“There are tribesmen in northern Tartary who erect for themselves a new god every day: this god must be the object first come across by the individual upon awakening in the morning. If perchance it be a mard, that mard becomes the idol for the day; and put case it be a mard we’re to reverence: is not a bit of shit worth quite as much as the comical flour-paste god adored by the Catholics? The Tartar divinity is excrement already, the Catholic will be in a few hours; truly, I find no ready distinction to be made between the two.
“In the province of Matomba, ’tis within a noisome and very dark hut the children of both sexes are enclosed when they have reached the age of twelve; and there, by way of initiation, they suffer all the ill-treatment the priests are pleased to mete out to them, nor when they emerge from the hut may the children either reveal what has been done to them nor complain thereof.
“When a girl marries in Ceylon, it is her brothers who depucelate her; the husband hasn’t the right to do so.
“We regard pity as a sentiment sure to guide us to good deeds; with greater reason, it is considered a fault in Kamchatka: amongst the people of that peninsula it would be vicious to rescue someone from a peril into which fate has led him. If these clear-minded individuals see a man drowning, they pass calmly on about their business without stopping; no one would dream of rescuing him.
“To forgive one’s enemies, that’s a virtue among Christian imbeciles; in Brazil, it is thought a splendid act to kill and eat them.
“In Guiana, when her menstruating first begins, a young girl is exposed naked to flies to feast upon; she often perishes during the operation. The enchanted spectators will then spend the whole day in merrymaking.
“In Brazil once again, on the eve of a young woman’s wedding they inflict a great number of cuts and gashes upon her buttocks, the object being to waken some measure of revulsion in a husband who, thanks to a fiery temperament and the tropical climate, is only too apt to incline to an antiphysical attack.21
“These few examples I have cited suffice to indicate what in reality are the virtues whereof our European laws and religions make such frantic to-do; what is that loathsome bond of brotherhood our vile Christianity is forever sniveling about. For your own self you may determine whether or not it exists in the heart of man; would such a host of execrations be the general rule if the virtue they contradict really did exist?
“I say to you over and over again: humane sentiments are baseless, mad, and improper; they are incredibly feeble; never do they withstand the gainsaying passions, never do they resist bare necessity: go examine a besieged city where within the walls hungry humans devour each other. Humanity? A sentimentality; it has nothing whatsoever to do with Nature. Humanity? The child of dread, debility, and unwholesome prejudice. Can one ignore the fact that ’tis Nature which gives us both our passions and our needs? or that, in seeking fulfillment, these passions and needs proceed with total disregard for humane virtues? These humane virtues are thus foreign to Nature; they are thus no more than the blatant result of the egoism that has brought us to wishing to be at peace with our fellows in order to exploit them for our own pleasure. But he who has no fear of reprisals must be at great pains to subordinate himself to a duty which only those who tremble can possibly respect. Ah no, Juliette, no, there is no such thing as genuine pity, there is no pity save that wherefrom we calculate to profit. If at the moment we are in the throes of commiseration we pause and think and study ourselves deeply, then from the inward regions of our heart we’ll detect a hidden voice cry: Thou dost shed tears to behold the sore plight of thine unhappy neighbor; thy tears bear witness to thine own wretchedness, or to thy dread of being more miserable still than him for whom thou thinkest to weep. Well, what voice is this, if not that of fear? whence is this fear born, if not of egoism?
“So let us then thoroughly destroy this pusillanimous sentiment where we find it in ourselves; it must always be dolorous, since it cannot arise save through a comparison that plunges us back into woe.
