The third girl is stretched out flat on her back and secured to the floor: her fruit was to perish from being trod upon. Braced by Elise and me while Raimonde, on her knees and astride the victim, frigs his device between her compressed breasts, the libertine dances a jig upon the wretch’s belly, and out pops her infant. It too is tossed into the brazier, the father not even taking the trouble to ascertain his scion’s sex; and more dead than alive, the mother is ejected from the room. If the last of the four was the loveliest she was also the most unlucky. Her child was to be torn from her womb; imagine what her sufferings were to be!
“This one won’t survive the experience,” Leopold informed us, “my discharge shall be owing to her unspeakable agony. It could not be otherwise, since of the four she, when I fucked her, gave me the most pleasure: the little whore conceived the same day I blasted her maidenhead.”
She is affixed to a diagonal cross of heavy timbers, at their intersection is a block of wood upon which her buttocks rest; her arms and legs are tied down and then covered over, so that nothing is to be seen of her except the rotund, swollen mass caching the infant. The Abbot falls to work…. Leopold, his eyes riveted upon the operation, embuggers me; both his hands are busy frigging, to the right Elise’s ass, Raimonde’s cunt to the left; and while the perfidious chaplain cleaves open the victim’s belly and rips out the child, which is of fatal consequence to the young mother, Austria’s brightest star, the Medicis’ great successor, the celebrated brother of France’s most illustrious whore, looses a torrent of fuck into my fundament, with another stream of foul vituperation, curses, and black blasphemies.
“Ladies,” said Duke Leopold as he wiped his prick, “the price of three thousand sequins you demanded and which I agreed to pay includes the cost of your silence concerning our joint doings.”
“They shall be kept secret,” I replied, “but I pose one condition.”
“Condition? Condition? Thunder and Godsfuck, does it beseem you to speak thus?”
“Certainly … and insofar as I can bring about your downfall by divulging them, your crimes give me rights.”
“Behold!” stormed the Abbot, “see what happens when you behave liberally toward these jades: one should either never let them see a thing, or cut their throats once they’ve seen it. Your commiseration, good my Lord, is bound to be your ruin or your purse’s, I have told you so over and over again; and I ask you, Sire, can you deign bargain with such ordures?”
“Softly, Abbot,” said I, “save that kind of language for the penny-a-fuck mechanics you and your patron are doubtless accustomed to dealing with ordinarily; it is not appropriate when addressing women of our rank who, perhaps as wealthy as you,” I pursued, turning to the Duke, “prostitute themselves less through greed or necessity than from taste. Let us close this discussion; his Worship needs our good will, we need his: some mutual services may redress the balance. Leopold, we will swear you the completest secrecy provided you for your part ensure us the completest impunity so long as we remain in Florence. Swear to us that no matter what we do in your duchy, we shall be made to answer for nothing.”
“I could avoid this extortion,” said Leopold, “and, without staining my hands with the Wood of these creatures, convince them that here, as in Paris, there are fortresses behind whose walls the garrulous learn how to hold their tongues; but I dislike using such methods with women who appear to me quite as libertine as I: I grant you the dispensation you solicit—I extend it to you, Madame, to your sisters-in-law, and to your husband as well, but for the space of six months only: that period ended, begone from my lands, I command it.”
Having obtained all I was after, I saw no reason to reply, and after thanking Leopold and receiving our fees we bade him adieu and retired.
“We must turn this jubilee to account,” said Sbrigani once he had heard of our arrangement with the Grand Duke, “and before our time is up endeavor to add at least three millions to what we have already. It is truly a pity our carte blanche has been delivered for use in such a bedraggled, poverty-ridden part of the country; but never mind, we’ll accept whatever is offered and snatch anything that is not, and half a year should suffice to accumulate a tidy little fortune.”
