cruelty, as I 
know you to be capable of. Adieu.” I had the stranger ushered in.

“Sir,” said I, maintaining the appearance of perfect equanimity and 
graciousness, “you are doubtless a friend of his Lordship?”

“Both my family and I have for a long time been the beneficiaries of his 
generosities and kindness, Madame.”

“’Tis plain from his letter, Monsieur…. But allow me to give my servants 
instructions so that you may be received in such wise as the Minister seems to 
desire.”

Bidding him be seated, I went out of the room.

My servants, and they were rather more slaves than domestics, provided 
themselves with rope and were at my side when I returned to the visitor.

“Conduct this gentleman,” I told them, “to the quarters his Lordship would 
have him occupy,” and my retainers, powerful bucks they were, set upon our 
guest and dragged him off to a very abominable cell far under ground.

“Madame! I protest! There is some mistake!” cried the unlucky dupe of 
Saint-Fond’s deceit and mine.

Inflexible, deaf to his pleadings, I carried out the Minister’s instructions with 
zeal: the captive’s anguished questions were left all unanswered, I myself turned 
the key in the lock.

No sooner was I back in the drawing room than I heard carriage wheels on the 
drive. Out stepped the stranger’s wife and daughter, and the letters of 
introduction they presented were exact replicas of his.

Ah, Saint-Fond, I said to myself, casting a glance upon those two women, 
admiring the beauty of the mother who was a superb thirty-six, the sweet 
modesty and grace of the daughter, only then entering her sixteenth year, ah, 
Saint-Fond! your fell, accursed lust has much to do with these ministerial 
proceedings, that is but too certain. And in this, as in everything else you do, are 
you not guided far more by your vices than by the interests of your country?

I would be hard pressed to give an adequate description of the moans and 
tears those two wretches let forth when they beheld themselves dragged 
infamously off to the dungeons readied for them; but no more moved by the 
weeping and wailing of the mother and daughter than I had been by the 
entreaties of the father, I was concerned only to take the greatest precautions for 
their safekeeping, and was not at ease until I had these important prisoners 
behind the stoutest bars and all the keys in my pocket.

Meditating upon what the fate of these individuals might be, I did not imagine 
that it would involve more than detention, in as much as executions were my 
affair and I had received no instructions to slay; while I was in the middle of 
pondering these matters, the arrival of a fourth personage was announced to me. 
Heavens, what is my surprise upon recognizing the selfsame young man who, you
will recall, the first time I held conversation with Saint-Fond, at the latter’s 
bidding struck me three blows of a cane upon the shoulders. He too came bearing
a letter, I opened it at once.

“Greet this man warmly and entertain him well,” I read; “you must surely 
remember him, for you carried his marks awhile, and they were his hands that 
gripped you at our first voluptuous rencounter in your house. He is to take the 
leading role in the drama that will be staged tomorrow; in him welcome the 
executioner of Nantes, who upon my orders has come to put to death the three 
persons now your prisoners: obliged under pain of losing my post to produce 
these three heads the day after tomorrow before the Queen, I would myself 
(needless to say) wield the ax, had not Her Majesty expressed the very keenest 
desire to receive the spoils out of none other than the hands of a public 
executioner. It is for that reason the latter, arriving in Paris, found his services not
immediately required there, and has been dispatched posthaste to your 
residence, whither he comes in ignorance of the business he is to attend to. You 
may instruct him now; but refrain absolutely from permitting him a glimpse of his 
prey, this is essential; expect me tomorrow morning. Meanwhile treat the 
prisoners, and the women especially, very rigorously: bread only, a little water, 
and no day-light.”

“Sir,” said I, turning to the most recent of my visitors, “the Minister mentions 
in his letter that we, you and I, are not unknown to each other. Tis true. Once 
upon a time you—”

“Aye, Madame. Orders, alas, are orders.”

“Indeed they are, and I harbor no grudge against you,” I went on, giving him 
my hand, which he kissed with ardor. “But it is dinner-time. First to table; we’ll 
discuss afterward.”

Delcour was twenty-eight, a very pretty fellow, his air and calling pleased me 
mightily. I showered attentions upon him, and they were quite sincere; when we 
finished dinner, I mounted as skillful an attack as ever you’ve seen. Delcour soon 
exhibited evidence of the success of my advances. There was a wonderful bulge in
his breeches, I was overpowered.

“For God’s sake, my love,” said I, “have it out, I fain must see what you’re 
hiding there. That magnificent prick has me all aflutter, your profession sets my 
brain awhirl; you’ve absolutely got to fuck me.”

He promptly fetches that marvelous device into view, and pursuant to my 
custom when dealing with a man, I catch hold of it with the intention of mouthing 
it to the balls; but that was a grandly proportioned tool, I tell you, and it was all I 
could do to accommodate half its length. As soon

as he was lodged, Delcour got his hands on my cunt, buried his face in it, and 
two seconds later we discharged in concert. Seeing me swallow his fuck, that 
handsome young man leapt excitedly upon me.

“Ah, by Jesus,” said he, “I was in too great a hurry; but I’ll make amends for 
my mistake.”

The rascal’s stave was still holding true, he stretches me out upon a broad 
couch, fastens his lips to mine which are yet sticky with his sperm, and encunts 
me as only rarely you will be encunted by a still leaking prick: in all my life I’d 
never been so stoutly fucked. Delcour cut and thrust for three-quarters of an hour
and more, out of prudence he retreated on sensing another discharge impending; 
but when at last my cunt’s grip triumphed, he loosed a second dose of thick fuck, 
and this too I swallowed with as much delight as I had the first.

“Delcour,” said I, once I had resumed possession of my wits and could essay a 
rational analysis of my late behavior, “you have been somewhat surprised, I fancy,
by the informal reception I have given you; such frivolous conduct, such speedy 
advances—I venture to suppose you consider me a loose woman, nay, a thorough
whore. Despite my supreme disdain for that which fools call reputation, I would 
have you understand that your good fortune is owing far less to my coquetry or to
anything physical in me than to my mentality: I have an exceptionally odd one. 
You kill by trade … you are a murderer, a handsome one besides, one such prick 
as you boast isn’t come by every day. But your profession, it is that I wish to 
stress—thanks alone to it I flung myself into your arms; scorn me, detest me, I 
don’t give a damn. You fucked me; I’ve got all I wanted.”

“Heavenly creature,” Delcour replied, “it isn’t scorn I feel for you, no, nor shall 
it be hatred, you inspire altogether different sentiments in me. You deserve to be 
worshiped and worship you I shall, regretting that your ecstasy had its origin 
solely in that which earns me the loathing of others.”

“’Tis of no importance, that,” said I. “A mere matter of opinion, and opinion 
varies, as you observe, since the source of my fondness for you is precisely this 
very thing which puts you at a remove from the rest of mankind; however, this is 
but debauchery on my part, you shouldn’t interpret it as anything else. My 
attachment to the Minister, my manner of living with him bar me from intrigues 
and I’ll certainly never contemplate any. We’ll make the most of this evening, of 
the whole night if you like; and there’s an end to it.”

“Ah, Madame,” the young man said with respectfulness, “of you I ask only your
protection and your gracious kindness.”

“You shall never want for either; but in return you must comply with all that 
results from my imagination. I must warn you, it is subject to all sorts of 
disorders, and they sometimes lead far.”

Delcour had gone back to fondling my breasts with one hand and frigging my 
clitoris with the other, now and again darting his tongue down my gullet; after a 
few minutes of this I bade him refrain from wearying himself unduly, and to give 
truthful answers to certain questions I wished to pose him.

“Tell me, to begin with, just why Saint-Fond had you strike me upon the 
shoulder that first time I saw you. It puzzled me then and still does.”

“Libertinage, Madame, sheer libertinage. You know the Minister. He has his 
quirks.”

“He has you take part in luxurious scenes then?”

“Whenever I am in Paris.”

“He has fucked you?”

“He has, Madame.”

“And you’ve fucked him back?”

“Most certainly.”

“You have beaten him? Flogged him?”

“Frequently.”

“Sweet Jesusfuck! how that excites me—frig, Delcour, frig away—and has he 
had you beat and flog other women?”

“Upon several occasions.”

“Have you ever gone farther?”

“Allow me to respect the Minister’s secrets, Madame. In this connection your 
guesses are very apt to be correct since they would be based on a good 
acquaintance of his Lordship.”

“Can you say whether he has at any time formulated projects against me?”

“Madame, toward you his attitude has always been, to my knowledge, one of 
affection and trust; he is greatly attached to you, you may take my word for it.”

“And so am I to him: I adore him, I hope he is fully aware of it. However, since
you would not have me tempt you to indiscretion, we’ll talk of other things. Tell 
me, if you please, how are you able to take the life of some individual who has 
never wronged you in any way? How is it that from the depths of your soul pity 
does not speak out in behalf of the poor wretches the law enjoins you to 
assassinate in cold blood?”

“Be very certain, Madame,” was Delcour’s answer, “that in my calling none of 
us attains this degree of rationalized and scientific ferocity save through principles
that are largely unknown to folk in general.”

“How so? Principles? I would have you tell me about them.”

“They are rooted in a soil of total inhumanity; our training begins early, from 
childhood on we are taught a system of values wherein human life is nothing and 
the law everything; the result is that it gives us no more bother to cut the throats
of our fellows than it does a butcher to cut the throat of a calf. Does the butcher 
have qualms? He doesn’t know what they are. Neither do we.”

“But carrying out the law is your work; do you proceed in the same way when 
it is a question of pleasure?”

“Certainly, Madame. Could it be otherwise? Should it be? The prejudice once 
overcome in us, we cease to behold any evil in murder.”

“Must one not necessarily esteem it an evil to destroy one’s fellow beings?”

“Madame, I might rather ask you how one can possibly impute any such thing 
to an act of destruction. If destruction of all human beings were not one of the 
fundamental laws of Nature, then, yes, I should be able to believe that you 
outrage this unintelligible Nature when you destroy; but in view of the fact there 
does not exist a single natural process which does not prove that destruction is a 
necessary element to the natural order and that Nature creates only by dint of 
destroying, ’tis most obvious that whoever destroys acts in tune with Nature. It is 
no less obvious that whoever refuses to destroy offends Nature very grievously: 
for, and of this there can be no doubt, it is only by destroying we furnish Nature 
the means for creating; and hence the more we destroy, the nicer the accord 
between ourselves and her workings; if murder is basic to Nature’s regenerative 
operations, certainly the murderer is the man who serves Nature best; and this 
truth grasped, we are moved to declare that the more numerous his murders, the
better he fulfills his obligations toward a Nature whose sole need is of 
murders.”(9)

“Such doctrines contain their element of peril.”

“They are nonetheless true, Madame. More learned thinkers would be able to 
develop them much further than can I, but you will find that the point of 
departure of their arguments is constantly the same.”

“My friend,” I said to Delcour, “you have already given me much food for 
thought, a single idea cast into a brain like mine produces the effect there of a 
spark upon saltpeter—yes, I sense it, we have similar minds. We have three 
victims here. To sacrifice them is why you were sent to this chateau. It will, 
believe me, give me great pleasure to behold you in action; but, my dear, you 
must possess a vast store of information and experience, be so kind as to dilate 
upon the mechanics of the thing. Am I correct in believing that it is only with the 
aid of libertinage you succeed in vanquishing unnatural prejudice? For you just 
gave me clear proof that Nature is much sooner served than outraged by 
murder….”

“What do you wish to ask, Madame?”

“This: if it is not very certain, as I have heard say, that only by transforming 
the whole affair into one of libertinage are you able to perform, and enjoy, the 
murders your trade obliges you to commit; in fine, I ask you if ’tis not so, that the
act of executing infallibly puts your prick erect?”

“It is no longer contested, Madame, that libertinage leads logically to murder; 
and all the world knows that the pleasure-worn individual must regain his 
strength in this manner of committing what fools are disposed to denominate a 
crime: we subject some person or other to the maximum agitation, its 
repercussion upon our nerves is the most potent stimulant imaginable, and to us 
are restored all the energies we have previously spent in excess. Murder thus 
qualifies as the most delicious of libertinage’s vehicles, and as the surest; but it is 
not true that in order to commit murder, one has got to be mentally in a libertine 
furor. By way of proof I cite to you the extreme calm wherewith the majority of 
my colleagues dispatch their business; they experience emotion, yes, but it is 
quite as different from the passion animating the libertine as this latter is from 
the passion in him who murders out of ambition, or out of vengeance, or out of 
greed, or, again, out of sheer cruelty. Which is simply to indicate that there are 
several classes of murder, the libertine variety being but one; however, this does 
not prevent us from concluding that none of these sorts of murder outrages 
Nature, and that it is in far greater conformance to her laws than in violation 
thereof.”

“All you say is just, Delcour, but I maintain nonetheless that, precisely in the 
interest of these very murders, it would be desirable were their perpetrator to be 
inspired by lust alone, for that passion is never followed by remorseful 
aftermaths, one’s recollections of it are of joy and joyous; whereas with the 
others, once their fire has gone out one is often devoured by regrets, above all if 
one happens to be something less than a veteran philosopher; and therefore it 
seems to me there is much to be said in favor of never murdering save through 
libertinage. One would be free to kill for whatever the motive, but the erection 
would always be there as a safeguard and the better to consolidate the action, so 
as to avoid being troubled by serious remorse later on.”

“In that case,” said Delcour, “you consider that every passion can be increased 
or nourished by lust?”

“Lust is to the passions what the nervous fluid is to life: it sustains them all, it 
supplies strength to them all, and the proof thereof is that a man who, as they 
say, hasn’t any balls will never have any passions.”

“And so you suppose that ambition, cruelty, greed, vindictiveness as 
motivations lead to the same thing as lust?”

“Yes, I am convinced that all these passions cause erections, and that a lively 
and properly organized mind will be as readily inflamed by any of them as by lust.
Mark you, I am speaking now from personal experience. The effect of 
concentrating upon mental images characterized by ambition, cruelty, avarice, 
revenge has been that of a thorough frigging, and each of these ideas has more 
than once made me discharge myself dry. I have not entertained the thought of a 
single crime, whatever the passion inspiring it, without feeling the subtle heat of 
lust circulate in my veins: falsehood, impiety, calumny, rascality, hardheartedness,
even gluttony have wrought those effects in me; and, in a word, there is not one 
form or mode of viciousness which has failed to ignite my lust; or, if you prefer, 
the torch of lust has at one time or another made all the vices in me blaze up with
its sacred fire, to them all communicating that voluptuous sensation which, it 
appears, is never kindled otherwise in us curiously organized persons. There. That
is my opinion.”

“And it is mine also, Madame,” Delcour rejoined, “I’ll not attempt to conceal it 
any longer.”

“I rejoice at your frankness, my dear, it helps me to know you. And from what 
I know of you already, I venture to say, and would be greatly surprised if I was in 
error here, that you require to enter into a libertine furor when you perform your 
official murders, which enables you to reap far more voluptuous satisfaction from 
your functions than is granted your colleagues who carry them out mechanically.”

“Madame, I must own that you have fairly found me out.”

“Scoundrel,” I said, smiling and taking hold of this young man’s tool, which I 
began to exercise so as to restore some of its energy, “oh, deep-dyed libertine 
that you are, why not go on to say that your prick hardens for the sake of the 
enjoyment to be had from my existence today, and tomorrow depriving me of it 
would make you discharge?”

The young man was visibly embarrassed at this last question; I gazed at him 
for a moment, then came to his rescue. “There, there, my friend; I have 
absolutely no quarrel with your principles, I must forgive you their results: instead
of disputing about those results, let’s profit from them.” At this point I grew very 
hot indeed. “Come now, look alive, we must try some extraordinary tricks.”

“What would you have me do?”

“Beat me, outrage me, lash me; isn’t that what you do with women every day;
aren’t those the foul violences which, electrifying you, make you capable of the 
rest? Well? Answer.”

“’Tis true.”

“Of course. Well, you’ve a job to perform tomorrow, start preparing for it 
today. There is my body. It is at your disposal.”

And Delcour, following my instructions, having started in with a dozen slaps 
and kicks in the behind, took up a bundle of withes and slashed away at my ass 
for fifteen minutes or so, while one of my women cunt-sucked me.

“Delcour,” I cried. “Oh, divine destroyer of the human race! you whom I adore 
and from whom I expect unheard-of joys, lay on, lay on, I say, whip your slut 
harder, faster, imprint the marks of your savagery upon her, for she yearns to 
wear them. I discharge at the idea of my blood wetting your fingers; shed it 
liberally, my love.…”

It flowed…. Oh, my friends, I was in ecstasies; words cannot express the wild 
emotion that was cindering me; without a brain like mine there is no conceiving 
such a thing, unless one has brains like yours it is not to be comprehended. 
Unlimited were the quantities of fuck I loosed into the mouth of my fricatrice; 
never in my life had I been in the throes of such disorder, such torment, such 
rapture.

“Delcour, Delcour,” I went on, “there is one last homage you must render me, 
husband your resources for the purpose. This ass you’ve just hacked to ribbons 
beckons you, invites you to soothe, to console it. At Cythera Venus had more than
one temple, you know; come ope the most arcane, come bugger me, Delcour, 
make haste … for we must leave no delight untasted, no horror uncommitted.”

“Great God!” said Delcour, in transports. “I didn’t dare propose it to you; but 
behold how your desires inflame mine.”

And indeed my fucker exhibited a prick harder, longer than any I’d clapped 
eyes on hitherto.

“Beloved libertine,” said I, “are you then fond of ass?”

“Ah, Madame, is there anything that affords comparable pleasure?”

“’Tis all too plain, my dear,” said I, “when you accustom yourself to defying one
of the laws of Nature, you do not take authentic pleasure anymore except in 
transgressing them all, one after the other.”

And Delcour, master of the altar I abandoned to him entirely, covered it, 
though ’twas drenched in blood, with the tenderest caresses. His tongue thrilled in
the hole, my temperature soared. The slut operating upon me frontwardly set my 
cunt afire. Fuck gushed out of me afresh, I was dry, I could bear no more; but I 
was not by any means easy; I suddenly lost all interest in Delcour, then all 
patience with him. Great had been my desire for the man, great was my 
abhorrence for him now. And there’s the effect of irregular desires: the greater 
the height they arouse us to, the greater the emptiness we feel afterward. From 
this cretins derive proof of God’s existence; whereas for my part I find here only 
the most certain proofs in support of a materialistic attitude: the more you 
cheapen your existence, the less I’ll be inclined to believe it is the handiwork of a 
deity. Delcour sent off to his bedchamber, I retired for the night with my Lesbian 
hireling.

Saint-Fond put in his appearance the next day around noon; he dismissed his 
servants and his coach, and came directly into the salon to greet me; we 
embraced. Uncertain what his reaction would be to the little prank I had played 
with Delcour, but anxious lest he hear the story from someone else, I told him 
everything.

“Juliette,” he said when I had concluded, “had I not assured you long ago that 
I would take the most indulgent view of your aberrations, L would scold you now. 
We can ignore the fuckery, ’tis natural to fuck; your one mistake was in your 
choice of a partner. Are you so sure you can rely upon Delcour’s discretion? I am 
glad, however, that you have made his acquaintance; for two years he was my 
bardash when he was fourteen and fifteen: he is from Nantes where his father 
was hangman, a fact which stimulated my interest in the boy: I took his 
maidenhead, and when I was weary toying with his ass, I turned him over to the 
Paris executioner, whose aide he remained up until the time his father died; he 
inherited his post at Nantes. The lad is not without intelligence, he is excessively 
libertine; and as I just hinted, he isn’t the sort who merits overmuch trust. But let
me tell you something about the captives we are going to put to death.

“Of all the men in France, Monsieur de Cloris has probably contributed most to 
my advancement; the year I was preferred to the Ministry, he, though very young
at the time, was sleeping with the Duchesse de G*** whose power at court was 
immense, and owing primarily to the maneuvering and intrigues of the two of 
them, I obtained from the King the position I still hold. As of that moment I 
contracted an insuperable loathing for Cloris; I would go to any lengths to avoid 
encountering him, I dreaded the sight of him, I hated him; so long as his 
protectress was alive I postponed taking action; but she has just passed away, or,
perhaps, I have just put her out of the way; this brought Cloris to the top of my 
black list; he married my cousin-german.”

“What, my Lord! This woman is your cousin?”

“She is, Juliette, and the fact has contributed not a little to her doom. I had 
designs upon that woman; she always resisted my desires. Little by little they 
shifted to her daughter; here I met with yet more stubborn resistance; with the 
result

that my rage, and my extreme desire to see the whole family gone to blazes, 
reached the decisive pitch. To promote its undoing I resorted to every known kind
of cunning, baseness, lie, and calumny; and I have finally so aroused the Queen’s
antipathies to the father and daughter, by giving her to understand that Cloris 
once sold his child to the King, that at our last interview Her Majesty, much 
wrought up, commanded me to arrange their deaths. She adamantly insists upon 
having their heads by tomorrow; my recompense has been fixed at three million 
apiece: I shall obey the Queen’s orders and very joyfully, you may be sure, and 
very pleasurable will be the episodes wherewith I plan to accompany my 
revenge.”

“My Lord, ’tis this a dreadful complication of crimes, it puts my brain into an 
indescribable whirl.”

“It affects mine likewise, my angel, and I arrive here with the most execrable 
intentions. I’ve not discharged for a week; no one is more adept than I in the art 
of whetting the passions through abstinence; and having a good time the while. 
Over the past seven days I’ve probably been fucked two hundred shots, and had 
intimately to do with somewhere between a hundred and seven score individuals 
of both sexes, but during this interval not a drop of fuck have I yielded. From thus
playing coy with Nature I have achieved a pent-up state that bodes very ill for the
persons upon whom the storm is due to break…. Have you given orders that we 
be left alone and that nobody, saving only those who are necessary to the scene, 
be under any circumstances admitted to the house?”

“Yes, my Lord. And I have added that anybody who ventures to intrude shall 
be hanged on the spot: a squadron of troopers is lying at Sceaux to lend me 
assistance in case of need; never has stage been more impeccably set for a 
crime. We shall, the two of us, be able to relish the pleasure of committing it 
under ideal conditions and in absolute security.”

“Ah, you see into what state whatever you say puts me.”

“In truth, I believe you are discharging.”

“And you?”

Whereupon, in search of proof positive of a crisis which I was indeed 
undergoing, the rake lifts my skirt above my navel and ferrets briefly about in my 
cunt; then he examines his fingers, and finds them slimed with damning evidence
of my lewd agitation.

“You know,” the Minister confesses, “I adore discovering such symptoms in 
you, for they roundly attest the similarity of our ways of thinking. But hold, I must
bib at the tap I’ve set to flowing.”

And gluing his mouth to my cunt, the villain drank thereat a good quarter of an
hour; then rolled me over. “Ah,” said he, “there’s what I like to kiss most of 
all—the peerless hole. Eh, rascal, it’s been traveled recently, has it not? You’ve 
been bum-fucked of late, ’tis very plain to be seen.” All the while he went on 
cooing and kissing about my vent and the area environing; now he has his 
breeches off, shows me his own ass, and I fall to licking it.

“You manage that wonderfully well, you little minx,” says he, “I do declare, I 
think you love my ass. Here’s my prick, it’s starting to stand, suck it a bit; and 
suggest a few extravagances if you can: the hour of Venus should be rung in by 
the bells of Folly.”

“The weather is warm,” I said, “I recommend that you adopt savage attire, 
leaving your arms, thighs, and prick bare; your headdress ought to resemble a 
dragon or serpent in the Patagonian manner, you’ll smear red grease paint all 
over your face, we’ll fit you with moustaches, you’ll wear a baldric, girding on all 
the instruments required for the tortures you plan to inflict upon your victims: this
costume will terrify them for a certainty, and it is terror one should inspire when 
one wishes to wallow in crime.”

“You are right, Juliette, you are quite right. I’ll ask you to rig me out in that 
way.”

“Apparel and gear are imperative; tell me if in the courts of law our precious 
buffoons, the judges, don’t resemble heroes out of comedy or charlatans.”

“My sole objection to the magistracy nowadays is that it is composed of men 
sorely lacking in sanguinary temper, and if these are such unruly times, we may 
lay it up to that. Rest assured, Juliette: better not even to try your hand at 
governing men unless you are willing to immerse it in their blood.”

Dinner was announced, we repaired to table and pursued our conversation in 
the same tone.

“Yes by all means,” the Minister proceeded, “the laws must be made more 
severe; the only happily governed countries are those where the Inquisition 
reigns. They alone are really under their sovereigns’ control; the purpose of 
sacerdotal chains, and the need for them, is to reinforce political ones: the might 
of the scepter depends on that of the censer, it is hugely in the interest of both 
authorities, lay and clerical, to stay each other mutually, and only by breaking 
that common front will the people ever achieve their liberation. Nothing so 
effectively cows a nation as religious fears; nothing better than that it dread hell’s
eternal fires if it revolts against its overlord; and that’s why the crowned heads of 
Europe are always in such admirable intelligence with Rome. We other great ones 
of this world do indeed despise and defy the fabulous thunderbolts of a 
contemptible Vatican, but we are well advised to keep our slaves in terror of 
them; once again ’tis there the sole means to keep them under the yoke. Steeped
in Machiavelli, I would want the disparity between the king and the mob to be no 
less considerable than that between a heavenly body and a cockroach; a mere 
gesture on the part of the monarch, and his throne would become an island in a 
very sea of blood; beheld as a god on earth, his subjects would only dare crawl 
into his presence on their hands and knees. Who is fool enough even to compare 
the physical constitution, yes, the mere physical constitution of a king with that of
a commoner? I’m willing to believe that Nature gave them the same needs—the 
lion and the earthworm have the same needs also; but does this create a 
resemblance between them? Oh, Juliette, do not forget that if kings are beginning
to lose their credit in Europe, it’s the vulgarity they’ve become attainted with that 
has been their downfall; had they remained aloof and invisible like the sovereigns 
of Asia, the whole world would yet tremble at the sound of their names. Contempt
is bred of familiarity, and familiarity from what is daily within public view; the 
Romans must surely have stood in greater awe of Tiberius off on Capri than of a 
Titus wandering around the city consoling the poor.”

“But this despotism,” I said to Saint-Fond, “you favor it because you are so 
powerful; do you suppose however that it is equally pleasing to the weak?”

“It pleases everybody, Juliette,” Saint-Fond replied; “mankind tends universally
in that direction. To be despotic is the primary desire inspired in us by a Nature 
whose law could not be more unlike the ludicrous one usually ascribed to her, the 
substance of which is not to do unto others that which unto ourselves we would 
not have done … from fear of reprisals, they should have added, for very certain it
is that only weaklings, dreading tit for tat, could have contrived this homily; and 
they must have been desperate as well as insolent rogues to dare to fob it off as a
natural law. I affirm that the fundamental, profoundest, and keenest penchant in 
man is incontestably to enchain his fellow creatures and to tyrannize them with all
his might. The suckling babe that bites his nurse’s nipple, the infant constantly 
smashing his rattle, reveal to us that a bent for destruction, cruelty, and 
oppression is the first which Nature graves in our hearts, and that we surrender to
it more or less violently according to the amount of sensibility we are endowed 
with from the outset. I therefore hold it self-evident, that all the pleasures which 
ornament the life of a man, all the delights he is able to savor, all that makes for 
the extreme delectation of his passions, are essentially located in his despotic 
usage of his brethren. The sequestration, in voluptuous Asia, of the objects 
accessory to pleasure-taking demonstrates to us, does it not, that lust gains with 
oppression and tyranny, and that the passions are more strongly fired by 
whatever is obtained through force than by anything granted voluntarily. When it 
is logically established that the degree of violence characterizing the action 
committed is the one factor for measuring the amount of happiness of the active 
person—and this because where the violence is greater the shock upon the 
nervous system will be sharper—as soon, I say, as that is proven, the greatest 
possible dose of happiness will necessarily consist in the greatest of the effects of 
despotism and tyranny; whence it will emerge that the harshest, the most 
ferocious, the most traitorous and the wickedest man will be the happiest man; 
and that stands to reason. For as Noirceuil has often told you, happiness lies 
neither in vice nor in virtue; but in the manner we appreciate the one and the 
other, and the choice we make pursuant to our individual organization. It isn’t in 
the meal set before me my appetite lies, my need is nowhere but in me, and two 
people may be very differently affected by the same fare: it makes his mouth 
water who is hungry, excites repugnance in him who has just eaten his fill: 
however, as ’tis certain there must be some difference between the vibrations 
received, and that vice must procure much more intense ones in the individual 
with the vicious bent than virtue can give to the person whose organs are 
structured for its reception; that, although Vespasian had a good soul and Nero an
evil, despite the fact both were sensitive, there was a great difference in the 
temper of those souls as regards the species of sensibility constituting them: for 
Nero’s was without doubt endowed with a faculty of sensation far superior to 
Vespasian’s; ’tis certain, I say, that of the two, Nero was the happier man by far; 
why? because that which affects more intensely will always produce the happier 
effect in man; and because a vigorous person, owing to his very vigor so 
structured as to be a better recipient of vicious than of virtuous impressions, will 
sooner discover felicity than a mild and peaceable individual, whose feeble 
complexion will deny him all possibilities other than the abject, hangdog, 
woebegone practice of the formulas of humdrum good behavior; and what the 
devil would the merit be in virtue if vice weren’t preferable to it? Thus, I tell you, 
Vespasian and Nero were as happy as they were able to be, but Nero must have 
been much more so, because his pleasures were incomparably livelier and 
keener; while Vespasian, in giving an aim to some beggar (simply because as he 
himself said, the poor have got to live), was stirred in an infinitely less intense 
manner than Nero, a lyre in his hand, watching Rome burn from atop the tower of
Antonia. ‘Ah,’ somebody will say, ‘but deification was the reward of the one, 
disparagement and hate that of the other.’ As you wish; however, it is not the 
effect their souls had upon others I am interested in; I am simply evaluating the 
inward sensation which the different penchants native to each must have made 
each experience, and discriminating between the vibrations each was capable of 
feeling. Thus I am able to affirm that the happiest man on earth will inevitably be 
he who is addicted to the most infamous, the most revolting, the most criminal 
habits, and who exercises them the most frequently—who, every day, doubles 
their force, triples their scope.”

“The most outstanding service one could do to some young person,” I 
observed after hearing this speech, “would then be to pluck out of him all the 
weeds of virtue Nature or education might have sown in his soul?”

“That is exact, snatch them out and if possible stifle them while they are yet in 
seed,” Saint-Fond answered. “For even supposing the individual in whom you 
annihilate these virtuous possibilities were to maintain he finds happiness in 
virtue, you, perfectly certain you will cause him to find far greater happiness in 
vice, ought never to hesitate to blot out the one in order to permit the other to 
waken; ’tis a real and capital service he’ll thank you for sooner or later: and that 
is why, very different from my predecessor, I authorize the publication and sale of
all libertine books and immoral works; for I esteem them most essential to human
felicity and welfare, instrumental to the progress of philosophy, indispensable to 
the eradication of prejudices, and in every sense conducive to the increase of 
human knowledge and understanding. Any author courageous enough to tell the 
truth fearlessly shall have my patronage and support; I shall subsidize his ideas, I
shall see to their dissemination; such men are rare, the State has great need of 
them, and their labors cannot be too heartily encouraged.”

“But,” I inquired, “how does this sit with the severity you favor in government?
with the Inquisition you would establish?”

“As nicely as you please,” Saint-Fond replied; “it is to keep the people in their 
place I urge severity, and if I so often imagine the autos-da-fé of Lisbon 
transferred to Paris, it is in the interests of subordination. My knife will never be 
drawn against the upper classes, the elite in substance or mind.”

“But must not these writings, if generally read, pose a threat to those very 
persons you seem to wish to keep out of harm’s way?”

“Impossible,” declared the Minister. “If these texts quicken in the weak the 
desire to break their bonds (and mind you, lest they have that desire I cannot 
forge bonds at all), the strong, for their part, will find instruction therein upon 
how to load further and heavier chains upon the captive masses. In short, the 
slave will perhaps accomplish in a decade what the master will have accomplished
in a night.”

“You are widely accused,” I now ventured to remark, “of persistent 
condescension in everything that touches the growing depravity of manners 
nowadays; never, so it is said, were they so corrupt as since you entered into 
office.”

“Perhaps, but we still have an enormous task to achieve before they are as I’d 
like to see them; and at the present time I am working upon some new police 
regulations which, I hope, will help matters along in the proper direction. I do not 
believe it is a secret, at any rate it is a fact whereof you cannot afford not to be 
fully aware, Juliette: a vital chapter in the policy followed by all those at the head 
of any government is to foment and promote the extremest degree of corruption 
in the citizenry; so long as the subject wastes away body and soul in the delights 
of gangrenous, enfeebling debauchery, he does not feel the weight of his irons, 
and you can heap fresh ones upon him without his even noticing. The true 
essence of statecraft is thus to multiply a hundredfold every possible means to 
debilitate and pervert the people. Lots of shows, much pomp and display, 
cabarets, brothels without number, a general amnesty for all crimes committed in 
debauchery: those are the expedients for bringing the plebeians to heel. O you 
who ambition to rule over them, beware of virtue within the frontiers of your 
empire, only let virtue reign and your peoples will open their eyes, and your 
thrones, reposing as they do upon nothing but vice, will be very speedily 
overthrown; the free man’s awakening will be cruel for the despots, and the day 
he ceases to fritter his leisure away in vices he’ll start to strive for domination like
yourselves.”

“And what are your proposed regulations?” I asked.

“It’s by means of fashion I aim to mold public opinion at first; you know how 
the French are influenced by the latest in vogue.

“1) I am launching a new style in masculine and feminine dress which leaves 
all the lust-inspiring parts, and the ass especially, exposed in their virtual entirety.

“2) There will be spectacles after the model of the Floral Games they used to 
hold in glorious Rome, at them lads and lasses will dance naked.

“3) Instead of morality and religion, which will be stricken from the curriculum,
the pure and unadulterated principles of Nature will be taught in the public 
schools; every child of either sex who has reached the age of fifteen without 
having been able to get a lover will be very sharply reprimanded, penalized, held 
up to public scorn and dishonor, and declared^ if a girl, forever ineligible for 
marriage, for holding any office, if a boy; in default of a lover, the boy or girl will 
be obliged to present a certificate proving prostitution and nonpossession of 
virginity in any shape or place.

“4) Christianity will be rigorously banished out of the land; none but libertine 
rites and feasts will ever be celebrated in France. I’ll be rid of Christianity, I say: 
but not of religion, this I intend to retain, for its chains are useful to the 
preservation of order as I proved to you a moment ago. The object of worship 
doesn’t matter in the slightest, the thing that counts is clergy; but I’d rather see 
the dagger of superstition wielded by the priests of Venus than by the admirers of
Mary.

“5) The common herd will be kept in a state of subservience, of prostrate 
bondage, which will render them powerless even to strike for, let alone to attain 
to, domination, or to encroach upon or debase the prerogatives of the rich. Tied 
to the glebe as in olden days, the people will be held like any other property, and,
like it, will be subject to all the various mutations of value and ownership. Only 
the people will be liable to punishment at the hands of the law, and it will be 
inflicted for the most trifling offenses. The commoner’s proprietor will have the 
right of life or death over him and his family, and neither his complaints nor his 
recriminations will ever receive hearing. Never will free schools be available to 
him: tilling the soil does not require knowledge, the blindfold of ignorance is made
for the peasant’s eyes, showing him the light is always a risky business. The first 
individual, regardless of his class, who were to think to stir up the people or to 
invite them to break their chains will be thrown to wild beasts and eaten alive.

“6) In every town and city of the land there shall be opened public houses 
containing specimens of both sexes, the number of these houses to be 
proportional to the population of the district or agglomeration, there being at least
one male and one female establishment per every thousand inhabitants; the 
personnel of each shall be three hundred individuals, who will begin their 
internment at the age of twelve and not retire from service before twenty-five. 
These establishments will be subsidized by the government; only members of the 
free class will have the right of entrance and they will of course be empowered to 
do in these places whatever they please.

“7) Everything denominated crime of libertinage at present, to wit: murder in 
debauch, incest, rape, sodomy, adultery, etc., will be reprehensible only if 
committed by a member of the slave castes.

“8) Prizes shall be awarded to the most celebrated courtesans in the bawdy 
houses, likewise to the young boys there who have got themselves a name in the 
art of pleasing. Similarly, bonuses and stipends shall be granted to each inventor 
of a new lubricity, to every author of cynical books, to all libertines recognized as 
professed in their order.

“9) The slave class shall exist as did the Helots in ancient Lacedaemon. There 
being no difference whatsoever between the human slave and the brute beast, 
why should you punish the murderer of the one more than the murderer of the 
other?”

“My Lord,” I put in, “this last, it seems to me, deserves some slight explaining. 
I would like to have you prove to me there is no real distinction to be drawn 
between the human slave and an animal.”

“Glance at the works of Nature,” this philosopher answered me, “and judge for 
yourself whether she has not, in forming the two classes of men, made them 
vastly unalike; I ask you to put aside partial

ity, and to decide: have they the same voice, the same skin, the same limbs, 
the same gait, the same tastes, have they, I venture to inquire, have they the 
same needs? It will be to no purpose if someone attempts to persuade me that 
circumstances or education have made for these differences and that the slave 
and the master, in a state of Nature, as infants, will be indistinguishable. I deny 
the fact; and it is after having pondered the matter and sifted much personal 
observation, after having examined the findings of clever anatomists, that I affirm
there is no similarity between the conformations of these several infants. Abandon
them both to themselves, and you’ll observe that the child of the first class 
manifests tastes and aims most unlike those the child of the second class 
demonstrates; and you will perceive the most striking dissimilarity between the 
sentiments and dispositions proper to each.

“Now perform the same study upon the animal resembling man the closest, 
upon, for example, the chimpanzee; let me, I say, compare this animal to some 
representative of the slave caste; what a host of similarities I find! The man of 
the people is simply the species that stands next above the chimpanzee on the 
ladder; and the distance separating them is, if anything, less than that between 
him and the individual belonging to the superior caste. And why should Nature, 
who so assiduously observes these gradations in all her works, have neglected 
them here? Are all plants alike? No. Are all animals the same in aspect and 
strength? No. Dare you compare a shrub to the majestic poplar, a pug-dog to the 
proud Great Dane, the Corsican mountain pony to the spirited Andalusian stallion?
So many essential differences within the same over-all categories; and why do 
you object to the same differences existing among men? You should certainly 
never lump Voltaire and Fréron in the same class, any more than you would the 
virile Prussian grenadier and the debilitated Hottentot. Therefore, Juliette, cease 
to doubt these inequalities; and, admitting their existence, let’s not hesitate to 
take full advantage of them, and to persuade ourselves that if it so suited Nature 
to have us born into the upper of these two human classes, we have but to 
extract profit and pleasure from our situation by worsening that of our inferiors, 
and despotically to press them into the service of all our passions and our every 
need.”

“Kiss me, my beloved,” I cried, throwing myself into the arms of a man whose 
principles I simply could not resist; “to me you are as a god, ’tis at your feet I 
want to pass my life.”

“Apropos,” remarked the Minister, getting up from the table and leading me to 
the couch in the salon, “I forgot to tell you that the King is fonder of me than 
ever; I’ve just had new proof of his attachment. From somewhere he got the idea 
I am burdened by heavy debts, and has given me two million to straighten out my
affairs. ’Tis only just that you share in my good fortune, Juliette; I am turning half
the gift over to you; continue to approve my tenets and to serve me well, I’ll raise
you so high in the world you’ll have no more trouble believing in your superiority 
over others: you cannot imagine the joy I derive in advancing you to atop the 
very pinnacle, and making your pre-eminence conditional upon profound humility 
and unbounded obedience toward me alone. I wish you to be the idol of others 
and, at the same time, my slave; the mere thought heats my prick…. Juliette, 
we’ll perform horrors this day, shan’t we, my angel? horrors, atrocities?”

And he pressed his lips to mine, the while toying with my cunt.

“Oh, my love, how delicious are our crimes when impunity veils them, when 
duty itself prescribes them. How divine it is to swim in gold and, as one reckons 
up one’s wealth, to be able to say, here are the means to every black deed, to 
every pleasure; with this, all my wishes can be made to come true, all my fancies 
can be satisfied; no woman will resist me, none of my desires will fail of 
realization, my wealth will procure amendments in the law itself, and I’ll be despot
without let or hindrance.”

I kissed Saint-Fond a thousand times over and, profiting from the enthusiasm, 
the drunkenness he was carried away by, and above all from his predisposition to 
me, I had him sign a lettre de cachet written out for the arrest of Elvire’s father, 
who wished to deprive me of her, and wheedled two or three other favors out of 
him, each of which was worth about five hundred thousand francs to me. And the 
fumes of the excellent dinner I had just provided him rising to his head, he 
announced he was sleepy and would retire for a little; he departed to his 
chamber, and I looked to the completion of the arrangements for the evening’s 
entertainments.

Saint-Fond woke toward five that afternoon. By then everything stood ready in 
the salon, and this is the way the scene and the actors were disposed: nude and 
simply decked in garlands of roses, there were, on the right, the three maids 
intended for the orgies; I’d grouped them like Botticelli’s Graces: all three were 
girls of condition spirited out of a convent at Melun, and their beauty was 
startling.

Louise was the name of the first: she was sixteen, fair-haired, and never was a
more interesting face beheld.

The second was named Hélène: fifteen years old, slender in the waist, slight of 
build and tall for her age, long brown tresses, Love’s own eyes and mouth; 
beautiful though she was, most would have admitted her to be surpassed by 
Fulvie, ravishing and also sixteen.

In the center, to offer a contrast to this group, I had stationed the ill-starred 
family, likewise naked and festooned with black crepe: the father and the mother 
were watching each other in expectation of the worst, at their feet lay the 
charming Julie; heavy irons rubbed their bare skin raw, the nipple on Julie’s left 
breast peeped through a link, which had bruised it, and it bled softly. Another 
length of chain was visible between the thighs of Madame de Cloris, and was 
pinching the lips of her womb; Delcour, whom I had outfitted in the terrifying garb
of a demon out of hell and armed with the sword he was to use upon his victims, 
held the end of the chain which ever and again he would tug, with dreadful effect 
wherever it touched flesh.

Next, in the pose of Callipygian Venus, their backs to Saint-Fond, draped in a 
simple brown-and-white gauze which left their asses very distinctly in sight, were 
my four women:

The first was twenty-two, superb, a veritable Minerva, magnificently formed; 
her name was Délie.

The name of the second was Montalme: twenty, in full bloom, as nicely fleshed 
as woman can be.

Palmire was nineteen. She was blonde and had the romantic countenance of 
those girls you always like to see in tears.

Seventeen years old, Blaisine had a mischievous look, faultless teeth, the 
sauciest eyes that ever fired desire.

And at the far left of this semicircle were placed two strapping lads, five feet 
and ten inches in height, awesomely membered; they were standing face to face 
and while frigging each other were exchanging passionate kisses. They were 
naked.

“Charming,” said Saint-Fond upon opening his eyes, “heavenly! No possible 
mistake, all this attests the mind and art of Juliette. Have the guilty ones brought 
hither,” he continued, directing me to take a seat beside him, Montalme to come 
and suck his engine, Palmire to place her ass within his reach.

Delcour marched the family forward.

“You are all three under accusation of enormous crimes,” the Minister began, 
“and from the Queen I have express orders to put you promptly to death.”

“They are unjust orders,” Cloris replied, “my family and I are innocent—as you 
know full well, you wretch! (At this point Saint-Fond was prey to a pleasurable 
emotion so puissant he was scarce able to fight off a discharge.) Yes, you know 
perfectly well that we are innocent. But if we are under suspicion, then let us be 
put on fair trial, but not exposed this way to the tigerish lust of one who sports 
with us only to quicken his ignoble passions.”

“If you please, Delcour,” said the Minister, “a taste of the chain.”

And the executioner gave it a jerk, so sudden, so violent, that the cunt of 
Madame de Cloris, the breast of her daughter, one of her husband’s thighs were 
cut into, blood spurted on the iron.

Then Saint-Fond said, “You allude to the law. You have broken the law, you 
have violated it too gr

ievously to invoke its protection; its full severity is all you have a right to 
expect now. Ready yourselves to die.”

“You,” was Cloris’ proud answer, “you are the hireling of a tyrant and the 
creature of a whore. Posterity will judge me.”

Here Saint-Fond rises in fury; his prick is prettily grown; he beckons to me, 
“Come.” Going close to the well-chained insolent, the Minister slaps him with all 
his might several times, insults him, spits in his face and, frigging his weapon on 
Julie’s teats, defies her father: “You are ill used? Call not on the opinion of later 
times, but take matters into your own hands now. Are you a man? Then exert 
yourself a little.”

“Coward, were I to get free you’d run off in a panic!”

“You are quite right. But you are not going to get free, I have you in my power,
I enjoy the situation; would you deprive me of enjoyment? Try.”

“Everything you have, you owe to me.”

“You have only yourself to blame for that,” the Minister said; and took hold of 
his benefactor’s prick, massaged it; then bade me endeavor to bring it to life. But 
my efforts were fruitless also; seeing this, he said to Delcour, “Separate this man 
from his family, attach him to that stake. The Queen having left to my discretion 
the choice of tortures that are to prelude your deaths,” Saint-Fond continued, now
addressing the two women, “I mean to subject you to a certain amount of lewd 
handling; Cloris will be witness to it.”

Noticing that Delcour was not binding the husband to the stake quite as firmly 
as he wished, Saint-Fond lent the executioner his assistance, and showered a 
further series of blows upon the man’s face and behind.

“I shall kill him myself,” he told Delcour. “Yes, I want to have the pleasure of 
shedding his blood in person.”

As always methodically combining horror and lechery, he bent forward, sucked 
Cloris’ prick a moment, then kissed his ass. Delcour being hard by, he took that 
worthy’s prick in his mouth too, and tongued his vent; straightened up and glued 
his lips to Delcour’s; and after five minutes of this, confided to me, “That’s the 
only thing that really puts a little snap in my whip.” There followed an interval 
during which Saint-Fond was plunged in crapulousness and atrocity; emerging 
from these, he returned to objects of my sex.

“Ah, my Lord!” said those poor creatures as he drew near them, “what have 
we done to deserve such barbarous treatment?”

“Be courageous, wife,” cried the luckless husband, “death shall soon deliver us 
from these outrages, we’ll suffer no more and remorse shall gnaw at this 
monster’s soul.”

“Remorse,” said Saint-Fond, chuckling, “is not a sentiment wherewith I shall 
ever have acquaintance, lest it be for sparing you.”

First to be unbound was Madame de Cloris. She was brought to the Minister.

“Ah, whore,” said he, “do you remember all the obstacles you hurled in my 
path, all your stubbornness in the past? Dear cousin, cherished cousin, sweet 
cousin, I’ll have you cheap today.”

His erection was something extraordinary to behold; he falls to pawing the 
woman’s charms; catching her around the waist, he brutally encunts her before 
the very eyes of her husband, whose prick, thanks to the position Saint-Fond has 
adopted, he is able to mouth the while. And I, finding his ass a fair target, strap a
dildo about my loins and embugger him; men and women together, all the others 
save Julie and Cloris surround him. Into his hands, before his eyes, I place cunts, 
asses, pricks, bubs in profusion; excited by the demon of cruelty, his fingers rake 
about, his nails claw and tear whatever they touch; but they rove with especial 
predilection over the breasts of the unhappy woman his rage feeds upon: these 
he scrapes, nips, bloodies incontinently.

“Take that stuff away, Juliette,” says he, decunting from the mother in order to 
have at the daughter, “I’m tired of discharging. Little whore,” he declares to the 
innocent creature under his belly, “your father and your mother are both aware of
all I did in my attempts to gain possession of you: I have you today, and today 
they’re going to regret having thwarted me previously.”

He then had Cloris placed in such wise that while fucking the daughter he 
might have a clear view of papa’s handsome hindquarters, the which Delcour was 
to thwack with one hand as, with the other, he molested mama’s buttocks, both 
their asses being at the same height, and adjacent. ’Tis I who help him 
depucelate Julie: he takes good aim, he presses, he thrusts, he encunts; and 
eight poised asses ring him round. He is sodomized: and the wicked wight, 
considering the torments Delcour is inflicting not severe enough, snatches up a 
small stiletto and indiscriminately pricks the mother’s dugs, the daughter’s 
shoulders, the father’s rear. Blood flows.

“Aye, but I’ll not discharge into this vessel of abomination,” snaps the satyr, 
decunting; “no; it’s rather there,” says he, fondling the father’s bum, “the shrine 
at which I’ll do my sacrifice.”

He gives orders that Cloris, his hands still tied, be stretched out upon the fatal 
sofa.

“Delcour, noose a cord around his neck; if we have any resistance from him, 
tighten till it ceases.”

Again superintending the operation, I artfully guide the fiery courser to the 
edge of the road it is to charge down; there’s not a murmur out of poor Cloris. 
Squarely ahead of him are posted the mother’s bosom on the right and on the left
the daughter’s pretty little ass. The Minister is no sooner ensheathed in the 
bowels he has been coveting, than his hands, one of them wielding the dread 
stiletto, begin to stray hither and yon about the attractions displayed to him and 
so displayed that, whenever he jabs, ’tis upon the father’s head flows the blood 
drawn from the wife or from the daughter. As all this goes forward I diddle about 
his asshole and my women prick his buttocks with hatpins.

“Ah, well,” says he after a time, “it seems I’m yet again mistaken. My sperm 
won’t loosen, and I fancy that’s because I want first to explore this truly very 
winning family’s asses. Delcour, chain the old bardash back to the stake, he’s 
been of no use save to cover my prick with shit. You, the tall one,” says he to 
Montalme, “come lick it clean.”

Detecting in Montalme a certain unreadiness to comply, Saint-Fond instantly 
commands Delcour to administer a hundred lashes to teach her obedience.

“Ah, the whore, the whore,” he murmurs while her instructor toils over her, 
“you are loath to suck my prick because it’s beshitted? Whatever shall you do 
when in a little while I give you mards to eat?”

Montalme, well whipped, returns in a different humor; she sucks the lecher, 
tidies his member, cleans his asshole out next; and going tranquilly, back to work,
there he is sodomizing the mother, the while molesting the ass of the father on 
the one side, his daughter’s cunt on the other. These exercises occupy him only 
briefly; now he fastens upon Julie, saying, “I hope this will turn the trick.”

Ever in the pilot’s role, I steer him into Julie’s hindward channel, and once he is
safe berthed every conceivable thing is done to deliver him of his seed; but, 
whether from villainy or from contrariness or from impotence, he quits this ass 
too, declaring he’s spent and if he’s to recover his strength must thrash the whole
family. The father, already secured to the post, is flogged first. Straightway he’s 
all bloodied, his wife is tied with her belly to his back; a thousand strokes lay her 
ass open, then little Julie, camped upon her mother’s shoulders, is given the same
treatment.

“Unassemble them,” says the centaur, “’twas an agreeable episode, now we’ll 
essay another: I’ll whip the youngster afresh, but her parents will hold her this 
time. Juliette, and you, Delcour, take you each a pistol, clap it to their heads, and 
if while I’m at work on their child they so much as flinch, blow their brains out.”

In charge of the mother, I wanted nothing so much as to have her show some 
recalcitrance; but, taking comfort in the thought she was soon to die under 
circumstances far less mild than mere shooting, I grew cheerful again after 
having been downcast and alarmed initially by her submissiveness. Poor Julie, 
abused with unexampled fury, first lashed with withes, was next flogged with a 
martinet the thongs whereof had her blood splashing all about the room; when 
done with her, Saint-Fond falls upon her father and using no other weapon but 
this martinet, its lashes iron-tipped, has him swimming in blood inside three 
minutes. The mother is seized without delay, she is installed on the edge of the 
sofa, her legs at the greatest possible spread and he bends the martinet to her, 
aiming his blows so they will strike into her open womb. I followed him wherever 
he went, now frigging him, now beating him, now sucking his tongue, or his prick.
Raging, he wheels on the daughter, bestows upon her a pair of blows so terribly 
violent she and her manacles fly all aheap; the mother would come to her aid, he 
awaits her; kicked in the belly, she lands five yards off. Cloris was rolling his eyes,
foaming at the mouth, but he dared not utter a word; bound hand and foot, what 
could he do? The girl is hauled to her feet; Saint-Fond directs the executioner to 
cunt-fuck her, and he himself, he sodomizes the executioner, while I, employing 
sweet words and having unbound him, I promise the father his life will be spared 
and his family’s also if he can succeed in buggering the Minister. Hope ever rises 
up in the soul of the doomed: cunningly frigged by my hand, his quivering lance 
penetrates the chink. Saint-Fond, positively thrilled to feel so stout a prick in his 
fundament, dances and skips like the gleeful fish thrown back into water after 
having been a while in the air.

“’Tis divine, and he’s assured of release and safety, 

says the Minister, “if, profiting speedily from the admirable state my ass tells 
me his prick is in, he consents to bugger-fuck his daughter.”

“Monsieur,” I said to this gentleman, “ought you hesitate? For is it not better a 
hundred times that you fuck your child than murder her?”

“Murder her!”

“Why yes, Monsieur; do you refuse and she’s undone. Dead, I say, if you balk.”

And the while one of the women holds the little girl’s buttocks at full divide and
moistens the hole within, I quickly snatch the engine out of Saint-Fond’s bum and 
clap it to the threshold of Julie’s; but Cloris, in revolt, drives not past the gate.

“So be it, so be it, since he won’t fuck her,” says Saint-Fond, “she’ll have to 
die.”

At this cruel pronouncement resistance melts away. I fit the girl’s loins up near 
the member, I push it into the anus; for as much as the requisite preparations 
have all been made, my efforts culminate in triumph, and Cloris who would not 
become the child-murderer becomes incestuous to the tune of a liberal 
outgushing of fuck. Délie was fustigating Saint-Fond, in the meantime he was 
vexing the mother’s ass and kissing the buttocks of one of the lackeys; but this 
lackey is soon fucking him, and now a close-on view of Délie’s behind seems to 
inspire him. The inconstant Saint-Fond ordered this group dissolved too; still 
stubbornly holding his seed in check, he appears before us in a greater fury than 
any wild beast: he shrieks, he bellows, there’s foam on his lips, curses in his 
mouth; as soon as Delcour spews into Julie’s cunt, he has him embugger her 
mother. At length the storm abates a little; Saint-Fond resumes his chair and 
orders me to bring up for his examination the three young girls of whom 
heretofore he has not taken anything but casual notice. He fingers and caresses 
their asses a quarter of an hour; he separates their buttocks, he compresses 
them, he compares them; and I frig him all this while; and he admits that, in a 
word, I have never found him better stuff. He is especially taken by Fulvie.

“I’d bugger her, be sure of it,” the lecher remarked, “if I didn’t fear I’d 
discharge.”

After reviewing the three girls he wishes to review the four women; Palmire 
enchants him, never, says he, has he seen the like of her, and the lovely girl’s 
matchless ass has him dumbfounded and doting for ten minutes.

Then he turns to me. “Instruct all these whores to get down on their knees in a
semicircle around me; then to creep forward and pay their respects to my prick, 
and to suck it, one by one.”

I give the order, it is carried out, and while each suckles his engine she 
receives a couple of smart slaps.

“Well now,” says he, when that ceremony is over, “it’s my ass’s turn, have 
them approach one after the other and do it fitting worship and lick it.”

Off they go to their new chore and while it is being done he sucks pricks, 
including, as you may well imagine, those of Cloris and Delcour.

“The time has come, Juliette,” says he, “to end this first scene.”

Whereupon the villain embuggers little Julie, the valets hold the mother and 
father while he bores and scrapes the child’s ass. Armed with a razor, Delcour 
steps up and prepares to sever her head.

“Be in no hurry about it, Delcour,” he cries, “I want my beloved niece to know 
what’s happening to her, she’s not to die before I’ve done fucking her.”

Delcour laid the cutting edge to skin and at once the child set up a ghastly 
wailing and screeching.

“Proceed, proceed,” said Saint-Fond, well lodged in her ass, “but go softly, 
you’ve no idea the repercussions all this is having on my nervous system. Bend 
this way a little, Delcour, so that I can warm your member while you work. 
Juliette, pay your respects to Delcour’s ass, worship it; he’s become a god in my 
consideration. And bring the mother’s ass inside my reach, I want to kiss it while I
have her daughter murdered.”

But what were those kisses! Great God, they were bites so cruel the blood 
leapt forth at each. A valet embuggered him, the scoundrel’s ecstasy was 
unspeakable.

“Ah, I savor crime, I do indeed,” he exclaimed, uttering many incoherent 
oaths, “I adore crime, it bewitches me.”

Delcour cuts with exquisite slowness…. Cloris is deathly pale, half in a swoon, 
he averts his horror-filled gaze. Julie’s beautiful head falls at last, like a rose that 
finally yields to the unflagging north wind.

“Than what I have just experienced there is probably nothing more 
voluptuous,” announces Saint-Fond, withdrawing from the cadaver, “’tis 
unimaginable, the constriction resulting in the anus from a gradual incision 
performed upon the nape vertebrae, it is delicious. All right now, Madame, 
prepare to give me the same pleasure.”

And the scene begins anew. Estimating that the operation is going ahead too 
rapidly, Saint-Fond suspends it.

“I dare say they are few who realize,” he observes, “how heavenly it is to slice 
through the neck of a woman whom in your gigantic weakness you loved in days 
bygone. I am being very splendidly revenged upon my cousin; it’s the sort of 
thing you are fain to have last forever.”

He continued frigging the headsman’s prick, but he would now kiss my 
buttocks; a valet tups him bumwise, another inserts in Delcour who resumes 
carving; the father has been adjusted so that I, armed with switches, can slash 
away at his privities. My ferocious lover is in raptures, he feasts upon the slow 
sufferings of his relative, whose head is at last sundered fifteen minutes later. And
now ’tis Cloris’ turn. He is placed in the position the operation demands, and 
bound. Saint-Fond sodomizes, the killer sets to work, valets yet embugger them 
both. This time it is Montalme’s magnificent behind Saint-Fond elects to kiss. The 
other women encircle him, displaying their asses; the bomb does finally burst. 
Heavens! if mighty Lucifer were to take it upon himself to discharge, me-thinks 
he’d unloose his seed less thunderously, would not foam so much at the mouth 
nor so gnash his teeth, at the gods would not hurl blasphemies and imprecations 
so fearful. While Saint-Fond remains behind, resting, I escort the seven women 
and the two valets into the next room. The Minister has soon rejoined us, but, like
Wenceslas, his headsman is ever at his side; a few revels of a milder kind are, 
however, to precede the anthropophagical orgies of our latter-day Nero, and now 
for a space fuck is perhaps to flow before the bloodshedding resumes.

Nonetheless, considering the man I was dealing with, it was necessary that I 
hew to the line laid down by his favorite pleasures: the voluptuous groups 
awaiting him had been disposed about in three alcoves decorated with all that is 
emblematic of Death. The entire room was hung in black, bones, skulls, a great 
store of rods, switches, withes, martinets, and knives were the furnitures; in each
niche, a virgin was being cunt-lapped by a Lesbian, both naked, reposing upon 
black cushions, and upon their brows wearing the skull and crossbones device. 
Within each niche one of the lately severed heads was plainly visible, and in front 
of these niches there were on the right a coffin, and to the left a little round table 
upon which lay a pistol, a goblet of poison, and a dagger; from somewhere 
(doubtless from my desire to please my lover) I had got the idea of sawing up the
bodies of the three victims sacrificed a little before, gone was everything below 
mid-thigh and from the waist up, and cords depending from hooks sunk in the 
intercolumniations between the niches held these chunks of meat mouth-high. 
These were the objects Saint-Fond first caught sight of when he entered.

“My goodness,” sighed he after he’d kissed them all, “here they are again, and 
I’m most content to see them, these asses which recently gave me such delight.”

A dim, a lugubrious lamp hung in the middle of the room whose vaults were 
likewise covered with dismal appurtenances; various instruments of torture were 
scattered here and there, among other objects one saw a most unusual wheel. It 
revolved inside a drum, the inner surface of which was studded with steel spikes; 
the victim, bent in an arc upon the circumference of the wheel, would, as it 
turned, be rent everywhere by the fixed spikes; by means of a spring device the 
drum could be tightened, so that, as the spikes grated flesh away, they could be 
brought closer and contact with the diminished mass maintained. This torture was
the more horrible in as much as it was exceedingly gradual, and the victim might 
well endure ten hours of slow and appalling agony before giving up the ghost. To 
accelerate or slow the procedure one had but to decrease or widen the distance 
between the wheel and the compassing drum; this machine, of Delcour’s 
contriving, had not yet been essayed by Saint-Fond; upon seeing it, he waxed 
very enthusiastic and then and there gave its inventor a fifty-thousand-francs 
gratuity. From that moment on his single preoccupation was to choose her from 
among the three victims who would be immolated in this manner; his perfidious 
gaze flitted from one girl to the next. Gods! the conclusion was foregone: the 
unlucky Fulvie, being the most beautiful, stood condemned in the tyrant’s heart, 
of this I was sure. A kiss he applied to that lovely creature’s asshole the moment 
he was done contemplating the terrible machine erased all doubt; but of all that in
due time.

Between Delcour and me, Saint-Fond first starts by settling himself in one after
the other of the three armchairs which were placed one in front of each alcove. 
Palmire, of my women alone not employed in a niche, is posted behind his chair 
and is reaching around and polluting him; he is dandling Delcour’s prick and 
toying with my ass; and he scrutinizes the scene before him. Each tribade is 
mindful to ensure him a good view of the body of the little girl she is frigging in 
every sector and in every possible manner and attitude; often, indeed, the child is
brought to him so that he may kiss her in divers parts. He rises, goes to the next 
niche, then to the third; then comes back to the first; in the meantime Delcour 
flogs him; and now again he has somebody fuck him, and I suck him; I remark 
his device beginning to assume size and vibrancy; he embuggers me after a while
(this occurred opposite the niche where Blaisine was toiling over Fulvie), it was 
then, as he was embracing that charming girl’s ass, he glanced aside at me and 
whispered in my ear, “That’s the one who’s to baptize the wheel. What a pretty 
tickling it’ll give those delectable little buttocks.”

This preliminary examination completed, he lays himself down on a kind of 
narrow upholstered bench, and then begins a veritable parade; all those present, 
male and female, file up and one by one straddle the bench, squat over his face, 
and shit into his mouth. Palmire steps first to the fore, and when she has eased 
herself she kneels down beside his Lordship, takes his prick in her mouth, and 
sucks on it throughout the rite. Next, Montalme and I present ourselves 
simultaneously in order that he be able, as he so desires, to handle one ass while 
the other is yielding. From nastiness the libertine moves straight to horrors; he 
gives Delcour instructions to flog the seven women, and I rub his prick upon the 
heads he has had me detach for this purpose.

After that three tableaux take form before his eyes: my two fuckers embugger 
two of my tribades; in the center, Delcour flogs the third; at the foot of each 
group reclines one of the little girls Saint-Fond is to depucelate, and for this task 
he is now getting himself in readiness: Palmire and I are arraying him for fight, 
she by socratizing him, I by means of prick-friggery. Rampant, the libertine 
shivers the three forward pucelages, turns Fulvie over and sinks his lance in her 
bum and discharges. I suck his weapon to restore it to true and temper; he would
have the headsman hold for him all the women, not excepting me; to each of us 
he applies two hundred strokes; then it is he who holds the women and bids 
Delcour embugger them all. While Delcour is performing, the Minister kisses them
upon the mouth during all the scene, in which I figure too.

Then Saint-Fond led each maiden away into a remote chamber and passed a 
brief interval with her alone. We do not know what he told them, nor what he did;
nor dared we even question them when they were brought back. In all likelihood 
he apprised them of their impending deaths, for each returned weeping from the 
interview. While Saint-Fond’s consultations were in progress Delcour indicated to 
me that a certain subtle lubricious byplay ordinarily followed this announcement; 
and that since the outset of his acquaintance with the Minister, he, Delcour, had 
always observed that pronouncing sentence left his Lordship overwhelmed by a 
sweet and mysterious anguish. Such was now the case, for he came back 
profoundly agitated, flushed, and marvelously erected.(10)

“Very well,” said he, rubbing his hands together, lust’s froth on his lips, “let’s 
take counsel. How shall we do them to death? Their agonies must be frightful, you
understand, indescribable. Delcour, my lad, cudgel your wits, I expect you to 
outdo yourself in inventiveness: these poor swine are to endure one after the 
other all of hell’s tortures, it will desolate me if they get away with less.”

And so saying he gave Fulvie a warm kiss; it was very obviously she who most 
aroused him.

“Delcour,” he went on, “let me recommend this pretty little thing to you; she’ll 
look stunning on your wheel, those plump white buttocks were made for its 
spikes.”

Wherewith he sank his teeth into her, bit her in half a dozen places, drawing 
blood from each; one of those bites cost her the nipple off her left teat, and the 
roguish Minister swallowed it. He popped his prick into her asshole for a moment, 
then plucked it out again, got hold of Delcour’s engine, and rammed it into the 
vent he’d vacated.

“The executioner must fuck his victim,” said he, “protocol demands it.”

While Delcour was complying, Saint-Fond’s fingernails raked and tore the 
child’s buttocks, thighs, breasts, and he lapped up the blood as he made it flow; 
he had Palmire come forward, Palmire for whom, it appeared, he also had a 
prodigious weakness, and he said to her, “Behold, ’tis thus I treat little girls who 
stiffen my tool.”

Those words were scarce out of his mouth when he drove the selfsame tool 
into her ass: after some bucking and heaving he had her clamber upon a chair so 
he could proceed with her buttocks in better view; and beside her he had Délie 
take the same stance; then the three girls ranged themselves in a semicircle 
around him; they knelt; and he molested their bosoms while Blaisine frigged his 
prick. He ran pins into those three unfortunates’ still but half-formed breasts, with
a penknife he gashed them, then immediately brought a hot iron into play and 
cauterized the wounds. And I? I was busy keeping his excitement at a pitch, 
having, pursuant to his orders, Delcour’s prick in my bowels and the prick of a 
valet in either hand. With cords the Minister bound the kneeling three into a 
compact group, their backs together, and with a martinet whose steel tips were 
arrowheads, edged as well as pointed, made a very hash of their mammaries; 
throughout these pageantries Palmire’s ass was constantly there wherever he 
looked; taking respite from his labors, he many times flung himself upon it and 
sucked it to recover strength.

“No dallying,” said he. rising up again, “set the stage. We’ll have some more of
the whip.”

The seven women—I was left out—were tied to specially constructed columns; 
in their upraised hands they each held a crucifix; also upon crucifixes the four 
tribades were standing, and seemingly treading them contemptuously under foot;
while the three victims found support upon cannonballs studded with nails all 
over, in such wise that their feet were lacerated owing to the weight of their 
bodies. The victims were cinctured around the breast by a leather strap, first wet,
and as it dried, shrinking ever tighter; a device impended above the head of each 
and Saint-Fond, controlling a small crank, could bring its needle-sharp point down
so that it penetrated to whatever depth desired into the cranium of the girl; other 
instruments, these resembling two-tined forks and likewise needle-pointed, and 
also controlled by Saint-Fond, were aimed at their eyes; yet another point was 
there to receive their navels in the event that, jostled by the blows of the whip, 
they might perchance slip forward; and each of the victims, arranged as I have 
said, was flanked by tribades, who were free of all such intricate harnesses.

Saint-Fond at first uses the switches Delcour and I hand over to him; he metes
out a hundred strokes to each victim and deals each tribade fifty; the second 
round sees the steel-tipped martinet in service, each victim is favored with two 
hundred blows thereof, each tribade with a mere dozen. Then Saint-Fond starts 
his machineries working; the poor children, pricked in this place and that, set up a
clamor such as would have melted the heart of any villain made of less stern stuff
than we. Sensing a mounting irritation in his prick, whence fuck is already oozing,
Saint-Fond quickly has Louise brought to him, that Louise, sixteen years old, 
whom he has singled out to be executed first. Much does he kiss her, lick and 
fondle her bleeding ass, give her his prick to suck and his asshole; then turns her 
over to Delcour who, once he has slipped his goad into both her orifices, fastens 
her down upon a long table and subjects her to that Chinese torture which 
consists in being chopped up alive, by less than inches, into twenty-four thousand
pieces. Saint-Fond, seated on the lap of the lackey fucking him, assists at the 
spectacle, and between his thighs grips Hélène, next on the list and whose ass he 
molests while I frig him and he tongues Palmire’s mouth. The torture used upon 
the second consists in having her eyes gouged out and after that of being spread 
on a Saint Andrew’s cross and broken alive. Saint-Fond attends to the matter 
while I thrash him. All the victim’s limbs are broken, all her joints pulled loose; in 
that state she is offered to him again, he embuggers her and while he 
instruments her anus, Delcour finishes her off with a mace, dashing out her brains
so that they fairly splatter into Saint-Fond’s mouth and eyes.

The charming Fulvie alone remains, surrounded by the gory vestiges of her two
companions; can she be in doubt of her fate? Saint-Fond points to the wheel.

“Look there,” says the Minister, “I’ve saved the best for you.”

And the traitor does not fail to caress her and to kiss her tenderly upon the 
lips; yet again he embuggers her before delivering her to the killer. Delcour has 
her now; hideous are her screams; she is fitted into position, fastened there, and 
the wheel begins to turn. Fucked now by one valet, now by the other, Saint-Fond 
sounds Delcour’s ass while alternately kissing Palmire’s behind and mine, and in a
detached and fugitive manner fingering the three unoccupied assholes. Very soon 
the ascending volume and t

one of the victim’s screams give us report of her pain. Violent you may be 
certain it was; judge thereof by this detail: the blood was coming from her like 
one of those fine rains blown almost to mist by a strong wind. Saint-Fond, eager 
to prolong the game to the utmost, varies his tableaux and his festive doings too. 
He embuggers my four tribades in swift succession, while we all, Delcour 
included, compose new groups for him. The spike-surfaced drum, ever 
contracting, begins to attack the nerves, and the cries of the victim are stilled as 
overwhelmed by suffering she faints away; and that’s the very moment when 
Saint-Fond, weary of horrors and cruelty, finally unleashes his fuck into Palmire’s 
superb ass while he gamahuches Delcour’s, palpates mine with one hand and 
Montalme’s with the other, watches one of the valets embugger Blaisine on the 
floor beside the fatal wheel, and is whipped by Délie who also sucks his tongue to 
hasten his discharge.

Saint-Fond’s shrieks, his disport, his foul, ungodly language were all appalling; 
he was only half-conscious when we bore him to the bed where, he nevertheless 
gave me to understand, he wished to have me pass the night at his side.

This peerless libertine, quite as though he had just performed wonders of 
charity, enjoyed ten hours of blissful undisturbed sleep. I watched his rest; and if 
I had doubted it before, I was convinced now that it is easy to build oneself a 
conscience to sort evenly with one’s opinions, and that after the initial effort has 
been made, nothing afterward stands in one’s way. Oh, my friends, believe me 
when I say that he who has succeeded in ridding his heart of every idea and trace
of God or religion, he whose gold or influence removes him beyond the reach of 
the law, he who has toughened his conscience and brought it firmly into line with 
his attitudes and cleared it utterly and forever of guilty remorse; he, I say, and be
certain thereof, he may do whatever he pleases and whenever, and never know 
an instant’s fear.

When he woke up, the Minister asked me if it were not true that he was the 
wickedest man in the world. Knowing the pleasure I would give by answering in 
the affirmative, I did not by any means contradict him; and he smiled.

“You flatter me.”

“Do I? It is sincere.”

“I rather suppose so. Ah, my angel,” said he, yawning, “could it be otherwise 
with me? Is it my fault if this is how I am, and if Nature put the most irresistible 
taste for vice in me, and not so much as a hint of a bent for virtue? Don’t you 
agree that I serve her quite as well as some other in whom she ingrained a 
fondness for doing good deeds? That seems self-evident to me; and this likewise, 
that there would be no greater folly than willfully to cross her purpose as it 
regards us individually; I am the poisonous plant she makes grow by the balsam 
tree, and find my manner of being no more to be regretted than I would esteem 
enviable that of the virtuous man; and once we realize that upon earth there 
must be the bitter together with the better, can it make one jot of difference to us
whether we are numbered in this category or that? Imitate me, Juliette,(11) your 
native leanings are in this direction: let no criminal act daunt you, the more 
atrocious it is, the more pleasing to Nature; guilt? The only guiltiness is in 
reluctance, in backhanging; lift up your head, beloved girl, and go ever forward. 
To the dreary mediocre portion of mankind leave all notions and prattle such as 
that righteousness and modesty must accompany fleshly pleasure, they’ll fail 
utterly of it every time. For it cannot possibly delect save when one outsteps 
every limit in one’s quest; the proof thereof is that there must be a breaking of 
restraining rules before pleasure begins to be pleasure; go farther yet, break still 
another and the irritation becomes more violent, and necessarily so with each 
ascending step; and you do not really attain to the true goal whither these 
pleasure-takings point until the ferment of the senses has reached the extremest 
pitch, until you have got to the final limit of what our human faculties can endure,
in such wise that your nerves are so prodigiously wrought upon that they are 
frayed as if to paralysis, smitten into a convulsion that resembles standstill and 
shocked insensibility. He who also would know the whole wild power and all the 
magic of lubricity’s pleasures must thoroughly well grasp that only by undergoing 
the greatest possible upheaval in the nervous system may he procure himself the 
drunken transport he must have if he is properly to enjoy himself. For what is 
pleasure? Simply this: that which occurs when voluptuous atoms, or atoms 
emanated from voluptuous objects, clash hard with and fire the electrical particles
circulating in the hollows of our nerve fibers. Therefore, that the pleasure be 
complete, the clash must be as violent as possible; but so delicate is the nature of
this sensation that a mere nothing can spoil or nullify it; hence, the soul must be 
prepared, tranquil, its serenity ensured by certain mental attitudes or certain 
physical postures, so that it lies as though in a calm and smiling vale; and then 
the imagination’s fire must set the furnace of the senses alight. From this point 
onward give that imagination free rein, act at its every behest, its every whim; 
and labor not only to grant it what it desires but, by making practical use of your 
philosophy and above all of the chill hardness of your heart and your lack of 
conscience, enable it to forge, to weave, to create new fantasies which, injecting 
energies into the voluptuous atoms, cause them to collide at greater speed and 
more potently with the molecules they are to make vibrate; these vibrations are 
your delight. From what I have just said, you will appreciate, Juliette, how 
obstacles, exerting their restrictive influence upon the form of your delirium, will 
always tend to confine it within the boundaries of decency and virtue, thus 
altering its essence; upon your delirium obstacles of any sort have a dampening 
effect, water poured on fire; a hindering effect, so many chains, so many clogs 
encumbering the spirited young destrier that asks only to take the bit in its mouth
and break into a gallop.

