Marquis De Sade: His Life and Work, by Dr. Iwan Bloch

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Ethnological and Historical Examples

Marquis de Sade was a keen observer. He had besides become very well acquainted with contemporary literature during his stay in prison. It is therefore no wonder that we find the signs of both properties in his work. What seems to us most characteristic is the great rôle that ethnology plays with de Sade. That was no accident. The first pretences to folklore started in France. Lafitau wrote the first important work of this kind in 1724 on the American savages. The great interest in the wild races was increased by the number of expeditions of French savants in the eighteenth century. We name only such well known figures as Bouguer, La Condamine, Bougainville, La Pérouse, Marchand, d'Auteroche, Duhalde, Charlevoix, Savary, Le Vaillant, Volney, Dumont. In a tentative fashion comparative analyses of morals and customs of primitive races and the development of humanity were essayed. The glorification of European civilization thus started from these early ideas of ethnology. Lafitau says: "I have read with great irritation the usual works on savage races; they are described to us as people who have no religious instincts, no knowledge of a God, no personality, neither laws, justice nor organization; men who have only the form in common with us. They indeed differ but little from animals." This conception of savage races is also found in de Sade.

He justified all the vice and cruelty found in the savage races. James Cook found pederasty rampant in the South Seas. Therefore it was good (Philosophy in the Boudoir I, 201). The cruelty of women was the same all over the world. Zingua, Queen of Angola (often mentioned by de Sade), the "most cruel of all women" sacrificed her lover after her pleasure, had battles fought for her and gave herself to the victor and had all pregnant women under thirty years of age stamped to death in a huge mortar. (Philosophy in the Boudoir, 1856.) Zoë, the wife of the Chinese Emperor, found the greatest pleasure in having criminals executed before her very eyes, and had all slaves sacrificed in the bed chamber where she was engaged with her husband. The greater the cruelty, the greater the pleasure. She found her greatest enjoyment in watching men roasted alive! Theodora amused herself by castrating men (ib., p. 157). De Sade also told the well known story of Amerigo Vespucci, that the women of Florida had their men place small poisonous insects in their members which swelled up tremendously at the contact and caused an insatiable libido accompanied by dreadful pain and ulcers (Philosophy in the Boudoir I, 157). De Sade had ethnological examples in plenty for poisoning, prostitution, anthropophagy, sexual degeneration, Malthusianism, atheism, etc. The Bible, for one, gave him a number of examples. Then the Africans, Asiatics, Turks, Chinese, etc., etc. De Sade had all the facts. He had all the available material and quoted that in Lapland, Tartary and America it was "an honor to prostitute one's wife," that the Illyrians celebrated remarkable mass orgies, that adultery flourished among the Greeks, that the Romans borrowed one another's wives, that his beloved Zingua had made a law that proscribed vulgivaguibilité of the women. Sparta, Formosa, Otaheiti, Cambodia, China, Japan, Peru, Cucuana, Riogabor, Scotland, etc., afforded him a mass of convincing examples on the justification of his theories.

All bizarre ideas, all remarkable cases of notorious erotic monsters were made use of by de Sade. Noirceuil declared that he would marry twice in one day and indeed at ten o'clock dressed as a woman he married a man; a twelve o'clock, dressed as a man, he married a boy who was married as a woman. Juliette also wanted to marry in the same church and at the same time, two tribades, one dressed as a woman and another dressed as a man. This, of course, was an imitation of the double union of Nero who married Tigellinus as a woman and Sporus as a man (Juliette VI, 319). Juliette, who did not want to fall behind Noirceuil in imitative talent, took an example from the Empress Theodora. She sprinkled barley in her most secret part and had the geese peck there, thus affording her continued pleasure (Juliette IV, 341).

De Sade made continual mention of Marshal Gilles Laval de Rais throughout Justine, Juliette and the Philosophy in the Boudoir. This "bluebeard" was a man of elegant appearance and great learning. At the age of 27 he left the court and army, cast off his wife and child, disappeared to his lonely castle, delved in mystical studies, alchemy, devil-craft and similar pursuits, finally gave himself up to sexual debaucheries and became a pederast, kidnapper, murderer, sadist, coprophiliac, etc., etc. This monster systematically murdered over 140 children in his castle. The victim was thrown on the floor, his throat cut deep and Gilles de Rais drank in his pleasures in watching the convulsive movements of the body. Then the extremities were cut off, breast and stomach opened and the entrails ripped out. At times he sat on the body of the victim to feel the death struggles. He also beheaded the corpse, took the head in his hands, looked at it closely and kissed it passionately. He often said to his accomplices: "No one in the world understands or can understand what I have done in my life. There is no other person who could have enacted my deeds." The heroes of de Sade spoke with similar pride of their crimes.

But the very age of Marquis de Sade was full of similar figures! "How many secret privileged criminals were there," asked Michelet, "who were not prosecuted? How many murders were set down as simple disappearances?"

De Sade also mentioned very often Count Charolais (1700-1760) who "committed murder for pleasure." This Count combined a raging cynicism with an unbelievable boldness. He loved to see blood flowing at his orgies and executed the courtesans who were brought to him in a dreadful fashion. "In the middle of his debaucheries with his mistress he would suddenly shoot a roof-thatcher. The rolling of the body from the roof afforded him infinite satisfaction." Abbé de Beauffremont is also said to have shot down people on the roofs. De Sade indeed placed this monomania in his register of sexual perversions. Juliette shot her father, while satisfying herself sexually with another man, in order to increase the pleasure (Juliette III, 115).

According to Michelet, Charolais loved the fair sex only "in bloody condition.” His father, Prince Condé, had derived his pleasure from poisoning people as, for example, the poet Santeul, and had willed to his sons, the Duke of Bourgogne and Prince Charolais, these perverse inclinations. Both served as accomplices at the orgies of Madam de Prie. One day, there appeared a Madame de Sart S… who when undressed by the princes was lightly browned in a servette. In spite of this experience the victim again came to the house of de Prie and this time was "roasted like a bud." Michelet expressly mentioned that the Duke of Bourgogne had this horrible idea. This monster was described in Juliette as Duke Dendemar, who poured burning oil on the naked bodies of four prostitutes (Juliette I, 352).

