by admin » Wed Oct 09, 2013 8:44 am
THE WORKS OF MARQUIS DE SADE
Justine and Juliette
The main works of Marquis de Sade, to which he owed his "herostratic eternity" were Justine and Juliette, later amplified to Justine or the Misfortunes of Virtue and Juliette, her Sister, or the Fortunes of Vice (Paris, 1797, 10 volumes, 18mo, 4 vols. of Justine and 6 of Juliette).
The plan for Justine dates back to the imprisonment of Marquis de Sade. According to the Universal Biography he wrote both Aline and Valcour and Justine in the Bastille. After he was freed in 1790 there appeared the next year two editions of Justine, one with a frontispiece by Chery, the other revised edition having twelve obscene pictures by Texier. The third edition, printed in 1792, is even more cynical than the first two; for example, Bressac practices his monstrosities on his mother instead of as in the earlier editions, on his aunt. A fourth edition appeared in 1794.
Juliette appeared for the first time in 1796. All these plans are essential for the study of Marquis de Sade since the great combined edition of Justine and Juliette in 1797 was not only the most exhaustive but the one which had the ideas of the author developed to the highest degree. In this combined edition The History of Justine or the Misfortunes of Virtue by the Marquis de Sade was in four volumes. The History of Juliette or the Fortunes of Vice by the Marquis de Sade, was in six volumes. Justine contained 40 obscene illustrations, Juliette 60; there are in addition 4 frontispieces. The motto for the work was printed on the title page:
To Portray the desires
That perverse nature inspires
Is a criminal act?
The Preface
It is found in the first volume of Justine and declared that the work was conceived in 1778, that the author was dead and that the false friend to whom the manuscript was entrusted had printed many faulty editions of the work. The present was a true copy of the original. Their bold thoughts would cause no shock in a "philosophic century," and the writer, in whom all "affairs of the heart” were open, had made use of all possible situations and cynical pictures. "Only fools will take offense. True virtue fears not the pictures of vice. She finds only a firmer conviction than before. Perhaps some people will cry out against this work. But what people? The roués, as once the hypocrites cried out against Tartuffe. No book will awake so pleasant an expectation and hold the interest so grippingly. In no other book are the passions of a libertine so cleverly executed and their fantasies so realistically described. There has never been written anything like this present work. Have we not then reason to believe that this work will last to the dimmest future? Even Virtue, though she tremble a moment, should forget her tears in her pride that France can own so piquant a work in which the cynical expressions are bound with the strongest and boldest system of immoral and atheistic ideas."
We see that Marquis de Sade himself was convinced of the uniqueness of his work and he indeed declared that he wanted to outdo all other similar works in cynicism. We shall now give a detailed analysis of Justine and Juliette since the first is very difficult to procure and the second has never been translated.
Analysis of Justine
It is the Misfortunes of Virtue that are described in Justine. Virtue, embodied in the heroine, Justine, always meets misfortune, and is strangled by vice and evil. This is the plot of the novel.
Justine and Juliette were the daughters of a very rich Parisian banker and were brought up in a famous convent of Paris until their fourteenth and fifteenth birthday, respectively. At the sudden bankruptcy of their father, followed by his death and that of the mother, they were notified to leave the convent and shift for themselves.
Juliette, the older, "lively, frivolous, malicious, wanton, and very pretty," was jubilant at her golden freedom. Justine, the younger, was naive and more interesting than her sister, a tender nature, inclined to melancholy, who bewailed her unfortunate state. Juliette tried to comfort her by showing her the joys of sexual excitements and how she could earn much gold by her bodily beauty. But her proposals were repulsed by the virtuous Justine and the two parted, later to meet one another under anomalous circumstances.
Then the fate of the virtuous Justine is told. She turned to the friends of her late parents but they insolently showed her the door. A priest even tried to seduce her. Finally she came to a great merchant, Dubourg, whose greatest sexual pleasure consisted in making children cry and who was naturally delighted at the wailing complaints of Justine. But when she later repulsed his ardent sexual advances she was thrown out. Meantime a certain Madam Desroches, at whose house Justine put up, opened her chest in Justine's absence and stole all her belongings so that the poor girl was entirely in the hand of this megaera. Finally Justine became acquainted with a demi-mondaine, Madame Delmonse, who gave her a lengthy lecture on the advantages and joys of prostitution (Justine I, 28 ff.). "Our virtue is not taken, only in mask. Hence I, like Messalina, am a whore; but I am also esteemed as modest as Lucretia. I am an atheist like Vanini; I am esteemed as pious as the holy Theresa. I am as false as Tiberius; I am esteemed as truthful as Socrates. I am believed to be as temperate as Diogenes; but Apicius was less immoderate than I. I love all the vices and hate all virtues. But if you ask my husband or my family they will tell you: Delmonse is an angel!"
Justine was now being assailed by both women and was finally led by them again to old Dubourg, but again she successfully resisted him. She was then locked in the house of Delmonse where Dubourg for the third time was to try his luck and where Justine had to defend herself against the tribadic attack of the wanton Delmonse. Finally the old impotent Dubourg arrived and was first prepared by Delmonse who gave him magnificent bouillon and rubbed him all over until he became heated. At the critical moment Justine for the third time gave him the slip by creeping under the bed. Poor Dubourg was again disappointed and swore revenge on the disobedient girl. Delmonse accused Justine of having stolen a golden watch from her and the poor girl was sent to prison.