“In such cases, the impediment represented by religion is without doubt the 
first that ought to be liquidated, being as it is a perpetual source of discomfort 
and remorse to anyone languishing in its grip; but combating superstition is only 
half the job, it will remain unfinished so long as the altars of a fantastical God are 
left standing. No, there’s not much to the former operation, neither a great deal 
of intelligence nor a great deal of brawn is needed to dispose of religion’s 
disgusting chimeras, since not one of them can hold up under examination. But 
that’s not the end to it, Juliette, not by any means, there are countless other 
duties, other social conventions, other barriers which will soon become as much a 
nuisance to you as religion was, if, bold and independent of mind, you do not 
make it a rule to thrust aside anything that lies in your path. Just as hampered by
these contemptible restraints, you’ll soon discover them interfering with your 
pleasures equally as much as his belief interferes with the believer’s; if, on the 
contrary, you have ridden roughshod over everything in order to attain pleasure, 
and if you have protected your rear by taming your conscience and lulling it nicely
off to sleep, then, in this other case, there is no doubt but that your enjoyment 
will be as intense and complete as anything Nature allows of; and such will be 
your frenzy that its excessive consequences will be all if not more than your 
physical faculties can endure. Nevertheless, do not expect to be as happy in the 
beginning as, by dint of persistence, you shall be later on; no matter what you do 
to counter them, prejudices will continue a long while to harass you, and the 
more severely the more formidable the obstacles you surmount: baneful, fatal 
effects of education, for which the only remedy is deep thought, indefatigable 
perseverance, and entrenched habits especially.

“But little by little—my intention is not to discourage you—little by little your 
mind will become fortified; habit, that second nature which sometimes becomes 
more powerful than first, which is at length able to annihilate those very natural 
principles that seem the most invulnerable, the most sacred, this habit that is 
essential to vice, that I cannot too strongly urge you to acquire, and upon which 
success in the career you have chosen depends; this habit, I say, will dull your 
remorse, quell it, silence your conscience, put a stop to the silly bleating that 
comes from the heart; and then you’ll see things in a very different light indeed. 
Amazed at the fragility of the bonds that held you captive once, you’ll look with a 
certain regret, yes, with a certain nostalgia back upon the days when, stupidly 
ensnared, innocently, you were able to resist pleasures; and though a few paltry 
obstacles may have got in the way of your felicity, the charm of having known it, 
and the divine memories you will have of it, will cause the thorns they wished to 
strow in your path to appear as very flowers. Well now, in the circumstances 
where I have placed you, with the security I guarantee you, what have you to 
fear? Reflect a moment upon your marvelous situation; and if the certainty of 
getting off scot-free furnishes crime its divinest allurements, who in all the world 
is better placed than you to enjoy yourself to death? Consider now your other 
advantages: eighteen years, perfect health, the prettiest face, the noblest figure, 
all the wit one could ask for, intelligence, the temperament of a Messalina, the 
riches virtually of a Croesus, a splendid reputation, no handicaps, no chains, no 
relations, friends who adore you … and you’re afraid of the law? Put by your fears 
forever; if some day the sword of justice is bared against you, Juliette, protect 
yourself with the shield of your wiles and winningness; instead of this languor 
where you lie becalmed in a sea of voluptuous delights, adopt another mood, put 
on seductive raiments, show yourself about, and crowds will fall at your feet; 
bestir yourself and a kneeling world will provide you with ten thousand 
champions, they will shed their blood to the last drop defending the name of their 
most cherished idol and to keep it pure; ten thousand hearts will beat for you, 
and where others would have judges to dread you’ll find none but devoted lovers. 
Let the isolated, the friendless, the penniless individual, he who counts for 
nought, who scarce has an identity, let him groan under vulgar yokes; they were 
designed for him only. But you, Juliette, ah! hurl all Nature into confusion, wreak 
havoc, destroy, rend the whole universe asunder; men will consider your anger 
godlike and do you divine worship if perchance you deign to smile upon the world,
whensoever you cast a crumb of kindness to it; and will dread you when in wrath 
you trample upon it; but it is all one, whatever you do, you’ll always be God to 
the common sort and mass of humankind.

“Indulge yourself, oh, my Juliette, without fear, proudly surrender to the 
impetuosity of your tastes, to the irregularity of your caprices, to the blazing 
ardor of your desires; your wantonness is my cheer, your pleasures my joy; be 
ever guided by them, ruled by them and by nothing else; may your voluptuous 
imagination ensure variety to our disorders; only by multiplying them will we 
attain happiness. Happiness being an intrinsically fickle and fugitive thing, it 
confers its blessing only upon him who is clever to mark it, quick to seize it, 
strong to hold it; and never lose sight of the fact that all human felicity lies in 
man’s imagination, and that he cannot think to attain it unless he heeds all his 
caprices. The most fortunate of persons is he who has the most means to satisfy 
his vagaries: get ye girls, men, children; upon all those in your entourage direct 
the lasciviousness of your impassioned soul; whatever delights is good, whatever 
arouses is natural.

“Do you not see the star that lights us sometimes give life and sometimes take
it away, now vivifying, now withering to dust? Match the sun in thy conduct as 
thou dost figure it in thy fair eyes. Take Messalina and Theodora for thy models; 
like those famous whores of antiquity, supply thyself with harems of either sex 
wherein thou canst plunge conveniently and when thou wilt into a very ocean of 
filthiness. Wallow in ordure and infamy; let all that is of the dirtiest and the most 
execrable, of the most shameful and the most criminal, of the most cynical and 
the most repulsive, of the most unnatural, illegal, irreligious, be for those very 
reasons that which dost please thee most. Soil without stint and at leisure the 
loveliest parts of thy body, remember that there is not a one where lubricity may 
not find a shrine, and that the divinest pleasures are unfailingly those whereat 
thou perhaps suppose Nature vexed. When the most odious of debauchery’s 
excesses, when the most depraved turpitudes, when the most disgusting activities
begin to pall upon thee and leave thee listless, have resort to cruelties, they 
reanimate; the most ghastly and fell deeds, the most revolting atrocities, the 
most unimaginable and nameless crimes, the most gratuitous horrors, the most 
monstrous perversities, let these be the means to convey thy soul from the 
lethargy where libertinage may have left it. Nor forget that Nature is thine ally 
and sanction; that whatever she lets us do is permissible; and that when she 
created us she was cunning enough to withhold from us the power and possibility 
of doing her injury. Thou shalt then notice Love sometimes maketh his arrows into
daggers, and that for bringing our fuck to flow the invectives of the doomed one 
we torment often outvalue the polite gallantries of Cythera.”

Deeply moved by Saint-Fond’s speech, I ventured to indicate that my sole fear 
was of the possibility his kindness to me might come to an end.

“Juliette,” he gave me answer, “you’d have fallen out of grace a good while 
before this had I merely been your lover; for, however beautiful she may be, the 
favors of a woman cannot exert prise upon me for long. He unto whom it is a 
principle that the instant one has finished fucking a woman is the instant when it 
is essential to be finished with her, must of a certainty, if he is only a lover, inspire
such an eventuality as causes you to worry; but Juliette, and hereof I need hardly
remind you, there is precious little of the vulgar amorist in me; both of us bound 
by similarities of taste, intellect, outlook, and self-interest, I apprehend our 
attachment as one forged out of egoism alone, and that kind endures forever. 
Would I advise you to fuck broad if I were your lover? No, Juliette, no, that I am 
not, such I shall never be. Hence dread no change of heart in me; if ever I quit 
you it will be you the cause of our separation, only you. Maintain your good 
behavior, I tell you, be active in the service of my pleasures; let not a moment go 
by when I do not develop some new vice in you or further refine an old one; while
we are at home, show me submissiveness carried to the last degree of baseness, 
the lower you crawl cringingly at my feet, the higher I, from pride, shall set you 
above others; above all, whatsoever may be the thing I require you to do, do it 
without ever displaying any weakness, any hint of contrition, and I shall render 
you the happiest of women as you shall render me the luckiest of men.”

“Oh, my master,” said I, “be ever sure that if I would reign over the world, it is 
to bring it on its bended knees in homage to you.”

Next we left off generalities to discuss certain particulars. Saint-Fond 
expressed regret at not having been able to subject his niece to the wheel; which,
said he, he would definitely have done were he not under obligation to produce 
her head in Paris. Then he spoke in very great praise of Delcour.

“He is full of imagination,” said the Minister. “He is young and vigorous besides,
and I must compliment you upon having desired his prick. For my own part, it is 
always a delight to fuck him. In passing let me remark that, as I have often had 
occasion to observe, the same man you fucked in your youth can yet be fucked 
pleasurably when you are forty. We are alike, aren’t we Juliette?” he went on. “As 
did I, you took a fancy to him on account of his trade; were it not for that, neither
of us would have paid him the slightest attention.”

“Have you had many such fellows?” I asked Saint-Fond.

“For five or six years they were my specialty,” he replied, “I combed the 
provinces to get hold of them; and I had an incredible leaning toward their valets.
You simply cannot imagine what it’s like to have the prick of a headsman’s valet in
your ass; after a time though, I found something equivalent in butchers’ boys. 
Often I’d pass two hours being embuggered by one of those lads come fresh from
his slaughtering and bloody all over.”

“Adorable,” said I.

“Beyond words so,” said he. “Ah yes, my dear, believe me, those stunts call for
infamy and depravation; and what the devil is lust, if crapulousness is not therein 
as its very soul? By the way,” the Minister continued, “one of those tribades has 
an appalling effect upon my nerves—I refer to the pretty blonde, the whom, I 
think, obtained the last of my fuck.”

“Palmire?”

“Yes, ’twas doubtless so I heard you call her. Her ass was the fairest, its hole 
the narrowest, the warmest of the lot…. How did you gain possession of the 
wench?”

“She was working at a dressmaker’s, was just turned eighteen when I found 
her and as mint as a babe emerging from its mother’s womb; Palmire is an 
orphan. She comes of a good line, and has no parents save an elderly aunt who 
gave me an excellent character of the girl.”

“Do you love her, Juliette?”

“Saint-Fond, I don’t love anything. I am moved by caprice only.”

“I feel this pretty creature lacks absolutely nothing of what is needed to make 
a delicious victim; undeniably she is beautiful, it is quite certain she would be yet 
more so in distress, she has magnificent hair, a sublime ass whose qualities are 
indeed outstanding…. Here, Juliette, dost see how my prick soars at the thought 
of martyrizing her?”

Truly, never had I seen his prick in such high wrath, I clutched it and set to 
frigging it softly.

“But if I take her,” he added, “I’ll pay you well, I’ll pay you a better price for 
her than for another, since I desire her.”

“To my understanding, does not that word have the meaning and force of a 
command? Wouldst have her come in this instant?”

“I would, for my prick is gone up for her.”

Saint-Fond, flinging a dressing robe about himself, sprang toward Palmire as 
she came into the room and, taking her firmly by the arm, disappeared with her 
into another chamber: long, arduous was the séance; I could hear Palmire’s 
screams. An hour elapsed before they returned. As he had made her undress 
before leading her off to that secret lair, the first thing that caught my eye when 
she reappeared was the extent to which she had been mistreated; and even if her
body had not been naked, the tears still coursing down her cheeks would have 
been sufficient evidence. It was but too superfluously confirmed by the marks on 
her breasts and buttocks.

“Juliette,” declared her tormentor, visibly overwrought by what he had just 
accomplished, “it breaks my heart but I simply do not have enough time for this: 
those blasted heads must be delivered to the Queen by five this afternoon, which 
means I’ll not be able to amuse myself with this girl in the manner I’d like. Not 
today at least. So this is my suggestion. Have her present the day after tomorrow
at our next three-girl supper. Until then, prison her safely in the darkest and 
best-barred of your dungeon cells; I forbid you to allow her any nourishment or 
drink, and order you to fetter her so closely to the wall she will be able neither to 
sit down nor even to stir. Do not question her about what has just now passed; I 
have my own reasons for preferring to keep you in ignorance thereabout. For this 
Palmire you will receive double the customary fee. Farewell.”

So saying, he and Delcour, the latter carrying the box containing the three 
heads, mount Saint-Fond’s coach; it drives away; and I, keenly agitated, remain 
rooted to the spot.

I had a great fondness for Palmire. Very loath I was to surrender her to that 
cannibal; but could I disobey? Daring not even to speak to her, I had her taken off
to the dungeon; and scarcely was she there when two sentiments assailed me. 
The first was a desire to save this girl, of whom I was still far from being weary; 
the second revolved around an extreme curiosity to discover just how Saint-Fond 
proceeded with women upon whom he pronounced capital sentence. Ceding to 
this latter desire, I was about to start down to interrogate the captive when a 
servant ushered in Madame de Clairwil.

Several days earlier she had seen the Minister and learned from him the time 
of his return from the country; and now she had come to ask whether I would not
care to drive back with her to Paris and to see a charming ballet at the Opera. I 
embraced my friend most warmly; I related to her all we had lately achieved, 
Saint-Fond and I; the follies I’d committed before the Minister’s arrival, I spoke 
also of them, and of all the others that had ensued. The dear creature found my 
stories delicious and congratulated me upon the progress I was beginning to 
make in crime. When I alluded to what was afoot regarding Palmire, Clairwil 
raised a cautioning hand.

“Juliette,” said she, “beware. Banish all thoughts of cheating the Minister of his 
victim, and above all of prying into his obscure ways; be rather mindful that your 
fate depends upon this man, and that the pleasure you might derive from 
discovering his secret, or from preserving your slut’s life, will never console you 
for the woes that will unfailingly beset you do you act the fool. You’ll find ten 
score girls worth more than this one; and as for Saint-Fond’s secret, knowledge of
one piece of infamy more or less is not going to make you happier. Let’s dine, my 
beloved, and then hasten back to the city; it will distract you.”

By six o’clock we were en route, Clairwil, Elvire, Montalme, and I; the team of 
six English horses had us flying swift as the wind and we would surely have 
arrived in time for the opening of the ballet, when but a little out of the village of 
Arcueil we met with four men, who were mounted and had pistols in their hands. 
Night had fallen. Our lackeys, effeminate, craven fellows, fops almost, ran off as 
fast as their legs could carry them, and, save only for the two coachmen, we were
left to confront the four masked riders alone.

Clairwil, who knew not the meaning of fear, singled out him who looked to be 
the ringleader and, addressing him in an imperious tone, demanded what he 
fancied he was about; not a word did he reply. Our drivers were ordered to turn 
the coach about, we proceeded back away in the direction of Arcueil, then climbed
to Cachan, and swung off into a narrow road which at length brought us to a 
lonely fortified castle. The coach entered, the gates closed, we even heard them 
being barricaded from within; thereupon one of our escorts opened the door of 
the coach and silently offered his hand, inviting us to step out.

My knees buckled as I got down from the coach, I was close to fainting away, 
for indeed I was dreadfully afraid; my women were in no better case; only Clairwil
was undaunted. Head high, lips compressed, she bade us take courage. Three of 
our ravishers disappeared; their captain led us into a well-lit drawing room. 
There, our eyes were greeted by the sight of an old man: he was weeping, and 
two very pretty young ladies were endeavoring to console him.

“Mesdames, these persons gathered here,” pronounced our guide, who had 
now been rejoined by his three fellows, “are all that remain of the Cloris family. 
The old gentleman is’ the father of the husband, these two ladies are the sisters 
of his wife, and we are his brothers. The head of this house, his wife and daughter
too, are missing; false charges were brought against them, through no fault of 
their own they incurred Her Majesty’s displeasure and, worse yet, the wrath of 
that Minister who owes his place and fortune to none other than my brother’s 
generosity and aid. Enquiries we rapidly made led us to the conviction that these 
three persons, of whom there has been nothing heard since the day before 
yesterday, are being held prisoner, or are dead, in the country house you left this 
same evening. You belong to the Minister; one of you is his mistress, this we 
know. You shall either guide us to the recovery of the three we seek, or persuade 
us that they are no longer alive; until then, you shall remain our hostages. 
Restore our relatives to us and you go free; but if they have been murdered, then
you shall be with them in the grave very shortly, and your shades shall implore 
theirs for forgiveness. Beyond this we have nothing to say to you; now ’tis your 
turn to speak. Be quick.”

“Messieurs,” answered the brazen Clairwil, “it would appear to me that your 
doings are in every sense profoundly illegal. I would also qualify them as 
exceedingly clumsy. For consider: to begin with, is it likely that two women, 
madame and myself—these others are our servants—is it at all likely, I say, that 
two women be so well acquainted with the Minister’s private affairs as to have any
knowledge of such happenings as you refer to? Do you really suppose that if the 
persons in question have fallen into disgrace at Court, and that Justice or the 
Minister has been called upon to take action; do you honestly believe that we 
would have been made privy to any such execution? You know when we departed 
from the Minister’s house, you doubtless know when we arrived; does not our 
presence under his roof during the last few days most conclusively prove that the 
event could not have transpired there? For the rest, gentlemen, we have nought 
but our word of honor to give you, but we offer it as guaranty of our total 
ignorance of what may have befallen those after whose fate you ask. No, 
gentlemen, no, we do declare to you that we have never even heard tell of these 
people until now, and if you are just men, and have no more to say to us, put us 
at our liberty this instant, for it is against our will you detain us here, and you 
have not the right to do so.”

“We shall not amuse ourselves refuting you, Madame,” our guide replied. “One 
of you has been four days upon the Minister’s estate, the other arrived there late 
this afternoon. It was also four days ago the Cloris family entered that same 
house; of you two, one is most assuredly in a position to answer the questions I 
have posed, and you have neither of you any chance of being released until we 
are fully enlightened.”

Whereupon the three other horsemen declared that since we were not eager to
speak of our own free will, there were ways of extracting information from us by 
force.

“Ah, my sons, that I would not have,” said the old man, “no violence shall be 
done here. We must eschew our enemies’ means lest we be likewise guilty of an 
evil. We shall merely request these ladies to compose a letter to the Minister, 
asking him to come to this house forthwith; and the message may be so styled as
to give him the impression that they, and they alone, are soliciting his presence 
for business of the greatest urgency. He will come; we shall question him; he will 
finally have no choice but to tell us where my son and daughter are: for if he 
refuses, this hand, trembling though it is, shall find the strength to thrust a 
knife-point into his heart…. Wicked abuses of tyranny! Dire results of despotism! 
O people of France, when shall you rise up against these horrors? When, tired of 
slavery and conscious of your tremendous might, when shall you look boldly up 
and snap the chains with which crowned criminals keep you in bondage, when 
shall you reclaim the freedom whereunto Nature destined you? … Put pen and ink 
and paper before these ladies and let them write.”

“Keep them amused,” I whispered to Clairwil, “occupy their attentions and 
leave the letter to me.”

This was the text: “An affair of the very extremest importance necessitates 
your presence here; the bearer of this note will guide you, come with the utmost 
dispatch.”

I submit the letter to our captors, they approve it. While addressing the 
envelope I find a moment to scribble this postscript: “Rush hither in force, else 
we’re lost; it is perforce the foregoing is indited.” The missive is sealed, one of the
brothers leaves with it, and we are introduced into a room in an upper story; the 
door is bolted, and another brother stands guard without.

No sooner were we alone than I told Clairwil what I had appended to the letter.

She shook her head. “That does not suffice to set my mind at rest,” said she. 
“For if he comes here in force, these people have but to see that force and our 
throats are cut. What if we try to seduce our jailer?”

“We’ll fail,” I replied. “These aren’t hired thugs. They are bound by honor, not 
to mention ties of blood, nothing will dissuade them from seeking their revenge. 
Ah, Clairwil, it does indeed seem to me that I have not yet got firm grasp of our 
principles, for in truth I do greatly fear lest some fatality or other, call it what you 
will, shall see virtue triumph in the end.”

“Never. Never. Victory goes always to the stronger, and for strength crime has 
not its match. Such ideas betray an unpardonable weakness in you.”

“This is my first reverse—”

“Your second, Juliette. Let me refresh your memory: only after you emerged 
from a prison where you ought rather to have gone to the gallows did fortune 
begin to heap her favors upon you.”

“True. I’d forgot that adventure.”

“And its moral. Take courage, Juliette; be patient.”

Nothing under the sun could have extinguished the fires of libertinage that 
burned at all times in this remarkable woman. There was but one bed in the 
room, and would you believe it? she suggested we all four of us get into it and 
while away the time frigging one another until Saint-Fond’s arrival. But as it 
turned out, neither I nor either of my women was in a sufficiently composed state
to cooperate in her extravagances; and so we chatted instead as we awaited 
further developments.

Like Clairwil, Monsieur de Saint-Fond considered that, we being prisoners 
there, it were wiser not to storm the chateau; under such circumstances, the 
employ of ruse, he felt, ought to precede that of violence, and this was the 
stratagem he used.

The rider who had gone out with our letter returned with two youths-unknown 
to us; they brought Cloris’ father a message, it ran as follows:

“To hold women in an affair concerning men only is not befitting to gallantry. 
Free these ladies; in their stead, accept as hostages these young men, one my 
first cousin, the other my nephew; you may believe that their safety is more 
precious to me than that of the women now in your power. As well, put aside all 
fear regarding your own loved ones; they are indeed under detention, but here at
my house in Paris; consider me responsible for them; and I vow to you they shall 
be in your midst within the space of three days. Again I say to you, keep my 
kinsmen and let the women go their way; I myself shall be at your house four 
hours after this reaches you.”

Here we had to use our wits very cleverly. The note was not read out to us, it 
was not until later we learned its exact contents; for the moment we could only 
guess its drift.

“Are you acquainted with these young gentlemen?” old Cloris asked me.

“Most certainly,” said I, “they are related to the Minister; if they have come to 
substitute themselves for us, you couldn’t have better hostages.”

They were discussing whether to set us at large or no when one of our captors 
spoke up: “This may be a trap; whatever, I am against letting the women out of 
our hands. Why not keep them all? That means two hostages the more.”

To this the others agreed, and the fools (for pursuant to the design of things, 
virtue can lead nowhere but to folly), the stupid clods, the animals, shut us all 
inside the same room.

“Be assured, Mesdames,” said one of the Minister’s alleged relatives, “we are 
here to help you. Those are our instructions; two hours from now, the entire body
of the Paris police—to which we belong—shall have the chateau surrounded: we 
shall protect you during the siege. We are well armed, never fear; and were these
people, finding they have been tricked, to decide to attempt anything against you,
you shall be defended.”

“My one fear,” Clairwil remarked, “is that these idiots wake up to the fact they 
have made a mistake in putting us all together. We shall be helpless if they 
separate us.”

“Very well,” said I, much more at ease than I had been hitherto, “we have 
simply to unite ourselves inseparably.”

“What,” Clairwil declared, “you who but a moment ago shuddered at the 
mention of a roughly similar distraction, do you now dare broach the idea?”

“Why, I’ve grown much calmer,” I replied, “and, Clairwil, these two lads are 
both very pretty to look upon.”

One of them, Pauli by name, was in truth but twenty-three, and he had the 
gentlest face, the most delicate features in the world; the other was probably two 
years older, his appearance was effeminate but he was quite as handsome, and 
his prick was a veritable splendor.

“I am confident that these gentlemen are at our disposition,” said Clairwil; 
whereupon we fell to kissing our champions and caressing them with such ardor 
that we were soon able to read consent in their expressions.

“Yes,” Clairwil resumed, “since they are so emphatically of our mind, this is 
how the thing should be gone about. Pauli is going to fuck you, Juliette; I’ll be 
served by Laroche; when we’re both encunted, Elvire will frig my clitoris with one 
hand, my asshole with the other; Montalme will do the same to you. Both of them
being within our fuckers’ reach, our fuckers will toy with them according to their 
fancy: you must not suppose that we’ll lose by thus dividing our fuckers’ 
attentions, not at all, those attentions will be intensified, there’s nothing like this 
arrangement to keep a prick in size; all voluptuous women would be well advised 
to employ it. But let me proceed. Taking careful note of the sensations being 
experienced by our young studs, as soon as they observe them nearing 
discharge, Elvire and Montalme will deftly snatch these pricks out of our cunts and
transfer them into our asses in order that no fuck be spent other than there; once
both are discharged empty, we’ll exchange man and woman. But you and I, 
proximately placed, will be concerned with ourselves only: we shall kiss each 
other, we shall tongue each other, my love, and the while,” she added in a 
whisper, “we’ll watch these vile beings, these base drudges toiling to give us 
pleasure like so many slaves Nature has created to be our tools and whom we 
suffer to exist solely in the interest of our passions.”

“Precisely,” I rejoined. “I do not understand how one can even hope to be 
aroused unless one holds that attitude.”

And the very next instant there the two of us are, sprawled on the bed, our 
skirts pulled up above the navel, legs flung wide. First of all, the tribades seize 
each an engine, these we ready, steer into position, then engulf with our panting 
cunts. If Clairwil was briskly fucked by Laroche, certainly I had no cause to 
complain of Pauli; his member was not quite so thick as his colleague’s, but it was
of goodly length, and I felt it stab to the final depths of my womb; frigged 
meanwhile in heavenly style by Montalme, voluptuously kissed by my friend, we 
had each passed through nerve-rending crises when the piece of legerdemain so 
skillfully executed by Montalme advised me of my young lover’s impending 
ejaculation; and then my thirsty ass was flooded by streams of nectar-sweet 
sperm. While it was pouring into me, the adroit Montalme probed three fingers 
into my lately vacated cunt and continued to rub my clitoris throughout. A loud 
shrill oath from my friend told me where matters stood with her; we were 
simultaneously whelmed by a third discharge as once again fuck washed 
abundantly into our entrails.

“Now we’ll exchange,” said Clairwil, “try some Laroche while I take Pauli.”

Both of them young, both vigorous, our athletes recommence their efforts 
without even asking to catch their breath, and I found myself being fucked by one
of the most beautiful pricks imaginable.

At that point Clairwil, who had gone on kissing me, tonguing me 
uninterruptedly, ignoring everybody else, paused to murmur in my ear: “I have 
something perfectly abominable in mind.”

“Ah, by fuck,” said I, “let’s to work. What would you do?”

“No. I want to surprise you,” she said. “Content yourself with knowing that this
idea alone is flushing the whey out of my loins.”

And therewith joy smote the rascal; her convulsions, her thrashings would 
rather have chilled than gladdened her fucker had he been acquainted with their 
cause. Restored somewhat to her senses, still being fucked by Pauli, she spoke to 
me again, again in an undertone: “I think I’d better explain it to you, else you 
won’t be able to play your part in the thing. There is going to be fighting; we shall
be attacked; we’ll resist. I propose that we ask these young men for weapons, 
and, as thanks for all the services they’ve done for us, that we shoot them dead 
during the battle. Blame for these murders will be laid upon our enemies; and 
Saint-Fond, further impressed by the dangers you’ve run, will probably reward 
you that much more liberally.”

“Oh, thrice-damned slut,” was my reply, discharging like a whore as Clairwil 
divulged this exciting scheme, “it’s good, good, what you advise.”

As I spoke I oiled Laroche’s prick; and he, finding himself on the verge of 
another explosion, hastily decunted, burrowing into my bum at the same instant I
discharged, which coincidence hurled me into transports such as I doubt my 
powers to describe, there being nothing, I affirm, absolutely nothing so delicious 
for a woman as to feel a prick penetrate her ass at the same instant she is 
overtaken by an orgasm. A brief moment later we heard gunfire outside; we all 
sprang up from the bed.

“They’ve come,” says Clairwil; “give us pistols so that we can defend ourselves,
my lads.”

“Here you are,” says Laroche. “Each is loaded with three balls.”

“Good,” Clairwil replies, “and be sure they’ll be soon lodged in somebody’s 
heart”

The noise mounts, shouts ring out in the chateau: “To arms!”

“See to the priming,” cries Laroche; “you ladies had best group yourselves 
behind us, we can act as a shield for you.”

Things now began to happen very fast. Already driven back in the lower part of
the chateau by the detachment sent from Paris, our captors raced up toward 
where we were, meaning to kill us before surrendering; but their assailants were 
hot on their heels. Our door was forced; the pistol-shots were deafening. 
Stationed behind our defenders, we chose this moment for ridding ourselves of 
the weight of gratitude. Two bodies lay in a welter of blood at our feet, and our 
cunts were yet slimed with the fuck of the young men our iniquity slew. Their 
deaths were of course ascribed to our captors; the officers in charge of our 
detachment lost little time revenging their murdered comrades. Old Cloris and the
young ladies alone remained alive: they were packed into a coach and, escorted 
by six of the policemen, were taken off to the Bastille. The rest of the police, 
having hitched the horses to our carriage, conducted us to my house, where I 
besought Clairwil to stay for supper.

She agreed to do so; we scarce had seated ourselves in the drawing room 
when my butler announced Saint-Fond.

I turned quickly to my friend. “Shall we tell him about our little horror?”

“No.” She pursed her lips. “You must always do whatever you want. You must 
never tell all you’ve done.”

The Minister entered, we declared ourselves thankful for the measures he had 
taken in our behalf. He in his turn declared that he was very sorry indeed a 
personal affair of his had caused us such inconvenience.

“Eight men were killed in the course of the thing, perhaps ten,” he informed 
us, “among them the two lads I sent to you. It’s rather a pity about them.”

“A pity?” Clairwil repeated. “How so?”

“Oh, I’d been fucking them both for quite a while, you know.”

“Tush,” she chided, “is this Saint-Fond we hear expressing pity for objects he’s 
fucked?”

“Merely regret at their loss. They were nimble boys, and wonderfully 
serviceable in my covert operations.”

“Never mind, there are many pebbles on the beach,” said I, showing 
Saint-Fond to his chair at table; “let’s forget about the slight harm that’s been 
done and talk instead about your successes.”

During the meal the conversation as usual revolved around philosophical 
questions; afterward, the Minister having business to attend to, and we being 
exceedingly tired after a trying day, the company separated. At the supper held 
on the morrow, my unlucky Palmire, fetched for the purpose to Paris from her 
dungeon in the country, was mercilessly sacrificed after enduring a thousand 
tortures, one more barbarous than the other. Saint-Fond obliged me to strangle 
her while he gave her an ass-fucking. For Palmire I got twenty-five thousand 
francs; a lively description of my perilous captivity in the chateau earned me 
twenty-five thousand more.

The following two months were unattended by any event worth signaling. I had
just celebrated my eighteenth birthday when Saint-Fond, visiting me at home one
morning, told me he had been to see Madame de Cloris’ sisters at the Bastille; 
they were both, he considered, far prettier than she whom we had butchered; 
and indeed the younger of the two, who was my age, struck him as positively 
lovely.

“So, my Lord,” I asked, “shall it be a trip into the country?”

“Yes, exactly,” was his reply.

“And the old man?”

“Oh, some spice in his soup perhaps….”

“As you like, but that will mean the loss of three prisoners at one stroke, and 
you realize that the warden depends entirely upon them for his livelihood.”

“He won’t go hungry. Replacements are easy to come by.”

“I should like you to put one of Clairwil’s relations first on the list. The creature
in question has been playing the prude with our friend, to whose libertinage she 
has some strange objection. That leaves two vacancies to fill; I have candidates 
for them now, I’ll give you their names in a week.”

“I’ll have the documents in order,” said the Minister, “but one thing at a time.” 
He drew out a memorandum book and penciled a note: “Gentleman: lunch. 
Ladies: outing.” Whereupon he looked up at me and smiled. “Off you go 
tomorrow, Juliette. Take Clairwil along; she’s charming and for imaginativeness 
has no peer. We’ll contrive something delicious.”

“Shall you require men and tribades?”

“No, I think not. Private scenes are sometimes preferable to orgies: the 
narrower stage is more favorable to meditation, more conducive to horrors. And 
in cozier surroundings one is less apt to be shy.”

“Two women to assist at least?”

“Two women well on in years; find me a pair in their sixties, it’s a caprice. I’ve 
been many times assured that nothing is quite so stimulating as natural 
decrepitude; this might be the occasion to try some of that.”

An hour later I was in conference with Clairwil. “I have only one suggestion to 
make,” said she after I had sketched the Minister’s project. “Those young ladies 
doubtless have lovers, favorites at any rate; we must locate them, make off with 
them, and include them in the festivities: these situations ordinarily afford any 
number of possibilities.”

I hasten to the Minister’s residence, report Clairwil’s idea to him; it meets with 
his approval; the date of the party is postponed a week; and a hunt for the lovers
is got under way.

The wicked treachery necessary for their discovery was sheer joy for 
Saint-Fond. He takes himself to the Bastille, has each of those girls cast into a 
cell, interrogates first one, then the other, causing them to tremble now with 
hope, now with fear, and sometimes with both at once, all most cunningly; he 
finally learns that the younger, Mademoiselle Faustine, is in love with a young man
by the name of Dormon, of the same age as she; and her sister, Mademoiselle 
Felicity, who is twenty-eight, has given her heart to one Delnos, a year or two her
senior and renowned throughout Paris for his good looks. Four days sufficed to 
have these young men behind bars; the charges leveled against them were 
somewhat vague and altogether false but, because never seriously examined, 
more than sufficient in an age when the abuses of privilege and influence were 
such that even the valets of high-placed personages were in the habit of jailing 
just about whomever they liked. These latest victims lay but a night in the 
Bastille; they were conveyed the next to my country domain whence the young 
ladies had been brought the previous day. Clairwil and I received our guests as 
they arrived and locked them away, but in separate chambers; so that, though 
they were all lodged under the same roof, they could not suspect that they had 
their beloved for neighbor.

After an enormous dinner we removed to a drawing room where all stood in 
readiness for the projected execrations. Garbed as Roman matrons and making 
up switches, the two sexagenarians were awaiting orders. Saint-Fond, impressed 
by Clairwil’s magnificent ass, wished to render it homage before doing anything 
else. Resting upon a sofa, the hussy presented it to him in the most artistic 
manner; and while I sucked her clitoris, Saint-Fond darted six inches or more of 
tongue into her entrails.

By now, he is erected; he embuggers Clairwil, kissing my ass meanwhile; the 
next instant he sodomizes me, as he does so caressing Clairwil’s voluptuous 
behind.

“And now to work,” says the Minister, “any further delay will cost me a 
discharge: there’s no resisting such asses as yours.”

“Saint-Fond,” Clairwil says, “I have two boons to ask you. You have a notable 
capacity for cruelty. Pray exercise it to the full, my dear, that is my first request. 
The second is that you enable me to exercise mine: entrust to me the murder of 
these young men. Torturing males is still my favorite pastime; you enjoy 
tormenting persons of my sex, I am equally fond of making representatives of 
yours suffer, and from martyrizing these two pretty fellows I expect to derive no 
less satisfaction, and possibly even more, than you will reap from massacring 
their two mistresses.”

“Clairwil, you are a monster.”

“I know I am, my dear; and the one thing that mortifies me is to have to own 
myself outdone by you every day.”

Saint-Fond declaring his desire to see each of the four lovers in turn, one of 
the old attendants brought in Dormon, he whose mistress was Faustine.

“Young man,” Clairwil began, “you are standing before your master, therefore 
see to it that the most complete submissiveness characterizes your behavior and 
a most scrupulous truthfulness your replies; it is in his Lordship’s hands that lies 
your life.”

“Alas,” the unhappy one replied, “there is truly nothing that I have to say, 
Madame. As to what I could have done to merit arrest I have not the faintest 
notion, nor can I understand why I am become the victim of fate.”

Clairwil was devouring him with her eyes. “Were you not to wed Faustine?”

“My whole heart and soul were set on making mine the happiness of having 
her to be my wife.”

“You know nothing of the dreadful affair her family was implicated in?”

“In truth, Madame, of her family I know nothing but what was seemly and 
decent and virtuous; could vice exist whence Faustine came?”

“Bah,” said I, “he prates like a hero out of a novel.”

“I shall always be a loyal friend to virtue.”

“Youthful enthusiasm therefor,” Clairwil advanced, “has proved the undoing of 
a good many persons like yourself. But we are here concerned with other 
matters; the object of this interview is to inform you that Faustine is in this house.
The Minister is disposed to enjoy her; he trusts you are disposed to cede her 
favors; in exchange for which concession she will be pardoned and so will you.”

“I seek no pardon since I have done no wrong,” was the young man’s proud 
reply. “But be it so a thousand lives hang in the balance, I do declare to you that 
I’ll not purchase one of them at the price of an atrocity whose mere mention is an
insult.”

“So be it. Ass, Madame, give me ass,” cried Saint-Fond in a veritable lather, 
“it’s plain indeed we’ll reach no understanding with this stubborn little scapegrace 
unless we use violence.”

At which Clairwil and the two hags leaped upon the young man, and had him 
pinioned and naked in the twinkling of an eye. He was marched up to Saint-Fond, 
who spent a few minutes poring over a man-ass than which there were few fairer 
in the world; and, gentlemen, as connoisseurs you know that in this article of the 
anatomy you may often reveal yourselves our superiors.

“Ah,” said Dormon, gazing about him in distress as he realized what infamies 
lay in store for him, “ah, I’ve been tricked. I am amongst monsters.”

“Your surmise, Sir,” said Clairwil, “is quite correct, and experience will soon 
confirm it.”

And after some preliminary abominations I was requested to bring in Faustine. 
Beauty, shapeliness, sweet candor, all that invites, these she had in rare degree; 
and when she beheld the scene in the room, oh, how the modesty in her made 
her other qualities shine! Espying her lover, whom Clairwil and Saint-Fond were 
caressing industriously, the girl came near to fainting away.

“Be easy, sweet angel,” I said, taking her hand, “be of good cheer, we’re 
fucking, we’re swimming in dirt and nastiness and joy, my dove; like us, 
shamelessly, you’re going to bare your wondrous ass; and you’ll see ’tis not 
unpleasant.”

“But—but what is all this? Oh, merciful heavens, where am I? Who are you?”

“Your host is his Lordship, the Minister, your uncle and friend: your case is in 
his hands. It is a difficult case, yea, a very grave case; however, be patient, be 
considerate; and everything will come out well.”

“And you,” she said in a faltering voice, addressing Dormon, “you have been 
capable—”

“Oh,” he murmured, casting down his eyes, “like you I have had to submit to 
force. But,” he went on, lifting his head, “while this is the day of our dishonor, 
there may soon come another that shall see us revenged.”

“Enough of this frightful comic-opera rubbish, young man,” reprimanded 
Saint-Fond, applying a vigorous thwack to the glib boy’s bare hindquarters, 
“better employ your fiery eloquence to persuade mademoiselle here to lend 
herself to my caprices, and they shan’t be mild. She’s going to be sore tried.”

Whereat tears began to flow from Faustine’s glorious eyes, she uttered groans;
cruel Saint-Fond, prick in hand, approached and stared at her from close on.

“By fuck!” he exclaimed, “does she weep? It pleases me mightily to see women
weep, with me they always do, all of them. Cry away, my pretty little one, cry 
your eyes out—here, let your tears splash on my member. But save some for later
on, you’ll shortly have the most legitimate grounds for shedding them.”

Nay, I shrink from telling how far his outrages went, one would have thought 
nothing so contented him as wounding innocence and insulting beauty in distress.
The faint glow of pleasure we managed to kindle in the girl turned swiftly into 
chagrin; ’twas with his prick Saint-Fond dried a new spate of tears.

Clairwil’s main passion, as I have said, did not consist in vexing women; it was 
men upon whom she preferred to expend her greatest cruelty, whereof Nature 
had given her no small fund. However, though she might now and then refrain 
from inflicting pain, even upon a person of the opposite sex, she always relished 
watching others in action; and, standing near Dormon, whom as a matter of fact 
she was frigging, with wicked curiosity she observed all the outrages poor 
Faustine was being made to endure; more, she suggested further ones.

“Well now,” said Saint-Fond, “we must unite those who were so soon to have 
been bound together in marital bliss. Far be it from me,” he added, “to deny this 
young gentleman one of his pretty mistress’ two maidenheads. Clairwil, dispose 
the male, I’ll prepare the female.”

I confess that I did not believe the enterprise could possibly succeed. Terror, 
grief, alarm, tears—in fine, the two lovers were in a shocking state; did it not 
exclude them from performing the act of love? One would have thought so. But 
now we were witness to a very prodigy, one of those miracles only Nature can 
work: her energy triumphed over all obstacles: and we beheld a rampant Dormon
fucking his mistress. Of the two, only she needed to be held; only in her was pain 
predominant, forbidding her access to pleasure; and this despite all our efforts: 
we tried this, we tried that, we excited her, scolded her, caressed her, it availed 
not, her soul lay beyond rescue, drowned in sorrow; from her we got moans of 
despair and sobs only.

“Still, you know, I like her that way,” said Saint-Fond; “I’ve never cared much 
about seeing pleasure’s lineaments writ over a woman’s countenance. They’re too
equivocal, too unsure; I prefer the signs of pain, which are more dependable by 
far.”

By now blood has begun to flow, the deflowering is completed. Thus posed by 
Clairwil, Dormon was lying on his back, Faustine was astride him, her knees 
drawn up, her head bent low, her forehead resting on his shoulder; so that the 
pretty little girl’s pretty ass was perfectly exposed.

“She is in an admirable position, see to it she doesn’t move out of it,” 
Saint-Fond told one of the crones; “she might as well lose both pucelages at the 
same time, I might as well sodomize her while she is being encunted.”

Not only was the operation a stunning success, but, instead of sighs of ecstasy,
it drew piercing screams from the girl whom never before had such a dart 
penetrated, and who seemed as though firmly set against enjoying the 
experience, generally longed for, that makes a woman of the maid. While fucking, 
the libertine fondled the hags; I busied myself sucking Clairwil’s cunt. The prudent
Saint-Fond, as ever sparing of his fuck, kept the sluices tight closed, and we 
moved on to other voluptuous activities.

“Hear me, young man,” said Saint-Fond. “I am about to require something 
most extraordinary of you, and which I venture to suppose you will consider most 
barbarous. Be that as it may, your mistress is doomed unless you obey 
instructions. I am going to have your beloved secured to this column here, you 
will take this bundle of switches, and with them you will flay her ass.”

“Monster! Can you propose—”

“Then you prefer to see her killed?”

“Why must it be that I have no choice between this infamy and the loss of her 
whom I cherish above all others in the world?”

“A hard alternative surely, and such as the weak have every day to face,” said 
I. “You are helpless, hence you must yield: do as you are bid, do it at once, or a 
dagger goes into your mistress’ heart.”

The great art of Saint-Fond consisted in always placing his victims in such a 
situation that of two evils they had inevitably to elect the one which more nicely 
suited his perfidious libertinage. Trembling, Dormon neither agrees nor refuses; 
his silence speaks. ’Tis I who bind Faustine to the column, great is my pleasure in 
pulling the rough cords painfully over her fair skin; I love thus to bare the throat 
of innocence to the edge of crime’s blade; the malicious Clairwil kisses her as I 
get her into readiness. What charms were here to expose, what perfections to 
spoil! Ah, when heaven comes not to the defense of the righteous and the good, it
is in order to make us mortals comprehend that unto virtue only contempt is due.

“This is the proper way to take with you,” said the Minister, striking sweeping 
blows upon the plump white buttocks that fairly beckoned to him. “Yes, it is thus 
we must proceed,” he continued, rattling off another ten; and the purple marks 
they left were already standing out in marvelous contrast to that silky smooth 
skin. “Try your hand.”

“Oh, Sir, for the love of God, I could never….”

“Nonsense, my boy, of course you can.” Threats follow sardonic cajolery; 
Clairwil loses her temper, swears that if he doesn’t do as he’s been told, which, 
says she, amounts to very little, he will get a thrashing himself and see the girl 
murdered into the bargain; whereupon Dormon sets to work. But how reluctantly!
And how timidly. Saint-Fond is obliged to guide his arm. At length my lover’s 
patience runs out, he picks up a knife and raises it to Faustine’s heaving breast; 
Dormon lays on somewhat more energetically … then collapses in a swoon.

“Ah, fuck my soul,” grumbles Saint-Fond, his prick as stiff as a monk’s, “we’ll 
get nowhere so long as we rely upon a lover: this undertaking calls for villainy.”

And having furiously at the beauteous behind presented to him, in less than 
ten minutes he has it in a bloody shambles. In the meantime another horror’s 
being enacted nearby: instead of succoring him, Clairwil is venting her savagery 
upon the unconscious Dormon.

“The lout, the cad,” says she, as he comes back to his senses to find himself 
bound hand and foot and receiving a drubbing quite as merciless as the one 
Faustine is getting from the Minister.

It was not long before the ill-starred lovers were both in the most deplorable 
state imaginable. Not yet in a position to judge Clairwil, her cruelty, I must 
confess, startled me; but when I saw her turn to execrations of a very different 
kind, when I saw her daubing her cheeks with the victim’s blood, tasting it, 
drinking it, when I saw her bite into his flesh and tear it away with her teeth; 
when I saw her rub her clitoris on the bleeding wounds she opened in the wretch, 
when I heard her cry, “Juliette, come do as I am doing”; then, urged to it by this 
wild beast, carried away by her hideous example—ah, my friends, must I own 
that I imitated her? Nay, the truth may well be that I surpassed her; I may even 
have led the way, stimulated her imagination by means of atrocities which would 
not have occurred to her otherwise; perhaps, who knows? For I waxed furious 
too, my every nerve was afire, my very perverse soul revealed itself in its 
entirety; and I discovered that devouring the flesh of a man could have as 
powerful an effect upon my senses as lashing a woman to ribbons.

Saint-Fond deemed best to defer major operations until after the other couple 
had been dealt with. The first two were tied up and stowed in a corner; in came 
the second. Delnos and Felicity were subjected to the same treatment, except 
that the procedure was reversed: that is, instead of appealing to the lover to 
share his mistress, we appealed to the mistress for the use of her lover; 
arguments were again backed by threats of the worst sort and as before we met 
with considerable resistance. Felicity was an exceedingly pretty thing of twenty, 
not quite so fair as her sister but just as agreeably made, and her eyes were 
remarkably expressive; she gave evidence of more character, more energy than 
her sister, but Delnos of far less than Dormon. Howbeit, directly after 
embuggering this second girl, our cannibal, despite himself, lost his seed in 
Delnos’ handsome ass while he was clawing Felicity’s charming breasts. Now 
quietly seated between Clairwil, busily socratizing him, and me who was frigging 
him, and gazing ahead at the two couples, bound hand and foot, he consulted us 
over what the final fate of the victims ought to be.

“I was appointed to be the scourge of this family,” he said to us, fingering 
himself while he spoke; “three of its members lost their heads in this house, two 
others I had slain in theirs, I am responsible for another’s poisoning in the 
Bastille, and the chances that these four people will escape me look very slim 
indeed. You have no idea how I enjoy these little exercises in arithmetic. Tiberius,
it is said, used to do his sums every evening; what would crime be without its 
sweet memories? Oh, Clairwil, whither are our passions leading us? Say, my 
angel, is thy mind clear enough, hast thou perchance discharged enough to give 
me thy sagely framed opinion in this matter?”

“No, by fuck,” replied she, “no, it’s not talking I’m eager to do, what I want is 
to act. Vitriol, blazing acid, some hellish thing is flowing in my veins, my brain is 
sick—oh, give me horrors! I must have horrors—”

“Then let us commit them in abundance, for that sorts nicely with my mood 
also,” said Saint-Fond; “these two couples arouse me: it passeth all belief, the evil
I would do unto them. But as to the form it should take, there I am in some 
uncertainty.”

The doomed four were able to hear our conversation; were able to see we 
were plotting against them … and yet they clung to life.

The awful wheel of Delcour’s contriving stood within view. Saint-Fond’s 
brooding gaze lit upon it, and the thought of putting it to a little use soon lofted 
his prick skyward. Thereupon, after loudly and unequivocally explaining the 
properties of the infernal machine, the scoundrel declared that the two women 
should draw lots, would that not be the fairest way to determine which of the two 
was to die in this manner? Clairwil opposed the suggestion; she took the line that,
since Saint-Fond had already employed the wheel upon a girl, he ought now to 
procure himself the pleasure of seeing a boy subjected to it; nor did she notice 
any advantage in allowing chance to decide between Delnos and Dormon, for as 
much as the latter struck her as by far the more eligible, he stimulated her 
imagination prodigiously. But Saint-Fond would brook no partiality; he pointed out
that the honor of being the first to die, and by such a torture, was preference 
enough. Lots are prepared; the young men draw; Dormon is the winner.

“It’s quite as though I had heaven by the throat, for it’s been a long time now 
since a single one of my wishes went unfulfilled,” said Clairwil. “The sole function 
of that execrable chimera you call the Supreme Being seems to be to facilitate my
every crime.”

“Embrace your intended,” said my lover as he untied some of Dormon’s bonds,
leaving intact those which secured his hands; “kiss her, my lad, and then show 
your mettle: she’ll have her eyes upon you throughout your ordeal. And if you 
care to glance at me during it, you’ll see me fucking her ass, that I promise you.”

Then, as was his custom, he led the powerless young man off, they were 
encloseted for an hour together; we could only suppose that the libertine took this
opportunity to impart some deep secret to his victim, to whom, as it were, he 
entrusted the mission of carrying it with him into the next world.

“What can be going on in there?” Clairwil demanded, annoyed at having to wait
and glancing impatiently at the door to the chamber.

“I have no idea,” said I, “but such is my eagerness to find out, I would be 
almost willing to sacrifice our relationship….”

Dormon emerged: his flesh showed signs of some cruel mauling, especially 
about his buttocks and thighs, which were cut and bruised; upon his uplifted brow
rage and fear and pain were at war; blood dripped from his penis and his 
scrotum, and his cheeks, scarlet, revealed traces of several slaps. After him came 
Saint-Fond, conspicuously erected; the most atrocious savagery glinted in his 
every feature, in his twisted lips, his dilating nostrils, his wickedly narrowed eyes; 
clutching one of his victim’s buttocks, he steered him toward us.

“Come along, come along,” said Clairwil, visibly pleased at seeing Dormon in 
such beggarly condition, “come along, my little clown, let’s waste no more time.” 
Turning to Saint-Fond, “We are short on men,” the diabolical creature observed; “I
am going to need no end of fucking while I watch this rogue perish.”

“His mistress could pollute you,” the Minister suggested, “and I shall of course 
be embuggering you the whole time….”

“And his blood?”

“Oh, we’re sure to be splashed a bit.”

Clairwil seized Dormon by both ears. “Kiss me, little fool, while there’s still 
something left of your pretty face.”

And Dormon showing no great alacrity to comply, the hussy wiped her asshole 
upon his nose; then he was granted permission to kiss his mistress goodbye. She 
burst into tears. Clairwil frigged the wight, the lass’ clitoris was tickled by 
Saint-Fond; the matrons finally catch hold of him and fasten him on the dread 
wheel. Faustine, sprawled atop Clairwil, is obliged to frig her; and at the same 
time Clairwil excites me. Saint-Fond sheathes his weapon in Faustine’s bowels, 
and we are all four shortly bathing in blood. The spectacle is hideous, and it has 
not yet reached its term when the girl proves unable to endure any more; smitten
senseless by anguish, she wilts.

“What’s this, what’s this!” cries Saint-Fond, “would the bitch expire? I have no 
objection to her death provided I am its cause.”

So saying, the villain looses his sperm into a mass whence life has fled already.
Clairwil, whose wicked hands are kneading Delnos’ balls while I am stabbing that 
young man’s buttocks with a long hatpin, is at last overwhelmed by the sight of 
Dormon on the wheel, and, uttering maniac, hardly human screams, discharges 
thrice.

Now only Felicity and her young beau are left.

“Ah, by fuck,” mutters Saint-Fond, “that other bitch was a great 
disappointment, but this one is going to be tortured properly; and since it was the
mistress watching the lover die a moment ago, we’ll have the lover watch the 
mistress now.”

He leads her away for private conference, half an hour later he brings her 
back; and she is in a shocking state. She is condemned to impalement; 
Saint-Fond himself inserts the sharpened end of the stake into her ass and after 
much thrusting and twisting the point emerges from the mouth; the other end of 
the stake is planted in a socket set in the floor, and Felicity remains on exhibit for 
the rest of the day.

“My friends,” says Clairwil, “you will be good enough to allow me to choose the
torture for our last victim. I haven’t changed my mind since first clapping eyes on 
him: the bugger resembles Jesus Christ, and I would treat him in the same way.”

At this we all laughed merrily; arrangements were completed during the 
interview, no detail was neglected. One of the hags gets down on all fours, we 
prop the text on her rump, the story of the passion of Mary’s bastard is located; I 
read out the chapter and verse aloud. The young man is already in bedraggled 
condition when he returns; Clairwil, Saint-Fond, and the unoccupied hag take 
charge of him; he is affixed to the cross, and upon it he suffers precisely what 
that impudent little bore out of Galilee endured at the hands of those wise 
Romans of old: his side is gashed, he is crowned with thorns, he is given a 
vinegar-soaked sponge to suck. At length, remarking that Delnos is in no hurry to
die, we institute improvements upon the classical ordeal: the patient is lifted off 
the cross, turned over, nailed on again, and every kind of horror is perpetrated 
upon his behind; we prick his buttocks, we sear them, and tear them into shreds; 
by the time he finally expires, Delnos has gone mad. Clairwil and Saint-Fond, 
whom I have been frigging one on either hand, discharge copiously; and 
therewith ended infamies at which we had been twelve hours occupied. They were
succeeded by the pleasures of the table.

Clairwil was deeply curious to learn Saint-Fond’s secret; she plied him with 
wine, she caressed and praised him till he was quite giddy; then she put the 
question: “What is it you do with your victims just prior to killing them?”

“I announce their death to them.”

“That’s not all you do. There’s more, we’re convinced of it.”

“No, that’s all.”

“There’s more. We know there is.”

“Perhaps. But it’s merely one of my failings. Why force me to reveal it?”

“Ought you to keep secrets from us?” I asked my lover.

“In truth, it’s no secret,” said he.

“You hide it from us, however. Pray tell us what it is.”

“What purpose would that serve?”

“It would satisfy our curiosity, and we are the two best friends you have in the 
world.”

“You are cruel women,” said he, and he sighed. “Don’t you realize that I cannot
make this confession without acknowledging a dreadful weakness in me, a 
veritably unavowable paltriness?”

“You can afford to divulge it to us.”

We redoubled our pleas and flatteries, our caresses and seductions conquered, 
the Minister waved us to our chairs and addressed us in this wise:

“Fierce and long has been my struggle against the shameful yoke of religion, 
my friends; and I must confess to you today that I am yet its captive insofar as I 
still have hopes of a life after this. If it is true, I say to myself, that there are 
punishments and rewards in the next world, the victims of my wickedness will 
triumph, they will know bliss. This idea hurls me into deepest despond, owing to 
my extreme barbarity this idea is a very torture to me. Whenever I immolate an 
object, whether to my ambition or to my lubricity, my desire is to make its 
sufferings last beyond the unending immensity of ages; such has been my desire,
and had been for a long time when I broached it to a famous libertine whom I 
was greatly attached to in days bygone, and whose tastes were the same as 
mine. He was a man of vast knowledge, his attainments in alchemy and astrology 
were especially noteworthy; he assured me that I was very correct indeed in my 
suspicion that there are punishments and rewards to come; and that, in order to 
bar the victim from celestial joys, it is necessary to have him sign a pact, writ in 
his heart’s blood, whereby he contracts his soul to the devil; next to insert this 
paper in his asshole and to tamp it home with one’s prick; and while doing so to 
cause him to suffer the greatest pain in one’s power to inflict. Observe these 
measures, my friend assured me, and no individual you destroy will enter into 
heaven. His agonies, in kind identical to those you make him endure while burying
the pact, shall be everlasting; and yours will be the unspeakable delight of 
prolonging them beyond the limits of eternity, if eternity there be.”

“And so that is what you do to your victims?”

“Softly, Clairwil, berate me not. You wanted nothing so much as to learn the 
truth. It is a weakness you wheedled me into disclosing. I am not proud of it.”

“No, nor should you be. Why, Saint-Fond, I am amazed! I thought you were a 
philosopher. You have a mind, do you not? Then how can you for a single instant 
accept the absurd claptrap about the immortality of the soul? For, is it not so, this 
disgusting religious fantasy must first be accepted before you begin to believe in 
the rewards and punishments of an afterlife?

“As for your intention, I applaud it, it is delicious,” Clairwil continued, “it 
accords with my own attitudes: to want to prolong forever the sufferings of the 
person you send to his doom—that is a desire which does you credit. But to base 
It all upon nonsense, upon extravagances—no, Saint-Fond, that will not do, that is
quite unpardonable.”

“Clairwil, do you not understand that my divine hope must fade away unless 
founded upon such an opinion as I entertain?”

“I do very well understand, my good man, that if you have to edify your divine 
hopes upon fables, it would be better to give them up; for the day may come 
when the harm belief in fables has done you will prove to outweigh the pleasures 
you have received therefrom. Come, come, Saint-Fond: be content with the evil 
you can work in this world and abandon your foolish schemes for perpetuating it 
forever.”

“Saint-Fond, there is no afterlife,” said I at this point, recollecting the 
philosophical tenets which had been very early inculcated in me; “the sole 
authority vouching for that illusion is the imagination of those men who, dreaming
it up and clinging to it, merely expressed their desire to find later on a more 
durable and purer happiness than what is our portion on earth. Ah, is it not a 
pitiful absurdity, first of all to invent for oneself a God, then to believe that this 
God holds torments without end in store for the majority of humankind! Thus it is,
after rendering mortals miserable in this world, religion shows them a weird deity,
the fruit of their credulousness or their knavish cunning, a deity, I say, who’s very
apt to render them more miserable still in the world to come. I know how they 
quibble: this God’s justice is horrible, but this God is merciful also; but a 
mercifulness which leaves room for appalling cruelty is far from infinite; neither is 
it reliable; after having been infinitely good, he becomes infinitely wicked; and is 
this what you call an immutable God? A God overflowing vindictiveness and fury, 
is this the sort of entity to whom you ascribe one jot of clemency or kindliness? To
judge from the notions expounded by theologians, one must conclude that God 
created most men simply with a view to crowding hell. Would it not have been 
more conforming to honesty, to goodness, to common sense and decency, to have
created stones and plants and gone no farther, instead of creating men whose 
behavior would bring unending calamity down on their heads? A God so 
perfidious, so evil as to create a single man and then to leave him exposed to the 
peril of damning himself, such a God can be regarded as no specimen of 
excellence; if perfection be his, then it is a monster of unreason, injustice, malice,
and foul atrocity. Nay, very far from composing a perfect God, theology’s adepts 
formed the most loathsome chimera; and when to this abominable God they 
ascribed the invention of eternal penalties, they but added the final touch to an 
artifact that was hateful from the start. The cruelty that makes for our pleasure 
has at least its purposes and hence its justification; this latter is accessible to the 
reason, we understand it; but what motive has God for torturing the victims of his
wrath? Has he rivals? Is he threatened? No, those he packs off to hellfire were 
able neither to contest his power nor trouble his felicity. Let me add that the 
tortures of the life after this would be of no use to the living who cannot witness 
them; they would be of no use to the damned, since there are no new leaves 
turned over in hell; whence it follows that in the exercise of his eternal 
vengeance, God’s sole aim is to enjoy himself, and having exploited his creatures’ 
frailties, to make the most of their helplessness; and your infamous God, acting 
more cruelly than any mortal, and without any motive a man might have, in so 
doing shows himself infinitely a traitor, infinitely a cheat, and infinitely a villain.”

“I think we may go farther,” said Clairwil. “If that is agreeable to you, I shall 
attempt a more detailed analysis of this pernicious and gloomy hell dogma; I am 
confident that by the time I am done, our friend shall have abandoned every bit 
of his faith in this pathetic, onerous superstition. Will you lend me your ears?”

“Certainly,” said we.

And then it was as follows that the subtle and erudite Clairwil addressed herself
to this solemn question.

“There are certain dogmas which one is sometimes obliged not to accept but to
posit hypothetically for the purpose of combating others. My aim you know, and 
you will allow that it is worthy: to obliterate the idiotic dogma of hell out of your 
apprehension; I trust you will not take it amiss if, with this end in view, and for 
the time being, I reinstate the deistic chimera. Bound to employ it as point of 
departure in this important dissertation, I am forced temporarily to ascribe 
substance to the myth; this is regrettable but I am sure you will excuse it, and 
excuse it all the more readily knowing, as you do, that as regards belief in this 
abominable phantom, I am above suspicion.

“In itself, the dogma of hell is, I own, so devoid of probability, all the 
arguments customarily advanced in its support are so weak, so transparent, in 
such manifest contradiction with reason, that one almost blushes at having to 
counter them. Never mind; let us ruthlessly deprive the Christians even of the 
hope of fettering us anew at the feet of their atrocious confession, and let us very
plainly show them that the dogma they count upon most heavily to affright us 
vanishes, like all their other ghosts and goblins, at the mere approach of 
philosophy’s rational light.

“The primary arguments in the case they make out for their baneful fairy tale 
are these:

“1) That sin being infinite by virtue of the fact sin is offensive to God, the 
sinner merits infinite punishment; that the Almighty having decreed the laws, it 
behooves his mightiness to punish those who transgress them.

“2) The universality of this doctrine, and the manner in which we find it 
enunciated in Scriptures.

“3) The high need for such a dogma, lacking which there would be no 
restraining sinners and the incredulous.

“The whole edifice sits on those foundations; now let us demolish them.

“Taking them in the above order, we begin with the first: it, I have no doubt 
but that you will concur, is exploded by the glaring disproportion between the 
human provocation and the divine reprisal. We observe that according to this 
doctrine the pettiest fault is to be punished as severely as the gravest; now, 
presuming our God just, for so he is accounted, how can we admit such iniquity? 
Who created man, anyhow? Who gave him the passions and the penchants which 
the torments of hell are to punish him for having? Who else but your God? And 
thus, half-witted Christians, you are disposed to imagine this preposterous God 
endowing man with impulses one minute and being compelled the next to chasten
man for having acted upon them? But was it that God did not know what he was 
doing? Is it a blind incompetent fool you worship? Did he not know that man, 
endowed by him with the power to misbehave, would outrage him inevitably? If 
God knew, then why did he not otherwise endow man? And if he did not know, 
then why does he punish defective man when he, the Maker, is alone to blame?

“I think it is only too obvious that under the conditions alleged to be necessary 
to salvation, we are far more likely to be damned than saved. So tell me then, is 
this your God’s so loudly vaunted justice, to have placed his puny, miserable 
masterpiece in such an abominable position? and this being the system, how dare
your doctors assert that eternal happiness and eternal unhappiness are presented
to man to choose between, and that his destiny depends on his option alone? If it 
comes out that the fate of the greater share of mankind is to be eternally 
unhappy, an all-knowing God must have known this from the outset; why then did
the monster create us? Was he forced to? Then he is not free. Did he knowingly, 
deliberately, cause things so to be? Then he is a fiend. No, God was under no 
obligation to create man, certainly not, and if he did so simply to expose man to 
such a fate, the propagation of our species therewith becomes the foulest of all 
crimes, and nothing would be more desirable than the total extinction of 
humankind.

“If however you esteem this dogma necessary to the greatness of God, I must 
ask you why this God, so great and so good, failed to give man the capacities he 
would need in order to avoid the torture awaiting perhaps nine out of ten human 
beings. Is it not, to say the least, cruel on God’s part to allow man opportunities 
and an appetite for dooming himself eternally? And however are you to exonerate
your God from a charge either of ignorance or of wickedness, the one as criminal 
as the other?

“If all men are equal in the eyes of the Divinity who made them, why are they 
not all in agreement as to the particular crimes which are to cost man this 
everlasting suffering? Why does the Hottentot damn you for something which if 
you are a Chinaman sees you into paradise, and how is it, pray tell, that the latter
will promise you a place in heaven for what lands the Christian in hell? Endless 
would be the task of listing the various opinions of pagans, Jews, Mohammedans, 
Christians, concerning the means to employ to escape eternal woe and to attain 
felicity; endless the task, and yet more cheerless, of describing the puerile and 
ridiculous formulas and devices invented to these ends.

“But we shall proceed to examine the second of the foundations they have 
endeavored to construct for this grotesque doctrine: its peculiar enunciation as 
shown in the Writ, and its universal character.

“We ought to preface our remarks with a reminder to ourselves: let us beware 
of taking the universality of any belief for a title in its favor. There is not one 
idiocy, not one form of madness, that has not enjoyed a general currency and 
mode; not one that has wanted for adherents any more than for exponents; so 
long as there are men on earth there will be fools, and so long as there are fools 
there will be gods, cults, a heaven, a hell, etc. But Scripture contains it all in black
and white, you tell me. We shall for a moment suppose that the texts so called 
have some authenticity, and that they truly merit some respect. (I think I have 
already pointed out that to attain a position from which one can blast certain 
absurdities one may have to play lip service to certain others.)

“Very well. My reply, to begin with, is that there are strong grounds for 
doubting whether Scripture mentions this doctrine at all. Supposing nevertheless 
that it does, what Scripture says can be addressed to none but those who are 
familiar with these writings and acknowledge them as infallible; those who have 
no acquaintance of them, or who refuse to believe them, cannot be convinced by 
their authority; however, is it not maintained that they who have no acquaintance 
of this Scripture, or they who do not believe it, are subject to eternal punishment,
just as are those others who are acquainted with Scripture or who believe it? 
What say you, is not this dreadful injustice?

“Perhaps you’ll say that some races or nations to whom your nonsensical 
sacred literature was completely unknown had no lack of belief in a future life 
made up of eternal suffering. This may be true of some peoples; many others, 
however, had no knowledge of these dogmas. But precisely how were such 
opinions able to make their way into the heads of a people unacquainted with the 
Bible? I trust nobody will tell me that we are here dealing with innate ideas; for in
that case we would find these opinions in all men everywhere. Nor do I fancy 
anybody will maintain that they naturally stem from the human reason; for surely
his reason is not apt to advise man that he will suffer infinite punishment for finite
wrongs; nor is revelation the answer, since the people in our example know 
nothing of that. To what then must we ascribe the existence of this dogma among
this particular people? Either to the people’s fancy or to the plotting of its priests; 
these being the sources of the superstition, how can you allow it any substance?

“Were you to conjecture that, there where we find no Scripture, belief in 
eternal punishment has been handed down by tradition, I should have to ask 
where they got it from, who spread the word originally;

and if you are unable to prove that they received it through divine revelation, 
you shall have to agree with me that this tremendous opinion must have arisen 
out of some disease of the imagination or some piece of roguery.

“Supposing now that Scripture, allegedly holy, informs men of punishments in 
a future life, and supposing that this announcement is in no sense a false alarm, 
might one not wonder how the authors of Scripture could know that such 
punishments did in actual fact exist? The unfailing reply is, of course, that they 
were inspired; splendid. But those who have not been favored by this special 
illumination have therefore had to take the word of others for it; pray tell me, if 
you please, what confidence should one have in persons who concerning a fact of 
such importance declare to you, ‘I believe it is true because so-and-so told me he 
dreamt it.’ And lo! there it stands before you: that’s what haunts and preoccupies,
and what frightens and debilitates half the human race; that’s what prevents one 
man out of two from hearkening to Nature’s sweetest promptings! Is it possible to
be more mistaken, to tumble more needlessly into error? But your inspired ones 
did not get in touch with everybody; the vast majority of mankind knows nothing 
about their reveries. It is, is it not, to the vital interest not only of the men who 
wrote the Bible and their adherents but of all men to be apprised of this dogma? 
Then why is it that some, nay, many, whole multitudes, have been left in the 
dark? This matter of eternal punishments being the concern of all, thorough and 
definitive information thereupon would have been of advantage to all; why then 
did God not impart this sublime knowledge directly and immediately to everyone, 
without the help and participation of individuals who may be suspected of fraud or
insanity? To have positively done the very contrary, is this, I ask you, the behavior
of a being whom you would have me believe infinitely wise and good? Does not 
such conduct rather show all the attributes of stupidity and wickedness? 
Whenever laws are made in a State, does not every government bring them to 
the attention of the public and employ every possible means to make generally 
known what penalties will be incurred by violation of them? Provided you are 
rational, how can you punish a man for breaking a law he has never even heard 
of? And what now, in the face of all these truths, must our conclusion be? This: 
that the institution of a hell has never been anything but the result of the 
malicious lucubrations of some men, and the unqualifiable folly of a great many 
others.(12)

“The third of these arguments proposed in favor of this frightful dogma is its 
indispensability: without it, there would be no holding sinners and unbelievers in 
check.

“If you would have me grant you that because of his justice and glory God 
were required to punish sinners and unbelievers with eternal tortures, I ask you 
to grant me in return that reason and justice would also require that it be within 
the power of others not to be unbelievers; now what person can possibly be 
absurd enough to suppose that man is free? Who can be blind to the point of not 
seeing that our will, having nothing to do with any of our actions, all our actions 
being determined for us, we are responsible for none of them; and that God who 
manipulates us puppets would be (if we suppose that he exists, which, as you 
doubtless notice, I do with loathing), this God, I say, would be beyond words 
unjust and barbaric if he punished us for helplessly and despite ourselves 
becoming caught in the snares he first lays and then takes pleasure driving us 
into.

“And so is it not clear that it is the temperament Nature gives to humans, the 
various circumstances in the life of each individual, his education, the society he 
lives amidst, which determine his behavior and steer him in the direction of good 
or evil? But (you may perhaps object) if this be the case, the punishments which 
men are made to undergo in this world for their misdeeds are likewise unjust. 
They most certainly are. But here the general welfare prevails, individual welfare 
must cede thereto; it is the duty of every society to eliminate from its midst such 
elements whose conduct may be prejudicial to the community; and this justifies a
quantity of laws which, when viewed alone from the standpoint of the individual’s 
self-interest, might appear monstrously unjust. But does your God have any 
comparable reasons for punishing the evildoer? Obviously not; God Almighty 
suffers not one whit from the evildoer’s rampages, and if the wicked man is 
wicked at all, it is because omnipotent God was pleased to create him thus. Hence
it is atrocious to inflict tortures upon him for having become on earth the evildoer 
this execrable God knew full well he would become and indeed intended him to 
become.

“Let us now demonstrate that the circumstances which decide which religious 
belief a man will have are utterly outside his control.

“I ask, to begin with, whether we are allowed to exercise any choice as to the 
clime we are born in; and whether, once born into this or that church, it is our 
fault if we happen to lack the capacity for faith. Is there a single religion which 
can withstand the fire of the passions? And are not passions, which come to us 
from God, preferable to religions which come to us from man? What then is one 
to think of this barbaric God who would punish us eternally for our metaphysical 
doubtings—we who cannot believe, owing to the belief-destroying passions God 
put in us? It is a sordid joke. From start to finish it is all unutterable nonsense. 
And how one resents wasting one’s time refuting such transparent absurdities! 
However, since we have taken it upon ourselves, let us make a thorough job of it 
and, if possible, leave the lunatic partisans of this most ridiculous dogma not one 
leg to stand on.

“Therefore we continue.

“Even were it left to every man to decide for himself whether he will or will not 
be virtuous and believe in all the articles of his specific religion; even were this so,
we would still have to inquire if it were equitable that men be punished eternally, 
whether because of this weakness or their incredulity, when it is only too 
apparent that no good can result from their gratuitous sufferings.

“To settle this question we must put our prejudices aside and reflect above all 
upon the justness we acknowledge in God. Is it not the height of illogicality to 
contend that this God’s justice demands the eternal punishing of sinners and 
unbelievers? Does not the act of imposing a punishment out of all proportion to 
the fault speak far more in behalf of vindictiveness and cruelty than of justice? To 
maintain that God punishes in such a manner is obviously nothing short of 
blasphemy. What! this God you depict as so good, will you have him express his 
goodness in bullying and brutalizing his defenseless children? Most assuredly, they
who declare that God’s glory requires that he behave like a savage are not fully 
aware of the enormity of this doctrine. They talk about the glory of God very idly, 
they know not whereof they speak. Were they able to judge a little of its nature, 
were they able to arrive at some rational conception of it, they would sense that if
this being does indeed exist, he would have to found his glory not upon his 
capacities for violence, but upon his generosity and kindness, upon his wisdom 
and his boundless power to communicate happiness to mankind.

“It is added in passing, with a view to confirming the odious doctrine of 
punishments everlasting, that it has been espoused by a great many intelligent 
men and learned theologians. I deny the fact; most intelligent men and learned 
theologians have doubted this dogma. And if the rest have appeared to credit it, 
we can readily guess why: the priests, who already held the people in bondage, 
were delighted to clap this iron collar of a hell dogma around their necks; we are 
familiar with the sway terror can exert over simple souls, and everyone knows 
that the politician who wishes to subjugate others cannot do so without employing
it.