The notorious anthropophagist, Blaize Ferrage, called Seyé, seemed to have served the Marquis as a model. This man terrorized the Pyrenees, killed men, women and especially young children; he ate men only when hungry; he used the women sexually before he murdered them; it was reported that he especially satisfied his passion in the most brutal manner on children. On December 12, 1782, he was condemned to death by the whel; on the following day, only 25 years old, he was executed. De Sade described such an anthropophagist in Minski, the "Hermit of the Apennines" (Juliette III, 313).

Brunet mentioned additional sadistic types of the eighteenth century. A respectable Pole, author of many historical works, Count von Potocki, committed crimes "of the kind of Marquis de Sade." In Lyons the morals before the Revolution were so degenerate that "a number of sadistic outrages took place within a short time." Michelet rightly said in his History of the French Revolution that "not without justice did a notorious writer find a number of his episodes in his horrible novels in Lyons."

Jean Paul Marat, undoubtedly the most bloodthirsty person among the great Revolutionaries, gave the Marquis many ideas that are to be found in his novels. "He behaved like a drunkard who had washed himself in blood and was greedy for the flow of more blood." He advised mass murders in his Friend of the People and returned again and again to this favorite topic of his. We will encounter this idea of mass murders more than once in de Sade's novels.

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Conditions in Italy

In the year 1772, after the Marsellais Scandal, Marquis de Sade and his cousin fled to Italy where they remained for six years. The result of this story was the description of Italian conditions which occupy more than three volumes of Juliette (from the end of the third volume to the end of the sixth volume). The Marquis made it clear that he knew Italy from his own experience and said (Juliette III, 290): "Those who know me are aware that I went to Italy with a very pretty woman whom I, by a unique principle of obscene philosophy, introduced to the Grandduke of Toscana, the Pope, Princess Borgia, the King and Queen of Naples. They may be assured that I have truthfully described the actual morals of these persons. Had the reader himself been an eyewitness he could not have described them more truthfully. The reader may also be assured that I have faithfully described my journey with the greatest accuracy."

Italy was undoubtedly the breeding-ground of real modern and refined immorality. We have but to mention Pietro Aretino, Pope Alexander VI, Lucrezia and Cesare Borgia, Giulio Romano and Agostino and Annibale Carracci, those great artists of passion. In comparison how innocent and naive sound the love-adventures in Boccaccio's Decameron! The Renaissance and the jesuits started a new era in the sexual life of Italy.

Marquis do Sade described the growth of prostitution in Italy as enormous. All the cities that Juliette visited overflowed with prostitutes of all kinds who bore themselves proudly and were in no way ashamed. According to the glossary of the Pope a real whore was one who had sinned at least 23,000 times! What an enormous mount of sins Italy had on its poor head!

Venice was especially degenerate in its sexual life and Marquis do Sade had some horrible things to tell (Juliette IV, p. 144 ff.). The courtesans, for centuries the "pestilence of the city," were glorified in Venice. "Where in the world were there so many charms and pleasures as in Venice? Where were the courtesans prettier, better formed and more accomplished as priestesses of Cytherea? To Venice on the first train came all the roués, to taste every sin they could imagine and to find many they had never dreamed of. Only one purpose led all to Venice. This was the significance of the city of lagoons: The metropolis of absolute freedom for sexual delights. The prostitutes enjoyed the especial protection of the authorities."

Italy was very famous for its pederasty. Marquis de Sade, in this point certainly a true observer, cried: "The back is the best part of Italy" (Juliette III, 290). This was the inheritance from Greece and Rome. Dante even mentioned the great spread of homosexualism in the fifteenth and sixteenth stanza of the Inferno. Pope Sixtus IV (1471-1484) swore allegiance in the widest sense to pederasty and was said to have raised his Ganymede to a cardinalship. A few cardinals asked the Pope to be allowed to practice pederasty and the Pope is said to have granted it. The following verse found its adherent in Pope Sixtus IV.

Since Rome (Roma) delighted in inverse love (amor),
Love took its name from inverse Rome.

In the eighteenth century pederasty was the daily fare in Italy. Indeed one ran the danger of being attacked by pederasts in the open streets. Casanova told of such an attempt that a man made upon him. Cardinal Brancaforte, one of the greatest roués of the world, according to Casanova, "when he went into a bordello he went in to stay," was especially fond of pederasty. At a stay in Paris a young girl of Padua confessed to him that some men had taken certain freedoms with her that were strongly forbidden in the codes. Before he granted her absolution he desired to hear every detail of the crime. At each recital he would cry "but this is monstrous! Oh, my dear, you have committed a horrible sin—but it’s a very pretty story." Casanova, gave many similar anecdotes.

Even today masculine protection in Italy is more general than in any other country. "In Naples, today, on the Via Toledo young men offer themselves to passersby and the pimps proudly describe their masculine as well as feminine wares." Moll, who tells this in his Perversions of the Sex Instinct believes that Italy has always been more disposed to homosexualism than all other countries of Europe.

It is unnecessary to add that the Italian clergy of the eighteenth century played a great part in these sexual debaucheries. The enormous number of the clergy that overran the entire country speaks for itself. Joseph Goroni, whose interesting Memoirs have been verified as historically accurate, estimated that the Kingdom of Naples (without counting Sicily) had 60,000 monks, 3,000 lay brothers and 22,000 nuns in a population of 480,000. Those clergy were of an "unheard of ignorance" and of a monstrous débauche crapuleuse. The convents were scenes of most depraved orgies. The clergy was in addition so rich that it possessed one-third of all the property in the country. Casanova was escorted in all the Italian bordellos by the clergy. The horrible abuse of castrates for spiritual purposes is an additional proof of the extreme depravity of the Italian clergy.

Zoophilia and sodomy were also more rampant in Italy than in other countries. Marquis de Sade saw in the house of Princess Borgiose a regular parade of turkey-cocks, a great bull-dog, one ape and a goat used as Maîtres de plaisir! (Juliette IV, 262.) The shepherds in Sicily were one and all said to have preferred goats. Cardinal Bellarmin after 1624 had "immoral intercourse with women and four pretty goats." Casanova was replete with information on sexual affairs and conditions in Italy. In his own words "there was no kind of depravity that was not practiced in Italy, especially among the clergy." Marquis de Sade's description of Pope Pius VI and Queen Charlotte of Naples will prove interesting.