Here she made the acquaintance of a certain Dubois who had committed every possible crime. She and Justine were condemned to death. Dubois started a fire in the prison and 60 persons were burnt to death. Justine and Dubois escaped and allied themselves to a band of robbers in the forest of Bondy. As Justine hesitated to follow the path of crime of her companions she was threatened to be put to death if she did not join. She was forced to be a witness and assist in a wild orgy of the four men with Dubois. The brother of Dubois, Couer de Fer, then greatly praised pederasty, which was loved especially by the priests (Justine I, 88-89). After many crimes of this band Justine escaped with a merchant Saint Florent whom she had saved from death and who pretended to be her uncle. They stopped on the way at an inn. It was soon apparent that Justine had leapt from the frying pan into the fire. For Saint Florent revealed himself as a thorough roué. He even waited to catch Justine during the satisfaction of a natural need. At the break of night they left the city and came to a forest. Here Saint Florent struck her in the face so that she fell down unconscious and satisfied himself on her, and left her unconscious in a truly sad state. When she awoke Justine could trust only in prayer. At dawn she hid herself in the thicket since she feared the return of Saint Florent and there she became an unwilling witness of a pederastic scene between a young noble, de Bressac, and his lackey, Jasmin. Justine was discovered by them, bound to a tree, but again freed and made chambermaid of the mother of de Bressac. She was a woman of severest virtue who held her son within bounds. Hence relations between the two were very strained. Madame Bressac sought to rehabilitate Justine in Paris. Delmonse had sailed to America so the affair was not discovered. In a notable fashion Justine was seized by Bressac, a complete degenerate and misogynist. He used Justine only to make known to her his evil principles, and to poison her character. He also started in her presence a sexual orgy, even overpowering his own mother. He told Justine that he wanted to do away with his mother because she had for a long time been in his way. Justine, who had refused to be a party to the murder, was to have been killed but fled to the City Saint Marsel to a house, supposedly a school kept by a certain Rodin. He received the now 17 year old Justine very warmly and introduced her to his daughter, Rosalie. Rodin was 36 years old, a surgeon, and lived together with his 30 year old sister, Celestine. The latter was a tribade and as erotic a monster as her brother. There was also a 19 year old governess in the house. Rodin had a pension and school for both sexes, 100 boys and 100 girls between 12 and 17 years. Ugly children were not admitted. Rodin instructed the boys, Celestine the girls. No stranger was admitted to betray the secrets of the house. On the very first day Justine and Rosalie observed the secret conduct of the brother and sister. Rodin appeared to be of the same taste as Saint Florent since he watched from a mirror Justine relieving herself. Later when Justine refused to obey the degenerate orders of the couple and sought to flee with Rosalie, Rodin determined to murder them both with the aid of a colleague, Rombeau, first performing a physiological experiment on them. A sectiso caesarea was performed on Rosalie amid a wild orgy. Justine came off luckily, being only branded, and was then driven away.
In her flight she reached the neighborhood of Sens. As she was sitting at the bank of a pond in the evening twilight she saw a child thrown into the water. She saved it but was surprised by the angry murderer who threw the child back into the pond and led Justine to his castle, where this monster lived alone. He had the peculiar mania of abusing each woman only once for the sole purpose of child-rearing. The children were raised until 18 months and were then thrown by him into the pond. At the moment he had thirty girls in his castle. He was a vegetarian and anti-alcoholist and also gave the girls plain fare so that they would be better fit to bear children. He also bound them to a machine before coition and had them afterwards lie in a bed for 9 days with their heads bent and feet high. That was his method of aiding conception. He conducted his own operations and took especial pleasure in the Caesarean. Just as the choice fell upon her she was freed by Coeur de Fer whom she had let into the castle and who gave her her freedom.
She next entered a Benedictine abbey, Sainte Marie des Bois, whose Prior Severino, a relative of the Pope, turned out to be a dangerous roué and pederast who practiced the vilest things in the underground halls with his lecherous monks. Two "seraglios of girls and boys were kept in the monastery and were watched by a Messalina by the name of Victorine." Descriptions of the orgies are then given and diverse sexuo-pathologic types appear. One received pleasure from boxing the ears of the women; another, menstruations; a third, the odor of the armpits. The monk Jerome said: "I would like to swallow them (the women), I would like to eat them alive, I have for long eaten no woman nor drunk their blood." Justine made friends with a young girl, Omphale, and was informed by her of the affairs and rules of this monastery-bordello. The monks preferred to give death penalties in the form of roasting, cooking, wheeling, quartering, strangling and beating. Between the numerous orgies great orations were given to justify them. The horrible Jerome then told his bloody, passionate life story. In the beginning of his career, after getting much pleasure from the seduction of his own sister, he induced sisters to be seduced by their brothers. He was also in Germany in 1760 and had practiced his crimes in Paderborn and Berlin (Marquis de Sade had also been in Germany at this time). Then he went to Sicily where poisoning was at its height and the clergy led the most degenerate life. He became acquainted with the chemist, Almani, who was very fond of goats and who had an orgasm at the eruption of Mt. Etna. With the help of a certain Clementia, Jerome practiced the cruelties of a Gilles de Rais. From Sicily Jerome went to Tunis and then returned to France when he had an opportunity to study the corruption at Marseilles before he entered the Convent again.