“But those purportedly holy books you cite to me, do they come from a source 
so pure that it is beyond our power to reject what they offer us? The speediest 
perusal of these texts suffices to convince us that far indeed from being, as we 
are brazenly told, the work of an illusory God who never wrote a word nor uttered
one either, they are to the contrary merely the scribblings of weak-minded and 
ignorant men; and they deserve our mistrust, nay, our scorn. But even were we 
to suppose, in defiance of all the evidence, that these writers were not completely
devoid of common sense; bah, what sort of a fool would he be, pray tell me, who 
was able to wax ecstatic over this or that opinion simply because he’d come upon 
it in some book or other? One may adopt an opinion, that is permissible; but to 
sacrifice one’s life’s happiness and peace of mind to it—this, I repeat, only a 
madman is capable of doing.(13) Furthermore, do you tell me that the Bible’s 
contents bear out the hell opinion, and I in my turn will quote you passages from 
the same book disproving it. I open Ecclesiastes; here is what I see:

‘I said in mine heart concerning the estate of the sons of men, that God might 
manifest them, and that they might see that they themselves are beasts.

‘For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; even one thing 
befalleth them: as the one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they have all one 
breath; so that a man hath no pre-eminence above a beast: for all is vanity.

‘All go unto one place; all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again.’(14)

“What could be less favorable to the theory of an afterlife than these lines? 
What could be of greater encouragement to the view that denies the immortality 
of the soul and contests the whole ridiculous dogma of a hell?

“And so what are the thoughts of the sane individual as he peers critically at 
this absurd fable of man’s eternal damnation for having eaten of forbidden fruit in
paradise? However inconsequential this little tale, however repulsive one finds it, 
permit me to dwell upon it for a moment, since it is the point of departure for an 
argument that conducts one to a hell of eternal sufferings. Is not an impartial 
examination of this absurdity quite enough to convince one of its inexistence? Oh,
my friends, answer: would someone full of loving kindness plant in his garden a 
tree which produces delicious but poisonous fruit, and would he be content to 
warn his children not to touch it, telling them they will die if they eat thereof? 
Were he aware of such a tree growing in his garden, would not this thoughtful and
wise father proceed without delay to chop it down, and all the more surely take 
this precaution in the knowledge that from eating its dread fruit his children must 
perish and precipitate all ensuing generations into irreparable misery? But the tale
reads otherwise: God knows that man shall doom himself and his posterity if he 
bites into the apple: not only does God endow man with the capacity to yield to 
temptation, his wickedness does not stop short of arranging man’s seduction. Man
succumbs, he is lost; he does what God has enabled him to do, what God has 
invited and pushed him into doing, and behold him now, fallen, cursed forever. I 
call this cruelty and viciousness without parallel. No, I repeat, I would have 
spared you the recital of this dismal anecdote, I would have disdained to include it
in my disquisition were it not for the fact that the hell dogma, whereof I wish to 
leave not one vestige intact, is one of its more sinister consequences.

“We may consider all this as so much allegory, fit to provide us a moment or 
two of diversion but not fit for our belief, and of which mention ought to be 
forbidden save as one speaks of Aesop’s fables and Milton’s gross fantasies; for 
the latter are of slight importance, whereas Biblical incantation, seeking to 
engross our faith, to spoil our pleasures, becomes something of the most evident 
danger and ought to be suppressed ruthlessly until we need bother with it no 
more.

“So let us be well persuaded that such facts as those which are entered in the 
tedious romance known under the title of the Holy Writ are mere abominable 
falsehoods, worthy of utter contempt only and without the faintest consequence 
as regards our weal or woe. Let us be further persuaded that the dogma of the 
immortality of the soul that had first to be propounded before this soul could be 
rewarded with eternal bliss or damned to eternal torments is the most blatant, 
the most arrant, the crudest and the clumsiest of all possible lies; let us realize 
that when we die, all of us dies, as it is with other animals, and that whatever the
conduct we have observed in the world, we shan’t be any the more or less happy 
for it after we have sojourned there for the longer or shorter period Nature is 
pleased to allot us.

“It has been asserted that belief in eternal punishments is absolutely necessary
if human beings are to be kept in check, and that we must therefore take utmost 
care to preserve and promote it. But if it becomes evident that this doctrine is 
false, if it fails completely to withstand scrutiny, will you not agree that there is 
infinitely more danger than usefulness in employing it as the buttress for your 
ethics? and may we not wager that it will prove of more harm than good once it 
has been set before the individual and he, correctly appraising it, dismisses it for 
the fiction it is and flings himself carefree into evil-doing? is it not a thousand 
times better not to impose any restraints upon him at all than that there be a one
which he can ignore and flout so easily? In the former case, the idea for doing evil
may perhaps not occur to him; but it certainly will when it occurs to him to break 
the restraint, for in the breaking thereof a further pleasure exists; and such is the
perversity in man that he never so cherishes an evil, never so eagerly, so gladly 
performs it, as when he fancies himself somehow hindered from doing it.

“They who have pondered upon the nature of man will be forced to agree that 
all perils, all ills, however great they may be, dwindle with distance and appear 
less dreadful than minor dangers when these are close at hand. It is obvious that 
the threat of immediate punishment is much more effective, much more apt to 
deter the would-be criminal than that of punishments to come. As for misdeeds 
that lie outside the scope of the law, are not men far more effectively deterred 
from them by considerations of health, decency, reputation, and other such 
mundane considerations as are apparent at the moment than by the dread of 
future and unending woes which seldom enter the mind, or which, when they do, 
are always vaguely shaped, dimly perceived, and reckoned easy to avoid?

“In order to judge whether the fear of eternal and rigorous punishments in the 
next world is more likely to deter men from evil than is that of temporal and 
imminent punishments in this world, let us for a moment suppose that, the first of
these fears subsisting universally, the second were entirely removed; would we 
not perceive the world suddenly flooded with crimes? Now let us imagine the 
opposite, let us suppose the fear of eternal punishments abruptly done away with,
and the fear of immediate, palpable punishments remaining in full force: while we
saw these punishments being meted out unfailingly everywhere, would we not 
also notice that they were making, a much deeper impression upon the minds of 
men and were having a much greater influence upon their behavior than the 
remote punishments of the future which one forgets all about as soon as the 
passions start asserting themselves?

“Daily experience furnishes us, does it not, plentiful and convincing proof of the
slight effect the fear of punishments in the next world has upon those very 
persons who believe most staunchly in them. The dogma of eternal sufferings has
had particular success with the Spanish, the Portuguese, and the Italians; are 
there any more dissolute peoples? Where does one find more secret crimes 
committed than among priests and monks, that is, among those who you would 
think were thoroughly penetrated with religious truths? Indubitable evidence, this,
that the good effects produced by the eternal-punishments dogma are very rare 
and very uncertain. We are about to see that its ill effects are innumerable and 
definite. Such a doctrine, inevitably filling the soul with bitterness, cannot help but
fill the mind with images showing the Divinity in the worst light; it hardens the 
heart and hurls it into a despair most disadvantageous to the Divinity, belief in 
whom you mean to bolster by means of this doctrine. Quite the contrary, this 
frightful dogma fosters atheism, impiety, every right-thinking and decent person 
finding it a great deal simpler and more convenient not to believe in God at all, 
rather than acknowledge one so cruel, so inconsistent, so barbaric, as to have 
created men solely in order to sink them in perpetual misfortune, grief, and 
anguish.

“If you insist upon having God as the basis for your religion, at least endeavor 
to compose a flawless God; for if he is riddled with defects, as yours is, the 
religion based upon him will soon come into disrepute, and you’ll discover you’ve 
spoiled each ingredient by unskillful blending of the two.

“Do you really suppose it is possible that a religion can be believed for long, 
respected for long, when it is founded upon belief in a God who, according to the 
rules of the game, must punish a huge—an infinite—number of his creatures for 
behavior to which that God put them up? Any man who accredits such an 
arrangement must necessarily live in constant fear of the being who has the 
power to make him eternally wretched; with that understood, how can he ever 
love or respect such a being? Were a son to imagine his father capable of 
condemning him to such cruel tortures or of not wishing to spare him these 
sufferings if the matter lay in his hands, would that son feel much respect or love 
for that father? Are not the creatures God has made entitled to expect still more 
by way of kindness from him than may children from even the most indulgent 
father? is it not men’s belief, that all the good things of this world are theirs 
through the goodness of their God; that this God is their guide and protector; that
’tis he who will later procure them the happiness whereof they are in hope; are 
not all these the assumptions which serve as foundation to a religion? And if you 
blast them, goodbye religion; whence you see that your idiotic hell dogma wrecks 
instead of consolidates, that it loosens the underpinnings of the cult instead of 
tightening them, and that, as a consequence, only dolts have ever been able to 
believe something only knaves could have invented.

“No question about it, this being, concerning whom there is so much unending 
chatter, is sullied, dishonored by the ridiculous colors his portraitists habitually 
employ; did they not entertain senseless and incoherent ideas of the Divinity, 
they’d not represent him as cruel; and did they not think him cruel, they’d not 
fancy him capable of punishing them by infinite torments, or even able to consent
that man be deprived eternally of happiness.

“To elude the force of this argument, partisans of the dogma of eternal 
damnation affirm that the sore affliction of the reprobate is not arbitrary 
punishment on God’s part, but a consequence of sin and the immutable order of 
things. Indeed? Who told you so? If you claim this to be a teaching out of 
Scripture, you’ll have an awkward time proving it; and if you manage to happen 
across a single passage where there is some allusion to the matter, oh! the 
lengths to which you shall have to go in order to convince me of the authenticity, 
the accuracy, the holiness of these few lines which look to you as though

they read in your favor. Were they your rational faculties which suggested this 
atrocious dogma to you? In that case, tell me how you manage to conciliate 
reason with the injustice of a God who confections a creature, all the time 
knowing full well that the ironclad, immutable shape and design of things is such 
as will for a certainty forever sink him in an ocean of unremitting woes. If it is 
true that the universe is created and ruled over by a being infinitely powerful, 
infinitely wise, then everything must necessarily pass in conformance to his will, 
coincide with his aims, and conspire to the well-being of all that dwells therein. 
Now in what way does it further the advantage of the universe that a frail and 
miserable and helpless creature undergo eternal torture as a punishment for 
errors he never committed of his own free will?

“If the vast host of sinners and infidels and unbelievers were really destined to 
suffer cruel and perpetual torments—what a horrible prospect for mankind! 
Billions of human beings mercilessly condemned to agonies without end … were it 
so, indeed, then the lot of man, this thinking and sensitive being, would be truly 
hideous. For is there not grief and sorrow enough he must face in this life, that he
must expect more pain and worse anguish when his career on earth is done? 
What horror! Oh, ’tis execrable! However can such ideas make their way into the 
human mind, how is one to avoid the conviction that where they are in currency 
there lurk imposture, lies, and barbarous politics? Ah! let us be ever more firmly 
aware that this doctrine, neither useful nor necessary and utterly ineffectual as a 
means for dissuading men from evil, can be made into the basis for one and only 
one kind of religion: that whose sole purpose is to keep slaves at heel; let us 
clearly understand that the unvarying consequences of this abominable dogma 
are sinister and unwholesome in the extreme, since it is capable only of 
transforming life into a nightmare of bitterness, horrors, tears, and alarms; and 
breeds such notions of the Divinity that, save he be paralyzed totally and undone,
the individual has no choice but to curse God and a faith wherein belief is 
tantamount to final degradation.

“Assuredly, if we believe the universe created and governed by a being whose 
might, wisdom, and goodness are infinite, we are obliged to conclude that all evil 
must necessarily be excluded from this universe; well, you will not gainsay that 
the eternal unhappiness of most of the individuals embraced in the human species
would constitute a positive and absolute evil. Fie! what an infamous role you give 
your infamous God to play by supposing him guilty of such barbarity. To be brief, 
eternal torturings combine very ill with the infinite goodness of the God you have 
in mind: so either cease trying to make me believe therein, or get rid of your 
savage dogma of sufferings everlasting, do one or the other if you seriously wish 
to see me adopt your God for a single instant. Rejecting the dogma of hell, we 
may likewise dismiss the other of paradise; both are the wicked inventions of 
theological despots who by terrorizing men’s minds strove to ensure their 
obedience to sovereigns. Let us be assured of it: that we are made of matter only,
that what is immaterial is inexistent; that all we attribute to the soul is all simply 
the effect of matter; and this in spite of our human pride which causes us to 
stress the distinction between ourselves and brute beasts however it be that, like 
beasts, we yield up to the dust the dust whereof we are made, and when dead 
shall be no more punished than they for the bad deeds which the kind of 
organization we have received from Nature has induced us to commit, nor more 
rewarded for the good deeds we perform simply because we have been otherwise
structured. And so, as regards the fate awaiting you after this life, whether you 
conduct yourself well or ill, it amounts to the same; and if we shall have 
succeeded in passing every single instant of the term allotted us amidst 
pleasures, even though this manner of existence may have been unruly, may 
have caused disturbance to everybody about us, have gone counter to every 
social convention; if, I say, we shall have shielded ourselves from the law—and 
this is encumbent upon us, it is the one essential—then most assuredly, most 
certainly we shall have done far better, been far happier than the fool who, from 
awful dread of punishments in an afterlife, has in this one rigorously eschewed 
everything which might have gladdened and afforded him delectation; for it is of 
infinitely greater importance to achieve happiness in this life whereof we are sure,
than to forego the indisputable joys offered us here and now in the hope of 
acceding to imaginary ones of which we have not, and cannot possibly have, the 
faintest idea. Eh! he must have been a prodigiously droll fellow, he who 
attempted to persuade men that they may become unhappier when dead than 
they were before they were born! Has anyone ever asked to enter into this world?
Do men endow themselves with the passions which, according to your gruesome 
creed, hurl them into eternal woes in the next world? Why no! not at all, none of 
this is the individual’s doing, it is all done to him, if fault there be it is not his, and
it is unthinkable, it is fantastic, it is false that he can be punished therefore.

“But have we not to cast a glance at our miserable species to ascertain that 
there is no hint here of immortality? What! this divine quality, or let us rather say,
this quality which cannot possibly exist in matter, am I to understand that any 
such thing could belong to this animal we call man? He who feeds, drinks, and 
reproduces like beasts, whose superiority over them resides in a somewhat more 
refined instinct, this creature is able to expect a fate so unlike any of those same 
beasts? who will accept such nonsense for a minute? But hold, they protest, man 
has achieved the sublime awareness of his God; this in itself betokens worthiness 
of the immortality he dreams of. Ah. And what is so sublime about this awareness
of a spook, unless you wish to imply that because man has carried his ravings 
over a particular subject to their final conclusion, he must now rave in connection 
with everything else? O poor wretch! if thou hast some advantage over animals, 
how many are their advantages over thee? Art thou not susceptible to a hundred 
times as many infirmities or diseases? Art thou not the victim of a hundred times 
as many passions? Weigh it up and tell me whether, in the over-all, man is really 
better off than the beast. Do you find that the scales still tip in his favor? And this 
slight advantage you accord him, is it so great as to warrant his proud notion that
he is due eternally to outlive his four-footed brethren? O pitiful humanity, look to 
what lengths of folly thou hast been urged by thine inflated self-esteem! And 
when thou shalt make riddance of all these chimeras which obstruct thy view, 
shalt not thou see thyself as no more than a beast, thy God as merely the ne plus
ultra of human extravagance, and this life but a road passing from nought to 
nought, and which thou mayest travel as thou wilst, in vice as confidently as in 
virtue?

“But with your leave I shall deepen the discussion and enter more thoroughly 
into the knotty questions confronting us now.

“Certain Church Fathers maintain that Jesus descended into hell. How often 
this contention has been attacked and refuted! We shall not catalogue and inspect
severally the various theses which have treated of this subject: the philosophical 
spirit—and we address ourselves to no other—would very probably make short 
work of them. The facts are these: neither Scripture nor any of its commentaries 
is positively decided either upon the specific whereabouts of hell or upon the 
precise tortures you undergo there. This being granted, we next find that the 
Word of God clarifies nothing, whereas the teaching of Scripture, we all agree, 
ought to be plainly and distinctly set forth, above all as regards a matter of such 
high consequence. However, research fails to discover either in the Hebrew text or
in the Greek and Latin versions, a single word designating hell in its traditionally 
or still currently accepted meaning: that is, a place reserved for the torture of 
sinners. Is this not very telling evidence against the soundness of the opinion held
by those who maintain that these tortures really exist? If Scripture omits any 
mention of hell, by what right, pray tell, do they presume to entertain such a 
notion? Are we bound, in religious questions, to believe anything over and beyond
what is written? Well, if this opinion appears nowhere in writing, in pursuance of 
what are we to adopt it? It does not beseem us to trouble our minds about what 
has not been revealed; and whatever has not been we cannot legitimately regard 
as other than fable, vague supposition, human tradition, imposture’s inventions. 
Scholarship discloses nevertheless that near Jerusalem there was a locality known
as the valley of Gehenna, where criminals were put to death and into which the 
corpses of animals were thrown also. It is to this place Jesus refers in his 
allegories when he says, Illic erit fletus et stridor dentium. This was a vale of 
tears, of suffering and horror: and there appears to be no doubt it is to Gehenna 
he is alluding in his parables, in his unintelligible speeches. Our belief receives 
further confirmation from the fact that torture by fire was practiced in this valley: 
there the guilty were burnt alive; at other times they were buried to the knees in 
dung. Or round their neck was looped a length of cloth whose ends were pulled by
two men, so strangling the victim and forcing him to open his mouth into which 
molten lead was poured—there we have the fire, the torture, whereof the Galilean
spoke. We often hear him say that such and such a sin merits punishment by fire,
that is, the miscreant deserves to be burnt in the valley of Gehenna or flung upon
the dung heap and burned with the animal carrion that was dumped in this 
noisome awful place. But, you may point out, the adjective eternal Jesus 
frequently uses to qualify this fire, does it not bear out the contention of those 
who believe the flames of hell shall burn forever? By no means. Often employed 
in Scripture, this term eternal always connotes the finite. For example, God 
concluded an eternal alliance with his chosen people; nevertheless, this alliance 
came to an end. The cities of Sodom and Gomorrah were to burn eternally; but 
that blaze died out a good long while ago.(16) Furthermore, it is common 
knowledge that the fire in the valley of Gehenna, near Jerusalem, was kept lit by 
night and by day. We also know that great use is made of hyperbole in Scripture, 
and that not a line of it should be taken literally. These exaggerations are enough;
must one go a step farther, as is regularly done, and twist the underlying meaning
of things? Indeed, must not such magnifiers be regarded as the most definite 
enemies of good sense and reason?

“But what then is the nature of the fire they menace us with? (1) It cannot be 
tangible, because we are told our fire is but a faint image of it; (2) a tangible fire 
illuminates the area surrounding it, and we are assured that hell is a tenebrous 
place; (3) tangible fire promptly consumes all combustible materials, and finally 
consumes itself, instead of which hellfire must last indefinitely and consume 
eternally; (4) hellfire is invisible, hence it is not at all tangible; (5) tangible fire 
goes out for lack of fuel, and, according to our absurd religion, hellfire will burn 
forever; (6) hellfire is eternal, tangible fire is temporary; (7) it is said that the 
worst of the torments the damned have to endure is the privation of God; 
however, in this life experience “shows that tangible fire can be far more painful 
than the absence of God.

“8) Lastly, tangible fire can have no effect upon spirits, therefore hellfire can 
have no effect upon them. To say that God can contrive in such a way that a 
material fire acts upon spiritual beings; that he will make these spirits to live and 
subsist without sustenance, and that he will make the fire to burn without 
combustibles—this is to resort to wonderful suppositions for which there is no 
warrant apart from the idle reveries of theologians, and which consequently prove
only their stupidity or their wickedness.

“To come to the conclusion that, because nothing is impossible for God, God 
will do everything possible is surely no very logical way of reasoning. Men would 
be well advised to refrain from basing their fond hopes upon God’s omnipotence, 
when they do not even know what God is. In order to elude these difficulties, 
other theologians assure us that hellfire is not tangible at all, no, according to 
them it is spiritual. Perhaps you will be good enough to tell me, what is a spiritual 
fire? what is an immaterial, incorporeal, non-substantial fire? Some there are who
speak to us of such a thing; what do you fancy they are talking about? do you 
suppose they themselves have the slightest idea? where, in what connection, 
upon what occasion does their God explain to them the nature of their fire? Again,
however, we find a few doctors who, hunting for a happy medium, assert that this
fire is partly spiritual, partly material. Which gives us, oh behold! two different 
sorts of fire in hell; how preposterous! What devices is superstition not driven to 
resort to as it constructs its sand-castles of falsehood!

“And likewise, when pressed to produce something plausible concerning the 
location of this fabulous hell, what an outrageous higgledy-piggledy of farfetched 
speculations has been invented! The prevailing feeling had been that hell lay in a 
region somewhere below the earth; but where is that region in relation to a 
revolving globe? Others, recognizing the world as round, placed hell at its center, 
that is, some fifteen hundred leagues from where we are standing now; but if 
Scripture says true, the world is going to be destroyed, and where will hell be 
when that comes to pass? Well, you observe the wild nonsense that results when 
one puts one’s faith in the ravings of others. Less extravagant reasoners claim, as
I mentioned a moment ago, that hell consists in being barred from the vision of 
God; in which case hell starts right here in this world, for hereabouts there’s 
neither hide nor hair of that God to be seen: and yet this state of affairs can 
hardly, you’ll agree, be called unendurable. One is tempted to imagine the 
reverse: if this queer God did truly exist such as he is depicted to us, the mere 
sight of him would probably constitute a very adequate image of hell.

“All these incertitudes and the scanty concordance amongst the theologians 
indicate that the latter are wandering about in a fog and a delusion and, like 
drunkards, are unable to get their bearings, let alone keep their footing; and 
nevertheless, is it not curious that they cannot come to some manner of terms 
over so essential a dogma, and one which, they say, is so clearly expounded in 
the Word of God?

“So, shavepate rabble, own that this gigantic grisly dogma of yours is utterly 
baseless, all made up, that it is the product of your greed, your ambition, and 
sired by your unhinged mentalities; that it cannot stand unless crutched up by the
ignorant terrors of the vulgar simpleton you train to swallow, uncritically, 
everything you are pleased to serve up to him. Admit that this hell exists nowhere
but in your brain, and that the infernal tortures you brandish are so many 
anxieties it suits your political convenience to inflict upon the mortals who let 
themselves be guided by you. Aware of these facts, let us forever abjure a 
doctrine which only affrights men, constitutes an insult to the godhead, and, in a 
word, must be repudiated by any reasoning person.

“Various arguments are yet put forward; I think it incumbent upon me to 
combat them. (1) The fear which, they say, everyone senses inwardly of some 
punishment to come is an indubitable proof of that punishment’s reality. But this 
fear is by no means innate; it is inculcated, fostered by education; it is not in 
every land the same, nor the same in all men; it is not found amongst those in 
whom passions have annihilated prejudice; the conscience is never modified save 
by instruction, by ruling passions, by habit.

“2) The pagans acknowledged the dogma of hell…. Surely not as do we; and 
supposing that they might have acknowledged it, we who reject their religion, 
must we not reject their dogmas as well? But it is very certain the pagans never 
believed in an afterlife of everlasting sufferings; nor in the pathetic claptrap of the
resurrection of bodies, which they burned on pyres, and whose ashes they 
preserved in urns; they did believe in metempsychosis, in the transmigration also 
of bodies, ideas for which there is a great deal to be said arid which natural 
studies repeatedly confirm; but the absurd conceit of bodily resurrection, very 
worthy of Christianity, belongs entirely to it. It would strongly appear that our 
doctors got their notions of a nether world, of paradise, and of purgatory out of 
Plato and Virgil, and that they then shaped them to suit their own purposes: 
nebulous vagaries of poetical fancy were in time changed into articles of faith.

“3) If there is such a thing as sanity and healthy reason, then the dogma of a 
hell and of eternal punishment is necessarily proven true. God is just, therefore 
he must punish men for their crimes…. No, and no again; never could sanity, 
never could healthy reason subscribe to a dogma which so blatantly outrages it.

“4) But God is a judge, his justice must be done…. Another atrocity: evil is 
necessary on earth. I say unto you that if your God exists, his justice cannot 
consist in punishing deeds he has himself prescribed; if he is omnipotent, your 
God, has he need of punishing the evildoer in order to prevent the doing of evil? 
Could he not, can he not today, deprive men altogether of the capacity for evil? If 
he did not do this originally, if he will not do it tomorrow, it is because he 
considers evil necessary to the maintenance of general harmony; and in the light 
of this, how, vile blasphemers! how dare you say God can punish a mode of 
behavior which must exist if the universe is to run aright?

“5) All theologians concur in believing and preaching the existence of the 
punishments of hell…. Does this prove anything except that the priests, usually so
disunited, are nonetheless very able to reach an understanding whenever it is a 
question of deceiving their flocks? Furthermore, must the ambitious and 
calculating inventions of Romish clerics dictate what the opinions of other sects 
are to be? Is it reasonable to expect the whole of mankind to believe what a 
grubby little minority found it advantageous to devise and proclaim? Must one 
then rather place one’s faith in these cheats than in reason, common sense, and 
truth? It is by truth we should be ruled, not by the mob; far better to rely upon 
one man who speaks true than to heed the knaves who have been spouting lies 
for centuries.

“The other arguments they advance are all so patently weak that one has 
difficulty taking them seriously and little inclination to waste one’s time refuting 
them; none of them reposing either upon Scripture or upon tradition, they all 
necessarily collapse of themselves. For example, unanimous consent is alleged; 
but can it be, when it is impossible to find any two individuals who follow the 
same line of reasoning about what is apparently one of the most important things 
in life?

“Realizing they have not a single sound argument on their side, these fierce 
priests are

always fully prepared to threaten you; despite the fact that, as everybody 
knows by now, threats are the weapons of the simple-minded, the feeble, and the
defeated. Come, come, silly little children of Jesus! give us reasons, yes, it is 
reasons we want out of you, not bluster, rant, and fist-shakings: we do not wish 
to be told, ‘Since you do not choose to believe in these tortures, you are going to 
feel them’; we merely ask, and with this request you cannot successfully comply: 
demonstrate to us that by virtue of which you would have us believe in your 
fictions.

“The fear of hell, in short, is no sure guarantee against sin…. Nothing, 
anywhere, authorizes any such fear…. It is only too obviously the fruit of the 
diseased imagination of priests, of, that is, those personages who comprise the 
vilest and the most mischievous class in society. So what purpose does the hell 
myth serve? I put anyone at defiance to tell me. They assure us that sin is an 
infinite wrong and ought hence to be punished infinitely. Rubbish. God himself 
chose to prescribe a finite punishment for this crime, and that punishment is 
death.

“And so we conclude that the puerile dogma of hell is a fairy tale of sacerdotal 
contrivance, a cruel supposition hazarded by gowned rascals who began by 
fabricating a dreary, a disgusting God in their own image, in order then to have 
this loathsome dummy repeat what sorted best with their own passions and, 
above all, to repeat whatever was most likely to procure them whores or money, 
the sole objects ambitioned by that covetous, that shiftless lot, that crew of social
outcasts whereof society would be wonderfully well advised to purge itself 
definitively.

“I say unto you, banish forever from your heart this doctrine which is an insult 
to your God and your reason alike. Such beyond any doubt is the dogma that has 
produced more atheists than all the others combined, there being not a single 
man on earth who would not prefer to believe nothing whatsoever rather than 
subscribe to this confusion of peculiarly dangerous lies; this is the explanation for 
why so many upright and decent souls consider themselves obliged to repair to 
thoroughgoing irreligion in their search for relief from, and defense against, the 
terrors wherewith an infamous Christian creed would lay waste their energies and
all their peace of mind. So let’s be rid of these false alarms; let’s forever have 
done with the dogmas, the ceremonies, the rites of this abominable religion. 
Better the most inveterate, the most incorrigible atheism than a cult so fraught 
with perils so immense. Indeed, I am aware of no drawback in not having any 
belief at all; but I see nothing but disadvantages of the very gravest order arising 
from the adoption of these dangerous systems.

“There, my dear Saint-Fond, I have presented my views touching this infamous
hell dogma. Let it terrify you and chill your pleasures no more. For mortal man 
there is but one hell, and that is the folly and wickedness and spite of his fellows; 
but once his life is over, there’s an end to it: his annihilation is final and entire, of 
him nothing survives. Ah, what a prodigious dupe he must therefore be, who 
denies himself a single pleasure or curbs his passions for a moment! Let him 
realize that he exists purely for their satisfaction through whatever excesses this 
may entail, and that all the effects of these passions, in whatever kind or shape 
they may have been implanted in him, are the means whereby you serve the 
Nature whose agents we at all times are, whether we are conscious of it or no, 
whether we will or no. And now I hand you back the idea of a God which I made 
brief use of as an instrument for combating the eternal-punishment scare; but 
there is no God, he does not any more exist than does the devil, than heaven, 
than hell; and the only duties we have in this world are those toward our 
pleasures, which we are to satisfy without regard to the interests of others, for we
are bound, aye, duty-bound to sacrifice any of them and, if need be, all of them if 
the least of our desires would have it so.

“I trust I have said enough to prove the absurdity of the principle upon which 
you base your pointless cruelty. Must I speak of the means you employ? No, to be
honest with you, it isn’t worth the trouble; how, in the first place, how have you 
ever come to think that a signature scribbled in blood can be more binding, less 
worthless, than one in ink, or none? That, next, this scrap of paper stuffed into a 
bum can serve as a passport to heaven or to hell, neither of which exists? ’Tis 
here a patchwork of prejudices so ridiculous as truly does not deserve the honor 
of critical dissection or disproving. For the voluptuous idea that’s made you giddy, 
this idea of prolonging the sufferings of a given individual, for it substitute a 
greater abundance of murders, I beseech you; cease killing the same individual a 
thousand times over, which is impossible; instead, assassinate individuals by the 
thousand, which is altogether feasible. Is there anything so mean-spirited as 
confining oneself to half a dozen victims a week? Trust Juliette, she is clever, she 
is capable, only say the word and she will double the number, triple it, give her 
the required money; you’ll want for nothing, your passions will be satisfied.”

“Splendid,” Saint-Fond replied, “I heartily welcome this last conclusion; from 
now on, Juliette, we shall have not three victims per supper, but six, and the 
suppers shall be held twice as frequently as heretofore, which will mean 
twenty-four victims a week, a third of them men, two-thirds women. Your fees 
shall be augmented proportionally; however, Mesdames, I cannot confess having 
been vanquished by this learned dissertation upon the nullity of infernal 
punishments. I admire the erudition it displays, its aim, certain of its implications 
and consequences: but bow before it, this I cannot do, and to what you have 
advanced I should like to answer as follows.

“First of all, throughout your entire argument I observe an effort to exculpate 
God from the barbarity of the dogma of hell. If God exists, you seem to be saying 
in virtually every sentence, the qualities which he must possess are every one of 
them incompatible with this execrable dogma. But, my dear Clairwil, it is precisely
here that I feel you fall into heaviest error, and this for want of a philosophy 
comprehensive enough, luminous enough, to enable you to behold the subject 
properly. The hell dogma creates a hindrance to your pleasures, and from there 
you go on to assert that hell there is none; facts must be established upon 
something more solid than personal wishes. To combat the dogma of eternal 
penalties you begin by gratuitously destroying everything it rests upon: there is 
no God, we do not have souls, hence there are no sufferings to dread in a life 
after this. It strikes me that you start at the very outset by committing the 
greatest blunder one can commit in logic: to posit as granted that which is in 
question. Far from sharing your way of thinking, I acknowledge a Supreme Being 
and yet more firmly believe in the immortality of the soul. But let not your pious 
hearts, enchanted by these initial declarations, run on to suppose they have a 
proselyte in me; I am not so sure my doctrine will prove to their liking. You 
yourselves may find it odd. Never mind; I should like to expound it to you all the 
same, and I am sure I can count upon a fair hearing.

“I raise up my eyes to the universe: I see evil, disorder, crime reigning as 
despots everywhere. My gaze descends, and it bends upon that most interesting 
of this universe’s creatures: I behold him likewise devoured by vices, by 
contradictions, by infamies; what ideas result from this examination? That what 
we improperly call evil is really not evil at all, and that this mode is of such high 
necessity to the designs of the being who has created us that he would cease to 
be the master of his own creation were evil not to exist universally upon the 
earth. Well persuaded that this is so, I tell myself: there exists a God; some hand 
or other has necessarily created all that I see, but has not created it save for evil,
is not pleased but by evil; evil is his essence, and all that he causes us to commit 
is indispensable to his plans. What matters it to him that I suffer from this evil, 
provided it be advantageous to him? Does it not seem I am his favorite child? If 
the misfortunes that afflict me from the day I am born until the day I die prove 
his indifference to me, I may very well be mistaken upon what I call evil. What I 
thus characterize relative to myself seems indeed to be a very great good relative
to the being who has brought me into the world; and if I receive evil from others, 
I enjoy the right to pay them back in kind, to be the first to cast the stone: so, 
henceforth, evil is good, just as it is for the author of my existence, relatively to 
my existence: the evil I do others makes me happy, as God is rendered happy by 
the evil he does me. All confusion and error are gone save in the idea attributed 
to the word; but in the deed, there is both evil as necessity and evil as pleasure; 
henceforth, why ought I not call it good?

“Be sure of it: evil, or at least what goes by that name, is absolutely useful to 
the vicious organization of this melancholy universe. The God who has articulated 
it is a very vindictive being, very barbarous, very wicked, very unjust, very cruel; 
that, because vengeance, barbarity, wickedness, iniquity, criminality are the 
necessary modes, vital to the principle that governs this vast creation, of which 
we only complain when it brings us hurt: to its victims, crime is bad; to its agents,
good. Now, if evil, or at least what we call such, is the essence both of God who 
has created everything and of the creatures wrought in his image, how can one 
be anything but certain that the consequences of evil are eternal? It is in evil he 
made the world, by evil he does sustain it; it is for evil he perpetuates it; it is 
impregnated with evil that creation must exist; it is into the womb of evil it 
returns after its term. Man’s soul is merely the action of evil upon a subtle matter,
susceptible of being organized only by evil; now, this mode being the soul of the 
Creator as it is of the being created, just as it existed before this created being 
that is saturated with it, so it will exist after that created being is no more. All, 
everyone has got to be wicked, barbarous

, inhuman, like your God: these are the vices the person who wishes to please 
him must adopt, without, nevertheless, any hope of succeeding: for the evil which
harms always, the evil which is the essence of God, will never be, can never be 
susceptible of love nor of gratitude. If this God, center of evil and of ferocity, 
torments man and has him tormented by Nature and by other men throughout 
the whole period of his existence, how may one doubt that he acts likewise and 
perhaps involuntarily upon this breath of air which outlives him and which, as I 
have just said, is nothing other than evil itself? But how, you are going to object, 
how may evil be tormented by evil? Because when it encounters itself, it is 
increased, and because the force that yields must always be obliterated by the 
force that compels it to yield—which is in accordance with the logic wherein 
weakness is always subjugated by strength. That which survives the naturally evil
being, that which must survive him, since it is the essence of the being’s 
constitution, an essence whose existence is prior to the being and which will exist 
after the being, by falling back into the womb of evil, and because of its relative 
weakness no longer having the strength to defend itself, will hence be tormented 
by the entire essence of evil, to which it will be reunited; they are these 
maleficent molecules that, in the operation of compassing and assimilating those 
which what we call death reunites to them, compose what poets and others of 
ardent imagination have named demons. No man, whatever be his conduct in this
world, can escape this terrible fate, because it is necessary that everything that 
emanates from the womb of Nature, that is to say, from the womb of evil, return 
thereunto: such is the universal law. Thus are the detestable elements of the 
wicked man absorbed into the source of wickedness, which is God, to return again
and to animate other beings which will be born that much more corrupted, in as 
they will be the fruit of corruption.

“What, you may wonder, what has become of the good being? But there is no 
such thing as a good being: he whom you call virtuous is not by any means good, 
or, if he is from your viewpoint, he surely is not from the viewpoint of God, who is
only evil, who wants nothing but what is evil, who requires evil alone. The man 
you speak of is merely feeble, and feebleness is an evil. Weaker than the 
absolutely and entirely vicious being, and more completely engulfed by the 
maleficent molecules with which his elementary dissolution will conjoin him, this 
man will have to suffer a great deal more: and there, precisely, is what ought to 
oblige every man to render himself in this world as vicious and wicked as possible 
in order that, more like unto the molecules wherewith he must someday contend, 
he have, in this act of reunion, infinitely less to suffer from their onslaught. The 
ant that were to fall into the midst of wild animals, where there prevails such 
violence as must overwhelm any insect, would, because of its radical 
defenselessness, have an infinitely more painful time of it than might some large 
beast which, stronger, more resourceful, better able to resist, would only 
gradually become swallowed up into the whirlpool. The more vices and crimes a 
man would have manifested in this world, the more he will be in harmony with his
ineluctable fate, which is wickedness, which I consider the primary matter of the 
world’s composition. Let man then take care to preserve himself well from virtue 
if he should like to avoid exposure to the most hideous sufferings; for virtue being
the mode hostile to the world’s system, all those who will have yielded to it are 
certain to endure, after this life, the most unspeakable torments by reason of the 
difficulty they will experience in re-entering the womb of evil, author and 
regenerator of all we behold.

“Having seen that all was vicious and criminal on earth, the Being Supreme in 
Wickedness will say unto them, ‘Why did you stray into the paths of virtue? Did I 
ever announce to you, by any token, that this mode was agreeable to me? Did 
not the perpetual miseries with which I inundated the universe convince you that 
I love only disorder, and that to please me one must emulate me? Did I not set 
grandly before you every day the example of destruction? Why did you heed it 
not? Did not the plagues wherewith I withered the earth, by proving to you that 
evil was my joy, enjoin you to perform evil acts in the service of my scheme? Now
were you not aware that humankind must satisfy me; and in what aspect of my 
conduct have you noticed benevolence? Is it in sending you plagues, blights, civil 
wars, earthquakes, tempests? is it by brandishing above your heads all the 
serpents of discord that I persuade you that my essence is good? Fool! why did 
you not imitate my ways? Why did you resist those passions I put in you for no 
reason other than to prove to you how great is the necessity for evil? Their voice 
was to have been heard and obeyed; it was necessary to despoil pitilessly, as I 
do, the widow and the orphan, to pillage the poor, in one word, to make man 
comply with all your needs, bend before all your caprices—as I do. After having 
played the idiot and taken the contrary way, what have you come back here for? 
And how are the soft, flabby elements, emanating from your dissolution, how, I 
ask, without being shattered and without occasioning you the most excruciating 
agonies, are they to return now into the womb of maleficence and crime?’

“More of a philosopher than you, Clairwil, I do not have to apply, as you seem 
obliged to do, either to that rogue Jesus or to that insipid novel, Holy Scripture, in
order to demonstrate my system; my study of the universe alone provides me 
with weapons to oppose you, and simply from the manner in which it is governed 
I see eternal and universal evil as absolutely indispensable in the world. The 
author of the universe is the most wicked, the most ferocious, the most horrifying
of all beings. His works cannot be anything but the result or the incarnation of his 
criminality. Without his wickedness raised to its extremest pitch, nothing would be
sustained in the universe; evil is, however, a moral entity and not a created one, 
an eternal and not a perishable entity: it existed before the world; it constituted 
the monstrous, the execrable being who was able to fashion such a hideous 
world. It will hence exist after the creatures which people this world; it is unto evil
they will all enter again, in order to re-create others perhaps more wicked yet, 
and that is why they say all is degraded, all is corrupted in old age; that stems 
only from the perpetual re-entry and emergence of wicked elements into and out 
of the matrix of maleficent molecules.

“You are now perhaps going to ask me how, within this hypothesis, I rationalize
the possibility of causing a person to suffer for a longer period of time by means 
of a bit of paper introduced into the anus. It is the simplest thing in the world, 
and I dare say the surest and least refutable as well; if I have been pleased to call
it a weakness, it is because I had no idea you would ever get me into the position 
of disclosing my doctrines to you. I’ll defend my method, however, and prove its 
worth.

“When my victims arrive in evil’s womb, they come bearing evidence that in 
my hands they have endured all the suffering it is possible to endure; they are 
then classified as virtuous beings. Through my operation they are made better, 
improved; their adjunction to the maleficent molecules is rendered exceedingly 
difficult; their agonies, hence, are enormous; and by the laws of attraction 
essential to Nature, they must be, those agonies, of the same species as those I 
caused them to suffer in this world. As the magnet draws iron, as beauty whets 
carnal appetites, so agonies A, agonies B, agonies C call to their like, enchain 
their like. The person my hand exterminates by means of agony B will, I suppose,
only return to the matrix of maleficent molecules via that agony B; and if agony B
is the most appalling possible, I am sure my victim will undergo a similar one in 
entering the womb of evil which necessarily awaits all men and which, by the laws
of attraction I just mentioned, only accepts them in the same way by which they 
went out of the world. But the instrument … merely a formality, I admit … useless,
futile, perhaps; but a formality which suits me, and which can have nothing about
it contrary to the true meaning, to the assured success of my operation.”

“That,” replied Clairwil, “is the most astonishing, the most unusual, I dare say 
the most bizarre of all the systems yet to have occurred to the mind of man.”

“Less extravagant than the one you’ve just brought to light,” answered 
Saint-Fond; “to maintain yours, you are forced either to wipe God clean of his 
faults or to deny him; as for me, I acknowledge him with all his vices, and indeed 
in the eyes of those who are familiar with all the crimes, all the horrors of this 
curious being whom men only invoke and call good from fear—in the eyes of 
these people, I say, my ideas will appear less irregular than the ones you have 
exposed.”

“Your system,” said Clairwil, “arises solely out of your profound horror of God.”

“True; I abhor him; but my system is by no means the issue of the hatred I 
have for him; no, it is but the fruit of my intelligence and my meditation.”

“I,” said Clairwil, “would rather not believe in God than forge one in order to 
hate it. Juliette, what do you think of the matter?”

“Profoundly an atheist,” I replied, “arch enemy of the dogma of the soul’s 
immortality, I will always prefer your system to Saint-Fond’s; and I prefer the 
certitude of nothingness to the fear of an. eternity of suffering.”

“There you are,” Saint-Fond rejoined, “always that perfidious egoism which is 
the source of all the mistakes human beings make. One arranges one’s schemes 
according to one’s tastes and whims, and always by drifting farther from truth. 
You’ve got to leave your passions behind when you examine a philosophical 
doctrine.”

“Ah, Saint-Fond,” said Clairwil, “how easy it would be to point out that yours is 
nothing but the product of those passions which you would have one put by when 
studying. With less cruelty in your heart your dogmas would be less sanguinary; 
and you yourself would rather risk the eternal damnation of which you speak than
renounce the delicious pleasure of horrifying others with it.”

“Exactly!” I interrupted; “that is his single motive for exposing his doctrine; 
nothing but wickedness on his part, but he won’t believe it.”

“I believe you are wrong: and you see perfectly well that my actions 
correspond in every point to my manner of thinking: convinced that the torture of
being reunited with the maleficent molecules will be quite mild for the person as 
maleficent as they, I cover myself with crimes in this world so as to have less to 
suffer in the next.”

“As for me,” retorted Clairwil, “I soil myself with them because they please me,
because I believe them one of the ways of serving Nature, and because, since 
nothing of me is going to survive, it matters bloody little how I behave in this 
world.”

Thus far had we come in our conversation when we heard a carriage enter the 
courtyard and stop; Noirceuil was announced, then introduced. With him he 
brought a youth of sixteen, never had I clapped eyes on one so fair.

“Bless me,” murmured the Minister, “I’ve only this minute finished giving these 
ladies an analysis of hell; could it be that my dear Noirceuil arrives to tempt me 
into meriting it a little?”

“Only too true,” Noirceuil returned; “you might damn yourself wondrously at 
this pretty little chap’s expense, I fetched him here for that very purpose. He is 
the son of the Marquise de Rose, the same whom last week you sent to the 
Bastille upon charges—what were they? plotting against the Crown?”

“That was the pretext, as I recall.”

“And your aim, presumably, was to procure yourself this child and perhaps 
some money besides?”

“Precisely.”

“Then I was not mistaken. At any rate the Marquise, knowing of our 
connections, sought audience with me; I had one of your clerks draw up a writ, 
and this morning she and I had a chat together. Here’s the result of our 
negotiations,” Noirceuil said, thrusting young Rose into the Minister’s arms, “fuck 
and sign. I’ve also a hundred thousand crowns to turn over to you.”

“He’s pretty,” said Saint-Fond, kissing the lad, “exceedingly pretty; but he 
comes at a bad moment… we’ve been up to horrors; I’m exhausted.”

“Tush,” Noirceuil replied, “the boy has all the qualities needed to restore you to
life, of that I’m certain.”

Rose and Noirceuil, who had not yet taken supper, joined us at table. 
Saint-Fond said, when the meal was over, that he wished to have me on hand 
while he amused himself with the youth, and he proposed that Noirceuil lie with 
Clairwil, both of whom seemed pleased by the arrangement; and the company 
retired.

“I fear I shall have to put you to contribution,” Saint-Fond declared, “for 
attractive though this child undeniably is, I foresee I’ll have trouble stiffening. 
Unbutton him for me, my pet, roll his shirt above his waist and, that’s it, leave his
breeches hanging just above his knees, quite, that’s the style I adore.”

And as the ass I bared for his delectation was nothing short of luscious, 
Saint-Fond, polluted by me, kissed it fervidly and long, while frigging a juvenile 
prick we soon saw reach a most creditable stand.

“Suck it,” my lover bade me; “I’ll tongue his asshole in the meantime. I believe
that, between the two of us, we should be able to wheedle a discharge out of 
him.”

Next, his greed aroused by the thought of the fuck I was about to pump forth, 
Saint-Fond said he would change places with me; this we did so dextrously that 
scarcely had he got the boy’s prick in his mouth than he felt it filled by a most 
abundant ejaculation; he swallowed every drop down.

“Oh, Juliette,” he confided to me, smacking his lips, “food for the gods, that. I 
thrive upon no other.”

Then instructing the boy to get into bed and to await us without falling asleep, 
Saint-Fond conducted me to his boudoir.

“Juliette,” said he, “I must give you the particulars concerning an affair upon 
which Noirceuil himself is by no means thoroughly informed.

“The Marquise de Rose, one of the most beautiful women of the Court, was 
once my mistress, and the child Noirceuil brought here this evening is mine. I 
became interested in him two years ago, for two years the Marquise prevented 
me from satisfying a passion: and I was obliged to bide my time until my position 
was strong enough to permit me to act without risk. It was not until recently, my 
prestige and credit towering upon the shattered remnants of hers, that I judged 
the occasion ripe; my grievances are two: I resent having fucked her, I resent 
having been kept from fucking her son. Now she trembles; she sends the boy to 
me, but he arrives rather late in the day: for eighteen months I discharged at the 
very thought of him, but such enthusiasms are never maintained indefinitely, and 
I find that this one, if it has not completely disappeared, has ebbed very 
significantly; however, this adventure retains certain other criminal possibilities 
which I owe it to myself not to leave unexplored. Oh, yes, I am perfectly willing to
pocket the Marquise’s hundred thousand, I am nothing loath to fuck her son; but 
matters don’t end there, my vengeance has to be considered. She’ll not emerge 
from the Bastille save in a crate.”

“And, pray, what do you mean by that?”

“Just what I say. The Marquise does not know that in the event her son dies, I,
though a distant relative, would be sole heir to her fortune; the whore shan’t 
outlast the month; and after I’ve properly fucked her scion tonight, tomorrow 
morning we’ll have him breakfast on a cup of chocolate which will remove the 
single obstacle between me and a windfall.”

“What an accumulation of crimes!”

“Not one too many, my dear, if I am to go favorably prepared to that crucial 
rendezvous with the maleficent molecules.”

“Astonishing man! And there’s something substantial to be gained from the 
enterprise, I take it?”

“Over five hundred thousand livres a year, Juliette, and earning them entails an
investment of twenty sous worth of arsenic. Well,” said the Minister, getting to his 
feet, “we have some fucking ahead of us, let’s not tarry. See for yourself,” he 
continued, giving me his swollen, rock-hard prick to handle, “behold the influence 
a criminal thought can have upon my senses. There’s not a woman on earth 
who’d ever have had cause to complain of my services if I’d been sure of being 
able to kill her afterward.”

Young Rose was expecting us; we lay down in bed on either side of him. 
Saint-Fond covered him with lewd kisses; we frigged him, we sucked him, we 
tongued his vent; and as his imagination was powerfully astir, Saint-Fond was 
soon lodged to the hilt in the boy. I titillated my lover’s asshole with my tongue; 
great though his previous exertions had been that day, seldom had I seen him 
loose his sperm in such quantity or seen the spasm last so long. He enjoined me 
to collect his seed from the vessel he had spat it into and to convey it to his 
mouth; this challenge to my libertine abilities pleased me hugely, I acquitted 
myself of the chore with gladness in my heart. Next, Rose had to embugger me 
while the Minister bum-fucked him afresh, and then Saint-Fond buggered me 
while licking and sucking the ass of our humble little playfellow, whom we wore 
positively to shreds by dint of the discharging we made him do now into our 
mouths, now into our asses. Dawn was approaching when Saint-Fond, dead sick 
of it all but not yet satisfied, ordered me to hold the child fast, and the villain 
slashed his backside with a hundred or so strokes of a martinet, then beat him 
with his fists and molested him very cruelly indeed. At eleven o’clock the 
chocolate was brought in; upon the Minister’s instructions I poisoned the cup in 
such wise as to ensure his inheritance; and he, while I was preparing the poison 
that would do away with the son, busied himself penning a note to the 
commandant of the Bastille, wherein the latter was ordered to administer a 
similar dose to the mother.

“And so,” said Saint-Fond, stifling a yawn, “and so,” said he, once death had 
been insinuated by our fell maneuvers into the veins of the unlucky child, “that’s 
what I call a day fairly begun; may the Being Supreme in Wickedness but deign to
send me four such victims a week, and I shall never cease to sing heartfelt 
praises unto his name.”

Noirceuil and Clairwil, waiting for us, took

breakfast together; we joined them in due time. Everything of what had 
passed remained a secret between the Minister and me. The two men set out for 
Paris, the doomed child accompanying them; while Clairwil and I returned thither 
in her carriage.

Concerning this adventure, my friends, I have nothing further to tell you that 
you have not already taken for granted: the crime, like all Saint-Fond’s crimes, 
was crowned with greatest success: he very shortly came into possession of a 
legacy which proved every bit as valuable as he had originally estimated; and a 
million livres, representing two years of his new income, was the gift he had the 
kindness to present me for my help in obtaining it.

On the road to the capital, Clairwil posed me several questions; I managed to 
elude them. To be sure, I spoke of our lewd activities—there would have been no 
point attempting to conceal them, she would not have believed me had I denied 
them; but as for the rest, I hid it all, which was according to Saint-Fond’s wishes. 
During that journey I took the opportunity to remind my friend of her promise to 
secure my admission to her libertine club; she gave me her word that I would be 
received the next time it met; we entered the city, kissed, and said goodbye.


Part Three

My friends, it is time I tell you a little about myself, and above all describe my 
opulence, fruit of the most determinedly dissolute living, in order that you will be 
able to contrast it with the state of indigence and adversity wherein my sister, 
who had chosen good behavior, was languishing already. Your outlook and 
philosophy will suggest to you what conclusions are to be drawn from these 
comparisons.

I lived on a grand scale, on a perfectly enormous scale; you must surely have 
suspected as much, what with the expenses I had to make in behalf of my lover. 
But leaving aside the innumerable things required for his pleasure, I had to myself
a superb town house in Paris, an exquisite property by Sceaux at 
Barrière-Blanche, as delightful a little dwelling as ever you saw, twelve Lesbians 
were perpetually in my train, four equally engaging chambermaids, a reader, a 
night nurse, three carriages, ten horses, four valets chosen for their virility and 
excellence of member, all the other appurtenances of a very great household, and
after salaries and upkeep had been deducted I was left with a balance of two 
million to throw away on trifles of one kind or another. You will concede, I believe,
that something is to be said for the way I had managed my affairs.

Would you like my daily life described?

I rose every day at ten. Until eleven I saw nobody except intimate friends; 
from then until one, my toilette, at which all my retinue assisted; promptly at one
o’clock I gave private audience to those individuals who came to solicit my favors,
or to the Minister when he happened to be in Park. At two I hied myself to 
Barrière-Blanche where, every day, I would find awaiting me what had been 
delivered by tasteful and conscientious procuresses, to wit: four new men, and 
four new women, with whom I would very wantonly, very amply, indulge my 
caprices. To obtain some idea of the objects I used to receive there, you have 
only to know that not one of them cost me less than twenty-five louis, and I 
frequently paid double that; nor is there any imagining what of the delicious and 
rare was purveyed to me in either sex; at these trysts I more than once met 
women and girls of rank and the highest station; sweet were the joys, yes, 
elaborate were the pleasures I tasted in that house. I would return to town at four
in the afternoon, and always dine with friends. I shall not speak of my board: 
nowhere in Paris was there anything to match it for splendor, for delicacy, for 
profusion; and yet I was a hard mistress to my cooks and wine steward, 
demanding that they ever outdo themselves; but I need not press the point, you 
are familiar enough with my extreme intemperance. It is perhaps a mild vice, 
gourmandise; it is one of my favorites nonetheless; for I have always been of the 
opinion that unless you carry this one to excess you can never properly enjoy the 
others. After those royal repasts I used to go out to the theater; or entertain the 
Minister if it was one of his evenings.

Regarding my wardrobe, my gems, my furniture, and my savings, though at 
this period I had been scarcely two years with Monsieur de Saint-Fond, I believe 
four million would be a low figure for the value of the lot; I had half that sum in 
gold, and used sometimes, after Clairwil’s example, to fling up the lids of my 
treasure chests and masturbate frenziedly: I love crime, and see! I would gloat, 
discharging over the thought, see, here at my disposal are all the means I need 
for committing it. Oh, my good friends, ’tis a very sweet idea and what seas of 
fuck have I not spilled entertaining it. Did I desire a new piece of jewelry, another 
dress, anything, and my lover—who disliked having me wear the same thing more
than twice—would satisfy me immediately; and in return for all that nothing was 
required of me save lawless conduct, lechery, libertinage, and prodigious care in 
arranging the Minister’s frolics. It was thus that by flattering my tastes I found 
them gratified, every one; through my surrender to every sensual irregularity my 
senses were kept in a constant drunken exhilaration.

But such comforts, such joys—what was my moral situation as a result of 
them? Ah, of this I am reluctant to speak, and yet however I must. The terrific 
libertinage I practiced day in and day out had so rusted and decayed the workings
of my soul, to such a degree had I been envenomed by the pernicious advice, the 
vicious examples I was fairly deluged with from all sides and all the time, that I 
declare to you, I do not think I’d have given a penny out of my hoard to rescue 
someone on the brink of starvation. Indeed, about this time a dreadful famine 
broke out in the vicinity of my country home; all the folk in those parts were 
reduced to the very worst distress: I recall hideous scenes, girls sold their bodies 
by the roadside, waifs were abandoned, there were several suicides; droves of 
people came begging to my door; I held firm and deliberately and impudently 
reasserted my uncharitable disposition by laying out fabulous sums for the 
improvement of my lawns and shrubberies. But how can one possibly bestow 
alms, was my insolent rejoinder, when one is in the midst of having mirrored 
boudoirs built in one’s park, and one’s paths beautified by sculptured Cupids, 
Aphrodites, and Sapphos? Everything that could move a heart of stone was 
exhibited to my tranquil gaze; it got them nowhere, steadfast I remained: 
weeping mothers, naked infants, ghostlike figures wasted by hunger, I simply 
smiled, shook my head, and throughout those trying months slept as soundly as 
ever before and ate with an increased appetite. Taking stock of my sensations, I 
discovered that what I was feeling bore out my teachers’ predictions perfectly: 
instead of a disagreeable sentiment of pity, there was kindled in me a certain 
restlessness, a commotion produced by the evil I fancied I was doing in turning 
those wretches away empty-handed, and within my nerves there was a certain 
rush of heat much like the blaze ignited in us whenever we violate a law or 
subdue a prejudice. I suddenly recognized how delightful putting these principles 
into practice could be; and I understood that if the spectacle of misery caused by 
unkind fate can be sublimely voluptuous for those with minds trained and 
enriched by such doctrines as had been inculcated in mine, then the spectacle of 
misery for which one has oneself been responsible must surely intensify this 
pleasure; as you know, mine is a fertile imagination, it now began to run riot. The
logic of the thing was eminently simple: I reaped pleasure merely from denying to
the destitute the wherewithal that would have brought them respite; ah, what 
might I not experience from being the direct and sole cause of that destitution? If,
said I, it is sweet to refuse to do good, it must be heavenly to do evil. I 
summoned up this idea, played with it during those critical moments when the 
flesh catches fire from the sparks emitted by an excited brain; moments when 
one is particularly apt to heed the voice of desires become that much more 
strident, that much more imperious with the receding into unimportance, and 
finally into nullity, of all else. The dream once dreamt and over, one may subside 
again into prudence and sobriety—it requires little or no effort. Purely intellectual 
wrongs are always easily effaced. They harm no one; but, unfortunately, the thing
is likely to go farther. Ah, one says to oneself, what shall the deed itself do to me 
if the mere grating of the thought upon my nerves has been able to affect them 
so keenly? The temptation is enormous: one makes the accursed dream come 
true, and its existence is a crime.

Less than a mile from my chateau stood a humble cottage belonging to a 
peasant, one Martin Des Granges; in this world he had little else beyond his eight 
children and a wife who for kindliness and cheerfulness and thrift was a veritable 
treasure to the man; would you believe it? this asylum of poverty and virtue 
excited my fury and wickedness. Very true it is, to this I bear witness, that crime 
is a delectable thing; very certain it is that the flame it darts through our whole 
being is what sets alight the torch of lust, that it requires but the thought of crime
to hurl us into a lubricious ferment.

I had taken Elvire with me the day I visited that place, and with me also I had 
some phosphorus in a jar; upon arriving, I instructed that witty little jade to go in 
to entertain the family, saying I would join her in a minute; whereupon I slipped 
off and buried the combustible amidst the hay in the loft above the room where 
the wretches slept. I climb back down, enter, the youngsters kiss me, we play 
games together, the mother and I chat about the details of her household. The 
father asks if he may offer me some refreshment? He endeavors to be as 
hospitable as his dreadfully scanty means permit. … I am not for all that swerved 
an inch from my purpose, not in the least melted; what are my emotions? I 
inspect them and find it is not a tedious pity that pervades me, but a delicious 
irritation which racks me to the core of my being: a mere touch and I could 
discharge ten times over. I distribute renewed caresses to every member of this 
wonderful family into whose midst I have just sown the seeds of murder; my fell 
deceit is at its height; the blacker grows my gratuitous treachery, the more 
violent the itch in my cunt. To the mother I give some ribbons, candy to the brats;
we take our leave, start for home; but I am in such a state of excitement, of very 
delirium, that I feel my knees ready to buckle and must beg Elvire to come to my 
relief. We turn off the road into a thicket, I raise my skirts, I spread my legs … she
puts her hand to my sex, has scarce inserted her fingers when I discharge; never 
before had I known anything like those terrible moments. “What ails you, 
Madame?” asked Elvire, unaware of what I had just done.

“Don’t speak to me, frig me … frig me,” said I, thrusting my tongue into her 
mouth, “I am fearfully overwrought this morning, that’s all. Here, let me have 
your cunt, let me toy with it, and let’s both of us drown in rivers of fuck.”

“But what can have happened?”

“Horrors, my dove … atrocities, and sperm flows marvelously, believe me, 
when its spurts are started but of the womb of abomination. So frig me, Elvire, 
frig me, dear heart, I have got to discharge.”

And the creature kneels, glides her head between my thighs, her tongue glides
into my cunt, thrills there. “Oh fuck!” I gasp, “’tis even so, ’tis so, you seize me 
well….”

And my seed washes her lips, her nose, drips down her chin…. We pursue our 
way.

I reached home in an indescribable exaltation, it was as though every violent 
impulse, every instinct, every vice were allied in an effort to debauch my very 
soul, I swam in a kind of intoxication … in a kind of rage, there was nothing I 
might not’ have done, no lewd act I could not have soiled myself with. Bitterly I 
regretted that my blow had fallen upon only a tiny fraction of humanity, great was
the evil in me, great enough to have laid all Nature waste; I dashed into one of 
my boudoirs and, naked, flung myself upon a couch, I commanded Elvire to send 
“me in every man she could get hold of, I bade them do everything they wished 
with me provided they insulted me, reviled me, treated me like the vilest whore. I
was fingered, pawed, prodded, spat upon, beaten, slapped; my cunt, my ass, my 
breasts, my mouth were all used, befouled; would that I had had twenty other 
altars to present for their offerings. Some of those men left and fetched back their
friends, individuals I had never seen before, I opened my holes to them, refused 
no one, was the harlot to everyone, anyone, and fuck gushed in torrents out of 
me. One of the more uncouth of those studs—I had been baiting him—declared it 
was not upon a bed he wanted to fuck me, but in the mire; I let him drag me 
bodily into a pigsty and there, in slime and excrement, I flung my legs apart and 
challenged him to do his worst. The knave performed brutally and let me go only 
after having shat all over my face … and I was happy. The more, the deeper I 
wallowed in ordure and infamy, the greater grew my excitement, the fiercer my 
joy. In less than two hours I was tupped twenty times over, and Elvire never 
stopped frigging me throughout it all, and nothing, no, nothing alleviated my 
pangs, my sufferings hideous and delicious and provoked by the thought 
constantly in my mind, that of the crime I had just perpetrated. Going upstairs to 
my dressing room, we noticed a ruddy glow in the distance.

“Madame, come look!” Elvire called, opening a window. “Look, Madame, a 
fire—over there, do you see? In that direction, where we were this morning—”

And I tottered back, to fall nearly unconscious upon the sofa. We were alone, 
that pretty girl and I. For perhaps five minutes, or ten, she frigged me; and then I
sat up, thrusting Elvire away.

“Do you not hear shouts?” I demanded. “Come, let’s not tarry here, a rare 
spectacle awaits us outside…. Elvire, I am responsible for this—”

“Madame?”

“Come, I say, let’s go gloat together over my triumph. I simply must see it all, 
I must savor it all, I don’t want to miss a detail.”

We set out as we were, the two of us—our hair disheveled, our dresses 
rumpled, weariness and delight traced in our features: we resembled a pair of 
bacchantes. Stopping twenty paces away from that scene of horror, behind a little
hillock which hid us from the sight of others, I sink again into the embrace of an 
Elvire almost as aroused as I: we cunt-suck each other by the light of homicidal 
flames my ferocity has ignited, we discharge to the sound of shrill screams 
coming from a woe and anguish that are my confection; and never has woman 
been happier than was I.

At last we regain our feet and stand awhile surveying that panorama of 
destruction, then move closer to pore over the details. Great is my distress at 
concluding, as I count the corpses, that two members of the family must have 
escaped me. I examine the charred bodies one by one, recognize each: these 
people were alive this morning, I muse, and now, but a few hours later, here they
are, dead; killed by me. And why did I do it? Out of fun. To spill my fuck. So this 
is what murder is! A little organized matter disorganized; a few compositional 
changes, the combination of some molecules disturbed and broken, those 
molecules tossed back into the crucible of Nature who, re-employing the selfsame
materials, will cast them into something else so that in but a day or so they shall 
reappear in the world again, only guised a little differently; this they call 
murder—truly now, in all seriousness, I ask myself, where is the wrong in 
murder? This woman here, that infant there—in the eyes of Nature does either 
count for more than, say, a housefly or a maggot? I deprive the one of life, so 
doing I give life to the other—how can this be made out an offense to Nature?

This little revolt of the intellect against the heart set the electrical globules in 
my nerves briskly into motion, and once again my companion found her fingers 
wetted by my running cunt. I honestly do not know to what lengths I might not 
have gone had I been alone. Who can tell, possessed of a perfectly Caribbean 
cruelty, I’d perhaps have fallen to devouring my victims: there they lay, strewn 
invitingly upon the ground: none but the father and one of the children had got 
away, the mother and the seven others had perished; and as I stared down at 
them, felt, palpated them, I repeated to myself: I have done this, I. These 
murders were planned by me, consummated by me, they are my handiwork, my 
creation … and I discharged afresh.

Of the cottage not a stick remained; it was hard to imagine a dwelling had ever
stood there, that human beings had ever inhabited this wilderness.

And now, my friends, what do you fancy was Clairwil’s reaction when she heard
of my feat? She listened to the recital in cold silence, one eyebrow raised; and 
when I was done, she assured me that I had precious little to boast of; indeed 
said she, I had acquitted myself more like a coward than a criminal.

“In the execution of your undertaking I notice several grave defects,” she 
declared, and her comments are worth citing, for they reveal the character of that
unusual woman; “firstly,” she specified, “you proceeded in slipshod style: had 
someone chanced to come along, your gestures, your exuberance, very telltale, 
would have constituted evidence against you. Beware of such loose conduct. 
Ardor, passion—by all means, but keep it inward; outwardly, nonchalance, 
phlegm. Circumscribe, contain the lubricious effects, under pressure their 
temperature mounts.

“Secondly, scope and grandeur are sadly lacking in your conception of the 
thing, which I am obliged to qualify as mean; for you must admit that with a large
town and seven or eight sizable villages plainly visible from your windows, there 
is a timorousness, undue modesty in exerting yourself upon a single house, an 
isolated house in a secluded place furthermore … from fear, one is led to suppose,
lest the flames, by spreading, extend the dimensions of your petty felony: your 
nervousness, your anxiety, in committing it are only too apparent. You spoiled 
your pleasure, for crime’s pleasures brook no restriction; I speak from 
experience: there where free rein is not given the imagination, where the hand is 
stayed by some scruple or consideration, the ecstasy cannot possibly be 
complete, for there always subsists a regret: I could have done more, and I did 
not. And regrets arising from virtue sting worse than those consecutive to crime: 
should he who follows in virtue’s train happen to perform a piece of wickedness, 
he is always able to comfort himself by the thought that a host of good deeds will 
wipe the blot away, and as it is easy to convince oneself of anything one desires 
to believe, his conscience is soon at peace. But for those who travel the path of 
vice matters are not so simple, a missed opportunity is something we cannot 
forgive ourselves because it cannot be compensated by anything; no virtue comes
to our rescue; and the promise we make to do something worse only whets our 
palate for evil, without consoling us for having let a chance of doing it go by.

“Another observation has to be made,” Clairwil went on. “To even the most 
superficial glance your scheme betrays a very glar

ing error; had I been in your place I would surely have brought an action 
against that Des Granges. Nothing simpler than to have had him charged with 
arson and burned at the stake; oh, yes indeed, I would have included that item 
on the program. For are you unaware that when fire breaks out in the house of a 
tenant—and Des Granges is one of your tenants—you have the right to summon 
the authorities and launch an inquiry to determine whether the tenant is the 
culprit? Who knows, perhaps the fellow wished to get rid of his wife and children 
and then go off and play the shiftless beggar somewhere else? The moment he 
bolted from the house you should have had him arrested while attempting flight, 
don’t you see; you spend a few louis collecting witnesses; to begin with, Elvire, 
she was there: she affirms that the very same morning she saw the guilty one 
skulking distractedly about in the barnyard, climbing up to the hayloft, she spoke 
to him, questioned him, got only gibberish for answer; and the courts would have 
done the rest: inside a week you’d have been treated to the voluptuous spectacle 
of your man being burned alive at your gate. Let this be a lesson to you, Juliette, 
profit from it, as soon as the idea for a crime occurs to you, concert its 
amplification, its aggravation; and while putting it into execution, further 
elaborate upon your idea.”

There, my friends, those, textually, are the cruel additions Clairwil would have 
had me join to my miscreancy; and why deny it? deeply stirred by her arguments,
forced to recognize that I had performed shabbily, I promised myself that in the 
future my enterprises would defy criticism. I was aggrieved above all by the 
peasant’s escape; what would I not have given to see him roasted on my 
doorstep! The mere recollection of that loss pains me to this day.

At last came the time appointed for my reception into Clairwil’s club. Its name 
was the Sodality of the Friends of Crime. On the morning of that day my sponsor 
brought for my study a copy of the Sodality’s bylaws; here, let me read them to 
you, I believe you will find them intriguing.

STATUTES OF THE SODALITY OF THE FRIENDS OF CRIME

Deferring to the common usage, the Sodality admits the serviceability of the 
word crime; but makes plain declaration that in its employment thereof with 
reference to any kind of act of whatever sort or color, no condemnatory or 
pejorative sense is ever intended. Thoroughly convinced that man is not free, and
that, bound absolutely by the laws of Nature, all men are slaves of these 
fundamental laws, the Sodality therefore approves and legitimates everything, 
and considers as its most zealous and most estimable Members those who, 
unhesitatingly and unrepentantly, acquit themselves of the greatest number of 
those vigorous actions fools in their weakness call crimes; because it is the 
Sodality’s belief that through accomplishing these actions the individual serves 
Nature, that their performance is dictated by her, and that if such a thing as crime
there be, it is characterized by the reluctance or refusal to do any of the very 
various things Nature may inspire and hence enjoin. The Sodality therefore stands
protectively behind all its Members, guaranteeing all of them aid, shelter, refuge, 
allies, funds, counsel, everything needed to counter the maneuvers of the law; all 
Members who violate it are safeguarded and championed automatically by the 
Sodality, which considers itself above the law because the law is of mortal and 
artificial contrivance, whereas the Sodality, natural in its origin and obediences, 
heeds and respects Nature only.

1. No distinction is drawn among the individuals who comprise the Sodality; 
not that it holds all men equal in the eyes of Nature—a vulgar notion deriving 
from infirmity, want of logic, and false philosophy—but because it is persuaded 
and maintains that distinctions of any kind may have a detrimental influence upon
the Sodality’s pleasures and are certain sooner or later to spoil them.(1)

2. The individual presenting himself for membership in the Sodality must 
forswear whatever religious faith he may happen to be encumbered with; his 
contempt for these crack-brained beliefs and for the fictitious object of worship 
they revolve around will be judged by means of tests to which he ought to expect 
to be put; the penalty of immediate expulsion is prescribed for those who, 
however mildly, and even in the spirit of jest, backslide into these abject 
practices.

3. God, in the view of the Sodality, does not exist; sound evidence of atheism 
is a prerequisite for entry into it; the sole divinity it recognizes is pleasure; to 
pleasure it sacrifices everything; it considers voluptuous activities, all imaginable 
voluptuous activities, and nothing but voluptuous activities, sacred; whatever 
delectates, it considers good; within the Sodality all forms of pleasure-seeking 
and of pleasure-taking are authorized, it frowns on none, there is not one it does 
not applaud, encourage, and promote.

4. The Sodality dissolves all marital ties and ignores those of blood; under its 
roof one should disport indiscriminately with the wife of one’s neighbor as with 
one’s own, should for enjoyment consult one’s own brother, sister, children, 
nephews, quite as one would do with the brothers, sisters, children, nephews of 
somebody else; and any unwillingness to comply with these rules constitutes 
strong grounds for expulsion.

5. A husband is bound to present his wife for admission; a father, his son or 
daughter; a brother, his sister; an uncle, his nephew or niece; etc.

6. Entry into the Sodality is barred to those unable to indicate a minimum 
yearly income of twenty-five thousand livres, dues of membership being ten 
thousand francs per annum. This sum is the equivalent of average estimated costs
per Member, and out of it are paid expenses entailed by the upkeep of the 
Sodality’s seat, rentals, maintenance of the seraglios, carriages and equipages, 
offices, and functionaries’ salaries, outlay for the Assemblies, suppers, and 
lighting; and when the Treasurer reports a favorable balance at year’s end, he 
divides it among his fellow Members; and in that other case where disbursements 
have exceeded revenue, a tax is levied and the deficit made up to the Treasurer, 
whose word in these matters is always accepted without question.

7. Twenty artists and literary figures are to be admitted upon remittance of the
modest fee of a thousand livres per annum; this special consideration is part of 
the Sodality’s policy of patronizing the arts; it regrets that its means do not 
permit it to welcome, at this insignificant price, a larger number of these gifted 
persons to whom it would give every kind of encouragement.

8. The Members of the Sodality, united through it into one great family, share 
all their hardships as they do their joys; they aid one another mutually in all life’s 
various situations; but alms, charities, help extended to widows, orphans, or 
persons in distress are rigorously forbidden, both within the Sodality and above all
without; should proof be brought forward, or the simple suspicion arise, that a 
Member has indulged in such so-called good works, he will be expelled.

9. An emergency fund of thirty thousand livres is kept in constant reserve and 
is at the disposition of any Member who by accident or ill fate finds himself in 
difficulties of whatever sort.

10. The President is elected by ballot, and his period of office is one month; he 
may be of either sex; and presides at twelve Assemblies, whereof there are three 
per week. His duties are to see that the Sodality’s laws are respected, to 
supervise the correspondence executed by a Permanent Committee whose 
chairman is the President. The Treasurer and the Sodality’s two Executive 
Secretaries sit on this Committee; but as with the President, each Executive 
Secretary’s term of office expires after one month.

11. Each Assembly is opened by a speech delivered by one of the Members; 
the tenor of his address is always contrary to polite custom and religion; if it is 
deemed worthy thereof, it is printed forthwith, at the Sodality’s expense, and 
deposited in its Archives.

