The “Venus” is a delicious blonde, with lovely eyes, but features a shade too sharply drawn for a blonde whose charms, as composed by Nature, are usually, like her character, of a dreamy softness. The subject appears upon a white couch, one of her hands toys with flowers, the other has strayed coyly to cover her pretty little bush; voluptuous is her attitude, and unwearyingly one pores over the beauties of this sublime picture’s details. Sbrigani remarked that this Venus seemed to him to bear a striking resemblance to our Raimonde; I agreed. The pretty creature blushed innocently when we reported our findings to her; from the fiery kiss I laid upon her lips she could measure my approval of my husband’s comparison.
In the next room, known as the Chamber of the Idols, we found a great store of works by Titian, Paolo Veronese, and Guido. And in that room we saw something very curious indeed: a sepulcher overflowing with cadavers severally exhibiting all the various stages of decay, from the moment of death’s advent to the total material decomposition of the individual. This somber work is executed in wax colored so subtly and modeled so cunningly that the thing itself could be neither more expressive of Nature nor more authentic. So powerful is the impression produced by this masterpiece that as you gaze at it your other senses are played upon, moans seem audible, you wrinkle your nose quite as if you could detect the evil odors of mortality…. These scenes of the plague appealed to my cruel imagination; and, I mused, how many persons had undergone these awful metamorphoses thanks to my wickedness? But I rove. Let me say only that Nature probably impelled me to those crimes since even the mere recollection of them still thrills me to the core.
Nearby it is another miniature representing, in the same style, another common grave teeming with plague victims, and here the most interesting figure is a naked man who, as he drops the corpse he is carrying in among the rest, is himself overcome by the stench or overwhelmed by the sight, reels back, and dies: the treatment of this group is terrifyingly realistic.
We now came to gayer objects. The Tribunal Chamber, as it is called, contained the celebrated “Medici Venus”: and upon beholding that stunning piece a rush of emotion assailed me as surely must happen to any sensitive spectator. A Greek, they say, was smitten by passion for a statue…. It is understandable; I could well have duplicated his distracted behavior, I trow: a survey of this work’s wondrous features leads one to believe tradition says true in reporting that the sculptor resorted to no fewer than five hundred models before completing it; the proportions of this sublime effigy, the beauty of the face, the heavenly contours of each limb, the graceful curves of the breasts, of the buttocks, are touches attesting a human genius rivaling Nature’s own, and I doubt whether three times as many models chosen from all the world boasts of the most beautiful could today furnish a creature that would benefit from comparison with this one. It is generally agreed that this statue shows us the Venus of Greek seafarers; I need not describe it at greater length, it has been copied often enough; but though a reproduction of it is within anyone’s means to buy, nobody will ever appreciate it quite as I did…. This marvelous piece was once broken by some vandals, led by their execrable piety to this act of madness. The boors, fools! they worshiped the author of Nature and thought to please her by shattering her noblest work. Touching the sculptor’s identity there is disagreement; common opinion ascribes the work to Praxiteles, others say Cleomenes made it: whoever the artist may have been, his creation is magnificent, it is admired, it inspires the imagination, contemplating it is one of the sweetest pleasures that can be derived from the sight of man-made things.
My eyes fell next upon “The Hermaphrodite.” As you know, the Romans, who all had a special fondness for these monsters, welcomed them into their saturnalian assemblies; the one represented here was probably among those whose lubricious reputation was outstandingly notorious and hence deserved commemoration; but its legs are crossed, which is a pity, for the sculptor should have displayed what characterized its double sex and singular amenities: it is shown reclining upon a bed, exposing the most tempting ass in all the world … a voluptuous ass which Sbrigani coveted, telling me he had once bum-fucked a similar creature and had never been able to forget the delight it had given him.
Close by is the group, Caligula and his sister; ah, those proud masters of the world, far from concealing their vices, hired artists to immortalize them. In the same room you will also find the famous Priapus upon which young girls were obliged, as one of the requirements of their faith, to rub the lips of their vaginas. This deity’s member is reproduced with such stout proportions that introduction must surely have been impossible, or exceedingly difficult, if that too was perchance enjoined by the rites.