According to de Sade this Pope was a great roué (Juliette IV, 26 f.); Juliette had a long conversation with him on the immorality of the Popes (TV, 270, ff.) and called him "an old ape" (IV, 285). Later His Holiness held an equally long discourse and his conclusion was that murder was the "simplest and most legitimate action in the world" (IV, 370) and did not fall behind this assurance in his numerous orgies (V, I ff.).

Was Pope Pius VI such a man? History assents only partly. Pius VI (1775-1798), previously Giovanni Angelo, Prince Braschi, was one of the most beautiful men of his times, "tall, of noble appearance and rudulent complexion." He carried his royal wand coquettishly, liked to show his well-rounded lines and laid great emphasis on his harboring.

He had the clergy and the faithful worship him with a stupid veneration, but which often concealed an ironical attitude. Pius was regarded in the Vatican as a much bespotted man, outside, as a god. When he stopped into the street, the women cried: "Quanto è bello, quanto è bello!" Cardinal Bemis called him a lively child who had always to be watched. According to Casanova, he approved of prostitution; according to Gorani, he had many mistresses and even committed incest with his natural daughter. In all, a handsome man with too many vanities that he could not help but succumb to.

Marquis do Sade described Queen Charlotte of Naples as the perfect tribade (Juliette V, 258) and wrote of her charms "according to nature." She, as well as her husband, King Ferdinand IV, were distinguished by their high degree of passionate cruelty and often expressed themselves with a cold fervor on the great Neapolitan festival, at which 400 persons were killed (Juliette VI, 1).

Here Marquis de Sade actually described "according to nature." Gorani and Coletta as well as other authorities, agree that Charlotte was an actual Messalina and Ferdinand a suitable consort.

The relation of Charlotte to the famous Lady Emma Hamilton, the huntress of Nelson, was especially notorious. Coletta’s judgment on tribadic liaison is confirmed by all scientific investigators.

De Sade's description of orgies celebrated in the ruins of Pompey actually occurred (Juliette V, 34 ff.). The great mass-murder of which de Sade wrote is also an historical fact. On October 18, 1794, there was a great street fight in Naples, thirty men were killed and many hundreds were wounded.

All other Neapolitan conditions were actually as bad as represented in Juliette. According to Gorani the Roman Empire had never seen such moral corruption as in the court of Naples, no such Messalina as Queen Charlotte. Nelson said of Naples: "Not a woman is virtuous, not a turn deserves but to be hanged on the gallows." Again according to Consul, King Ferdinand IV's main passion was the torturing and killing of conies, cats and men; his next preference was his countless love-adventures, leaving Acton and the Queen to go on with their orgies without him.

We have seen that Marquis de Sade presented in the main a true account of the condition of cultural and sexual life in France and Italy and that his works have high value in regard to historical, literary, and philosophical proposes. In a later section we will give detailed analysis of his works.

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THE LIFE OF MARQUIS DE SADE

His Ancestors

It was the day when the sun's heavy rays
Grew pale in pity of his suffering Lord
When I fell captive, lady, to the gaze
Of your fair eyes, last bound in love's strong cord.

Who does not know this famous verse in praise of the first meeting with Laura, Madonna Laura, by Francesco Petrarch in his most famous Sonnet? What has this symbol of tender feeling to do in a book on Marquis de Sade? Laura, whom Petrarch met on that memorable Monday in the holy week in 1327 in the Church of Santa Chiara at Avignon, daughter of Audebert de Noues, was the wife of a Hugo de Sade, the ancestor of the family of de Sade. A strange and cruel jest in the history of literature: in the beginning a light from heaven, in the end, the darkness of hell!

Hugo de Sade, the husband of Laura, called the "old man," left many sons, one of whom, Paul de Sade, became the Archbishop of Marseilles and the confidant of the Queen, Jolande of Aragoine. He died in 1433 and left his wealth to the Cathedral of Marseilles.

Hugo, the third son of the first Hugo de Sade and the beautiful Laura, was the progenitor of the three branches of the house, Mazan, Eiguières and Tarascon. His oldest son, Jean de Sade, was a learned jurist and was named president of the first parliament of Provence by Louis II, King of Anjou. His brother, Elzear de Sade, was so powerful that Emperor Sigismund allowed him to use the imperial eagle on his coat of arms.

Pierre de Sade, of the branch of Eiguières, was the first governor of Marseilles (1565-1568). He cleaned the city of all evil elements.

Jean Baptiste de Sade, Bishop of Cavaillon, wrote many pious religious works. He died in December 21, 1667.

Joseph de Sade, Seigneur d’ Eiguières, born in 1684, was a very famous general and had notable victories both on land and sea. He held many important posts and received many decorations and honors. He died on January 29, 1761.

Hippolyte de Sade was also noted for his amazing sea exploits. Voltaire sent him a poem on the occasion of his marriage and Hippolyte replied using the same intricate verse scheme. He died in 1788.

Jacques François Paul Alphonse de Sade, the uncle of our Marquis de Sade, had a great influence upon him and hence must be described in more detail. He was born in 1705 and was the third son of Gaspar François de Sade. He devoted himself to the study of theology, became the general vicar of the Archbishop of Toulouse and Narbonne (1735) stayed for many years in Paris, where he experienced very profane and happy days at the side of the beautiful Madame de Ia Popelinière, the mistress of the Marshal of Saxony. He was an elegant writer, a spirited man, who gave himself up to "all frivolous pursuits of the century" and knew when to say farewell to "the vices of Paris" and return to the solitude of Vaucluse, where he pursued his studies on Petrarch and Laura and wrote many famous works on them as well as an excellent translation of all of Petrarch’s works.

If one thinks in terms of hereditary influence it is clear that Marquis de Sade inherited the properties of his uncle and not his father. It so happened that the uncle undertook the education of his nephew for some time. At any rate the nephew had both his main characteristics: a love for frivolity and for writing. For Marquis de Sade was an ardent bibliophile. And if the uncle cared for love only in his youth, the nephew made his life work the theory and practice of vice.

The father of Marquis de Sade, Count Jean Baptiste François Joseph de Sade, was born in 1700, entered the military service and became the ambassador to Russia (1730) and London (1733). He allied himself with the Bourbons by marriage with Marie Eléonore de MailIé, niece of Cardinal Richelieu and court lady of Princess Condé. The great Condé had also married a Maillé. Comte de Sade was appointed in 1738 the general-lieutenant for Bresse, Bugey and Valromey; he bought the property of Montreuil at Versailles and returned to private life. He died on January 24, 1767, and left many manuscripts of anecdotes, moral and philosophical ideas, as well as a large correspondence on the war during the years 1741-1746.