This account enthused the monks so much that they executed some more girls. Justine also was selected, for her only protector, Severino, had been called away from the Convent. In the nick of time she succeeded in fleeing. She met on the way Dorothée d'Esterval, a canny hypocrite, the wife of an innkeeper who plundered and bestially murdered all his guests. Dorothée begged Justine to go with her and protect her. But Justine again fell into a trap. The wife was as degenerate as the innkeeper. Justine had to serve both their lusts besides enticing and ensnaring travelers. Many such horrible scenes are described. One day there came an old friend of Justine, de Bressac, a relative of d'Esterval. All four went to Count Gernande, another relative. He was a real glutton and satisfied his passion by making incisions and wounds on his wives; he was on the sixth. Such scenes are presented in the most horrible fashion. Dorothée later seduced Madame Gernande to tribadism. Then there came another branch of that honorable family, de Verneuil, his wife, his son Victor, and his daughter Cécile. Old Verneuil also had a peculiar specialty of sexual pleasure. He stole from poor women and gave to rich women! He immediately started an orgy upon an Ottomane Sacrée over which hung a picture of God. There then followed many similar scenes. Bressac delivered an oration on the eternity of the soul and murdered the wife and daughter of Verneuil, Justine then fled to Lyons where she again met Saint Florent whose specialty was the seduction of virgins and then subsequent sale to the madames. He wanted Justine to be his accomplice but she indignantly refused. He imprisoned her and forced her to consume his spittle. After an orgy Justine was released and on her way from Lyons met a beggar who asked for alms and then robbed Justine of her purse. In her pursuit Justine came upon a band of beggars in a cave. The chief participants in the sexual debaucheries were the pederast and jesuit Gareau and the tribade, Séraphine, whose history is told in detail. She escaped from the cave and on her way found a man named Roland who had been left for dead by two cavaliers. This Roland was the head of a band of forgers and hid in a castle high up in the mountains. Poor Justine found out that she was in the hands of a dangerous libertine. In a subterranean cellar of the castle were numerous skeletons, weapons of all kinds, crucifixes, etc. Here he enjoyed his sexual sport: jeu de coupe corde, the hanging of women; since this was an unspeakably passionate death. Roland himself proved this to Justine who released him before it was too late. Later she was placed in an abyss filled with corpses by Roland; as soon as he left the next day she was saved by his attendant, Deville. One day the whole band was seized, brought to Grenoble and hanged. Justine, however, was saved by the devoted work of an attorney at Grenoble, S…, who also made a collection for her.
Justine now met an old friend, Dubois, who had promoted herself to a baroness. She tried to get Justine to aid her in a plan to rob a young merchant, but instead, she betrayed her, but it was too late as Dubois in fear had poisoned him. Justine was then seized by three men in the street and brought to the home of the Archbishop of Grenoble where the vengeful Dubois presided. This Archbishop was naturally a paragon of vice and cruelty, a "faun from the fables," a monomaniac for the head. He had his own execution room "in which before the eyes of the shuddering Justine a girt was beheaded." Justine fled but was again found by Dubois, denounced as a pyromaniac and murderess and placed in the prison at Lyons from where she was brought by the ubiquitous Saint Florent to the judge, Cardoville. In his castle a society of anthropophagists celebrated their orgies with the assistance of twelve Negroes. Justine was flogged on the wheel for a time. Then two girls made the operation of infibulation on her. Then she had to run between two aisles of men who beat her with rods. Then many participants lay themselves down upon a cross set with iron points and which excited them terribly, and gave occasions to wild outbreaks. Then Justine was led back to prison and condemned to death by fire. The prison guard, who had her commit a robbery for him, let her escape.
In her wanderings, she noticed one evening an elegant lady with four gentlemen. It was her sister Juliette, who upon recognizing her tried out: "Oh, poor girl, do not be amazed. I had told you all that would happen. I have walked the path of vice and found only roses. You were less of a philosopher. You see to what you have come." Justine was provided with clothes and food; one of the cavaliers pointed to her and said: “There you see the Misfortunes of Virtue!" And pointing to Juliette: "And, my friends, the Fortunes of Vice!"
Analysis of Juliette
The Fortunes of Vice is the theme of the six-volumed Juliette which appeared in the combined edition of 1797 as a continuation and completion of Justine, and described the triumphs of vice in truly ingenious pictures.
Justine and Juliette were, as has been mentioned, educated in the Panthémont convent from which came the "prettiest and most immoral women of Paris." For five years Madame Delbène was the abbess of this convent, a thirty year old tribade who initiated Juliette and her fifteen year old friend, Euphrosyne, into the secrets of lesbian love. She later met them in a bordello. She had le tempéramente le plus actif, 60,000 livres income, and was of a "delicious perversity." She developed quickly and at 15 years of age formulated her materialistic and anti-moral system of philosophy, studied Holbach and La Mettrie, defined conscience as a “prejudice implanted by education," discoursed on electrical fluid, objective existence of God, the soul, etc., etc. She started a great tribadic orgy in which participated the 20 year old Madame de Volmer, the passionate companion of Delbène, a true hermaphrodite, the 17 year old Saint Elme, the 13 and 18 year old Elizabeth and Flavia as well as Juliette. All were held by the world to be modest and chaste. Here they were of an "energetic indecency." Nevertheless their virginity was very anxiously protected. Juliette was deflowered much later by Delbène with the aid of the dildo. The entire society climbed into the catacombs of the convent by means of a grave in the church. There was an artistically arranged room in the catacombs in which the 10 Year old Laurette awaited her defloration at the hands of two monks, the 30 year old abbé, Ducrez, main vicar of the archbishop of Paris, who was entrusted to the Panthémont convent and the 36 year old Father Télème, a franciscan and father confessor for the novices and pensionaires of the convent. With cynical plainness Delbène explained to the astounded Juliette that there the nuns assembled with the monks for the purpose of sexual debaucheries and atrocities. Here the great "crimes" were planned and carried out. In the following orgies natural and artificial paedicatio played a great rôle with the men and women. It was especially recommended to the unmarried girls with the argument: point d’enfants, presque jamais de maladies, et des plaisirs nulls fors plus doux. Juliette had to deflower Laurette who was bound fast to the table. A rich meal was then spread and Laurette, nude, had to serve all the persons who were sitting at the table. Volmer manustuprated the monks over a punchbowl in which Juliette relieved herself whereupon the other women drank from it. Suddenly the lights were extinguished by the flight of a frightened owl and the orgy came to an end.
