“Granted a choice of partner, you’ll every time select a married person; it being to the advantage of all concerned to keep the thing a secret, you’ll have less to fear by way of indiscretion; but preferable even to these individuals are those in your hire. I’ve already told you so: they’re beyond comparison the best, you can change them like linen; variety, multiplicity are the two most powerful vehicles of lust. Fuck with the maximum possible number of men; nothing so much amuses, so much heats the brain as profusion; no one in this crowd will be unable to afford you some new pleasure, be it but the pleasure of one conformation or gesture the more, and, my child, you know nothing at all if all you are acquainted with is one prick. Were you to be served by an army, it could make no difference to your husband: you’ll agree that he won’t be more dishonored by the thousandth than he was by the first, indeed, he’ll be less dishonored, for it does seem that one somehow effaces the other. Furthermore, if he is reasonable, the husband is always much more prone to excuse libertinage than love; the one offends personally, the other assumes the look of a mere flaw in your physical make-up. ’Tis altogether possible he have a flaw in his, it’s all one; as for you and your principles, either you’re no philosopher, or you must necessarily feel that, once the first step has been taken, one commits no graver sin as one accomplishes the ten thousandth than at the start. Thus, there remains the matter of the world at large. Well, the public belongs entirely to you. Everything depends upon the art of feigning and the other of imposture; if you are skilled in each—and your main task is to become so—you’ll do absolutely whatever you wish, and to both the public and your husband. Never cease to bear in mind that it’s not an error that ruins a woman, but the uproar occasioned by it, and that ten million crimes that remain unknown are less dangerous than the least slip which glares in the eye of everybody.
“Be modest in your dress: dash and finery do much more to exhibit a woman than can her twenty lovers; a more or less elegant hair style, a more or less costly gown, none of that furthers happiness; but frequent, extensive, and intensive fucking works wonders therefor. With a prudish or humble air, you’ll never be suspected of anything; were someone to dare criticize your character, a thousand champions will spring to break lances in your defense; the public, lacking enough time to pursue its investigations very far, never judges save by appearances: it costs hardly anything at all to wear those it wants to see. Give it satisfaction and when you need it, the public will be on your side.
“If you have sons, then when they are grown remove them from your immediate vicinity: they have only too often appeared in the role of betrayers to their mothers. Should they tempt you, resist the desire; the discrepancy in age is sure to breed a disgust, its victim will be you. There’s nothing very piquant to that variety of incest, and it can have a negative influence upon much solider delights; frigging yourself with your daughter, if she pleases you, presents many fewer risks. Include her in your debauches and she’s less apt to discuss them in public.
“And now I think I had better add a word of conclusion to all this advice: the self-restraint some women exercise means a loss to society, a curse to society; there ought to be a form of punishment for the absurd, wrongheaded creatures who, for whatever the motive, fancy that by preserving their loathsome virginity they are acquitting themselves brilliantly in this world and readying themselves for laurels in the next.
“Youthful, appetizing exemplars of the female sex,” Delbène went on panegyrically, “’tis to you I’ve until now addressed myself, ’tis to you I say once again: devil take this uncivilized virtuousness which fools dare confection into an ornament for you to wear, give up the outlandish, the barbaric habit of immolating yourselves upon the altars of this grotesque virtue whose pitifully meager rewards will never offset the immense sacrifices you shall be called upon to make in its name. And by what earthly right do men require so much self-abnegation in you, when they deny themselves so precious little? Do you not plainly see that it’s they who’ve concocted the rules and that they were drawn up under the oversight of their pride, their insolent pride or their intemperance?