We would here like to mention the eldest son of Marquis de Sade, Louis Marie de Sade, born in 1764 at Paris. He was a famous army officer and fought in many campaigns. He was also noted for his writings, especially his History of the French Nation (1805), a scholarly investigation. He was killed by brigands in Otranto on June 9, 1809.

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The Childhood of Marquis de Sade

On the second day of June in the year 1740, one of the most remarkable men of the eighteenth century, indeed of modern times, was born in the home of the great Condé. Donatien Alphonse François, Marquis de Sade, Philosopher of Vice and professeur de crime, as Michelet and Taine call him, received the title of Comte after his father's death, but since he became notorious even before then the name Marquis de Sade clung to him. At the age of four he was sent to his grandmother at Avignon in sunny Provence, then a few years at Ebreuil with his uncle who carefully gave him his first lessons and prepared him for admittance in 1750 to the College Louis le Grand in Rue Saint Jacques in Paris. This institution was deemed the best in all France and gave the students the opportunity of a well-grounded and diverse education. They had to give public speeches, present plays, debate, etc. More care was taken of the mind than of the body which became defensively inured to the blows and floggings of the teacher.

There are many descriptions of the personality of de Sade at this tender age, but all are not wellfounded. According to Uzanne he was at this age an "adorable boy with delicate, pale face from which two great black eyes gleamed." But already there was an atmosphere of evil about the entire environment around him and was even more dangerous because of his almost "feminine charm" which inspired involuntary sympathy. Lacroix gives him a "graceful figure, blue eyes and blond, well-kept hair." A German author indulges himself in the following fantasy: "The young Vicomte was of such startling beauty that even in his early youth all the ladies that saw him stood stock still in rapt admiration. He also had a charming voice that pierced into the hearts of all women. He was always dressed in the latest of fashions, bright, colorful clothing that set off his appearance perfectly."

At any rate Marquis de Sade made as a youth a striking appearance. There exists unfortunately no authentic portrait of him. There are, of course, many pictures of him, mostly poor lithographs, but all have been proven to be false.

We also do not know in what mental condition Marquis de Sade left the College Louis le Grand. He is said to have been "an inveterate bookworm from earliest youth and early established a philosophic system on epicurean principles. He was also devoted to fine art and was a proficient musician, dancer, fencer and sculptor. He spent many days in the art galleries, especially those in the Louvre, Fontainebleau and Versailles." That de Sade loved music is confirmed by Lacroix and that he often visited art galleries is proven by his description of the collection of paintings in Florence (Juliette IV, 19 ff.).

Janin believes that when de Sade left school be was already a "fanatic of vice.” De Sade left school in the same year (1754) that Maximilian de Robespierre entered.

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Youth

The young Marquis then entered the regiment of Cheraux-Legers, became a sub-lieutenant in the king's regiment, lieutenant with the Carabiniers and finally captain of a cavalry regiment, serving in the seven-year-war with Germany. According to Lacroix he returned to Paris in 1766 where his father reproached him with "many youthful follies," but in 1763 de Sade was already in Paris. In May, 1880, a letter of the Marquis dated Vincennes, November 2, 1763, was found giving the date of his marriage, May 17, 1763. This is supported by the circumstance that the oldest son of the Marquis, Louis Marie de Sade, became a lieutenant in the Soubise Regiment in 1783. Since it is quite improbable that a boy of 16 could become a lieutenant Marquis de Sade must have returned to Paris to be married in 1763.

The history of the marriage has been described in detail by the bibliophile Jacob from contemporary accounts. Marciat is inclined to place great value from a psychological standpoint on this marriage for the moral deviations of Marquis de Sade. We cannot agree. De Sade's moral decline had already started. The "youthful follies" his father threw up at him, were a part of the general depravity of the French Army as a result of the seven-year-war. His father wanted the son married to rescue him from "the evil practices that flourished in the army during the war."

Montreuil, president of the Cour des aides, long a friend of the father, Marquis de Sade, had two daughters, 20 and 23 years of age, both pretty and well educated but differing in character and external figure. The elder, a brunette with black hair and dark eyes, was very majestic in appearance, very pious and passionless. The younger, a blue-eyed blonde, in spite of her youthful age appeared mature, was very intelligent, "of a heavenly disposition and charm" and was of a very passionate nature.

It had been agreed by the fathers that Marquis should marry the elder daughter and as luck would have it, he saw at his first visit to the home of President Montreuil only the younger daughter since her sister was ill. He immediately fell passionately in love with the younger who entranced him with her musical enthusiasm, her sweet voice and excellent technique at the harp. When de Sade met the older sister at his second visit, he felt only distaste for her and made known that he wanted to marry the younger. The president flatly refused and the Comte de Sade gave his son the choice between submission to his will or return to the army in an obscure post and disinheritance. So the Marquis, whose appeal "to the heart of the mother of the two girls found only a cold reply" was forced to marry the older sister. The younger had already returned de Sade’s love and had sought in vain to move her parents by cries and prayers. Lacroix declares in detail that de Sade had married the older sister only in thought of committing adultery with the younger and that he very probably had come to an understanding with both sisters. Madame Montreuil, who understood the nature of her son-in-law from the very beginning, placed the younger daughter in a convent to escape the threatening scandal.

It is undecided whether this marriage is the chief origin of the demoralization of Marquis de Sade, as Marciat believes. It assuredly explains the hatred of marriage that is found in all of the works of de Sade. That his wife gave him no cause is shown by Ginistry's Letters of Marquise de Sade. She is revealed in these letters as a good wife, always tender and loving to him, stood by his side in all the scandals that surrounded him, helped him in a thousand ways during his stay in prison, assisted him in his flight from prison, in short, showed him all the care and regards of a loving wife. Women were said to have been irresistibly drawn to him by the "air of vice" that surrounded him. Ginistry has shown in detail how the Marquis evaluated his wife's love. We give one of the letters from his wife: "You know the world much better than I and do what you Will. I am only the servant for your commands. You know that you can count on me as your best and dearest friend." De Sade wrote on the margin of this letter: "How can one lie so shamelessly?"