12. During those hours devoted to corporative frolicking, all Members, male 
and female, are naked; they intermingle, in the melee partners are chosen 
indiscriminately, and there is no such thing as a valid refusal whereby one 
individual would deny his pleasure to another. Once called upon, each individual 
must cooperate instantly, unreservedly, gladly; has he not the right to demand 
the same a few minutes later? Should an individual attempt to shirk his 
obligations toward his brethren, he will be forcefully constrained to fulfill them and
then be driven ignominiously out of the Sodality.

13. During Assembly, no cruel passion, save whipping inflicted upon the 
buttocks only, may be given vent to; the Sodality possesses seraglios, and there 
dangerous passions may be exercised with entire freedom; but when amongst his
fellows each Member must confine himself to crapulous, incestuous, sodomistic, 
and benign merrymaking.

14. The completest confidence reigns among Members of the Sodality; they 
may and ought to avow to one another their tastes, their foibles, chat intimately, 
and employ the exchange of confessions as a further spur to pleasure. Were 
anyone to disclose Sodality secrets, or in one of his fellows to criticize 
ungenerously the failings or predilections which make for the success of his 
pleasure-seeking, he would be expelled Straightway.

15. Hard by the public pleasure hall are located private cells whereunto one 
may repair solitarily to indulge in all the debaucheries of libertinage; these cells 
are available to groups of any size, they are appropriately and fully equipped, and
each contains a youth and a young lass with whom, at all times, Sodality 
Members may execute any passion whatsoever, including those allowed only 
inside the seraglios, for these children being of the same species as the seraglios 
are stocked with, and indeed belonging to the seraglios, they may be treated 
similarly.

16. Eating and drinking carried to any point of gluttony and drunkenness are 
authorized; every Member is assured of assistance while indulging in these as in 
other excesses; all possible measures are taken to facilitate them.

17. No condemnation by a court of law, no public disgrace, no defamation of 
character will disqualify a candidate for admission into the Sodality. Its principles 
being based upon crime, the criminal element poses no threat to it; to the 
contrary. Rejected by the world, these outcasts will find consolations and friends 
in a society which recognizes their value and will always give preference to their 
candidacy. The worse a given individual’s reputation abroad, the more highly he 
will be thought of by the Sodality; very notorious criminals and eminent public 
enemies may be elected to the presidency upon the day of their admission, and 
given the run of the seraglios without prior novitiate.

18. Public confession is made at each of the four major General Assemblies, 
the dates of which coincide with what Catholics call the four great festival days of 
the year; at them each Member is in turn obliged to declare in a loud and clear 
voice by and large everything he has done: if his conduct has been blameless, he 
is reproved; much praise is his if it has been irregular; be it horrible, if he has 
accumulated execrable deeds, then he is rewarded; but in this last case he must 
produce witnesses. The prizes are fixed at ten thousand francs drawn from the 
Treasury.

19. Frequented by Members only, their location known to Members alone, the 
Sodality’s premises are of particular splendor; and surrounded by superb 
grounds. Fires are maintained in all rooms throughout the winter season. 
Assemblies begin at five in the afternoon and last until noon the following day. 
Toward midnight a sumptuous meal is served, refreshments are available at all 
other times.

20. All games and gambling are forbidden during Assembly; devoted to more 
natural forms of recreation, the Sodality frowns upon anything in any way 
conducive to the neglect of libertinage’s divine passions, the only ones capable of 
electrifying the human being.

21. One month is the period of initiation for each newly elected Member; 
during this novitiate he is completely at the disposition of the Sodality, is its toy; 
may not enter the seraglios or enjoy any privilege or consideration. He must 
consent to all such propositions as are made him; failure so to do may incur 
capital punishment.

22. Election to all posts is by secret ballot; factions, cabals, cliques are strictly 
forbidden. These posts are those of President, the two Executive Secretaries, 
Censors, the two Wardens entrusted with government of the seraglios, Treasurer, 
Steward, Bailiff, the two Physicians, two Surgeons, Obstetrician, Master of the 
Chancery under whom are the Scribes, the Printers, the Reviser, and the Censor 
of Texts and Publications, and the Inspector General of admission cards.

23. Men over forty years of age, women over thirty-five are not received by 
the Sodality; once admitted, however, no Member may be expelled on grounds of 
old age.

24. Any member who does not attend a Sodality Assembly during the space of 
a year will be stricken from the roster; obligations public or private, however, 
constitute valid excuse for absence.

25. Any written work attacking polite customs or religion presented by a 
Sodality Member, whether of his production or no, will be deposited at once in the
Library, and the donor will be rewarded therefore, in accordance with the merits 
of the work and his share in its composition.

26. Children resulting from Sodality unions will be, at birth, immediately placed
in the crèche and subsequently in the nursery annexed to the seraglios, later—at 
the age of ten for boys, of seven for girls—to become inmates thereof. But a 
woman addicted to child-bearing will not be tolerated by the Sodality, propagation
being utterly alien to its spirit and aims; true libertinage abhors progeniture; and 
the Sodality therefore disfavors it: female Members will denounce men given to 
this mania and if the latter prove incorrigible, they also will be invited to prepare 
their withdrawal from the Sodality.

27. The President’s duties are to ensure the smooth running of the Assembly. 
Under his orders is the Censor; theirs is the responsibility for maintaining 
decorum and a propitious atmosphere: the calm, the freedom from interference, 
the enthusiasm of agents, the submissiveness of patients; they are, as well, to 
see to the preservation of quiet, moderating laughter and conversations and 
everything else that is incondite and not in the spirit of libertinage or that is 
damaging to it. The President has the highest authority over the seraglios. He 
may not, during his term of office, leave Sodality headquarters unless he appoints
his predecessor to take temporary charge in his absence.

28. Oaths, hard language, and blasphemies in particular are authorized, they 
may be employed upon all occasions. Between Members the familiar thou is 
compulsory.

29. The jealousies, the quarrels, the scenes entailed in love, as well as the 
language of love, endearing expressions, tender ones, etc., are absolutely 
prohibited; all this is detrimental to libertinage, and libertinage is the business to 
which the Sodality is to attend.

30. Dueling has no place in the Sodality, nor roistering, neither do bullies and 
bravoes, they will be expelled mercilessly. Poltroonery is revered here as it was in 
Rome. The coward lives at peace with his fellows; he is quite commonly a libertine
too, such are the people the Sodality wants.

31. The total number of Members may at no time exceed four hundred and in 
so far as that is possible, the proportionate strength of the two sexes will be kept 
equal.

32. Theft is permitted within the bounds of the Sodality; but murder is not, 
except in the seraglios.

33. Members need not bring with them the furnitures, implements, and 
weaponry requisite to libertinage; for the house provides these objects in 
abundance and variety, and they are clean.

34. Repulsive deformities or diseases will not be put up with. Someone so 
afflicted, were he to present himself, would most surely be rejected. And were an 
already admitted Member to fall prey to such misfortunes, he would be asked to 
resign.

35. A Member who contracts the venereal malady will be obliged to retire until 
completely restored, his recovery being vouched for by the house Physician and 
Surgeons.

36. No foreigner will be admitted; provincials are likewise debarred. The 
Sodality exists only for persons resident in Paris and its environs.

37. High birth will in no wise facilitate admission; the essential is to prove one 
has the necessary means alluded to above (Article 6). However pretty a woman 
may be she shall not be accepted unless she possess the required wealth; the 
same will apply to any young man, however handsome.

38. Neither beauty nor youth confers any exclusive privilege in the Sodality; 
privileges would speedily destroy the equality which must prevail there.

39. Death will be the certain fate of any Member who divulges secrets of the 
Sodality, which will have him hunted down no matter where he goes, and at no 
matter what cost.

40. Ease, liberty, impiety, crapulousness, all libertine excesses, all those of 
debauchery, of eating and drinking, in short, of what is known as foul lust, will 
reign supreme during Assembly.

41. One hundred male servants are retained at all times and paid by the 
Sodality; they, youthful and attractive all, may be used to fill passive roles in lewd
scenes; but will never participate actively therein. The Sodality owns sixteen 
vehicles, a corresponding number of teams, has two equerries in its hire and fifty 
outside valets. It has a print shop, type setters, a dozen copyists, and four 
readers; and in addition all the personnel necessitated by the seraglios.

42. No firearms, no sword, no stick may be introduced into the hall reserved 
for pleasure. Before entering, Members leave all they have with them in a 
spacious cloakroom, where trustworthy women relieve them of their clothing and 
are held accountable for it. Adjoining the hall are several public conveniences; 
stationed in each are attendants, girls and boys, ready to be of any service; they 
have syringes, bidets, vessels in the English style, ordinary pots, high-quality 
linens, cloths and swabs, perfumes, and in general everything needed before and 
after the operation or while it is in course. They will lend their tongues upon 
simple request.

43. Under no circumstances does the Sodality intrude or interfere in 
government affairs, nor may any Member. Political speeches are expressly 
forbidden. The Sodality respects the regime in power; and if its attitude toward 
the law is disdainful, that is because it holds as a principle that man is incapable 
of making laws which obstruct or contradict those of Nature; but the disorders of 
its Members, transpiring privately, ought never to scandalize either the governed 
or their governors.

44. Among the facilities offered Sodality Members are two seraglios, they are 
located in the two wings of the main building. One is composed of three hundred 
boys ranging from seven to twenty-five years of age; the other of a like number 
of girls, from five to twenty-one. These creatures are constantly replaced, not a 
week goes by but at least thirty are winnowed out of each seraglio so as to make 
room for fresh accessions: close by is an establishment where new lots are 
trained up to fill gaps in the ranks. Sixty procuresses look after recruitment; and, 
as has been said, there is a Warden for each seraglio. These seraglios are 
agreeable places, comfortably appointed; there, one does exactly what one likes; 
the most ferocious passions are exercised in these sanctuaries where all Sodality 
Members are admitted free of charge; however, a tax of one hundred crowns is 
levied per creature murdered. Those Members who choose to sup in a seraglio are
at liberty to do so; entrance tickets are distributed by the President, who cannot 
refuse them to Members in good standing and who have accomplished their 
month as novices. The extremest subordination on the part of the inmates 
prevails in the seraglios; complaints relative to lack of submissiveness or of 
cooperation will be taken at once to the Warden of the seraglio, or to the 
President, and no time is lost chastising the miscreant, according to the plaintiff’s 
specifications, and you have the right to inflict the penalty yourself, if such things 
amuse you. There are twelve torture chambers per seraglio, where everything is 
at hand for dealing with victims in the most awful, the most unspeakable manner. 
Although each seraglio contains creatures of only one sex, they may be mixed at 
will and to taste, males being fetched into the midst of females, or females into 
the midst of males. There are in addition twelve dungeons per seraglio, for the 
use of those who enjoy subjecting victims to the slow death of incarceration. 
Inmates of the two seraglios may not be removed either to the pleasure halls or 
to a Member’s personal residence. The lateral pavilions housing the seraglios 
contain menageries as well, where animals of every species await the Member 
given to bestiality; this is a simple passion and altogether natural, and must 
hence be respected like all the rest.

Three complaints brought against any one subject suffice to have him 
removed. Three requests that he be put to death suffice to have him dispatched 
without further ado. In each seraglio are four executioners, four jailers, eight 
whippers, four flayers, four mid-wives, and four surgeons all at the orders of 
Members who, in the heat of passion, might have need of the ministry of such 
personages; it being understood of course that the midwives and surgeons are 
present not by any means to render humanitarian aid, but to assist in tortures. As
soon as a seraglio inmate manifests the slightest symptom of illness he is sent to 
the hospital, never again to return to the house.

Each seraglio is surrounded on three sides by high walls. All the windows are 
barred, and the inmates remain indoors, always. Between the building and the 
high wall shielding it is a space ten feet wide, forming an alley bordered by 
cypress trees; Sodality Members sometimes take seraglio inmates for walks along
this secluded pathway, to indulge with them in pleasures more somber and often 
still more frightful. At the foot of a number of these trees are holes, pits into 
which a victim may be made to disappear; suppers are held under these trees 
from time to time, and occasionally in these very pits: whereof some are 
extremely deep, descent into them being possible by means only of hidden 
stairways, and in the lower reaches of which one may accomplish every 
imaginable infamy, the same stillness, the same silence reigning there as in the 
uttermost bowels of the earth.

45. No candidate will be admitted without first signing both the oath he will be 
made to repeat, and the list of obligations corresponding to his sex.

The time came to leave. I was adorned like the goddess of daylight; Clairwil, 
my sponsor, was in a gay mood and out of coquetry had dressed herself to look 
like a girl of fourteen. En route she reminded me of the extreme docility I was to 
show in the face of all the Sodality members’ desires, and she also said that as 
regards the seraglios I would simply have to be patient for, as a novice, it would 
be a month before I could make use of them, no exception was ever allowed to 
the rules.

The house to which we were driving was in one of the bleakest and least 
populous quarters of Paris; it took nearly an hour to get there. My heart beat 
excitedly when our carriage entered a dark courtyard virtually enclosed by tall 
black trees, the gates shut immediately after we were inside. A servant was 
awaiting us as we stepped from the carriage, and he escorted us into the hall. 
Clairwil was obliged to surrender her clothing: I, however, was to undress later, in
the course of the ceremony. This was a veritable palace, superbly lit; in the 
entrance and so placed on the floor that one could not avoid treading upon it was 
a big crucifix sprinkled with hosts and at whose farther end was the Bible, which 
one had to step upon as well; I was not daunted, you may be sure, by any of 
these obstacles.

I went in. An exceedingly handsome woman of thirty-five was presiding, she 
was nude, her coiffure was magnificent; those to her left and right where she sat 
on the platform of honor were naked also, they were two men and a woman. 
Over three hundred members had already arrived and there they were, all naked;
some were encunting, some masturbating, some flagellating, some cunt-sucking, 
some sodomizing, some discharging, and all that most serenely and amidst 
perfect calm: not a sound was to be heard save the noises necessitated by the 
various circumstances. Some were strolling about in pairs, some alone; many 
were watching the crowd and while gazing at spectacles fingering themselves 
voluptuously. There were several groups, some of them composed of up to eight 
and even ten persons; many of men only; no fewer of women exclusively; of 
several women between two men; and of several men occupying two or three 
women. Extremely pleasant incense burned in great cassolettes, emitting heady 
vapors whose irresistible effect was a sort of sensual languor. I saw a trio emerge 
together from one of the latrines.

And then the President rose and in a quiet voice said that she would like to 
have the attention of the assembly for a moment. Activity soon ceased and a few 
minutes later I found myself surrounded by all the members present; never had I 
been so closely scrutinized nor by so many people; each delivered an opinion, and
I believe I can assert that the view generally expressed was flattering; there was 
whispering, glances, nods were exchanged, and clearly all sorts of little plots were
being hatched against me, and I shuddered at the thought that I was about to 
have to subject myself to all the desires roused by my youth and my charms. At 
length the President bade me step up and stand on the dais opposite her; and 
there, a balustrade separating me from the very numerous company, I was upon 
her instructions divested of my raiments by two servants who in less time than it 
takes to tell had off every stitch I was wearing. When the servants withdrew and 
left me absolutely naked before the bold stares of those several hundred 
spectators, I was, I do admit, somewhat embarrassed; but that feeling was 
short-lived, my impudence was restored at once by the applause I heard ring out.
These, such as I shall recite them to you, were the questions the President put 
me; and my answers to them:

“Do you promise to live your whole life long in libertinage of the very 
extremest order?”

“I swear it.”

“Do you esteem all lewd acts, whatever they be and including the most odious,
to be simple and natural?”

“They are all as one to me, thus do I consider them.”

“Would you commit each and every one of them if moved by the slightest 
desire?”

“I would indeed. All of them.”

“Do you declare your intention to adhere strictly to the Sodality’s statutes as 
they have been read out to you by your sponsor?”

“I do.”

“And are you prepared to accept the penalties prescribed therein should you 
prove refractory?”

“I am.”

“Swear it.’-’

“I swear.”

“Are you married?”

“No.”

“Are you a maid?”

“No.”

“Have you been embuggered?”

“Often.”

“Fucked mouthwise?”

“Often.”

“Whipped?”

“Upon occasion.”

“What is your name?”

“Juliette.”

“Your age?”

“I am eighteen.”

“Have you been frigged by women?”

“Many times.”

“Have you committed crimes?”

“A few.”

“Stolen?”

“Yes.”

“Attempted the life of a human being?”

“Aye, I have.”

“Do you promise never to swerve from the path you have followed until now?”

“I do swear it.”

Here a new burst of applause.

“Will you bring into the Sodality all those related to you by bonds of kinship?”

“I shall.”

“Do you agree never to reveal the secrets of the Sodality?”

“I shall never reveal them, I swear it.”

“Do you promise to exhibit the completest indulgence toward all the caprices 
and all the lewd whims of all Sodality members?”

“I promise it.”

“Whom do you prefer, men or women?”

“Where friggery is concerned, I am very fond of women; where fucking, I have
a passion for men.”

My naïveté brought forth a wave of laughter from the corporation.

“What think you of the lash?”

“I like to use it and to have it used upon me.”

“Of the two pleasures a woman can procure, which do you prefer, cunt-fucking 
or sodomy?”

“It has befallen me to disappoint the man who encunted me, but never him by 
whom I was bum-fucked.”

This reply was much appreciated also.

“And your attitude toward oral pleasures?”

“I adore them.”

“Do you like to have your cunt licked?”

“Infinitely.”

“And do you lick well the cunts of others?”

“With industry and enjoyment and, I have been told, with art.”

“It may then be presumed that you enjoy sucking pricks?”

“Draining them.”

“You swallow?”

“I gorge myself.”

“Have you had offspring?”

“No, none.”

“Do you intend to refrain from having them?”

“I shall do everything in my power to avoid them.”

“You therefore dislike progeniture?”

“I detest it.”

“Were you perchance to become pregnant, would you have the courage to 
abort?”

“Certainly.”

“Has your sponsor with her the sum constituting your entrance fee?”

“Yes.”

“Are you wealthy?”

“Exceedingly.”

“And have you ever devoted any of your money to charity?”

“Of course not.”

“Nor have you ever performed a religious gesture since childhood?”

“Not to my knowledge.”

Clairwil handed the fee over to the Executive Secretary from whom in return 
she received a small brochure; I was instructed to read it aloud. This printed 
document was headed by the title Instructions to Women Admitted into the 
Sodality of the Friends of Crime.

From a drawer Madame de Lorsange took an envelope, opened it. “I have kept 
the paper,” said she, “for it is interesting. Listen to its contents:”(2)

The estate or condition into which was born she who is to sign this matters not
in the least, she is a woman, and as such created for the pleasures of man. It 
were hence seeming to prescribe to her a mode of comportment which would 
enable her to make the rendering of her services advantageous to her purse and 
agreeable to her fleshly needs. We shall suppose her married. For those who, 
though unmarried, live nevertheless with a man, whether as his mistress or as his
whore, are bound by the very same chains as those who exist in wedlock’s irons, 
and they will be able to employ the following recommendations to similar 
purpose, that is, the escaping from those chains or the lightening of them; 
wherefore note will be taken that the word man as used here generically means 
lover, husband, or keeper, or in fine any individual arrogating to himself rights to a
woman whatever her sort, because, be she in possession of millions, yet she must
still earn money from her body, the first law for all women being never to fuck 
save through libertinage or for the sake of gain; and as she is often obliged to pay
those who please her, she must accumulate the necessary reserves therefor, by 
means of her prostitutions to those others who do not please her; it being fully 
understood that all that follows concerns her behavior in society only, the Statutes
she having just sworn to observe and uphold fixing her behavior within the 
confines of the Sodality.

1. To attain to the apathy that must be preserved, she will, regardless of 
whether it be for money she fucks or for pleasure, take constant care to keep her 
heart inaccessible to love; for if she fucks for pleasure, she’ll obtain little if in love,
love being the veritable and certain kiss of death to enjoyment: her inevitable 
concern to give pleasure to her lover will prevent her from tasting any herself; 
and if she fucks for money, if in love she will never dare squeeze it from her 
beloved; which, however, ought to be her unique object and occupation with the 
man who pays her.

2. Eschewing all metaphysical sentiments, she will always therefore accord 
preference to him who, if it be for pleasure she fucks, erects quickest and most 
sizably, has the prettiest prick, or the hardest; and if it be for gain she fucks, to 
him who fees her most amply.

3. She must scrupulously and at all times avoid such personages as are called 
fops, idle fellows, dancing masters, and the like, that dronish breed pays as poorly
as it fucks; let her resort rather to valers, stableboys, porters, drudges, butchers, 
such are the breeches energy inhabits, such souls keep secrets safe; menials are 
plentiful, moreover, they can be changed like skirts, and with never a moment’s 
fear of an indiscretion.

4. Whatever be the man into whose clutches she falls, let her take care not to 
consider his proprietorship exclusive; fidelity, an infantile habit and romantic 
sentiment, can bring about nothing but the downfall of a woman, can be nothing 
but the cause of woes without end, and never the source of a single pleasure; and
indeed, why should she be faithful, since, and she may be very sure of it, in all 
the world there is no such thing as a faithful man? It is ridiculous, is it not, that 
the more fragile, the weaker sex, the one forever open to every enticement into 
every pleasure, the one whose surrender thereto is authorized by daily and 
manifold seductions—absurd, is it not, that it should be this sex that resists 
temptation while the other has as means for evil-doing nothing but his unaided 
solitary wickedness! And more, what’s the use to a woman of her fidelity? If her 
man loves her truly, he must be of sufficient delicacy to tolerate all her failings, 
and even to share vicariously in the delights she procures herself and to rejoice 
therein; if he loves her not, a silly creature she, who would be bound utterly to 
someone who deceives her day in and day out; woman’s infidelities, faults if you 
wish, are natural, those of a man proceed from his duplicity and his viciousness; 
the species of woman we have in mind, that is, a healthy and intelligent woman, 
will hence spurn no occasion to be unfaithful, rather she will seek such occasions 
and exploit them as often as possible, and to the full.

5. Deceit is a characteristic no woman can forego, it has ever been the weapon
of the weak; always confronted by her superior, how shall she withstand 
oppression unless she have frequent recourse to lies and imposture? Therefore, 
let her fearlessly use these arms, Nature furnished them to her in order that she 
have some defense against her enemies; men wish to be dupes, an agreeable 
illusion is easier for them to swallow than a bitter reality; and so ought she not 
disguise her wrongs instead of proclaiming them?

6. A woman should never appear to have a character of her own, she must, 
artfully, borrow that belonging to this or that person whom it is to her greatest 
interest to flatter at the moment, whether it be for the sake of her lust or her 
greed; seeing to it nevertheless that this flexibility does not deprive her of the 
energy essential for plunging into all such sorts of misdemeanors and crimes as 
are pleasing to her passions or apt to serve them, examples being adultery, 
incest, infanticide, poisonings, robbery, murder, all those, in fine, which may be to
her liking and which, behind the mask of deceit and the treachery we recommend 
to her, she may undertake without fear, pause, or regret, because Nature placed 
these impulses in woman’s heart and only false principles acquired along with 
education prevent her from acting in accordance with them every day, as she 
ought to do.

7. Far from alarming her, let the most extensive, the most sustained, the most 
crapulous libertinage become the basis of her most cherished occupations; if she 
lends an ear to Nature, she will discover that from her she has received very 
pronounced leanings, very violent ones, toward this sort of pleasure, and there 
being no grounds here for fear and fewer yet for restraint, she ought to indulge 
herself therein constantly: the more she fucks, the better she answers Nature’s 
expectations of her. Nature is not to be outraged save by continence.(3)

8. Whatever the act of debauchery her man may propose to her, let her never 
balk; readiness and good will are her surest means for maintaining a hold over 
him she wishes to keep. A man soon wearies of a woman’s favors; what happens 
if she lacks the ability to revive his interest? He ceases to care for her, begins 
next to loathe her, and abandons her shortly afterward;

but he who remarks a woman devoted to the study of his tastes, to 
anticipating his desires, to kindling and to satisfying them; ah! that man, finding 
the woman in his possession always new, is much more apt to settle down to 
contenting himself with her; the woman is now in a position to deceive him, and 
deceiving her man is the fondest and the most unrelentingly pursued objective of 
the individual belonging to the sex whose duties we are sketching here.

9. Let this charming individual very assiduously avoid an air of prudishness and
of modesty when she is with her man; few indeed they are who appreciate such 
posings, and great is the risk of promptly alienating those who are repelled by 
them. Let her simulate them in public, if she deems this imposture necessary, 
anything in the direction of hypocrisy is to be recommended: it is one further 
means to deceit, and she should neglect none of them.

10. She cannot be too strongly urged to avoid pregnancies, either by making 
extensive use of those various manners of fucking which deflect the seed away 
from the vessel where conception occurs, or by destroying the foetus once she 
suspects its existence. Pregnancy is telltale, spoils the figure, endangers the 
health, is bad from every point of view; let her indulge, preferably, in antiphysical 
pleasure, this delicious form of it assures her simultaneously greater enjoyment 
and greater safety, nearly all women who have tried it will have no other; the 
thought, moreover, of the enormously increased pleasure they thus give men 
ought surely, and here we consider their amour-propre alone, to spur them to 
adopt it exclusively.

11. Let a very hardened heart be her protection against a sensibility which is 
certain to be her undoing; a woman susceptible of sympathies must expect 
nothing but the worst, for weaker, more delicate, thinner-skinned than men, she 
will be rent much more cruelly by all that assails this sensibility; whereupon she 
may bid all pleasure farewell. Her complexion moves her to lust; if, owing to this 
excess of sensibility we are seeking to destroy, she enslaves herself to one man 
only, as of that moment she deprives herself of all the charms of libertinage, the 
libertinage which, in view of the way Nature has constructed her, alone befits her, 
can alone render her truly happy.

12. Let her meticulously avoid any practice of religion; these infamies which 
she ought long ago to have spat upon can only, as they affright her conscience, 
recall her to a state of virtue she shall not re-enter without being forced to 
renounce all her habits and all her pleasures; those frightful platitudes are not 
worth the sacrifice they demand; and like the dog in the fable, she will as she 
chases after them relinquish the reality for the appearance. Atheistic, cruel, 
impious, libertine, wanton, insatiable, a sodomite, a tribade, incestuous, 
vindictive, bloodthirsty, hypocritical, and false—such by and large is the 
description of the woman who will find her rightful place in the Sodality of the 
Friends of Crime, such are the vices she will have need of if she would find 
happiness within the Sodality.

The spirited reading I delivered of these precepts convinced the assembly I 
had taken them quite to heart, and amidst claps and hurrahs I stepped down into 
the press.

The couples distracted from their proceedings by the rites of my admission now
fell back to their merrymaking, and I was soon under assault; at this point I lost 
view of Clairwil and was not to see her again until supper.

First to hail me was a gentleman of fifty.

“By Jesus, I’m blind if you don’t have the look of a whore,” he exclaimed, 
steering me toward a couch, “and you talk like one, too. I liked your style, slut, it 
put my prick in the air.”

So saying the lecher encunts me. He scrapes away for a quarter of an hour, the
while kissing me fervently; then, claimed by a woman who plucks him straight off 
my belly, he deserts me without having discharged. It’s next a lady in her sixties 
who approaches and, thrusting me back upon the couch before I can rise, she 
frigs me and has me frig her at great length. Three or four men have been 
watching us; one of them suddenly moves in and embuggers the matron, who 
lets forth a screech of pleasure. Another of the men, noticing I had been entering 
into a sweat beneath the old Lesbian’s fingerings, had offered me his prick to 
suck; and now that the woman leaves off toying with me, the rascal glides from 
my mouth to my cunt; he had the prettiest prick in the world and wielded it like a 
god; a girl steals it away from me and stows it impetuously into her slit; my rival 
nods to me, I answer the summons and she sets to cunt-licking me: she got his 
fuck from the man whom I’d hoped to drain, and by and by she got mine too. A 
pair of youths sauntered up and joining us formed the most pleasant group, 
encunting us both; my companion went off with the lad who had just served her, 
leaving me alone for a moment. Here now was a personage I recognized as a 
bishop for whom I had toiled in the past when with Madame Duvergier; he 
encunts me also, after having me piss on his face. The next to come, and this 
ecclesiastic was also a familiar face, popped his member into my mouth and let fly
therein. A very engaging young thing arrives to have herself frigged, I suck her 
with all my heart; her heaving flanks are caught firmly in midflight by a man of 
about forty, who bum-stuffs her; it is not long before the libertine has done the 
same to me, while tupping he reviled us most energetically, calling us nuns, 
cunt-suckers, and as he sodomized the one he spanked the behind of the other.

“What are you doing to these two buggeresses?” asked a well-made young 
man who strode up then and socratized him on the spot; “take that, villain,” he 
went on, “it’s not woman-ass that will cure what ails you.”

Once again I was left to myself and was recovering my breath when an elderly 
man presented himself, he had a fistful of withes and meant to warm my hind 
parts therewith and to have me warm his prick.

“You’re the one they admitted tonight, are you not?” he began.

“I am.”

“A pity I haven’t come across you until now,” said he, “I have been busy in a 
seraglio. You’ve got a damned pretty ass, bend over, let me get into it.”

And he stormed triumphantly through the gate, I got his fuck. A delightful 
young man appeared and dealt with me in the same way, though he lashed me 
far more stoutly; next, one after the other, a procession of ten persons, six of 
them men of the law and four men of God; they all fucked me bumwise. I was 
quite afire, I repaired to a public convenience: as women were using only those 
where men were in attendance, it was a lad who, after settling me upon the 
throne and helping me off again, asked if he could lend me his tongue. By way of 
reply I thrust my ass at his nose, and so pleasantly did he clean it that fuck 
escaped me. Returning to the assembly hall I remarked some men waiting about, 
apparently to waylay women emerging from the privies; and indeed one of them 
steps up and asks leave to kiss my ass, I wheel it about, his tongue probes a 
moment, he straightens up, and from his sorrowful expression I divine his 
disappointment at finding the cupboard so bare. It is without a word he hastens 
away from me to join a youth just then entering the same privy; and I profit from
a brief respite to survey the scene. Believe me when I say that there, in that 
spacious room, the over-all spectacle was one such as distanced anything the 
most lascivious imagination could possibly conceive in the course of threescore 
years: what a wealth of voluptuous attitudes! how many curious doings, what a 
variety of tastes and preferences!

Oh, great God, I murmured, how wondrous indeed is Nature, how splendid, 
and how delicious are these, all the passions she gives us.

But everywhere my eye roved, it was to be amazed at the same extraordinary 
state of affairs: save for the utterances incidental to the action, sometimes shrill 
exclamations of pleasure, and much blasphemy, sometimes loud, there was no 
other sound, one could have heard a pin drop. Over all that was astir the most 
entire order reigned; were some altercations to arise, and it happened very 
rarely, a gesture from the President or the Censor restored peace and quiet in a 
trice; the most decent activities could not have transpired amidst greater calm. 
And thus I was made quickly to realize that, of all the things there are in the 
world, the passions are those that command the greatest respect from human 
beings.

Men and women in ever growing numbers were beginning to remove to the 
seraglios; tickets were being distributed by the President, a smile upon her lips. I 
was now had at by several women; then by several more; I frigged with no fewer 
than thirty-two of them, a good half of whom were past forty: they sucked me, 
fucked me frontwise and behind with dildoes, one had me piss into her gullet 
while I lapped her cunt, another suggested we shit on each other’s bubs, she 
larded mine generously, I was’ unable to repay her in kind, unfortunately; while a 
man labored in his asshole, a second man gobbled up the excrement steaming on
my chest; and after that he shat there in turn, as he did so discharging into the 
mouth of him by whom he had just been sodomized.

The President developed a sudden craving for me; she appointed a man to 
relieve her at her post, and we came to grips: kissed each other, tongued each 
other, sucked and caressed each other nigh to death. With the exception of 
Clairwil, never had I seen a woman discharge so abundantly nor so lewdly; her 
favorite stunt was to receive a bum-fucking the while, her cunt crushed upon a 
woman’s face, that woman sucked her and she herself cunt-sucked another 
woman: we went brilliantly through this exercise, and the whore resumed her 
chair.

Back came the men, in force: among this second wave I found few encunters 
but buggers aplenty, an occasional masturbater, and a dozen or so 
mouth-fuckers; one of the latter had himself pumped by a youth while snuffling 
under my armpits, licking them softly ever and anon, which procured me a very 
pleasant sensation. I was given five or six floggings; three or four rectal 
injections, which I flushed into the mouths of those who had administered them; I
was got to fart, there were bidders for my spittle; I spent thirty whole minutes 
sticking thousands of pins into one squire’s buttocks and balls, and thus 
bestudded did he keep himself for the rest of the evening; the mania of another 
was to run his tongue over a woman’s body, he was two hours lapping my eyes 
and mouth and ears and nostrils and between my toes, and finally inserted his 
tongue in my asshole, and discharged. Several women insisted upon fucking me 
with great, massive dildoes; one led up a man and had me heat his prick by 
chafing it upon her asshole, and next required me to push the fuck into it with the
tip of my finger; a dear little creature utterly besmeared my buttocks with her 
shit, behind her stood a middle-aged man, he embuggered her while eating the 
mard clean off my ass; I was informed they were father and daughter. There were
other such couples; I beheld brothers embuggering their sisters; fathers 
encunting their daughters; mothers fucked by their children; in a word, every 
possible scene of incest, of adultery, of sodomy, of lechery, of whoring, of 
foulness, of impiety, each under a hundred various forms and a hundred various 
colors took place before my eyes, and surely at no bacchanal of old was there 
ever such a concurrence of so much nastiness and so much infamy.

Weary of the victim’s part, I was eager to play an active role in my turn: I 
intercepted half a dozen young men whose pricks attracted me for size, and who 
now in this sector, now in that, and sometimes in both at once, fucked me steadily
for nearly two hours. At the close of that episode a venerable abbot had himself 
frigged on my clitoris by his niece, a ravishing creature; I sucked her cunt; and a 
handsome young fellow must kiss my behind while he embuggered his mother. 
Two pretty sisters got me between them, one frigged my cunt as the other 
fluttered about my ass; I discharged, quite unaware that their papa was all that 
time encunting them alternately. Another father had me embuggered by his son 
and in the meantime enjoyed the boy in the same manner; and subsequently 
sodomized me himself while enduring at the hands of his son precisely what he 
had done to him shortly before. A brother encunted me, his sister—a 
nun—simultaneously buried her cross in his ass…. And all these supposed 
outrages to Nature went forward amidst a serenity and with an orderliness such 
as might give a moralist pause, and perhaps turn him into a philosopher. For 
indeed, if one but reflects a little, one finds nothing odd in incest; Nature allows it,
encourages it; only local legislation outlaws it; but may something tolerated in 
three-quarters of the world be truly a crime in the other fourth? Here was an 
enviable act I had not the wherewithal to commit, and the thought saddened me; 
ah, what would I not have given to have had a father or a brother, and how 
ardently I would have surrendered myself to the one or the other … entreated him
to do with me all he wished….

Soon I was surrounded by other objects; two pretty sisters of eighteen—they 
were twins—led me off to a privy and bolted the door; upon them I executed 
everything of the most piquant and the most disgusting lewdness can suggest.

“Were we to attempt to amuse ourselves this way in the assembly hall,” they 
explained to me, “twenty of those dreadful men would soon be clustered around 
us squirting their horrid sperm left and right; it’s ever so much nicer to have a 
little privacy, don’t you agree?”

Whereupon the little minxes confessed their tastes to me. Fastidious 
votaresses of their own sex, they found men unbearable even to their sight; it 
was their father who had drawn them into the Sodality, though distressed at 
having to submit to men, they found compensation in being able to have their fill 
of women.

“I take it then that you have no intention of marrying?”

“Marrying! Never. Death would be a kinder fate than that of becoming slaves to
husbands.”

As I plied them with questions, they revealed to me the rest of their principles,
uncommonly firm for persons of their age; brought up philosophically by their 
father, they were pure of any taint of morals or religion, all that had been skillfully
weeded out of them; there was nothing they’d not done, nothing they weren’t 
ready to do again, and their energy amazed me; such characters sorted too nicely
with mine for me to keep from expressing my feelings, I overwhelmed those 
delightful girls with caresses; and after we had all three loosed very floods of 
fuck, we promised to remain in touch, and started back to the hall. A slender 
young man, noticing me emerge in their company, now came up to me; in an 
anxious undertone he requested a brief interview, and in his company I retraced 
my steps into the privy I had only just left.

“Great heaven!” said he the moment we were alone, “how I shuddered to see 
you with those two creatures! Beware of them, I tell you, be on your guard, they 
are monsters—monsters who, despite their youth, are capable of every 
conceivable horror—”

“But,” I put in, “is it not thus one ought to be?”

He stared at me. “To be sure,” he nodded; “but in one’s relations with 
members one ought to be kindly, respectful, affectionate. Outside, why, steep 
your sword in blood. Of course. But not here. Believe me when I say those two 
bitches take pleasure only in doing mischief to their brothers; wicked, cunning, 
treacherous, they have every trait needed for expulsion from the Sodality, I 
cannot understand why the Permanent Committee does not act. Why, my dear, 
they amuse themselves with somebody and that’s enough, from then on their one
aim is to destroy you or to enslave you if they can. Be grateful to me for having 
warned you, and thank me by turning your ass this way.”

I supposed he was going to fuck it. Not at all. This odd fellow limited himself to
plucking out the hairs around my asshole, and to licking it; to my protest that he 
was hurting me he replied that owing to his warning I would be spared far worse. 
After fifteen more minutes of this vexatious business we left the privy, although 
my young man had not ejaculated. We parted; and shortly after I learned that 
everything he had said about the two sisters was utterly untrue, that calumniating
others aroused him, and that, so he reckoned, her profound indebtedness to him 
would lead any woman to endure the treatment he subjected her to.

Sweet music was now to be heard; it was supper being announced, and I went 
with the others into the voluptuous dining hall. It was decorated so as to appear a
forest; between the trees were countless little glades within each of which was a 
table set for twelve. Garlands of flowers hung in festoons from the trees, 
thousands and thousands of candles, disposed as skillfully as in the assembly hall,
shed a soft light; two servants delegated to each table served it promptly, 
cleverly, and in silence. Scarcely two hundred persons were present, the rest 
were all in the seraglios. You chose the table you wished and there, among 
friends, splendidly regaled, to the sound of enchanting chamber music you gave 
yourself up simultaneously to the intemperances of Comus and to all the lewd 
riotings of Cypris.

Clairwil, back from the seraglio, had sat down next to me; her manifest 
agitation betokened recent excessive behavior: the hard glitter in her eyes, her 
flushed cheeks, her unloosened hair floating over her breasts, the obscene, 
ferocious language coming from her mouth, in everything there were reflections 
and echoes of the transport which made her a hundred times lovelier to see; I 
bent toward her and we kissed.

“Villain,” said I, “what ocean of horrors have you been swimming in?”

“Be not envious,” she returned, “when next I plunge back into them, and it will
be soon, you will be at my side.”

The two little sisters with whom I’d been afrigging earlier in the day, two 
women of forty and of wit, two other exceedingly attractive ones of twenty and 
twenty-five, and six men made up our table.

Owing to the studied placing of the glades there was not one table from which 
you could not see all the others; and the cynical spirit in which the whole thing 
had been framed was also evident in the fact that no lubricity here in the dining 
room would be any less visible to the observer’s eye than had been that in the 
assembly hall.

By virtue of these arrangements I was witness to some unusual sights; there is
no describing the reeling of a vicious brain at such times. I had thought myself 
thoroughly versed in libertinage, thought I had nothing further to learn; and that 
evening I was convinced I was yet a callow fledgling. Oh, my friends, what 
impurities, what abominations, what extravagances! Some of the celebrants were 
constantly leaving table and repairing to the latrines, and it was impossible to 
refuse to do their bidding; the desires of Sodality members were laws for the 
individuals they focused upon. The latter soon found opportunity to demand of 
others what had been demanded of them; wherever you glanced, it was masters 
and slaves you saw; and the slaves, steadied by the knowledge that the roles 
would be reversed shortly, complied unhesitatingly with orders it would be their 
turn to issue in a moment.

Raised upon a throne from which she could oversee everything, the President 
maintained order at the supper as before in the hall; and the same calm 
prevailed. Conversations were held in a subdued tone; one could easily imagine 
oneself in the temple of Venus, whose statue, moreover, was visible inside a 
bower of myrtle and roses, and the foregathered worshipers, one perceived, 
tastefully avoided disturbing their rites by any of those rude vociferations which 
are proper only to pedantry and stupidity.

Rare wines and succulent viands made the after-supper orgies even more 
luxurious than the preceding ones. There was a moment when the entire Sodality 
united in a single immense group; not a member was inactive, and nothing could 
be heard but a deep murmur of voluptuous moans accented by the gasps and 
shrill cries heralding discharges. I had further assaults, terrible assaults, to 
sustain, individuals of every sex passed through my hands, not a spot on my body
was left unsullied; and if I ended up with fearfully battered buttocks, mine also 
was the glory of having wreaked havoc upon innumerable others. Day dawned at 
last and I came away so whelmed by fatigue, so dry from delicious exertion that I
had to keep to my bed for a day and a half.

My month-long novitiate seemed an eternity; it came finally to a close, and 
mine now was the so hotly coveted right to penetrate into the seraglios. Clairwil, 
eager to acquaint me with everything, guided me everywhere.

Nothing could be as delicious as those seraglios. And that holding boys being 
identical to that offering girls, the description of one will give you as well a picture
of the other.

Four large rooms ringed by bedchambers and cells formed the interior of each 
of these isolated wings; the large rooms were for the use of those who wished to 
enjoy themselves publicly, the cells for those who preferred privacy in their 
pleasure; and the inmates were lodged in the chambers. Taste and art presided 
over the furnishing; the cells especially were of the highest elegance, so many 
little chapels consecrated to libertinage, where nothing lacked that might be 
instrumental to stimulating worship. Four duennas governed each seraglio; they 
took the tickets you brought with you, inquired of your desires, and saw speedily 
to their satisfaction; also on hand, ready to offer their services, were a surgeon, a
midwife, two fustigators, an executioner, and a jailer, all of prodigiously 
melancholy aspect.

“You are not to think,” Clairwil remarked to me, “that those individuals there 
have simply been picked at random from the class that ordinarily supplies them; 
they are libertines like us, but less prosperous: unable to pay the admission fee, 
they fulfill their functions out of pleasure and just as you would suppose, the job 
is done better in this manner. Some of them receive a stipend, others ask only to 
enjoy a member’s privileges, these are granted them.”

While on duty those personages wore awesome costumes: the jailers had on 
great belts whence hung rings of keys, the fustigators carried about a battery of 
whips and martinets, and the executioner, swart, bare-armed, fearfully 
moustached, had a cutlass and a stiletto at his side. Seeing Clairwil enter, the 
executioner rose from where he was sitting on a stool and greeted her with a kiss.

“Have some work for me today, buggeress?”

“Look here,” she answered, “I’ve brought you a novice. Count upon it, she’ll 
have at least as many chores for you as I.”

And the wicked fellow, kissing me as he had done my friend, assured me that 
he was in every sense at my command. I thanked him, embraced him most 
warmly, and we resumed our visit of the place.

Each of the four central rooms was reserved for a particular category of 
passion: in the first, you gave way to simple ones, to, that is to say, all the 
various forms of masturbation and fuckery. The second room was the theater of 
fustigations and other irregular passions. The third of cruel proceedings; the 
fourth of murders. But as an inmate delegated to any one of these rooms might 
merit imprisonment, the lash, or death, the staff of each included jailers, 
fustigators, and executioners. Women were admitted into the seraglio of boys and
into the other of girls, men likewise could frequent either. Arriving, we found all 
the inmates being employed or else in their chambers waiting to be put to use. 
Clairwil opened a few doors and showed me some truly heavenly creatures; they 
were in gauze shifts, had flowers in their hair, and welcomed us with an air of 
profoundest reverence. I fell to toying with a lovely thing of sixteen; I was already
handling her breasts and cunt when Clairwil scolded me for the delicate and 
unduly decent manner I was employing.

“That’s not the way you behave with this trash,” said she, “they don’t even 
deserve the honor of being selected for our consumption…. Command, they 
obey.”

I altered my tone at once, and my orders were responded to with blindest 
obedience and inspiring alacrity. We entered other chambers: the same charms 
everywhere, the same beauty, everywhere the same submissiveness.

“You know,” I confided to Clairwil, “we really must not go away without leaving
our mark.”

The thought occurring to me while we were in a chamber occupied by a 
thirteen-year-old girl, pretty as Love herself, by whom for better than a quarter of
an hour I’d been having my cunt and asshole tongued, I immediately chose her 
for my victim; we summoned a fustigator; a duenna led the child off to one of the
torture chambers; and there, having roped her fast, we bade the specialist 
perform upon the little miss and frigged each other while the blood streamed 
down her body. Clairwil, perceiving the fustigator to stiffen, developed his erection
and snapped his device into her cunt while, at that libertine’s request, I bestowed 
upon him what he had just meted out to our young victim; the scoundrel 
withdrew from Clairwil in order to stuff me, and then we returned to whipping the 
little girl, who when we were finished with her was in such a sorry state as to 
have to be conveyed to the hospital the following day. We removed to the seraglio
of males.

“What have you a mind to do here?” Clairwil wished to know.

“Get my hands on a lot of engines,” was my reply; “I like nothing so much as 
to squeeze a prick, for me it is a delicious activity, the gathering of human fuck. I 
love to glean it, harvest it, to see sperm spurt, to feel myself wet by it, to wade 
and bathe in it—”

“Well, go ahead then,” said my friend, “do as you like; for my part I require a 
stronger diet. May I make a suggestion? It’s an arrangement I sometimes come 
to with a lady of my acquaintance: as I dislike having pricks unload in my body, I 
can nevertheless warm them in my cunt and, when they are hot, turn them over 
to you; which will spare you the bother of tedious preliminaries.”

“Excellent.”

We installed ourselves in the first of the main rooms and were sent fifteen lads 
aged between eighteen and twenty; we ranged them in a line in front of us and 
then sprawled on couches; then by way of defiance Clairwil and I struck the 
lewdest possible attitudes. The most poorly endowed of those boys had a 
mechanism measuring seven inches long by five in circumference, and the best, 
twelve by eight; one by one they moved forward, roused by the ardor we kindled 
in them; Clairwil met each, dallied a little with it, then shunted it on to me; I 
made them flow over my breasts, between my thighs, my buttocks, on my neck 
and face; reaching for the sixth, I felt such a furious itch in the neighborhood of 
my anus that from then on I presented my behind to everything which emerged 
from Clairwil’s vagina: they filled out in her cunt and emptied in my ass; the 
tempo quickened, they redoubled their efforts, but one’s hunger, so to speak, 
grows from eating, there is nothing quite like a woman’s temperament when 
excited, it is a sort of volcano you only further inflame in your attempts to 
appease it. We called for more men; a fresh batch of eighteen arrived; for this 
second round we changed roles; these pricks, and they compared very favorably 
with the fifteen we had just exhausted, caught fire in my cunt and died out in the 
ass of my companion; but we divided the task of frigging; and more than once it 
befell that, the order we had established upset by the excessiveness of our 
desires, we found ourselves with six or seven either in us or exploding all around 
us.

When finally we got to our feet, spattered with fuck and puddles of it on the 
couches, like Messalina rising from the bench after her lewd bouts with idiot 
Claudius’ guards, we had each been tupped eighty-five times apiece.

“My bum itches,” Clairwil declared. “Whenever I’ve been grandly fucked I 
always feel an incredible need of whipping.”

I admitted to the same longing.

“We had better send for a pair of fustigators.”

“Let’s have four,” said I, “my ass has simply got to be made a hash of this 
evening.”

“Wait,” said Clairwil, nodding familiarly to a man who entered just then, “we

can perhaps make something dramatic out of it.”

She went over to the newcomer and conferred with him in an undertone; he 
smiled, adopted a threatening air, called to the fustigators. “Seize them,” he 
cried; we were seized, our hands were tied, and we were both beaten while this 
man looked on, palpating his engine and fondling the buttocks of our assailants; 
when once the blood was fairly flowing down our backs we presented cunts to our
tormentors who, monstrously pricked, fucked each of us twice.

“And now by way of reward for my cooperation,” said the master of 
ceremonies, “I merely ask you to hold one of these lusty fellows while I give his 
bum a taste of meat.”

We comply with his request, he sheathes his weapon; the others flog him while
he ass-fucks; and we, in seventh heaven, suckle the whippers’ pricks.

“I cannot stand it any longer,” said Clairwil, when we found ourselves alone; 
“libertinage leads me fatally to cruelties: let us immolate a victim…. Did you 
notice that pretty lad of eighteen who kissed me so feelingly? He was as sweet as 
an angel to behold and gave me all sorts of ideas. Into the torture room with him,
I say, we’ll cut the little dog’s throat.”

“Fie, Clairwil!” said I. “Why didn’t you propose something like that when we 
were in the female seraglio?”

“It’s simply that I prefer to butcher males, I’ve never pretended otherwise: I 
enjoy avenging my sex. And if it be true that the other possesses a superiority 
over ours, is not the fictitious offense to Nature all the graver when we kill men?”

“One would suppose that you regret that this offense is null.”

“You grasp me aright, my dove, for me it is a source of immense despair ever 
to seek the crime and nowhere to find anything but the prejudice instead. O fuck! 
by God’s envenoming fuck, when,” she sighed, “oh, when shall I be able to do an 
authentic evil?”

They fetched us the youth.

“Shall we need an executioner?”

“Don’t you think we can dispatch the thing well enough by ourselves?”

“Why, I believe we can try.”

“Let us.”

We had our victim installed in an adjoining cell where there awaited us 
everything needed for the piecemeal destruction of the young man; his agony 
was slow, it was ghastly, the infernal Clairwil drank of his blood and swallowed 
one of his testicles. Less given to these masculine murders than she, my 
transports were probably not so violent; killing a woman, at any rate, would have 
excited me more; be that as it may, I discharged copiously; and, quitting that 
seraglio, we directed our steps toward the other.

“Let’s go to the room where extraordinary things are accomplished,” I 
proposed. “If you don’t care to do anything, there is no reason why we must; but 
we shall be able to watch.”

A man in his forties, he was a priest, had a pretty little girl of fifteen hanging 
by her hair from the ceiling; he was stabbing her with a long needle, blood 
covered the floor, he embuggered Clairwil while gnawing my ass. Another was 
plying a whip over the breasts and face of a beautiful girl of twenty: he confined 
himself to inquiring, would we like to have the same done to us? It was by one 
ankle the third had suspended his victim, most ingeniously, we agreed, and 
laughed merrily at the sight: she looked to be about eighteen and superbly made;
the position she was in caused her cunt to start wide open, into it the villain was 
ramming a wooden member studded with nails. Noticing our presence, he invited 
Clairwil to hold the girl’s free leg and to pull on it so as to open her cunt farther 
still, and he had me kneel beside him, ordering me to rub his prick with one hand,
to massage his asshole with the other: it was not long before Clairwil and I were 
drenched in the blood gushing from the victim. The fourth person in action was an
elderly magistrate; upon a grill he had chained a delicious twelve-year-old and by 
means of a huge charcoal brazier, which the scoundrel now approached and now 
drew away, he was roasting her by inches; I leave you to imagine what were the 
screams the poor little soul would give vent to whenever her tormentor saw fit to 
resume the cooking of her flesh. When he saw us, he shoved the stove into place 
and asked for my ass: I present it, while he drives into it he mauls Clairwil’s; but 
he discharges, ’tis prematurely and a calamity: the torture is interrupted while 
there is yet an hour or so of life in the victim, the villain’s joy is cut short, he 
curses us for having come along and spoiled everything for him.

All this had put me in a sanguine mood, I insisted upon proceeding to the 
murder room; Clairwil was nothing loath to follow me: although she was not fond 
of killing women, neither was she opposed to their destruction, her native 
tigerishness leading her to accept whatever flattered her tastes.

I had twenty girls stood in line and from among them selected one of 
seventeen, she was as engaging a creature as any you have ever seen. A vacant 
cell was designated to me by the duenna, and in the three of us went.

The wretch I was about to sacrifice, fancying I would be sooner moved to pity 
than a man, cast herself at my feet in a ludicrous effort to sway me: a very angel 
for beauty and full of grace, her methods would certainly have succeeded with a 
less toughened adversary, with someone whose soul was less corrupt than mine. I
had developed beyond the point where pleas are heard. Rather, the only effect 
her wiles had upon me was to fan the flames of my irritation…. And indeed, even 
had it not been so, would I have dared relent in Clairwil’s presence? After having 
this lovely girl suck me two hours straight, after having slapped, buffeted, beaten,
and thwacked her, after having maltreated her in every conceivable way, I had her
bound upon a table, and drove a dagger again and again into her body while my 
friend, squatting over me, simultaneously titillated my clitoris, the interior of my 
vagina, and my asshole. Rarely had I enjoyed a happier discharge, I literally 
discharged myself dry; and afterward was so exhausted I felt it would be useless 
to return to the assembly hall. Instead, I invited Clairwil to come home with me; 
we supped and then retired to bed together. It was then that charming 
personage, inclining to the belief I had lacked somewhat of determination in my 
latest performance, decided she had best speak to me, and this is what she said.

“The truth, Juliette, is that, a certain undeniable progress notwithstanding, 
your conscience has yet to reach the stage I should desire; what I demand of it is
that it become so warped as to be unable to reassume its former shape; to 
achieve this there are means to employ; I don’t mind indicating what they are, 
but I am not so sure you have the strength to apply them. Those means, my 
dearest friend, are simple in themselves: they consist in doing, immediately, in 
cold blood, that very thing which, done in the throes of passion, has been able to 
cause you remorse when later on you recover your wits. This way you strike 
squarely and hard at the virtuous impulse the instant it bares itself; and this 
custom of attacking it head on at the first sign of its reappearance, and it tends to
reappear once the senses have subsided into calm, this, I say, is one of the most 
certain fashions of destroying it definitively; employ this secret, it never fails: 
directly a moment of calm favors the resurgence of virtue, announcing itself 
under the colors of remorse, for that is always the guise it wears in its endeavor 
to regain ascendancy over us—then, directly when you perceive it, commit 
forthwith the act you are wont to regret; by the fourth repetition of the trick you 
shall hear the nagging voice of conscience no more, and you shall be at peace for 
the rest of your days. But this is no trifling matter, it calls for strength, discipline, 
and a certain ruthlessness with oneself: it is, you understand, illusion which 
invests crime with its attractiveness, and a weak spirit encounters greatest 
difficulty committing it when, totally self-possessed, illusion there is none. The 
means I propose are valid nonetheless, indeed, I may assure you that virtue itself
will safeguard you from remorse, for you shall have acquired the habit of doing 
evil at the first virtuous prompting; and to cease doing evil you shall have to stifle
virtue. Oh, Juliette, be sure of it, this is the best advice you are apt to receive in 
this important connection; and you realize its worth, since by carrying it out you 
surmount the most painful of situations, victory being yours whether you choose 
to combat it by vice or to annihilate it by virtue.”

“Clairwil,” said I to my friend, “your suggestions are excellent, doubtless, but 
perhaps unnecessary. I am not without experience in the profession of vice, and 
the soul in me requires no fortification. Neither does my purpose. Rest assured, 
you shall never see me falter whatever the deed to be perpetrated whether for 
the sake of my material advantage or for that of my pleasure.”

“Dear heart,” said Clairwil, hugging me to her, “I beseech you to have no other
gods than those.”

Somewhat later, Clairwil called upon me and proposed an unusual exploit. We 
were in the season of Lent.

“Shall we go and make our devotions?”

“Are you mad?”

“Not at all. I have had a truly extraordinary idea in my head for quite a while, 
and you are the companion I want to have in this adventure. At the Carmelite 
convent there’s a friar of thirty-five, the most gorgeous creature in the whole 
wide world and I have had my heart set upon him for the past six months; I 
simply must be fucked by him, and this is how we shall manage it: we shall go to 
have him hear our confession, tell him a few tales, lewd ones, he’ll become 
aroused, I am absolutely certain we need do no more to have him make us a 
proposition:

he will explain how we are to get together, we’ll go to the rendezvous and we’ll
drain the holy brother’s balls…. And more: we’ll go to communion after that, we’ll 
hide the hosts one way or another and bring them home; and at lunch we’ll find 
some not very Christian use to which these abject symbols may be put.”

Here I felt moved to remark to my friend that of her two schemes, the first 
struck me as far more sensible than the second.

“Once we have ceased to believe in God, my dear,” I pointed out, “the 
profanations you have in mind become so much pure childishness, the worse for 
being useless.”

“Childishness, yes,” she rejoined, “that I cannot deny. But they excite me 
mentally and for that I value them. Nothing, in my view, is surer proof against 
backsliding: one cannot accord any seriousness to objects one treats in such a 
manner. May I add that I suspect doubts may still be warranted of your firmness 
in these matters?”

“Ah, Clairwil, banish them out of your mind!” I retorted most energetically. 
“You err. If anything, my atheism is perhaps solider than your own. At any rate, it 
is not to be bolstered by such nonsense as you have just proposed; I shall join 
you in these undertakings because they please you, but for me they are mere 
amusements at best, and in no wise necessary either to the strengthening of my 
opinions or to their demonstration.”

“As you like, my beloved,” said Clairwil, “as you like, we shall execute them for
pleasure’s sake alone.”

“Seducing the friar by means of a confession, this is worthy of us; but my 
stars, Clairwil! profaning a wee bit of a wheatpaste disk which happens to be the 
idol of imbeciles, why that amounts to no more than tearing up or burning some 
scrap of paper—”

“To be sure, but to your scrap of paper no meaning is attached, whereas the 
better part of Europe assigns a very holy significance to that host, to that crucifix,
and that exactly is why I am fond of profaning them: I hit at public opinion, that 
entertains me, I vomit on the prejudices they strove to inculcate in me when I 
was young, I obliterate them, that excites me.”

“Let’s be away,” said I.

We went by carriage; our simple, artless toilettes conformed wonderfully to our
designs, and Brother Claude, whom we asked for and who quickly seated himself 
in the confessional, could not have taken us for anything but models of piety.

Clairwil opened fire first. It was plain, the poor Friar was listing very heavily 
when my turn came to loose a broadside.

“Oh, my Father!” I cooed, “grant me much indulgence for I have horrors to 
divulge to you.”

“Courage, my child,” stammered Claude, “great is the goodness and mercy of 
God, He listens to us with infinite understanding; what have you to confess?”

“Enormities, Father, sins which a frightful libertinage makes me commit every 
day: young though I am, I have violated every commandment, I have ceased, 
yes, ceased to pray and God has become a stranger to my soul. Oh, intercede in 
my behalf, very sore is my distress! And my lewd doings … ah, you shall tremble 
when you hear about them, I hardly dare speak—”

“Are you married?”

“Yes, Father, and not a day passes but I outrage my husband by behaving in 
the very worst way.”

“A lover … a tendency?”

“An indomitable longing for men in general, and a liking for women too—a 
fondness for every possible variety of debauchery—”

“You are then, I take it, hot-blooded—”

“Hot-blooded? Insatiable, Father, that’s what I am, it’s this hunger that is 
dragging me farther and farther into vice, hurling me so violently into it that I 
dread I must succumb in spite of all the aid religion can be…. Must I avow it, dare 
I? Oh, Father, at this very moment, the pleasure of holding this secret 
conversation with you is upsetting me, aye, convulsing me, counteracting the 
effects of pardon … I seek God in this holy place and whom do I find? A charming 
man beneath his cassock and, woe is me, I sense myself ready to forget the 
Lord—”

“My daughter,” said the poor Friar, his voice shaking now, “the state you are in 
afflicts me … only great penances—”

“Ah, the crudest for me would be never to see you again…. Why is it the 
ministers of God are as though illuminated by charms that distract from the sole 
object which ought to occupy us here? My Father, this sanctuary, this interview 
have not restored me to serenity, instead I … I—oh, heavenly man, your words 
speed to my heart rather than to my mind, I came hither in search of peace, but 
it is restlessness, excitement that has hold of me: can we not meet elsewhere? 
Can we not flee this box, it frightens me; and will you not cease a little to be the 
man of God and take the part of Juliette’s lover?”

Claude’s erection stamped him as a true Carmelite: the milk-white and 
rose-tipped breast I’d cunningly brought into view, my sparkling eyes, gestures, 
and fumblings which pointed to the emotions I was at grips with … beside himself,
the ecclesiastic capitulated.

“Fair lady,” he replied, and his tone was impassioned, “your friend, in a case 
very like unto your own, has also proposed things, ah … which your starry gaze 
inspires and which I … I burn to do, I…. You are two sirens, your sweet words 
bewitch me and I am no longer able to resist—let’s leave the church; I have a 
small room, it is not far from here … if you will consent to come, I shall do 
everything in my power to put you at ease.”

Then, stumbling from the confessional and grasping Clairwil by the hand: 
“Follow me, ladies, come with me, the foul fiend has sent you to tempt me; ah, 
was he not a match for God Almighty Himself? He must then best a poor friar.”

And out we go.

Night had fallen, there was no moon; Claude told us to look sharply after him 
but to keep twenty paces back. He set off for the Vaugirard Barrier, and we soon 
found ourselves in a mysterious and chilly cell; the good Claude offered us cakes 
and liqueurs.

“Excellent sir,” my companion said to him, “enough of this mystical chatter; we
know the kind of man we are dealing with; we love you, why, what am I saying? 
we are quaking from a frantic desire to be fucked by you. Join us in laughing at 
the ruse we employed to get this far, contrive to make us feel our efforts have not
been for nought. Speaking for myself, I tell you I have worshiped you for a year 
and I have been leaking for two hours in anticipation of your prick. There,” went 
on our libertine, tossing up her skirts, “there’s where I’d have you lodge it; look, 
is the cage not fitting for the bird?”

Promptly flinging herself upon the bed, the slut had the fellow’s engine out in a
trice.

And an uncommon engine it was.

“Christ’s tears, will you behold it, Juliette!” cried Clairwil, already half swooning
away, “here, catch this mast if you can get your hands round it, and steer it at 
me; be a dear, I’ll do the same for you in a moment.”

Clairwil is heeded; the bludgeon thunders into a cunt which, fuck-moistened 
already, had been yawning a welcome to it for fifteen minutes. Oh, my friends, 
how justly they refer to a Carmelite when wishing to describe the optimum in 
erected pricks. Our Claude’s member, like unto a mule’s, showed nine and 
three-eighths inches round the stem and thirteen inches in over-all length, head 
clear and included; and that formidable head, my friends, I was scarce able to 
encircle it with both hands. ’Twas the noblest, the most rubicund mushroom the 
human imagination can picture. By a miracle of Nature, a miracle Nature performs
only in behalf of her favorites, Claude had been furnished with three balls … and 
how full they were! how swollen! ’Twas he himself declared it, not a drop of sperm
had he shed in a month. What torrents thereof he spewed into Clairwil’s cunt the 
moment he touched bottom! and into what transports this enormous ejaculation 
pitched my voluptuous friend! Fucking her, Claude handled me, and his dextrous 
manipulation of my clitoris soon wrung the whey from me too. The Friar 
withdraws; I paw him. Clairwil remains in position. The tool dilates, hardens anew
in response to my skillful attentions.(4) Claude, breaking away from the hand 
guiding him, would dive again into the gaping vagina….

“No, no,” says Clairwil, fending off her impetuous lover, “Juliette, make me 
desire him, lick my clitoris.”

And Claude, rather than stand idle during these preliminaries, falls to caressing
me; while with one hand he holds Clairwil’s cunt agape for me, he masturbates 
me with the other. Like the fiery steed that will not be restrained by the bridle or 
bit, Claude leaps into the beckoning hole; and stretching me out beside Clairwil, 
the rascal, gone quite berserk, while furiously fucking the one of us pollutes the 
other with equally prodigious effect.

“He’s assassinating me, the great swine,” shrieks Clairwil, swearing like one of 
the damned; “ah, by the balls of the bugger-fucking Almighty, I can’t resist this 
buffeting, every blow is costing me a pint of sperm—can you not at least kiss me, 
pig that you are? can’t you stick your filthy tongue as deep into my throat as 
you’ve buried that club of yours in my womb? Ah, by fuck, I’m coming—but you, 
keep yourself in check,” she adds, expelling him with a powerful heave of her 
flanks, “don’t squander your resources, I am going to call upon you again.”

But poor Claude could not contain himself and prepared to unleash a second 
emission; seeing what he was up to, I seized his instrument and, stroking it, 
aimed the boiling flood into Clairwil’s wide-starting cunt. It was with fuck I tried to
extinguish the fires fuck ignited.

“Ah, doublefuck my eyes,” Clairwil expostulated, getting to her feet, “this 
bugger here would fain break me in two…. Juliette, you’ll not outlive his attack.”

However, she catches hold of the Friar, begins to rattle his pike; to hasten its 
elevation, the slut endeavors to mouth him; but the engine of this servant of God 
is too massive to fit between her lips; resorting to another stratagem, she pokes 
two fingers into his vent: with the true-born buggers that all friars are, such 
means seldom fail. In response to Clairwil’s libertine questioning on this head, 
Claude allows that, as a youth, he played the bardash to his confreres.

“Why then, we’ll fuck you too,” cried Clairwil, bringing Brother Claude’s ass into
plainer view, kissing his buttocks and tonguing his anus. “Yes, we shall sodomize 
you,” she went on, exhibiting a dildo; “your mistress will turn into your lover. 
Fuck, good friend, I am going to embugger you and afterward you’ll embugger 
the two of us if you like; see here,” she said, showing the Carmelite her behind, 
“isn’t this as appealing as the cunt you’ve just rioted in? We’re whores, you 
understand, arrant little whores, we’re good for any purpose, and when we go 
somewhere to be fucked, it is with the intention of having no part of ourselves left
untouched. To work, great beast, your prick’s aloft: fuck this nice little novice who
treated you to such a pretty little confession, encunt her, let that be her penance, 
and fuck her as hard and as roundly as you fucked me.”

She trundles the awful object toward me, I was lying on the bed, my thighs 
widespread, the altar offered itself to the sacrificer; but my thoroughgoing 
libertinage notwithstanding and however much I was used to accommodating the 
best pricks in Paris, I was simply incapable of coping with this one without 
preparation. Clairwil takes pity on me; with her saliva she anoints both my labia 
and the colossal knob tipping Claude’s device; next, with one hand pressing my 
buttocks so as to close the gap between the target and the lance, she managed 
to-bury it to the depth of perhaps an inch, perhaps two. Enheartened by these 
auspicious beginnings, Claude took a firm grip upon my flanks; he swears, he 
sputters, he drools, the gates cede, the fortress falls; but his triumph costs me 
dear, I bleed as never I did the day I lost my maidenhead, and the pain is as 
great; this soon transforms, however, into the sweetest sensation of pleasure, 
and to each of my conqueror’s lunges I reply with a telling riposte.

“Steady there, steady,” cries Clairwil to my rider, “control those thrashings, I 
cannot take fair aim at your ass unless you hold still, and I promised to fuck it, 
you recall.”

Claude grinds to a halt; Clairwil parts two very fine buttocks: a dildo strapped 
around her loins, the wench bum-stuffs my fucker. This operation, so precious to 
a libertine, nay, so indispensable, serves only to increase his agility, he wriggles, 
he squirms, he sounds, he discharges; I have not time enough to get out of the 
way; and even had it happened less rapidly, would I have fled to safety? Ah, one 
is blind to danger when one is drunk from pleasure.

“My turn,” said Clairwil, “we shall grant him no quarter. Here you are, bugger, 
my ass thirsts for the mead, in with you and draw blood if you can—blood? what 
care I for the loss of a little? Clap on the dildo, Juliette, sodomize him just as I 
did, and I’ll reap the benefits you enjoyed.”

Claude, aroused by my caresses, by the prospect of the fair behind Clairwil 
presents him and of the laughing hole in its center, is not slow to revive; I wet 
Clairwil’s anus with my tongue and oil the holy dart of Christ’s well-furnished 
minion. Unimaginable, the difficulties Claude encounters in penetrating! Twenty 
times over he quails before the enterprise, twenty times must he resume the 
assault; but most cunning is my friend, subtle her maneuvers, ardent her desire 
of that prick, and in the end it is every inch housed and to the hairs in her 
bowels….

“He’s crippling me,” she shrieks.

She would escape, she would be rid of the gargantuan glaive run into her 
vitals. Too late. The fabulous weapon is ensheathed entire and now belongs as 
intimately to her as to its wielder.

“Ah, Juliette,” gasps the hard-pressed Clairwil, “leave this bugger be, he’s 
excited enough as things are at present; I’m in far greater need of your hand 
than his bum is of your dildo; come frig me, my child, for I am dying.”

Despite her pleas, it’s to ass-fucking the Friar I devote my main attentions; 
howbeit, reaching out an arm, I frig my companion; who, thanks to a lively 
tickling, faces Claude’s onslaught with truly admirable courage.

“Truly, I overestimated my capacities,” she sighs: “Juliette, do not imitate my 
brashness, it could well cost you your life.”

Claude is discharging by now: his performance, rare hitherto, continues to 
astonish, the villain bellows and brays, growls and grunts, and far, very far inside 
Clairwil’s bowels, deposits certain proof of the pleasure overwhelming him.

It was a much tattered and torn Clairwil who emerged from the fray; I was 
bent upon replacing her there.

“I refuse to permit it,” said she, adamant. “One must not,” she added, “risk 
one’s well-being for an instant’s vain pleasure; this is no man we have here, but a
bull. I am prepared to wager whatever you like that never before today has he 
been able to find a woman to fuck.”

And Friar Claude nodded in assent. In all Paris, he declared, only his Superior’s
asshole had succeeded in compassing his prick.

“Eh, how’s that? Do you then embugger, wretch?” Clairwil demanded.

“Frequently.”

“And thou sayst Mass, thou shrivest, being withal soiled by thy dirty practices?”

“Why not? Amongst men the greatest believer is he who serves the most gods.

“Mesdames,” went on the ecclesiastic, seated between us and fondling an ass 
with each hand, “Mesdames, do you really fancy we set any more store by 
religion than you do? Dwelling closer to the being it presupposes, we are in a 
better position than others to perceive the features of the falsehood; religion is all
a shoddy fiction, true, but it provides us with a living and the merchant must not 
disparage his wares. We traffic in absolutions and gods the way a pander sells 
whores; for all that, are we otherwise fleshed than yourselves, insensible to your 
passions? and do you think some ridiculous unctions, a few absurd affectations 
and smirks are sure protection against the stings of human instinct? Far from it. 
‘The passions,’ writes a wise author, ‘acquire additional force beneath the frock, 
the heart harbors those seeds, example brings them to flower, idleness fertilizes 
them, occasion causes them to multiply—resist the passions? By what possible 
means?’ It is in the ranks of the clergy, my dear ladies, that you find the authentic
atheist; doubters you may be, you others, skeptics perhaps, but you cannot even 
begin to realize the hollowness of the idol; whereas we, its ministers, we to whom
its care is entrusted, there’s not a one of us who is not convinced of its 
inexistence. All the revealed religions you come across in the world are full of 
tenebrous dogmas, unintelligible principles, unbelievable wonders, astounding 
stories, the whole mumbo jumbo invented, apparently, for the sole purpose of 
insulting the intelligence and flouting common sense; without exception they all 
announce an invisible God whose existence is unfathomable. The behavior 
ascribed to him is as puzzling, as inconceivable, as his very essence; if he existed,
would the divinity have spoken in such riddles? what’s to be gained from revealing
yourself merely to. talk nonsense? The greater the freight of mysteries it carries, 
the less accessible to the comprehension a religion is and the more it pleases the 
fools who wallow in it as in their element; the more shadowy, obscure, and 
dubious a religion, the diviner it looks to be, the closer, that is, it conforms to the 
nature of a hidden and intangible being of whom no clear notion can be formed. 
’Tis a characteristic of ignorance to prefer the unknown, the fantastic, the 
farfetched, the incredible, indeed, the terrible, to whatever is forthright, simple, 
and true. Truth titillates the imagination far less than fiction; the vulgar ask for 
nothing better than to listen to the preposterous fables we retail; inventing 
religions and forging mysteries, priests and lawgivers catered splendidly to the 
desires of the rabble; by means of creeds and codes they gathered a following of 
enthusiasts, women, and simpletons; such individuals dispense very easily with 
proofs they are incapable of examining; love of the simple, love of truth are to be 
found only amongst those, and they are few, whose imagination is governed by 
study and by reflection. No, Mesdames, no, be assured of it, there is no God, the 
existence of that infamous phantom cannot possibly be imagined, and all the 
contradictions it is composed of suffice to explode it—we need but deign to 
inspect it closely and poof! it is no more.”

During this discussion, the Friar, seated between us, as you know, was 
palpating our asses.

“Beautiful behind,” he murmured, alluding to mine, “what a shame not to be 
able to thread that strait…. But perhaps, if we were to try…. Oh, Madame, with a 
little kindness on your part—for surely, one so fair cannot be so cruel—”

“Brute,” said I, rising from my chair, “I’ll not even lend you my cunt, it still 
smarts from what you did to it and I am not eager to subject myself to worse. 
Catch hold of him, Clairwil, we’ll make him discharge till the blood seeps from his 
balls, otherwise he’ll give us no peace.”

We laid him upon the bed, Clairwil clamped his member between her breasts 
and I, squatting over his nose, had him kiss the door to the temple I forbade him 
to enter; he tongued it timidly at first, then more boldly, and sliding a hand to my 
bush fell to exercising my clitoris; and once again we discharged.

Clairwil asked the Friar whether there were other such libertines as he in his 
monastery; upon Claude’s affirmation that there were at least thirty, my friend 
wanted to know if it might be possible to pass an evening amidst the whole 
brotherhood.