We were shown chastity belts. “Examine those devices well,” I recommended to my two sweethearts, “you shall be strapped into the like the day I have any doubts of your fidelity.” To which the mild-tempered Elise delicately replied that her devotion to me would always suffice to restrain her within the bounds of the strictest temperance.
Next we saw a splendid collection of daggers, some of them were poisoned; nowhere has murder been refined as amongst the Italians, it is therefore quite the ordinary thing to find in their homes all sorts of instruments for murdering, in the crudest and most traitorous manner.
The air at Florence is very unwholesome, autumn may be positively fatal there: during that season, leave a bit of bread steep in the Apennine miasmas, it will molder invisibly and sicken anybody who tastes it; sudden deaths, apoplexies become very frequent at that time of year. But as we were then in early spring I considered we could remain through the summer without risk. We bedded only two nights at our inn; the third day I rented a fine house overlooking the Arno: I took it in Sbrigani’s name, for I was still masquerading as his wife and my two followers were become his sisters. Established there upon the same footing as at Turin and in the other Italian cities where I had made residence, no sooner had intelligence of us got abroad than the propositions began to arrive. But upon the advice of a friend of Sbrigani, who esteemed that moderation and no improper eagerness to leap at offers would perhaps win us admission to the Grand Duke’s secret revels, we refused all bids for a fortnight.
The prince’s emissaries appeared in due course. Leopold wished to have the services of the three of us at a forgathering which would also include the everyday objects of his private debauches, and our unreserved cooperation would be worth a thousand sequins to each of us.
“Leopold’s tastes are despotic and cruel, like those of all sovereigns,” his representative explained to us, “however, you have nothing to fear, you shall be merely to serve his lusts, others will be his prey.”
“We shall be at the Grand Duke’s orders,” I answered, “but, my good sir, for a thousand sequins … hardly. No, my sisters-in-law and I are only to be had for thrice that sum; come back if those terms are acceptable.”
Libertine Leopold, who had already cast eyes upon us, was not the man to forego such delights because of a trifling two thousand sequins more. Miserly toward his wife, toward the poor, toward his subjects, Austria’s fairest son spent generously upon his pleasures. And so we were called for the following morning and conducted to Pratolino, in the Apennines and on the road by which we had gained Florence.
That villa, shaded, solitary, and voluptuous, lacked none of the features characteristic of a retreat for debauchery. The Grand Duke was finishing dinner when we arrived; with him he had only his chaplain, the agent and confidant of his lubricities.
“Dear friends,” the lord of Tuscany declared, “step this way if you please, we are awaited by those young persons my lust is to feed upon today.”
“One moment, Leopold,” said I, that elevated tone of self-respect in my voice for which I have always been noted, “my sisters and I shall submit ourselves to your caprices, we shall satisfy your desires; but if, as people of your sort so frequently are, you too are given to dangerous fantasies, then say so now, for we do not intend to enter the arena unless we are sure we shall
emerge from it safe and sound.”
“The victims have already been appointed, they are there,” the Grand Duke replied to me, “you are to be the priestesses in this affair, nothing more; and we, the Abbot and I, the sacrificers.”
“You heard the gentleman,” I said to my companions, “in we go. Faithless knaves though they are, sovereigns may sometimes be trusted, above all when you have reliable means for vengeance about you,” and casting back my sleeve I afforded Leopold a glimpse of the haft of the poniard I had been carrying ever since the day I entered Italy.
“What,” cried he, laying a hand upon my shoulder, “you would attempt the life of a sovereign?”
“If provoked, of course,” I rejoined. “I’ll start no trouble, but if you were to forget whom you were dealing with, this knife”—and I now drew it all the way into view—“will make you remember that your mistake was to behave inconsiderately toward a Frenchwoman.