Morals are very free, conduct very loose in Florence. The women go about costumed as men, men as girls. In few Italian cities does one detect so decided a penchant for betraying one’s own sex, and this mania the Florentines have no doubt derives from their pressing urge, indeed, from their need, to dishonor both. Sodomy with them is a craze, and at one point in the past the city fathers successfully negotiated with the Vatican for a plenary indulgence covering every form of this vice from every possible angle. Incest and adultery are rampant there too, no effort is made to conceal them: husbands cede their wives, brothers lie with their sisters, fathers with their daughters.
“It’s the climate,” say these good people, “the climate is to blame for our depravity, and the God who placed us in these surroundings cannot be surprised at the excesses for which He is Himself responsible.”
In this connection there used to be a most unusual law in Florence. On Shrove Tuesday no woman had the right to refuse her husband’s sodomistic advances; if nevertheless she took it into her head to deny him, and if he interpreted her refusal as a slight and grounds for complaint, ’twas very likely she would be a laughingstock all over the town. Oh, happy, happy nation this, that was wise enough to consecrate its passions in laws; there is proof of common sense, all the extravagance belongs to those benighted societies which out of principles equally stupid and barbarous, instead of prudently wedding one to the other, through absurd legislation seek to thwart all a human being’s natural propensities.
However irregular though Florentine manners may be, streetwalkers are not permitted to drift loose through that city. The whores are restricted to a separate quarter of their own whence they may not venture commercially forth and where reign the most perfect order and calm. But these girls, seldom pretty, are for the most part ill-lodged; and the philosophical observer who visits the bawdyhouses will discover nothing of any particular interest unless it be the remarkable docility of these public playthings who, only too happy to attract you by means of their resignation, present no matter what part of the body upon simple demand and with unwearying patience even suffer each of them to be used in any manner libertine cruelty deems suitable. Sbrigani and I indulged in no end of beating, whipping, slapping, burning, mutilating, and maiming without ever hearing so much as a murmur of protest, and it is never thus in France. But if whoring does not much flourish in Florence, the libertinage there is excessive nonetheless, and the thick-walled, secluded dwellings of the rich harbor many an infamy: vast are the numbers of girls who are lured or furtively conveyed inside those strongholds of odious proceedings, there to lose their honor and not infrequently their lives.
Shortly before our arrival a wealthy notable of the town, having made off with a pair of little girls aged seven and eight, was accused by the children’s parents of raping and then murdering them: the evidence against the gentleman was plentiful and damning: a few sequins to the plaintiffs and of the case nothing further was heard.
And at about the same time a famous procuress came under suspicion of kidnapping maidens from middle-class families and furnishing them to some Florentine noblemen. Questioned as to the names of her clients, she compromised such a quantity of distinguished persons that there was no pursuing this inquest either, the dossiers had to be burned, and the woman forbidden to say any more.
Nearly all the ladies of condition, in Florence, have the habit of vending their charms in brothels; their temperament and their penury bring them to it. For the legal status of married women is singularly unfavorable in Florence, perhaps worse here than in any other European city, and there are few where their profligacy is more extensive or rampant. As for the cicisbeo, his function is merely to provide her a screen; rarely does the cicisbeo enjoy any privileges with the woman he serves; appoin
ted to his post as the husband’s friend, he accompanies the wife when she wishes to have him by her and obediently retreats when she orders him away. Those who fancy a cicisbeo is a paramour are greatly mistaken; he is simply the woman’s indulgent friend, or ally; may sometimes be the husband’s spy; but never does he lie with her; and of all possible roles, this is the dreariest a man can assume in Italy. A wealthy foreigner has but to appear on the doorstep, and husband, gallant, and everybody else speedily retire, leaving a clear field to him upon whose purse all hopes are founded, and I have often seen the complacent lord of the house quit it in consideration of a sequin or two when the stranger manifests the wish, however slight, to hold private parley with milady.
I have inserted this brief sketch of Florentine manners in order that you apprehend in what way, touching the thieveries, the debaucheries we were meditating, we were aided and in what way hampered by the traditional usages of this people at whose expense we wanted and were free to amuse ourselves for six months.