“Certainly,” Claude answered, “if ever you wish a memorable fucking you have 
only to come and you will be treated royally—and to more than you bargain for, I 
dare say.”

Clairwil then asked if the impious revels she had her heart fixed upon could 
also be held at the monastery.

“Better there than elsewhere,” said the Carmelite, “you shall be able to do 
whatever you like under our roof.”

“My dear,” Clairwil said, “rather than join you only to be disappointed, pray go 
and speak to your Superior; explain the matter to him; bring back his response, 
we shall attend you here.”

As soon as the Friar had departed, Clairwil turned to me, a wicked glitter in her
eye. “Juliette,” said she, “you’ll not be surprised to hear it: that fellow fucked me 
well, too well for me not to desire his death—”

“What! Are you already plotting the wretch’s undoing?”

“The loathing I have for men once they have satisfied me is in direct proportion
to the pleasure I have had from them, and it’s been a great while since I’ve 
discharged so exquisitely. … He must die, I say. Two means occur to me: that of 
having him placed in pace by his Superior—to arrange this we need merely 
intimate to that chief the dangers involved in having such a person as Claude at 
large, a person capable of blathering the secrets of the house to all and sundry. 
But by proceeding this way he is entirely lost to me; and I have designs on his 
wondrous engine.…”

“But how are these projects to be carried out if you have him put to death?”

“I see no reason why we might not induce him to spend twenty-four hours with
us at your country estate; for the rest, never fear…. Ah, Juliette, what a dildo 
hangs under that bugger’s belly!”

My friend declining to enlighten me further, while waiting for the Friar we 
passed the time inspecting his quarters.

It was a mine of obscene engravings and literature that we turned up: the first 
volume was Le Portier des Chartreux,(5) more a bawdy production than a 
libertine one and which, despite the touching candor and sincerity permeating it, 
was, according to rumor, disowned by the author as he lay on his deathbed. Bah, 
what folly. The fellow capable at such a time of repenting what he dared say or 
write in the course of his life is a rank coward, whose memory ought to be 
execrated by posterity.

The second was L’Académie des Dames, a well-conceived work but poor in the 
execution; done by a fainthearted man who seems to have scented the truth but 
was afraid to tell it; and full of boring conversations.

L’Éducation de Laure was the third book we found. Another complete failure 
owing to extraneous and false considerations dominating the composition. Had 
the author brought the wife-murder frankly onto the stage, instead of leaving it 
off somewhere in the wings, and made something substantial of the incest, which 
he hints at constantly but never explores; had he increased the number of lewd 
scenes … shown in action those cruel tastes he restricts himself to mentioning, 
abstractly, in his preface, the work, most imaginative, would have been delicious: 
but tremblers are my despair, I lose all patience with them and would prefer a 
hundred times over that they write nothing rather than give us bare ideas only, 
and in halves at that.

Thérèse philosophe was there, a charming performance from the pen of the 
Marquis d’Argens,(6) alone to have discerned the possibilities of the genre, 
though only partially realizing them; alone to have achieved happy results from 
the combining of lust and impiety. These, speedily placed before the public, and in
the shape the author had initially conceived them, finally gave us an idea of what 
an immoral book could be.

The others were all examples of those deplorable little pamphlets commonly 
got up in coffeehouses or in brothels and which regularly reveal mean-spirited 
buffoons toiling at the instigation of hunger and under the guidance of some 
burlesque muse; lust, the child of opulence and of superiority, cannot be treated 
save by persons of a certain condition, of a certain quality—that is, by persons 
who, favored by Nature at the outset, have after that benefited from wealth 
enough to be able themselves to try what they describe in their lewd pages. Well, 
as we are reminded by their gropings and feebleness of expression, such 
experience is totally denied the smutty fellows who flood us with the low 
scribblings I am speaking of, among which I do not hesitate to include those of 
Mirabeau, who in order to be something would fain be a libertine and who in fact 
throughout the whole of his life was nothing at all.(7)

Pursuing our search through Claude’s belongings, we came upon dildoes, 
cat-o’-nine-tails, articles from which we were able to deduce the extent to which 
the Friar was familiar with libertine practices; and now he returned.

“I have,” he reported, “my Superior’s formal consent, you may come whenever
you wish.”

“It shan’t be long before we do, my friend,” said I; “after being so liberally 
entertained by a single member of the order, we cannot but anticipate wonders 
from the rest: no need to tell you we have fiery cunts, from what you have 
already seen of them you may judge what they will be able to undertake when 
still better served. While waiting, Claude, let me invite you to pay us a visit; my 
friend and I will be delighted to receive you at a pleasant little place I own in the 
country, and where we are going in three days’ time. Will you come? You will 
enjoy yourself. Between now and then, let me recommend repose. Don’t fail us.”

The opportunity being present, we thought best to have a word with the 
Superior. He proved to be a handsome man of sixty, who greeted us with utmost 
cordiality.

“Ladies, we will be most happy to welcome you,” he declared, “among the 
thirty friars who are worthy to participate in these orgies, I promise you a score 
between the ages of thirty and thirty-five who, membered like Claude and 
possessing the vigor our vocation expects, will treat you according to your highest
hopes. As regards secrecy, you have no cause for fears which may not be 
groundless when such activities are undertaken in mundane surroundings. You 
said, did you not, that you are interested in a few impieties? Ah, we know all 
about those little matters, leave everything to us, ours are capable hands. Fools 
maintain that monks are good-for-nothings; we mean to prove to you, Mesdames,
that Carmelites at least are excellent for fucking.”

Language so forthright following upon our late trial of Claude eliminated any 
last vestige of doubt about the spirit in which we would be entertained; we 
therefore notified these honorable anchorites that we would avail ourselves of 
their hospitality and, furthermore, bring with us two pretty girls to collaborate in 
and further our amusements; the which, despite our vexation at having to 
postpone them, could not, owing to various pressing affairs that would detain us, 
be scheduled before Easter.

That date was acceptable to our hosts and, Clairwil remarked as we came 
away, appropriate to the impieties she was still meditating. “I don’t care what 
others say,” she insisted, “I am going to derive pleasure from profaning the 
holiest mystery of Christianity during that very period of the year when one of 
Christianity’s great holidays falls.”

Easter lay nearly a month off and this interval being marked by two 
outstanding occurrences, I believe I shall speak of them at this point before 
relating what followed in the way of our libertinage among the Carmelites.

The first of these events was the tragic death of Claude; the unlucky chap 
arrived in the country on the appointed day; Clairwil was there with me; we 
introduced him into the most pleasurable surroundings, he was in seventh heaven
and when his prick had attained to full and towering erection, then my wicked 
friend, signaling to the five women to seize him suddenly and pinion him, sliced 
that peerless member off with a razor, severing it close; later giving it to be 
prepared by a learned physician, she thus acquired herself the most extraordinary
and I dare say the biggest dildo you have ever clapped eyes on. Claude departed 
this world in dreadful pain, his agony was not pretty to see: the sight of it fed 
Clairwil’s lubricious rage, and as she watched him expire, three women and I 
frigged her at a distance of two feet from her victim.

“So now,” the whore said to me after having splashed her fuck over us, “did I 
not tell you a means had been found for doing away with the bugger without 
losing him altogether?”

I now come to the second of these two events; and I do not suppose it is any 
more to the honor of my soul than the stunt I have just finished describing was to
my friend’s.

Surrounded by a crowd of sycophants and clients who seemed to be thinking 
that their fate lay in my lap, I was occupied with my toilette when a servant 
ushers in a middle-aged man, visibly of mean condition, and who begs me for a 
brief private interview. I have it explained to the fellow that I am not in the habit 
of receiving such folk as he, that if the matter be one of aid, or a good word 
spoken to the Minister, the case may be presented to me in writing and I will 
consider whether anything can be done; but the shabby visitor will not be put off. 
More from curiosity than anything else, I decide to give him audience and have 
him wait in the little drawing room where I held private parleys at the time; then, 
instructing my servants to remain within call, I go to find out what business has 
brought this individual to me.

“My name, Madame, is Bernole,” the stranger begins, “a name with which you 
are surely unacquainted. It would be less unfamiliar to the mother you lost, to 
that excellent woman who, were she alive, would not allow you to continue this 
however lucrative existence of shameless disorderliness and misbehavior.”

“Sir,” I interrupt, “your tone does not strike me as fitting to somebody who has
come to ask a favor….”

“Softly, Juliette, softly,” Bernole replies, “it is nonetheless possible that I am 
going to ask you a favor and equally possible that I have rights that allow me to 
adopt this tone which displeases you.”

“Whatever be your rank, Sir, I would have you know that—”

“And I would have you know, Juliette, that if I have come to ask your help, you
ought to be flattered by the request. Kindly look at these papers, young lady: a 
glance will inform you of my need of that help and at the same time of your duty 
to grant it.”

I had but to scan those documents. “My God,” I gasped, “what, my mother! 
She was guilty … and with you?”

“Precisely, Juliette; I am your father,” and Bernole spoke most crisply. “I 
brought you into this world—I was a cousin of your mother, my parents had 
prepared the match, we were already betrothed when the offer of another 
marriage, a more advantageous one, induced them to alter their plans. They 
sacrificed your mother—at a time when she was pregnant, you were in her womb.
She and I contrived to deceive the man whom you knew as your father, he was 
completely taken in. You are not his child, but mine; I can prove it. Below your 
right breast is a birthmark, a brownish spot the size of a small coin…. Juliette, 
have you one such mark?”

“I do, Sir.”

“Then recognize your father, oh, cold, unfeeling soul! Or if you are not willing 
to believe me, read through these papers with a little attention, they will banish 
every shred of doubt. After the death of your mother … and it was a horrible 
death, the vicious doing of one Noirceuil, the same with whom you, excused by no
ignorance of the facts, dare maintain a criminal relationship, and who would be 
broken on the wheel tomorrow if only we had the necessary evidence—and, 
unfortunately, it is lacking; after her death, I say, I was deluged by every 
imaginable piece of misfortune. All I had, I lost. I lost all your mother left me as 
well. For eighteen years now I have subsisted thanks to public charity alone; but I
have found you at last, Juliette, and all my sufferings are soon to be over….”

“Sir, I have a sister who in all likelihood is still floundering amidst hardships 
caused by the prejudices I rid myself of very early on; is she also your child?”

“Justine?”

“That is correct.”

“She is indeed my daughter. The woman who bore her loved me, that love 
endured despite every obstacle; I alone had the joy of making her a mother.”

“Great heaven!” cried the unhappy Justine, “my father lived and I knew him 
not! Dear God, had Thou but brought us together I would have been a comfort to 
him and soothed him in his distress, I would have shared with him the little I had 
and my sympathy would have compensated for the unkindness which, sister, he 
had probably to endure at your hands.”

“My child,” declared the Marquis, out of all patience with Justine after the night
he had spent with her, “if you are allowed the honor of being present at this 
gathering, it is not to afflict us by your jeremiads. Pray continue, Madame.”

Knowing me as you do, my friends, you must realize that this affair was 
distasteful to me, in as much as there are few souls so poorly attuned to gratitude
and filial sentiments as mine; I’d not dropped one tear at the loss of the person I 
had always assumed to be my father, would it have been natural for me to be 
moved by the calamities which had befallen this other one fate restored to me? 
And the bestowing of alms, I need hardly remind you, was not a pastime to which
I was much given; I considered charity the worst use money could be put to; and 
this insolent beggar might talk as he liked about being my father, the fact 
remained that to satisfy him I had either to part with some silver or plead in his 
favor before a Minister who, quite as stern, quite as unbending as I in his attitude 
toward such matters, could hardly be expected to lend a complacent ear to my 
importunings. To be sure, this individual was my father, of that there could be no 
question, the proof was there, but to it Nature incited in me no response at all, 
none. It was with sheer indifference I stared at the person standing in front of 
me. The silence lasted several minutes.

“Sir,” said I at last, “the tales you tell me may be perfectly true; however, I see
not the faintest reason for being obliged to listen to them. I have principles, Sir, 
steadfast principles which, unluckily for you, are totally incompatible with this 
commiseration you implore. As for the titles of paternity, here you are, I hand you
back the papers which establish them, and let me also give you the assurance 
that I haven’t the least need of them: whether I have a father or whether I do not
have a father, you would surely have trouble realizing how little I care. And so my
advice to you, Sir, is to relieve me very promptly of your presence unless through 
obstinacy you wish to compel me to have you thrown bodily out that window.” I 
rise, intending to ring for my servants without further ado; but Bernole rushes 
forward, stays my hand.

“Ungrateful child!” he cries, “do not punish me for a sin over which I have shed
a lifetime’s tears—you are of illegitimate birth, aye, alack, but does my blood not 
run in your veins for all that? and do you not owe me your aid? If you cannot 
heed the feelings Nature seems to have forgot to put in your breast, will you not 
hark to the plaintive accents of misery and of despair?” Sinking down before me, 
clutching my knees, wetting them with his tears, “Juliette,” says he, gazing up at 
my face, “Juliette, enormous wealth is thine, and it is but a crust of bread thy 
penniless father begs of thee! Girl, think on thy mother, wouldst thou refuse 
succor to the man who loved her? The only man to have loved her who bore thee 
nine months in her womb, hast thou no respect for him? Attend the prayer of the 
lowly, else Heaven shall smite thee in thy wickedness.”

Undeniably, pathos abounded in the wretch’s speech; but there are hearts 
which harden rather than melt before the efforts of those who strive to appeal to 
them. Like the kind of wood that toughens when exposed to fire, it is in the very 
element which one would suppose ought to consume them that they acquire an 
added degree of force. Thus, instead of exciting sentiments of compassion in me, 
Bernole’s antics were fast hurling me into that lubricious furor which the refusal to
perform a good action begets, a mild version, this, of what happens inside us 
when we acquit ourselves of an evil one. At first it was the icy stare of 
indifference I bent upon Bernole; my glance now warmed, became the fiery one 
of pleasure; and my throat constricted as there filtered through my veins that 
perfidious delight which fastens upon us at the thought or the recollection or the 
designing of an act of badness;(8) my brows knit, my breathing quickens, and 
feeling myself grow ever harsher because this harshness is agreeable, because it 
is arousing … because I am readying to discharge. … “I have told you,” I declare 
to the boor groveling at my feet, “that I don’t care who you are, that I shall never
care who you are, and that I never give anything to the needy; and so I shall say 
it once again, and this shall be the last time: kindly get out of here. Or do you 
want to rot in some dungeon?”

A wave of madness sweeps over the man: employing now imprecations, now 
pleas, then invectives and then expressions of endearment, he beats his head 
against the floor, opens a gash in his brow, my apartment is spattered with his 
blood…. This blood is my blood; I watch it well forth, and I am happy. Happiness 
chokes me. After several exquisite minutes, I ring.

“Expel this clown from my house,” I instruct my servants, “forcibly; but get his 
address before you do.”

I was obeyed…. Overwrought, inflamed, I was obliged to have immediate 
resort to my women who were two hours toiling to restore me to my senses. 
Mighty effect of crime upon a heart like mine! It was written in the sacred book of
Nature, that everything apt to outrage the Nature common spirits invariably 
misunderstand was sure to constitute, for me, the means to pleasure.

Both Noirceuil and the Minister were dining with me that day; I asked the 
former, was he acquainted with an individual called Bernole, who claimed to have 
been my mother’s lover and to have fathered me?

“Yes,” said Noirceuil, “I knew a Bernole. He had investments with your father 
and his money was lost along with your family’s when I operated its ruin. If I 
remember rightly he was indeed fond of your mother, over whom he fairly grieved
when she was gone; I dare say it was through no fault of his I wasn’t hanged…. 
Do you mean to tell me the fellow is still about? Then it is high time he were put 
properly out of the way.”

“We can lodge him in the Bastille before the day is out,” said Saint-Fond. 
“Juliette has only to ask—”

“No,” Noirceuil broke in, “it would be a mistake to hurry, for there are 
possibilities here, it seems to me. I already envisage a pathetic scene—”

“Exactly,” I said. “And dungeons—piffle, such scoundrels merit worse than that.
Noirceuil and you, Saint-Fond, you have labored earnestly at the reformation of 
my soul; that your efforts have not been vain is going to be proven upon this 
occasion. Since we are to trouble to commit a piece of mischief, we might as well 
make it a full-blown crime. The plan is simple, there can be no other: while the 
dog dies by my hand you’ll be fucking me.”

“Blast me,” exclaimed the Minister, quaffing off another glass of champagne, 
“you are marvelous, Juliette.” And divesting himself of his breeches, “What a mind
the child has. She has but to air a thought and lo! my prick soars. Do you really 
believe you shall have the determination to execute your scheme?”

“I swear it upon the head of this prick I inspire,” said I, catching hold of the 
purpling member Saint-Fond had just enlarged.

And I being bent forward at the moment, Noirceuil advanced a hand toward my
ass while gripping his risen stave hard. “By fuck, Saint-Fond, I always told you 
she was a delicious creature, did I not?” and he scraped his engine between my 
parted buttocks.

“Come, come, gentlemen, hear me out if you please. The undertaking must be 
embellished by some pretty details. It strikes me that Bernole and I ought to 
meet again: I’ll tell him I am dreadfully sorry about what happened today, declare
it was all a misunderstanding, I’ll deceive him by means of advances, we’ll kiss, 
don’t you know, I’ll have him in love with me in half an hour, beside himself, out 
of his mind, he’ll stick me…. No, that’s not enough, he has got to embugger me … 
and he will. You, Saint-Fond, at this point you’ll suddenly appear, at the critical 
instant you’ll burst into the room, the instant, that is to say, he is about to 
discharge: you are my lover, you are furious, you intend to punish me, pointing a 
dagger to my breast you enjoin me to kill Bernole or perish myself. So I kill him, 
of course. We shall include Clairwil in the scene, she will surely be able to 
contribute something original to it.”

Discussions preparatory to a crime never fail to please rascals. These two 
waxed so enthusiastic as they listened to me that there was shortly no restraining
them anymore. The door to a boudoir opens, several individuals join us as 
auxiliaries, and my ass receives plenteous offerings from each of these monsters 
whom my perfidious imaginings had hurled into a very lather of lust. The storm 
abated, a draft for five hundred thousand francs was delivered to me, and with it I
had the promise of a million payable the day the project was enacted.

The prospect of this reward tempted me sorely; impossible to turn back now. I 
rush to my estate; there, I take pen in hand and write to Bernole. Kind Sir, I 
begin, filial devotion has found its way into my heart at last, and as I write I 
weep: it is the pure country air, apparently, that has dispelled the ferocity we 
inhale from the foul atmosphere of Paris; come visit me here in these idyllic rustic
surroundings, in this place where Nature reigns uncontested, and let me give vent
to the feelings Nature inspires in me for you. My man arrives…. Ah, the joy of 
duping him, very sweet it was, sweet beyond belief or telling; I was fairly quaking
from delight. The first thing I did was display to him the luxuriousness of my 
circumstances, he was dazzled; my artful caresses completed his seduction.

After we had supped in richest style, “By what possible means,” I asked, “can I
hope to right the wrongs I did you, all because of my wicked mind? Monsieur 
Bernole,” I declared, “my position is not easy. I was afraid. I must watch my step 
very closely. I am the Minister’s confidante, his friend; great is his power, he need
but lift a finger and I am doomed. In you, as you stood before me, I detected 
nothing of a father; no, let me say it out, the emotions which assailed me were 
not a daughter’s, they were something a thousand times more tender and more 
delicate, and that accounts for why, dreading lest I succumb to them, I was 
obliged to feign coldness, to behave harshly, aye, cruelly. What else could I do? 
Overcome by affection, by the most sacred love…. Eh, Bernole, you loved my 
mother, I would also have you love me; but if we are to know happiness together,
discretion is required of us both, discretion, that is all; are you such a man as a 
woman may rely upon?”

The upright and decent Bernole shuddered at hearing these words.

“My Juliette,” replied he, deeply stirred, “I seek to reawaken your sense of filial
love only; that alone is due me, religion and honor, to which I am yet attached, 
prevent me from accepting any other. Tax me not with immorality for having lived 
out of wedlock with your mother: we both believed that such voluntarily 
contracted ties as bound us together were valid in the eyes of heaven, and these 
we respected; ’twas not lawful, what we did. I am aware of that, I was aware of it
then, but our error was one Nature comprehends and forgives, but what you 
propose to me is abhorrent to her.”

“Why, Bernole, yours is a benighted mind!” I cried, my solicitations having 
brought me to the point of kissing him and laying a hand upon his thigh. “You 
whom I adore, alas,” I went on with mounting heat, “are my sentiments of no 
interest to you? Come give life a second time to her whose sole glory is to have 
been sired by you: my first existence I owe to love, let me owe it another also; 
you gave me life, will you not make that life worth living? Oh, my Bernole, ’tis so, 
’tis so: without you I must die.”

Two breasts white as snow and prettily shaped, which as though by accident 
pop into sight that same moment, eyes full of dreamy longing, of languor, and of 
lust … straying hands wandering up the paternal legs to unbutton the paternal 
pantaloons and with skill to fondle and stroke the half-stiffened instrument that 
brought me into this world; at length Bernole’s reluctant passions are roused….

“Good God, what are these assaults,” he exclaims, “and how am I to withstand
them? How spurn the living image of her whom I worshiped up until the very 
end?”

“And today, Bernole, your beloved is restored to you—behold in me she whom 
you loved in the past—she breathes; by the sweet kisses her mouth thirsts after 
bring her entirely back to life—ah, do you realize the state you are putting me 
in?” I demand. “Only see,” I add, lifting my skirts, flinging myself upon a couch, 
“yes, look, look, and resist if you dare.”

Gullible Bernole, quite swept off his feet, falls into the trap I have laid for his 
virtue; she who caresses the sot is thoughtful only of the base scheme that is 
soon to procure his undoing. Possessed of a vibrant member, wiry, spirited, and 
above all uncommonly long, Bernole fucked very adequately, yes, delightfully; 
stimulated by his performance I treated him generously, clutched his buttocks and
pulled him firmly to me. That for awhile; then, slithering down beneath him, I 
merrily pump this prime cause of my existence; after which, resuming my place, I
pack him away into my cunt, ball-deep: inordinately heated by my tricks, Bernole 
looses a discharge; I answer with one of my own, as my incestuous entrails 
become host to a fresh batch of the same seed he sowed long ago in my mother’s
womb. Thus did I conceive. I shall tell you about my pregnancy a little later on.

Unhinged by love, under the sway of that deity forgetting the dictates of the 
honor and the probity which had so well ruled his conduct hitherto, Bernole 
implores me to let him stay the night. Greatly excited by the idea of being fucked 
by the father my viciousness has passed the death sentence upon, I consent to 
everything. Bernole’s efforts surpassed my hopes: I was soundly tuppered seven 
times over, and all the while obsessed by my ferocious designs, out-discharged 
him two to one as I dwelt upon the prospect of burying on the morrow him who 
had been so ill-starred, first to be my father, then, worse yet, to give me such 
pleasure. Midway along in our exercises, alluding to my dread lest carelessness 
lead to a pregnancy that would discover our intrigue, I steered round an exquisite
ass by way of suggestion that he change itinerary: but crime, alas, was so foreign
to my virtuous father’s heart that, would you believe it? he proved not to have the
least notion how to go about these infamies (infamies, I borrow his expression) 
which, he was at pains to have me understand, if he performed them, it was out 
of prudence and excess of love; the well-tooled sophist buggered me 
thrice—these rehearsals were necessary for the play that was to be staged the 
next day; so keen was their effect upon me I fainted away from pleasure.

There arrived that longed-for tomorrow when I was to savor the unspeakable 
charms of a crime I was in a perfect panic of eagerness to perpetrate. I looked 
forth upon the day in its dawning: Nature, whom I was about to outrage so 
gravely, had never appeared to me in such beauty; and glancing in a mirror I saw
myself as prettier, healthier, more winsome than ever I had been before; within 
me there were hidden stirrings, never had they needled me so sharply, so 
imperiously as now they did. Rising from my bed, I sensed myself dominated by a
lust … by a wickedness … I was devoured by a craving for abominations; and in 
me there was something beyond words bitter: it was despair at being incapable of
carrying horror to the full extent described by my desires….

’Tis a crime I am soon to commit, I mused, something which would be 
commonly held a very black crime. But though it be black, though it be heinous, it
is only one crime. And what is a single crime to a person who wishes only to live 
in the midst of a multitude of crimes, who wishes to live for the sake of crime 
alone, who idolizes it and nothing else?

The whole morning I was restive, gloomy, testy, I fidgeted. I flogged two of my
female hirelings, I was cross; I teased a child that had been entrusted to the care 
of one of them, then lured it into tumbling out a window: it died from the fall, this
lifted my spirits somewhat, and I spent the remainder of the day at all sorts of 
little japeries, whiling the time away at all sorts of little savageries. I thought the 
promised supper would never arrive; but it did at last. I had issued orders that it 
be as lavish as the other of the day before, and as I had done then, I again drew 
Bernole upon a couch and flashed him my ass. Into it the ninny plunged, fuddled 
by my meaningless amorous prattle. An instant or two later the door is flung open
and in storm Clairwil, Noirceuil, and Saint-Fond, swearing and armed; Bernole is 
dragged off my back and bound hand and foot.

“Juliette,” a raging Saint-Fond declares, “you deserve to be butchered along 
with this monster for having betrayed the trust I have always placed in you. 
Would you live, eh? Then you have no choice: there are three balls in this pistol, 
take it and blow the churl’s brains out.”

“Great heaven!” I shrilled theatrically. “What are you demanding of me? This 
man is my father—”

“A father-fucking slut ought to be able to do a little father-killing.”

“The choice is impossible—”

“Rubbish. Come, be quick about it: take this pistol instantly, or die yourself.”

“Woe is me,” I sighed, “my hand trembles, give me the weapon nevertheless. 
What must be, must be,” said I; “beloved father, will you pardon this act? I am 
under constraint, you observe it—”

“Vile creature,” Bernole answered, “do as you are told. Aye, go ahead. But 
spare me having to listen to you. I do not wish to be made a fool of.”

“Very well then, papa,” said Clairwil gaily, “since you don’t wish to be made a 
fool of, you shan’t be: just as you have guessed, your death is of your daughter’s 
contriving—and right indeed she is to want to murder the great scoundrel you 
must be for ever having given life to such a child.”

Preparations are made forthwith: Bernole is tied to a chair fixed by spikes to 
the floor; I take up a position ten feet from him. Saint-Fond stretches out upon a 
divan and fits his member in my anus, Noirceuil supervising the introduction with 
one hand, stroking his own instrument with the other; to the right Clairwil is 
tonguing Saint-Fond’s mouth and tickling my clitoris. I take aim.

“Saint-Fond,” I inquire, “shall I wait until you wet me?”

“No, foul bitch,” he shouts, “kill him, kill him, the shot will bring my sperm 
out.”

I fire. The ball enters Bernole’s brow; he expires; and with wild screams we all 
four discharge.

Barbarous Saint-Fond rises and goes to peer at the victim; he stands over the 
body a long time, manifestly in ecstasy. (He always adored such situations.) He 
calls my name, would have me look also…. While I do he casts sidelong glances at
me, studying my reaction; my sang-froid satisfies him. With a very mischievous 
smile Clairwil watches death stiffen Bernole’s limbs and drift over his contorted 
face.

“Nothing arouses me like the sight of death,” Clairwil murmurs. And then, her 
eyes still riveted upon our victim, “Who’d care to frig me?”

I step forward; Noirceuil slips his stave into my ass, Saint-Fond his into 
Clairwil’s; and we all discharge afresh. After which a most delicious meal is 
brought in and we take places around a table at whose head, as though presiding 
over the feast, sits the corpse.

“Juliette,” says Saint-Fond, kissing me and laying the money down by my 
plate, “here is what I promised you. You will not take it amiss if I tell you that 
until today I allowed myself to harbor one or two little doubts as to the stuff you 
were made of. There is no longer any room for them. Your performance was 
irreproachable.”

“You will excuse me,” put in Clairwil, “but I am not of that opinion. I seem still 
to notice the same failing in her: whenever Juliette commits a crime, it’s 
enthusiastically; but so long as her cunt is dry she might as well be paralyzed. 
One must proceed calmly, deliberately, lucidly. Crime is the torch that should fire 
the passions, that is a commonplace; but I have the suspicion that with her it is 
the reverse, passion firing her to crime.”

“The difference is enormous,” Saint-Fond remarked, “for in such a case crime 
is but accessory, whereas it ought to have prime importance.”

“I am afraid I share Clairwil’s view, my dear Juliette,” said Noirceuil; “you need
further encouragement; this ruinous sensibility plaguing you must be dealt with. 
All the irregularities into which our imagination leads us,” he continued, “are exact
indices of our degree of intelligence. Its vivacity, its impetuosities, in a superior 
being, are so powerful that it will stop at nothing; obstacles to surmount 
represent that many more delights; and their overcoming is not necessarily proof 
of depravity, as fools suppose, but evidence of the mind’s strengthening. You, 
Juliette, have now reached the age where your faculties are at their apogee; you 
enter your prime readied by earnest study, by solid reflection, by a wholesale 
rejection of all the curbs and all the prejudices imposed and acquired in childhood.
No, you have no cause for worry, that long and careful preparation shall not have 
been for nothing, your career is going to be brilliant: a fiery and vigorous 
temperament, robust health, great heat in the bowels, a very chilly heart are 
there to second this ebullient, enlightened, and unscrupulous brain. We may 
depend upon it, my friends, Juliette will go as far as she possibly can; but I ask 
that she not tarry on the way, nor even pause, that if ever she casts a glance 
backward it be then to chide herself for having made such modest progress, and 
not to be amazed at the great distances she has covered.”

“I expect still more,” said Clairwil. “Let me repeat: I expect Juliette to do 
evil—not to quicken her lust, as I believe it is her habit at present, but solely for 
the pleasure of doing it. I ask that in bare evil, evil free of all lewd accouterments,
she find all the delight her lust affords her; I ask that she learn to dispense with 
all vehicles, with all pretexts for the doing of evil. This program carried out means
no diminishing of libertinage’s charms, Juliette may go on savoring them as in the
past, and ought to. But what I am resolutely opposed to is her having to frig 
herself in order to reach a criminal pitch; for the consequences of this kind of 
behavior are that the day her appetites fade, her desires quit her, she’ll be 
incapable of doing anything wrong at all; whereas by following my prescriptions, 
in crime she will always find the means to revive her passions. No further need to 
lay finger to cunt in order to perpetrate the wicked deed; but from perpetrating it 
she will derive the wish to frig herself. I find no clearer way of expressing the 
matter.”

“My dear,” I replied, “there is nothing obscure in your philosophy; I grasp these
theories because their practice suits me. Do you doubt it? I am prepared to prove 
it to you; put me to whatever test you like. Had you somewhat more carefully 
observed my comportment in the business we have lately dispatched, you would 
not, I am sure, have formulated these criticisms; I am come to the stage where I 
love evil for its own sake; only in crime, I have recently noticed, do my passions 
catch fire, and where the seasoning of crime is lacking I taste no joy. There 
remains a single point I would consult you upon. Of remorse I experience nothing 
anymore, I may truthfully declare that for me it has ceased altogether to exist, 
never a twinge of it regardless of the abomination I indulge in; but, do you know, 
I am sometimes ashamed of myself. I blush, like Eve abashed after eating the 
apple. Our activities, our extravagances, these are things whereof I would not be 
pleased to have intelligence leak out, things I am loath to own save to our close 
friends—why is it so? Why, pray explain to me, why is it that of these feelings, 
remorse and shame, I am susceptible to the weaker although impervious to the 
more potent—in fine, where does the distinction lie between the two?”

“In this,” answered Saint-Fond, “that shame reflects the wound inflicted upon 
public opinion by a given piece of wickedness, whereas remorse relates to the 
pain that wickedness does to our own conscience; in such sort that it is possible 
to be ashamed of a deed that causes no remorse when this deed offends 
conventional practice only without afflicting one’s conscience; and similarly it is 
possible to be unashamedly contrite if the deed committed accords with the 
usages and customs of our country, but jars with our conscience. For example: to 
stroll naked down the central alley in the Tuileries might well make a man blush, 
but could hardly make him remorseful; and a military commander will perhaps 
feel badly at having sent twenty thousand of his troops to their death in a battle, 
but he is not apt to be ashamed. However, both these troublesome feelings are to
be finally eliminated by means of habituation. You now belong to the Sodality of 
the Friends of Crime; it may be safely predicted that participation in its activities 
will by and by rid you of your tendency to shame, of your capacity for it: you will 
acquire the habit of a pronounced cynicism, it will make short work of the 
weakness bothering you at present; and to accelerate the cure, I urge you to 
parade your misbehavior, to show yourself nude in public, frequently, and to strive
after the most arrantly whorish effects in your dress; you’ll gradually cease to 
blush at anything; let the measures I am advising become seconded by doctrinal 
firmness, and all these sudden starts and annoying twinges will be things of the 
past, you will take a very different view of affairs: you shall sense nothing but 
pleasure there where once upon a time you were stricken by shame.”

More serious matters were broached next: I was informed by Saint-Fond that 
the marriage of his daughter Alexandrine to Noirceuil, his friend, was about to be 
concluded at long last, and that he and his future son-in-law were agreed that the
young lady should pass a season with me, living in my house, where she would be
familiarized with, and adapted to, the tastes of the individual to whom she was 
going to be joined maritally.

“We request you, Noirceuil and I,” Saint-Fond pursued, “to shape this little soul
after your own. Cultivate it, nurture it assiduously, make it liberal provision of 
good counsel and bright example; will Noirceuil keep the girl by him if he finds 
her soundly formed? Perhaps. But it is most unlikely he’ll long abide her if she 
prove gauche or a prude. So endeavor, Juliette, to achieve something you can be 
proud of and which will be useful to us all; the pains you take will not be 
overlooked.”

“Sir,” said I to the Minister, “you know that such lessons as these can only be 
given between a pair of sheets….”

“Of course, of course, my dear,” Saint-Fond nodded. “That is what I have in 
mind.”

“By all means, yes,” Noirceuil echoed.

“Obviously,” said Clairwil. “How educate a girl save by lying with her?”

“Quite,” Noirceuil continued; “our good Juliette will bed with my wife as often 
as she sees fit.”

Saint-Fond took up fresh subjects; he outlined a cruel scheme he had devised 
for the devastation of France. “We are presently concerned,” said he, “by certain 
symptoms which could soon lead to a revolution in the land, and are disturbed 
especially by the untoward size of the population; the trouble might well have its 
origin there. The more numerous the people become, the greater the danger they
pose; the awakening of minds, the spreading of a critical spirit, these are grave 
developments: only the ignorant remain placid under the yoke. Therefore,” the 
Minister went on, “we plan, firstly, to have done with all these grammar schools, 
the free ones, which are producing such alarming quantities of poets, painters, 
and thinkers instead of the drudges and pickpockets we ought to have. What need
have we of such crowds of talent, why do we bother to encourage it in them? Less
wit in the nation, I say, and some numerical retrenchment also: France requires a 
severe purging, the lowliest is the first sector to attack. We intend hence to have 
unsparingly at mendicants, that’s the class which breeds nine out of ten of our 
agitators; we are razing charitable institutions, the poorhouses, being determined 
not to leave the masses one single refuge where insolence can ripen. Bowed 
beneath chains a thousand times heavier than those worn by, let us say, the 
commoners in Asia, we propose to have ours crawl in slavery, and to this end we 
are prepared to use the widest variety of radical means.”

“It will be a while before those means take effect,” Clairwil pointed out. “If it’s 
a sudden diminishment you need, then you had better resort to prompter ones: 
war, famine, epidemics….”

“Ah, war,” said Saint-Fond, “we’ll not neglect a war, that’s scheduled. As for an 
epidemic, it is to be avoided since we ourselves might be its first victims. 
Regarding a famine, the total monopolization of corn we are working toward, as 
well as being profitable to us, will shortly reduce the people to veritable 
cannibalism. We are counting heavily upon this measure. The Council of Ministers 
approved it unanimously today. Speedy, infallible, prodigiously lucrative.

“Won over to the principles Machiavelli set so clearly forth,” the Minister 
continued, “I have for a long time had the profound conviction that individuals can
be of no account to the politician; as machines, men must labor for the prosperity
of the government they are subordinated to, never should the government be 
concerned for the welfare of the public. Every government that interests itself in 
the governed is weak; there is but one sort of strong government, and it 
considers itself everything and the nation nothing. Whether there are a few more 
or a few less slaves in a State does not matter; what does, is that their bondage 
weigh onerously and absolutely upon a people, and that the sovereign be 
despotic. Rome tottered feebly along in the days when Romans insisted upon 
governing themselves; but she became mistress of the world when tyrants seized 
authority; all the power resides in the sovereign, thus must we behold the thing, 
and since this power is merely moral so long as the people are physically the 
stronger, only by an uninterrupted series of despotic actions can the government 
assemble the force it needs: until such time as it commands all the real power, it 
will exist in an ideal sense only. When we are eager to gain the upper hand over 
others, we must little by little accustom them to seeing in us something which is 
actually not there; otherwise, they’ll only see us for what we are, and this will 
regularly and inevitably be to our detriment….”

“It has always seemed to me,” Clairwil remarked, “that the art of governing 
men is the one that demands more trickery, more duplicity, and more fraudulence
than any other.”

“Perfectly true,” Saint-Fond assented, “and the reason therefor is simple: there
is no governing human beings unless you deceive them. To deceive them, you 
must be false. The enlightened man will never allow himself to be led about by 
the end of his nose, hence you must deprive him of light, keep him in darkness if 
you would steer him; none of this is possible without duplicity.”

“But is not duplicity a vice?” I wondered.

“I would rather tend to esteem it a virtue,” answered the Minister, “it is the 
only key unlocking the human heart. You cannot hope to live amidst men if you 
limit yourself to honesty; their sole and constant effort being to deceive us, what 
awaits us if we do not very quickly learn to deceive them? The foremost 
preoccupation of man and of the statesman, particularly, is to penetrate others 
without letting his own thoughts be known. Well, if duplicity is the only means for 
achieving this, duplicity is then a virtue; in a totally corrupt world there is never 
any danger being more rotten than one’s neighbors; rather, ’tis there to assure 
oneself of the whole sum of felicity and ease which virtue would procure us in a 
moral society. But the mechanism that directs government cannot be virtuous, 
because it is impossible to thwart every crime, to protect oneself from every 
criminal without being criminal too; that which directs corrupt mankind must be 
corrupt itself; and it will never be by means of virtue, virtue being inert and 
passive, that you will maintain control over vice, which is ever active: the 
governor must be more energetic than the governed: well, if the energy of the 
governed simply amounts to so many crimes threatening to be unleashed, how 
can you expect the energy of the governor to be anything different? what are 
legally prescribed punishments if not crimes? and what excuses them? the 
necessity of governing men. There it is: crime is one of the vital mainsprings of 
government, I ask you now in what sense can this they call virtue be necessary in
the world, when it is evident you cannot obtain it save through crimes? I may add
that it is exceedingly necessary, for the government itself, that mankind in general
be thoroughly corrupt: the more corrupt men are, the more easily they may be 
managed. In conclusion, examine virtue from every viewpoint and you always find
it useless and dangerous.

“Juliette,” Saint-Fond declared, addressing himself now to me, “if you still 
entertain prejudices touching this subject, I should like to rid you of them once 
and for all, they cannot have anything but the worst influence upon your destiny. 
Opinions are important in life, I should like to make certain that yours are 
wholesome; for it is dreadful, if one is born with penchants for evil-doing, not to 
be able to do evil save in fear and trembling. Hear me, my angel, take note of 
what I say: were your activities to hurl the entire natural order into confusion, 
you would be doing no more than exercising the faculties Nature gave you for 
that—faculties which Nature was perfectly aware you would employ for that; their 
employment is obviously not something Nature can object to or condemn, since 
instead of neutralizing these harmful faculties she originally gave you, or 
subsequently depriving you of them, she does nought but incite in you, 
continually, the desire to make the most of them. So do all the evil you like, and 
do it knowing it need not cost you a wink of sleep; take heart in the fact that 
whatever the species of wickedness you contrive, for violence it will never surpass
or satisfy Nature’s greedy expectations, who welcomes destruction, loves it, lusts 
after it, feeds upon it; take heart, I say, knowing that you please Nature never so 
well as when, emulating her, you set your hand to ruinous work; and knowing 
that, if the question be of outrage, of infringement upon her rights, you never so 
injure her as when you labor at the creation she abhors, or as when you leave in 
peace this mass of humanity which is an eternal threat to her; for the true laws of
Nature are crime and death, and we are most faithfully her servants when, 
smiting hard to left and right, in a rage like hers we indiscriminately cut down all 
inside our reach.”

“Believe me, Saint-Fond,” I replied to my lover, “to all the principles you have 
just settled I adhere most cordially. Only one thing disturbs me: one must, you 
asserted, be treacherous in one’s dealings with everybody; now, if by ill chance 
you were so with me—”

“You need dread no such eventuality,” the Minister affirmed at once. “I shall 
never be treacherous toward my friends, if merely because one cannot very well 
do without something solid and sure in the world; and what’s left if you cannot 
count upon your intercourse with your friends? You may therefore be certain, all 
three of you, that I shall never play you false unless you wrong me first. The 
reason is simple. I base it on self-interest, the only rule I know for judging oneself
and others intelligently. We live side by side: is it not true that if you discover I 
am deceiving you, you will deceive me in return at the first opportunity; and I do 
not want to be deceived: there’s the whole of my logic upon the chapter of 
friendship. Experience shows that between persons of the same sex the sentiment
of friendship is not easy to preserve, and impossible between persons of unlike 
sex; I value it in so far as it may be founded upon likenesses of humor and 
compatibilities of taste, which happens only very seldom; but it is a great error to 
suppose virtue must be its cement; if that were so, friendship would become an 
unbearably dull sentiment which monotony would soon destroy. When pleasures 
provide its basis, each new idea gives the attachment an added sinew; need, the 
sole real aliment of friendship, knits it ever tighter, affection grows with each 
passing day as with each passing day increases the mutual need of one for the 
other; you have enjoyment from your friend, you enjoy yourselves together, you 
enjoy yourself for his sake, each delight fortifies the rest, and ’tis only then one 
may be said to know them. But what does a virtuous sentiment yield me? A few 
barren pleasures, a few vapid intellectual gratifications that never survive the first
test, except in the form of regrets which are the more poignant where hurt has 
been done one’s pride, no shafts being more wounding than those which strike 
there.”

It was past midnight; we retired, the four of us repairing to a bed eight feet 
long and eight wide, built for such scenes; and after some lewd ones, some foul 
ones, we went to sleep. Noirceuil had business awaiting him in the city and left us
early the next day; Clairwil remained with me to keep Saint-Fond company, for 
the Minister was disposed to spend a few more days in the country.

Upon our return to Paris Saint-Fond brought me his daughter, whose apartment
had been put in readiness during our absence. Alexandrine was of an 
extraordinary and eminently regular beauty; she could boast of a sublime bust, 
the prettiest details distinguished her form, her skin was glowing clear, her flesh 
firm, there was grace and ripeness in her limbs, heaven shone in her face, her 
organ well became the rest, it positively intrigued, and there was considerable of 
the romantic in her spirit.

“Here is my daughter,” said Saint-Fond, introducing her to me, “I mean, as you
know, to marry her to Noirceuil, who is not the man to be rattled by the liberties I
have taken with her and which I still take every day. There’s some fruit left on the
tree, however: frontwardly, Alexandrine has treasures still to be assessed. But on 
the hinder side … her ass, this gorgeous ass, Juliette, has been long the object of 
my depradations. Who could have resisted such a temptation? Look at it, my 
angel, and tell me now, have you ever seen anything so inviting in all your life?”

Rarely indeed had I clapped eyes on a fairer, a better-cleft set of buttocks.

“And for endurance, for elasticity, and for healing power it is perfectly 
remarkable,” Saint-Fond went on, opening it wide, “for from the look of it who 
would believe I lash her every morning at nine and bum-fuck her every night at 
ten? I confide this girl to you, Juliette, educate her for a while; make her worthy 
of the gentleman whose wife she shall be, breed in her the taste for all crimes 
and the liveliest horror for all virtues. To you I cede my rights over her; transmit 
to her the philosophical systems you have received from him who is to wed her; 
give her all our penchants, communicate all our passions to her: never has the 
name of God been pronounced within her hearing, I think I may safely expect it 
shan’t be in your proximity that religious notions will occur to her. I’d not trifle 
with her, no, I’d put a bullet in the chit’s brain the instant I detected talk of that 
execrable chimera coming out of her mouth. For several important reasons 
neither Noirceuil nor I can personally undertake the task we are entrusting to 
you; but Alexandrine could not be left in more capable hands.”

That was the occasion on which the Minister mentioned the news of Noirceuil’s 
nomination to one of the highest posts at the Court, which fetched with it one 
hundred thousand crowns a year. “It was given him,” Saint-Fond added, “at the 
same time the King conferred upon me another worth twice as much.”

And while vice, impudent vice, sped unerringly from one triumph to the next, 
fate went just as steadily crushing whomever those mighty rascals deigned to 
make victims. Such was the situation; I pondered it at length. And all my 
observations, all my meditations conspired to depress ever lower the view I held 
of goodness, and to exalt my opinion of evil, again and again confirming me in my
choice to dwell fast and secure in the bosom of crime and of infamy…. Ah, my 
friends, I cannot well communicate to you the loathing I had of virtue.

I spent the following night with Alexandrine; no question about it, that child 
was delicious. But I must nonetheless own that I beheld her so philosophically, 
sobriety to such a degree characterizing my senses, that it is difficult to give an 
account of the pleasures she yielded me: she roused my emotions scarcely at all. 
My ideas had gained such a prise upon me, the moral in me so thoroughly 
overmastered the physical, my indifference was such, my self-possession so 
unshakable, that whether it was because of surfeit, or depravity, or sheer 
pigheadedness, I was able to have her naked ten successive hours in my bed, to 
frig her, to have her frig me, to lick her, to suck her, and all that unremittingly and
without a trace of feeling. Here, I dare say, is an outstanding example of the 
benefits that accrue from stoicism. Steeling our soul against all that may stir it, by
means of libertinage inuring it to crime, paring voluptuousness down to a purely 
carnal affair and stubbornly denying it any element of delicacy, the stoical training
enervates the soul; and from this state, wherein its native activity does not 
permit it to remain long, it passes into one of apathy which soon metamorphoses 
into pleasures a thousand times diviner than those which frailties could procure it;
for the fuck I shed with Alexandrine, though due to this toughness I have sought 
to represent, got me delights infinitely more trenchant than the ones which would
have resulted from excitement or the dreary heats of love.

At any rate, to my consideration Alexandrine appeared quite as untaught 
morally as she was physically inexperienced; everything was still to be done for 
her heart and her mind. The little vixen had a promising disposition, however, and
every time I attempted to arouse her I found her full of fuck. I asked her, did her 
father hurt her when he buggered her?

“A great deal at first,” she admitted, but she had become so used to it that it 
no longer caused her suffering.

Upon my demanding whether she had held conversation with anyone beside 
the Minister and Noirceuil, she told me Saint-Fond had obliged her to accept the 
attentions of one other man, and from her description I recognized Delcour. 
“Attentions,” I repeated; “do you mean by that he embuggered you too?” No, he 
had whipped her while her father looked on; judge thereby of the imagination of a
man whose prick lifts and spits as he watches his daughter being flogged by a 
public executioner. In the course of our first night together I supplied my pupil all 
the rudiments of the theory of libertinage; and in three days’ time she was 
frigging me as adroitly as Clairwil. Be that as it may, this child gradually began to 
set my teeth on edge; I was already caressing visions of her undoing when I 
asked Noirceuil his intentions concerning the creature.

“I shall make a victim of her, needless to say. I’ve never done anything else 
with a wife.”

“Then why the delay?

”

He smiled. “Because of the dowry, because of the child I want to sire on her, or
have somebody else sire, because of my desire to preserve the Minister’s 
protection through this alliance.”

These were considerations which had not occurred to me; I had to abandon my
plans. I simultaneously lost all interest in Alexandrine and, in order not to have to
mention her again—I have more important things to talk about—let me say that 
she married Noirceuil, became pregnant one way or another; and the moral 
instruction I gave her having penetrated not very far, it was early on in the game 
that she succumbed to the concerted villainy of her father and husband, perishing
during a rout I did not attend because of events whose details I shall enter into 
shortly.

The girls whom I furnished to the Minister did not always cost me as much as I
retailed them for, and it sometimes even happened that I earned money through 
their acquisition. I shall cite an instance of this, realizing that it does not. speak in
favor of my probity.

From a personage residing in the provinces I one day receive a letter, telling 
me that the government owes him half a million francs which he loaned the State 
during the last war; his affairs have taken a catastrophic turn, for want of the sum
aforementioned he has been brought to the worst extremes, he is faced by 
nothing short of starvation, he and his sixteen-year-old daughter, who, devoted to
her as he is, he would marry with a part of the money if he could but recover his 
due. Knowing of my influence with the Minister he has been obliged to invoke my 
aid; all pertinent documents accompany his missive. I make inquiry, learn that 
what he advances is true; obtaining the funds will require intercession from a 
powerful source, but that they are owing to the claimant is beyond all question. 
Moreover, the young lady referred to in the letter is, so I am assured, one of the 
most enchanting creatures in the entire country. Without airing anything of my 
scheme to the Minister, I ask him for the necessary order for payment. It is 
delivered to me at once; in twenty-four hours I accomplish what ten years of 
struggle have failed to get the provincial. As soon as I have the cash in hand, I 
notify the latter that appropriate steps have been taken; but that his presence is 
indispensable; that success could only be accelerated by his arrival in the 
disbursor’s office accompanied by a pretty young thing; in fine, I urge him to 
bring his daughter to town with him. The simpleton is taken roundly in; he 
appears at my door and with him, sure enough, he has one of the loveliest girls it 
has ever been my fortune to see. I lodged them in a place of safety, but did not 
keep them long in doubt of their fate: they were the principal ornaments at the 
next of the frolics I arranged each week for Saint-Fond. Already five hundred 
thousand francs in pocket and thanks to this newest piece of treachery now in the
possession of the father and daughter, you will not, I suppose, be hard put to 
guess what employment I reserved for these spoils. The money, enough to have 
guaranteed a comfortable future to several families, was squandered by me in 
less than a week; the daughter, who might surely have made, had fate been 
kinder, for the felicity of some honest man, instead of that, after having been 
soiled by our nocturnal pollutions for three days in a row, made a fourth supper 
victim, her father providing a fifth, both expiring under a torture the more 
barbarous for being prolonged over twelve hours of hideous suffering.

To complete this self-portrait, after describing my perfidy I ought to represent 
my greed to you. With me greed went far: to the point, indeed, of usury. Once 
finding myself with eight hundred thousand francs worth of objects in pledge, 
objects which would not, had I auctioned them off, have fetched a fourth of that 
sum, I declared bankruptcy, and the gesture sufficed to ruin twenty humble 
families who had deposited into my keeping all they had of value in exchange for 
a pitiful fugitive subsistence, no more than enough to enable them to pursue the 
desperate toiling whence they earned practically nothing.

Eastertide was drawing near, Clairwil reminded me of our appointment at the 
Carmelites’. There we betook ourselves, Elvire and Charmeil, the two prettiest of 
my hired sluts, in tow. No sooner were we inside the monastery than the Superior
asked for news of Claude. Nothing further had been heard from him since he had 
left after accepting our invitation. In reply, we wondered whether in the absence 
of other information it might not be conjectured that, libertine as he decidedly 
was, he had flung away his frock. No more was said of Claude. We entered a vast 
hall; and it was there the Superior had us review his legions. Eusebius, so was the
head of the establishment called, summoned them forward from ranks one by 
one; they stepped forth, were taken in charge by my two women who frigged 
them and displayed their pricks when they were in fullest flower. Anything short of
six inches around by nine in length was rejected, so was anything older than fifty. 
We had been promised only thirty opponents, here in fact were fifty-four friars 
plus ten novices with engines not one inferior to the dimensions noted above, and
certain of them ten by fourteen. The ceremony began.

It transpired in that same hall. Clairwil and I were bidden to recline upon broad
couches, thick-mattressed and elastic, our legs flexed, our loins pillowed on big 
cushions, totally naked; in this first assault, we gave the cunt for target to the 
adversary. Our tribades sorted out the pricks according to size and directed them 
our way, starting with the smaller; from now on all pollution was effected by us, 
that is to say, we each readied the pair of pricks which were to succeed the ones 
encunting us at the moment. When a cunt became filled by what had been in a 
hand, that empty hand was immediately given a new prick to prepare; we each 
had, at all times, three men either on or by us. After he had completed his attack,
a friar would retire from the field and into an adjoining room, there to rest and 
await further orders. They were all naked, their pricks were all sheathed, and it 
was into those protectors they all discharged. First they visited Clairwil, then me; 
and so were we each fucked four and sixty times in the course of this 
engagement, toward the close of which our women went into the other room and 
busied themselves preparing the friars for fresh affray. The second attack 
began…. Another sixty-four fuckings apiece; it was under identical circumstances 
the third was launched, except that it was directed at our asses and we, instead 
of frigging pricks manually, constantly had one in our mouths: a prick that had 
just emerged from our asses we sucked, furbishing it for the fourth attack. Here, 
we introduced the weaving variation: that is, I sucked the prick which withdrew 
from Clairwil’s bum and she mouthed the one that came out of mine. When truce 
was called we had each been fucked one hundred twenty-eight times cuntwardly 
and as many times in the ass, making two hundred fifty-six fuckings in all. 
Biscuits and sherry were served, then battle was resumed.

We took on our men in groups of eight: we had a prick underneath each 
armpit, one in each hand, one between the bubs, another in the mouth, the 
seventh in the cunt, the eighth in the bowels. No sheaths now; the object was to 
lave, bathe our bodies in sperm from head to toe and to have fuck spouting from 
all sides at once. Each eight-man platoon loosed two volleys, bringing first one of 
us, then the other, under fire, and the constituents of each changed posts; thus it 
was we each underwent eight such assaults, and when they were over we 
declared ourselves satisfied and at our hosts’ disposal; they might do what they 
wished with either of us and to their hearts’ content. So it was that Clairwil was 
fucked another fifteen times in the mouth, ten in the cunt, and thirty-nine in the 
ass; and I forty-six in the ass, eight in the mouth, and ten in the cunt.(9) All told, 
another two hundred fuckings each.

The sun rose and as it was Easter day, the rascals who had treated us thus 
marched off to Mass and then marched back; the hour for dinner being not far off,
we indicated to the Superior our desire to proceed to the little impieties that had 
been included in our agreement, before sitting down to the noon meal. Eusebius, 
who cared for men only, had, during our lubricious antics, confined himself to 
readying pricks and embuggering a few of his brothers while they were fucking 
us.

“Why certainly,” he assured us, “I shall myself celebrate the Holy Mystery in 
the chapel of the Virgin. Have you any preferences touching how it should be 
done?”

“As follows,” said Clairwil. “A second friar will officiate beside you: these two 
Masses will be said upon the cunts of our two tribades; while this is going on yet 
another friar will be mouth-fucking them, this enabling him to present his ass to 
the celebrant and at the point the Host is consecrated he will drop a mard upon 
the girl’s belly, and the priest will promptly insert the wafer in the mard; my 
friend and I shall come forth to seek God therein, we’ll apply fire to some of it, 
stab it elsewhere with the point of a knife; what remains of the mixture shall be 
divided into four portions, two of these are to be buried in the asses of the 
celebrants, rammed home by prodding pricks, and the third and fourth portions 
will be likewise stored in Juliette’s ass and in mine: four little syringes—we have 
them here—shall have been got ready in the meantime, and the holy wine shall 
now be squirted into our fundaments. Next, we two women and the two priests 
shall be sodomized anew, and to what is already in our asses discharged fuck 
shall be added. Your prettiest and best crucifixes will be beneath our bellies 
throughout the operation, and we shall shit thereupon, as well as into your 
chalices and various sacred vessels, immediately after we have been fucked.”

All passed in conformance to my friend’s wishes.

She came away from the rites very satisfied. “Excellent, excellent,” she 
repeated, “so much silliness, doubtless, and quite useless, but I found it 
stimulating and that is sufficient justification for anything. Voluptuous delights are
no more than what the imagination makes of them; and that which pleaseth best 
will always be the most delectable:

All tastes partake of Nature;

The best is that which one has.”

We shared a magnificent repast with Eusebius and four of the friars whose 
performances had been most noteworthy; we rested for two hours, and the orgies
recommenced.

Our two tribades were stationed on either side of Clairwil, one displayed her 
cunt, the other her ass; my task was to erect the sixty-four pricks and to lodge 
them one after the other, first in my companion’s vagina, then in her anus, she 
awaiting them lying on her back, her legs raised, her ankles being affixed to the 
posts at the foot of the bed; her swains did no more than excite themselves in her
cunt, all discharging occurred in her ass. I took Clairwil’s place, she now rendered
me the same service. By dint of such arrangements, those libertines not only 
obtained the pleasure of fucking us bilaterally, but in addition to that obtained, 
while fucking, the pleasure of being aided, assisted, guided by a pretty hand, and 
of kissing a mouth, a cunt, or an asshole at will; fuck flowed in tides.

At the second sitting while each of our tribades was rubbing a prick on our 
faces we were frigging another in each hand, and two ecclesiastics were tonguing 
us: we were in a crouching position, squarely above the nose of the man who was
licking our asshole; between our legs, kneeling there, was he who was sucking 
our cunt; the seventh and eighth stood by, prick in hand, awaiting instructions, 
and they would encunt or embugger us when, properly aroused by the sucker or 
the licker, we gave the signal for introduction. An hour or so of this and our total 
number of fuckings had risen by eight more.

Overtaxed, our spirits were beginning to flag when into Clairwil’s head popped 
the thought that revived us both. She expressed it thus: “With a little skill, it is 
possible for two men to encunt a woman at the same time; let those approach 
who are still in condition to try it.” Several came forward, my friend designated 
two of them. “You,” said she to the better-weaponed, “you’ll lie down and I shall 
get aboard you and take your prick first. And you,” she said to his fellow, “you’ll 
fuck me from behind, frigging my asshole while you do. I can perfectly well suck a
third man’s prick; and what’s to prevent me from frigging two others?”

Not every cunt is made for the success of such an enterprise; Clairwil’s, 
happily, was by no means narrow. Pounded and scraped by two gigantic 
members, their action coordinated in such a manner that while the one slid aft 
the other crashed forward till hair met hair,(10) thus fucked at a sustained allegro
for the space of three hours and better by the twenty-six friars who were agile 
enough to accomplish the trick, the whore, at the end of it all, was in a frantic 
condition; her glaring eyes roved, sparks shot from them, foam whitened her lips,
she was in a lather; and spent as she looked to be, yet she would have more; like
one possessed she darted hither and thither through the press, clutching at 
pricks, sucking upon them, pulling them, essaying this and that to stiffen them to 
new efforts. Too young, too delicate, to permit myself even to attempt the 
obscene irregularity my companion was engaged in, I entertained myself at 
preparing the pricks required for her feast; but more than this I could not do. In 
both the zones of pleasure there was such a burning sensation, a scorching so 
intense, that I was scarce able to sit down.

We supped. It was late. Clairwil said she would fain lie that night in the 
convent.

“Kindly have a mattress placed for me upon the altar in your church,” said she 
to the Superior, “there’s yet a deal of fucking to be done. Juliette will join me. The
weather is warm, we shall be more comfortable there. Or, if she prefers, Juliette 
may lie in the chapel dedicated to the whore who, they say, begot the hanged 
God of your infamous Christianity. What say you, Juliette? Go sprawl yourself 
upon that altar, there’s my suggestion, spread your legs in pious remembrance of 
the whorishness of Dirty Mary. Instead of soldiers from the Jerusalem garrison by 
whom the buggeress would get herself stuffed every day, from amongst our 
Carmelite army you’ll select those in whom you suspect a little lingering vigor.”

“But I can fuck no more,” I protested.

“Nonsense. You’ll frig them, they’ll frig you; you’ll suck them, they’ll suck you. 
You’ll see. One can always scrape up fuck to shed in foul circumstances. You tell 
me you are spent? Not I. Far from it; I’ve been well tupped today, better than 
you, and I am still ablaze. The floods of sperm that washed into my ass and cunt 
put no flames out, but fed them. I am on fire…. The more one fucks, my dearest, 
the more one wants to fuck; only fuck soothes the inflammation fucking causes; 
and when a woman has a temperament like the one Nature gave me, only from 
fucking, only while fucking, can she be happy. Woman has one innate virtue, it is 
whorishness; to fuck, that and that alone is what we were created for; woe unto 
her whom a thoughtless and stupid virtuousness ever keeps prisoner of dull 
prejudices; a victim of her opinions and of the chilly esteem she hopes for, almost
always in vain, from men, she’ll have lived dry and joyless and shall die 
unregretted. Libertinage in women used once to be venerated the world over; it 
had worshipers everywhere, temples even; I become more and more a zealot in 
that cause. ’Tis my creed, my whole concern and ambition; so long as there is 
breath in me, I shall be a whore, I proclaim it, I swear it. If there is anyone who 
can claim gratitude from me, it belongs to those who encouraged me in the way 
of vice. To them I owe everything, I owe life itself. That which I received from my 
parents was besmirched by infamous prejudices, they comprised a very jail; I 
burst out of it, my passions broke down those walls, cindered those prejudices, 
and since the daylight my eyes behold only became pure the day I learned the art
of fucking, I consider that my existence dates from then…. Pricks, aye, pricks, 
those are my gods, those are my kin, my boon companions, unto me they are 
everything, I live in the name of nothing but the penis sublime; and when it is not
in my cunt, nor in my ass, it is so firmly anchored in my thoughts that the day 
they dissect me it will be found in my brain.”

After this exuberant statement, delivered somewhat more incoherently than I 
reproduce it here and in a voice bordering upon a shriek, Clairwil laid hold of two 
Carmelites and dashed away to wrestle with them upon the altar; I repaired to 
the chapel. Having first sponged myself with rose water, I provoked attacks from 
the two superb novices I had chosen, and I was in the throes of new transports 
when Clairwil reappeared, crying that she was in requirement of fresh men.

“It is all very well—and natural enough—to pick and choose amidst abundance,
but provisions are now run out, these buggers are frayed and bone-dry. Can you 
believe it, Juliette, I have just been flubbed—aye, flubbed, I who never before had
to endure that affront. Up, my lass, there are other pricks in this convent; we 
merely requisitioned the cream of the crop, let’s feel out the rest. If the Superior,”
she went on, bidding someone go in search of him, “if the Superior has made no 
individual contribution to the satisfying of my desires, he shall yet prove himself 
useful in having them appeased by those of his underlings who, hale in wind and 
limb and having not yet lifted weapon, ought to have fight enough in them to 
content us. Ah, Eusebius, there you are,” she said when he arrived, “good 
Eusebius, take us to the cells inhabited by the friars who were excused from duty 
but of whom we are in need at present; lead on.”

We wended our way slowly through the cloister; doors opened at our 
summons; and whatever the conformation of those we uncovered in those 
chambers, they were enjoined to tup us. All subscribed to the bargain, all signed 
it in sperm: some had at us from the front, and others, they were the majority, 
would take us nowise but from behind; and we, with a single aim in view, that of 
being fucked, we wasted no time higgling or disputing, but lent ourselves on the 
spot to this usage or to that, glad simply to obtain fuck in no matter what orifice: 
such is the attitude every woman should adopt. Is there anything more absurd, 
indeed, than to fancy that there is only one part of the body for the reception of 
pricks, and that if perchance one strays off the beaten track crimes at once start 
to be committed? as if, in shaping us two-holed, Nature had not indicated to man 
to stopper them both, indiscriminately; and that with a predilection for the one or 
the other, let him but proceed as he likes, he acts within the laws of a mother far 
too wise to have conferred upon one of her feeblest creatures the empty little 
privilege of outraging her.

Very partisan to this manner of fucking, considering it beyond comparison with 
the other, I was gratified to have no one, during this second round, ask for 
anything but my ass, and I made it available to all comers.

At length we reached the elder recluses.

“Nothing must be neglected, no exceptions granted,” Clairwil said, “no man is 
without merit once he can be got to discharge; fuck is all I expect of any of 
them.”

Several who were lying abed with novices bent cold glances in our direction. 
“You’ve nothing to offer us that would recompense infidelity on our part,” they 
told us; “even were you to avail us of the shrine wherein we perform our 
customary sacrifices, there would yet be that other altar whose mere presence 
nearby is sufficient to defeat any attempt at homage:

Contrive what she will, however she turn,
A woman can be nought but a woman.

—Martial, Epig.”

From others we had friendlier greeting; but to what trouble we had to go only 
to stiffen their antique instruments! to what were we not obliged to consent! what
ministrations, what lewd attentions! how many different roles did we have to play!
Now victims, now priestesses, we had, by means of cruel macerations, to 
resuscitate a well-nigh extinct Nature in some, whereas others could not be 
brought out of their lethargy until we submitted ourselves to be molested by 
them. One of these old sinners must flog us, we gave him leave; we lashed 
others; we had to lend our mouths to five or six; and very scurvily they repaid 
our industry, spending their strength before we could obtain the least benefit from
it; yet others demanded more unusual treatment; we complied in every instance 
… and they all discharged, down to the sexton, to the gate-keeper, to the 
pew-sweepers who fucked us unendingly, attaining staggering totals; and after 
having been a good three hundred times mounted in one way or another by all 
manner of riders, we took our departure, smitten by every sort of fatigue that can
whelm the human frame. Nine days of moderate living, including lots of baths and
whey, restored us so wonderfully to rights that you’d never have guessed the 
Carmelites had served us anything stronger than tea.

But while no outward marks of that party were left on me, it had fired my 
imagination; my mental state was something that defies description, I was 
enwrapped in an unabating delirium of lubricity; to find relief or, if not that, to 
arouse myself further, I decided to go alone for once to a foregathering of our 
Sodality: there are moments when, however agreeable the company of a person 
like in mind to ourselves, we nevertheless prefer solitude, thinking, perhaps, that 
we will be freer, that our fancy will enjoy a wider scope; for when alone one is 
dispensed of that kind of shame or bashfulness so hard to be rid of when with 
others; and there is, after all, no equivalent to solitary crimes.

It had been some while since I had appeared in those circles: constantly 
surrounded by pleasures, I often did not know how to choose among them. No 
sooner did I enter than I was beset by suitors and paid a thousand compliments; 
and it became quite clear that though I might have come there animated by 
ferocious intentions, the part I was going to have to enact was not the sacrificer’s,
but the victim’s. A man in his early forties encunted me; to his ardors I responded
with that minimum of interest courtesy demands; I remained very listless until my
glance lit upon an extremely handsome abbot who at the time was alternately 
embuggering two young ladies while having himself fucked. He was scarce a yard 
away; I ventured a few smutty comments, I noticed that they excited him, and 
that he was now devoting a good deal more attention to me than to the material 
he was using. Hastily disencumbering ourselves of our several entourages, we 
joined each other.

“Your style of fucking is far more to my liking than the one you saw me 
subjected to a moment ago,” said I; “it surpasses my understanding how a man 
fit to belong to this Sodality durst continue to dally with a cunt.”

“I too am puzzled by the thing,” Chabert admitted.

(For it was Chabert, my friends, the very same who today is the fairest 
ornament in our little rural society, and whom you shall soon see playing a role in 
my adventures.)

“That is to say,” my engaging abbot went on, “this prick you see here, and you 
see it yet in goodly size and fettle, is of the variety that tickles more in ass than in
cunt.”

“I’m sure of it,” I replied.

“In which case,” said he, taking me by the hand and beckoning his late fucker 
to follow, “let us remove to a boudoir, and I’ll show you to what a degree our 
tastes are alike.”

We established ourselves; Chabert’s fucker was furnished like a mule: the 
Abbot himself was very respectfully outfitted; my ass drained their four balls dry. 
I promised Chabert we would meet again, and stole off to the seraglios where, 
thanks to the stimulants I had just absorbed, I arrived in a fury. After treating 
myself to three hours of ass-fucking I went from the male slaves’ quarters to the 
females’, in search of victims. Recollecting those pits dug between the two walls, 
and in whose depths one had the feeling of being in the remotest place on earth, 
I selected a pair of little girls, one aged five, the other six, and off we went. I had 
a marvelous time: there where we were, you might scream, you might rave, you 
might shout your lungs away, dwellers in the antipodes would sooner have heard 
you than the inhabitants of our hemisphere; and after such horrors as you may 
prefer to surmise rather than have me paint for you, I alone climbed up flights of 
stairs three human beings had descended not long before.

It was soon afterward that I dined at the home of Noirceuil. His other guest, a 
striking figure of a man, was identified to me as Comte de Belmor.

“Here is our new president,” said Noirceuil. “The Comte assumes office today, 
and for his inaugural address he has promised us a discourse on love. Unless I am
mistaken it will contain much to forearm the feminine heart against a sentiment 
which women only too often have the extravagance to conceive for men. And you,
my friend,” he continued, turning to Belmor, “allow me to introduce the famous 
Juliette to you. Have you met at the Sodality?”

“No,” said the Comte, “I do not believe I recall having seen Madame—”

“Never mind,” said Noirceuil, “you’ll have become acquainted with her before 
you leave…. Here is the fairest ass … and the blackest soul—a personage of our 
own stripe, Comte. She shall be there to listen to you this afternoon; would you 
care to do anything before we dine? I am expecting Clairwil but, you know, it will 
be four o’clock ere she has completed her toilette. Since it is only three now, let 
me exhort you to step briefly into my boudoir, my valet will be at your orders.”

Belmor consented; the valet arrived, and we all three encloseted ourselves. 
Belmor’s passion was simple: he kissed, he lengthily, pensively brooded over a 
woman’s buttocks while receiving a sodomization from the man; then, when this 
man had discharged, he re-stiffened the man’s prick by rubbing it upon the 
woman’s ass, got from him a second ejaculation which with great care he guided 
so that it landed exactly in the hole, and devoured what the man had just loosed, 
the woman farting meanwhile. He was then flogged. The Comte now rehearsed 
each scene in the drama, but feeling that he would have to face heavy obligations
later on in the day, refrained from discharging; we quit the boudoir. A perfectly 
heavenly Clairwil had just appeared; we took ourselves to table.

“Juliette,” Noirceuil said to me, “you must not think that the Comte’s practices 
are limited to the mild little ritual you and he have just executed. You are our 
friend, this he knew. He behaved with the appropriate consideration.”

“He is capable of singular self-restraint,” Clairwil put in.

“Are you then familiar, Madame,” I asked, smiling, “with what Monsieur does 
when carried away? Do not leave me in ignorance, I beg of you; for I would fain 
be privy to everything concerning such an amiable gentleman.”

“Comte,” Noirceuil asked, “do you deem it fitting she be told?”

“Is it truly advisable? Such information must surely give Madame an 
unfavorable impression of my character.”

“Reassure yourself,” said Clairwil. “My friend is apt to esteem you above all for 
the multiplicity and superlativeness of your vices.”

“This scoundrel’s favorite caprice,” said Noirceuil, “is to have a little boy of five 
or six bound to the shoulders of a beautiful woman; a knife is taken to the tender 
victim, innumerable gashes are so inflicted as to cause the flowing of blood to 
collect and run in a single rivulet down between the buttocks and over the asshole
of the woman, who is obliged to shit during the operation. As for Belmor, he, 
kneeling before that behind—the formulation of the details is correct as I give 
them, Comte?”

The Comte nodded.

“Belmor, kneeling before that behind, laps up the blood while one after the 
other three men discharge themselves limp into his bum. And so, you see, what 
you and he have recently done is merely a diminutive version of his choice 
vagary; here again we find the general truth confirmed: that in a man the lesser 
quirk relates directly to the greater, and that to the discerning eye there is no lack
of clues pointing to a man’s predominating vice.”

“Fuck!” I exclaimed joyously, throwing my arms around the Comte’s neck, 
“your mania makes my head fairly reel; I entreat you to employ my bottom in 
connection with quantities of such operations, and depend upon me to omit 
nothing that may contribute to the perfection of your ecstasies.”

My Lord gave me assurance that he would be calling upon me before the day 
was out; and in a discreet whisper he besought me to reserve him my turd.

“Just as I thought,” said Clairwil. “I knew that in announcing your libertinage to
her you were in no danger of displeasing Juliette.”

Said Noirceuil: “Aye, temperance is a very foolish virtue, that is certain. Man is 
born for enjoyment, and through his debaucheries alone does he gain access to 
the sweetest pleasures of life. Only idiots are wont to deny themselves.”

Now Clairwil: “For my part, I believe that we owe it to ourselves to indulge 
blindly in everything and at all costs to pursue the happiness we situate in the 
midst of the extremest irregularities.”

And the Comte: “Nature counsels man to seek it nowhere else; the inconstancy
that has been provided him, urging him to broaden the range of his sensations 
every day, conclusively shows that the fairest lie out of the way of onerous 
routine. Woe betide them who, setting shackles on a man’s passions while he is 
yet young, develop in him the habit of self-denial and thereby render him the 
most unfortunate of beings. What a terrifying disservice is thus done to him—”

“Let there be no mistake as to the aims of those who behave in this manner,” 
Noirceuil interrupted; “doubt not that they are motivated by jealousy, by 
vindictiveness … by fear lest others be as happy as those same pedants feel when
they surrender to their own peculiar passions.”