“As regards your royal sacrosanctity, in my country we sneer at such rubbish. You don’t suppose, do you, that the heaven that made you made your existence one whit more inviolable than that of the meanest individual in your realm? My respect for you is no greater than for him; a zealous egalitarian, I have never considered one living creature any better than any other, and as I have no belief in moral virtues, neither do I consider that they are differentiated by any moral worth.”
“But I am a king.”
“Poor fellow! As if I were to be impressed by that title! Why, Leopold, you cannot guess how little it means to me. How did you get to where you are? By luck. What did you to do to merit your rank? That first of kings who earned it through his courage or his cunning, he could perhaps claim to some esteem; but he who has it through mere inheritance, may he hope for more than compassion?”
“Regicide is a crime—”
“Disabuse yourself, my friend: it is no worse than killing a cobbler, and you do as much evil, or as little, when you squash a beetle or murder a butterfly, Nature having fashioned those insects also. You may believe it, Leopold, the manufacture of your person cost our common mother no more effort than creating a monkey, and yours would be a serious error if you let yourself imagine that she cares for this one of her children any more than for that.”
“I find this woman’s outspokenness quite engaging,” Leopold said to his chaplain.
“And so do I, Sire,” declared the man of God; “but I fear that such pride will prevent her from showing your Worship’s pleasures all the subordination they require.”
“Fear nothing of the sort, my good Abbot,” said I; “proud and frank in social conversations, meek and mild in intimate ones: such is the part of a pretty French courtesan, ’twill be mine. But if in the boudoir I look a slave, remind yourself that it is only before your passions I bend a knee, not before your kingliness. I respect passions, Leopold, I have them as well as you, but I stubbornly refuse to bow before rank: be a man, you’ll obtain everything from me; nothing, I warn you, as a prince; let us begin.”
It was a voluptuous salon Leopold bade us enter, and there awaiting us were the creatures he had alluded to and with whom we were about to disport; who ever would have believed it? they were a quartet of girls aged fifteen or sixteen, and all four pregnant to the bursting point.
“What the devil do you plan to do with these articles?” I inquired of the Grand Duke.
“You shall see before very long,” he replied. “I am the father of the infants they are ready to whelp, and I sired them solely for the sake of the delicious pleasure I shall have in destroying them. I know of no greater satisfaction than causing a woman I have ingravidated to miscarry, and as my seminal product is uncommonly abundant, I impregnate at least one a day to insure the wherewithal for my daily destructions.”
“Ah ha,” said I to the Austrian, “your passion is odd, it intrigues me, I shall take a willing hand in this operation; and how do you proceed with it?”
“Have a little patience, young lady, you shall be witness to every detail,” said Leopold who until now had communicated with me in a whisper. “We begin by announcing the fate in store for them.”
Whereupon he approached the four girls and notified them of his intentions. I need hardly tell you, my friends, that upon hearing this perfidious declaration they were all without exception plunged into the depths of distress; two fainted, the other two set to squealing like pigs being led to slaughter. But unfeeling Leopold only commanded his agent to strip off their clothes.
“Fair ladies,” the Grand Duke then said to us, “will you kindly imitate these demoiselles, and undress yourselves too? I never enjoy a woman except when she is naked; and, indeed, I suspect your bodies are pretty enough to merit being observed unveiled.”
A moment later Leopold was surrounded by seven naked women.
We were favored by that libertine’s preliminary homage. He scrutinizes us separately, he compares us, has us stand apart, brings us close together, and terminates this prelude by cunt-sucking the three of us while having the pregnant girls frig him one after the other. Leopold liked fuck, and busied himself upon us until we had loosed three of four discharges apiece into his mouth. While he frigged us, the Abbot socratized us, so that, excited before and behind, we bore the prince unstinting libations. An hour of this and then the inconstant lecher repaired to another shrine and had his holy cohort tongue us successively, while he himself licked our assholes. And the pregnant girls frigged him still.
“I am growing very hot,” he told us, “it is time we turn to more serious matters. You see there, in that brazier, four branding irons,” he continued, “they are hot too; upon each is inscribed the sentence of one of our laden women. I shall blindfold them, each shall choose her own iron.”