Sbrigani felt that our schemes were likely to meet with fairer success if we ran up our flag over an emporium of debauchery rather than over a casino; perfidious greed insatiable! did we not have riches enough already without striking out anew toward crime? No doubt; but once one is a traveler of crooked paths does one ever renounce them for straight?
So we circulated information advising the public at large that gentlemen would find at any hour of the night or day not only pretty wenches awaiting them in our establishment, but even women of the highest quality, and it was likewise made known that ladies could always obtain from us what they required in men and young girls, for their clandestine pleasures. Together with all that, we proposed the most agreeable surroundings, the most exquisite table; and the whole town rushed to us immediately. My companions and I were the mainstay of the house; but our clients had simply to make the request, they had simply to indicate the desire, and we put at their disposal everything delicious the district afforded. We charged exorbitant rates, but they were marvelous services we offered. Slise and Raimonde, trained in the matter, saw to the misplacement of countless pocketbooks and pieces of jewelry; their depradations gave rise to a certain number of complaints, all futile, the protection from which we benefited was an impervious defense, rendering vain all the denunciations of our activities.
Among the first we received was the Duke of Pienza. His passion was sufficiently out of the ordinary to warrant describing. Sixteen girls the Duke must have, they were arranged by two’s, each pair being distinguished by a different coiffure. These girls were naked, so was I where I reclined upon a sofa beside him; sixteen musicians, all youthful, handsome, and naked also, were seated to the right. Each couple was to enter the room in turn; prior to its appearance, the Duke told me what lascivious pose or lewd act he expected from the couple, the orchestra was admitted into the secret, and it was from the music, its key, its tempo, its volume, its melody, the couple was to try to guess its instructions. It guessed aright? the music would stop, the Duke would embugger the two clever girls. Did they fail to divine what was required of them—and each couple had ten minutes for solving the puzzle—then when the time had expired the dunces were flogged red and raw by our libertine who, as I dare say you very well imagine, derived quite as much pleasure from their mistakes as from their correct penetration of his wishes.
The game began: the funny fellow’s first wish was to have his prick sucked by both of the first two girls. In they came; faultlessly guided by a fugue, they guessed the secret, and were sodomized. The chore to which the second couple was appointed was the licking of my cunt, the girls’ efforts to interpret the music were unavailing, they were lashed. The third of the Duke’s secret wishes was to be lashed, and it was found out. The fourth, to frig the musicians’ sixteen pricks: the fourth couple was unlucky. The fifth, to shit in the middle or the room: the ten minutes passed and the whip was brought into play. The sixth pair of girls realized that they were to frig each other. The two composing the seventh couple altogether failed to grasp that they were to whip each other, and as a consequence were whipped by the Duke, vigorously. The music enabled the eighth couple to understand that the hero was to be embuggered with dildoes, and this was the moment he chose to inject his own discharge into my bum. And there was an end to it.
For some three months we had been leading this frivolous and profitable life when I accomplished a piece of outstanding baseness and thereby added a hundred thousand crowns to our treasury.
Of all the women who frequented my house with the utmost assiduity, the wife of the Spanish ambassador was she whose debauchery was probably the most noteworthy. Married women, maids, boys, castrates, she could find a use for anything, and though young and of angelic beauty, the whore’s rapacity, her foulness were such that she would insist I fetch her common laborers off the street, gravediggers and sweeps, pickpockets, flunkeys, ragpickers, and whatever else I could lay my hands on that was lowbred, vile, and vulgar. When it was for women she longed then they must be sluts just risen stinking and sodden off a barracks-room floor, or worse yet if it might possibly be procured. Once encloseted with the rabble I collected for her, the rascal would be seven and eight hours frolicking in that leprous milieu, and then when she had had her fill of veneral pleasures would turn to those of the table, and close the day in mad riot amidst the most revolting debaucheries.