“Superstition,” said Belmor, “has a large hand in the thing: it had inevitably to 
compose possible offenses to the God it created; what else could be done? A God 
who is never cross with anybody, vexed by nothing, instead of appearing 
omnipotent, soon takes on the air of helplessness; and in what more likely place 
could the seed of crime be located than in the spurt of passion?”

“Immense are the wrongs religion has done the world,” Noirceuil muttered.

“Of the ills afflicting mankind,” said I, “I regard it as the most dangerous; he 
who was the first to broach the subject to men was plainly their greatest enemy 
at the time, and history provides no worse since. No death however atrocious 
would have equaled his deserts.”

“The necessity to destroy it, to extirpate it,” said Belmor, “is not deeply enough
felt in our country.”

“The task will be arduous,” said Noirceuil; “man cleaves to nothing so doggedly
as to the principles he is fed in childhood. We shall perhaps someday see the 
people become prey to another set of prejudices quite as ridiculous as those of 
religion, and in the name of a new craze topple the idols of the former. But like 
unto the timid child, our nation will after a little begin to weep for its broken 
rattles and will soon put them back together again with a thousand times more 
fervor. No, no, philosophy is not something you shall ever observe in the people, 
too rude, too dense ever to be softened and refined by the sacred torch of that 
goddess; sacerdotal authority, perhaps enfeebled temporarily, will only 
re-establish itself the more forcefully, and ’twill be to the end of time you’ll see 
superstition supplying its venom to human thirst.”

“That is a horrible prediction.”

“It is horribly apt to be true.”

“Is there no remedy for our plight?”

“One,” said the Comte, “only one, it is violent but it is sure: we must arrest 
and slaughter all the priests in a single day and deal similarly with all their 
followers; simultaneously, inside the space of the same minute, destroy every last
vestige of Catholicism; and concurrently proclaim atheistic systems, and instantly 
entrust to philosophers the education of our youth; print, publish, distribute, give 
out, everywhere display those writings which propagate incredulity, unbelief, and 
for fifty years prosecute and put to death every individual, without exception, who
might think to re-inflate the balloon.(11) But, you may hear it insolently objected 
to this, severity makes proselytes to a cause; intolerance is the soil wherein all 
martyrs grow. These replies are absurd. All this they are telling me has happened 
in the past, to be sure, but only because hitherto the process has been conducted
far too gently, far too lazily, far too vaguely: the surgery has now and again been 
attempted, but cautiously, fumblingly, then suspended short of completion, never 
pursued to the end. You don’t confine yourself to severing one of the Hydra’s 
heads, it’s the entire monster you must exterminate; if your martyrs have 
confronted death courageously it is because they were inspired and enheartened 
by their predecessors. Massacre them all at a stroke, let nothing remain, and 
from then on you’ll have done with both sectarians and martyrs.”

“This is not an easy operation,” Clairwil hazarded.

“Infinitely easier than one might think,” Belmor replied, “and I am prepared to 
direct it if the government cares to place twenty-five thousand men under my 
command; the elements of success are some political support, secrecy, and 
firmness: no flabbiness, that’s essential, and no keeping people waiting in line. 
You fear martyrs, you’ll have them so long as a single worshiper of that 
abominable Christian God is left alive—”

“But,” I declared, “are you not going to be forced to wipe out two-thirds of 
France?”

“Not even one-third,” Belmor assured us; “but supposing the destruction were 
to have to be as extensive as you say, would it not be a hundred times better that
our fair part of Europe be inhabited by ten million honest folk rather than by 
twenty-five million rascals? However, I repeat, it is exceedingly doubtful that 
France counts as many Christians as you seem to imagine; at any rate, separating
the sheep from the goats would not take long. Compiling my lists should require 
no more than a year’s work in shadow and silence; and I’d not unleash the 
campaign until I was sure of all the objectives it entailed.”

“The bloodshed would be stupendous.”

“Granted; but it would ensure France’s health and happiness forever; it is a 
potent remedy administered to a vigorous body: repairing matters all at one 
stroke, it eliminates the need for continual purgings which, become too 
numerous, finally result in complete exhaustion.

“Be well persuaded of it, eighteen hundred years of thorns in France’s side 
have been planted there only by religious factions.”(12)

“From what you say, Comte, are we to infer that you think poorly of religion in 
general?”

“I see it weigh upon nations like a plague. Had I not such love for my country I
would perhaps be less opposed to those forces which tend to maim and ruin it—”

“May the government charge you with the mission you desire,” said Noirceuil, 
“I too would be delighted by the results, since it would cleanse out of the portion 
of the globe where I live an abominable confession which I hate at least as much 
as you do.”

We had completed a most sumptuous meal and the hour being late, we went 
straight to the Sodality after coffee.

The inauguration of a president was accompanied by a curious traditional 
custom. The presidential chair was, as you know, upon an elevated platform; 
now, before and below it, a large pouf was placed, over it the new chief officer 
bent, and each Sodality member stepped forward in turn to kiss his ass. When he 
had gathered homage from everyone, the Comte rose and mounted to his throne.

“Fellow members,” he began, “love is the subject of the speech I have 
prepared for this august occasion. Although my remarks may appear to be 
addressed to men only, I believe I may venture to say that they contain virtually 
everything a woman need hear to ensure her protection against this grave peril.”

Then, adjusting his dress, and silence descending upon the assembly, he 
expressed himself in the following terms:

“The word love is used to designate that deep-seated feeling which propels us, 
as it were despite ourselves, toward some foreign object or other; which provokes
in us a keen desire to become united to it, to ever lessen the distance between it 
and ourselves … which delights us, ravishes us … renders us ecstatic when we 
achieve that union, and which casts us into despond, which tears us asunder, 
whenever the intrusion of external considerations constrain us to rupture this 
union. If only this extravagance never led to anything more serious than pleasure 
intensified by the ardor, the abandon, inherent in it, it would merely be ridiculous;
but as it leads us into a cer

tain metaphysic, which, confounding us with the loved object, transforming us 
into it, making its actions, its needs, its desires quite as vital and dear to us as 
our own—through this alone it becomes exceedingly dangerous, by detaching us 
from ourselves, and by causing us to neglect our interests in favor of the 
beloved’s; by identifying us, so to speak, with this object, it causes us to assume 
its woes, its griefs, its chagrins, and thus consequently adds to the sum of our 
own. Meanwhile, the dread of losing that object, or of seeing its feelings for us 
pale and vanish, harries us unceasingly; and though at the outset we be in the 
serenest of states, this cross once become our burden we gradually sink into what
is doubtless the cruelest that can be imagined on earth. If the reward for so many
pains, or their counterpart, were anything beyond an ordinary spasm, I might 
perhaps recommend risking it; but all the cares, all the torments, all the 
anguishes and nuisances of love never yield anything but what might be 
conveniently obtained without it; why then must one put on these chains! When a
beautiful woman offers herself to me, and when I fall in love with her, my 
ambitions in her regard nevertheless remain no different from those of another 
who claps eyes on her and who desires her without feeling for her any sort of love
at all; both he and I want to lie with her—he, ’tis but her body he desires; and I, 
by a fallacious and always perilous metaphysic blinding myself to the veritable 
motive which, howbeit, is not one whit different from my rival’s, I persuade 
myself that it’s only her heart I want, that all carnal possession of her is quite 
aside from the question, banished therefrom, and of this I persuade myself so 
thoroughly that I would gratefully come to an arrangement with this woman, 
whereby I would love her only for her self and purchase her heart at the price of 
sacrificing all my physical desires. There is the cruel cause of my error; there is 
what is about to drag me down into a frightful abyss of unhappiness, there is 
what is about to spoil my life: I am in love, from now on everything is going to 
change: suspicions, jealousies, alarms, worries are going to become my eternal 
fare, the very substance of my wretched existence; and the nearer I come to the 
day when happiness shall be mine, the greater shall be the store I set by it, and 
the worse shall become the fatal terror of losing it.

“By refusing the thorns of this dangerous sentiment you must not think that I 
deprive myself of its roses; no, this will enable me to pluck them without danger; 
I’ll retain only the nectar in the flower, discarding the dross of extraneous matter; 
likewise I’ll have possession of the body I desire and shall not have that of the 
soul, which is of no use to me at all. Were man to reflect more carefully upon his 
true interests in pleasure-taking, he would spare his heart this cruel fever that 
burns and wastes it: if he could but realize that there is no need to be loved in 
order to be satisfied, and that love acts rather to hinder than to promote the 
transports of enjoyment, he would disdain this metaphysic of sentiment which 
beclouds his understanding, confine himself to the simple enjoyment of bodies, 
would make acquaintance of true happiness, and would deliver himself forever 
from the anxieties inseparable from his baneful fineness of feeling.

“’Tis an intellectual construction … a mystification, an entirely fictitious, 
chimerical sensation, this delicacy we would introduce into the desire of 
enjoyment; it sometimes assumes considerable importance in the metaphysic of 
love; it’s the same here as with all illusions, they embellish one another 
reciprocally. But delicacy is useless, even disruptive, in all that pertains to the 
satisfaction of the senses: the complete inutility of love now becomes very 
evident, and the rational individual can no longer behold the object of his 
pleasures as anything more than an object which causes a sharp rise in the 
temperature of the neural fluids, than a creature of precious little account per se, 
a creature whose function is simply to contribute to the purely physical 
satisfaction of the desires that have caught fire from the heat it has provoked in 
this neural fluid, and which, this satisfaction once given and received, loses, in the
thinking man’s eyes, all particular attributes, returning to its former anonymous 
place within its general class. It is not unique in its species, he will be able to find 
other samples of the same thing, equally good, equally compliable; he was living 
well before this encounter, why should he not live just as well after it? In what 
possible way could he be disturbed by this woman’s infidelity? When she lavishes 
her favors upon somebody else, will she be robbing her lover of anything? He has 
had his fair turn, what is he complaining about now? Why should somebody else 
not have his turn too, and what will he lose in this creature that he cannot 
immediately find in another? Put case that she is false to him and lies with a rival,
she can quite as easily deceive that rival and get back into bed with him; she is 
thus no more in love with this second lover than with the first; wherefore should 
either of them be jealous, since neither is treated better than the other? Such 
regrets might, at the very most, be pardonable if this cherished woman were the 
only one in the world; they are preposterous once loss of her is reparable. 
Imagining myself for a moment in our first lover’s place, what is there about this 
creature, I wonder, that can give rise to my dolor? She made some fuss over my 
person, to my feelings made some responses; if they seemed emphatic at all, it 
was because illusion supplied nine-tenths of their force; mere eagerness to 
possess this woman, my curiosity about her, my stratagems to gain her, these 
embellished her in my eyes, and if the having of her does not make the scales 
drop away, it is either because I yet want experience in these things or am still 
laboring under the effects of my earlier mistakes, it is the blindfold I used to wear
and was accustomed to in the days before I came to know anything about 
women, which, in spite of me, now returns to obscure my vision and befuddle my 
brain again; and I do not snatch it off and fling it away! It is weakness, it is most 
unmanly; the romping over with, let’s consider her analytically, this Aphrodite 
who dazzled us a short while ago. Here, in this moment of calm and weariness, 
here is the opportunity for a scientific survey; as Lucretius says, let’s have a 
glance into the backstage of life. Well, we shall find her, this celestial object we 
were enthralled by, entranced by, we shall find her endowed with the same 
desires, the same needs, the same shape of body, the same appetites, afflicted by
the same infirmities as all the other creatures of her sex; and cold-blooded 
examination dispelling the ridiculous enthusiasm that drove us toward this object, 
in no particular different from all the rest of its kind, we shall see that in having it 
no more we lack nothing that cannot be easily replaced. Amenities of character 
comprise an element that is not relevant to our discussion; these virtues falling 
entirely inside the domain of friendship, they ought only be appreciated there; 
but, in love, I am wrong if I believe it was that which attracted me: no, it’s solely 
the body I love, and it’s the body alone whose loss I lament, though I can get 
another as good, just like it, whenever I please; how pointless now are my 
whinings, and how superfluous my regrets!

“Let us have the courage to acknowledge the truth: in no case is a woman 
designed to ensure the exclusive happiness of one man; viewed from the angle of
his enjoyment, she can hardly be said to render it complete, for he obtains better 
and livelier in conversation with his fellows; while if now she be regarded in the 
role of a friend, her duplicity and her servility, or rather her baseness, scarcely 
favor the perfection of the sentiment of friendship; friendship requires openness 
and equality; when one of two friends dominates the other, friendship is 
destroyed; now, this preponderance of one of the two sexes over the other, fatal 
to friendship, exists necessarily where two friends are of unlike sex; thus, woman 
is good neither as a mistress nor as a friend; she is only where she belongs when 
in the servitude where the Orientals keep her; her usefulness extends no farther 
than the pleasure she can afford, after which, as good King Chilperic used to say, 
best have away with her as promptly as ever you can.

“If it is easy to demonstrate that love is nothing but a national superstition; 
that three-fourths of the world’s societies, whose custom is to keep their females 
under lock and key, have never been subject to the ravages of this imaginative 
disorder; so now, in tracing this superstition back to its sources, we shall have 
little trouble assuring ourselves that it is merely an ailment and arriving at the 
sure means for curing it. Now, it is certain that this our chivalric gallantry, which 
ridiculously proposes as the object for our veneration that object which is made 
only for our needs, it is certain, I say, that this attitude comes from the respect 
our ancestors used long ago to have for women owing to the witchcraft and the 
prophetic trades they exercised in the towns and rural places; terror turned 
respect into worship, and gallantry was born from the womb of ignorant 
superstition. But this respect was not natural, you’ll waste your time scanning 
Nature for any sign of it; the inferiority of females to males is established and 
patent, there is nothing in their sex which can constitute a solid title to our 
respect; and love, begot of this blind respect, is, like it, a superstition: respect for
women increases the farther the principles animating a given government depart 
from those of Nature; so long as men remain obedient to her fundamental laws, 
however, they are bound to hold women in supremest contempt; women become 
gods when those laws cease to be heeded, for when Nature’s voice grows faint in 
men they become enfeebled, and the weaker must inevitably command where the
stronger degrade themselves: wherefore it is that government is always 
debilitated when women reign; cite not to me the example of Turkey, if her 
government is weak today this was not the case before harem intrigues began to 
regulate its workings: the Turks destroyed the Byzantine Empire in the days when
they dragged that sex in chains, and when in the presence of his marshaled army 
Mahomet II beheaded Irene, who was suspected of having overmuch influence 
upon him. Woman-worship, however mild, attests baseness and sore depravation;
for it is impossible even in the moment of ecstasy, how can it be possible 
afterward? If because something proves serviceable this be reason for deifying it, 
you owe a like reverence to your bull, your donkey, your chamberpot, etc.

“That which they call love is, in short, nothing else than the desire to enjoy; so 
long as it exists, worship is of no help; so soon as it is satisfied, worship is 
impossible: which proves that it was certainly not from worship the respect was 
born, but the contrary. Glance at examples showing the lowly position women 
occupied in the past and yet occupy in a great many lands today, and you will 
conclude, if you are yet in any doubt, that the metaphysical passion of love is in 
no wise innate in man but is the fruit of his erroneous thinking and mistaken 
practices, and that the object which gave rise to this passion, generally scorned 
everywhere, ought never have blinded him.

“Such is that scorn amongst the Croats, more particularly known to 
geographers as Uskoks and Morlacks,(13) that when they refer to their wives, 
they employ the same coarse expression the vulgar commonly use in connection 
with a vile animal.(14) They never suffer them in their beds, women in that part 
of the world sleep on the bare ground, without a murmur and with utmost alacrity
do as they are told, and are mercilessly beaten at the least hint of disobedience; 
their subordinate situation, their drudgeries, and their fare remain unchanged at 
all times, even when they are with child: they are often seen to give birth in open 
fields, pick up their offspring, wash it in the nearest stream, bring it home, and 
resume their chores; and observers have remarked that in this country the 
children are a good deal healthier and more robust, the wives a good deal more 
faithful, than elsewhere; it would seem that Nature is loath to relinquish the rights
which decadent habits and false delicacy seek to strip her of in our climates 
without achieving any other result than abasing our sex in ranking it evenly with 
the other Nature created to be its slave.

“In Zaporozhian Cossack country women are excluded from the clan; those 
who serve-for propagational purposes are relegated to islands, and when in need 
men go thither to use them, but haphazardly, indifferently; need eliminates all 
considerations of age, looks, kinship, in such wise that the father begets children 
on his daughter; the brother on his sister; and no other laws with these people, 
save such as need establishes.

“There are places where, when women menstruate, they are treated like 
beasts; they are penned, caged, shut up tight, food is thrown to them from a 
goodly distance—so tigers are fed, or bears; do you fancy these people go to 
much bother loving their wives?

“In the kingdom of Loango, in Africa, pregnant women are yet more rudely 
dealt with; once in this state, they are reckoned more than ever impure, 
misshapen, and disgusting; and indeed, pray tell me, what is there more frightful 
to see than an expectant mother? Gravid and stark naked, it is thus the entire sex
ought to be shown to its admirers, since they have a liking for the grotesque and 
the horrible.

“A woman gives birth, and the blacks of Barray suspend all commerce with her 
for four years and upward.

“The wives of Madura, alluding to their husbands, speak in circumlocutions; 
which signify the profound respect they have for them.

“The Romans and the Celts held the right of life and death over their wives, 
and exercised it often; this is a right we have by Nature: flouting her and 
weakening her laws, when we neglect to use it.

“Their bondage is grim throughout almost all of Africa; she esteems herself 
beyond words fortunate when her husband deigns to accept her attentions.

“They are so ill-treated, so unhappy in the principality of Juida, that those who 
are recruited for the harems of the prince prefer, when they can, to kill 
themselves rather than be taken there, this sovereign never making dalliance of a
woman without, they say, subjecting her to execrable discomforts.

“Do we bend a glance at those magnificent retreats in Asia: there we see 
proud despots, whose desires have the force of orders, exposing purest beauty to
all such nasty whims as imagination may compose, and reducing to the lowest 
level of degradation those insolent divinities whom we, to our disgrace, revere.

“The Chinese have the loftiest contempt for women, and consider them hardly 
fit to be used, and even less so to be seen.

“When the Emperor of Golconda would go out to take the air, a dozen of the 
tallest and strongest girls in his harem, disposing themselves some atop the 
others, some before and some behind, form a kind of dromedary, the four 
sturdiest being its legs; His Majesty is hoisted up into the saddle, and off they 
trot. I leave you to speculate upon this monarch’s conduct inside his pleasure 
palaces, and upon what his astonishment would be if someone were to tell him 
that the very same creatures he uses for bum-wipes were objects of worship in 
Europe.

“The Muscovites are unwilling to eat anything that has been killed by a woman.

“Ah! be certain of it, my brothers, it was not to see us grovel in the grips of a 
sentiment so base as love that Nature put muscle and intelligence on our side: it 
was to rule that weaker and deceitful sex, to force it into our desires’ service; and
we totally forget her intentions when we accord some independence, let alone 
some ascendancy, to beings whom she made to be absolutely in our power.

“We fancy there is happiness to be found in the affection we fancy women to 
have for us; but that sentiment, always meretricious, is always measured out, so 
much, so little, depending upon the need a woman calculates she has of us, or 
upon the sort of passion we flatter in her; let age whiten our hairs, or let there be
an adverse shift in our fortunes, so that we can no longer serve her pleasures, 
her greed, or her pride, and she abandons us upon the spot, frequently to 
become our most mortal enemy. In any case, we have no crueler foes than 
women, even those who adore us sincerely; if we consult them for our pleasures, 
then they tyrannize over us; if we snub them, then they look for revenge and 
always end up doing us ill; whence it results that of all man’s passions, love is the
most dangerous and that against which he should take the greatest care to 
defend himself.

“To judge whether love be madness, is not the lover’s distraction sufficient 
proof of it? or that fatal illusion he entertains, which causes him to ascribe such 
charms to the object he dotes upon and goes scampering about praising to the 
skies? Not a flaw that has not been rewrought into a virtue; not a defect that 
does not become a beauty; all that is ridiculous in her is changed into grace; ha! 
when the tempest subsides and the lover, open-eyed, can coolly inspect the 
contemptible object of his enthusiasms, must he not, as he blushes before his 
despicable error, at least make firm resolutions never to be misled in the future?

“Inconstancy and libertinage, those, my brothers, are the two antidotes to 
love; accustoming us to dealings with these false divinities, they both exert a 
gradual erosive action upon the illusion, till finally it is all eaten quite away; you 
cease sooner or later to adore what you see every day: thanks to the habit of 
inconstancy and of libertinage, the heart loses, little by little, the dangerous 
softness which permits it to be susceptible to the impressions of love; surfeited, it
hardens, it toughens, and the patient may soon be considered cured. What! shall 
I go mope before the door of this creature who only lets me in at last to put the 
remnants of my good humor at further defiance, shall I endure all this when, if I 
pause to think an instant, I realize that with perfect ease and at the price of a few
francs I can have the hire of a body just as fair as hers? We must bear it ever in 
mind that the woman who strives to get us the most inextricably into her captivity
is certainly concealing flaws which would rapidly disgust us if we knew what they 
were; do we but set our imagination to envisaging these details, to probing after 
them, to guessing at them; and this preliminary exercise initiated at the same 
moment love is born will perhaps succeed in extinguishing it. Be she a girl? She 
surely exhales some unhealthy odor, if not now then later on; is it worth your 
while, sir, to pant after a cesspool? Be she a woman? Another’s leavings may, I 
admit, momentarily rouse our desires…. But our love … and what’s to be idolized 
here? This vast mold that’s cast a dozen brats…. Picture her giving birth, this 
treasure of your heart; behold that shapeless mass of flesh squirm sticky and 
festering from the cavity where you believe felicity is to be found. Undress this 
the idol of your soul, undress her, even at some other time: is it over these two 
crooked and stubby thighs you propose to rave? Or over this unclean, fetid gulf 
where they meet? Ah ha, it’s perhaps this apron of matted hairs hanging untidy 
between those same thighs that is due to fire your imagination … or else these 
two flaccid globes drooping flappily onto her navel? Would it not be on this nearer 
side but on the farther she harbors charms worth your homage? Lo, here they 
are, these two wattles of weary tallow-colored flesh, sheltering a livid hole that 
connects with the other: oh yes, these are the wonders your mind battens on, 
and it is for their sake you sink yourself into a condition lower than the condition 
of an earthworm? But what’s this? I am mistaken? you are not attracted by any of
this, there are much finer qualities than these that spellbind you: it is that 
traitorous cunning character, those perpetual dishonesties, that lying tongue, that 
shrewish scolding tone, this voice like a cat’s, or this whorishness, or this prudery,
for woman spends her life in the one or the other of those two extremes; this 
calumny … this spitefulness … this contrariness … this witless inconsequence, ever
nagging, caviling, cawing stupidity… Yes, yes, I see it clearly, such are the 
attributes you cherish in “her, and they doubtless merit going into a dither 
over.(15)

“Think not that I exaggerate matters: if all these defects are not combined in 
the same individual, the one you worship surely has her share of them; if they 
escape your eye, that’s because they are screened from your sight, but they 
exist, fear not, they exist: clothing or education may disguise what would revolt 
you if you saw it, the defect is none the less real even though you see it not, or 
not yet; hunt for it before attaching yourself, you will ferret it out every time, and 
if you be wise, my friend, halt there rather than throw happiness and tranquillity 
to the winds for the enjoying of an object which, certainly, infallibly, you will soon 
start to loathe.

“Oh, my brothers, contemplate a little the host of sorrows this baneful passion 
brings in its wake … the cruel maladies caused by the sufferings it gives, the 
material expenditures, the loss as well of sleep, of ease, of appetite, of health, the
obligatory renunciation of all other pleasures; realizing the gigantic sacrifices it 
entails, and profiting from all these examples, do as does the prudent helmsman 
who steers not for the reef littered with the hulks of a thousand shattered vessels.

“Eh, can you not forego these dubious pleasures when life has so many other, 
genuine, ones to offer? Why, what is this I say? life offers you the very same 
ones, and gives them to you free of any disagreeable accompaniments or 
aftermaths. Since libertinage assures you the same enjoyments and in return 
asks only that you clear them of this icy metaphysic, which adds nothing to 
pleasures, feast unrestrictedly upon everything that appeals to your senses; and 
in order to use a woman must you necessarily love her? We all of us here feel, it 
seems to me, that a woman is made much better use of when she is not loved or 
at least that loving her is perfectly gratuitous so long as matters are taken no 
farther than that. And what need have we to take them farther, I should like to 
know, wherefore prolong our pleasures by a ludicrous flight of melancholy and 
madness? After five or six hours of her, have we not had quite enough of this 
woman? One night more, a hundred nights more would only yield us the same 
pleasures; while other objects hold new ones in store for you. What! millions of 
beauties await you, and you’d be such a fool as to bind yourself to one? Would 
you not smile at the simpleton who, invited to a magnificent banquet, ate of one 
dish only, though fivescore others were offered to his delectation? It is diversity, it
is change, that makes for the happiness in life, and if every single object on earth 
can procure you a new delight, what manner of lunatic are you who would be the 
prisoner of somebody who can afford you only one?

“What I have said of women, my brothers, may also be applied to men. Our 
defects are just as serious as theirs, and they are as unluckily moored to us as we
to them, the putting on of any shackle is a folly, every bond is an attempt against 
the physical liberty which is our due, and which we ought to enjoy here on earth. 
And while I am wasting my time with this being, whatever it is, a hundred 
thousand others are growing old around me, who would much more merit my 
homage.

“And, further, is it a mistress who can satisfy a man? Is it then, as slave to his 
goddess’ velleities and whims, which he must labor to content, that he will be able
to devote attention to his personal desires? Superiority is necessary in the 
pleasurable act; he of the two who shares his joy has less of it, he who obeys has 
none; get thee gone, idiotic delicacy which causes us to find charms … even in our
sacrifices; these pleasure-takings, purely intellectual stunts, can they compare to 
those which involve our senses? The love of women is like unto that of God: in 
either case, we feed upon illusions. In the former, we wish only to love the 
spiritual, making abstraction of the corporeal, in the second, we ascribe a body to 
a spirit; and in both, we tumble to our knees before fictions.

“Let us enjoy ourselves to the full: such is Nature’s law; and as it is altogether 
impossible to love for long the object we enjoy, let us calmly accept that things be
with us as they are with those creatures we sometimes unjustly deem inferior. Do 
we observe the pigeon or the dog return and salute his companion when finished 
with her? bow and scrape, kiss her paw or claw? If loves flares up in a dog, this 
love could as well be called need, is nothing else than need; once the bitch has 
satisfied him, indifference, aversion characterize his attitude toward her until he 
begins to desire again; but his desire will not be for the same female; all those he
comes across will each in turn become the object of the inconstant male’s 
attentions; and if a dispute arises, yesterday’s favorite will be sacrificed as today’s
rival. Ah, we err when we depart from these models, closer than we to Nature; 
they act in much nearer harmony with her laws; and if Nature has allotted us a 
few more sensitive faculties than they, this is in order that we refine their 
pleasures. From the moment we recognize that if the human female is more than 
an animal the difference is made up wholly of shortcomings, why must we 
reverence this portion which in fact humbles her? We may love her body, as the 
animal loves its mate’s; but let us have no sentiments for what we suppose 
distinct from the body, since precisely there is located that which counterbalances 
the rest, that which alone ought to make us reject her entire. Yes, oh yes, the 
womanish character, her surliness, her unwholesome mind, her perfidious soul, 
these ought always to dampen in me any inclination to enjoy a woman’s body, 
and if you would gauge to what extent his reason has been impaired by 
metaphysical frenzy, only listen to the love-sick exclaim that it is not his beloved’s
body he wants, but her heart—her heart! that thing which should rather make him
flee in horror from her presence. This extravagance has no parallel; more, beauty 
being nothing but an affair of convention, love can be no more than an arbitrary 
sentiment once beauty’s traits, which are what cause love to be born, are not 
uniform.

“Love thus being simply the taste describing the requirements of a given 
individual’s organs, it is a physical impulse, neither more nor less, and with it 
delicacy of feeling, sophisticated modes of courtship can have nothing to do; for it
is now plain that I love a blonde because she has attributes which establish close 
link with my senses; you love a brunette for similar reasons; and with both blonde
and brunette, the material object becoming the instrument for the relief of our 
eminently material need, how are you going to apply your delicacy and your 
disinterest to this piece of plumbing? Do you fancy something metaphysical there?
Then pride has induced you into prodigious error; a single glance should suffice to
blast the illusion. Would you not call him mad, who in all earnestness insisted that
he was fond of the sweet william’s scent but indifferent to the flower? There is no 
imagining into what incredible absurdities a man may tumble, who will become 
attached to and guided by every metaphysical mirage.

“But, and here I anticipate a possible objection, but this worship has existed 
throughout the ages; the Greeks and Romans deified Love and his mother. To this
I reply, the thing may have come about with them as it did with us; in Greece and
Rome women foretold the future also. Whence, probably, was born respect for 
them and from that respect, worship; I have already described how it may come 
about. However, concerning objects of worship, one ought to refer only very 
sparingly to the Ancients; peoples who adored fecal substances under the name 
of the god Sterculius and the sewers in the shape of the goddess Cloacina could 
readily worship women, so often likened by odor to those two classical divinities.

“And so let us finally use our common sense and treat these ridiculous idols as 
the Japanese treat theirs, whenever they fail to obtain satisfaction from them. Let
us worship away or pretend to worship, if you like, until our prayers have been 
answered and the desired thing has been obtained; once it is ours, let’s despise 
it; if we are refused, we’ll give the idol a hundred blows with a stick, to teach it to
disdain our wishes; or if you prefer, we shall imitate the Ostiaks who when irked 
by their gods promptly take a lash to them; with a god that proves thoroughly 
useless there is but one thing to do: pulverize it; a feigned belief will be quite 
enough at those moments when you are in hope of results.

“Love is a physical need, let us avoid ever considering it anything else.(16) 
‘Love,’ writes Voltaire, ’is the imagination’s embroidery upon Nature’s homespun.’ 
The aim of love, its desires, everything about it is physical; forever shun the 
object which would seem to demand anything more; absence and change are the 
sure remedies for love; one soon thinks no more about the person one has 
stopped seeing, and new delights efface the memory of old ones; regrets 
surrounding such losses do not long endure; irretrievable pleasures may of course
engender bitter regrets, but those which are so easily replaced, those which are 
every moment reborn at every street corner, over these not a tear need be shed.

“And think now, what if love were not an evil but something truly good, that 
which does really make us happy, why, we should have to spend a fourth part of 
our lives without any enjoyment at all! What man dares suppose he will be able to
captivate a woman’s heart when he is past sixty? At sixty, however, if he be 
soundly made, he has still another fifteen years’ potential enjoyment ahead of 
him; but he has lost his looks and so must bid happiness adieu! We shall accept 
no such monstrous proposition; if age withers the roses of springtime, it does not 
extinguish either the desires or the means to satisfy them; and the pleasures one 
tastes in later years, ever more elaborate, more choice, further divested of that 
stony metaphysic, a very grave to voluptuousness; these pleasures, I say, are a 
thousand times more delicious gathered in the depths of debauchery, of 
crapulousness, and of libertinage than were those he used long ago to procure his
fair mistress; in those days he toiled for her sake, and at present his only concern
is for himself. Watch him, mark those refinements, observe how he clings to 
something which he knows he can caress for but a fleeting instant; what a wealth 
of details in his lewd amusements, how he wrings every drop of enjoyment from 
each … notice how he would make free of everything and how he wants all 
thoughts, all attentions to be concentrated upon him. The mere suspicion of 
pleasure in the object he is using would alarm him, infuriate him, he wants its 
submission, and that is all. Fair-haired Hebe averts her eyes, she cannot hide her 
revulsion; it matters not to seventy-year-old Philater, it is not in her behalf he 
exerts himself; and even these gasps and shudders of horror he produces only 
contribute to his mounting delight; disgust is easy to inspire; he is obliged to 
apply pressure; a few threats, then he opens his stinking mouth and sucks into it 
a sweet pure tongue; the young beauty quails; and suddenly here’s the image of 
rape and consequently, for Philater, one pleasure the more. At twenty did he 
experience the like? They would rush upon him, deluge him with kisses, bewilder 
him with caresses, he’d hardly have time enough to desire them, and it would be 
over in the twinkling of an eye, without his being sure it had happened at all. 
Indeed, can that be called a desire which is satisfied before it has had the chance 
to be born? And where can there be desire if it has not resistance to overcome? If
then pleasure is only stirred up by the irritations of resistance encountered, and if
the latter is only bred by aversion, it may become delicious to cause aversion, and
all the caprices which disgust a woman may then become more sensual and a 
hundred times better than love … love, the absurdest of all follies, the most 
ridiculous, and doubtless the most dangerous, whereof I think I have given you 
adequate demonstration.”

This dissertation was not, to be sure, very warmly received by the women 
present; but Belmor, who sought their praise with no more eagerness than he did 
their sentiments, was amply consoled by the masculine applause that rang out 
heartily everywhere in the hall; handing the presidential attributes temporarily 
over to his predecessor, he made ready to reconnoiter the seraglios and exercise 
his authority there; Noirceuil, Clairwil, and I met him at the foot of the platform, 
and we all started off together toward the side door. We were not halfway there 
when a man of sixty halted Belmor and, asking to be allowed to express his 
congratulations, begged the favor of his ass; Belmor, unable to refuse, poised 
himself appropriately; the sexagenarian embuggered our Belmor and would not 
restore him to us until he had discharged into the chief executive’s bum.

“There’s a bit of unexpected luck,” said the Comte.

“It is owing to your eloquence, my Lord,” Noirceuil assured him.

“Materialist that I am,” said Belmor, “I’d prefer to owe it to my ass than to my 
ideas,” and we entered the game preserve, laughing at his Lordship’s sally.

The President gave orders that during his inspection nobody be admitted into 
the premises apart from ourselves, who made up his escort; and he commenced 
his tour forthwith. Such a man, with such prepossessions, was able, as you may 
well imagine, to uncover a prodigious number of culprits; he was accompanied on 
his rounds by a quartet of executioners, two flayers, six flagellators, and four 
jailers: the first harem our procession entered was the one composed of women: 
to the lash he condemned thirty aged between five and ten, twenty-eight between
ten and fifteen, forty-seven between fifteen and eighteen, sixty-five between 
eighteen and twenty-one; three children in the six-to-ten age group were 
condemned to be flayed alive, three others heard the extreme penalty 
pronounced against them; among those aged between ten and fifteen there were 
six girls selected for flaying, four were appointed to die; the next group (fifteen to
eighteen) yielded another six for flaying and eight for execution; while from the 
last group only four were found to merit death and five the loss of their skins. The
creatures thus sentenced were directed into the several chambers where, before 
suffering the penalties decreed, they were first made available to those libertines 
who, out of peculiarity of taste, might happen to repair thither for satisfaction. 
Four female subjects were condemned to the dungeons; regarding floggings, they
were all meted out in our presence: the naked victim was led before the 
President, he would examine her, handle her for a little, a flagellator would then 
take her in charge, bend her over his knees; and when once she was in a position
where she could not budge, a second flagellator, armed with a switch, a 
cat-o’-nine-tails, or some other instrument of the President’s preference, would 
apply the number of strokes prescribed by him. Belmor was decent enough to 
leave the specification of a figure to us in almost every case, and I doubt whether 
we were beneath him in severity; six of those girls received such a hammering 
that, half-dead, they had to be borne out; the whole while these lubricious 
operations were going ahead we were all four entwined in one another’s arms, 
there was a great deal of frigging done and much outpouring of fuck.

We moved to the seraglio of men; here Clairwil agitated against any relapse 
into indulgence and made liberal essay of stimulations. Belmor, however, whose 
fondest practice consisted, as you already have heard, in the massacre of small 
boys, was by no means backward in his display of ferocity. Forty-two children of 
between seven and twelve received the lash with utmost rigor; in this same group
there were six sentences of death and ten of flaying. Sixty-four lads of between 
twelve and eighteen were no less sternly dealt with; here were three more death 
sentences, eight more flayings. In the upper class, comprised of those ranging 
from eighteen to twenty-five, fifty-six asses were singled out for whipping, two 
lives were lost, and three skins removed; all told, three males were designated 
for the dungeons; in addition, two matrons were given whippings for dereliction in
the line of duty, and Belmor himself thrashed them till he had lifted the epidermis 
off their behinds.

I had been frigging him incessantly throughout all these operations, his prick 
was in a state of excessive erection; but if I am to do justice to his strength of 
character, let it be said that he did not once leak a drop of sperm nor show any 
pity for an instant.

“Very well now,” Noirceuil said to him, “let’s turn to pleasures; that passion of 
yours, Belmor, will you set it forth into view?”

“That is my intention,” said the Comte; “but dreadfully wrought up as I am, I 
mean to give an appallingly extensive vent to it.”

“Excellent, we’ll only enjoy it the more.”

Whereupon the President re-examined all the little boys and out of the lot 
chose ten no older than seven. He required as many girls; but I having asked to 
play the part of one of them, he had to select only nine: they were all from 
eighteen to twenty-one, and I noticed that they were without exception picked 
from among those whom he, in his mischievousness, had lately condemned either
to death or to flaying. Ten men, their eligibility determined by superiority of 
member alone, were appointed to fuck him during the forthcoming rout, and here 
is how it began.

To one of the girls—the Comte suggested that I not be first, in order that I at 
least have the pleasure of judging the thing before taking a hand in it—a child 
was, I say, attached to the shoulders of one of the girls, bound to her so tightly 
and so thoroughly that the two bodies almost seemed one; then the girl, her 
papoose on her back, lay flat upon a sofa, her buttocks largely exposed; Belmor 
scrutinized, nibbled experimentally, forcefully bit and pinched the child’s ass, and 
slapped the girl’s; another girl, one of three thirteen-year-olds chosen for this 
purpose, seated herself on the floor between the legs of the child-carrier, and 
Belmor, kneeling on a cushion, mouth-fucked the girl who was sitting; while this 
was in progress he was embuggered, and Clairwil busied herself whipping his 
fucker. The Comte’s attitude brought his head near the buttocks of the girl on the 
sofa; two executioners now had at the bound child and, wounding it in a thousand
places but very artfully, made its blood flow into the cleft between the buttocks at 
which the Comte was staring.

“Off you go, shit!” said he to the girl, as he caught sight of the nearing stream 
of blood, “shit, I tell you, shit into my mouth.”

The whore obeyed; and the lecher, gluing his lips to her asshole, was thereby 
able to imbibe, simultaneously, the blood flowing out of the body of the child and 
the mard emerging from the ass of the girl. No one stirred out of formation until 
all the blood had drained from the victim; once it was manifestly dead, the girl 
carrying it was ordered to her feet and she, her burden remaining ever in place, 
went to stand at the head of the sofa, facing away from it, so as to provide a 
prospect to the Comte. I alone of the carriers was dispensed from this part of the 
ceremony; I was the third to mount the sofa, and the child was removed when I 
arose; all then were slaughtered in this same manner, while the ten fuckers 
fucked, the ten girls shat, and the three suckers took turns; Belmor discharged 
into each mouth, discharged without interrupting his other activities, and the 
entire feat was accomplished without a single pause; Clairwil was exhausted, she 
may easily have delivered above ten thousand strokes of the whip to the asses of 
the Comte’s ten fuckers. As for Noirceuil, passably calm throughout, he had been 
content to watch affairs and to molest the behinds of the two extremely pretty 
lasses of sixteen who were frigging and sucking him by turns.

“A charming passion,” said he to Belmor, when the President had discharged 
for the last time; “but, with his Lordship’s permission, I am going to show him 
that this same fancy is susceptible of an entertaining variation. Have them send 
me ten little girls of five or six, seven at the most, and ten boys of seventeen or 
so; the Comte’s fuckers appear still to be stiff, and I can make do with them.”

Then Noirceuil began his arrangements. He had one of the youths lie out 
straight, and upon his chest he attached the little girl, but in such a way that her 
cunt was placed over the boy’s mouth; so taut w

ere the cords drawn that the boy had great trouble breathing.

“Notice,” Noirceuil pointed out to us, “that the carrier as well as the carried is 
ill-used in my operation, while in the Comte’s the carrier experiences no pain at 
all, and that is something which should be rectified, I feel; for, surely, these 
hecatombs improve as concomitant sufferings increase.”

Noirceuil knelt before the carrier and mouthed his prick; the executioners fell 
to work upon the child; the suckers teated Noirceuil’s prick, and he was fucked; 
the victim’s blood was soon pouring over the prick Noirceuil was sucking, and he 
was soon swallowing a mixture of blood and fuck. The tenth little girl died at last; 
and thus did this barbarous caprice cost twenty children their lives.

“I prefer Noirceuil’s interpretation of the scene,” said I, “and were it not so late
I would enact it a few times myself.”

Belmor, far from taking umbrage, congratulated Noirceuil upon his ingenuity. 
“However,” he told us, “what must prevent me from changing is the girls Noirceuil
butchers, for I, unfortunately, I have the bad taste of liking to sacrifice little 
boys.”

“And so do I,” said Clairwil; “there is nothing in all the world so delicious as 
choosing one’s victims from among men. What kind of triumph can strength 
obtain over weakness? where can the amusement be there? But how sweet are 
the victories the weak contrive to win over the strong.”

Then addressing the two friends in that impassioned tone which could render 
her so splendid to see: “Ferocious men,” cried she, “massacre as many women as
you like, I shall be nought if not content, provided I am able to avenge every ten 
victims of my sex by one of yours.”

Thereat we separated. Noirceuil and Belmor returned to the seraglio of women,
and later report told of how they bagged another dozen victims of every 
description and by a wide variety of methods; whereas we, Clairwil and I, 
remained in the seraglio stocked with men, which we did not finally leave before 
having had ourselves fucked sixty or eighty times apiece, and achieving some 
other little atrocities in such kind as I need not trouble to delineate, since you 
have some acquaintance of these affairs.

But a few days after the infamies we had performed at the Sodality in the 
company of Belmor and his friend, our club’s amiable President waited upon me 
and convinced me that Clairwil had not been mistaken when she said he would be
only too delighted to form a connection with me; the Comte, excessively rich, 
proposed fifty thousand francs a month for only two entertainments per week; 
Saint-Fond representing no obstacle, I saw no reason for not coming to an 
arrangement with Belmor. I told him, therefore, that I would be glad to be of 
service to him, but that the sum he offered would not even cover the costs of the 
suppers; the Comte heard me out and doubled his bid, agreeing to meet all 
additional expenses—which promised to be considerable, at each foregathering 
the libertine wishing to have three superb new women upon whose bodies he 
would immolate, or have immolated, a corresponding number of small boys; his 
murders once consummated, he would retire with me for another two or three 
hours of mutual friggery, after which he would return home. Such were his 
conventions; the bargain was struck.

Without excepting Noirceuil and Saint-Fond, I have known few men so corrupt 
as Belmor; he was corrupt by temperament, through taste, and on principle; his 
exceedingly criminal imagination often led him to invent things that surpassed all 
I had heard of, or even dreamt of, hitherto.

“This imagination you laud in me, Juliette,” he said one day, “is precisely what 
in you seduced me; for lasciviousness, diversity, and energy I have seldom seen 
its equal; and you have surely remarked that my sweetest pleasures with you are 
those I taste when, the two of us giving free rein to fancy, we fabricate ideal 
lubricities whose existence, unfortunately, is impossible. Oh, Juliette, how 
delicious are the pleasures of the imagination, and how voluptuously one follows 
out the lines of its dazzling constructions! Ah, dear angel, how little do they 
realize what we are about, what we originate, what we create during these divine 
intervals when our fiery souls are plunged utterly into the impure depths of 
lubricity; what raptures we experience as, frigging each other, we come erect 
erecting phantoms; nor with what ecstatic joy we caress them … elaborate them 
… surround them with a thousand obscene details and episodes. All the earth is 
ours in these enchanted moments; not a single creature resists us, to our aroused
senses each affords the kind of pleasure which to our boiling imagination each 
appears capable of giving; we devastate the planet … and repeople it with new 
objects, and immolate these in their turn; the means to every crime is ours, we 
commit them all; we multiply the horror an hundredfold; and all the deeds 
ambitioned by all the most infernal and the most malignant spirits that ever were,
in their most disastrous effects were nought compared to what we dare desire…. 
‘Happy,’ says La Mettrie, ‘happy they whose lively and wanton imagination keeps 
their senses ever whetted to the foretaste of pleasure!’ Truly, Juliette, I 
sometimes think the reality possessed is not worth the images we chase thereof, 
and wonder whether the enjoyment of that which we have not, does not much 
exceed the enjoyment of that which is ours: lo, there is your ass, Juliette, there 
before my eyes, and beauteous it is to my contemplation; but my imagination, a 
more inspired architect than Nature, a more cunning artisan than she, creates 
other asses more beautiful still; and the pleasure I derive from this illusion, is it 
not preferable to the one which reality is about to have me enjoy? There is beauty
in what you offer me there, but only beauty; what I invent is sublime; with you I 
am going to do nothing that anyone else may not do, whilst with this ass my 
imagination has wrought, I might do things which not even the gods themselves 
would invent.”

Little wonder then if, with a mind like that, the Comte was prone to erratic 
flights; few men I had met had ever carried them to such lengths, and I had 
known few so attractive. But I have so many things still to recount to you that I 
cannot linger over the horrors we committed together; let it suffice you to know 
that we did our worst, and that your conceptions of what that might be probably 
fall short of the truth.

About four months had elapsed since I had admitted my father to the honor of 
my couch; our conversation having transpired at a critical moment, there was a 
great danger he had got me with child. My fears were only too well justified; the 
fact had to be faced, a decision taken; I consulted a renowned midwife who, 
hampered by no scruples in this matter, deftly inserted a long and well-sharpened
needle into my matrix, found the embryo, and pierced it. I evacuated it two hours
later, experiencing no pain at all: this remedy, surer and better than juniper, 
which upsets the digestion, is the one I recommend to every woman who, like 
me, is courageous enough to grant greater importance to her figure and her 
health than to some molecules of organized fuck which when come to maturity 
will frequently prove the bane of her existence who vivified them in her womb. 
The scion of his excellency my father once dropped into the privy, I came forth 
trimmer about the waist than ever before.

“Juliette, I have just been given the address of a most unusual woman,” 
Clairwil confided to me one day. “We must pay her a call: she is a fortuneteller 
and also blends poisons of all sorts, which she sells.”

“And does she,” I asked, “give the recipe for her poisons?”

“In return for fifty louis”

“They are reliable?”

“If you like she will make test of them in your presence.”

“We must decidedly visit her. I have always been fond of the idea of 
poisoning.”

“Ah, my dove, it is exquisite to have the lives of others arbitrarily in one’s 
power.”

“And killing them by poison, that must be exquisite too—I am sure of it, for, 
would you believe it? you no sooner mentioned the thing than I felt a quivering in 
my nerves, a sudden flash of heat…. Clairwil, I am quite certain that if you were 
to touch me now you would find me wet….”

Clairwil reaches a verifying hand beneath my skirts: “Aye, it is so—oh, beloved 
child, what a mind is yours! But, Juliette,” she said, knitting her brows, “did you 
not tell me Saint-Fond gave you an entire chest?”

I nodded.

“Well? What have you done with it?”

“There is none left and I dare not ask him for more.”

“You mean you used it?”

“All of it.”

“For his purposes?”

“Yes, a third of it. The rest for my passions.”

“Revenges?”

“Some were revenges. There were a good many lubricities.”

“Delicious creature!”

“Oh, Clairwil, you’ll never be able to conceive the horrors I have achieved in 
this domain … the joys I have derived from performing these crimes. … A box of 
poisoned almonds in my pocket, I used to stroll disguised through the public 
gardens, along the boulevards, into brothels; I would distribute those fatal 
candies to all who crossed my path; yes, to children also, especially to children. 
Afterward I would return to ascertain the results; were I to see a bier at the door 
of the individual upon whom the day before I played one of my cruel pranks, a 
glow would come into my cheeks … a fever into my blood … my head would reel …
I would totter, have to lean against a wall or a lamppost for support; and Nature 
who, doubtless with a view to her own needs, had constituted me differently from
others, would in the form of an unspeakable paroxysm reward an action which 
according to the belief of fools ought to have offended her.”

“All perfectly understandable, my dear,” Clairwil rejoined, “and the principles 
upon which we have been nourishing you for some time, Saint-Fond, Noirceuil, 
and I, elucidate the workings and designs of Nature as regards this entire matter;
it is no more extraordinary to come to the point you have reached than to like to 
inflict beatings, it’s the same pleasure, but refined; and once it has been proven 
to us that from the commotion of the pain experienced by others there results an 
impact upon our nervous system and in it a vibration which must perforce 
provoke lust, all possible means for causing pain become for us so many means 
for tasting pleasure; and starting out with little teasings, we shortly arrive at 
execrations. The causes are the same, only the effects are different; the laws of 
Nature and, even more so, satiety require that there be a gradual but steady 
growth: you begin by poking with a pin, you end up stabbing with a dagger; there
is, furthermore, a kind of perfidy in the employment of poison which singularly 
augments its attractiveness. Well, you have excelled your teachers, Juliette, I 
have perhaps imagined more than you, but I fear have accomplished less—”

“Imagined morel” I exclaimed. “What the devil more can you have imagined?”

“I would like,” Clairwil answered, “to find a crime which, even when I had left 
off doing it, would go on having perpetual effect, in such a way that so long as I 
lived, at every hour of the day and as I lay sleeping at night, I would be 
constantly the cause of a particular disorder, and that this disorder might broaden
to the point where it brought about a corruption so universal or a disturbance so 
formal that even after my life was over I would survive in the everlasting 
continuation of my wickedness….”

“For the fulfillment of your aims, my dear,” said I, “I know of little else than 
what may be termed moral murder, which is arrived at by means of counsels, 
writings, or actions. Belmor and I have discussed this question together; here is a
little computation he made just the other day, it suggests how rapidly contagion 
unfurls and how voluptuous it may be to cause, if it is true, as neither you nor I 
have any doubt, that as the crime becomes more atrocious, to that degree is the 
sensation enriched.”

And Madame de Lorsange displayed to her listeners the same paper Belmor 
had given her years before. This was the text: “Dedicating himself to this sort of 
action, one libertine can easily, in the course of one year, corrupt three hundred 
children; at the end of thirty years he will have corrupted nine thousand; and if 
each child he has corrupted only matches him in only one-fourth of his 
corruptions, and we can hardly expect less, and if each succeeding year’s batch of
corrupted children follows suit, as must very probably happen, by the time those 
thirty years have elapsed the libertine will have seen this corruption flower in two 
whole generations, will be able to number nearly nine million persons corrupted 
either by himself or by the doctrines and examples he has disseminated.”

“Charming,” Clairwil replied; “but the undertaking, easy enough to launch, 
must be sustained—”

“Not only must a full three hundred victims be regularly corrupted every year, 
one must also, insofar as one can, aid in the corruption of the rest.”

“Think of it,” Clairwil murmured, “merely find ten confederates for the 
simultaneous and coordinated execution of ten such plans, the spread of 
corruption would, even as they watched, become swifter than the most headlong 
progressions of the plague or malignant fevers.”

“Of course,” I said; “but it is not enough to watch developments, such an 
enterprise needs constant promotion, constant maintenance. To that end, and to 
ensure final success, a combined and extensive use must be made of the means I
spoke of a moment ago: counsels, actions, writings”

“You are, you know, treading on dangerous ground—”

“Admittedly; but remember Machiavelli, according to whom it were better to be
impetuous than circumspect, because Nature is a woman to be mastered only by 
him who goes to her whip in hand. Experience shows, the same authority 
continues, that she far more readily grants her favors to ferocious suitors than to 
diffident”

“Your Belmor must be delightful,” Clairwil remarked.

“He is indeed,” said I; “there are not many men so lovable, none more 
libertine—by the way, he will adore the purchases we are going to make; we shall 
have to resell them to him for their weight in gold—and do you really believe that 
however we be devoted to a man, whatever be our relationship to him, do you 
really believe that notwithstanding all that we should constantly deceive him too?”

“Most certainly,” was Clairwil’s reply; “dealing with a man, we have the human 
nature in him to contend with, and are obliged to proceed toward him as he 
always proceeds in our regard; and since no man is frank, why would you have us
be frank with them? Enjoy your lover’s tastes where they concur with your 
caprices; make the most profitable use of his moral and physical faculties; heat 
yourself by the fire of his intelligence, be inspired by his talents; but never for one
instant forget that he belongs to an enemy sex, a sex bitterly at war with your 
own … that you ought never let pass an opportunity for avenging the insults 
women have endured at its hands, and which you yourself are every day on the 
eve of having to suffer; in short, he is a man, and you have got to dupe him…. 
You know, Juliette, on this head you are still of an incredible guilelessness: you 
are kindly, you are good-hearted, why, you respect men; whereas they must be 
used and deceived, and nothing else. From Saint-Fond you don’t glean a sixth of 
what I’d extract; had he a similar weakness for me, in your place I would be 
banking millions every day.”

Our conversation, held in Clairwil’s carriage while driving to a remote point on 
the edge of the Faubourg Saint-Jacques, was now broken off, for we were come to
where the sorceress lived.

It was a little house, isolated and lying between courtyard and garden; one of 
our lackeys rang, an old serving-woman answered the door. Having learned our 
business she bade us first dismiss our coachman and attendants, suggesting we 
have them wait for us at a certain wineshop some distance away; the orders were
given and she ushered us into a small chamber.

A quarter of an hour later Madame Durand appeared. Forty years of age, this 
was a very handsome woman, richly and gracefully made, tall, with a majestic 
presence, Roman features, a wondrous skin and large expressive eyes; her 
speech was seemly, her gesture measured; her look and manners contained 
everything that announces breeding, education, and intelligence.

“Madame,” my friend addressed her, “persons well in your acquaintance and 
whom you have satisfied send us here…. First, we would have you say what the 
future holds in store for us, these twenty-five louis are in payment for that; next, 
we would have you provide us the wherewithal for controlling that future, I mean 
a complete assortment of the poisons you prepare. And there,” Clairwil went on, 
tendering her fifty louis more, “is the sum you ordinarily ask for instruction in the 
composing of those same poisons, and for showing the beginner your laboratory 
and your garden of venomous plants. Be sure of it, our interest in these things is 
practical.”

“Let me begin by saying,” Durand replied, “that you are two extremely pretty 
women, and as such, before anything else, you shall have to undergo initial and 
quite indispensable ceremonies which may perhaps displease you.”

Clairwil inquired in what these ceremonies consisted.

“You must accompany me into a dimly lit cabinet,” said the sorceress, “where, 
once you have removed all your clothes, you shall be flogged by me.”

“Vigorously?”

“Until the blood flows, my fair friends … yes, until the lash draws blood from 
your bodies: I never give out the least information save this little request be 
complied with; more, I have need of your blood for the auguries, and of blood 
resultant from a preliminary fustigation.”

“Come along,” I said to Clairwil, “under circumstances like these one must 
demur to nothing.”

The cabinet into which Durand led us was too unusual not to merit a 
description; and though for illumination there was but one smoky lamp, we could 
still discern objects well enough to make out their details. This cabinet, painted 
black, was about nine feet wide by twelve long; all along the wall to the right 
were alembics, furnaces, and other instruments of chemistry; to the left, shelves 
containing bottles and jars in great profusion, numerous books, there was a 
workbench, a stool; opposite us, at the farther end, hung a black curtain dividing 
this room from another; the curtain fell upon a divan, dividing it also, so that half 
the divan was in the cabinet, half in the room beyond; and there was, rising in the
center, a velvet-covered wooden post to which Madame Durand attached us, face 
to face.

“So then,” this personage demanded, “are you resolved to suffer some pain to 
acquire the knowledge you seek?”

“Lay on, Madame,” we answered, “lay on, we are prepared for whatever may 
come.”

At that Durand kissed each of us very amorously, gave our buttocks a friendly 
squeeze, and blindfolded us; and from this moment onward silence was observed:
we were softly approached, by whom we could not be sure, and given fifty strokes
each. They were but rods that were first used upon us, but willow rods so green 
and so tough and wielded with such force that, notwithstanding our habituation to
these pleasures, I think this volley of cuts may well have opened our skin. 
However, we durst not complain, and not a word was said to us. Our buttocks 
were palpated then, and it is certain those hands were not Madame Durand’s.

Our tormentor set to work anew, and now we could be in no more doubt of his 
sex: a prick made contact with our behinds, was rubbed in the blood oozing forth 
from them; some sighs, some voluptuous moans were heard, and two or three 
kisses were bestowed on our assholes, a tongue even twittered into them, then 
twittered out again; a third attack occurred, but the rods had been laid aside; 
numb though our asses were, we had no trouble deciding that here the 
instrument being employed was a cat, the tips whereof were sharp; so indeed 
they must have been, for I immediately felt blood course down my legs and 
gather in a puddle around my bare feet. Back came the prick, back came the 
tongue, and the ceremony terminated. The blindfolds were taken away and all we 
saw was Madame Durand; a saucer in her hand; she placed it beneath Clairwil’s 
buttocks, placed another beneath mine; then when they were brimful with blood, 
removed them and loosed our bonds. She sponged our behinds with water and 
vinegar and asked us, had it hurt?

“Never mind,” said we, “is there anything else that has to be done?”

“Yes,” Durand replied; “you must be frigged about the clitoris: I can make you 
no predictions unless I have observed you in pleasure’s throes.”

The sorceress now had us stretch out side by side upon the divan; thanks to 
the curtain bisecting it, we were from the waist down in the cabinet, from the 
waist up in the room adjoining. By means of a strap passed across our midriffs 
Durand fixed us to the couch: unable to sit up, we would be unable to make out 
with whom we were having to do. She, half-naked herself, had settled near us; 
her superb breasts were placed where we could kiss them; she watched us 
carefully and glanced from time to time at the two saucers. Our friggings started 
with the clitoris, very knowing attentions were then turned to our cunts and 
assholes; we were tongued in both those orifices; other straps were fastened 
around our ankles, our legs were hoisted into the air; and a mediocre prick was 
introduced alternately into our cunts and our bums.

Detecting the hoax, I spoke up at once: “I should hope, Madame, that you 
have at least some assurance of this man’s trustworthiness?”

“Simple creature,” was Durand’s response, “’tis not a man who is taking his 
pleasure with you, ’tis God.”

“Madame, you are mad,” Clairwil affirmed, “there is no God; and if there were,
all his acts approaching to perfection, he might perhaps have himself 
embuggered, but for a certainty he would not fuck women.”

“Silence,” Durand commanded; “concentrate upon fleshly impressions without 
fretting over the identity of those who cause you to feel them: if you utter 
another word, all shall be in vain.”

“We shall not say anymore,” I replied, “but mark you well, Madame, we want 
neither the pox nor offspring.”

“None of these things is to be feared with God,” Durand declared; “now an end
to this conversation, there is nothing further I can say.”

And I very distinctly felt the prick belonging to the personage aboard me 
discharge abundantly inside my bowels; he even swore, he stormed, he fumed; 
and that same instant, hardly noticing what was happening, we were borne aloft, 
divan and all.

We found ourselves in a largely unfurnished room which, judging from the time
we took ascending there, seemed very high up; no more curtain separating our 
heads from our bodies now; another machinery had conveyed Durand, she was 
there, so also were two little girls of thirteen or fourteen: they were sitting in 
armchairs and were bound fast…. From their countenances, from their pallor it 
was plain to see those creatures had been reared in extreme poverty; not far 
from them lay, in a cradle, two infant boys nine months of age; a big table was in 
the room, ranged upon it were numerous parcels resembling those enveloping 
drugs in a pharmacy: and also in this room were a great many more jars and 
bottles than we had seen in the other.

“It is here I pronounce opinion,” said Durand.

And she undid the strap pinioning us.

“You, Clairwil,” she began, looking hard into the dish containing her blood, 
“and you see that I know your name, without anybody having told me it; you, 
Clairwil, shall live only five years longer; but for the excesses you indulge in you 
would be able to live to sixty: your fortune shall increase as your health declines, 
and the day the Bear moves into the Scales you shall regret the flowers of 
springtime.”

“I do not understand.”

“Write down my words and the day will come when their meaning shall be very
clear.”

At this my friend seemed worried.

“As for you, Juliette—and, pray tell me, who ever could have given me your 
name?—you, Juliette, shall be enlightened by a dream, an angel will appear to 
you, it will unveil incomprehensible truths; but between now and then I may 
foretell this: when vice doth cease woe shall betide.”

And now a thick cloud filled the room. Durand fell into a trance, she shrieked, 
did strange contortions, in doing them shook off the little that still adorned her 
lovely body; the cloud having dissipated, she returned to her senses. That vapor 
had left an odor of mingled amber and sulphur in the air. Our clothes were 
restored to us; once we were dressed Durand asked us what kinds of poison we 
desired.

“Your prediction distresses me,” said Clairwil; “death inside five years I”

“Ah, who knows? May be you will avoid it,” Durand replied. “I told you what I 
saw in your fate, my eyes sometimes deceive me.”

“Let me cling to that hope, else I must truly despair,” said Clairwil; “but 
perhaps she errs in another direction, and I have only a week to live? So be it; 
such time as remains to me I shall spend soiling myself in crimes. Eh then, 
Madame, be quick about it, show me your wares; open your jars, let us see the 
weird plants in your garden: explain to us all the properties of all these lethal 
things, we’ll set aside those which please us, and you can dress a reckoning 
afterward.”

“I must have twenty-five louis more,” said the witch, “that is the fee for 
admission to my exhibits; later you will pay for the separate items you select, 
according to the rate of each. You may wish to experiment with them, you will of 
course be at liberty to do so: those two little girls are at your disposal, and if they
do not suffice I will furnish you, at fifty louis a head, as many men as you like.”

“You are delightful, Madame,” I exclaimed, throwing my arms around Durand’s 
neck, “I am so happy we consulted you, and I am certain you shall be happy to 
have us for clients.”

Taking down the jars from the shelves one at a time, she began by showing us 
aphrodisiacs and love philters as well as emmenagogic agents, electuaries, and 
other antiaphrodisiac purgatives. We had an ample store of the former done into 
packages, amongst them goodly amounts of cantharides, ginseng, and several 
vials of Joui liqueur from Japan for which, because of its rarity and its unusual 
virtues, Durand charged us ten louis an ounce.

“Add to my list some larger flasks of the latter,” said Clairwil, “they will be 
helpful to me in my dealings with lots of men.”

“We now come to the poisons,” said Durand; “if it is sometimes pleasant to 
labor at propagating the human species, it is more often delicious to hinder its 
progress.”

“These actions should not be mentioned in the same breath,” I protested, “the 
one is horrible, the other divine; our aim in buying these philters is not to 
promote the population, it is to increase our lubricity; and that progeniture which 
we detest, ’tis for the delectable destruction thereof we intend to buy the rest.”

“Kiss me,” said Durand. “Ah, here are two women of the stripe I adore. The 
better we come to know one another, the better, I am convinced of it, we shall get
on.”

These poisons were in very great number, each classified according to its 
category. In the first we examined, Durand drew our attention to a powder where 
the basic ingredient was vert toad; what she related of its effects was so exciting 
to hear that we besought Durand to make trial of it there and then.

“Gladly,” said she, “designate the victim.” And after having detached the girl 
we pointed to, she wondered whether we fancied having her fucked by a man, 
and poisoning her meanwhile; we rejoiced in this suggestion. Wherewith Durand 
rang, and in answer to her call appeared a tall individual, lank, pale, and nervous,
some fifty years of age and in a very neglected state.

“There,” I whispered to my companion, “he’s the one who sported with us a 
little while ago, I’m certain of it.”

Clairwil nodded. “I think you’re right.”

“Alzamor,” said Durand, “this maid must be devirginated while these ladies 
disorganize her with a powder…. Are you stiff?”

“Turn the child over to me,” said Alzamor, mournfully, “I shall do what I can.”

“Madame, what manner of man be this?” I demanded.

“He is an old sylph,” Durand replied, “by pronouncing a formula I can cause 
him to disappear. Would you care to see it done?”

“Yes.”

Durand uttered two barbarous words which I was unable to retain; where 
Alzamor had been there was now only smoke.

“Now make the sylph return,” said Clairwil.

Another outlandish phrase and a second cloud brought him back; this time the 
sylph had an erection, and it was prick atower he caught hold of the child. This 
personage proceeded to give evidence of prodigious vigor, in two minutes he had 
perforated the girl’s maidenhead and spattered blood all about the room. ’Twas 
then Clairwil administered the dose: it was dissolved in a cup of broth, the poor 
little soul quaffed it off. Her convulsions began promptly; when they were at their 
height Alzamor adjusted her for embuggering; her writhings, her screams 
increased; it was hideous to behold; six minutes later she collapsed and the sylph
withheld his discharge until she was completely lifeless. Her death throes were 
noisy beyond belief; her violator, too, loosed unearthly sounds, and it was the 
violence of that ecstasy which made us finally conclude that, indeed, this was the 
man who had tupped us earlier on. The uncouth words were pronounced again, 
Alzamor vanished, and the victim vanished with him.

Durand resumed the displaying of her goods and, after having indicated the 
features of the second category of poisons, said, “Here is burnt engri flesh, the 
engri is a variety of Ethiopian tiger; its effect is subtle, awful, and deserves to be 
witnessed by ladies as curious as yourselves.”

“Then let us try some out,” Clairwil said, “but upon a young man.”

“Of what age precisely?”

“Of eighteen or twenty.”

In a trice stood a youth, comely, prettily made, superbly membered, but 
showing such signs of privation as to leave us in no doubt of the class from which 
our sorceress chose her victims.

“Will you amuse yourselves with him?” Durand wanted to know.

“Yes,” said I, “but will you not join us? He looks capable of fucking the three of 
us.”

“What’s this? You are of a mind to see me fuck?”

“We most decidedly are.”

“I’m beastly, you will be appalled.”

“Fie, slut,” said Clairwil, clasping her in her arms, “do your damnable 
worst—we expect it of you, for you are a woman after our own sort and we are 
burning to see you in action.”

And without further ado Clairwil shoots toward the young man and begins to 
arouse him; and I, having brought Durand’s charms into view, with eyes, hands, 
and tongue begin to devour every part of her splendid body. Here were symmetry
and luxuriant abundance in perfection, never was flesh so firm, so fair, so 
responsive to the touch; never were buttocks and breasts so smooth, so round, 
so full; and this clitoris! ah, this clitoris, never had we in all our days seen one so 
long nor so straight-standing. I own that, catching sight of this last-named 
wonder, I was overslept by an invincible partiality for this woman and I had 
already mouthed her member when Clairwil, leading up the youth by the end of 
his prick, brushed me aside and made ready to bury that prick in the enchantress’
cunt: but she voiced her opposition in a terrible cry.

“Why would you require this horror of me?” she demanded. “Cunt-fucking is 
not to my liking, neither is it within my capacity, do you take me for an ordinary 
woman?”

And driving the youth back with a powerful blow of her fist, she spun about 
and presented him her ass. Clairwil conducted the device which, all unprepared 
for this, sank its full length into this anus just as easily as it would have 
disappeared into the hugest cunt. The whore then began to wriggle and cavort in 
the most lubricious manner, Clairwil and I furnished fuel to her ecstasy by 
palpating her, by fingering her, by tonguing and sucking and pumping her, by 
polluting and kissing and caressing her with all the means at our command, 
physical and moral. There is no conceiving the ardor of that woman’s imagination,
the foulness of her talk, the originality of her lewd ideas, and the wildness of their
incoherence; in fine, the disorder which, established by the incredible heat of her 
passions, reigned throughout her entire person. Nearing her crisis, she clutched at
our asses, kissed them; and the whore, after tonguing and spitting in our vents, 
fucked them as a man should have done.

“Poison him, poison him!” she screamed as delirium invaded her senses and 
mounted into her brain.

“No, by God!” said Clairwil, “the wight shall bugger-fuck us both before we 
have any of that.”

At which Durand emitted dreadful screams, howls, all her limbs twitching, 
thrashing, she succumbed to a nervous fit, and loosed fuck in such vast quantity 
that my mouth, for I was sucking her then, was filled to overflowing.

“He is yet intact,” she told us, expelling the youth, “prevent him from 
discharging in order that he fuck you the better.”

My ass chancing to be the first snapped into position, therein the fucker 
deposited the seed which Durand’s convulsing bowels had so well readied for 
ejaculation. I continued, while being embuggered, to gobble the jets of fuck still 
spouting from Durand’s vagina, whose anus Clairwil was tonguing; my friend soon
changed places with me and it was while the young man was in the midst of 
sodomizing her that the necromancer had him swallow the venomous brew. He 
was seized by cramps before he had time to withdraw from my friend’s ass, so 
that he perished embuggering her, which hurled Clairwil into transports of joy so 
intense I thought she too was in danger of dying.

“By God,” the buggeress declared, “I do believe I got his soul and his fuck in 
the same spasm; you have no idea how the rascal’s prick dilated while the poison 
was having its effect, neither can you conceive the pleasure which such an 
operation procures.”

Oh, voluptuous women! the time to poison your fuckers is while they are even 
in your asses or your cunts, you’ll see what one gains thereby…. We did indeed 
have no end of trouble dislodging the murdered youth’s member from my 
companion’s rectum, and when at last we had it pried loose, we noted that his 
death agonies had not prevented him from discharging.

“Aye, that was my impression,” said Clairwil, “did I not tell you he gave up the 
ghost and his sperm all in one throw?”

The corpse is whisked away and pots of poison from the third category are 
disposed on the counter before us.

Among others it includes the poison royal, the same which in the days of Louis 
XV brought about the deaths of so many members of his family; poisoned darts 
and hatpins; the poisons compounded of snake venoms and known under the 
names of cucurucu, kokob, and Aimorrhoües; polpoch poison, so called after the 
reptile that inhabits a northwestern zone in faraway Jupatan.

“I mix it with a digestive or cordial,” Durand explained; “diluted in the 
proportion of one drop to a pint it remains absolutely fatal; in all my experience I 
have never known it to fail; would you like to see what it can do?”

“By all means yes,” I replied, “rest assured that such proposals are of a kind 
we are never apt to reject.”

“And what would you prefer in the way of a victim?”

“An attractive young man,” Clairwil volunteered.

Durand rang a little bell and there before us appeared a boy of eighteen, fairer 
than the previous one, and in the same state of dejection and misery.

“Will you have Alzamor embugger him?”

“Gladly!”

Another puff of smoke, and out of it steps the sylph.

“Fuck this boy,” Durand instructs him. “Mesdames wish to try some polpoch 
brandy on him.”

“Wait,” Clairwil interrupted, “he must embugger me in the meantime.”

“And what are we to do, Madame Durand and I?”

“You may tongue Alzamor’s asshole, Juliette; and our hostess, upon whom I 
shall recline, will encunt me with her clitoris; my fuckeress, otherwise unoccupied,
will, when she sees the boy about to discharge in my bum, be able to hand him a 
little glass of the poison whose effects we are eager to study.”

Everything proceeds in accordance to Clairwil’s plan until the moment when 
the young man absorbs the drink: he is shaken so powerfully by the poison in his 
vitals that postures are disturbed and the group must disperse; we relinquish the 
middle of the room to the patient; Alzamor frigs Clairwil, I spring into Durand’s 
arms, who tickles me exquisitely, she possesses the ultimate in art and 
experience, all the coigns and concavities of pleasure are explored with equal 
thoroughness by the libertine fingers of that ravishing personage, whose lips 
cover me with fervent kisses. The hard-pressed victim is by now staggering like a 
drunkard and while we look on, gradually sinks into a terrifying vertigo; the 
venom’s impact upon his brain was so fierce, that, in shrieks, he complained of 
having his head full of boiling oil; this phase was followed by a generalized 
tumefaction that spared no part of his body, his face became livid, his eyes bulged
from their sockets, and flailing his arms like one drowning in the sea, the wretch 
fell to the floor and writhed and struggled there in the oddest possible manner, 
while to left and to right the four of us sprayed torrents of the impurest and the 
most abundant fuck.

“For me,” said Clairwil, “that is the most divine of all passions, the one I shall 
never be able to resist. I am resolved to indulge in it every chance I get in the 
future.”

“And you may do so without fear,” said Durand, “murder by poison is certain 
and it is safe. Witnesses? There need be none. Clues, telltale traces left behind 
whereby you may be found out? Let the most learned physician hunt for them, his
art will avail him not; the effects of poison are indistinguishable from the causes 
of a natural ailment in the bowels; they accuse you nonetheless? Deny the 
charge, and be firm. Let the crime be gratuitous. So long as they can assign to 
you no motive for having committed it, you will always be under cover.”

“Go on, temptress, go on,” Clairwil said to her; “if you were to convince me I 
do believe I’d depopulate the whole of Paris tonight.”

Durand pronounced the arcane formula; the sylph disappeared.

“Come with me to the garden,” she said, and then added, a note of apology in 
her voice: “you may have whatever you like there. And I am afraid there is not 
very much: the frosts were so severe last winter that most of my plants died.”

This garden, an extremely somber place, bore a strong resemblance to a burial
ground: save where some rare plants were growing, sinister and grayish, it lay in 
the shade of tall trees. Our curiosity drew us toward a remote corner where we 
espied newly turned soil.

“It’s the spot where you conceal your crimes, Durand, isn’t it?” Clairwil asked.

“Come along,” the sorceress replied, guiding us in another direction, “it were 
better I show you that with which one kills rather than what has been killed.”

She explained the properties of this plant, she explained those of another; at 
length, unable to curb my impatience, “Listen to me,” I said, “the sight of that 
cemetery just ten yards away is driving me quite out of my mind. Conjure up a 
little girl of fourteen or fifteen, give her a dose of whatever occasions the most 
agonizing possible gripes in a human being’s guts; we shall dig a ditch first, it will 
be there waiting for her; we shall let Nature take its course, and when the victim’s
convulsions roll her into the pit, we’ll cover her over with earth, and discharge.”