After the bankruptcy and death of her parents Juliette was immediately released by Delbène who advised her to enter a bordello of a certain Duvergier where she would also find her friend Euphrosyne. Juliette followed her advice and separated herself from her sister, Justine. Juliette went from convent to bordello where she had all kinds of adventures. The isolated position of this bordello has already been described. Juliette here had intercourse with princes, nobles, rich merchants, etc., and encountered all kinds of possible ways for satisfying desires. She became friends with Fatima, a 16 year old prostitute, whose specialty was robbing her clients. She was instructed in this art by one of the most famous thieves of Paris, Dorval, who received reports from his spies of all new visitors in Paris. These were seduced and robbed by his prostitutes while he watched and received great sexual excitement. He already owned thirty houses. His sexual perversion consisted in cunnilingus post coitum. He delivered a long lecture on the theory and justification of robbery, the “main pillar of society." He thereupon had Fatima and Juliette thrown into a dark torture chamber where they were undressed and told they were going to be put to death on the gallows, Dorval receiving great pleasure from their distress. A mock execution was performed, Dorval satisfied his lust on the quasi-dead and then had them brought back nude to Duvergier in a wagon.
Juliette was then sent to the archbishop of Lyons in the quarter of Saint Victor in Paris. This shepherd of God practiced paedicatio with the assistance of another woman and as a conclusion was beaten by a third woman with rods.
After Juliette had luckily escaped the danger of infection with a man having a bad case of syphilis, she made the acquaintance of a certain Noirceuil, a rich roué and a grandiose scoundrel. Noirceuil had the strange complex; his wives—he was up to the l8th—had to be witnesses of all his orgies. He moreover desired only virgins. Two naked boys had to beat, bind and cut his own wife during his orgies. She had then to undress and serve him and his mistress at the meal following their intercourse.
Noirceuil made a surprising disclosure to Juliette: "I knew your father very well. I was indeed the cause of his bankruptcy. I ruined him. I cast an eye on his property, I could double it if it were in my hand… So according to my principles I took the money from him. He died in ruin and now I have an income of 300,000 livres." "Oh! horrible creature! no matter if I am a victim of your vice, still I love you! Nay more, I even embrace your principles." "Oh! Juliette, if you knew all!" "Try me!” "Your father, your mother!" "What of them?" "If they went on living they might betray me… I had to sacrifice them… I mixed some poison in your father's food one day; and shortly thereafter in your mother's." At this dreadful revelation Juliette cries: "Monster, you make me shudder but I love you!" "The murderer of your family?" "What of it? I judge everything par les sensations. Your victims never excited such a sensation in me, but your confession that you are a murderer inflames me and makes me burningly passionate," exclaimed Juliette.
Noirceuil highly rejoiced at finding such a delightful companion, and kept her in his home. But she also always visited the bordello of Duvergier. She had a special section for respectable ladies and young girls who were seized with some degree of nymphomania and so spent part of their lives in the bordello. Many sexuo-pathologic types were to be found there. The Duchess of Saint-Fal gladly sold her pucelage antiphysique and mother loved intercourse only with priests. Every evening a virgin from Duvergier was sent to Noirceuil who, in the presence, of Juliette, the two children and his wife deflowered them. Once Duvergier had Juliette and six other girls participate in an orgy of a millionaire, Mondor, a decrepit old man of 66 years who needed infinite patience and excitation to attain his desire. He had to be made potent by a tribadic scene of six girls, artificial paedicatio and defaecatio in os. Juliette stole 60,000 francs from him but after his return to the home of Noirceuil she found the money gonc but Noirceuil hypocritically pretended that Juliette's chambermaid stole the money and had her thrown into the prison at Bicêtre. After the heroic deed he delivered an oration on the profits of intelligent crime Juliette then went with three young modistes upon an order by Duvergier to a Duke Dendemar in St. Maur whose mania was flagellation of women, especially those who were not prostitutes, and paid great sums for his victims. Juliette was bound to a cross, and burning oil was spilled over the bodies of the few naked girls. Juliette stole a great sum of money from him, departed from Duvergier and lived for a year in the house of Noirceuil, had adventures from time to time, until later, a servant of Dendemar saw her on the street and had her thrown into jail. But she was freed by the intercession of State Minister Saint Fond at the request of Noirceuil who declared that one of the girls who accompanied Juliette must have been the thief. Noirceuil told Juliette that the monster was delighted with her criminal talents and had presented her with a great sum of money. They then had supper with the minister.
Saint Fond was a man of about fifty years of age, a treacherous and cruel libertine, traitor and thief. He had on hand many lettres de cachet and more than 20,000 people were thrown into prison on his orders; "none of whom," he said, "were guilty." There were present at a dinner, the President of Parliament D'Albert, four virgins, Juliette and Madame Noirceuil. They were served by six nude boys. Each libertine received two boys for his disposal. D'Albert promised Juliette an omnibus decree which would protect her from prosecution for any crime whatsoever; Saint Fond also assured her of the same but asked that he should always be regarded with the highest respect and to address him as "monseigneur" as befitting his wealth and station. He had an extreme case of megalomania and thought more of himself than the king did. He hated the entire world with the exception of Noirceuil, D’Albert and a few others. In sexual affairs he cared only for the backside and its products which he devoured with joy. He was then described as a handsome, powerful and healthy man. In the course of the following orgy the wife of Noirceuil was killed in a horrible manner. Her whole body was rubbed with spirits, burning candles were placed in all the openings of her body. She was finally poisoned in the presence of the others. Juliette was then selected by Saint Fond to arrange his private orgies; a great hotel in Rue du Faubourg Saint Honoré was then erected by her with his money; she also procured a pretty country house near Sceaux and a petite maison near the Barrière Blanche for his delectation. There were four chambermaids, a reader, two nightwatchmen, a housekeeper, a hairdresser, a cook, two servants, three carriages, ten horses, two drivers, four lackies and twelve tribades, all at her disposal. The minister made her the head of the "Department of Poisonings," since he dealt in whosesale murder. He explained to her the necessity in which a state often found itself of removing some objectionable character. Juliette was to poison these persons and receive 30,000 francs for each murder. There were at least fifty a year, giving her an income of 1,500,000 francs a year. The sacrifices of the secret orgies—two girls usually twice a week—brought her 20,000 francs apiece. Juliette hence received 12,000 livres from her personal enterprises, a monthly pension from Noirceuil, a million from Saint Fond for the general costs of the festivals, 20,000 or 30,000 francs for each victim, altogether a yearly income of 6,734,000 francs. Saint Fond added 210,000 livres for his menus plaisirs. He was easily able to afford this for he paid the money not from his own pocket but from that of the state which he plundered.