The ambassadress had a very pious husband, a very jealous one whom she gave to believe that when she went out it was to visit a friend who, like herself, was also one of my more reliable clients.
Seeing in all this certain promising possibilities, I one day take myself to the Embassy.
“Excellency,” I say to the representative of Spain, “so good and upright a man as you does not deserve to be cuckolded: the woman who bears your name is not worthy of it. Your own honesty and rectitude cause you to doubt the truth of what I advance? So be it; but I entreat you, for the sake of your dignity, of your honor, of your peace of mind, Excellency, investigate the matter.”
“Betrayed? I?” repeated the ambassador, “’tis unthinkable. I know my wife too well.”
“Say you so, my Lord? Begging your pardon, I am persuaded of the contrary, and wager you are far from having even the faintest glimmering of her appalling conduct. It needs to be seen to be believed. My object in coming here is to be of aid to you.”
Florella, troubled, wounded by the painful suspicions I have sowed in him, hesitates before the still more painful prospect of having them confirmed. And then, setting his chin purposefully, and showing himself more of a man than I would have thought, “Are you in a position, Madame, to prove these allegations?”
“Today, my Lord, if you so wish it,” I answer. “Here is my card, I shall be expecting you toward five o’clock this afternoon. You shall see the style in which your wife violates the trust you have in her, and the species of individuals she selects to that end.”
The ambassador promises to be there.
“I am flattered, Excellency, and satisfied; however,” I add, “I should like to point out to you that the favor I am doing you shall cost me dear. For ’tis I who furnish men to her, and she pays me handsomely for them—you shall punish her, I presume, and in any case I shall henceforth be deprived of her custom: I feel I am entitled to an indemnity.”
“True, that is only fair,” says Florella; “in what sum might it be?”
“Fifty thousand crowns?”
“This pocketbook contains that amount, I shall bring it with me and the money shall be yours when you have presented me with the necessary evidence.”
“Agreed, my Lord. I shall expect you at five.”
The several hours remaining until then were time enough to enable me to prepare further unhappiness for this ill-starred ménage. While causing the wife to fall into a trap, I was eager to snare the husband in it also; you shall soon learn by what crafty means I achieved this. After my little conference with the ambassador I went straight to call upon his w
ife.
“Madame,” said I, “you give yourself bother on account of your husband, thinking him of stern morality and irreproachable behavior you are ever apprehensive lest, finding you out, he upbraid you. I suggest that you come to my house a little earlier than usual this afternoon, and it shall be revealed to you that conjugal ties no more prevent him from enjoying himself than they do you. The spectacle will surely ease your conscience and doubtless induce you to put by the onerous precautions which gall your daily pleasures.”
“Do you know,” she replied, “I am less than entirely surprised by what you tell me, for I had an intuition he is not so sinless as he would appear; and I should be delighted to learn that my guesses have not been mistaken—”
“You shall have them confirmed today. I have six pickpockets ready for you, and I have never clapped eyes on a prettier set of ruffians. Unless they are the three young boys your husband has ordered for tonight.”
“The monster!”
“He is a bugger.”
“Ah ha! So indeed! That explains why he is eternally fussing and fumbling about my ass and always whining to be let into it. And that explains his eccentricities also … his unaccountable absences, and the handsome valets he surrounds himself with…. Oh, Juliette, I simply must catch him out…. I must learn the truth—you will help me, will you not?”
“If you insist. But I am obliged to think of the future, Madame. Satisfying your curiosity, I lose a client and his trade is even more profitable to me than yours.”
“Never mind, I shall make your losses up to you. Set a figure, Juliette, I am willing to pay anything if it will secure me an end to my anxieties and my persecutions.”
“Then fifty thousand crowns does not strike you as too much?”
“You shall have the sum—the money is in this purse, I shall have it with me. So go now, and count upon me to keep the appointment and the bargain.”