“Labor at the task; and when, beloved child, thy mind shall have perfectly apprehended the nullity, nay, the rank criminality that would subsist in acknowledging the existence of a bond linking thine own self up in brotherhood with others, then proudly declare with the philosopher:
“‘Eh, to satisfy myself, why should I hesitate when the act I meditate, whatever the ill it cause my fellow creature, may procure me the most palpable pleasure? For, tentatively supposing that by performing whatever may be this act I do this fellow a wrong, by not performing it I must ineluctably do a wrong unto myself. In despoiling my neighbor of his wife, of his inheritance, of his child, I may, as I have just said, be committing an injustice toward him; but in depriving myself of these things whence I derive extremest delight, I commit one toward myself: well, between these two inevitable injustices, shall I be so great an enemy of mine own self as not to prefer that from which I can extract a few agreeable little sensations? If I do not act thus, ’twill be out of compassion. But if surrender to such a sentiment may have the dire consequence of causing me to renounce joys I covet so, I must summon up all my forces and cure myself of this painful, this disastrous sentiment, I must neglect nothing in order to prevent it, in future, from obtaining any access to my soul. Once I have succeeded (and of success I am certain if I gradually accustom myself to the sight of the sufferings of others), I’ll never yield to any but the charm of satisfying myself; that charm will have no rivals, no other will beckon to me, I’ll have no further fear of remorse, for remorse cannot be but the aftermath of compassion, and this compassion I shall have extinguished in myself; I’ll therefore follow my bent, all unafraid honor my penchants; I’ll value my own welfare, or my own pleasure, above woes which no longer touch me; and I’ll sense that to let slip a real good from my grasp, because the having thereof would mean putting some other individual in an unhappy situation (a situation whose effects cannot make themselves felt upon me anymore), would be sheer ineptness, since it would be to love this stranger more dearly than I love myself, and that would be to violate every last law of Nature and every last element of good common sense.’
“Nor ought you to view familial ties as more sacred than these others, they are all equally fictitious. It is not true that you owe anything to the being out of whom you emerged; still less true that you are obliged to have any feeling whatever for a being that were to emerge from you; absurd to imagine that one is beholden to one’s brothers, sisters, nephews, nieces. Upon what rational basis can consanguinity establish duties; for what, for whom do we toil in the act of procreation? For ourselves; for anyone else? Certainly not. What can be our debt to a father who, amusing himself, incidentally created us? can we owe some debt to a son because once upon a time for the sake of diversion we spattered a little fuck into some womb or other? to a brother or a sister because the same womb was exercised upon more than one occasion? To the devil with the lot of these ties; needless to discriminate, they’re none of them serious.”
“Oh, Noirceuil!” I cried, “how often have you provided proof of it…. And still you are loath to tell me—”
“Juliette,” that amiable personage replied, “such avowals can be fitting reward for your behavior. I shall open my heart to you—in due time: when I feel you are truly worthy to hear the secrets I have to disclose. But before then you shall have to undergo several tests.”
And his manservant having come to announce that the Minister, an intimate friend of Noirceuil, was waiting in the drawing room, we separated.
I lost no time making a most advantageous investment of the sixty thousand francs I had stolen from Mondor. However sure I was that Noirceuil would have approved of the theft, I could not have mentioned it to him without also divulging my infidelity and, had he learned of that, my lover would surely have worried lest his own property become subject to my depredations; prudence counseled me to hold my tongue, and I turned all my thoughts to increasing, by like expedients, the sum of my revenues. The occasion soon pres
ented itself in the form of another party organized by Madame Duvergier.
The present enterprise was a mission to the home of an individual whose mania, as cruel as it was voluptuous, consisted in girl-whipping. We were four; at a cafe near the Porte Saint-Antoine I was joined by three charming creatures; a carriage was there waiting for us, and we were soon in Saint-Maur, at the delightful house of Due Dennemar. My companions were of rare beauty, youthful and as fresh as they were sweet to behold: the eldest was under eighteen, Minette was her name; she pleased me so wonderfully well I could not resist caressing her passionately; another was sixteen years old, the last fourteen. Very exacting in the choice of her victims, from the woman who conducted us to Saint-Maur I learned that I was the only courtesan of the quartet; my youth, my looks had persuaded the Due to suspend self-imposed rules which forbade him commerce with worldly women. The other three were seamstresses who had absolutely no experience in the work we were about to perform; they were decent girls, properly brought up, had been seduced only by the large sums the Due offered, and by the assurance that, restricting himself to fustigation, he’d not impair their virginity: each of us was to receive fifty louis; you shall decide whether or not we earned our pay.