The amusements at the petits soupers and in the boudoir at Barrière Blanche started anew and were managed most excellently by Juliette. Saint Fond, who had also brought an imperial prince to taste these pleasures, had Juliette poison his own father. He then, together with Noirceuil, brought his own daughter, with whom he had long incestuously lived, to his moribund father and openly practiced paedicatio. Noirceuil followed suit. What pleasure for Saint Fond! He cried out triumphantly: "I have all at one time committed patricide, incest, assassination, prostitution and sodomy!"
There then followed a luxurious meal; a burning candle was placed in the backside of the little girl to provide light; she was eventually burned to death. Other girls were then placed upon a spit and roasted alive. Juliette desired a younger girl to assist her and was introduced to Lady Clairwil, a cold, heartless English beauty, who was a passionate tribade and hated all men. All her cruelties and atrocities were practiced against men. She delighted in both passive and active flagellation, and proved it at a tribadic orgy with Juliette and four women. Saint Fond engaged the services of a professional executioner, Delcour. The idea of being together with a veritable executioner aroused the greatest passions in Juliette. She had herself flagellated and Delcour practiced cunnilingus. Then with the assistance of Clairwil and Deleon, the greatest cruelties were begun. Cloris, a relative of Saint Fond, who owed his whole career to him, was hence selected for the victim, and especially because his wife and daughter had not assented to the covetous desires of Saint Fond. The latter had slandered both women to Queen Marie Antoinette, who gave him three million francs for their murder. Father, mother and child were locked in prison and forced to practice the most horrible kinds of incest with one another. Then father, mother and child were murdered one after the other. The executioner, Delcour, had to cut the throat of the daughter of Cloris very slowly for Saint Fond was practicing paedicatio with her at the time. Juliette had draped a room in black and placed the heads of the corpses in niches along the walls, later to be brought to the queen. Moreover their buttocks were hung on the wall. A number of torture-instruments were then brought up. A girl, Fulvia, was placed on the wheel. Others had their eyes stabbed or their bones broken. A youth was placed in a huge machine, resembling a coffee-mill and cut into small pieces.
Some days later Clairwil and Juliette were seized by the relatives of the murdered Cloris, but were freed by order of Saint Fond. The girls then killed the men while they were engaged in coition. Saint Fond strangled a girl in the same situation. Faustine and Felicitas, Dormon and Delnos, the two sisters of Madame Cloris and their fiancés were sacrificed after an "enormous dinner." Dormon was fastened "in a moment." Clairwil lacerated him with her teeth, and he was then flogged upon the wheel by two old women. Faustine, who was hanged from the ceiling by her hair, died from fright. Delnos was filled with nails by Juliette. Felicitas was "impaled" alive. The still-alive Delnos was then crucified like Jesus by Clairwil. As a conclusion a natural son of Saint Fond, Marquis de Rose, was poisoned. Saint Fond then had the mother of the Marquis killed so that he could come into possession of her immense wealth.
Juliette also practiced many atrocities in her country home. One day she rode about Sceaux and came to the hut of a brave peasant who was scared out of his wits at the visit of "so great a lady." She praised the cleanliness and order of the house, the pleasant countenances of the children, the proper conduct of the family and took advantage of the peasant's absence to place the hut on fire. At his return he found the house in flames and his children burnt alive, since Juliette had made sure that all exits were closed. She was greatly amused at the cries of the victims and then hurried to Paris to tell Lady Clairwil of her heroic deed. At the relating of the story Lady Clairwil wrinkled her brow like a university professor. For Juliette had omitted something. She should have accused the peasant of having burnt his own home so that he would have been hanged or placed on the wheel!
This excellent instructress introduced Juliette into the "Society for the Friends of Crime" to complete her education. Her initiation is described. After the reading of the forty-five statutes, from which one understood that only the greatest criminals and libertines belonged to this institution, Juliette was accepted. There followed the most unbelievable debaucheries. Defecations one over another, excitation by enemas, needles pierced into the genitals of men and women. All parts of the body are licked, sucked, bitten; hands and feet were vigorously used. Human blood flowed freely and was ardently swallowed. Testes were a favorite dessert. There were separate rooms for masturbation, flagellation, torture and execution. All four rooms were filled with their respective devotees. Incest of all imaginable kinds was the order of the day. Great argument ensued over who received the greatest pleasure, coniste, bourge, marturbateur or f… en bouche. But neither Saint Fond, Noirceuil, nor their half dozen lackies chosen from the strongest men, nor their twelve tribades, nor Clairwil, the numberless male and female victims, the festivals and harems of the "Society of the Friends of Crime" could satisfy the insatiable temperament of our heroine. She wanted more and more diversions. Clairwil and Juliette went to the Carmelite monk, Claude, for confession and discovered that this marvelous man had three testes! He informed them that he served his brother monks as Pathicus and that he was a confirmed atheist. He had a separate room in the Barrière de Vaugirard and the girls found there good wine, soft, snug sofas and a select library of pornography, besides godmichés, martinets and condoms. But the luck of this stalwart monk did not last. He was one day attacked by the girls in ambush and an ablation was made of his virile member which was used by Clairwil as a godmiché. He was then killed.