“Oh, my companions, I say it unto you: Fuck! you were born to fuck. To be fucked Nature created you; let bawl the mad, let blither and snivel the judges, let whine and gripe the hypocrites; they have their own reasons for condemning those delicious heats, those joyous frenzies which confer all their charm upon your days. Unable to wring more from you, envious of all you can give to others, they heap discredit upon you and censure because they have nothing further themselves to expect and because they are no more in a position to ask you for anything; but go consult the children of love and of pleasure, go put the question to the whole of that society, and myriad voices will answer you in chorus: you will be exhorted to fuck, because Nature would that you fuck, and it is a crime against Nature not to fuck. Do not be intimidated by that empty epithet whore, an idiotic slut is she who declines the glory of that title. A whore is a lovable creature, young, voluptuous, who, less interested in her reputation than in the welfare of others, on those grounds alone merits every praise. The whore is the beloved child of Nature, the abstinent girl is Nature’s execration; the whore is deserving of altars, the vestal of the stake. And what more potent insult can a girl fling in Nature’s teeth than to waste herself by flagrantly keeping, and in defiance of all the injury that may thereby result to her own self, an illusory virginity whose entire value derives from nothing but the most preposterous, the vilest, the meanest of all irrationalities? Fuck, my friends, fuck, I repeat, with effrontery sneer at the counsel of those who aim to make you captive in the despotic irons of a virtue whence no conceivable good ever has or ever shall come. Forswear them forever, all modesty and reserve; make haste to fuck, be quick, there is only one age for discharging, take advantage of it. For time flies. If you allow the roses to fade, you’ll reap a whirlwind of remorse and rue; and the day may come when, belatedly possessed of the desire to have a petal plucked, you’ll find no lover who wants it—and then, and then you’ll never forgive yourself for having let go by those moments when love would have welcomed your favors. But, do you say, such a girl renders herself infamous, and the weight of this infamy is insupportably onerous? Can such a trifling objection be made in good faith? Let’s be frank then: prejudice is the sole author of infamies: how many acts are so qualified by an opinion forged out of nought but prejudice! The vices of theft, of sodomy, of poltroonery, for example—are these not dubbed infamies? and that shan’t prevent you from admitting that, viewed through Nature’s optic, they are completely legitimate, and whatever is lawful cannot possibly be infamous. For it is impossible that something urged by Nature be anything but lawful. Well, without—for the time being—subjecting these vices to a searching scrutiny, is it not certain that every man has been infused with the idea of acquiring wealth? That being so, the means he employs to become rich are just as natural as they are lawful. Similarly, are not all men given to seeking the greatest amount of delight in their pleasure-taking? Well, if sodomy is the unfailing means to this acknowledged end, sodomy is no infamy. Finally, does not everyone sense a desire to preserve himself, has he not been blessed with that instinct? Unto self-preservation poltroonery is one of the surest means; hence ’tis no infamy, poltroonery, and whatever may be our baseless prejudices concerning any of these three vices, it is clear that not one of them can be regarded as infamous, since all three are natural. It is likewise with libertinage as practiced by individuals of our sex. Since nothing so well serves Nature, this libertinage cannot possibly be infamous.
“But let’s for a moment suppose that this infamy authentically exists: what intelligent woman’s career is going to be hampered thereby? What the devil does she care if others consider her infamous? If in fact she is not so viewed by rational eyes, and if it is impossible that any infamy exist in the case she is in, she’ll laugh at the injustice and at the lunacy of her neighbors, she’ll cede as willingly as ever to Nature’s proddings, a
nd she’ll cede to them more confidently and more easy in her mind than would someone less libertine: for everything thwarts, everything affrights, stays, diverts her who trembles lest she lose her good name; while she who has already bade her reputation farewell, having nothing further to lose, being out of danger and fearlessly surrendering herself to whatever she wishes to do, must necessarily be the happier.
“We may go farther still. The act whereunto this woman gives herself, the habits into which her proclivities lead her, were she truly infamous from the standpoint of the rules and regulations current in the area where she lives, if, I say, this act, whatever it be, is so vital to her felicity that she cannot forego it without becoming unhappy, then would she not be mad to renounce the intention of committing it whatever the risk of covering herself with infamy? For the burden of this imagined infamy will not discomfort her, will never affect her so much as not indulging in her favorite sin; the former suffering will only be intellectual, capable of registering itself only upon certain minds, whereas what she deprives herself of is a pleasure accessible to everybody. Thus, as between two indispensable evils one must necessarily elect the lesser, the woman we are speaking of must unarguably brave the charge of infamy, and continue to live as she did before, in defiance of idle criticism; for, at worst, she’ll lose extremely little by incurring this ill fame, while, at best, she’ll lose a great deal by foregoing what will earn her a wicked renown. She must therefore accustom herself to opprobrium, learn to outstare it, she must achieve supremacy over this puny antagonist, dominate it, from earliest childhood she must habituate herself to blushing at nothing, to spurning the modesty, to vanquishing the shame which will always wreak havoc with her pleasures and add nothing to her happiness.