“I am determined to be of service to you,” Durand replied to this; “observe: I 
foresaw your request, there is the girl you want. And glance again at the 
cemetery: to the east there, do you see the pit? It is ready.”

Indeed, behind a wild Cayenne fig tree, there stood a very pretty child, naked 
as the day she was born; but the pit … we strained our eyes, then saw it open up 
in the earth, by what magic we could not guess….

“Ha!” exulted the sorceress, gazing at us as we, petrified, watched these 
prodigies, “are you afraid of me?”

“Afraid? No; but we do not understand you.”

“All Nature is at my orders,” Durand answered, “as she always submits herself 
to the will of whoever will probe her deep: with chemistry and physics nothing is 
beyond one’s power. Archimedes lacked only a place to rest his lever, else he 
would have moved the earth; and I now need but a plant in order to destroy it in 
five minutes….”

“Delicious creature,” Clairwil said, hugging her to her breast; “how happy I am 
to have met somebody whose methods so nicely correspond to my aims.”

Shutting a gate, we enclosed ourselves inside the cemetery with the little girl; 
her contortions began as soon as she had downed the poison.

“Let us sit ourselves here,” I said, “where ground seems to have been broken 
very recently—”

“I believe I read your thoughts,” said the sorceress.

From her pocket she pulls out a box, opens it, sprinkles some powder upon the
soil; and the plot beneath our feet suddenly becomes strewn with cadavers.

“Oh, fuck me, what a sight!” cries Clairwil, wallowing amidst these heaps of 
dead bodies; “quick, let’s all three frig one another while we watch that little bitch
suffer.”

“Let us take off our clothes,” Durand proposes, “with naked flesh we must roll 
upon this carrion, the sensation is voluptuous.”

“It occurs to me,” said I, “that these bones, shaped as they are, might serve in
the stead of pricks.”

And Clairwil, finding the idea greatly to her taste, snatched up a femur and 
stowed it in her cunt.

“Well done,” I remarked to my companion; “but we should be sitting on skulls, 
pointed nosebones should be prickling our assholes—see how I place myself….”

“Move a trifle to the left,” said Durand, “there’s the head, perhaps still warm, 
at any rate fresh, of the last boy you immolated: hold still a moment, Juliette, I 
have one of his hands, let me frig you with it….”

What now shall I say, my friends? Delirium and extravagance were at their 
height, we invented, we enacted a hundred things more infamous, more morbid 
yet; and the victim expired before our eyes, racked by execrable convulsions: the 
final ones having flopped and pitched her to the brink of her grave, she slithered 
into it, I discharged in the embrace of my two consorts who themse

lves smeared their fuck over me while the one sucked my nipples and the 
other drank my saliva; we donned our clothes again, and resumed our tour, just 
as cool as a trio of fools after having performed an exceptionally meritorious good
deed. Concluding our visit of the garden, we re-entered Durand’s abode.

“The pair of infants you see in this cradle,” the sorceress now said, “are the 
material I shall use in composing the costliest and most potent poison I sell. Do 
you wish to enjoy the spectacle?”

“Certainly,” we replied.

“I am not surprised,” said Durand, “in you I recognize woman philosophers 
who view the disorganization of matter as a merely chemical operation; and the 
compelling importance of the results outweighs, in your consideration, the 
so-called crime lesser minds notice in this action. … I am going to begin.”

Madame Durand plucks the babes out of their cradle, one after the other she 
hangs them by their feet from the ceiling, like hams, and lashes them mercilessly;
in time a foam bubbles from the mouths of the dilapidated infants, the sorceress 
carefully gathers this pink froth and sells us the little bottle for a hundred louis, 
certifying that of all the poisons she confections, this is the most virulent, and it 
was true. The children, to whom Durand gave no further heed, expired on their 
hooks. Ah, who any longer doubts that for greatest delectation it is casually, 
phlegmatically, crime wants to be committed?

“Yes, my dear friend,” said Clairwil, pondering over all the things we had seen 
that day, “those are awful secrets you possess.”

“I have a good many more, Mesdames,” Durand declared. “I hold the lives of 
multitudes in my hands: I can send the plague roaring abroad, poison streams 
and wells, propagate epidemics, contaminate the air of provinces, clap blight on 
houses, fields, vineyards, murrain on flocks; into deadly poison transform the 
flesh of cattle, I cause villages to burn, make suddenly perish he who inhales the 
scent of a flower or who unseals a letter; in a word, I am a woman without peer 
in my kind, nay, I am unique in it.”

“But, Madame,” I demanded, “how can somebody so well acquainted with 
Nature admit the existence of a God? When not long ago we inquired of you by 
whom we were being fucked, you answered ’twas by God.”

“Is there one more mighty than the prick?” Durand asked by way of answer.

“Ah,” said I, “I prefer to hear you respond thus than other-wise. But come 
now, dear heart, jesting aside: you do not believe in God, do you?”

“My friends,” Durand said to us, “the more one studies Nature, the farther one 
probes into her secrets; the better one comes to apprehend her energy, the 
greater grows one’s conviction of the futility of a God: the erecting of that empty 
idol is of all pieces of mystification the most odious, the most ludicrous, the most 
dangerous, and the most detestable; this revolting little fable, which wherever it 
exists has been whelped out of human hopes and fears, is the final consequence 
of human folly. Once again, to suppose an author of Nature is to misappreciate 
her altogether, only willful ignorance of all the effects of this fundamental power 
and prime mover permits the assumption of another which directs it, and you will 
never see any but idiots or rogues acknowledge or believe in the existence of a 
God. This God men have dreamt up is, in their presentation of him, what? an 
assemblage of all beings, all properties, all powers; the immanent and nondistinct
cause of all natural effects. Baffled about the qualities of this fictitious being, in 
their confusion seeing him sometimes as good, sometimes as bad, now jealous 
and now vindictive, people could only be further misled into imagining that he had
to punish and reward; but their God is actually only Nature, and Nature does not 
discriminate, neither does she deign to judge: in her eyes, all her creatures are 
equal and equally indifferent; since the production of one costs her no more than 
the production of another, to her the destruction of an ox is no worse than the 
destruction of a man.”

“And your doctrine touching the soul, what is it, Madame?” Clairwil asked. “For 
your philosophy is in too close concordance with our own for us not to relish an 
exposition of its various tenets.”

“No less a materialist in my approach to the soul than, in my analysis of the 
deity, I am prepared to state,” said Durand, “that after having sedulously perused
all the reveries philosophers have left us on this chapter, I came away with my 
conviction unshaken that the soul of man, absolutely similar to that of all animals 
but otherwise modified in him owing to the difference of his organs, is nothing 
else than a quantum of that ethereal fluid, of that infinitely subtle matter the 
source whereof is sunshine. This soul, which I consider substantially identical in all
animate things, is the purest fire there is in the universe: it is not hot, it does not 
burn by itself, but upon penetrating into the hollows in our nerves its impact there
is so explosive, it sets the animal mechanism so dynamically into motion as to 
render it capable of every sentiment and every combination thereof; in this its 
effect is similar to one of those of electricity, upon whose nature our information 
is still incomplete but which is basically the selfsame thing; upon the death of a 
man, or of some other animal, this fire is exhaled and, so a raindrop falling into 
the ocean, loses itself in the immense universal mass of the same matter, always 
existing, ever moving, perpetually active; the rest of the body putrefies, 
decomposes, and recomposes in other forms which other portions of this celestial 
fire enter and animate; I leave it to you to guess, in the light of this definition, 
what he who accepts it is bound to think of the comical ideas of heaven and hell.”

“My dear,” said Clairwil, “after having talked to us in so frank a manner, and 
after the manner in which we have illustrated our adherence to principles like 
your own, you ought indeed, with the same candor, tell us who it is and what, this
God by whom you latterly had us so well whipped and fucked; willing to unveil to 
us the mysteries of Nature, why should you fear revealing those of your house?”

“Because those of Nature are everybody’s by right,” Durand rejoined, “whilst 
those of my house belong to me alone; I may therefore disclose them or keep 
them secret, whichever I wish; well, my wish is not to discuss these matters with 
anyone, and if you persist in asking me about them, though you offer me the 
wealth of the Indies, you’ll go away from here empty-handed.”

“So be it,” said I, “let us not pester Madame with questions upon a subject she 
is not disposed to speak about; but there are others upon which she may be able 
to give us satisfaction…. The possibilities of libertinage here in your house, they 
exist—of this we are sure. What can you propose to us, for we are exceedingly 
libertine—”

“There is not a single passion,” replied Durand, “not a single whim or fancy, 
not a living being on this globe, not an extravagance or eccentricity, however 
unusual or picturesque it be, that cannot be enjoyed here; merely give me several
hours forenotice, I will procure you anything under the sun; let your desire be 
irregular, let it be fantastic, let it be gruesome, and this in no matter what degree,
I solemnly promise to provide you the means to execute it. Nor is that all. If there
be any men or women anywhere in the world, with whose tastes or practices you 
were eager to be acquainted, I will have them here; and unseen by them, you will
watch them in action through a gauze curtain. This entire house is mine, the ease 
wherewith on all four sides it may be entered or left without being seen, its 
secluded location, the height of the enclosure girting it, in a word, its mysterious 
loneliness, these, I think, guarantee both security and pleasure, which should be 
carefree; so command and you will be served: all individuals, all races, all 
nations, all sexes, all ages, simply specify what you wish—any debauchery, every 
crime: you have but to choose. You pay well, this I know; and with money 
anything can be had in my establishment.”

“And yet you must not be in any great need of it, Madame, your wealth must 
be immense.”

“Yes,” Durand conceded, “but I too have tastes and as I spend virtually 
everything I earn, I am not by a long shot as rich as you might think…. Yes, 
ladies, yes, strictest secrecy and unlimited facilities, such are the features of this 
place; you have immolated five or six victims so far today, assassinate five 
hundred more, there is no dearth to fear; do you wish to make further 
experiments upon boys, upon girls, upon mature persons, upon aged persons, 
upon youngsters, only say so, you will be served on the spot.”

“I want,” said Clairwil, “to bum-fuck two fifteen-year-old boys with a red-hot 
dildo while you martyr them, and while two handsome lads, already gorged on 
poison, bum-fuck me.”

“One hundred louis per victim,” said Durand, “and you will be satisfied.”

“For my part I’ll have two young girls,” said I, “since I only like to do to my sex
what this whore likes to do to men; I shall encunt them with a like device, and 
your sylph will lash them to ribbons with martinets—the points of steel must be 
heated to the same temperature; I shall be whipped throughout the operation.”

“Fifty louis per girl,” said Durand.

We took out our purses and in less than ten minutes everything was under 
way. The little girls given me were ever so pretty, and ever so ferocious were the 
sylph’s proceedings; the woe-begone victims expired in our arms and our 
transports were indescribable; the sylph and the corpses were whisked away in a 
flash, but our lust remained unappeased. Clairwil, disheveled, wild-eyed, was 
foaming at the mouth and I was hardly any calmer. Durand besought us to enact 
another drama, if that were agreeable to us it would be witnessed by libertine 
observers.

“Give us a victim apiece,” was our reply, “and your examiners will be 
contented.”

I am provided with a charming girl, naked, her hands tied behind her back; a 
similar subject for sacrifice, but of masculine sex, is produced for my companion: 
we begin by flogging them with nettles, then with our martinets, the work is 
already well advanced when it is interrupted by a knock on the door: it is Durand,
who had stepped out of the room and now returns: “The gentleman outside,” she 
says, “requests you to prolong the torture, and to turn slightly to this side while 
you operate: he would like a view of your asses wher

eof until now he has been unable to judge.”

“Go, and say it will be as he wishes,” Clairwil replied.

We resumed. The fierce creature opens the abdomen of the boy who has been 
entrusted to her, she tears out his heart and thrusts it hot into her cunt.

“Ah, Juliette,” says she, her breathing becoming hoarse, “for ages I’ve been 
wanting to frig myself with a child’s heart, this should lead to a memorable 
discharge.”

Sprawled atop the corpse of her latest victim, she yet sucked its mouth and 
chewed its tongue as she fucked herself with its heart. “And now,” she grunted, 
“let’s bury it completely.” In order to be able to fish it out again, she pierced it, 
ran a string through; and the lump of viscera sank out of sight.

Clairwil set up a howl of pleasure. “Juliette,” she gasped, “try it, Juliette, try it, 
there’s nothing to equal the sensation.”

“I once knew a man,” I said, “who had roughly the same mania: he used to 
make a hole in a yet palpitating heart, force his prick into it, and discharge there.”

“That could be charming,” said Clairwil, “but aesthetically less pretty than what
I am doing; try it, my angel, you owe it to yourself.”

There is nothing like the effect of example upon an imagination such as mine; 
it suggests, it encourages, it electrifies: I soon have my victim laid wide open and 
promptly insert its living heart between my labia; but, more straitly avenued than 
my companion, my efforts are unavailing, it will not enter my cunt.

“Slice it in two,” Clairwil urges upon noticing my plight, “provided some of it 
goes in, that is all that matters.”

I follow her advice and having taken the same precautions as she, bury a fair 
half of the heart in my womb. The fiendish creature was right, for dildo this is 
without peer; for warmth, for elasticity where will you find its match? And the 
moral parts, my friends! how they are fired by these horrors…. Oh yes, yes, there 
is no denying it, Clairwil’s idea was excellent, and I had not discharged so 
deliciously in a very long time. After an hour devoted to these infamies we 
summoned Durand again.

“Fuck!” she exclaimed upon catching sight of the frightful debris littering the 
room, “apparently, you need only be shown the opportunity—”

“Exactly, and we will duplicate that massacre at any hour of the day,” said 
Clairwil; “come, come, my dear, murder is as familiar to us as it is to you, we 
idolize it just as passionately, and so long as there is killing in your house you 
may always count upon our custom.”

“Kind friends,” Durand said to us then, “there is yet something I would propose
to you.”

“Do not hesitate.”

“Will you help me make fifty louis?”

“Certainly.”

“Then have the goodness to receive an admirer for a moment; he has been 
watching you, your doings fascinate him, and he is burning from eagerness to 
make your more intimate acquaintance.”

“Very well,” said I, “but we too wish to be paid, no money is more enjoyably 
spent than what one earns in a whorehouse; simply ask him for a hundred louis, 
that leaves twenty-five for each of us.”

“I am of my companion’s mind,” said Clairwil; “but what would the fellow do 
with us? One must not take payment for nothing.”

“Ah,” said Durand, “you will not be disappointed, he is extremely libertine; 
nonetheless, he is aware that you are ladies of condition and will treat you with 
fitting consideration.”

“Send him in,” said I, “let him only pay and not trouble to consider us, we are 
whores and intend to be treated as such.”

In they walked: first a little man of some sixty years, short, stout, almost 
naked, with the opulent look of a financier; a sodomizer followed hard on his 
heels, tooling him on the move.

“Lovely asses … lovely,” he cried, handling them; “ah, ladies, you have done 
remarkable things….” And while frigging himself amain: “You have killed, aye … 
butchered—that’s the very thing I adore. How would you like to begin again? We 
shall do the same together.”

So saying the lecher pushes me onto the bed and embuggers me while 
fondling Clairwil’s buttocks; after a few moments of clumsy shoving and jerking 
he takes up his stance behind Clairwil, gomorrahizes her, and, as he does, 
examines and nuzzles my bum. At this point his fucker discharges; the little man, 
seemingly considering it useless to go on warring in the breach without the 
support of a good prick in his rear, debuggers straight off and, catching up a 
handful of withes, he bids his fucker hold us while he gives us both a thrashing. 
The little rascal arranges us in this bizarre manner: facing in the same direction, 
we stand close beside the fucker, a tall man, who faces in the direction opposite 
and prisons our heads beneath his armpits: thus is Monsieur Mondor confronted 
by a sturdy prick for frigging and two superb asses for belaboring, and he flies to 
the task. Our bums, already in very fit sorts, bear up bravely under the storm, 
and it is severe, the bugger does his worst; prolonged was the ordeal, and bloody
too, he wore out six bundles of withes, and our thighs were as badly treated as 
our buttocks; during occasional pauses he sucked his man’s prick and when finally
he got it to a stand, had us fucked by this superb member: after all that 
flagellation, you may readily appreciate our need of that balm. While his retainer 
fucked us turn by turn, the financier worried the fucker’s ass and thereinto 
plunged his prick ever and again; his passion now well in the wind and running 
full-sailed, he cried out for a victim. One was brought him, an eleven-year-old 
boy: Mondor fucks him; Mondor is fucked: the villain orders us to carve the child 
open and extract his heart, as just before he had watched us do, and to rub it 
over his face while he discharges: all his bidding is done and the monster, bathed 
in blood and braying like a donkey, unpents his fuck. No sooner was he finished 
when, without so much as a word to us, he was gone out of the room. See there 
an example of the effects of libertinage upon a timid soul. It is ever the same: 
remorse and shame rush in the instant their fuck rushes out, because such 
people, unable to forge principles to themselves, always suppose they have 
behaved ill because they have not behaved quite like everybody else.

“And who was that queer fellow?” we asked Madame Durand.

“An exceedingly wealthy man,” she answered, “but I shall not give you his 
name; you would not be pleased to have me publicize yours.”

“His practices go no farther than what we have just seen?”

“He usually does his own murdering; but today he was visibly not in form and 
therefore charged you with the chore. You say he impressed you as being unsure 
of himself? You were not mistaken, he is indeed shy, overly scrupulous … and 
even very devout: he dashes off to pray to God after perpetrating horrors.”

“Poor fool, he is truly to be pitied. If you cannot first conquer vulgar prejudices,
better not venture into our way of life at all; for, once having elected it, he who 
does not advance with determined step is heading for a great many 
embarrassments.”

And after adjusting our clothes we wrapped up our purchases, made this 
valuable new acquaintance a generous settlement, and returned to our carriage, 
both of us determined to cultivate Durand and make the most extensive and 
frequent use of the supplies we had bought from her.

“I am going to poison every creature who crosses my path,” Clairwil 
announced, “if for no other reason—and is there another so solid?—than to 
commit an action which already affects my senses more profoundly than most, 
and is soon apt to win the position of a favorite in my heart.”

I was eager to introduce Belmor to Durand: they struck me as made for each 
other, and I frigged myself incontinently over the thought of seeing my lover in 
the arms of that evil witch. At our next encounter I mentioned her name; no, he 
was not acquainted with her; we agreed to call upon her together, and we went. 
After offering my excuses for having neglected her so dreadfully—I had not 
indeed been back since that first visit, lack of a free moment was the reason—I 
presented the Comte to her, and the welcome she gave him was warm. Enchanted
by everything he saw there, and after some heavy purchasing, he succumbed to 
the voluptuous titillations that stunning personage was causing in him. The scene,
just as I had hoped, transpired before my eyes; first sodomizing her, Belmor then 
begged to know, would she satisfy his dearest passion? I provided the necessary 
explanations; the victims were produced without delay, and Belmor, aided by me, 
regaled himself delightfully.

“Sir,” said the sorceress, “let me offer my felicitations, that passion of yours is 
charming; if you care to visit me again the day after tomorrow, I shall enable you 
to observe one of approximately the same sort, although a thousand times more 
spectacular.”

We came faithfully to the rendezvous; but nobody came to open the door. The 
shutters, we then noticed, were drawn over the windows, the house seemed 
deserted; and we went away. Despite the great many inquiries I made, I was 
never able to discover what became of that remarkable woman.

Nothing very out of the ordinary befell me in the course of the next two years; 
I lived higher than ever before, my debaucheries multiplied, and finally brought 
me to the point where I lost all taste for the simpler pleasures of Nature; to the 
point where if there was not something exceptional or criminal in the frolics which
were proposed to me, I could not even feign an interest in them. It is likely that 
when we reach this stage of numbed indifference, virtue makes a final effort 
inside us, whether because in our exhaustion we are so reduced that her voice 
reassumes its authority in the face of our torpor, or because, through a natural 
desire for change, we, bored with crimes, wish to try a little of the contrary; 
whatever the case may be, this is the moment, beware of it, when long-forgotten 
prejudices reappear, and if they overtake somebody who has already traveled far 
in a vicious career and gain the upper hand over him, the unhappiness they cause
is terrible; there is nothing worse than to limp back to Susa in defeat and 
dishonor.

I had just attained my twenty-second year when Saint-Fond broached another 
of his execrable schemes to me. Still infatuated with his depopulation measures, 
his aim in the present plot was to starve two-thirds of France to death, by 
engrossing foodstuffs, grains chiefly, on a colossal scale; and in the execution of 
all this I was to have the principal role.

I—yes, I confess it: corrupt to the core though I was, before the idea I 
shuddered; O thou, the fatal start I gave, what wert thou not to cost me! Little 
impulse, why could I not have suppressed thee?—Saint-Fond caught it with his 
searching eye. He turned and went away without a word.

I watched him go and, when the door was shut and the sound of his footsteps 
died away, waited there yet a certain while; then, for it was late, retired for the 
night. Long did I lie awake; once fallen asleep I had a troubling dream: in it I saw 
a fearful figure putting a torch to my belongings—to my furniture, to my house, to
everything I owned: all was afire and in the midst of it a young creature stretched
forth her arms to me … sought desperately to save me, and in the attempt 
perished herself in the flames. I awoke all asweat, and consciousness brought 
back to me the sorceress’ prediction: when vice doth cease, thus had she spoken,
woe shall betide. O Heaven, I cried in my heart, I stopped being vicious for a 
fleeting instant, I shuddered at a proposed horror; misfortune is about to engulf 
me, it is sure. The woman I saw in my dream, she is the sister, the unregenerate 
and sad Justine with whom I fell out because she was bent on taking the virtuous 
way; virtue appeals to me, and in my heart vice falters…. Fatal prognostic … and 
you who could explain it to me and tell me what I should do, you disappear just 
when my need for your advice is greatest. … I was still at grips with these 
lugubrious reflections when, unannounced, a stranger enters my bedroom, 
tenders me a note, and forthwith steals away. I recognize Noirceuil’s hand:

“You are ruined,” it reports to me, “never would I have expected frailty in her 
whom I formed and whose conduct heretofore has been flawless; seek not to 
repair the want you have exhibited of zeal: it is too late: your impulse betrayed 
you, and add not insult to injury by supposing the Minister can be further duped. 
Leave Paris before this day is out; take with you the money you may have by 
you; count not upon anything else. Everything you have acquired through 
Saint-Fond’s largesses and aid is forfeited; he is a powerful man, this you know, 
you also know his wrath when he has been failed: so do not tarry, go. And go with
lips sealed: you will not outlive an indiscretion, I leave you the ten thousand livres
a year you have from me, your drafts will be honored anywhere. Now fly, and to 
your friends say nothing.”

A bolt of lightning would have smitten me less cruelly; but dread of Saint-Fond 
affected me even more strongly than despair. I rise hurriedly from my bed; 
having deposited all my valuables and all my savings with Saint-Fond’s notary, I 
dare not go reclaim them. I ransack drawers, turn purses inside out: five hundred
louis is all I can assemble, all I have left. I make several rolls of the notes and 
hide them upon my person, and then, alone, on foot, in the middle of the night I 
go quaking out of this house where yesterday I dwelled like an empress, this 
house upon which I cast one last backward glance, tears in my eyes…. Whither 
shall I go? To see Clairwil…. But no, it has been prohibited; and moreover is it not 
she who has betrayed me? is it not she who wishes to usurp my place? Ah, how 
unjust we are rendered by misfortune, and how wrong I was, as you shall soon 
see, in rushing to suspect the best friend I had.

Come now, take hold of yourself, let’s not rely for help upon anybody but 
ourselves … I’m still young, I said to myself, it’s merely a question of starting 
afresh; I have learned from my youthful errors…. O fatal virtue! thou tricked me 
once; never fear, I’ll never again come under thine execrable sway. Only one fault
have I committed, only once have I slipped, and it was an infernal impulse to 
probity that tripped me. Let’s now snuff it out forever within us, virtue is man’s 
mortal enemy, capable of procuring him nothing but his doom; and the greatest 
mistake which can be made in a completely corrupted world is to want to put up a
lonely fight against the general contagion. And, great God, how often have I told 
this to myself!

Without anything like a definite plan in mind, concerned only to escape the 
vengeance of Saint-Fond, I jumped, as though mechanically, into the first public 
carriage I found; it was the mail-coach for Angers; in due time I arrived there. 
Never having been in this city before, not knowing a soul there, I decided to rent 
a house and to open it for gaming: the nobility from all the countryside around 
soon came flocking to me…. Countless lovers made their declarations; but the air 
of modesty and reserve I affected quickly persuaded my suitors that I was not to 
be wooed successfully save by him who would make my fortune. A certain Comte 
de Lorsange, the same by whose name I still go today, looked to me to be more 
assiduous and a great deal richer than the others: he was then forty years of age,
pleasing of face and figure; and from his manner of expression I was convinced 
his intentions were loftier and more legitimate than his competitors’: I heeded his 
attentions. It was not long before the Comte confided his designs to me: a 
bachelor, enjoying an income of fifty thousand livres a year, having no near 
relations, he, if I were to prove worthy of his hand, would prefer to have me 
inherit his wealth than have it passed on to some distant kin; and if I were willing 
to be frank with him, to describe my life in fullest detail, omitting nothing, he 
would wed me and accord me twenty thousand a year. A proposal such as this 
was too fair not to accept at once; it was a complete confession the Comte must 
have, it was a complete one he got.

“Listen to me now, Juliette,” spoke up Monsieur de Lorsange once I had 
terminated my recital, “the avowals you have just made me evidence an 
openness I admire; she who owns her sins so candidly is far nearer to never 
sinning again than she who has been faultless all her life; the former knows what 
to expect—and the latter may at any time fall prey to the desire to essay 
something new. Deign to listen to me a little, Madame, I insist that you do, to me 
your conversion would be a precious thing, I want to guide you into the righteous 
path; I do not propose to upbraid you in a sermon, no, but to put certain truths 
before you, truths your passions screened long from your sight, and which you 
will always find in your heart whenever you wish to inspect it alone.

“Oh, Juliette! he who was capable of telling you that morals are useless in the 
world set for you the crudest trap into which it would be possible to snare you, 
and he who was then able to add that virtue is futile and religion a fraud might 
better have assassinated you there and then, and been done with it. Killing you 
outright, he would have caused you only an instant’s suffering; instead, he 
readied you for griefs and woes beyond number; the misuse of words and the 
twisting of meanings were responsible for all your errors, let us now strive to 
make a just analysis of this virtue wicked teachers sought to make you hate. That
which is called virtue, Juliette, is constant fidelity in the fulfillment of our 
obligations toward others; I ask you now, what person can be so thoughtless, so 
unfeeling as to venture to situate happiness in that which shatters all the ties that
bind us to society? Does that person brashly fancy, will he delude himself into 
believing, that he can be happy all alone when he hurls everybody else into 
distress? Will he be strong enough, powerful enough, audacious enough to 
succeed, single-handed, in resisting the will of society, strong and powerful and 
audacious enough to compel every individual will to make way before the 
irregularities of his own? Is he so bold as to imagine he alone has passions? And if
all the others have them as surely as he, how can he hope to cow the rest into 
putting theirs into abeyance and serving his only? You will agree with me, Juliette,
no one but a madman can entertain such ideas; but even supposing he is ceded 
to, is he sheltered from the law? Does he doubt but that its blade will cut him 
down as it would another? Will you place him so high up that he is hindered by 
none of these checks? Very well; he must still contend with his conscience. Nay, 
Juliette, believe me, nobody ever escapes from that terrible voice: you have seen 
it for yourself, you have had the experience: you attempted to slay the conscience
in you by imposing silence upon it, and instead, more imperious than your 
passions, it called them to a halt.

“Instilling in man a taste for society, the unknown Being who shaped him had 
necessarily to give him, simultaneously, a taste for the duties whereby he could 
comfortably maintain himself therein; now, virtue consists precisely in the 
fulfillment of these duties; virtue is hence one of man’s primary needs, it is the 
sole means to his felicity on earth. Oh, in what lucid and stately order religious 
truths proceed from these fundamental verities, and how easy it is to prove the 
existence of a Supreme Being to the man of virtuous heart; the sublimities of 
nature, Juliette, those are the virtues of the Creator, as benevolence and 
humaneness are those of His creatures, and from the relationships knitting them 
all up together is born the concord of the universe. God is the center of the 
supreme wisdom whereof the human soul is a ray; the moment you close yourself
up against that divine light, your lot upon earth must be to wander in darkness 
from error to misfortune; cast your glance upon those who have presumed to 
formulate different principles and analyze their motives coolly; did they desire 
anything else than to seduce you and abuse your good faith? Were they animated
by any other intentions than to flatter their despicable and dangerous passions? 
And in addition to deceiving you, they deceived themselves; there is the worst of 
it, there is what never enters into the wicked man’s calculations; to get himself 
one pleasure he loses a thousand, to pass one happy day he destines himself to a
million dismal days; such is the contagion of vice that he who is attacked by it 
wishes to infect everyone around him: the mere sight of virtue is a reproach to 
him, and the wretch does not realize that all his efforts to annihilate it become 
triumphs for it; the delight of the evildoer is to do worse every day; but having 
done the worst, then he must stop, and is not this the moment which, revealing 
his limitations, reveals his weakness to him, and his fault? But is it likewise with 
virtue? The more he improves its delights the more delicate they become, and if 
he would attain virtue’s farthermost limits, he finds them in the bosom of God, 
with Whom he unites his existence to live eternally in bliss.

“Oh, Juliette, manifold and deep are the joys of virtue and religion! I have lived
like other men—yes, it is in a pleasure-house I have had the fortune of your 
acquaintance; but even in the flings of my youth, even in the fiery noon of my 
hot-blood days, virtue never lost its beauty in my eyes, and it was in discharging 
the duties she imposes I always found the sweetest of my satisfactions. Come 
Juliette, be honest with yourself, how are you able to think there is greater charm
in causing the tears of distress to flow than in relieving the miserable in their hard
plight? I am willing enough to grant you, for the sake of discussion, that there 
may be souls so depraved as to allow a delight in the first case: do you believe it 
can compare with the delight produced in the second? That which is excessive, 
that which affects for a brief instant only, must it not seem poor indeed beside a 
pure, mild, and enduring pleasure? The hatred and the curses of our fellow man, 
can they outvalue his love and blessings? O! immoral and warped spirit, are you 
immortal, are you unimpressionable? do you not drift like us upon this 
peril-strewn sea of life, and have you not our own need of rescuers the day you 
drive upon a rock? think you men will heed your call after you have insulted 
them? and do you think yourself a god, to be able to dispense with men? Only 
grant me these first principles, and how easily I shall lead you from love for the 
virtues to belief in the Being who combines them in the ultimate degree…. Oh, 
Juliette, what is the atheist’s dreadful quandary! Do but contemplate the beauties 
of the universe, do only that and you will realize the necessity of its Divine 
Author’s existence; it is pride in his passions that prevents vainglorious man from 
recognizing his God. He who has done a guilty deed is wont to doubt the 
existence of his judge; is readier to deny Him than to fear Him, finds it more 
consoling to say There is no God than to have to dread the retribution of Him he 
has outraged; but banishing these deceiving prejudices, let him glance impartially
at nature, he will discover God in all the infinite art of nature’s Author. Ah, 
Juliette, theology is a science for the vicious only; it is the voice of nature for the 
man whom virtue animates: the image of the God he. worships and serves, he 
would be sore troubled if virtue’s consolation were but a fable; yes, the universe 
bears everywhere throughout it the stamp of an infinitely powerful and 
industrious Cause; and chance, the paltry and unsure resource of dishonest 
thinkers, that is to say, the fortuitous concurrence of necessary and irrational 
causes, could not have formed anything; the Supreme Being acknowledged, how 
abstain from the worship that is His due? Is not our homage owing to that which 
in all the world is most sublime? He from Whom all our joys derive, is He not 
entitled to our thanks? And at this point how soon I shall be able to convince you 
that of all the world’s creeds, the most reasonable is the one you were born into. 
Juliette, if you love virtue, you shall quickly come to love the wisdom of the Divine
Author of your religion; consider the sublime morality that characterizes it, and 
say, was there ever an ancient philosopher who preached one so pure, so 
beautiful? Self-interest, ambition, ulterior motives lie back of all those other 
ethical systems, only Christ’s is based upon love of mankind: Plato, Socrates, 
Confucius, Mohammed seek reputation and followers; the humble Jesus awaits 
only death, and his death itself is an example.”

I listened to that sensible man…. Good heavens! said I to myself, this must 
surely be the angel Durand alluded to, and these the incomprehensible truths that
were to be divulged to me … and I pressed the hand of this new-found friend: 
tears were gathering in his eyes, he hugged me gently to his breast. “No, my 
Lord,” said I, hanging my head, “I do not feel worthy of the happiness you hold 
out to me … my sins are too many, my fate cannot now be reversed.”

“Ah,” he replied, “how little you know of virtue and of the mighty God whence 
it emanates! never was entry into His fold denied the repentent; implore the 
mercy of the Lord, Juliette, implore His forgiveness and your prayers shall be 
heard. Vain formulas, superstitious practices—ah no, I require none of this of you;
it is faith, it is virtue, it is your behavior as manifested in all the things you do 
which may ensure the happiness of the long life you have yet to live. They who 
have loved you only for your vices, because their own found stuff there to feast 
upon, they spoke to you in no such terms as I have used; nobody but the friend 
of your soul would take it upon himself to address you thus, and you will pardon 
these effusions, they stem from my ardent desire to see you happy.”

Needless to say, my friends, Monsieur de Lorsange’s pretty little diatribe 
persuaded me of nothing unless it was his innocence and striking inaptitude as a 
controversialist. For indeed, what grossly inadequate means were these for 
swaying someone whom the habit of logic had by now rendered inaccessible to 
prejudice or superstition, and what more ludicrous than to establish the necessity 
of virtue to human happiness—and this for my benefit! Virtue, eh! Whence came 
all my misfortunes if not from my weakness in having listened to it for one 
accursed instant; I ask you next whether Lorsange’s captious induction could 
impress anyone with a head on his shoulders. If virtue is proven necessary, said 
he, then religion is equally necessary; my informant’s construction of lies piled on 
bigotries collapsed the moment its bases were undercut. Ah no, said I to myself, 
virtue is by no means necessary, it is merely harmful and a menace—have I not 
found it out from fatal experience!—and all the religious fairy tales they seek to 
found upon virtue can only rest, like it, upon basements of absurdity, selfishness 
is the sole law of Nature; well, virtue contradicts selfishness, since it consists in 
the incessant sacrifice of one’s leanings and preferences in the interest of the 
welfare of others: if, as Lorsange argues, virtue’s existence proves God’s, what 
sort of God is this that perches atop a system raised upon Nature’s deadliest foe? 
Oh, Lorsange, your whole edifice crumbles of itself, and you have built on nothing 
solider than sand. Virtue is of no advantage to man, and the God you establish 
thereupon is the absurdest of all absurd phantoms; man, created by Nature, 
should heed none but the impulses he receives directly from her; his mind once 
freed of confusing prejudices and his vision clear, his natural understanding will 
discover neither any necessity for God nor any virtue either. However, pretense is 
obligatory here, my situation demands it; I must get me out of the mire and back 
onto the road of prosperity, Lorsange’s hand is indispensable to that end; so let’s 
seize it, and never mind the rest; let guile and treachery be the weapons I place 
heaviest reliance upon, the weakness of my sex dictates the choice of them, and 
my individual principles must make them the basis of my character.

My skill as a liar, acquired over long years of practice, was such that I could 
dissemble with ease and success in any circumstances whatsoever, I put on the 
appearance of espousing Lorsange’s point of view and counsels; I ceased 
receiving people in my house, each time he called on me he found me alone, 
sewing, and so wonderful was the progress he was making toward the salvation of
my soul that I was soon noticed at Mass. Lorsange tumbled happily into the trap; 
the twenty thousand livres’ annuity was written out to me and the marriage 
contract signed a mere six months after I had first set foot in the city of Angers. 
As I was on good terms with the neighborhood, and as my former errors were 
known to nobody there, Monsieur de Lorsange’s choice was generally applauded 
and I saw myself mistress of the finest house in town. Hypocrisy restored to me 
an affluence which dread of crime had stripped me of not long before; and here 
again stood vice at the top of the tree. Oh, my friends, say what they will, it shall 
ever be so until humanity’s final hour.

There is little I can relate touching my conjugal pleasures with Monsieur de 
Lorsange; of these the good man was acquainted with none but the most banal; 
as untaught in lubricity as in philosophy, during the two dreary years I spent as 
his wife, the poor devil never once took it into his head to vary his routine: soon 
suffocating from the monotony of it, I put out a watchful eye to see whether this 
city might not have something in the way of satisfactions to offer. I had no 
particular requirements as to sex and, provided it gave signs of imagination and 
verve, the object could be of any sort. I was long in searching; the strait and 
strict upbringing one encounters in the provinces, the moral rigidity, the 
mediocrity of the population, that also of its means, everything complicated my 
efforts, everything posed an obstacle to my pleasures.

A young thing of sixteen, very pretty, the daughter of one of my husband’s 
oldest friends, was the first I attacked. Caroline, intrigued by the originality of my 
remarks, suborned by the immorality of my systems, quickly yielded to my 
desires: one day when we had gone bathing together I made her discharge in my 
arms. But Caroline, who was only beautiful, might well once have, but could 
hardly hold someone who, like myself, had to be roused through the imagination; 
whereof the dear child possessed none at all. Brief was our idyll; I shortly found 
somebody else, abandoned her for a third. Yes, attractive women did not entirely 
lack in Angers, but how dull were their minds—never a hint of friskiness. Oh, 
Clairwil, how longingly I thought on you, how greatly you were missing to my 
happiness! Useless to deny it, he who loves vice, who since childhood cherishes it 
either from taste or from habit, he, I say, is invariably more apt to find felicity in 
the continual practice of depraved customs than will he who comes late to them 
after having always plodded along the desolate path of virtue.

I tried men, met with hardly better luck; I was on my tenth when one day, 
while hearing Mass beside my virtuous husband, I thought I recognized in the 
celebrant a certain Abbé Chabert with whom I had had some agreeable 
connections at the Sodality of the Friends of Crime—a charming boy, you often 
see him here today. Never had Mass seemed so tedious; it finished at last. 
Monsieur de Lorsange leaves; some supplementary prayers are my excuse for 
remaining behind. I request a word with the priest who has just officiated; he 
comes: why, my God, yes, it was Chabert. We removed at once into a secluded 
chapel; and there the amiable Abbé, after having congratulated himself upon this 
stroke of good fortune and expressed his delight at seeing me again, told me that 
large benefices he possessed here and there in the diocese compelled him to keep
under cover but that I should not be misled by his smirks and antics, bowing and 
scraping are enjoined to politics and cannot be avoided; that his way of thinking, 
views, and habits were quite what they had always been, and that he would be 
only too happy to give me proof thereof at the first convenient opportunity. I for 
my part recounted what had befallen me; having arrived in Angers but a week 
before, he had not known of my presence there, and reiterated his desire that we 
amply renew our acquaintance.

“Abbé,” said I, “need we delay? Fuck me here and now. The church doors are 
shut, this altar will serve as our couch; make haste, reconcile me with pleasures 
over the loss of which I weep every day. Will you believe it? Ever since I came to 
this wretched town, not one of the persons to whom I have surrendered has so 
much as thought to look at my ass, I who cherish none but those attacks, and 
who behold all other pleasures as necessarily accessory or incidental to that one.”

“Why, very well then, let us indulge in it,” said Chabert, turning me so that my 
belly was resting against the altar, raising my skirts from behind. “Ah, Juliette,” 
cried he after a moment spent admiring my buttocks, “your ass is still the same, 
Aphrodite’s own.”

The Abbé inclines, he kisses it; ’tis most inspiring to feel, in my asshole, this 
tongue where a god lay of late … he soon replaces it by his prick, and lo! I am 
sodomized to the balls. And so these were the delights of backsliding! Ah, good 
my friends, my pleasure was beyond description; it is cruel to interrupt sinful 
habits, it is heavenly to resume them. During my enforced abstinence from this 
kind of pleasure I had felt the most violent need of it, this had manifested itself in
the form of itchings so keen, so insistent that to soothe them I had had to resort 
to scratchings and scrapings with whatever instrument lay ready to hand; Chabert
gave me a new lease on life. Remarking the extreme pleasure he was affording 
me, he prolonged it to the utmost, and the rascal, young and vigorous as he was, 
hung in my bum until he had spat three discharges there.

“There’s no substitute for it, it has no equal—there’s my opinion,” said he as he
withdrew. “Or do you not agree?”

“Oh, Abbé Chabert, can you ask such a question? And of the staunchest 
defender of sodomy you are likely to meet in all your life! We must see each other
often, my dear.”

“We shall, Juliette, heaven be my witness, we shall. And I would that you were 
doubly content at having encountered me again.”

“What do you mean?”

“I have friends.”

“And, you wag, you intend to prostitute me to them?”

“With attributes and proclivities like yours, you are better suited to the role of 
a whore than the one you are enacting at present.”

“Abbé, I am touched by what you say, it is a mark of recognition. ’Tis a sad 
part to play in the world, that of an honest wife; the title itself implies stupidity. 
Every chaste wife is mad; or else a fool who, lacking the strength to shake off her
prejudices, remains buried beneath them through witlessness or because of some
constitutional flaw, and is hence nothing better than a creature Nature mismade 
or contrived in jest. Women are built for impudicity, born for it, and those of them
who remain prudes throughout and in spite of all are fit only for ridicule and 
scorn.”

Chabert knew my husband and described him as a bigot; he urged me to seek 
some compensation for the austerities of the marital couch. Having overheard 
someone say that Monsieur de Lorsange was to depart the next day for one of his
estates, he advised me to take advantage of his absence to come to a country 
dwelling of his whither he would escort me, and partake in a replica of our 
Parisian debauches.

“’Tis a wicked thing you are doing,” said I, rallying the Abbé, “you are 
unsettling all my plans for virtue. Say now, is it right for you to flatter my 
passions? should you thus pave for me the way to crime? ought you lure his wife 
away from a husband? Ah, your conscience will answer for it; it is time you halt 
your wicked machinations. The harm is not yet done, I have but to consult a 
spiritual guide less perverted than you, he will teach me how to resist such 
criminal desires; he will show me that they are the product of a perverse soul, 
explain to me that, in submitting to them, one dooms oneself to eternal remorse, 
to remorse of the very bitterest as there are evil deeds for which there is no 
possible reparation. He will not, like you, advise me that I am at liberty to do 
anything, that I have nothing to fear; he will not encourage me to wild conduct by
raising hopes of impunity, he will not facilitate my journey into adultery and 
sodomy, he will not cheer me on to betraying my husband—a gentle, God-fearing 
husband, wise, pious, good, who sacrifices himself for his wife…. Oh no, no, it will 
be the contrary of that, he will trundle out the great terrors of religion, he will 
brandish them to affright me; like the virtuous Lorsange, he will remind me of a 
dead God who died for the sake of my salvation;(17) he will make me sense how 
guilty I am in disregarding such favors…. But I shall not attempt to conceal it from
you, my dear Abbé Chabert, she who is today no less a libertine, no less a 
scoundrel than you knew me to be in the past would be mightily prone to take 
such pratings ill; and in reply to his golden words, tell him: My friend, I abominate
religion, to the devil with your fuck-in-the-ass God and a fig for your advice: 
gibber to me no more, clumsy little oaf, virtue offends me, it’s vice I like; and it is
to enjoy myself Nature put me on this earth.”

“Ah, Juliette,” said Chabert as we parted, “wrong-headed as ever, and just as 
engaging. Here in this solitude and bleakness where we live, ’tis a treasure I have
found in finding you.”

I arrived punctually at the rendezvous, Chabert and I set off for his retreat; 
apart from ourselves, there were gathered four men and four women. Among the 
latter were three with whom I had held voluptuous commerce previously; while 
the four men were carnal strangers to me. The Abbé gave us merrily and 
plentifully to eat and drink, and we gorged ourselves on libertinage too. The 
women were pretty, the men vigorous: my ass was fucked by all the men, my 
cunt fingered, sucked by all the women. I discharged prodigiously. No need to 
describe that party to you, nor the eight or ten others which followed it during my
stay at Angers. You are weary of lubricious descriptions, and henceforth I shall 
spare you all but those which exceptional crimes or other singularities render 
worthy of your hearing.

Before advancing with my story I must mention a few vital details which 
cannot longer be omitted. Eleven months after my marriage to the Comte de 
Lorsange I presented him with a charming baby girl; bearing the child was a 
struggle for me, but shrewdness won out in the end. The measure was essential: 
I had to consolidate my claims to the fortune of the man who had given me his 
name. I could not do this without a child—but was it fathered by my virtuous 
husband, that’s what you are wondering, isn’t it now, prying busybodies that you 
are? Why then, allow me to make you the same reply Madame de Polignac made 
to Monsieur in answer to the same indiscreet question: “Oh my Lord, when one 
ventures into the midst of a thicket of rosebushes, how is one to tell by which 
thorn one has been pricked?” But do you suppose Lorsange bothered to inquire? 
He accepted everything, jibbed at nothing; the honor and the burdens of paternity
devolved upon him, did my greed require anything more? This little daughter, 
whom my husband named Marianne, was completing her first year and I my 
twenty-fourth when, taking deep and long counsel with myself, I decided I had no
alternative but to leave France.

From anonymous correspondents I had received warnings that Saint-Fond, 
whose star was only continuing to rise at the Court and who was in apprehension 
of a damaging indiscretion from me, regretted not having clapped me away into a
place of safety, and that he was having me sought after everywhere. Fearing lest 
my change of name and condition prove insufficient camouflage, I resolved to put 
the Alps between the Minister’s hatred and me: but there were ties binding me, 
they had to be dissolved; could I make my escape so long as I was under a 
husband’s thumb? Here was something that had to be remedied and I began to 
lay my plans. The great deal I had already accomplished in this domain reduced a
rather unimportant crime to a mere trifle in my eyes; meditating it moistened my 
cunt, I hatched my plot to the tune of acute spasms of joy, and prospects of 
others goaded me toward its speedy execution. I had half a dozen pinches left of 
each poison bought from Durand: to my tender spouse I administered a strong 
dose of the royal variety, both out of respect for his aristocratic person, and 
because the time which was to elapse between the envenoming and the death of 
the beloved would screen me from all possible suspicion.

Never was there a sublimer death than that of Monsieur de Lorsange; his acts 
and sayings were elevated, they were exemplary; his bedchamber turned into a 
chapel where sacraments of all sorts were celebrated continually. He exhorted 
me, he preached to me, he bored me; recommended to me the little daughter he 
thought was his; and hemmed in by three or four confessors, breathed his last. 
Truly, had all that dragged on another two days, I believe I would have left him to
die all by himself. The respect and care allegedly due to the dying comprise 
another social obligation which makes no sense to me. One ought undoubtedly to 
take the fullest possible advantage of a living creature; but as. soon as Nature, 
afflicting it through maladies, advises us that she has initiated the process of 
reclaiming that creature, rather than risk infringing her laws we must let her 
operations take their course; we may hasten them, yes; but interfere with them, 
never. In short, the sick must be abandoned to their own devices; place a few 
objects inside their reach that may bring them relief, if you like, then proceed 
about your business. It is unnatural for a healthy individual to go and breathe, 
before his appointed time and in open violation of Nature’s intentions as they 
regard him, the contaminated air of a sickroom, and to expose himself to falling ill
too, all in order to do something unlawful: nothing being more criminal in my 
opinion than to venture to force Nature to desist or retreat; and always acting 
according to my principles, I may assure you that I shall never be seen nursing 
the sick, nor comforting them in any way whatsoever. Nor do I wish to be told 
that it is my harshness of character which is responsible for this attitude of mine; 
it comes from nowhere but my intelligence, and my intelligence rarely deceives 
me where the issue is philosophical.

My very chaste husband interred, I went gladly into mourning for him: no 
widow, I am told, was ever so becoming in her weeds, wherein I had myself 
fucked on the burial day—in Chabert’s company it happened; but even more 
delicious than wearing those lugubrious tires was to become the owner of four 
fine estates evaluated at fifty thousand livres a year in rents, plus the one 
hundred thousand francs in specie I found in my husband’s coffers.

More than enough here for my Italian journey, said I, transferring the bundles 
of banknotes from the deceased’s moneybox into mine, and there’s the hand of 
fate, friendly to crime as always and crowning it once again in bestowing her 
blessings upon one of crime’s most devoted disciples.

It turned out that Abbé Chabert had traveled in Italy and was able to furnish 
me a quantity of glowing letters of recommendation. In exchange, I left my 
daughter in his wardship; he promised to take the very best care of her—my 
concern for the child was of course motivated by material considerations rather 
than by any motherly affection, there being neither any place in my heart for such
a sentiment, nor any justification for it in my beliefs. For lust-objects I took along 
only a tall, well-shaped, and pretty lackey by the name of Zephyr, to whom I had 
frequently played Flora, and one chambermaid, Augustine, eighteen years of age 
and heavenly to behold. Accompanied by these two trusty individuals, by another 
woman of no consequence, some baggage, and my well-filled treasury, I boarded 
a coach and without stopping save for the night and for meals, sped at a merry 
clip all the way to Turin.

“And so here I am at last,” said I, drawing deep breaths of free air, “in this so 
interesting region of Europe, this Italy that has always attracted the curious, here 
am I in the home of Neros and of Messalinas; perhaps upon this hallowed soil 
they used once to tread I shall capture the spirit of those paragons of crime and 
debauchery, and be able to duplicate the atrocities of Agrippina’s incestuous son 
and the lubricities of Claudius’ adulterous wife.” The idea prevented me from 
sleeping that night and I spent it in the arms of a pretty young lass at the Albergo
d’Inghilterra, where I had taken lodgings—a delicious creature whom I had 
managed to seduce an hour after alighting, and in whose fresh embraces I tasted 
perfectly divine pleasures.

No city in all Italy is more regular nor duller than Turin; the courtier is tiresome
there, the townsman doleful, the rabble equally hangdog and also superstitious 
and devout. Very slender resources for pleasure, moreover; setting forth from 
Angers I had struck upon a properly libertine scheme, meditated upon it en route,
and at Turin I began its execution. My idea was to travel in the guise of a 
celebrated courtesan, to make broad display of myself everywhere, to enhance 
my fortune with the tribute exacted by my charms, and in the interests of my 
libertinage to exploit whatever of youth and vigor fell into my clutches. On the 
day after my arrival I had word carried to Signora Diana, the most famous 
furnisher in Turin, that an engaging young Frenchwoman was in town and for hire,
and that I would be obliged if she would come to discuss arrangements with me; 
the procuress did not fail to answer the call. I outlined my plans to her, and 
declared that between fifteen and twenty-five they could have me for nothing 
where I had guarantee of sound health; that I took fifty louis between twenty-five
and thirty-five; one hundred from thirty-five to sixty; and two hundred from sixty 
to the final point of human senescence; that as regarded fantasies, occult 
requirements, and the like, I satisfied them all, that I even lent myself to 
fustigations.

“And the ass, my fair lady,” Signora Diana interrupted me, “and the ass? For it 
is in hot demand here in Italy; you will earn more money by your ass in the space
of a single month than you will from four years of selling your cunt.”

I assured Diana that I was very easy in this article, and that in consideration of
a double fee no bid for the use of it would be refused. I did not have to wait long 
before being presented. It was the very next day that a message from Diana 
advised me I was expected for supper at the residence of the Duke of Chablais.

After one of those voluptuous toilettes whence nature emerged embellished by 
the cunning hand of art, I betook myself to the house of this Chablais

, then forty years of age and renowned throughout the entire country for his 
libidinous studies in venereal pleasures. The Duke had one of his sycophants by 
him, together they promptly explained to me that in the games to follow I would 
play the dummy.

“Get yourself out of all this array,” said the Duke, conducting me into a very 
elegant chamber, “art so often being a mask to defects, our policy with women, 
my friend’s and mine, is to lay them bare at the outset.”

I obeyed.

“One ought never wear a stitch when one has a body so fair,” my two 
assailants observed.

“Frenchwomen are all alike,” the Duke went on to remark, “their figure and 
skin are delicious, we have nothing comparable here.”

And the libertines inspected me, in their survey turning me this way and that 
but nevertheless concentrating their attention upon certain details and in a certain
manner that soon gave me to suspect that it was not without reason Italians are 
charged with a predilection for the charms unappreciated by Monsieur de 
Lorsange.

“Juliette,” announced the Duke, “I had better tell you that before you come to 
grips with us you shall make show of your talents upon some young boys, they 
will be admitted into the room one at a time. Station yourself upon this couch if 
you will; the lads we have in store for you shall, as I say, enter in single file by 
this door to the right and march out that other door to the left; as each arrives, 
you will frig him with all the skill your nationality promises, for nowhere on earth 
do they know how to frig pricks better than in France; just prior to discharge you 
will steer them first the one toward my friend’s mouth, then the next toward 
mine, that is where they are to deposit their fuck; after this, and once again 
taking turns, my friend and I shall embugger them before sending them on their 
way; as for you, your individual services shall not be required until we have had 
our fill of these inaugural delights, and you shall only then be informed of your 
remaining duties, with the fulfillment of which these lewd scenes will close.”

Immediately after the Duke finished speaking the parade began: all the youths
I had to frig were either fourteen or fifteen years old, and every one of the thirty I
handled was as pretty as a star. They all discharged, some for the first time in 
their life; the two friends, frigging themselves throughout, swallowed the fuck 
loosed by each and bum-stuffed them all from the first to the last: one friend 
would hold the patient, the other would joust five or six minutes in his bowels; 
neither ejaculated. When the tournament was over both were in such a fever and 
rage that sweat lay on their brows and foam upon their lips.

“Your turn now,” shouted the Duke, “’tis you, beauteous goddess come to us 
from France, who are about to receive the incense warmed within this crowd of 
charming little boys; it would be idle to expect your anus to be as narrow as 
theirs, but that may perhaps be mended.”

And they moistened my asshole with an alcohol essence whereof the effect was
such that when they fell to sodomizing me they had literally to blast and batter 
their way in; one after the other they stormed the fort, one after another they 
discharged inside it, exhibiting incredible marks of satisfaction; six small boys 
surrounded them while they toiled: two gave their asses to be colled, they frigged
two more, one with either hand, and the other two ass-sucked and ball-tickled 
them from below and behind. The Duke and his satellites left; I remained in the 
room, recovering my breath and stanching my wounds. A woman came to fetch 
me, helped me dress, and took me back to my lodgings after having counted me 
out a round thousand sequins.

Be of good cheer, said I to myself, my promenades in Italy shan’t cost me 
much, I have but to find a similar windfall in each city I visit and not only will I 
defray my expenses, I will keep Mademoiselle de Lorsange’s dowry intact.

Ah, but the life of a public whore is not all a bed of roses; however, having of 
my own free will resumed the profession, it was only just that together with its 
profits I also accept its liabilities. But we are yet a long way from coming to its 
perils.

A God-fearing man though he is, the King of Sardinia loves libertinage. 
Chablais had reported to him upon our interview, His Highness was eager to see 
me. Diana reassured me; it amounted to no more than receiving several clysters 
administered by the royal hand, and ejecting them for His Majesty’s amusement 
while frigging Sardinia’s noblest prick; for this two thousand sequins would be 
mine. Curious to see whether sovereigns discharged like other men, I accepted 
the King’s invitation. And he accepted the humble role of being my apothecary; I 
flushed six injections into his mouth; and as I frigged him hard and fast, he 
discharged hot and happy. He then offered me half his cup of breakfast chocolate,
I thanked him graciously. We chatted of politics. The privileges conferred upon me
by my nationality and sex, those I had just now acquired through my 
performance, my native frankness, everything conspired to put me at my ease, 
and according to my best recollection here as follows is the speech I made that 
morning to the little despot:

“Estimable gate-keeper of Italy, you who descend from a house whose rise 
constitutes a true miracle of policy, you whose ancestors, mere commoners and 
goatherds in olden times, became puissant lords simply by according right of 
passage through your States to princes from the north bent on conquest in Italy, 
a permission your forefathers only granted in exchange for a share in their booty;
you, first of Europe’s kinglets, deign to lend me your ear a moment.

“Perched high in your mountains like the crag-haunting eagle awaiting a dove 
to devour, you are coming to realize that in such a position as you keep, you 
depend utterly not only for your advancement but for your mere subsistence upon
the folly of courts or the mistaken maneuvers of crowned dizzards; this, I am well
aware, is what they were telling you thirty years ago; but there have been vast 
changes wrought in the system since then: the folly of courts now risks to be as 
much to your disadvantage as to their own, and those mistaken maneuvers can 
no longer bring you any profit; so give up your scepter, my friend, give Savoy up 
to France, and retire within the narrower boundaries Nature prescribed to you 
originally: see those superb peaks towering over in the west, the hand that 
created them, does it not prove to you, in piling them up so high, that your sway 
is not to extend beyond them? what need have you to reign over soil that is 
French, you who are unable even to reign in Italy? Have a care there, my friend! 
perpetuate not the race of kings; we already have overmany of those useless 
individuals in the world, who, fattening on the substance of the people, vex and 
bully them under the pretext of governing them. In our day there is nothing more
superfluous than a king; renounce that empty title before it is gone too far out of 
fashion, step down from your throne now, voluntarily, before, as may well 
happen, you are dragged forcibly off it by the people whose eyes are beginning to
tire of its height. Philosophical and free men are ill-disposed to see above them a 
man who, carefully considered, and impartially, has no more than ordinary needs,
strength, and merit; for us, the anointed of the Lord is not a sacrosanct 
personage anymore, and today wisdom laughs at a little fellow like you who, 
because he has some of his forebears’ parchments stored away in some box, 
fancies himself empowered to rule over men; your authority, my friend, no longer
reinforced by periodical lootings, presently rests upon nothing solider than 
opinion: let opinion change—it is very near to doing so—and we shall go looking 
for you amidst the hod carriers in your empire.

“And think not that much is lacking before the change comes about; as men 
grow steadily more enlightened they begin to appraise critically what formerly 
dazzled them: well, the likes of you do not benefit from scrutiny. The rumor 
begins to go about that a king is nothing but an ordinary human being; and that, 
softened by luxury, warped by despotism, there is not a single monarch on earth 
with the qualities requisite for his post. The first virtue demanded of anyone who 
wishes to be a ruler of men is knowledge of them; and what a distorted picture of 
them must he not have who, perpetually stunned and fuddled by their flatteries 
and living all his life at the greatest remove from them, has never been able to 
sift nor scan them? It is not tucked away in a bower of bliss that you learn how to
lead your fellows. He who has never been anything but fortunate, understanding 
nothing of the needs of the fortuneless, he is not the man to guide the destinies 
of a nation made up of woe-ridden individuals; Sire, heed my advice: throw away 
your royal baubles, go back to your plow, there’s nothing else left for you to do.”

Taken somewhat aback by my outspokenness, His Majesty’s only reply was 
some cajolery of that very false stamp which is the hallmark of everything that 
comes out of a true-born Italian’s mouth; and we bade each other adieu.

That same evening I was introduced into a rather brilliant circle where, around 
a gaming table, I saw society grouped in two distinct classes: there were the 
rogues on the one side and the dupes on the other: I was informed that the 
practice in Turin was to steal at play, and that a man could not pay addresses to a
woman until he had let himself be robbed by her.

“Why, that’s an amusing custom,” I said to the gambler who was acquainting 
me with the situation.

“The explanation is perfectly simple,” she continued; “gambling is a form of 
commerce, hence all ruses are lawful in it. Do you hail a shopkeeper before the 
magistrates because the curtains in his window filtered the light and led you to 
mistake shoddy wares for good? It has only to succeed and any means for 
acquiring wealth is proven sound, Madame; this one is no worse than another.”

I remembered Dorval’s maxims on theft, and decided they were altogether 
applicable to this variety of it. Of my informant I asked how one might go about 
perfecting oneself in this manner of plundering the property of others, assuring 
her that I had a thorough understanding of most of the rest.

“There are masters,” she replied, “I shall send you one tomorrow if you like.”

I begged her to do so; the teacher appeared, and in the space of a week he 
had given me enough instruction in the management of cards to enable me to 
collect two thousand louis during the three months I stayed at Turin. When the 
time came t

o pay for his lessons, he requested nothing but my favors; and as it was à 
l’italienne he must have them, and as that style suited me infinitely, after a close 
examination of his state of health, a precautionary measure which cannot be 
foregone in that country, I let him take his pleasure in the fashion appropriate to 
a man whose trade is in treachery.

Sbrigani, that was my mentor’s name, had in addition to an engaging 
appearance a very creditable prick; no more than thirty years of age, sound in 
wind and limb, of polished gesture and pretty speech, a libertine mind, a 
philosophical temper, and an astounding gift for appropriating anything belonging 
to others in every conceivable way. It at once occurred to me that such a man 
could be useful to me in the course of my travels; I proposed that we join forces; 
he accepted.

In Italy, regardless of the capacity in which a man accompanies an actress, 
singer, or other strumpet, there is never anything repulsive in the fact for those 
who pay her suit: the brother, the husband, or the father usually withdraws when 
the customer appears on the threshold; does the latter’s ardor seem to flag, the 
kinsman shows himself again, enters into conference with you both, and if, after 
this, Signor’s spirits look to be rising a little, retires into the clothes closet; it is 
understood that Signor supports the household, he therefore has its support; and 
the Italian, accommodating by nature, falls in wonderfully with this arrangement. 
As by now I knew enough of the tongue spoken in this splendid country to pass 
for a native, I straightway assigned Sbrigani the role of my husband, and we 
started forth on the road to Florence.

We proceeded at a leisurely pace; we had no cause to hurry, and I was well 
pleased to contemplate a land which, if one could but traverse it without seeing 
human beings, would answer one’s idea of heaven. We lay the first night at Asti. 
This city, prodigiously fallen from its ancient grandeur, is hardly anything at all 
today. On the morrow we resumed our way and went no farther than Alessandria;
Sbrigani having assured me that this town was reputed for the large number of 
nobility among its population, we decided to spend several days there and see 
what dupes might be found.

As soon as we would arrive somewhere, my husband issued a kind of 
clandestine but nonetheless very effective proclamation by which those who had 
the wherewithal to purchase my charms were provided a general description of 
them and some indication of their price.

The first to present himself was an old Piedmontese duke, ten years retired 
from the court; he wanted no more, said he, than to view my ass. For this 
pleasure Sbrigani charged him fifty sequins; but, heated by the prospect, the 
duke shortly demanded more. Ever the submissive wife, I announce that I can 
consent to nothing without my husband’s approval; no longer in any state to 
undertake a serious attack, the duke manifests a desire to whip. This fad is one of
the chief consolations of one-time buggers; it is agreeable to outrage the god into
whose temple one can no longer push one’s way; Sbrigani sets the figure at a 
sequin a blow and fifteen minutes later I have three hundred coins in my purse. 
From his Lordship’s spendthrift manner my husband deduces that here is a man 
to be dunned, inquires into all his concerns, and beseeches him to accord his wife 
the honor of supping with her. Greatly puffed up by this request, the old courtier 
feigns indecision for a moment, then allows himself to be prevailed upon.

“Magnanimous and revered favorite of Italy’s greatest prince,” says Sbrigani, 
introducing him to Augustine, whom we have told what is afoot, “the time has 
come for blood to speak, now must Nature stir in your soul; recollect the affair 
you once had, in Venice, with the lovely Signora Delfina, married to an aristocrat 
of second rank. Behold it, Excellency, you see standing before you the fruit of that
liaison. Agostina is your daughter; embrace her, my Lord, she is worthy of you. 
’Tis I who formed her from childhood and tell me now, have not my efforts been 
successful? I feel that I may rightfully boast of having turned her into one of the 
prettiest and cleverest creatures in Europe. Excellency! Great has been my desire 
to meet you, far and wide have I sought you out: overhearing that you dwelt at 
Alessandria, I hied myself hither, for I wanted to see it with my own eyes. Aye, 
’tis so, the resemblance cannot be doubted; so here you are, good my Lord, and I
trust you will reward me for my pains and have some kindness to show a humble 
Italian who for all his wealth has nought else but the beauty of his wife.”

Augustine’s slender waist and willowy figure, her big brown eyes and the 
exceeding fairness of her skin made a powerful impression upon the duke; and 
the allurements of incest contributing their heavy share to his joyous 
anticipations, after a few explanations, a few answers perfectly provided by 
Sbrigani, the poor duke assured us of his emotion, declared he recognized 
Augustine, and meant to take her home that very instant and assign her the rank 
she deserved to have in his family.

“Softly, softly,” said my illustrious spouse, “your Excellency has his dinner to 
digest. And I would remind him that the girl is mine until I have been reimbursed 
for the immense costs I have incurred on her account, ten thousand sequins 
would hardly cover them. Nevertheless, in view of the honor you have so 
graciously done my wife, I cannot higgle with your Lordship and will be content 
with that paltry sum; Sire, pray tell it out forthwith, else I’ll not be able to let 
Agostina leave my house.”

The bawdy duke was also rich and to his dazed consideration for so pretty a 
piece of merchandise as this no price could be too high; the transaction was 
concluded between cheese and dessert and after coffee my chambermaid went off
with her alleged father. Thoroughly instructed in what she was to do, the dear girl,
speaking Italian as fluently as I and equally unbackward where it was a question 
of raiding other people’s property, was not long showing her mettle. We had gone 
to wait for her at Parma; a fortnight later she joined us there and recounted how 
the duke, head over heels in love with her, had begun his wooing of her the very 
first night. The more she harped on the relationship which forbade such an 
intrigue, the hotter the old rake had waxed, pointing out to her that such 
fussiness and splitting of hairs simply wasn’t the practice in Italy. More at ease in 
his own house, better able to employ the assistance of third persons or the 
restoratives he apparently had not dared resort to when visiting me, the libertine 
acquitted himself more honorably; and Augustine’s charming ass, after having 
been stoutly lashed, had ended up being fucked. The sweet child’s extreme 
docility had so inflamed the poor duke that he had overwhelmed her with 
presents and given her his entire confidence. Entrusted also with all the keys to 
all the locks, she had rifled the treasury and decamped; and she closed her 
narration by producing something over five hundred thousand francs. As you may 
readily imagine, after such a capture we did not tarry overlong in the 
neighborhood, although it ought to be said that we were hardly in any great 
danger. For in Italy one has but to cross into the nearest province when one runs 
afoul of the law: the authorities of one state cannot prosecute you in another; and
better yet, as administrations change every day, often twice a day, the crime you 
commit before dinner is too old to punish by nightfall—all this is of clear 
convenience to travelers who, as was the case with us, are eager to wreak havoc 
along the way.

However, discretion being the better part of valor, we made a judicious 
departure from the states of Parma and did not stop till we were come to 
Bologna. The beauty of the women in that city forbade me from proceeding 
farther before having my fill of them; Sbrigani, who catered to me marvelously 
and whom I fairly covered with gold, presented me to a widow of his close 
acquaintance. This charming creature, thirty-six years old and as lovely as Venus 
in her prime, knew every sapphic personality in Emilia: in the space of a week I 
frigged myself with better than seven-score women, each more attractive than 
the other; we spent a second week in a celebrated abbey not far outside the 
town, whither my guide was in the habit of making periodic pilgrimages. Oh, my 
friends! the power even of an Aretino’s pen would be insufficient to describe the 
inconceivably lewd revels we organized in that holy retreat; all the novices, a 
goodly number of nuns, fifty pensionnaires, one hundred and twenty women all 
told, passed through our hands; and I may affirm that never in my life had I been
frigged as I was there. The Bolognese nun possesses the art of cunt-sucking in a 
higher degree than any other female on the European continent: she flits her 
tongue with such enchanting celerity from clitoris to vagina, and from vagina to 
asshole, that though she must momentarily quit the one in order to reach the 
other, it seems as if she were everywhere at once; her fingers are of an amazing 
flexibility and deftness, and she does not leave them idle with her sisters…. 
Delicious creatures! I shall ever sing your memory, and never forget your charms 
nor your matchless skill in awakening and maintaining voluptuous titillations; nor 
shall I forget your cunning refinements; and my most lubricious moments shall be
those during which I recall to mind the pleasures we tasted together. They were 
all so pretty, so fresh and gay, that choosing among them was impossible; if at 
any point I endeavored to concentrate upon one, that multitude of beauties would
distract my attention and the ensemble would reassert its claim to my homage. It 
was there, my friends, that I executed what Italian women call the rosary: all 
fitted out with dildoes and gathered in a great hall, we would thread ourselves 
one to the next, there would be a hundred on the chain; through those who were 
tall it ran by the cunt, by the ass through those who were short; an elder was 
placed at each novena, they were the paternoster beads and had the right to 
speak: they gave the signal for discharges, directed the movements and 
evolutions, and presided in general over the order of those unusual orgies.

Mesdames soon devised another fashion for giving me pleasure; here, all 
activities centered upon me: I was laid out upon a group of six, with whose 
voluptuous undulations I sweetly rose and fell, and all the rest came forward by 
the half-dozen to consult my sensations and slake them with lubricity: one had 
me suck her cunt, my two hands were busy palpating two more; another, 
straddling me, frigged herself upon my nipples, yet another rubbed her clitoris 
against my face; they all discharged, all washed me in their sperm; and you must
not suppose I was reluctant or miserly in the release of mine.

Finally, I besought them to embugger me; a cunt was applied to my lips, I 
drank of its whey; this cunt, drained, was replaced by another each time a new 
dildo penetrated into my fundament; my guide, the widow, had the same done to 
her, but cuntwise, and ’twas an ass she fed from.

While I was off rioting at the abbey, Sbrigani devoted himself to replenishing 
our funds, seriously depleted by my wild spending; by the time I returned he had 
accomplished the last of a series of six robberies and entirely repaired the 
damage my extravagance had caused. Happy is the man who learns to settle his 
expenditures and fill the gaps in his own fortune solely by using the fortunes of 
others.

This was in the extent of between two and three thousand sequins; we were 
able to leave Bologna about as rich as we had come.

I was exhausted; but since the excesses of libertinage, as they weary the 
body, only heat the imagination further, my thoughts were taken up with planning
a thousand new debaucheries; I regretted not having done more, and in search of
an explanation for my failure could only suppose that it was owing to some 
mental sluggishness on my part: and it was then I discovered that the remorse 
one may suffer for not having gone to the limit in crime is superior to anything 
that afflicts feeble spirits for having strayed away from virtue.

Such was my physical and moral state as we were crossing the Apennines. This
vast mountain chain dividing the peninsula along its length holds much of interest 
for the inquiring traveler; as the road rises, the most extraordinary prospects 
greet the eye: on the one side stretches the great Plain of Lombardy and on the 
other lies the Adriatic Sea; a spyglass enables one to see to a distance of fifty 
leagues.

We dined at the wayside inn at Pietra Mala, with the intention of visiting the 
volcano. Profoundly devoted to all the irregularities of Nature, adoring everything 
that characterizes her disorders, her caprices, and the gigantean horrors whereof 
she gives us renewed examples every day, I had of course to observe this 
phenomenon; and so, after a meal that was poor despite our policy of always 
sending a cook ahead of us, we set out on foot across the little stretch of blasted 
terrain at whose farther end the crater is situated. The zone surrounding it is a 
waste, uncultivated and littered with pebbles and stones; the temperature of the 
air mounts as one moves toward it, and one breathes the stench of copper and 
carbon the volcano exhales; by and by we caught sight of the flame whose heat, 
curiously enough, was intensified by a fine rain which happened then to start to 
fall: the fire pit seemed about thirty or forty feet in circumference: strike a spade 
into the earth anywhere near it, and fire springs up from the ground at that 
spot….

“It is,” said I to Sbrigani, who stood contemplating this wonder beside me, “it 
is like my imagination igniting under the strokes of a lash applied to my ass.”

The earth inside that furnace is baked, charred, black; that in its vicinity is like 
clay, and impregnated with the volcano’s odor. The flame soaring from the pit 
comes out in an intense gush, it burns and instantly consumes anything tossed 
into it; its color is a violet blue, like the color of burning brandy. To the right of 
Pietra Mala is another volcano which only bursts into flame when fire is brought 
near its edge; nothing so amusing as the experiment we made: by means of a 
candle we set the whole plain afire. With a mind like mine such things had best 
never be seen, yes, my friends, I must agree to that; but the candle I touched to 
the ground set it alight less quickly than the poisonous vapors arising from the 
place were intoxicating my brain.

“Oh, my dear,” said I to Sbrigani, “Nero’s wish is becoming mine. Did I not 
foresee that from breathing that monster’s native air I would soon adopt his 
penchants?”

When rain fills the crater of that second volcano with water, this water boils 
away in steam, and this steam is cool—O Nature! impenetrable and strange are 
thy ways and beyond the imitation of mortals….