Shortly thereafter a certain Bernole, a dirty and ragged person, informed Juliette that he had important news for her. She found that the rich banker who she had believed to be her father and who had been ruined by Noirceuil was her father only by power of law. Bernole was her real father and he showed her the proof. Immediately the idea of incest came into the mind of our sensitive heroine. She realized this idea and had herself made pregnant by her own father whom she later shot in the presence of Noirceuil, Saint Fond and Clairwil. She then undertook the education of Saint Fond's daughter, who we had seen was instructed by her father in all sexual secrets, and completed his emissions from a feminine viewpoint. They attended an orgy at a Carmelite monastery at which two "black masses" were read. They both learned much from Count Belmor, whose mania consisted in binding children on the shoulders of a pretty woman, beating them until they bled and to lick up the blood with his tongue from the woman's genitals. He was an excellent statistician and had estimated that a libertine could easily corrupt 300 children a year; in 30 years it amounted to 9000. If only a quarter of the seduced boys imitated him, a very probable event, and counting a generation for every thirty years, then each libertine would see after two generations nine million products of his vice!
Juliette, who had had her incestuously conceived child killed by a famous abortionist, visited with Clairwil the poisoner and card-reader, Durand, who could only prophesy after she had seen the flowing blood of the passersby. She prophesied that Clairwil would not live more than five years longer and that Juliette would fall into much trouble the moment she stopped her wicked ways. After an hysteric fit of this bloodthirsty poisoner, Clairwil and Juliette were introduced into the mysteries of poisoning; many poisons were described and the exotic methods of their growing were explained.
So two years passed; Juliette was now entirely bestial and found pleasure only in the strangest and most extraordinary pursuits. She was almost 22 years old. Saint Fond informed her in a secret conversation that he had conceived his masterpiece. He wanted to depopulate all France and let two-thirds of the inhabitants starve to death. This made even the hardened Juliette shrink back. Saint Fond noticed it and grew very angry. Juliette then received a letter from Noirceuil saying that Saint Fond was very angry with her because of her "relapse into virtue" and that he was thinking of doing away with her and that she should therefore flee from Paris at once. Head over heals she ran from the house of Saint Fond and bewailed: "O damnable virtue! Again for a moment you have deceived me! But no longer do I fear that I will ever again be found at the feet of your shameful altar. Virtue only destroys people. And the greatest misfortune that can happen to anyone in this wholly corrupt world is to desire to protect oneself from the general corruption!" She took her money, jewels and tribades to Angers where she opened a bordello in the style of Duvergier's. Soon all the nobles and high-bloods flocked to her place. The rich forty year old Count of Lorsange, who had a yearly income of 50,000 livres, married her after she had revealed her entire life with mock-holy tears. The Count then sought to ensure the new-found virtue of Juliette by a virtuous discourse that even moved the speaker to tears. But "this pretty little talk" did not have much effect upon Juliette. After she had endured for a time her married life, her "reason" warred with "prejudice and superstition." She sweetened the two monotonous years with her "harmless man" by secret vices, especially tribadic pleasures, until, at a mass she met Abbé Chabert, an early member of the "Society of the Friends of Crime." The old splendor returned again. There followed a continuous stream of festivals and orgies. Juliette found some time in between to give birth to a child so that "the property of the man might be assured." She then became frightened that Saint Fond was looking for her and determined to leave France; she poisoned her husband who died in the arms of the hypocritical Chabert and took over his income of 50,000 livres a year. Provided with many letters of introduction of the Abbé Juliette left for Italy and left her daughter with Chabert.
How well she felt in the home of Nero and Messalina! She did not want to become a mere tourist and so planned to travel everywhere as a "famous courtesan" and announced herself as such. She first came to Turin, the "most proper city of Italy"; the pious superstitious people who had little care for pleasures, naturally failed to please her. Immediately after her arrival she had Signora Diana, the most famous appareilleuse of the city, informed that a young and pretty French courtesan was "for hire." Princes, counts and marquis came running. For as the Duke of Chablais said: "The story of all French girls: form and skin are enchanting. There is nothing here like it." Juliette learned from a certain Sbrigani, a Molierian figure, the secrets of cheating at cards and then took fabulous sums from a count and marquis in a gambling den. Sbrigani accompanied her on her journey as her husband. They went next to Alexandria where they plundered a rich duke. They found the tribadic art most highly developed; they participated in a few such orgies at a convent. On the trip over the Apennines they became acquainted with a seven-foot-three-inch anthropophagic monster, by the name of Minski, who lived in a lonely fortified house on an island. The chairs in this house were made from human bones; the house itself was full of skeletons. The victims set aside for consumption were placed in cells in the subterranean cellars of the house. Minski came from the grandduchy of Moscow and had made many voyages "to study and imitate the vices and crimes of all the world." He had retired to live in a little island of a pond as the "hermit of the Apennines" in order to give his criminal desires free rein. He ate chiefly human flesh and ascribed his strength to this practice. He lay in wait for the travelers who were to be served on his table as roasts and ragoûts. Juliette, her servant and Sbrigani were also doomed to this fate. But first he did the honors and showed them about his well-populated harem and the cellars with their enormous treasures. Enchanted by the loveliness of Juliette he finally promised to let her live if she would never attempt flight. They next went to eat. Minski, an extreme alcoholist, drank 60 flasks of wine! They were served on a living table! A row of naked women, one pressed on top of another, with bent shoulders and immovable positions, formed the "table" on which they were served. No tablecloth was necessary for these pretty croupes satinées. Nor napkins, for the fingers were dried by the waving hair of the women. The food was excellent. Juliette, after tasting a very succulent ragoût asked what it was. She did not know whether it was beef or veal, venison or bird, that made such a delightful dish. "It's your chambermaid," answered the monster with a lovely smile. The poor tribade and true companion of her mistress had been turned into a ragoût! This charming cannibal then showed his guests a menagerie of wild animals, had some women brought from his harem and thrown between the lions and tigers for their meal. But the greatest wonder was a machine that hanged, stabbed and decapitated 16 men all at one time! Everything was indeed very amusing and Minski promised them more surprises on the next day, but Juliette was a little mistrustful. Sbrigani also shared her fears, so they decided to flee. They mixed a little strammonium in the chocolate of the cannibal but only enough to drug him to sleep for "such a monster should not be killed." They robbed all the treasures from his chests and took along two women, Elise and Raymonde. So they finally reached Florence laden with gold and silver.