“Once having attained this high level of development, she’ll make an astonishing but nonetheless eminently true discovery: that the stings and nettles of this infamy she dreaded have metamorphosed into goads to pleasure, and that, far from wishing to avoid these hurts, she’ll wound herself most voluntarily, she’ll redouble her efforts to seek out ways to feel a delectable pain, and it shan’t be long before she carries things to the point of desiring to broadcast evidence of her turpitude. Observe the ravishing libertine! the sublime creature wants to libertinize herself before the whole wide world, shame is nought to her, she flouts horror and scandal, her single complaint is that to her errors there are not witnesses enough. And the remarkable thing is that only now does she truly come to know the pleasure which heretofore was wrapped in the anesthetizing cloud of her prejudices; that she be transported to the ultimate extreme of drunkenness, she had first to destroy every last obstacle preventing these needles from penetrating to the agonizing delight of her heart. But, sometimes you hear it said, but there are awful things, there are things which defy common sense, that conflict with all the seeming laws of Nature, of conscience, of decency, things that seem not only properly to arouse a general horror but such as to be unable to procure one any pleasure. … Surely, in the eyes of fools; but there are certain minds, my friends, certain spirits which, having rid these things of what makes them in appearance horrible, and doing so by annihilating the prejudice which caused filth and wrong to adhere to them, behold these same things as nought but the occasion of mighty joy, and these delights are all the keener the greater the gulf between these things and approved behavior, the more radically they countercarry every practice, and the more sternly they are proscribed by vulgar law. Strive to cure such a mind in such a woman: try it, I defy you. By pitching her soul to this tone, the throbbing vibrations that assail her become so voluptuous and so intense that she is blind to all else save the need to march ever onward along the divine path she has chosen. The more appalling the thing to be done, the more it pleases her, and you’ll never hear her complain that she lacks the mettle and the will to endure the brand of infamy—the infamy she cherishes and whose terrible heat only further raises the temperature of her pleasures. This explains to you why she-devils of this breed are forever gone in quest of excess and why they are stung by no pleasure save when ’tis spiced with crime; no longer visualizing crime as the vulgar do, in whose sight it is repugnant, with other eyes they behold another vision, and it is one of infinite charm. The habit of stopping at nothing, of overcoming every barrier causes them ever and again to find eminently easy and good what was formerly forbidding and bad; and, progressing from extravagance to extravagance, they attain at length to monstrosities … monstrosities whose execution lies a step ahead of them, because these women must perpetrate real crimes to obtain real spasms of joy, and because, unfortunately, there is no such thing as a real crime, do what you will, desire what you please. Thus, always mounting in the track of the speeding star, eternally distanced by desire, ’tis not that these women perform too few horrors, but that there are too few horrors to be performed. Take care not to believe, my friends, that the delicacy of our sex somehow serves as lee shelter to the wind of wickedness: more sensitive than men, we are quicker than they to sense the storm, more eager to heed the high cry of wrong. Thus ’tis unimaginable what we do, after what excesses we lust, men have no idea what a woman is capable of when Nature goes unchecked, when religion’s voice is throttled, when the law’s sway over her is broken.
