We walked away into the night, under a sky filled with stars. We had abandoned the plunder to our lackeys who were thereby to earn some thirty thousand francs from its resale.
From Paestum we retraced our steps to Vietri, where we boarded a small vessel for Capri. It sailed an easy course, tacking frequently close in to the land, and enabling us to miss none of the picturesque sites along the sublime coast of that peninsula. We put in for lunch at Amalfi, ancient Etruscan town enjoying an incomparable location. After that we landed again at Point Campanella, having followed a shore that remained extraordinary every mile. Of the Surrentines who lived here long ago we found only the remains of a temple of Minerva. The weather being fair, we set sail and in two short hours, passing the three little islands in the Galli group, we entered the port of Capri.
The island of Capri, which must measure some ten miles around, is girt on all sides by the highest crags. The one harbor is the little port on the landward side, facing the Bay of Naples. In shape the island describes an ellipse four miles long by two at its greatest width; it is divided into two parts, upper and lower Capri. A prodigiously high mountain makes for the division, acting as the Apennines do in Italy. Communication between the two parts is by a stairway of one hundred and fifty steps hewn in the face of sheer rock.
Tiberius seldom climbed them; it was the lower part he preferred, where the weather is more temperate, and it was there he built his pleasure domes and his palaces, one of which is, however, perched on the tip of a rock rising so far above the water that the eye can barely discern the fishermen’s boats moored below. That particular palace served as the theater for his most piquant lewd revels. ’Twas from the summit of a tower poised on a spur of rock, and whose vestiges are still to be seen, that fierce Tiberius used to have children of both sexes flung to their death, once they were of no further use to his lust.
“Fuck the devil,” Clairwil muttered, “how he must have discharged watching the victims of his libertinage plummet from these heights. Oh, dear angel,” she went on, hugging me to her, “he was a voluptuous rascal, that Tiberius. What if we were to look for something to throw off this precipice as the Emperor used to do?”
And it was then that Borghese, guessing what was on our minds, pointed to a little girl of nine or ten who was tending a she-goat a short distance away.
“Just what we want,” said Clairwil. “But our guides?”
“They may be sent home. We need simply tell them that we have decided to take a nap here.”
No sooner said than done; we find ourselves alone. Borghese herself fetches over the child.
“Who are you?” we ask her.
“Poor and destitute,” the little darling replies humbly. “This goat is all we have and mother is sick and always in bed and if it weren’t for the goat and for me, she would surely die.”
“Why, this is a rare stroke of good luck,” said the infernal Clairwil. “We must tie the two of them together, goat and girl, and send them over the edge.”
“Quite right, but not before we amuse ourselves,” said I. “I for one am dreadfully curious to find out how this child is made; health, freshness, innocence glow in her young charms: it would be ridiculous not to divert ourselves with them.”
And will you believe it, my friends? Yes, we had the cruelty to take that child’s maidenhead, which was accomplished with a pointed stone; to flay her with brambles which we found growing near at hand; next, to bind her to her nanny and to push them both over the edge of the precipice, and to watch them fall and disappear into the sea; and what lent their acuteness to our three discharges was the knowledge that the murder was twofold, since we were also causing the death of the child’s infirm mother who, deprived of the resources represented by the two objects we had just destroyed, would surely not fail to perish in her turn.
“That is how I like my horrors,” I declared to my friends; “either make them thorough and extensive, or refrain from undertaking them at all.”
“Yes,” Clairwil agreed, “but it would have been good to have asked the child where her mother lives. For it would have been delightful to see her expire from want.”
“Roguish thing!” I said to my friend, “I wager there is not a person on earth able to boast of your capacities for refining a crime.”
And we continued our promenade.
Most eager to learn whether the happy inhabitants of this island resembled, through vigor as regarded the men, through charms as regarded the women, Naples’ divine breed, we betook ourselves to see the Governor, and delivered to him a personal letter from Ferdinand.