It is to be feared that the many volcanoes ringing Florence may someday 
cause it harm: these fears are amply justified by the signs of past upheavals one 
notices everywhere in the area. They suggested some comparative ideas to me: 
is it not very probable, said I to myself, that the fiery destructions of Sodom, 
Gomorrah, etc., made up into miracles for the purpose of instilling in us a terror of
the vice which held universal sway among the inhabitants of those cities; is it not 
altogether likely that the famous conflagrations were caused, not by supernatural 
agencies, but by natural forces? The region surrounding Lacus Asphaltites, where 
Sodom and Gomorrah lay, was studded with imperfectly extinct volcanoes; the 
country there was similar to what it is here. From the geographical parallel I 
moved on to the parallel of climate; and when I saw that at Sodom as at 
Florence, at Gomorrah as at Naples, and in the vicinity of Etna as in that of 
Vesuvius, the population cherish and adore nought but buggery, I came swiftly to 
conclude that the irregularity of human behavior is closely related to Nature’s own
caprices, and that wherever Nature is depraved she also corrupts her 
children.(18) Wherewith I imagined myself transported to those happy Arabian 
towns, here I am in Sodom, I said, let us do here as the Sodomites do; and 
poised on the brink of the crater, bending forward over its edge, I presented my 
bare buttocks to Sbrigani while next to me Augustine and Zephyr imitated us; we 
changed partners; Sbrigani drove full length into my waiting maid’s pretty ass, 
and I became my valet’s prey; and while our men toiled in our bowels, Augustine 
and I gazed dreamily into the pit and masturbated.

“This is indeed a charming pastime I find you at” we suddenly heard declared 
in a cavernous voice which seemed to issue from behind a bush. “No, no, carry 
on, carry on, I do not wish to spoil your pleasures, only to take a hand in them,” 
went on this species of centaur who, as he emerged from hiding and drew near, 
proved to be of proportions and aspect which exceeded anything we had ever 
seen in all our life. Seven feet and three inches tall, with, behind huge 
moustaches, a face both swarthy and awful; we wondered for a moment whether 
it were not the Prince of Darkness who was hailing us. Surprised at our alarmed 
stares, “What!” cried he, “have you not heard of the Hermit of the Apennines?”

“Certainly not,” Sbrigani replied, “we have never heard tell of the likes of you!”

“Why, then, come along with me, all four of you, and you shall behold more 
wonderful sights yet: the business I discover you engaged in leads me to suspect 
that you deserve to see what I have to show you, and to partake in it too.”

“Giant,” said Sbrigani, “we are fond of extraordinary things, and to witness 
them there is doubtless nothing we would be unwilling to do; but your 
tremendous strength, might it not be exerted to the detriment of our liberty?”

“No, because I judge you worthy of my society,” said this singular personage; 
“but for that, your fears would be fully authorized. Lay them aside, however, and 
follow me.”

Determined indeed to learn what this adventure held in store for us, we sent 
Zephyr to tell our entourage to wait for us at the inn until we reappeared there; 
Zephyr returned from his errand, we set forth, the giant in the lead.

“Have patience,” our guide told us, “the road is long but seven hours of 
daylight remain and we shall arrive before the veils of night overspread the 
heavens.”

We walked in total silence, for the giant would have it so; during that march I 
was able to give all my attention to the landscape.

Leaving the volcanic plain of Pietra Mala we climbed for an entire hour the 
slope of a high mountain lying to the right; from the pass we finally reached we 
gazed into an abyss a full two thousand fathoms deep, and it was down into it our
winding path led, through a forest that quickly grew so dense, so dark, we were 
scarce able to see the way. After three hours of nearly perpendicular descent we 
came to the edge of a lake; on an isle in its center was to be seen the donjon of 
the castle where our guide had his abode, of which only the roof could be made 
out owing to the lofty battlements girting it. We had been some six hours coming 
this far and during that time we had espied not a single house, not a single 
individual. A black bark, like a Venetian gondola, was moored to the shore; from 
there we could take in the tremendous bowl at whose bottom we were: it was 
rimmed all around by towering mountains whose flanks were covered by forests 
of pine, larch, and green oak, and ended in barren peaks and snow: words cannot
convey to what extent that scene was wild and lonely and forbidding, nay, 
unearthly. We stepped into the boat, the giant ferried us to the island. His castle 
lay two furlongs back from the water; we arrived before an iron gate set in the 
thick outer wall; spanning a moat twenty feet wide was a drawbridge which was 
raised once we had crossed over it; here was a second wall, again we went 
through an iron gate, and found ourselves in a belt of trees so close-spaced that 
we had indeed to force a passage between them, and beyond this enormous 
hedge was the castle’s third enclosure, a wall ten feet thick and without any gate 
at all. The giant stoops and lifts a great stone slab no one else would have been 
able to budge; thus does he uncover a stairway; we precede him down the steps, 
he replaces the stone; at the farther end of that underground passage we ascend 
another stairway, guarded by another such stone as I have just spoken of, and 
emerge from dank darkness into a low-ceilinged hall. It was decorated, littered 
with skeletons; there were benches fashioned of human bones and wherever one 
trod it was upon skulls; we fancied we heard moans coming from remote cellars; 
and we were shortly informed that the dungeons containing this monster’s victims
were situated in the vaults underneath this hall.

“I have you in my power,” he said once we had sat down, “I can do with you 
what I please. Do not, however, be alarmed; the acts I saw you in the midst of 
performing convinced me that here were kindred spirits such as would merit my 
hospitality. Supper is being prepared, between now and the time it is ready let me
tell you a little about myself.

“I am a Muscovite, born in a small town on the Volga bank. Minski is my name;
upon my father’s death I inherited his colossal riches and Nature had 
proportioned my physical faculties and my tastes to the favors wherewith fortune 
now gratified me. Sensing myself made for better things than to vegetate in the 
back country of an obscure province like this that was my birthplace, I traveled; 
the whole wide world seemed too narrow for my desires, they were limitless and 
the universe cramped them: born libertine and impious, debauched and perverse,
bloodthirsty and ferocious, I visited a thousand far-flung lands to learn their vices,
and no sooner adopted one than I refined it. I began with China, the Mongolias, 
and Tartary; I journeyed throughout all Asia; swerving north again I passed by 
way of Kamchatka and entered America by the famous Bering Strait. In that 
extensive part of the world I sojourned practically everywhere, by turns in its 
politer societies, by turns among its savages, copying none but the crimes of the 
former, the vices and atrocities of the latter. Sailing east, to your Europe I brought
back penchants so dangerous that they condemned me to the stake in Spain, to 
be broken on the wheel in France, hanged in England, drawn and quartered in 
Italy; wealth is a guarantee against anything. I crossed over to Africa; there I 
became most fully aware that what you so foolishly call depravity is neither more 
nor less than the natural state of man and its particular details usually the result 
of the environment into which Nature has cast him. Those noble children of the 
sun laughed at me when I rebuked them for their barbarous treatment of women.
‘And what do you suppose a woman is,’ they would reply, ‘if not a domestic 
animal Nature gives us for the double purpose of satisfying our needs and our 
desires? What better claim to our consideration has she than the cattle and swine 
in our barnyards? The only difference we see here,’ those sensible people would 
tell me, ‘is that our livestock may merit some indulgence thanks to their mildness 
and docility, whereas women merit harshness only, in view of their congenital and
everlasting dishonesty, mischievousness, treachery, and perfidy. We fuck them, 
don’t we? and is there anything better, indeed, is there anything else you can do 
with a woman you have fucked than use her as you do your ox or a mule, as a 
beast of burden, or kill her for food?’

“In a word, it was there I observed man in his constitutionally vicious, 
instinctively cruel, and studiously ferocious form, and as such he pleased me, as 
such he seemed to me in closer harmony with Nature, and I preferred these 
characteristics to the simple crudeness of the American, to the knavery of the 
European, to the cynical depravation of the Oriental. Having killed men on the 
hunt with the first, having drunk wine and lain with the second, having done much
fucking with the third, I ate human flesh with my brave African comrade; I have 
preserved a taste for it; all this wreckage you see around you are relics of the 
creatures I devour; I eat no other sort of meat; I trust you shall enjoy tonight’s 
feast, there will be a fifteen-year-old boy on the table. I fucked him yesterday, he 
should be delicious.

“After ten years wandering abroad I returned for a visit to my native land, 
where I was greeted by my mother and sister. Loath to tarry in Muscovy and 
resolved, once I had left it, never to set foot there again, this seemed the 
propitious moment to put a final order in my affairs. I raped and massacred them 
both in the same day: my mother was still a handsome woman, of impressive 
stature; and though my sister was only six feet tall, she was certainly the 
superbest creature to be found anywhere in the two Russias.

“Then with an income amounting to roughly two million a year I made straight 
for Italy with the intention of settling here. But for surroundings I wanted 
something unusual, rustic, little frequented, and where I could indulge my wanton
imagination; and its caprices are not mild, my friends, as I believe you shall have 
opportunity to perceive during these next few days as my guests; there is not a 
single libertine passion my heart does not cherish, not a piece of wickedness that 
has failed to amuse me. If I have not committed more crimes, it is for lack of 
occasion; I need not reproach myself for having neglected a one, and I have 
provoked all those which were laggardly in presenting themselves. Had I with 
greater luck been able to achieve twice as much, I would have that many more 
happy memories; for those of crimes are delights which cannot be too numerous. 
From this introduction you shall probably take me for a villain; the things you are 
going to witness in this house shall, I trust, confirm you in that opinion. You guess
my palace large; it is huge, in it are lodged two hundred boys, aging from five to 
sixteen, who commonly pass from my bed to my kitchen, and about the same 
number of young men whose job is to fuck me. I have an infinite fondness for 
that sensation; in all the world, I maintain, there is none so sweet as to have your
ass given a vigorous scraping while you busy yourself at some other distraction, 
whatever it may be. The pleasures I observed you tasting of late on the volcano’s 
rim prove that you share my liking for this fashion of fuck-shedding, and that is 
why I permit myself this open manner of speaking with you; were it not for that, I
would simply butcher you.

“I have two harems: the first contains two hundred girls from five to twenty 
years old; when by dint of lewd use they are sufficiently mortified, I eat them. 
Another tenscore women of from twenty to thirty are in the second; you’ll see 
how they are treated.

“Fifty servants of both sexes look after this considerable store of 
pleasure-objects; and for purposes of recruitment I have one hundred agents 
posted in all the large cities of the world. And yet, with all the movement this 
entails, the only access to my island home is by way of the trail you came along 
today, no one would ever believe it is constantly being utilized by perfect 
caravans, and the security in which all this is accomplished will never be violated. 
Not, mind you, that I have the slightest reason for worrying; we are here in the 
territories of the Duke of Tuscany; the whole extent of my irregular doings is 
known in his circles, and the silver I scatter about protects them from undue 
publicity as well as from interference.

“To round out this portrayal of myself, I had best provide some details touching
my more intimate person: I am forty-five, and at this age my lubricious faculties 
are such that I never retire for the night without having discharged ten times. 
True enough, such inordinate quantities of human flesh as I consume heavily 
contribute to the plentifulness and density of the seminal matter; whoever tries 
this diet is certain to triple his libidinous capacities, to say nothing of the strength,
the health, the youthfulness such fare assures; nor do I speak of its unique 
amenities, I need only tell you that you have but to taste it once and you will 
have a stomach for nothing else; no other flesh, whether of fish or fowl or animal,
can withstand the comparison. One has merely to overcome an initial aversion; 
after that it is fair sailing, one never tires of man. Since it is my hope that we 
shall discharge together, it is essential that you be forewarned of the appalling 
symptoms which distinguish my crisis: dreadful outbursts herald and accompany 
it, and the jets of sperm thereupon released mount to the ceiling, often in the 
number of fifteen or twenty: the repetition of pleasures has never left me dry so 
far, my tenth ejaculation is just as tumultuous, just as abundant, as the first, nor 
have I ever found myself tired and out of sorts today because of last night’s 
efforts. As regards the member whence all that comes, here it is,” said Minski, 
hauling forth a pike eighteen inches long by sixteen in circumference, surmounted
by a crimson knob the size of a military helmet. “Aye, here it is: behold its state, 
it is never in any other, even as I sleep at night, even as I walk in the day.”

“Oh, good heaven (1)” I cried upon seeing that instrument. “But, my kind host,
you kill as many women and boys as you see—”

“Just about,” the Muscovite replied to me, “and as I eat what I fuck, that 
spares me the wages of a butcher…. Much philosophy is needed to understand 
me, yes, I realize it, I am a monster, something vomited forth by Nature to aid 
her in the destruction whereof she obtains the stuff she requires for creation; I 
am without peer in abomination, alone in my kind … oh yes, all the invectives 
they gratify me with, I know them by heart; but powerful enough to have need of 
nobody, wise enough to find sufficiency in my solitude, to detest all mankind, to 
brave its censure, to jeer at its attitude toward me; experienced enough, 
intelligent enough to explode every creed, to flout every religion, to send every 
god to hell for the devil’s fucking; proud enough to abhor every government, to 
refuse every tie, to ignore every check, to consider myself above every ethical 
principle, I am happy in my little domain; in it I dispose of all a sovereign’s 
privileges, in it I enjoy all the pleasures of despotism, I dread no man, and I live 
content; I have few visitors, indeed none unless in the course of my outings I 
encounter persons who, like you, strike me as philosophers enough to take part in
my amusements awhile; such people only do I invite to my home, and I meet 
with few; thanks to my natural vigor, I am apt to rove very far on those 
excursions, not a day goes by but I make a twelve-league, sometimes a 
fifteen-league sally forth from here—”

“And hence some captures,” I interrupted.

“Captures, rapes, burnings, murders, whatever the criminal chances happen to
be I exploit them to the full, because Nature endowed me with a propensity for 
every crime and the means for committing them all, and because there is none I 
do not cherish and that does not afford me sweetest joy and make me glad in my 
heart.”

“And justice?”

“Inexistent in this country; that is why I chose it for my domicile in the first 
place: with money, you do anything you like here, and I spend a lot.”(19)

Two of Minski’s masculine slaves, evil-looking blackamoors, announced that 
supper was served; they knelt before their master, respectfully kissed his balls, 
then his asshole; and we removed into the next room.

“No special trouble has been gone to on your account,” said the giant. “If all 
the kings on earth were to come to see me I’d not depart one inch from my 
custom.”

But some description should be given of that dining room and of the 
accessories in it.

“The appointments you see here,” said our host, “are alive; they move when 
the signal is given.”

Minski snaps his fingers and the table in the corner of the room scuttles into 
the middle of it; five chairs dispose themselves around the table, two chandeliers 
descend from the ceiling and hover above the table.

“There is nothing mysterious about it,” says the giant, having us examine the 
composition of the furniture from closer on. “You notice that this table, these 
chandeliers, those chairs are each made up of a group of girls cunningly 
arranged; my meal will be served upon the backs of these creatures; my candles 
are stuck into their cunts; and our behinds, yours as well as mine, settling into 
these chairs—they are comfortable—will rest upon the soft faces and the elastic 
breasts of these maidens; wherefor it is I pray you lift your skirts, mesdames, and
you, messieurs, remove your breeches so that, in accordance with the words of 
Scripture, ‘flesh may rest upon flesh.’ “

“Minski,” I observed to our Russian, “the role assigned to these girls is 
arduous, above all if you are long at table.”

“The worst that may befall,” Minski retorted, “is that it kill a couple of them, 
and such losses are too easily repaired to permit me to bother about them for a 
minute.”

As we tucked up our skirts and the men climbed out of their breeches, Minski 
demanded a look at our asses; he fondled them, he nibbled them, he nuzzled 
them, and we remarked that of our four bums, Sbrigani’s, through a refinement 
of taste easy to imagine in such a person, enjoyed his particular favor; he 
tongued and pumped it for nigh on fifteen minutes; that ceremony ended, we 
took our places, bare-skinned, on the bubs and visages of Minski’s sultanas, or 
rather his slaves.

Twelve naked girls of between twenty and twenty-five brought the dishes; and 
as they were of massive silver and very hot, scorching the breasts and buttocks of
the elements composing the table, there was a pleasant convulsive stir produced, 
it resembled the rippling of waves at sea; above twenty entrees or roast platters 
decked the table, and upon side tables, built of four grouped girls each, and which
also ambled up at the snap of a finger, were ranged wines of every kind.

“My friends,” said our host, “as I have already informed you, only human flesh 
is served here; those plates are pure of any other ingredient.”

“We’ll try some,” said Sbrigani; “it is absurd to turn up one’s nose at anything, 
aversions are based on nothing better than the lack of habit; all viands are fit 
nourishment for man, Nature offers them all to him, and it is no more 
extraordinary, after all, to eat a human than to eat chicken.”

So saying my husband dug his fork into a joint of boy which looked to him 
especially well prepared and, having carved himself a generous two pounds of it, 
fell merrily to; I imitated him; Minski encouraged us; and as his appetite was in 
the same class with his passions, he had soon licked a dozen platters clean.

He drank the way he ate; he had tossed off his thirtieth bottle of Burgundy by 
the time the second course came on; this he washed down with champagne; and 
Aleatico, Falernian, and other rare Italian vintages were swallowed at dessert.

Yet another good thirty bottles of wine were in our cannibal’s guts when, his 
senses sufficiently enlivened by all these physical and moral excesses, the rogue 
declared that he was now in a discharging mood.

“I had better not fuck any of you four,” he admitted, “it would kill you; but you 
can at least cooperate in my pleasures, you can watch them. The spectacle is 
rousing. Well now, whom would you have me tup?”

“I want,” said I to Minski, who was bending lewdly over my breasts and 
seemed to be taking a growing interest in me, “I want you to encunt and then to 
embugger a little girl of seven right here in front of me.”

Minski gestures and the child appears.

The libertine’s rapings were facilitated by an ingenious contraption; it was a 
kind of high stool, splay-legged and of iron, upon which the victim lay either belly 
up or belly down, depending upon which orifice she was called upon to present; to
the stool’s four legs the victim’s four limbs were then made fast, who from the, 
position thus assumed offered the sacrificer either a wide-open cunt, if she was 
lying belly up, or a wide-open ass, if she was lying belly down. You have no idea 
what a pretty little thing she was whom the barbarian was preparing to immolate,
and you have no idea how it amused me, the unbelievable disproportion between 
the assailant and his quarry. Minski rises in a rage from the table.

“Strip,” he orders, “all of you, off with every stitch. You,” he goes on, pointing 
to Zephyr and Sbrigani, “you will bugger-fuck me while I am in action, and you,” 
he adds, fingering Augustine and me, “put your asses where I can kiss them side 
by side.”

We take up our stances; the child is clapped upon the stool and tied belly up to
begin with; I do not exaggerate when I affirm that the member by which she was 
about to be perforated was thicker than her waist. Minski rattles off a string of 
oaths, he whinnies as animals do, he sniffs the hole; I took pleasure guiding that 
monumental member, no art was employed in the enterprise, Nature alone was 
counted upon for success, and the whore came to our aid as she does every time 
it is a question of an atrocity which amuses, serves, or delights her. Three 
bone-cracking heaves and the tool is lodged: skin splits, blood pours, and the 
little maid faints.

“That’s it, that’s it,” shouts Minski, breathing very hard, “good, that’s what I 
wanted.”

Oh, my friends! the crime moves toward completion; Minski is being 
bum-stuffed, he kisses, bites, chews now Augustine’s buttocks, now mine; a 
ringing yell announces his ecstasy, he utters wild blasphemies…. The scoundrel! 
the rake! Discharging, he has strangled his victim, she breathes no more.

“Never mind,” he says, eyeing the child, “no need to tie her this time, she’ll lie 
still.”

And flopping her over stone dead as she is, the libertine sodomizes her, the 
while strangling one of the girls who had been serving the table and whom he has
summoned into reach.

“Why indeed!” said I when he had unleashed his second discharge, “do you 
then never taste this pleasure without it costing some individual his life?”

“It often costs the lives of several,” the ogre replied. “If I had no human beings
to kill I do believe I would have to give up fucking. For it is death’s sighs 
answering my lubricity’s that fetches forth my ejaculation, and were it not for the 
death my discharge occasions I don’t know how I’d be able to discharge at all.

“But come with me into the next room,” the Russian continued, “ices, coffee, 
and liqueurs are awaiting us.” Turning then to my two men, “Friends,” said he, 
“you fucked me to perfection; you found my asshole large, did you? I dare say. 
But agreeable nonetheless? I’m sure of it; the fuck you spattered into it tells me 
so. As for you charming ladies, your asses distinctly delighted me and in token of 
my gratitude, for the next two days I accord you the run of my seraglios, enjoy 
yourselves there, my beauties, they are rare facilities I place at your disposition.”

“Liberal host,” said I to the giant, “we ask no more of you; voluptuous 
satisfactions ought to crown lewd preparations, and the rewards of libertinage 
ought to be earned in the service of lubricity.”

We entered; from the odor reigning in the room we were quick to divine of 
what species were these ices Minski promised us: and indeed in each of five white
porcelain bowls reposed two or three mards, exquisite in form and exceedingly 
fresh.

“I always take them after dinner,” the ogre told us, “nothing is more helpful to 
the digestion and at the same time nothing so pleases my palate. These turds 
come from the best asses in my harem, and you can eat them safely.”

“Minski,” I rejoined, “an appreciation for these dainties is slow to come by; we 
might perhaps fancy them in a moment of passion, but you catch us somewhat 
unprepared—”

“Just as you like,” Minski replied, picking up a bowl and tossing off its contents,
“everyone must be his own guide in these matters. Go right ahead with the 
liqueurs, I shall not be having any until after.”

It was a lugubrious chamber we were in, and the illumination typified the rest: 
four and twenty skulls enclosed each a lamp whose light emerged through the 
eye-sockets and the jaws. Glimpsing my horror, the ogre, his prick high and 
nodding, made as if to approach me; I met him with skill enough to divert his 
desires elsewhere. Young boys were serving our coffee, I had him embugger one 
of them, he was twelve years old and dropped dead off the end of Minski’s prick.

Realizing after a while that in our fatigued condition we were no longer able to 
keep pace with him, Minski had his slaves conduct us to a superb gallery where in
four mirror-paneled alcoves stood the beds we required for rest. A corresponding 
number of girls were under instruction to chase away flies and burn incense 
during our sleep.

It was late when we awoke. Our attendants led us to the bathrooms where 
under their expert care we were wonderfully refreshed; and thence to the 
adjoining conveniences where they had us shit in a manner no less comfortable 
than voluptuous and hitherto unknown to us: they dipped their fingers in rose 
water, then inserted them into our anuses; gently and caressingly they detached 
and removed whatever matter they encountered there, but so tactfully, so 
cunningly that you savored all the pleasure of the operation without any of its 
pain: the vessel once emptied, they tongued it clean inside and out, and this with 
unequaled address and dexterity.

Upon the stroke of eleven a messenger arrived to announce that Minski had 
granted us the honor of visiting him in his bed. We entered his chamber; it was 
spacious, upon the walls were magnificent frescoes representing ten libertine 
groups which for composition were probably the highest thing ever attained in 
obscenity. At the far end of that room was a wide semicircular apse paneled by 
mirrors and containing sixteen black marble columns, to each of which a girl was 
bound, her rear being exposed to view. By means of a pair of cords placed like 
bellpulls at the head of our hero’s bed, he could subject each of those sixteen 
asses in the distance to a different form of abuse, the torture lasting until he 
released the cord. Independently of the girls aforementioned there were six 
others plus a dozen boys, some agents and some patients, who remained on hand
in nearby antechambers for such night-service as their libertine overlord might 
require. The first thing he did as we approached his couch was to show us his 
erection, putting on a horrible-grin as he pointed that gigantic engine in our 
direction; he demanded the sight of our asses, we complied; while palpating 
Augustine’s, he vowed he would get himself into it before the day was out; the 
poor thing trembled at those words. Minski frigged Sbrigani purple and made 
prolonged ado over his buttocks as well; they fell to some reciprocal ass-sucking 
and appeared to take great pleasure from that; then Minski asked, would we like 
to see him hurt those sixteen girls tied to the columns, all sixteen at one stroke? I
urge him to start his machine; he gives a tug on his tackle and the sixteen 
wretches, screaming in unison, are simultaneously attacked about the 
hindquarters in sixteen different manners, one is pricked, the next burned, 
another scourged, yet another tweezed, raked, scored, grated, stabbed, slashed, 
chopped, etc., and all that so forcefully that the alcove is drenched in blood.

“Were I to pull harder,” Minski explains to us, “and it sometimes happens that I
do, everything depends upon how things stand with my balls, but, as I say, I have
merely to pull harder on my lanyard and the lot of them are done for; I like to go 
to sleep lulled by the thought that at the bare hint of a desire I can perform 
sixteen murders.”

“Minski,” I say to our host, “your supply of women is large enough to permit 
you to make a little sacrifice: it is in my friends’ behalf as well as my own I ask 
you to treat us to this charming scene.”

“I consent,” Minski replies, “but my custom is to discharge while operating; this
little slut you have in your train, her ass intrigues me—let me sodomize her and 
the moment my fuck lands in the bottom of her bowels you’ll see my sixteen 
women die.”

“That will surely make seventeen!” Augustine shrilled, imploring us not to 
surrender her to the monster; “how do you expect me to endure such an 
experience?”

“With patience and understanding,” says Minski.

And, having his attendants undress her, he engaged her to assume the 
appropriate posture.

“Have no fear,” he continued, “no woman has ever resisted me and I fuck 
younger than you every day.”

Deciding from the Russian’s manner and mien that objections would only serve
to irritate him further, we dared not even manifest our regrets.

“It’s only a little whim,” Minski whispered to me, “it will be satisfied in a trice. 
This girl provokes me, blame it all upon her ass; whether I kill her or simply 
cripple her, it’s the same thing, you’ll have two other and much prettier ones to 
replace your loss.”

As he spoke, two of his serving girls in the room prepared the passage, 
moistening the instrument and guiding it to the hole. Minski was so practiced in 
these horrors that he accomplished them virtually without effort; two thundering 
blows sent his mast-sized weapon crashing to the depths of the victim’s ass, and 
with such dazzling speed we hardly saw its length disappear; the villain emitted a 
whoop of delight, Augustine swooned, and the gore ran down her thighs. Minski, 
in seventh heaven, only waxes the hotter; four girls and as many boys crowd 
around him, so well trained are they in their duties that not an instant elapses but
all is ready; Augustine lies somewhere beneath the giant’s bulk, she has quite 
vanished. Her assassin swears, nears the mark, he discharges, wrenches the 
cords; sixteen death-dealing devices enter simultaneously into play, the sixteen 
bound creatures scream as one and expire at the same time, one with a dagger in
her heart, the other with a bullet there, this one her brains dashed out, that one 
her throat slit, in short, variously but concurrently.

“It does appear to me that your Augustine was right,” Minski remarked coolly. 
“Indeed yes, her predictions have been amply borne out by the event.” And it was
then, as he debuggered, that the poor girl’s body came back into sight: it had 
been pierced in ten places by that many thrusts of a dagger. How the scapegrace 
had contrived to manage this without our noticing, and to wring Augustine’s neck 
into the bargain, I have no idea.

“Oh, I adore strangling them while fucking them,” that terrible libertine owned 
phlegmatically. “Let’s have no tears, I promised you I would give you two prettier 
ones in exchange and I intend to keep my word…. There was nothing for it, my 
friends, certain asses have always affected me that way; and when I am dealing 
with pleasure-objects, you understand, my desires are always so many death 
sentences.”

The duennas dragged my poor Augustine’s corpse into the center of the room 
where the sixteen dead girls already lay; and Minski, after surveying this heap, 
after having handled each of the bodies, bitten into a few buttocks and several 
breasts, designated three of them for his kitchen, one of these being the mortal 
remains of our late companion.

“Have them dressed and cooked for dinner,” he instructed his head steward. 
Turning away from the carnage, he invited us to follow him into the next chamber 
for a tête-à-tête.

At this point Sbrigani caught my eye. His opinion, communicated to me in a 
murmur, was that we had perhaps beware of this monster and ask to leave the 
premises as soon as possible. But, I said to myself, a request to depart could 
hardly entail greater risks than remaining here; however, upon entering the room 
Minski ushered us into, I was content to put on an aloof air which, conveying my 
disapprobation of his late proceedings, allowed him to infer how suspicious they 
had made me touching his designs in my own regard.

“Come, come,” said the ogre, having me sit down on a couch beside him, “I 
am surprised at you, Juliette. For I thought you much too much of a philosopher 
to miss that girl, or to suppose for one instant that the laws of hospitality were 
operative in the house of a man with a soul like mine.”

“What you have done is irreparable.”

“Why so?”

“I loved her.”

“You loved her! If you are silly enough to love an object which serves your lust,
why, Juliette, there is nothing more I can say: it would be a waste of time hunting
for arguments to convince you; none exist against stupidity.”

“Very well then,” I said grumpily, “it isn’t Augustine I am thinking about, but 
myself. I am anxious, I admit it. You will stop at nothing. What assurance have I 
that you will not subject me to the same treatment that undid my friend?”

“None, absolutely none,” said Minski, “and if the idea of assassinating you were
to harden my prick, you’d no longer be among the living a quarter of an hour 
later. But I thought you were as much a rascal as I; in view of our resemblance, I 
prefer you as my accomplice than as my victim. That is also my attitude toward 
the two men in your company: they also look to me fitter to participate actively in
my pleasures than to be the occasion of them: your security reposes upon this 
assumption. And what of Augustine? Ah! a bird of a different feather; I am a good
physiognomist: more servile than criminal, she complied with your desires, did as 
she was told but was far from doing what she wanted. Oh, Juliette, I hold nothing 
sacred: to have spared all four of you would have been at the least to act as 
though I believed in the laws of hospitality. The appearance … the mere idea of a 
virtue horrifies me; I had to violate those laws, some gesture was required of me;
I am satisfied now, put your cares away.”

“Minski, your frankness merits that I reply in the same strain. Let me repeat: if
I am disturbed by Augustine’s fate it is mainly because it causes me concern for 
mine. You were not mistaken in your judgment of me, rest assured that my heart 
is incapable of lamenting any object of libertinage; I have sacrificed a fair number
of them in my life, and I swear to you I have never bewailed the passing of a 
single one.”

At this Minski nodded and made as if to rise. “No,” I said, praying him to stay a
little, “you just now began a criticism of the virtue of hospitality, I have a liking for
principles; intimate to me yours on this subject. Although it has been a long while
since any virtue has enjoyed my favor, I never took firm measures against my 
notions of hospitality—was it oversight? was it chance? or could it be that I 
harbored some obscure belief in their sanctity? Combat, discredit, destroy, 
extirpate—speak, Minski, you have my ear.”

“The greatest of all extravagances,” the giant began, plainly not displeased to 
have this opportunity to display his wit, “is without doubt that which leads us to 
ascribe a privileged nature to the individual who, by accident, through curiosity, or
because of need, ventures under our roof; nothing but some personal motive 
could ever have induced us into this error. The fault is surely not Nature’s: the 
more entirely a people lives within her law, the less it knows of any laws of 
hospitality; countless savages lure travelers into ambushes and then immolate 
their prizes. In a few degenerate and unpolished nations they act differently, 
eagerly receive their visitors; and carry courtesy to the point of availing them of 
their wives and their children of both sexes; let us not be deceived by this 
practice, it too is the fruit of egoism. For the people who so behave are seeking 
support, protection, from the foreigners who come among them; recognizing 
them stronger, better made, or better-looking than themselves, they may desire 
to have these foreigners settle in their country, either to defend them or by 
mating with their women to breed an improved race for the regeneration of their 
society: such are the aims of this calculatedly joyous welcome, of this hospitality 
that seduces fools and which fools laud; and which, be persuaded of it, has never 
emanated from any disinterested sentiment.

“Yet other peoples expect pleasure from the guests they greet, and caress 
them in order to use them; they fuck them. But no people has ever exercised 
hospitality gratuitously: read all their histories and you will discover the particular 
reasons each had for receiving strangers generously.

“And indeed, what would be more ridiculous than to throw one’s house open to
an individual from whom one expected nothing in return? In the name of what is 
a man under obligation to play benefactor to another man? Does the material or 
moral similarity obtaining between two bodies entail the necessity that one of 
these bodies do good to the other? I value a man to the extent he is useful to me;
I scorn him and even detest him when he can be of no further service to me; he 
then having nothing left to show me but all that is vicious in him, and being 
nothing now but a potential threat to me, I must deal as warily with him as with a
ferocious beast that can do me nothing except harm.

“Hospitality was the virtue preached by the weak: homeless, naked, puny, lost,
looking elsewhere than to his own industry for his welfare, he had of course to 
advocate a virtue which would ready him haven and suppers. But what need has 
the strong man to act hospitably? Put incessantly to contribution, deriving nothing
from his philanthropies, how long can he continue to be a host to all and sundry 
before he becomes a fool? I ask you now whether any action at all can be 
honestly reputed a virtue when it is to the advantage of only one of the classes of 
society?

“And think of the dangers to which they who perform it expose the hapless 
souls they unthinkingly shelter! Accustoming them to idleness, they rot what is 
left of moral fiber in their lazy guests, who soon finish by breaking into your 
house when, your generosity exhausted, you cease to open the door to them, just
as beggars always turn thieves when you finally refuse them alms: well now, once
you analyze any such action, for what, pray tell me, does it reveal itself when on 
the one hand you detect its inutility and on the other its perilous nature? Answer 
me straight out and unambiguously, Juliette: can you dare transform an action of 
this sort into a virtue? will you not, if you wish to be just, rather rank it among 
the vices? Let there be no mistake about it, the granting of hospitality is as 
dangerous as the granting of charity; all civilities that emanate from 
benevolence—a sentiment originating in weakness and arrogance—all of them are
pernicious, from every imaginable point of view; and the prudent man, the 
reasonable man, steeling his heart against all these pusillanimous impulses, must 
take every good care to avoid the grim pitfalls into which they entice us.

“The inhabitants of one of the Cyclades are such enemies to hospitality that 
they go to unusual lengths to keep strangers at bay; they dread and loathe them,
so much so that they never accept anything tendered them by a stranger without 
first protecting their bare hands with green leaves, and then attaching the object 
to the end of a stick. If despite all precautions a stranger chances to touch their 
skin, they purify themselves immediately, rubbing herbs upon the spot.

“There is no treating with certain Brazilian tribesmen save at the distance of 
one hundred paces, and gun in hand.(20)

“The Africans of Zanguebar are so little given to hospitality that they pitilessly 
slaughter all strangers who penetrate into their country.(21)

“For centuries the Thracians and the mountaineers of the Taurus pillaged and 
slew all who came to visit them.(22)

“To this day the Arabs despoil and sell into bondage all survivors of disasters at
sea who succeed in coming ashore on their coasts.

“Egypt was long barred to foreigners; the government’s orders were to enslave
or kill anyone found along the border or within sight of land.

“In Athens, in Sparta, hospitality was forbidden; those who implored it were 
punished by death.(23)

“Arrogating to themselves rights over foreigners, several governments execute
them nowadays and confiscate their possessions.

“His Royal Highness the King of Achem seizes all vessels that run aground on 
the reefs in his coastal waters.

“Unsociableness toughens a man’s heart and thereby renders him fitter for 
great deeds; so it is that we see theft and murder erected into virtues; and only 
in those nations where this occurs do we ever see great feats and great men.

“The murder of foreigners is held a praiseworthy action in Kamchatka.

“The blacks of Loango go farther still in their aversion to the hospitable virtues:
they will not even suffer a stranger to be buried in their country.

“The entire world, in short, furnishes us examples of national loathing for the 
virtues of hospitality; and from this overwhelming accumulation of evidence and 
from our own reflections we are obliged to conclude that there is probably nothing
more injurious nor more contrary to one’s well-being and to that of others than a 
rule whose purpose is to bind the rich man to give asylum to the poor whereof the
latter will never profit save to his ultimate and inevitable detriment and to the 
donor’s also. A man can enter a foreign land for one of only two reasons: because
of his curiosity, or because he is in search of dupes; in the first case, he must be 
made to pay for his entertainment; in the second, he must be punished.”

“Oh, Minski!” I replied, “you persuade me; the maxims I have long embraced 
upon charity, upon benevolence, are too similar to yours upon hospitality for me 
not to concur in the opinions you have just expounded. But there is yet another 
thing concerning which I would be grateful for your advice: Augustine, whose 
attachment to me was of several years’ standing, is survived by aged parents, 
they are needy and quite unable to shift for themselves; as we were starting upon
our journey she mentioned them to me and asked me not to forget them if 
perchance some mishap were to befall her during our absence from home; do you
think I should settle a pension upon them? …”

“Certainly not,” Minski was quick to answer, “by what right would you presume 
to do any such thing? And for their part, what claim can the parents of your late 
friend make to your bounty? You paid that girl wages, did you not, you maintained
her the whole while she was in your hire; what connection does that establish 
between you and her parents? You owe them absolutely nothing, and neither, for 
that matter, did she. If, as I would judge from your philosophy you must, you 
have a clear idea of the nothingness of the fraternal bond alleged to subsist 
among men; if you have sufficiently pondered that idea and from it drawn the 
obvious conclusions, you cannot help but realize, first of all, that between 
Augustine and the services she rendered you there is no possible relation: for 
services, being of a temporal nature, exist only in the performance, and she who 
performed these is no longer able to perform at all. You are sensible of the 
distinction; and so must agree that any identification of the one with the other is 
founded upon flimsy illusion; the only real feeling that can remain to us for a 
departed servitor would be gratitude; and you know that no proud spirit can ever 
be grateful: he who refuses a service offered by another or who, having accepted 
one, considers himself in no wise beholden to a benefactor who acted for none 
but his own pride’s sake; he, I say, is far more of a man than the ignominious 
fellow who, willingly donning the shackles of indebtedness, prepares his 
benefactor the pleasure of parading his victim like a captive at a triumph; no, I 
shall say more, and though you may have heard it said already, it cannot be 
repeated too often: one ought normally to desire the death of the benefactor from
whom one is not yet discharged of obligation, and I am never surprised to hear of
accounts being settled by a murder. Oh, Juliette, how greatly do study and deep 
thought improve our understanding of the human heart; and how great becomes 
our determination to defy human principles once we come to know the being who 
devised them, for they are all of man’s making, and in the name of what do you 
call upon me to respect that which is no more than the handiwork of somebody 
no better than I? Yes, this subject once thoroughly explored and pondered, many 
crimes which would look atrocious to simpletons and leave them aghast, appear 
perfectly unpretentious and natural to us: let word get about that Tom, in 
pressing need of money, received a hundred louis from Dick and then for all his 
thanks plunged a knife into Dick’s breast, and watch your vulgar mob go quite 
berserk, hear those idiots shout murder and bawl for justice. Aye, they shout, 
they bawl; and the fact remains that this murderer is of a finer cut and nobler 
soul than his adversary, since the one, in obliging, did nought but defer to his 
pride while the other could not endure to see himself humbled; here we have 
ingratitude in the form of a splendid deed. Ah, frail mortals! how blindly you 
proceed with the sorting of your virtues and your vices, and how quickly the 
complexion of your scheme is reversed, black turned into white, day into night 
under the most superficial examination; you cannot imagine, Juliette, the 
insuperable tendency I have always had to ingratitude, it is the virtue of my 
heart, and never has anyone attempted to oblige me but I have been revolted by 
the prospect: once upon a time someone proposed me his services and, 
repressing my fury, I said to him, ‘Have a care, my friend, things will go ill 
between us if I accept your rash offer.’

“This act of charity you are meditating with regard to Augustine’s necessitous 
parents would have all the disadvantageous aspects presented by pity and 
compassion, feelings to which, as it appears to me, you are not much addicted. 
Charity makes for nothing but dupes, Juliette, benevolence nothing but foes; 
believe what I say, my doctrine is sound, only adhere to it and you shall never 
have cause to complain of me.”

“Such principles suit my character and have been responsible for my felicity,” 
said I to the giant; “virtue has always appalled me, never has it given rise to 
pleasure for me.” And to lend weight to these statements I related how a moment
of virtuousness had once reduced me to rag and ruin and all but cost me my life.

“I have no such reproach to make to myself,” Minski declared, “and since 
earliest childhood my heart has never for a single moment been assailed by these
abject sentiments whose effects are so dangerous; I hate virtue as I hate religion.
I consider the one as deadly as the other, and I shall never be seen in their 
clutches. My only regret, as I have already confessed to you, is that I have too 
few crimes to my credit; crime is my element, it and it alone sustains me and 
inspires me, it is my sole reason for living, and mine would become a sorry and 
aimless existence if I were to cease committing at least one crime an hour.”

“From what you tell me I wager you must have been the executioner of your 
family.”

“Alas. My father escaped me, and I have not yet got over it. I never had a fair 
try at him, he died while I was still too young. However, all the rest perished by 
my hand; I have related the killing of my mother and sister, often I have wished 
they were alive again so that I might have the pleasure of butchering them anew. 
What’s left for me these days? I have nothing but ordinary victims to sacrifice, my
heart grows heavy, all pleasures fade, they pall, the enjoyment is gone—”

“Oh, Minski,” I cried, “to the contrary, I deem you a happy man; I too have 
tasted those delights, although not to such an extent…. My friend, your 
reminiscences, your remarks stir me beyond words; I would ask you a favor: to 
let me rove through your castle’s hundred halls, to dally with your innumerable 
minions, open up to me this vast field of crime, let me fertilize it with fuck and 
with cadavers.”

“I shall, but upon one condition. I don’t propose to sodomize you, it would be 
your ruin; but I demand the total cession of that young man,” said Minski, and it 
was to Zephyr he referred.

My hesitation lasted an instant…. The icy point of a stiletto tingled upon my 
breast.

“Choose,” that fierce man bade me, “between death and the pleasures my 
house can afford you.”

Yes, despite my fondness for Zephyr, I surrendered him—could I do otherwise?


Bibliography

I. WORKS PUBLISHED DURING THE AUTHOR’S LIFETIME

LITERARY WORKS

1. Justine, ou les Malheurs de la Vertu. En Hollande, Chez les Libraires associés
[Paris, Girouard], 1791. Two volumes, 8vo. Frontispiece by Chéry. During Sade’s 
lifetime, there were six further printings between the initial publication and 1801. 
Sade’s re-arrest that year put an end to the reprintings. These subsequent 
editions were:

1) En Hollande [Paris, Girouard], 1791. Two volumes, 12mo. Certain copies of 
this edition include twelve erotic engravings.

2) À Londres [Paris, Cazin], 1792. Two volumes, 18mo. Frontispiece and five 
engravings.

3) Troisième [fourth] édition corrigée et augmentée. Philadelphie [Paris], 1794.
Two volumes, 18mo. Frontispiece and five engravings.

4) À Londres [Paris], 1797. Four volumes, 18mo. Further augmented edition. 
Six erotic engravings.

5) En Hollande [Paris], 1800. Four volumes, 16mo. Presented as the Troisième 
édition corrigée et augmentée, this is actually a reprint of the original edition.

6) En Hollande [Paris], 1801. Four volumes, 16mo. Also presented as the 
Troisième édition corrigée et augmentée, this was a reprinting of the 1800 
edition.(1)

2. Aline et Valcour, ou le Roman philosophique. Écrit à la Bastille un an avant la
Révolution de France. Orné de quatorze gravures. Par le citoyen S***. À Paris, 
chez Girouard, Libraire, rue du Bout-du-Monde, n° 47, 1793. Eight volumes, 
18mo.

There are actually three different editions of this work, bearing different dates 
and, in some instances, containing sixteen rather than twelve engravings. Sade 
announced(2) the book would appear at Easter of 1791, but the instability of the 
times and the death of Girouard beneath the guillotine in 1794 kept the book 
from appearing until 1795, which date should be taken as the date of reference of
the original edition.

3. La Philosophie dans le boudoir. Ouvrage posthume de l’auteur de “Justine.” 
À Londres, aux dépens de la Compagnie, MDCCXCV. Two volumes, 18mo. 
Frontispiece and four erotic engravings.

4. La Nouvelle Justine, ou les Malheurs de la Vertu. Ouvrage orné d’un 
frontispice et de quarante sujets gravés avec soin. En Hollande [Paris], 1797. Four
volumes, 18mo. These four volumes comprise the first part of the definitive 
edition of this work, of which the second part, in six volumes, bears the title:

5. La Nouvelle Justine, ou les Malheurs de la Vertu, suivie de l’Histoire de 
Juliette, sa soeur [ou les Prospérités du vice.] Ouvrage orné d’un frontispice et de 
cent sujets gravés avec soin. En Hollande [Paris], 1797.

6. Oxtiern, ou les malheurs du libertinage, drame en trois actes et en prose par
D.-A.-F. S. Représenté au Théâtre Molière, à Paris, en 1791; et à Versailles, sur 
celui de la Société Dramatique, le 22 frimaire, l’an 8 de la République. À 
Versailles, chez Blaizot, Libraire, rue Satory. An huitième [1800]. One volume, 
8vo, 48 pages.

7. Les Crimes de l’Amour, Nouvelles héroïques et tragiques; précédées d’une 
Idée sur les romans et ornées de gravures, par D.-A.-F. Sade, auteur d’ “Aline et 
Valcour.” À Paris, chez Massé, éditeur-propriétaire, rue Helvétius n° 580. An VIII 
[1800]. Four volumes, 12mo. Four frontispieces. This work contains eleven 
stories, as follows:

Vol. I—Juliette et Raunai, ou la Conspiration d’Amboise, nouvelle historique; La
Double Épreuve.

Vol. II—Miss Henriette Stralson, ou les Effets du désespoir, nouvelle anglaise; 
Faxelange, ou les Torts de l’ambition; Florville et Couvral, ou le Fatalisme.

Vol. III—Rodrigue, ou la Tour enchantée, conte allégorique; Laurence et 
Antonio, nouvelle italienne; Ernestine, nouvelle suédoise.

Vol. IV—Dorgeville, ou le Criminel par Vertu; la Comtesse de Sancerre, ou la 
Rivale de sa fille, anecdote de la Cour de Bourgogne; Eugénie de Franval.

8. L’Auteur de “Les Crimes de l’Amour” à Villeterque, folliculaire. Paris, Massé, 
an XI [1803]. 12mo, 20 pages.

9. La Marquise de Gange. Paris, Béchet, Libraire, quai des Augustins, n° 63, 
1813. Two volumes, 12mo.


POLITICAL PAMPHLETS

1. Adresse d’un citoyen de Paris, au roi des Français. Paris, Girouard, no date 
[1791]. 8vo, 8 pages.

2. Section des Piques. Observations présentées à l’Assemblée administrative 
des hôpitaux. 28 octobre 1792. De l’Imprimerie de la Section des Piques, rue 
Saint-Fiacre, n°2., 8vo, 4 pages.

3. Section des Piques. Idée sur le mode de la sanction des Loix; par un citoyen
de cette Section. De l’Imprimerie de la rue Saint-Fiacre n°2, 2 novembre 1792. 
8vo, 16 pages.

4. Pétition des Sections de Paris à la Convention nationale. De l’imprimerie de 
la Section des Piques. No date [1793]. 8vo, 4 pages.

5. Section des Piques. Extraits des Régistres des délibérations de l’Assemblée 
générale et permanente de la Section des Piques. De l’Imprimerie de la Section 
des Piques, 1793. 8vo, 8 pages.

6. La Section des Piques à ses Frères et Amis de la Société de la Liberté et de 
l’Égalité, à Saintes, département de la Charente-Inférieure. De l’Imprimerie de la 
Section des Piques, 1793. 8vo, 4 pages.

7. Section des Piques. Discours prononcé par la Section des Piques, aux mânes
de Marat et de Le Pelletier, par Sade, citoyen de cette section et membre de la 
Société populaire. De l’Imprimerie de la Section des Piques, 1793. 8vo, 8 pages.

8. Pétition de la Section des Piques, aux représentans du peuple français. De 
l’Imprimerie de la Section des Piques, 1793. 8vo, 8 pages.

II. PRINCIPAL POSTHUMOUS PUBLICATIONS

1. Dorci ou la Bizarrerie du sort, conte inédit par le marquis de Sade, publié 
sur le manuscrit avec une notice sur l’auteur [signed A. F. (Anatole France)]. 
Paris, Charavay frères, éditeurs, 1881. 16mo, 64 pages.

2. Historiettes, Contes et fabliaux de Donatien-Alphonse-François, marquis de 
Sade, publiés pour la première fois sur les manuscrits autographes inédits par 
Maurice Heine. À Paris, pour les membres de la Société du Roman Philosophique, 
1926. 4to, 340 pages.

Contains the following works: HISTORIETTES—Le Serpent; La Saillie gasconne;
L’Heureuse Feinte; Le M. . . puni; L’Évêque embourbé; Le Revenant; Les 
Harangueurs provençaux; Attrapez-moi toujours de même; L’Époux complaisant; 
Aventure incompréhensible; La Fleur de châtaignier. CONTES ET 
FABLIAUX—L’Instituteur philosophe; La Prude, ou la Rencontre imprévue; Émilie 
de Tourville, ou la Cruauté fraternelle; Augustine de Villeblanche, ou le 
Stratagème de l’amour; Soit fait ainsi qu’il est requis; Le Président mystifié; La 
Marquise de Thélème, ou les Effets du libertinage; Le Talion; Le Cocu de 
lui-même, ou le Raccommodement imprévu; Il y a place pour deux; L’Époux 
corrigé; le Mari prêtre, conte provençal; La Châtelaine de Longueville, ou la 
Femme vengée; Les Filous. APPENDICE—Les Dangers de la bienfaisance (Dorci).

3. Dialogue entre un prêtre et un moribond, par Donatien-Alphonse-François, 
marquis de Sade, publié pour la première fois sur le manuscrit autographe inédit, 
avec un avant-propos et des notes par Maurice Heine. [Paris], Stendhal et 
Compagnie, 1926. Small 4to, 62 pages.

4. Correspondance inédite du Marquis de Sade, de ses proches et de ses 
familiers, publiée avec une introduction, des annales et des notes par Paul 
Bourdin. Paris, Librairie de France, 1929. Small 4to, 452 pages.

5. Marquis de Sade. Les Infortunes de la Vertu. Texte établi sur le manuscrit 
original autographe et publié pour la première fois avec une introduction par 
Maurice Heine. Paris, Éditions Fourcade, 1930. 8vo, 206 pages.

6. Les 120 Journées de Sodome, ou l’École du libertinage, par le marquis de 
Sade. Édition critique établie sur le manuscrit original autographe par Maurice 
Heine. À Paris, par S. et C., aux dépens des Bibliophiles souscripteurs, 1931–
1935. Three volumes, 4to, 500 pages (uninterrupted pagination throughout the 
three volumes).(3)

7. Marquis de Sade. L’Aigle, Mademoiselle. . ., Lettres publiées pour la 
première fois sur les manuscrits autographes inédits avec une Préface et un 
Commentaire par Gilbert Lely. Paris, Les Éditions Georges Artigues, 1949. One 
volume, 16mo, 222 pages.

8. Marquis de Sade. Histoire secrète d’Isabelle de Bavière, reine de France. 
Publiée pour la première fois sur le manuscrit autographe inédit avec un 
avant-propos par Gilbert Lely. Paris, Librairie Gallimard, 1953. One volume, 16mo,
336 pages.

9. Marquis de Sade. Le Carillon de Vincennes. Lettres inédites publiées avec 
des notes par Gilbert Lely. Paris, “Arcanes,” 1953. One volume, 16mo, 106 pages.

10. Marquis de Sade. Cahiers personnels (1803–04). Publiés pour la première 
fois sur les manuscrits autographes inédits avec une préface et des notes par 
Gilbert Lely. Paris, Corréa, 1953. One volume, 12mo, 130 pages.

11. Marquis de Sade. Monsieur le 6. Lettres inédites (1778–1784) publiées et 
annotées par Georges Daumas. Preface de Gilbert Lely. Paris, Julliard, 1954. One 
volume, 16mo, 288 pages.

12. Marquis de Sade. Cent onze Notes pour La Nouvelle Justine. Collection “Le 
Terrain vague,” no. IV. [Paris, 1956.] Small (4)to, 158 pages (unnumbered).

13. Marquis de Sade. Voyage d’Italie, précédé des Premières oeuvres, suivi des
opuscules sur le théâtre. Publiés pour la première fois sur les manuscrits 
autographs inédits par Gilbert Lely et Georges Daumas. Textes critiques par Pierre
Klossowski, Roland Barthes, Hubert Damisch, Philippe Sollers, Michel Tort et 
Pierre Fedida. Paris, Tchou, éditeur, 1967. One volume, 16mo, 656 pages. With an
exhaustive bibliography by Jean-Claude Zylberstein.


III. PRINCIPAL UNPUBLISHED MANUSCRIPTS

1. Les Jumelles ou le Choix difficile. Two-act comedy in verse.

2. Le Prévaricateur ou le Magistrat du temps passé. Five-act comedy in verse.

3. Jeanne Laisné, ou le Siège de Beauvais. Five-act tragedy in verse.

4. L’École des jaloux ou la Folle Épreuve. One-act comedy in vers libres.

5. Le Misanthrope par amour ou Sophie et Desfrancs. Five-act comedy in vers 
libres.

6. Le Capricieux, ou l’Homme inégal. Five-act comedy in verse.

7. Les Antiquaires. One-act comedy in prose.

8. Henriette et Saint-Clair, ou la Force du Sang. Prose

drama in five acts.

9. Franchise et Trahison. Prose drama in three acts.

10. Fanny, ou les Effets du désespoir. Prose drama in three acts.

11. La Tour mystérieuse. Opéra-comique in one act.

12. L’Union des arts ou les Ruses de l’amour. A play in alexandrines, prose, and
vers libres. In the Catalogue raisonné of 1788, this work was to comprise six 
parts and a final Divertissement. In the extant manuscript, the Divertissement 
and one play, La Fille malheureuse, are missing.

13. Les Fêtes de l’amitié. Two acts incorporating prose, verse, and vaudeville.

14. Adélaïde de Brunswick, princesse de Saxe, événement du XIe siècle. Novel.


IV. PRINCIPAL UNPUBLISHED MANUSCRIPTS EITHER DESTROYED OR NOT 
RECOVERED4

1. L’Égarement de l’infortune. Three-act prose drama.

2. Tancrède. One-act lyric play in alexandrine verse with music interspersed.

3. La Fille malheureuse. One-act comedy in prose.

4. La Fine Mouche. Tale.

5. L’Heureux Échange. Tale.

6. La Force du Sang. Tale.

7. Les Inconvénients de la pitié. Tale (first draft).

8. Les Reliques. Tale.

9. Le Curé de Prato. Tale.

10. La Marquise de Thélème. Tale (first draft).

11. Le Portefeuille d’un homme de lettres. Of this projected four-volume work, 
there exists eleven historiettes published by Maurice Heine, an avertissement, the
Voyage de Hollande included in the Voyage d’Italie published by Lely and Daumas,
and various fragments.

12. La Liste du Suisse. Historiette.

13. La Messe trop chère. Historiette.

14. L’Honnête Ivrogne. Historiette.

15. N’y allez jamais sans lumière. Historiette.

16. La justice vénitienne. Historiette.

17. Adélaïde de Miramas, ou le Fanatisme protestan. Historiette.

18. Les Délassements du libertin, ou la Neuvaine de Cythère.

19. Les Caprices, ou un peu de tout. Political work.

20. Les Conversations du château de Charmelle. The first draft of Les Journées
de Florbelle.

21. Les Journées de Florbelle, ou la Nature dévoilée, suivies des Mémoires de 
l’abbé de Modose et des Aventures d’Émilie de Volnange servant de preuves aux 
assertions, ouvrage orné de deux cents gravures. This immense work, contained 
in over a hundred notebooks, according to Lely’s estimate, was burned by the 
police at the request and in the presence of Sade’s son, Donatien-Claude-Armand.

22. Conrad ou le Jaloux en délire. Four-volume novel. The manuscript, 
according to La Biographie Michaud, was “seized at the time the Marquis was 
taken to Charenton.”

23. Marcel ou le Cordelier. Four-volume novel.

24. Mes Confessions. Two volumes. It is thought that diaries Sade kept during 
his thirteen-year detention at Vincennes and in the Bastille were to have provided 
some of the contents of these Confessions.

25. Réfutation de Fénelon. One-volume polemic.


Notes

Notes for Part One

1 The vampire drank the blood from corpses, God causes that of men to be 
spilt; examination reveals both to be figments of disordered imagination; may we 
not justifiably call the one by the other’s name?

2 How else would they ever survive? Only two categories of individuals are apt 
to find religious systems at all to their liking: firstly, that which these absurdities 
fatten; and secondly, that made up of imbeciles who unfailingly believe all they’re 
told and never examine anything critically. But I defy any thinking being, any man
possessed of an ounce of wit, to maintain that he in good faith believes these 
religious atrocities.

3 May we refresh the reader’s memory, who may have forgot that the said 
Volmar is a charming nun of twenty-one years; and that Flavie is a pensionnaire 
aged sixteen and extremely fair of face and figure.

4 Gentle and most lovable creatures whom libertinage, laziness, or adversity 
has reduced to the lucrative and delicious estate of whores, pay closest heed to 
this counsel; well you see that here it is no less than the fruit of much wisdom 
and broad experience. Ass-fuck, my fair friends, ’tis the one way to amuse 
yourselves and prosper. Remember that they who bar you this pleasure are 
moved by nought but idiotic prejudice, unless it be by basest jealousy. You 
fastidious and sensitive wives who read me, accept the same advice; do as did 
versatile Proteus, be now this, now that, with your husbands and, gratifying them 
in every manner and at every turn, you’ll have them all to yourselves. Be most 
certain of it: of all the resources coquetry offers you, buggery is at once the 
safest and most winning. And you young girls, seduced in the bower of your 
innocence, remember well that by presenting only your ass for a target you 
infinitely lessen the risks you run, both as touches your honor and your health: no
offspring, virtually never any illnesses, and pleasures a thousand-fold sweeter.

5 Solitary, man blushes at nothing; modesty grips him only when he is 
surprised in the act, which proves that modesty is a ridiculous prejudice, 
absolutely unrecognized by, absolutely alien to, Nature. Man is impudicious born, 
his impudicity he has from Nature; civilization may tamper with her laws, but 
never shall civilization extirpate them from the philosopher’s soul. “Hominem 
planto,” said Diogenes, as he fucked by the side of the road; and why be more 
eager to conceal oneself when planting a man than a cabbage?

6 It should be remarked that Justine’s memoirs and those of her sister were 
written prior to the Revolution.

7 Oh, mortal man! you believe it a crime against Nature you commit when you 
take an opposing stand to propagation or when you destroy the matured fruit of 
your loins, and never does it occur to you that the destruction of a thousand, nay,
of a million times as many mortals as are now on the earth’s surface would cost 
Nature not a single tear and would introduce not the slightest change in the 
regularity of her functions; ’tis thus not for us that all has been wrought, and if 
we did not exist at all, all else would be as now it is notwithstanding. What then 
are we in Nature’s eyes? and how dare we make such a great case of our 
insignificant selves?

8 It flourishes in Persia too. Likewise, also, do the Brahmins forgather, to give 
each other their wives, their daughters, their sisters to be fucked reciprocally.

Among the Bretons of old, eight or ten husbands would convene and put their 
wives at the disposal of the company; selfish interests, factions discourage these 
delicious traffickings here in France; and I ask: when shall we be philosophers 
enough to establish them?

9 See Cérémonies réligieuses, Vol. VI, p. 300.

10 Such is probably the best and wisest of all man-made laws; an unpublic, 
furtive crime ought to be punished unpublicly, furtively, and vengeance therefor 
ought to be tasted by him alone and in private whom the deed has outraged.

11 All these laws owe their origin to nought but pride and lewdness.

12 It is very visibly to the rural situation prevailing under the ancien régime 
that the speaker refers here; the peasants sometimes knew hardship then, but 
those of today, bloated with luxuries and insolence, can no longer serve as 
examples. (Publisher’s note.) [Actually, author’s note—Tr.]

12a The equality prescribed by the Revolution is simply the weak man’s 
revenge upon the strong; it’s just what we saw in the past, but in reverse; that 
everyone should have his turn is only meet. And it shall be turnabout again 
tomorrow, for nothing in Nature is stable and the governments men direct are 
bound to prove as changeable and ephemeral as they. (Supplementary note.)

13 We owe the law of the talion to the indolence and imbecility of legislators. 
How much simpler they found it to chortle An eye for an eye than intelligently and
equitably to proportion the punishment to the offense. The latter proceeding 
requires superior intellectual endowments and, save for three or four exceptional 
cases, I know of no French lawmaker during the past eighteen hundred years who
has been able to display even a rudimentary common sense.

14 The father of Henry IV had the same taste.

15 Prudish, God-fearing, or otherwise timorous women, make daily and 
confident use of these counsels, ’tis for you the author intends them.

16 Beloved La Mettrie, learned Helvetius, sage and perspicacious Montesquieu 
I having so profoundly apprehended this truth, why did you not set it forth in so 
many words in your immortal writings? O century of ignorance and tyranny, what 
a grave disservice you have done the human understanding, and in what slavery 
you have maintained the world’s greatest minds! Let us then speak forthrightly 
today, since we are at liberty to do so; and since we owe mankind the truth, let 
us have the courage to reveal it entire.

17 Highly entertaining, don’t you agree, this profusion of laws that man enacts 
every day in order to promote his happiness, although there’s not a one amongst 
them all which, to the contrary, does not deprive him of some part of the 
happiness he already has. The purpose of all these laws? But do you ask? Rogues 
must not be denied their profits, and fools have got to be subjugated—there, in a 
nutshell, you have the whole secret of our human civilization.

18 Aristotle, in his Poetics, would have it that the aim of a poet’s efforts is to 
cure us of fear and pity, which the philosopher considers the source of all the ills 
which afflict man; and, one might add, they are also the source of all his vices.

19 Of all edibles probably the best for ensuring abundance and density to the 
spermatic fluid. Nothing more absurd than our queasiness on this subject; a little 
experience will make short shrift of it; once one has sampled such meats, one’s 
palate rejects all others as insufferable. (Upon this subject, see Paw, Recherches 
sur les Indiens, Egyptiens, Américains, etc.)

20 Several Parisian brothels feature avisodomy; the girl holds the bird’s neck 
locked between her thighs, you have her ass straight ahead of you for prospect, 
and she cuts the bird’s throat the same moment you dischar

ge. Of this fantasy being enacted we may perhaps soon have an example.

21 There are any number of curiously organized people whom such sights 
could very much arouse indeed and who, seeing a well-worn ass, might merely 
regret not having been partly responsible for its condition.


Notes for Part Two

1 The paradox is readily to be explained: one does that which no one else is 
able to do; hence, one is unique in one’s species. It is this singularity pride feeds 
upon.

2 There, by such tokens may you recognize them, those monsters that 
abounded under the ancien régime and personified it. We have not promised to 
portray them as beauties, but authentically; we shall keep our word.

3 This system will be amply developed further.

4 See Mémoires de la Marquise de Frène; Dictionnaire des Hommes illustres, 
etc.

5 We know that Sainte-Croix, Madame Brinvilliers’ lover, perished while 
concocting a powerful poison (we give the recipe below). He had put on a glass 
face-protector to keep from inhaling the effluvia of the brew: so active was the 
venom, it shattered the mask, and the chemist was undone. As soon as she heard
of Sainte-Croix’ misadventure, Brinvilliers unwisely rushed to his house and 
ordered the servants to turn over to her the casket in which her lover stored his 
other preparations—that was her fatal error. Later, this casket was conveyed to 
the Bastille, and its contents were made extensive use of by all the members of 
the family of Louis XV.

This celebrated woman was also convicted of having poisoned her two brothers
and her sister and was subsequently beheaded, in the year 1679.

6 Here the allusion is to the Marshal.

7 Brantôme’s expression is tordions. For the reference, see note below.

8 Book I of Les Vies des Dames galantes of his time, London edition, 1666, 
12mo. It would perhaps have been preferable had we extracted verbatim out of 
the author cited; we have not done so for two reasons: of these, the first is that 
quotations always spoil the appearance of the printed page; the second, that 
Brantome merely sketched what we have thought desirable to paint in all its 
colors, and in all its truth.

9 All this is but a mild foretaste of what subsequent volumes will provide the 
reader upon this vital topic.

10 Further light will be shed upon these strange matters.

11 Hot-blooded and lewdly disposed ladies, these are words to the wise, hark 
attentively to them: they are addressed not only to Juliette but to yourselves 
also; if your intelligence is in any sense comparable to hers, you’ll not fail to 
extract great benefit from them. In writing we are moved by an ardent desire for 
your happiness; a happiness you’ll never attain, no, never shall you attain it, 
unless you base your behavior upon this excellent advice, and upon it alone.

12 “Hell,” in the words of one clever writer, “is the stove upon which the 
sacerdotal pot is kept boiling; that kitchen was built for the feeding of priests; it’s 
in order that they fare handsomely the Eternal Father, their chief cook, spits and 
roasts those of his children who have failed to pay all due attention to their 
lessons; the feasting table is set, the elect are forgathered, they’ll be served 
grilled unbelievers, fricasseed millionaires, financiers in gravy,” etc., etc. See The 
Portable Theology, p. 106.

13 Eusebius tells us (in his History, lib. iii: cap. 25) that the Epistle of James, 
that of Jude, the Second of St. Peter, the Second and Third of St. John, the Acts of
St. Paul, the Revelation of St. Peter, the Epistle of Barnabas, the Apostolic 
Institutions, and the Book of the Apocalypse were none of them recognized in his 
day.

14 Ecclesiastes 3: 18–20.

15 O thou! who, ’tis alleged, hast created all that in the world there be; thou, 
of whom I have no certain conception, none, not even the tiniest; thou whom I 
know of through divers readings and through what mortal men, who are every 
day in error, may have told me about thee; thou weird and fantastical being 
denominated God, I formally declare herewith, authentically and publicly, that in 
thee I have not the faintest hint of belief, and this for the excellent reason that 
nowhere, neither in my heart nor in my mind nor in my soul, do I find anything 
that persuades me of an absurd existence, evidence for the reality of which is 
absolutely lacking in the outside world also. If I am mistaken, and if when I am 
come to the end of my days thou shalt prove me wrong, and if then (which is so 
doubtful, being in contradiction to all the laws of probability and logic) thou shalt 
convince me of this existence I so stoutly deny now, what will happen? Thou shalt
render happiness to me or unhappiness. Thou makest me happy, then I shall 
acknowledge thee, I shall cherish thee; if unhappy, then I shall abhor and hate 
thee; since ’tis obvious no reasonable man can reckon otherwise, how is it, with 
the power that is said to constitute the foremost of thine attributes, if thou dost 
exist, how, I say, canst thou allow man an option so damaging to thy glory?

16 Lacus Asphaltites presently covers the site of Sodom and Gomorrah, neither
of which is afire any more; the flames sometimes noticed thereabouts come from 
volcanoes in the vicinity, quite as Etna and Vesuvius yet smolder and erupt fire. 
The cities in question never burned in any other way.

17 Who are the true and the only troublemakers in society? The priests. Who 
are they who daily debauch our wives and children? The priests. Who are the 
sworn enemies, the most dangerous enemies of every government? The priests. 
Who breed faction, strife, foment civil wars? The priests. Who are ever at work 
stinking the air with falsehoods, befouling the scene with frauds? The priests. Who
rob us continually, from cradle to grave? The priests. Who abuse our confidence, 
cheat and trick us from dawn to dark of every day? The priests. Who most 
resolutely labor at the total extinction of the human race? The priests. Who are 
most sullied with crimes and infamies? The priests. Which are the most 
malevolent, the most vindictive, the most ferocious men on earth? The priests. 
And we hesitate to exterminate this pestilential vermin off the face of the earth! …
Why then, we richly deserve everything that ails us.


Notes for Part Three

1 The proponents of that absurd doctrine of equality will always be recruited 
from the ranks of the weak; it is never espoused save by him who, unable to rise 
to the class of the strong, can at least find comfort in pulling that class down to 
his own level; but of all theories this one is the most derisory, the most unnatural;
and it is nowhere current except with the viler underbred sort who, moreover, and
of this you may rest assured, will abandon it once they’ve got a little gilt on their 
rags.

2 You voluptuous women, you philosophically-minded women who deign to 
read us, it is once again to you this is addressed: profit herefrom, let them not be
for nought, our efforts to enlighten you. Never will true pleasure be known to you 
unless you accept wholly and blindly these excellent suggestions; and certain you 
may be that in making them we are interested solely in your happiness.

3 Almost all chaste women die young, or go mad, or become sickly and wither 
early away. Furthermore, they are all ill-natured, testy, forward, and rude; they 
are unbearable in society.

4 That which you enjoy doing you always do well; and the reader ought not to 
forget Juliette’s affirmation, to wit, that her greatest delight consisted in frigging 
pricks. The statement comes as no surprise, for what else is so voluptuous? To 
what joys does one not thrill, indeed, at the sight of a handsome member rearing 
in answer to the lubricious sensations one imparts to it! How flattering to one’s 
pride, how stirring thus to observe one’s handiwork take shape! And the 
exhilaration of this creative activity, especially as the task nears completion; who 
is there who can refrain from discharging himself upon seeing spring forth those 
divine spurts of semen? Ah, need one be a woman to taste this pleasure? What 
man, be he only mildly sensual, is unable to appreciate it? and who, at least once 
in his life, has not laid an affectionate hand upon some other prick than his own?

5 Sometimes ascribed, by his denigrators, to Rétif de la Bretonne.—Tr.

6 The renowned Caylus contributed the engravings.

7 No, nothing, not even a legislator. Very conclusive evidence of the 
misjudgment and the fo

lly which, in France, characterized the year 1789 is supplied in the ridiculous 
enthusiasm stirred up by that miserable monarchist spy. What today is the 
general opinion of that unwell and exceedingly unclever individual? He is 
considered a knave, a traitor, and a dunce.

8 See, set forth above, the natural philosophy accounting for these effects.

9 In such sort that these two winning creatures, not counting oral 
incursions—for mouth-fucking produces upon the fucked too faint an impression 
to merit consideration here—had, at this stage, been fucked, Clairwil one hundred
and eighty-five times and Juliette one hundred and ninety-two, this both cuntwise
and asswardly. We have deemed it necessary to provide this reckoning rather 
than have ladies interrupt their reading to establish a tally, as otherwise they 
would most assuredly be inclined to do. So offer us your thanks, mesdames, and 
endeavor to outshine our heroines, we ask no more of you; for your instruction, 
your sensations, and your happiness are in verity the sole objects for whose sake 
some wearisome efforts are undertaken; and if you damned us in Justine, our 
hope is that Juliette will earn us your blessings.

10 “We may with the authority of experience unhesitatingly affirm and 
guarantee that the woman well enough constituted to make trial of this method 
will extract therefrom sensations so highly flavored, vibrations so compelling that 
it is not easily practiced without loss of consciousness; if she can secure the 
collaboration of a third man capable of address enough to embugger her in the 
meantime, she will then be sure of tasting the most violent pleasure that can 
possibly be procured by our sex.” (From a note communicated by a lady of thirty 
years, who elsewhere declares having enjoyed this experience upon better than 
one hundred separate occasions.)

11 Simply compare the oceans of blood these knaves have spilled over the 
course of eighteen centuries with the lakes of it promised by Belmor’s measures, 
and one cannot but conclude that in qualifying his remedy as violent, the Comte 
speaks with a touch of irony. For no juster measures have ever been proposed, 
and peace shall not reign among men until this one is adopted and carried 
ruthlessly out.

12 How simple it would be to demonstrate that the present revolution is purely
the handiwork of the Jesuits, and that the Orléanais-Jacobin crew who fomented it
were and are nothing but descendants of Loyola! (Note to a subsequent edition.)

13 At the period these mountaineers were active in the service of Austria’s 
reigning house, they won themselves the name of Pandours. They inhabit the 
southern regions of Austrian Croatia. Pandour means highwayman.

14 Saving your presence.

15 The difference between a man and a woman, of this we may be perfectly 
confident, is quite as pronounced, quite as important as between man and ape; 
our grounds for refusing to include women in our species would be quite as valid 
as for refusing to consider the chimpanzee our brother. Next to a naked woman 
stand a man of the same age and naked too; now examine them attentively, and 
you will be at no pains to discern the palpable and marked difference which (sex 
aside) exists in the composition of these two beings; you will be obliged to 
conclude that woman is simply man in an extraordinarily degraded form; there 
are internal differences as well, and these are brought to light by anatomical 
comparison: the dissection should be performed carefully and simultaneously.

16 Upon this subject the celebrated Ninon de Lenclos, though a woman and a 
zealot, has interesting things to say.

17 A dead God! Nothing so droll as this incoherent term out of the Catholics’ 
lexicon. God means eternal; dead means noneternal. Blithering Christians, what 
do you propose to do with your dead God?

18 An important question raises itself here; literary minds, it seems to us, are 
peculiarly qualified for an attempt to settle it, and that is why we venture to 
propose it as a subject for their earnest consideration. Does moral corruption in a 
people come from the flabbiness of their government, from their country’s 
physical location, or from the excessive size of the population clustered in their 
urban centers? Notwithstanding Juliette’s contentions, moral corruption does not 
depend upon location, since there is as much moral disorderliness in the northern 
cities of London and Paris as in the southern cities of Messina and Naples; weak 
rule would not appear to be the cause either, since as regards these matters the 
law is much more severe in the north than in the south, without that preventing 
the disorder from being the same; no, we are driven to the conclusion that moral 
corruption, whatever be the terrain or the regime, results from nothing but the 
too heavy concentration of too many individuals within a small area; that which 
masses compactly degenerates; and every government that would avoid 
corruption within its borders must curb the growth of population and, above all, 
break large groups into smaller to preserve the purity of their constituents.

19 The far less inconvenient way would be for the state to allow persons of 
condition to do all they wished in return for money and to buy absolution for 
every crime; better this, surely, than to have them die on the scaffold. The latter 
measure is of no profit to the government; the former could easily become an 
important source of revenue, yielding funds to cover all sorts of unforeseen 
expenses which are met today by levying countless taxes: these are onerous to 
innocent and guilty alike, whereas what I propose distributes the burden 
equitably, the heavier share of it falling where it fairly belongs.

20 See Cook’s account of his second voyage.

21 This upon the authority of Mr. Ramusio Dapper.

22 History of the European Peoples, III.

23 See Herodotus.


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).