It is not strange that in the first year of the marriage after vain attempts by the Marquis to find the younger Montreuil, that he broke out into wild debaucheries, threw away his health and wealth with the assistance of the most notorious roués of his time and the "Coryphée of perfumed orgies" of the Duke of Fronsac and Prince Lamballe and did not disdain to use lackeys in wild saturnalias.

Initiated in the "secrets of the petites maisons and bordellos" he sought to outdo his companions by devising new, refined vices. Indeed there is a contemporary report that ascribes the idea of the Deer Park to Marquis de Sade. Even a few months after his first marriage de Sade, but 23 years old, was imprisoned in Vincennes because of great excesses in a petite maison. Here he was very retiring and quiet and made no trouble, only asked for a servant and for permission to enjoy some fresh air at intervals. In a letter dated November 2 he asked that his wife be informed of his imprisonment, without giving any reasons, and desired a priest to be sent to him. He closed with the words: "As unhappy as I am, I do not bewail my fate; for I desire divine punishment; to repent for my errors, to repair my wrongs will hence be my only desire." He must already have written an obscene book about this time. For be wrote in this letter of the "unfortunate book" which he wrote the preceding month. Which of his writings de Sade referred to is not clear. Cabanès believes that he referred to Justine but this is not borne out by present literary evidence and data.

Perhaps Marciat is correct in saying that this letter to the governor of the prison is written in a hypocritical style and intention, but it is also possible that this was one of the religious seizures that are so frequent with the perverse and libertines. There is at hand a letter to the prison chaplain, Griffer, on November 4, 1763: "We have a new prisoner at Vincennes who wishes to speak to a priest and has immediate need of your services although he is not sick. The person is Marquis de Sade, a young man of 23 years. Please visit him as soon as possible and I will be grateful if you report to me."

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His Prison Life

Paul Verlaine has written that the Marquis de Sade spent a great part of his life in prisons. Counting from his last sentence at Charenton he spent 27 years in 11 jails: of these 27 years 13 were in his old age. In the solitude of the prison he worked on the material for his books. We can describe the entire manhood of Marquis de Sade as an interrupted prison life of dramatic proceedings that spread his name and "fame" throughout the world.

The reason for his second imprisonment was one of the most talked of contemporary proceedings. It was the Keller Affair.

We have many different accounts of the Keller affair. The most important is that of Madame du Deffand in a letter written ten days after the incident to the English writer and statesman, Horace Walpole. She so wrote: "Here is a tragic and very strange story. A certain Comte de Sade, nephew of the abbé and Petrarch-student, met on Easter Tuesday a tall, well-built woman of 30 years who asked him for alms. He questioned her at length, showed much interest, promised to free her from her misery and make her the superintendent of his petite maison near Paris. The woman eagerly assented and was ordered for the next day. When she appeared the Marquis showed her all the corners and rooms of the house and finally brought her to the attic. There he ordered her to undress completely. She threw herself at his feet and begged him to spare her since she was a respectable woman. He threatened her with a pistol that he drew from his pocket and so forced her to obey. Then he bound her hands together and whipped her savagely. When she was completely covered with blood he applied salve to all her wounds and had her lay down. I do not know whether he gave her food and drink. At any rate he first saw her again an the following morning, looked at her wounds and saw that the salve had worked effectively. Then he took a knife and made cuts on her entire body, again placed salve on all her wounds, and left. The victim succeeded in testing her bonds and to free herself by means of a window to the street. It is not known whether she was injured by the fall. A great outcry arose. The police-lieutenant was informed. De Sade was imprisoned. What will happen further is not known; it may be that this will be all the punishment since he comes from highly respectable people. It is said that the reason for his dreadful action was to prove the value of his salve."

On the following day (April 13) Madame du Deffand wrote: "Since yesterday I have been informed of further details of this affair. The place in which he had his petite maison was Arceuil. He whipped and cut her on the same day and poured balsam on her wounds. Then he untied her hands, covered her and placed her on a good bed. As soon as she was alone she made a bold escape through the window. The police-lieutenant had de Sade imprisoned. The latter had the audacity to claim that his crime was a noble public service because he had thus shown to the public the miraculous working of a salve that immediately cured all wounds. She received a large sum of damages from him and he was therefore freed."

This is the most trustworthy report of the affair. The other accounts of the notable case deviate so greatly from one another that they befog rather than clear the details of the event. Janin wrote that Marquis de Sade had in Arceuil a petite maison where he held his orgies. The windows were covered with double shutters and the house was padded (matelassé) inside so that no sound or sight was granted the passerby. On an Easter morning, April 3, 1768, his servant and confederate brought there two common prostitutes; the Marquis himself, on his way to Arceuil, met a poor woman, Rosa Keller, widow of a certain Valentine, who was vying to earn her bread by prostitution. De Sade spoke to her, promised her food and sleep, addressed her very reservedly and tenderly, so that she rode in the carriage with him to Arceuil. The Marquis brought her to the second story of the dimly lighted house, where both prostitutes drunk and decorated with flowers, sat at a richly laden table. She was here gagged, entirely undressed, bound and beaten until she was "only a single wound" whereupon the orgy with the two prostitutes began. Then Janin described the flight of the victim, the riot, the imprisonment of the criminal who was found dead-drunk in a pool of "wine and blood."

Eulenberg gives practically the same account and adds that the sadism was evidently a preparatory act to incite de Sade for the girls.

Lacroix reports that Keller was whipped under obscene circumstances which Madame du Deffand did not describe in her letters to Walpole but that even the "greatest prudes told to each other all the scabrous details without any feminine modesty." He adds that Keller was cut in many places with a knife and that the wounds were sealed again with Spanish wax.

Rétif de la Bretonne, who knew the Marquis since 1768, gave in his Nights of Paris an entirely different account of the history of the "femme vivante dissequé." Marquis de Sade is said to have met Keller on the Place des Victoires, brought her to his house, placed her in an anatomy-room, where a great number of people were assembled, and made preparations to vivisect her. "Who wants this unfortunate being in the world?" said the Marquis in a grave voice. "She can do nothing and will serve to reveal to us the mysteries of the human structure." At a lull in the vivisection the woman is supposed to have freed herself and escaped. In her later story she claimed she saw a number of corpses in the house.

According to Cabanès, it was much simpler: Rosa Keller took one look at the room and company and fled to the street, nude as she was.