Here they put up a gambling house, connected with a bordello and a poison-den. Gold, indeed, they had enough, but it still gave them pleasure to see the world, learn the family secrets and to become acquainted with the morals and customs. Leopold, grandduke of Tuscany, and brother of Marie Antoinette, ruled Florence. Juliette and her companion were soon invited to an orgy given by the grandduke and his father-confessor in Pratolino. Leopold, "the grand successor of the first prostitute of France," diverted himself by the artificial abortion of women he had made pregnant. But he had something special to show his guests that day. He entertained Juliette with an especial performance of decapitation with musical accompaniment! The heads were cut off in accordance with the musical beat and à la ritournelle! Juliette observed that in Florence the men dressed like women and the women dressed like men and hence there was nowhere as much inclination for the same sex as there. The prostitutes lived in an especial quarter of the city. Titian's Venus in the Uffizi gave occasion for a lecture on the obscene representations in painting. There are mentioned the Venus of Medici, Hermaphrodite, and Caligula Caressing His Sister.
After our adventurers murdered another tribadic mother and sister they left for Rome. There they were richly received, soon became acquainted in the best circles, were admitted to all the palaces, and won the high favor of the tribadic Princess Olympia Borgia, Cardinals Albani and Bernis, and Duke of Grillo. They soon commenced the usual debaucheries with these new-found companions. Bernis composed in cynical self-irony an Ode to Priapus. Borgia poisoned her father and Juliette did the same to the Duchess of Grillo.
Both noticed how priests, monks, abbés, etc., slunk into a bordello. Then Borgia got the brilliant idea of setting fire to all the hospitals and charitable institutions in Rome. She wanted it performed by policedirector Ghigi and Count Bracciani, the first physician of Europe. Ghigi would rather have the people hanged because he received the greatest sexual pleasure in that manner. Bracciani, that great physicist, killed a girl "by artificial lightning." Finally the 37 hospitals of Rome were set afire and more than 20,000 people perished. Olympia and Juliette watched and got the highest sexual enjoyment from it. The conflagration lasted eight days. At the following orgy in the house of Borgia there appeared as participants in the feast a eunuch, an hermaphrodite, a dwarf, a woman of eighty years, a little boy of four years, a great bulldog, an ape, and a cock! Bracciani took the last-named and Borgia wrong its neck at the moment of ejaculation. The old woman had naturally committed many sins in her long life and so she was condemned to death and was immediately burnt alive on a funeral pyre.
Juliette was then presented to Pope Pius VI, whom she addressed by his former name, Braschi, and delivered a bold lecture on the prejudices of the church and the immorality of the pope, which was received with great applause by Pope Pius VI, who was himself described as a horrible atheist and as a sexual monster. At times he indeed tried to interrupt her, but he was abashed by a: "Shut up, old ape!" At the end of her lecture he cried. "O, Juliette, I was indeed told the truth when they said you had spirit. But I did not expect so much. Such hyperbolic ideas are indeed rare in women." The Holy Father would naturally have liked to possess such a woman. Juliette placed the most unworthy conditions for such a surrender. She was then escorted about the Vatican and shown the garden, making cynical remarks all the time. The meeting ended with a very intimate scene that gave the pope the opportunity of developing his materialistic and blasphemous principles. The next time a great orgy was celebrated in St. Peter's Church. The pope himself celebrated some "black masses" and had some people killed at its conclusion. Juliette emigrated to the bedroom of the Holy Father and used the opportunity of a sexual debauch in one of the galleries to rob the pope. Thereupon she rode with recommendations to the royal family at Naples. On the way she was held up by the robbers of the notorious Brisa Testa, to whose castle she was brought and with her companion thrown into a dark dungeon. They heard the bloodthirsty wife of the chief robber declare that they would be murdered on the morrow. Juliette recognized the woman as her old friend Clairwil, a sister of Brisa Testa living with him in incest. Brisa Testa then told the long story of his life that had led him to England, Sweden, Russia, Siberia and Turkey. He described in detail the perverse inclinations and cruelties of Empress Catherine Il who gave herself up to tribadic pleasures in the winter palace, the knout being stoutly applied. After diverse enjoyments at the robbers' Juliette left with Clairwil for Naples. She was received by King Ferdinand in Naples; Juliette gave him, too, a lecture on the Kingdom of Naples and its affairs, on the moral depravity of the populace, the "half-Spanish nation," and spiced her discourse with severe attacks on his sister-in-law, Marie Antoinette. Queen Charlotte of Naples was a lusty tribade whose charmes d’après nature Juliette learned at the first meeting; there followed a tribadic scene between the two and the godmiché as well as defecatio in os played important parts. Ferdinand was a confirmed necrophile. He delighted practicing paedicatio on a page whom he had strangled. The splendid surroundings of Naples, also recalling the horrors of Nero, were profaned by orgies on Cap Misenum, Puzzoli, in the ruins of the Procida, on Ischia and Niceta. In the temple of Venus at Baiae, Clairwil, Juliette and Olympia gave themselves to fishermen, and then returned to more respectable pleasures at the house of Prince of Francaville, a confirmed pederast. He organized a luxurious festival in the garden where the splendid pavilions, kiosks, stimulating activity, mass-flagellation, and automatically working phallus-machines enflamed the senses. At a visit in the museum at Portici our travelers saw a painting depicting a satyr in the act of intercourse with a goat, a practice, according to King Ferdinand, much in vogue in Italy. The ruins of Herculanus and Pompeii served as abodes of vice. Vespoli, the father confessor of the king and guide for his orgies, had erected a house for secret executions and tortures in Salerno. He found his chief pleasure in crucification and intercourse with lunatics! In Paestum the three tribades lived at a virtuous widow's with three young and innocent girls. Naturally all were overpowered and killed after they had been abused.