Having read it, “I am surprised,” said he, “that the King could have thought to issue me such instructions. Can he be unaware that my position here is more that of a spy set to watch these people than of a representative of the Crown? Capri is a republic of which the royally appointed governor is merely the president. By what right would His Majesty have me compel these citizens, men and women, to surrender themselves to you? A despot’s orders, these, and. Ferdinand knows full well he is not the despot here. I too am fond of all such things, but find little opportunity to indulge in them hereabouts, where there are no public whores and precious few idlers or valets; nevertheless, as, according to what Ferdinand writes, you pay liberally, I am going to propose to a merchant’s widow of my acquaintance that she let you have her three daughters. She likes money and I do not doubt but that she will be seduced by yours. These daughters, born on Capri, are one of them sixteen years of age, another seventeen, the eldest twenty; we have nothing more beautiful upon the entire island; what is your offer?”
“A thousand ounces a head,” said my friend, “funds disbursed for our pleasures’ sake do not come out of our own pockets, and to you, Governor, we promise an equal sum. But in addition we must get us three males.”
“Shall I receive the same fee for them?” asked the greedy public officer.
“Certainly. We are not people to higgle over such matters.”
And the dear man having readied everything for the lewd scene in the offing, asked nothing more in the way of favors save leave to watch it.
The girls were in truth splendid; the boys, healthy, vigorous, and endowed with magnificent pricks. After having had our thorough fill of them, we mated them with our three virgins; we assisted in the deflowerings; however, the plucking of the rose was all we allowed them; they were then obliged to take refuge in our asses, they had permission to discharge nowhere else. The spectacle had the poor Governor in an ecstasy, and he applauded it by masturbating nearly to unconsciousness: for these orgies were prolonged throughout the entire night, and in such a country we dared not pass the time otherwise than in anodyne ceremonies. We left without going to bed, after having paid the Governor handsomely, and promised to present his excuses to Ferdinand for not having done more for us, restricted as he was by the islanders’ mode of government.
Sailing back to Naples, our vessel coasted close to the land, for we remained spellbound by the sights along those wonderful shores. We discovered Massa, Sorrento, Torquato Tasso’s home, the lovely grotto of Lila de Rico, and finally Castellammare. There we put in to port to visit Stabiae, buried like Herculaneum, where Pliny the Elder used to go to see his friend Pompeianus, in whose house he was lying the night of the famous eruption which submerged that town along with the others round about. The workmen excavating this one are proceeding slowly: when we were there, they had unearthed only a handful of buildings.
It was a rapid tour we made, weary as we were; and very eager to rest and refresh ourselves, we returned at last to our princely quarters, sending word to the King notifying him we were in the city again, and thanking him for all he had done to make our journey such a success.
Part Six
A few days later we received a message from His Neapolitan Highness, inviting us to be among his guests on the balcony of the royal palace to witness one of his kingdom’s most unusual festivals. It was the one known as The Treat. I had frequently
heard tell of this extravagance; but the actual thing was unlike anything I could have expected.
Charlotte and Ferdinand were awaiting us in a boudoir whose windows looked out upon the square where the holiday tumults were to occur. Among us were two other personages, La Riccia and the Duc Gravines, a man of fifty, very libertine.
“If you are not familiar with this entertainment,” said the King after we had finished dinner, “you are apt to find it rather primitive.”
“That, Sire, and barbarous is how we like our entertainments,” I replied; “and I shall add that I have long favored reviving rough sports and gladiatorial combats in France: a nation’s tone is maintained by bloody spectacles; where these lack, you are heading for decadence. When a thoughtless emperor, placing stupid Christianity on the throne of the Caesars, closed the circuses at Rome, what did the masters of the world turn into, eh? Abbots, monks, or dukes.”
“I feel just as you do,” said Ferdinand. “My aim is to revive contests between men and animals, and even those pitting men against men; it is in that direction I have been moving; Gravines and La Riccia support me, and I hope we shall succeed.”