Finally there is an account by Brierre de Boismont which Manciat relates to the Keller affair but which we believe to be another case. Some years before the Revolution some people in a lonely street of Paris heard weak cries coming from the ground-floor of a house. They broke into it and found a nude girl, white as wax, upon a table. Blood streamed from cuts in all parts of the body. When the victim was revived she said that she had been enticed, beaten and cut by Marquis de Sade after which he satisfied himself on her. According to Brierre de Boismont this affair was hushed up, the victim receiving damages.

The Keller affair went off quite easily for de Sade. He was first imprisoned at the castle in Saumur but was released in six weeks after Rosa Keller had received damages of 100 louisdors.

He then again started on his debaucheries in the lowest spheres of the theatrical and literary world, associated with people of all sorts of callings, surrounded himself with prostitutes and gave free rein to his perverse inclinations. Montreuil finally had the police forbid the Marquis entrance to his castle, La Coste, when he was informed of the vices of his son-in-law by an actress (probably Beauvoisin of the Théâtre Français).

His wife who had asked for permission to visit the Castle Saumur in order to be near him, was foolish enough to inform him that her sister had finally left the convent. De Sade, whose desire for the younger sister had never diminished, hypocritically pretended indifference to his wife. But the first chance he was alone with his beloved, he fell at her feet, swore that he loved only her and that all the crimes had been the result of his unfortunate love. He threatened to take his life if his plea was not heard and he understood from the features of the silent young girl that he would receive a favorable answer. So, according to Lacroix, he conceived the plan of committing a strange crime, dazzle his sister-in-law with a suicide and thus get her to flee with him. The execution of this plan is the Marseilles Scandal (The Cantharidic Bonbon Orgy).

Bachaumont's secret memoirs has the following report under the date July 25, 1772: "I am told that Comte de Sade, who in 1768 caused great disorder by his crimes with a prostitute on whom he wanted to test a new cure, has just played in Marseilles a spectacle at first amusing but later horrible in its consequences. He gave a ball to which he invited many people and for dessert gave them very pretty chocolate pastilles. They were mixed with powdered 'spanish fly.' Their action is well known. All who ate them were seized by shameless ardor and lust and started the wildest excesses of love. The festival became an ancient Roman orgy. The most modest of women could not restrain themselves. The Marquis de Sade abused his sister-in-law and then fled with her to escape the threatening penalty of death. Many persons died as the result of the excesses and many others still suffer recurrent pains."

This account is plainly exaggerated. According to Lacroix who received his information from a trustworthy eyewitness, Marquis de Sade left with his servant for Marseilles. He had provided himself with cantharidic bonbons which he distributed in a public house. One prostitute sprang from a window and killed herself. The others, half nude, gave themselves to the most infamous debaucheries even in the midst of a great crowd. Two girls died as a result of the poison. De Sade read a letter from the council announcing the judgment of death upon him, showed this letter to his sister-in-law, called himself a monster and threatened to kill himself. She pleaded with him to flee and he enticed her to accompany him. After an hour they departed.

According to the Universal Biography this account is also false because no one died and only a few persons were "lightly harassed." Rétif de la Bretonne places the scene of the action in Paris in the Faubourg St Honoré. This is important since Rétif, who hated the Marquis, declared no one died as a result of this orgy.

It is hence quite certain that the affair did not lead to any deaths. Marseilles often saw such scenes which were part of the extravagant life of the ancien régime. According to authentic documents discovered by Cabanès the only actual facts in this famous affair were the visit of Marquis de Sade to one or a number of bordellos at Marseilles and the distribution of innocent bonbons to the prostitutes.

Marquis de Sade was sentenced by the Parliament in Aix on September 11, 1772, to death on account of sodomy and poisoning in contumaciam. The severity of this sentence was ascribed to the Chancellor Maupeou who wanted to make an example of de Sade. The death sentence was finally lifted on June 30, 1778. The Marquis had to pay a penalty of 50 francs; according to the author of Contemporary Biography he received only an admonition.

He had in the meantime fled with, his sister-in-law to Italy where he led a quiet life with her until after a short, severe illness she suddenly died and he fell back into his old habits. He was then seized in Piedmont and imprisoned in Fort Miolans on December 8, 1772. He conspired with his fellow-prisoner, the well-known de Songy (Baron de I'Allée), and they escaped on the night of May 1, 1773, with the aid of the Marquise and 15 men. They went to Geneva and from there to Italy where he met his wife. He soon changed her company for that of a mistress. He returned in 1777 to France where his wife and mother-in-law occupied themselves with his rehabilitation.

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Imprisonment in Vincennes and in the Bastille

After a short stay in Provence where he led a vicious life, de Sade was seized, brought to Paris and imprisoned in the chief tower of the fortress at Vincennes. In a letter to the governor he implored him to allow him to see his wife. Somehow he got in touch with her and through her efforts he secured a reversal of judgment. De Sade was brought to Aix where Counselor Siméom brilliantly defended him and brought about an annulment of judgment on June 30, 1778. But by the influence of his mother-in-law, who rightly feared de Sade's freedom more than his imprisonment, the judgment was made retroactive and he was brought back to Vincennes. He was guarded by Inspector Marais, already well known to us. At a stop in Lambesc on July 5, 1778, he succeeded in escaping, again with the aid of his wife. But he was shortly thereafter (September 7) discovered by Marais at his castle and this time brought back without mishap to Vincennes. In 1784, he was transferred to the Bastille.

From 1774 to 1790, in the flower of his manhood, Marquis de Sade sat in prison. There is no doubt that here he made the first outlines of his works.

In his first year at Vincennes he was placed in a cold, damp room containing only a bed. No other furniture. His food was pushed through a small bole. Books and writing materials were withheld. This he found extremely painful.

His wife, who clung to him with patient love, finally got permission to send him books, writing materials and some other useful items. She later received permission to visit him. But every visit started a scandal. The Marquise had to be protected from the anger and wild fits of her husband. Hence police-lieutenant Le Noir denied her visits on September 25, 1782. Not until July 13, 1786, was she again allowed to see the Marquis. As a precaution there were always people present to protect her from the violence of her husband.

Marciat finds in the life of Marquis de Sade before his imprisonment a tendency to be cruel, a hatred for all women and an untamable sexual lust. He rightly concludes that thirteen years of imprisonment, from his twenty-eighth to fifty-first year, must have wrought terrific havoc on his body and mind, since confinement made every satisfaction of his mighty sexual inclination impossible.