The game commences; as soon as the victim selects her iron Leopold plucks it from the live coals and claps the fiery red tip to her belly. These were the legends left imprinted in the girls’ flesh: to the youngest, who seemed scarcely over fourteen, the hand of fate awarded the brand worded thus: She will miscarry under the lash. The next, perhaps a few months older, received the label: A beverage shall be the cause of her miscarriage. The third was fifteen, this was her sentence: Her fruit shall be trampled from her belly. Upon the last, who was sixteen, was seared this dread decree: Her child will be torn from her womb.
The ceremony over, the blindfolds were removed and the four wretches, looking around one at the other, were able to read their various condemnations aloud. Leopold then had them all stand in a row at the end of a couch and close to it; he laid me upon that couch and encunted me energetically, while doing so peering fixedly at those four bloated bellies, each bearing the formula whereby it was to be deflated. Elise flogged his Worship in the meantime and the Abbot, his member grooved between Raimonde’s breasts, frigged himself full height.
“Leopold,” said I as we fucked, “I beseech you, keep a careful grip on yourself, for if I were to have the misfortune of becoming pregnant by you it is possible that I too would give birth prematurely.”
“If your case were submitted to my arbitration, you most certainly would,” said the Grand Duke, from whose eyes I received glances, and from whose loins blows, that were motivated by nothing resembling gallantry, “but take some comfort from the fact I discharge with difficulty.”
And thereupon he left me to depucelate Elise, who had been a quarter of an hour thrashing him, and who was soon deserted in favor of Raimonde; she had been ministering to the Abbot, I replaced her and after he was done with me he turned to Elise. Wondrous stiff and angry were the members of those two libertines.
“Aren’t we to have some buggery?” the Abbot wished to know, who for some time now had been caressing and fondling my behind in the way of a man who was eager to fuck it.
“Not yet,” Leopold answered, “we must first dispatch a victim.”
The little girl doomed to have the fruit lashed loose from her womb was seized by the sovereign who, plying first an ordinary bundle of withes, then a martine
t whereunto steel tips lent added bite, toiled thirty minutes over her behind, belaboring her so violently that the flesh came away like chips flying before a woodsman’s axe. The victim was then stood up, her feet fastened to the floor and her upraised arms secured to cords overhead, and the Duke, manipulating a bull’s pizzle now, delivered such prodigiously powerful thwacks to her belly that the embryo was soon dislodged. The girl shrieks; the head of the baby emerges, and Leopold, gripping it fast, wrenches it the rest of the way forth, tosses it unceremoniously into the brazier, and dismisses the mother.
“Pray ass-fuck, my Lord,” said the respectful chaplain; “your prick’s purpling veins, the foam wherewith your royal lips are besmeared, the fire darting from your eyes, everything indicates the imperious need you have of an ass. Fear not to spill your fuck, Sire, we are here to raise your fallen prick again, and we shall dispatch the others.”
“No,” insisted the Grand Duke, who when not absorbed in other business had been kissing and mauling me throughout these lubricities, “no, I discharged overmuch yesterday and cannot vouch for better than a single spasm today; before spending my strength I must attend to all the midwifery.”
And he laid hands on the second girl. A beverage shall be the cause of her miscarriage—the fatal goblet is produced, the little girl condemned to quaff its contents screws up her face, twists her head away; but the ferocious ecclesiastic is there, with one hand he holds her fast by the hair, with the other he pries her mouth open with a rasp; mine is the task of decanting the potion into her gullet, and the Duke, frigged by Elise, meanwhile handles my buttocks and the victim’s as well…. What potent elixir was this! Great gods, I had never seen the like of the results it obtained. The stuff was no sooner down the child’s throat than she pronounces the most blood-curdling screams, flails her arms, writhes on the floor, and the next moment, there’s her babe. This time it is the Abbot who performs the delivery. Leopold, frolicking so lewdly with Elise and me while Raimonde pumped him, was in no state to accomplish the delicate operation: I thought he was readying an ejaculation, but he avoided it, withdrawing in time.