“And of what account can the lives of all that trash be,” Charlotte wondered, “when our pleasures are at stake? If we have the right to have their throats cut for our interests’ sake, I see no reason why we cannot do the same for the sake of our delights.”
“Very well, gentle ladies,” Ferdinand said to us, “issue your orders. Depending upon the greater or lesser degree of rigor, upon the larger or smaller number of police I introduce into these orgies, I can have six hundred more or fewer people killed: therefore indicate what your desires are in this regard.”
“The worst, the worst,” Clairwil was prompt to answer; “the more of those rascals you have dispatched, the better you will divert us.”
Ferdinand then murmured some instructions to one of his officers.
A cannon boomed; and we proceeded out onto the balcony. There was an excessively numerous crowd collected upon the square; from our vantage point we had the clearest view of everything.
Upon a huge scaffolding decorated with rustic ornaments is heaped a tremendous quantity of victuals so disposed as to compose a part of the decoration. Inhumanely crucified there are geese, chickens, turkeys, which, suspended alive and held by a single nail, amuse the people by their twitchings and flutterings; loaves of bread, dried cod, quarters of beef; sheep, grazing on an artificial pasture, tended by pasteboard shepherds; upon a sea made of canvas, a vessel laden with food or useful articles intended for the populace. Such, laid out with much artistry and tastefulness, is the bait prepared for this savage nation, all in order to commemorate and to perpetuate its voraciousness and its excessive propensity for theft. For, after having witnessed this sight, it would be difficult not to agree that it is more an exercise in pillage than a veritable festival.
We had hardly time to consider the theater for the forthcoming events when a second shot was heard. At this signal, the cordon of troops that has been holding the crowd back suddenly gives way; the people rush forward and, in the twinkling of an eye, everything is made off with, snatched up, grabbed away, with a swiftness, with a frenzy impossible to describe. This terrifying scene, resembling the fleshing of a pack of hounds, regularly ends more or less tragically because disputes break out, everybody covets what his neighbor has just got his hands upon; and, in Naples, such differences are always settled with drawn knives, But this time, in accordance with our desires and thanks to Ferdinand’s foresight, once the scaffoldings were black with people, once they looked to be covered with a good seven or eight hundred struggling human beings, the structure abruptly collapsed, and over four hundred people were crushed.
“Ah, fuck!” exclaimed Clairwil, sinking giddily upon a sofa, “ah, my friends, you gave me no warning of this—I am dying—” and it was to La Riccia the whore appealed, “—fuck me, my angel, fuck me,” she sighed, “I am discharging; in all my life nothing I have ever been witness to has given me such pleasure.”
We re-entered the boudoir; windows and doors were shut, and the most delicious of all lubricious scenes was enacted, as it were, upon the ashes of the unfortunate plebeians sacrificed by high wickedness.
Four girls, fifteen or sixteen years old, lovely as daylight and dressed in the black crepe of mourning, naked underneath it, were awaiting us, standing, and in silence. In another part of the room, four other women, between twenty and thirty, each pregnant, each stark naked, silent also, and wearing grave expressions, seemed eager to hear our instructions. Reclining upon a couch at the room’s far end were four young men, between eighteen and twenty years old, and in their hands they held their threatening pricks, and those pricks, good friends, those pricks were monsters: twelve whole inches in circumference, yes, and eighteen inches long. Not in all our lives had we beheld the like of those objects; and the four of us discharged merely at catching sight of them.
“These four women and these four girls,” Ferdinand explained to us, “are the daughters and the widows of some of the ill-starred individuals who perished a short while ago before our eyes. Those individuals were, I can affirm, in positions of particular danger when the disaster was produced, and of their deaths I am certain. I had these eight women summoned here well before today’s Treat began and, locked inside a room, through a window they were able to witness the fate of their fathers and husbands. I turn them over to you now, with them conclude your holiday. Out there,” the monarch continued, opening a door giving out upon a little garden, “out there is the pit dug for their remains when they have at last, after hideous sufferings, earned the right to rest in peace. Their grave…. Women, step this way, you must see it too.”