This is seen in his increased irritability due to his illness. It is proven by the endless mistrust of his wife as shown by the notations on his wife's letters, which ascribe sexual motives to all her actions. The prison made a deep impression on de Sade. In the solitude of the cell his fantasy roamed free in images of passion and cruelty. It could be his only substitution for reality. As soon as he received books he sought in them all the possible examples and models for his vicious presentations which he placed as a record in his many manuscripts. This also was plainly a means of escape for his tired mind and body. He wrote and read incessantly while in prison.

Unfortunately the diaries kept by de Sade from 1777 to 1798, 13 books, were burnt so that an important aid for knowledge of his mental state was lost forever. He had marked down in his diaries everything that he had "said, done, heard, read, wrote, felt, or thought for 13 years." Only his works are left for a judgment of his personality.

It is interesting to note that while in prison the Marquis kept a correspondence with some of his former mistresses. There recently came up at auction some of these letters, filled with passionate remembrances.

By chance, Mirabeau was imprisoned at Vincennes at this time and, curiously enough, he also wrote his obscene works there. A strange effect of prison life!

There exists a remarkable letter by Mirabeau on his relations with the Marquis. "De Sade yesterday set the prison in an uproar and without the slightest provocation called me most infamous names. I was permitted by Rougemont (the governor of the prison) to walk about the court, while his request to do the same was denied. He asked me for my name so that at his release he could cut off my ears. I lost my patience and told him: 'My name is that of an honorable man, who never was imprisoned for strangling women.' He was silent and since then has never opened his mouth to me. It is dreadful to be in the same place with such a monster.”

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Participation in the Revolution and Literary Activity

The first scenes of the Revolution took place before the imprisonment of Marquis de Sade, who from youth had great sympathy for the movement. On July 2, 1789, before the storming of the Bastille, he halted the passersby on Rue Saint Antoine by means of a speaking trumpet, and soon had a great crowd listening to his loud insults of the governor of the Bastille. As the result of this incident Marquis de Sade was imprisoned at Charenton on July 4 and so missed the storming of the Bastille which took place on the fourteenth. He was freed from Charenton on March 29, 1790, by demand of the people. His first act was to hasten the separation from his wife. He also became estranged from his family; his sons left the country at the beginning of the Revolution. According to Lacroix he took a mistress who acted the hostess at his home. He lived first in the Rue Pot de Fer, near Saint Sulpice, later in Rue Neuve des Mathurins, Chausée d'Antin, No. 20. According to most reliable reports the Marquis was in a bad way as far as material wealth went. There exists a letter written in the year III of the Revolution, in which de Sade asked for a position as librarian or museum-conservator because he was completely without means, having lost his literary property at the storming of the Bastille, his lands at Marseilles by confiscation. There is another letter written in the year VI of the Revolution in which he asked payment for a poem he wrote and the return of a comedy. Soon after his release from Charenton he began to write a great number of comedies which he sold to the numerous theatres. For a couple extra louisdors he himself would play a part.

During the Revolution de Sade’s chief works appeared one after the other in quick succession. A year after his release, 1791, there appeared Justine, which was written for the most part in prison. The first edition is just erotic; those later, especially the last edition of 1797, contain all the bloody details. Marciat rightly believes that the influence of the milieu, the mighty events in the Revolution, called forth these later changes. Another novel written in the Bastille was Aline and Valcour which appeared in 1793. Then followed in 1795 Philosophy in the Boudoir and in 1797 as a crowning glory the double publication of Justine and Juliette. His 120 Days of Sodom was also written in the Bastille in 1785 but was not discovered until 1904. Until 1804, the year of his new imprisonment, the Marquis' pen was sterile, a fact which will later be explained.

Much has been made of the fact that Marquis de Sade at times denied the authorship of his works. But that signified nothing. It was a common practice of contemporary writers; for example, Voltaire and Mirabeau. Again, de Sade probably did not care to sit in prison any longer. At any rate he acknowledged to his personal friends that he was the author and presented to them a deluxe edition of Justine and Juliette in ten volumes.

We are scantily supplied with information on the private life of Marquis de Sade during the Revolution. One can only conclude from his earlier affairs that he resumed his previous vicious life. When Marquis de Sade was again seized in 1801 his bedroom was found full of large pictures representing the "principal obscenities of the novel, Justine." Many stories are told of finding instruments of torture in his bedroom. He had his walls decorated with pictures of all sorts of enemas and nude figures in all kinds of postures.

Especially notable is the political activity of Marquis de Sade during the French Revolution. He had clearly and early foretold its appearance. He said in Aline and Valcour, written in the Bastille in 1788: "A great Revolution is being prepared in this country. It has become tired of the crimes of our rulers, their cruelties, debaucheries and stupidities. It is tired of despotism and is getting ready to break its chains." In the solitude of his cell he had time to develop systematically all the Revolutionary principles, especially the fight against God, empire and priests.

The "martyr of the Bastille" also took a lively part in the leading incidents of the Revolution. He became secretary to the Section des Piques, also called Section de Place Vendôme and Section de Robespierre. In the disorders of September 2, when everyone remained at home, he thought he would be safest in the bosom of his section. So he left his home in Rue Neuve des Mathurins and went in the evening to the Place Vendôme. The friends of Robespierre were not there but in the Jacobin club. De Sade was recognized only as a man who had been in prison under the ancien régime. "Would you like to be our secretary?" "Gladly." He took the pen.

De Sade was an enthusiastic admirer of the bloodthirsty Marat and after his murder by Charlotte Corday, delivered his funeral oration, all filled with revolutionary phrases and celebrating "holy and divine freedom" as the only goddess of France. But all are agreed in saying that the Marquis was secretly despised and hated by the members of his section as well as by the other revolutionaries. According to Cabanès he was still called Marquis by his companions and adds that he was the only living Marquis under the rule of Robespierre and Fouquier. He was probably a republican not from political conviction but rather from his war against justice and law in general, because of his théorie du libertinage. He was the philosopher of vice but not a passionate politician. He developed a theory of absolute evil but in life he was very gentle, prudent, and full of virtuous phrases, which did not fail to please the great terrorists. A paradoxical action gave them the excuse of proceeding against him. He saved his wife's parents from the scaffold, for which he was condemned as a "moderate" and on December 6, 1793, upon the command of the Comité de la Sûreté Générale he was imprisoned in turn at Madelonettes, Carmes and Picpus; he, after a year of prison, finally received his freedom through Rovère, to whom he sold his property at La Coste. He had money for a while, once more.