They next visited Sorrento, Castellamare and the Blue Grotto. On Capri they found that the practices of its former resident, Emperor Tiberius, were still being imitated. They returned to Naples in time to see a great folk-festival at which 400 persons were killed. Charlotte and Juliette formed a plot against the king; the following contract was drawn up by the queen: "I will rob all valuables from my husband and give them to the person who provides me with the poison necessary to transport my husband to another world." The contract was sealed by a tribadic scene. The unsuspicious king pleased Juliette by two especially strange performances. He had two women bound to iron plates, and one was pounded upon the other with such great force that both bodies were squashed to pieces. But the most noteworthy was the Theatre of Horrors whose performances were of an unusual kind. Executions and again executions! That was the steady program for the productions. Each guest had his own loge in which hung seven pictures showing the seven different kinds of executions: fire, beating, gallows, wheel, impalement, decapitation, dismemberment. There were also in each loge 50 portraits of men, women and children. For each portrait and kind of execution there was an apparatus which was set in motion by the machinist in response to a press on the proper button by the guest. One bell denoted the appearance on the stage of the victim. The second bell announced the execution, performed by four executioners, as "naked and pretty as Mars." The guests tried to form all sorts of amusing combinations, and at one "performance" 1176 persons were executed. This spectacle inspired Juliette and Clairwil to an especially piquant crime. They agreed to destroy their true companion, Olympia Borgia. At an excursion which brought them to the top of Mt. Vesuvius, they seized the unsuspecting Olympia, undressed her and threw her into the crater; resulting in an intense sexual excitement that brought them to a tribadic orgy. There then followed an eruption of Vesuvius! "Ah," Juliette cynically cried, "Olympia wants her clothes!" and she threw them after her, first having removed all the valuables. Meanwhile Queen Charlotte brought all the millions of Ferdinand to Juliette and wanted to flee to France after the murder of the king. But Juliette denounced her to Ferdinand who had her imprisoned; Juliette meanwhile fleeing with all the treasure.
Clairwil and Juliette again met the poisoner, Durand, who hated Clairwil and finally convinced Juliette to poison her because she knew that Clairwil was plotting against her (Juliette's) life. After the murder Durand said cold-bloodedly; "I lied to you. She was not thinking of murdering you. But her time was up. She had to die." They next came to a church where a merchant, Cordelli, was abusing the corpse of his own daughter. This blood-thirsty monster owned a castle by the sea from which he threw his victims into the ocean or placed them in a snake-box to be eaten by the snake. But his pleasures could no longer be possible. Durand and Juliette poisoned him and his companions and availed themselves of his great fortune. They rode to Venice where as we have previously fully described they opened mother bordello in the style of Madame Gourdan. Again the usual round of debaucheries commenced. Poisoning, prophesying and prostituting; Juliette and Durand vied to outdo themselves in vice and crime.
But finally their splendor came to an end. The bordello was suspended; the properties of Juliette and Durand were confiscated. Juliette went to Lyons and informed Noirceuil of her proposed return to Paris. The Abbé Chabert informed Juliette that he was bringing her seven-year-old daughter to Paris so that she could be brought up as a "law breaker." The joys of reunion with Noirceuil were very great. He gave one of his usual long discourses and told Juliette that he was now a thousand times worse than when she had left him. They then celebrated their reunion with a murder. Juliette fixed up a bordello for men and women in Paris; six pimpesses selected, assorted and parceled the wares. Juliette and Noirceuil tried to outdo Emperor Nero and Empress Theodora in debaucheries. Noirceuil then married in a church with regular prayers, blessings and witnesses his two sons, Juliette, her daughter, and a girl Fontanges seduced by her. The joys of this happy family did not last long. At an orgy, honored by the presence of the executioners Desrues and Cartouche, the sons of Noirceuil and Mademoiselle Fontanges were murdered amid horrible tortures. Juliette's daughter was thrown into the fire!
Here Juliette ended her story before the amazed hearers, after she had added that she had poisoned all the brooks and springs in the village where Noirceuil’s home was situated and where she was reunited to Justine. Many peasants had, of course, died with horrible torments. Juliette closed her long report with a glowing apotheosis of vice:
This is the fortunate position you see me in now, my friends! I understand and love crime passionately. This alone charms my senses and I will follow its principles until the last day of my life. Free from every religious fear, above the law because of my secrets and my wealth, I would like to see the divine or human power that can stand in the way of my desires. The past tires me. The present electrifies me. I fear the future very little and only hope that in the rest of my life I can surpass the debaucheries of my youth. For nature has created man to enjoy himself with all the possible amusements in this world. That is her highest law and will always be mine. So much the worse for the victims that must be provided. Every thing would collapse in the universe without the law of balance of power. Only through frivolities can nature regain her rights torn from her by virtue. We thus set things aright by compensating with evil. O, my friends, convince yourself of this fundamental principle from whose development all sources of human fortune spring.
Justine had cried more than once during this long story. Not so the Chevalier and the Marquis. At the return of Noirceuil and Chabert the sacrifice of this "incorruptible and perfect virtue" was determined. At the last moment Noirceuil decided on a sign of fate for there was a heavy storm brewing. Justine was brought into the open. And lo! she was immediately struck by lightning. The joy of the companions of vice was great. Nature had spoken. Vice was the only joy of man. As they still practiced their atrocities on the corpse of the unfortunate Justine, Durand suddenly appeared again. She had restated a great part of the money confiscated in Venice. At the end Noirceuil was named minister, Chabert became an archbishop, the Marquis became an ambassador to Constantinople and the Chevalier received an income of 400,000 livres. Juliette and Durand followed their beloved Noirceuil to new splendors; after ten more years of remarkable successes in vice Juliette died.
"Whoever writes my history," she cried, "should title it: The Fortunes of Vice!"