We were ushered into a magnificent apartment; our guide bade us undress and await the orders it would please his Lordship to signify to us.
That was my opportunity to examine at leisure my three young colleagues’ naive graces, their delicate and gentle charms. What supple, willowy figures, what faultless skins, breasts that made one’s mouth water, thighs appetizing beyond words; for pink plumpness, for sweetness, their charming behinds were beyond comparison; I devoured all three and especially Minette with the most tender kisses, which they reciprocated so innocently, so movingly that I discharged in their arms. For the better part of an hour, awaiting the time when we’d have his Grace’s desires to cope with, we dallied there, frolickingly, and impetuously too, satisfying our own; and then at last a tall lackey, almost naked, came with instructions that we all four make ourselves ready, but that the eldest would be first. This placed me third on the list; when my turn came, I entered the pleasure sanctuary of this contemporary Sardanapalus; and the experience I am going to relate is in no particular different from that which befell each of the other three girls.
The cabinet in which the Due received me was circular and everywhere paneled with mirrors; in the center was a column of porphyry, rising to a height of some ten feet, and before it was a dais. I was told to mount upon it; the valet we’d seen before and who served his master’s pleasure-ceremonies, attached my feet to bronze rings fastened to the block I was standing on, then he raised my arms, secured them by cords, drew them high above my head. It was only then the Due approached; hitherto he had been reclining on a couch, quietly massaging his prick. Totally nude from waist down, a simple vest of brown satin covered his torso; his arms were bare to the shoulder; under his left arm he had a bundle of withes, thin and flexible, held together by a black ribbon. Of some forty years, the Due had an exceedingly somber and harsh physiognomy, and I judged that his moral character was not much less severe than his outward appearance.
“Lubin,” said he to his valet, “this one looks better than the others. A rounder ass, finer skin. A more interesting face. ’Tis a pity. She’ll but suffer the more.”
So saying, the villain pokes his muzzle between my buttocks, first snuffles, then kisses, finally bites. I emit a shriek.
“Goodness! She’s not insensitive. Too bad. We’ve scarce begun.”
Thereupon I feel his talon-like fingernails dig deep into my buttocks, he rakes, he hauls, he tears my skin in several places. More screams from me only animate this scoundrel who next inserts his fingers into my vagina; they come out bringing with them the skin he has scraped from the walls of that delicate part.
“Lubin” he then murmured to his valet, exhibiting his bloodied fingers, “my dear Lubin, I triumph. Cunt-skin.”
And he deposited it upon the head of Lubin’s prick, which therewith sprang up very stiff. It was at that point he opened a small cabinet the mirrors concealed; he drew out a long garland of green foliage, I’d no idea what it was nor of what kind of leaves it was composed. Alas! he came near me and I saw at once that these were thorns. Seconded by the cruel agent of his pleasures, he twined them thrice or more times round my body and ended by fastening them in a very picturesque but also very afflicting manner, for they lacerated the whole of my body and especially my breasts, against which he pressed them with the most ferocious affectations; my buttocks, however, were spared this accursed fire, for they were reserved for other use: the full expanse of the flesh his lashes were to belabor lay completely exposed to that libertine’s mercies.
“We are about to begin,” said Dennemar when at last the arrangements were complete; “I earnestly request you to be patient, in as much as these proceedings may last a certain while.”
The terrible storm about to break over my ass is heralded by ten relatively mild strokes.
These delivered, he lets out a shout: “Now, by Jesus! let’s see what we can do.”