“Frequently we hear the passions declaimed against by unthinking orators who forget that these passions supply the spark that sets alight the lantern of philosophy; who forget that ’tis to impassioned men we owe the overthrow of all those religious idiocies wherewith for so long the world was plagued. ’Twas nought but the fires of emotion cindered that odious scare, the Divinity, in whose name so many throats were cut for so many centuries; passion alone dared obliterate those foul altars. Ah, had the passions rendered man no other service, is this one not great enough to make us indulgent toward the passions’ mischievous pranks? Oh, my dears, steel yourselves to brave the aspersions they’ll always be ready to cast upon you, and so as to know how to scorn infamy as it must be scorned, familiarize yourselves with all that can attract the charge, multiply your little misdeeds; ’tis they that will gradually habituate you to braving come what may … that will crush remorse in you before the seed of remorse can germinate. As basis and rule to your conduct adopt that which seems in nicest agreement with your penchants; trouble yourselves not to inquire whether or no that concurs with our drab conventions, for you would be most unfair to your own selves were you, by depriving yourselves, to punish yourselves for not having been born in a clime where the thing is applauded. Heed only what most flatters or delights you, ’tis this suits you best, all else not at all. Be imperturbably indifferent to the style in vices and virtues that’s the rage today in town; vice, virtue, the words have no real signification, they’re arbitrary, interchangeable, express only what is locally and temporarily in vogue here and there. Once again, be firm in your conviction that infamy soon transforms itself into voluptuousness. I remember having read somewhere, in Tacitus, I believe, that infamy is the highest and last of pleasures for those who are jaded by the excessive use they have made of all others; a most dangerous pleasure, I believe, since one must find a means, a puissant means, for reaping enjoyment from this species of self-abandon, from this sort of degradation of sentiment whence every other vice is born; since it withers the soul, or rather robs it of every atmosphere save the pale of utter corruption, and that without leaving the tiniest outlet to remorse. Indeed, it absolutely extinguishes remorse; better, it works a thoroughgoing change in remorse: for now we have a person who has lost all esteem save for what gives rise to remorse, and who much amuses himself with reviving this feeling in order to relish the pleasure of quashing it, and who, step by step, accedes to the most unheard-of excesses; and the ease with which he arrives at these excesses is only increased by the number of transgressions he must commit and the quantity of virtues he must contemn preparatorily; and so many obstacles over-leapt are so many voluptuous episodes, often more stimulating to a perfidious imagination than is the very atr
ocity he designs. What is most wonderful about it all is that he believes himself happy—and is. If, reversibly, the virtuous individual is happy too, happiness necessarily ceases to be a situation every person can achieve by behaving well; happiness is thus proven to depend uniquely upon our individual organization, and may be as readily encountered in the triumph of virtue as in the abyss of vice…. But what is this I say? in the triumph of virtue…. Ah, has virtue this maddening sting? What chill, toughened soul could ever be cheered by virtue’s meager rewards? No, my friends, no, virtue shall never make for our happiness. He lies who pretends to have found happiness there; he seeks to have us call happiness what are rather pride’s illusions. For my part, this do I declare to you: that with all my soul I detest, I hate virtue, I despise it today as in the past I did cherish it, and to the joys I taste in outraging virtue constantly I’d like to add the supreme delight of assassinating it in every heart where it has an abode. How often, freighted with images, my accursed brain waxes hot, so hot that I want nothing but to be drowned in the infamy I’ve just portrayed for you! Yes, I’d have it known, inscribed, permanently decided that I’m a whore; I’d like to forswear, rend this veil, break these disgraceful oaths which prevent me from prostituting myself publicly, from soiling myself like the lowest of the low. I confess to you that I’m capable of envying the fate of those heavenly creatures who ornament street corners and slake the filthy lust of whoever strolls by; they squat in vile degradation, in ordures and horror do they wallow; dishonor is their lot, they are insensible to it, to everything … what fortune! and why should we not labor thus to become, all of us? In the whole world is not the happiest being he in whom there beats a heart rock-hardened by passions … who has by passion been brought to where he is immune to all save pleasure? And what need has he to be susceptible of any other sensation? Ah, my friends, were we advanced to that degree of turpitude, we’d no longer have the look of vileness, and we’d make gods of our errors rather than denigrate ourselves! ’Tis thus Nature points out to us all the gate to happiness: let us go that way.