And the cruel man obliged them to climb down into the trench, made them lie down in it, then, satisfied with its dimensions, he directed our attentions back to the four youths.
“I am certain, Mesdames,” said he, “that you have not often beheld such articles.” And he took hold of those awesome pricks, hard as iron bars, and had us feel them, heft them, kiss them, dally with them. “The vigor of these men,” the King went on, “at least equals their superiority of member; every one of them is the guarantee of fifteen or sixteen discharges, and not one yields less than twelve ounces of sperm per ejaculation: they are the élite in my realm. They are Calabrians all four, and there is no province in Europe that furnishes members of this size. Let us enjoy them without stint.
“Four boudoirs adjoin this one; they are outfitted with everything that can serve lustful purposes: so let us be off, let us fuck and be fucked, let us vex, torment, torture to our hearts’ content, and may our imaginations, fired by the spectacle that has just been staged for us, ensure the thoroughness of cruelties and the refinement of our joys.”
“Bugger-fuck!” I said to Ferdinand, “how nicely you have the art of entertaining persons of our temper.”
Dresses, petticoats, breeches fell quickly to the floor, and before proceeding to collective scenes, it appeared to be everybody’s intention to repair singly into the neighboring rooms for a short moment. La Riccia took with him one of the girls, a pregnant woman, and a fucker; Gravines encloseted himself with Olympia and an expectant mother; and Ferdinand took Clairwil, a fucker, another expectant mother, and two little girls; Charlotte chose me, and wanted to have a pair of fuckers with us, one of the girls, and a woman as well.
“Juliette,” the Queen of Naples addressed me as soon as we were inside our boudoir, “I can no longer keep to myself the emotions you have engendered in me: I adore you. I am too much a whore to promise you fidelity; but that romantic sentiment is of course valueless amongst such persons as ourselves: ’tis not a heart I offer you, ’tis a cunt, a cunt which pours fuck whenever your hand touches it. In you I see someone of my own mind, of my own way of thinking, and, incontestably, I prefer you to either of your sisters. Your Olympia is a clod, she shows some mettle occasionally, but the rest of the time she is timorous and at bo
ttom she is a coward; a clap of thunder would suffice to convert such a woman. Clairwil, yes, she is a superb creature, with infinite wit, I don’t deny it, but her tastes and mine are not at all the same: for exercising her cruelties she likes men only, and while I am willing enough to sacrifice that sex, it is however the blood of mine I most enjoy shedding. She adopts, besides, an overbearing and superior manner toward us all, and it is prodigiously hurtful to my pride. With no fewer resources and perhaps with many more than she, you, Juliette, do not affect so much vanity; that comforts; I believe there is more sweetness in your character, just as much wickedness in your head, but in your heart a greater capacity for loyalty toward your friends. In short, I like you best, and this diamond, worth fifty thousand crowns, which I beg you to accept, may persuade you it is so.”
“Charlotte,” said I, declining to take the gem, “you are a woman to whom one may confess having vices; I am touched by your feelings in my regard, and mine for you, be sure of it, are the same. But I shall own to you, my dear, and it is one of my idiosyncrasies, I accord no importance whatever to gifts, only what I take counts in my eyes. And if you care to satisfy me on that head, why, you can do so very easily.”
“How?”
“Before anything else, swear by your love for me that you will never tell anyone of the imperious desire that devours me.”
“I swear to it.”
“I want to steal your husband’s treasures, to that end I want you to provide me the means.”
“Lower your voice,” said the Queen, “these people could overhear us. One moment, I shall send them into the next room.
“Now,” Charlotte continued once we were alone, “we may chat in security. I have a proposal to make to you; accept it, there is no other way for you to convince me of the sincerity of your feelings in my regard. Oh, Juliette!” she added, “the trust you place in me demands that I in return place mine in you. And I too, my dear, I am meditating a crime; will you help me?”