Bringing both my buttocks under fire with a redoubtable arm, he applied two hundred cuts, never once pausing for breath. During the operation, his valet, kneeling before him, sought by sucking to extract the venom that rendered this beast so extraordinarily vicious; and all the while he went on plying his withes, the Due bawled at the top of his lungs:
“Ah! the buggeress … the bitch, the slut, the whore…. By the guts of Almighty God, I have no great fondness for women; if God made them, why can’t I exterminate them, whip them to shreds and tatters? Bleeding, is she? Well, at last…. By bloody fucking God, ’tis good, she bleeds…. Suck, Lubin, suck, my lad, ’tis very good, I see blood and I am happy.”
And pressing his open mouth to my behind, he lapped up what he was so thrilled to see flow; then, continuing:
“But, as you see, Lubin, I’m not stiff, and I’ve got to whip until I am, and once I’m stiff, to go on whipping till I discharge; well, that’s the program and our whore’s young. She’ll endure.”
The gruesome ceremony starts off again; but with certain modifications: Lubin has ceased sucking his master; armed with a bull’s pizzle, he attacks the Due who, while continuing to have at me, receives a hundred blows for every one he delivers. I am covered with blood, it streams down my thighs, I see it spreading in a crimson pool at my feet, staining the dais; punctured by the tight-wound thorns, slashed by the withes, I no longer know in what part of my body the pain is worst; and then it is that my persecutor, weary of torturing me and, all asweat with lust, subsiding upon the couch, finally orders me to be unbound. Swaying, only half-conscious, I totter toward him.
“Frig me,” says he, kissing the traces of his savagery, “or, no, rather than that, frig Lubin, I prefer seeing him discharge even to discharging myself. And, what’s more, pretty as you are, I doubt whether you’d succeed.”
Lubin lays hands on me straight off. I am still decked in that terrible garland; the barbarian deliberately presses it against my skin while I pollute him; his position was such that, when he ceded to my wrist’s supple encouragements, his fuck would splash upon the face of his master who, steadily continuing to drive the splines into my flesh, to pinch my behind, was quietly frigging himself alone; the effect occurs: the valet discharges, the Due’s features are drenched in sperm, but his own remains sealed in his balls, held in reserve for a more lubricious scene still: I’ll give you its details.
“Get out of here,” he told me the moment Lubin had performed, “I’ve got to put your youngest companion to work before I call you back.” The door opened, in the adjoining room I discovered the two others who’d gone before me: but, great heavens! what a state they were in! It outdid mine; the sight of their bodies—so pretty, so fair, so delicious—was now enough to inspire horror; the poor creatures were weeping, moaning at having consented to such a party; and I, prouder, of sterner stuff and more
vindictive, I thought of nothing but material revenge. A door stands ajar, I peer through it into the Due’s bedchamber, I stealthily enter. My glance falls at once upon three objects: a fat purse bulging with gold, a superb diamond, and a very fine timepiece. Hastily, I open the window; I notice, below and opposite, a little outbuilding forming an angle with the wall and close by the gate we entered when we came. Quick as a flash, I strip off one of my stockings, wrap the three objects in it, drop the bundle into the bush growing in the corner I’ve just mentioned; the bundle sinks down into the leaves, it’s out of sight. I return to my companions. The very next moment Lubin came in to fetch us: to consummate his sacrifice, the high priest needed all four victims at once. The youngest had already passed under the lash, and her ass seemed to have been treated no less severely than ours had been; she was bleeding from head to toe; the dais had been removed. Lubin directed the four of us to lie down on the floor in the middle of the chamber; so skillfully did he adjust us that little apart from our eight buttocks remained visible, I leave you to imagine the picture they presented. The Due approaches this group; with his left hand Lubin caresses his Lord’s prick, with his right he drips boiling oil upon our asses; fortunately, the crisis shortly supervenes.
“Burn them, sear them, scorch them, fry them!” cried his Grace as he ejaculated his fuck and blended it with the fiery liquid roasting our mutilated rumps, “burn these fucking whores, I’m discharging!”