De Sade went back to his literary activity which was hindered under the Directory. Indeed he had presented to each of the members a special deluxe edition of Justine and Juliette. At that time all the notorious works of Marquis de Sade were publicly sold. They were found in all bookstores and catalogues. A great capitalist financed the sale. This lasted until 1801. In the preceding year Marquis de Sade had published a novel Zoloë and Her Two Acolytes, a pamphlet against Josephine de Beauharnais (Zoloë), the ladies Tallien (Laurenda) and Visconti (Volsange), Bonaparte (Baron d'Orsec), Barres (Vicomte de Sabar), a senator (Fessinot), etc., all carrying on the most shameless infamies in a petite maison.

On account of this diatribe de Sade was seized on March 5, 1801. Without being legally tried he was brought to the prison of Sainte Pélagie, because a "trial would have provoked great scandal," and because the punishment was "even too mild for the crime." The prefect complained that de Sade seduced the young people in Sainte Pélagie and he was sent to Bicêtre. Upon the pleas of his family he was brought to Charenton on April 26, 1803. All his manuscripts and books were again confiscated. The practice of setting people in prison without trials was common in the rule of Napoleon. The poet Desorgues who wrote a chanson against Napoleon with the refrain

Oh, the grand Napoleon
Is a grand chameleon.

was interned in Charenton where he died in 1808. Many other authors met the same fate. De Sade indeed came off lucky. Buckle cites many similar fates in his History of Civilization in England.

We possess many interesting accounts of Marquis de Sade's stay in the insane asylum at Charenton. The most notable is the report of the famous Dr. Royer Collard on the Marquis in 1808. We give it verbatim:

Paris, August 2, 1808.

The Chief Doctor of the Hospital at Charenton to his Excellency, the Senator and Police Minister:

Sir:

I have the honor to appeal to your authority far assistance in an affair that threatens the entire order in my home.

We have here a man whose bold immorality has made him only too well known and whose mere presence effects the greatest evils. I speak of the author of that shameful novel Justine. This man it not mentally ill. His one delirium is that of vice—and this cannot be aided in an insane asylum. He has to be placed in the severest isolation to protect others from his outbreaks and to separate him from all circumstances that might increase his horrible passion. Our place as Charenton does not fulfill any of these conditions. De Sade enjoys too great freedom here. He can have intercourse with a great number of patients and convalescents either in his or their rooms. He has the right to walk in the park and often meets patients there. He preaches to them his criminal theories and lends them books. Finally we received a report that he is living with a woman whom he claimed was his daughter.

That is not all. They were so improvident at the asylum that they had a theatre erected for the performance of comedies and did not think at the harmful effects of such a tumultuous proceeding upon the mind. De Sade is the director of this theatre. He presents the plays, hands out the rôles and directs them. He is also the asylum poet. For example, at the dinners of the director he writes an allegorical piece in his honor or at least some couplets in his praise. I ask your excellency to remedy such a horrible condition. How can such things be in an insane asylum? Such crimes and immorality! Will not the patients who daily meet this man be also infected by his corruption and does not the mere thought of his presence in this house awaken the fantasy of those who do not see him?

I sincerely hope that your excellency will find these reasons imperative enough to find another resort than Charenton for de Sade. An order for him not to associate with the patients will not be sufficient as it will be only a temporary aid. I do not ask for him to be sent back to Bicêtre but I believe that a strong castle would he better fitted for him than an asylum with its many opportunities for the satisfaction of his degenerate desires.

Royer Collard, MD

This report had no results. Marquis de Sade remained in Charenton. There is a justification for the conjecture that he preferred this to a prison. He was the especial favorite of the director of Charenton, Abbé Coulmier. He was thus allowed the greatest possible freedom. Royer Collard's repeated complaints on the theatre finally resulted in its removal. But in its place were substituted concerts and balls! This he also made many protests against, but it was not until May 6, 1813, that they were stopped.

We have many impressions of the personality of Marquis de Sade during his stay at Charenton but they are none too trustworthy. Janin describes the perverted influence he had on the patients and the tender sympathy he showed to young and pretty girls. Lacroix writes that all the persons he met gave the best reports of him. Nodier recalls that he “spoke politely, solemnly and respectfully of all that was deserving of respect." But the "grace and elegance" were not borne out by his appearance for he was enormously fat. His tired eyes, though, would at times suddenly light up in excitement. According to the Universal Biography de Sade retained his perverted habits until his death.

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His Death

Marquis de Sade died at the age of 74 on December 2, 1814, at 10 o'clock in the evening, easily and quietly as a result of a long illness which had nevertheless not impaired his vigor. De Sade wrote of his illness in a letter to Napoleon dated June 17, 1808. He bitterly complained that he had led a most unhappy existence for 20 years in three different prisons. He was 70 years old, almost blind, suffered from gout, and had very severe pains in the breast and stomach. This could be confirmed by the doctors at Charenton. He therefore begged His Majesty to release him. The archives at Charenton state that the Marquis had been ill for some time from "liver trouble as a result of asthma." The end was sudden: he became severely ill two days before his death. His son, Armand de Sade, was present and burnt all the "dangerous papers" of his father. He was scarcely dead when "his skull was seized as an invaluable booty as if with one stroke the secret of the strange constitution would be discovered." The skull was like all others. It was a notable mixture of vice and virtue, of crime and honor, of hate and love. It was small, well formed and very like a woman's.

After his death the following testament was found:

I forbid my body to be dissected under any pretext whatsoever and desire most stringently that it shall remain in the room in which I died for 48 hours in a wooden coffin to be made only after the expiration of this time. The timber merchant, Lenormand, in Versailles, shall be ordered to come with his wagon and take my body to the forest on my property near Epernon where without any ceremony I should be buried on the first coppice that is seen from the great path in the old part of the castle. The grave should be dug by the tenant at Malmaison under the direction of Lenormand who shall not leave until all the arrangements are completed. My friends and relatives who wish to show me this last mark of love for me may be present. The ground over my grave should be sprinkled with acorns so that all traces of my grave shall disappear so that, as I hope, this reminder of my existence may be wiped from the memory of mankind.

Written at Charenton Saint Maurice in sound mind and health on January 30, 1806.

D. A. F. Sade.

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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!"