“Such, my dear Countess, are the views I would express to a vulgar auditor. But you—your rank, your person, your wealth, your credit, in what an enviable position they place you, how they shelter you from interference and ensure your impunity: you are beyond the reach of the law thanks to your birth, of religion thanks to your enlightenment, of remorse thanks to your intelligence. No, no, there is not a single extravagance you should refrain from, not one form of wild conduct you should not blindly indulge in.
“However, I cannot repeat it too often: avoid scandal, it brings on trouble every time and never increases pleasure one jot; and this too I shall tell you again and again: select your accomplices judiciously, since at this early stage you must have them. You are rich, fee them well; bound by your munificence, they shall not desert your cause; and if they dared, ’twould be to what peril for them? would you not have them arrested and punished long before punishment could overtake you? That same bond which to others is a deterrent as formidable as any forged of steel, is, do you see, a twine of flowers lying light upon you.
“This has been, I know, something of a sermon; let me now indicate to you, my lovely friend, the secret of how to discover which kind of crime is likely to fit your temperament best, for you can do nothing properly unless you enjoy it. A woman organized as you are cannot but be subject to incessant criminal impulsions; before divulging my secret, however, allow me to explain to you how I come to this conclusion about your temperament.
“Your power of feeling is extreme, but you have directed the effects of your sensibility in such a way that it can no longer move you to anything except vice. All external objects possessing some unusual feature or other provoke a prodigious irritation in the electrical particles of your neural humour, and the impact delivered to the nervous system is instantly communicated to the nerves in the vicinity of the pleasure zone; you become immediately conscious of an itch there, this prickly titillating sensation is agreeable to you, you welcome it, you cultivate it, you renew it; your imagination sets to contriving ways to intensify it, means to amplify it … the irritation grows ever keener, and thus, if you wish, do you multiply your enjoyments ad infinitum. Your sole aim and study is to extend, to aggravate your sensations—need I say more? Perhaps. One who has vanquished every obstacle, as you have done, and freed herself from every restraint must perforce go far: only the most stimulating and gravest excess, the most odious, the most contrary to every law human and divine, is now capable of igniting your imagination. And so I must advise you to keep yourself a little in hand since, alas, the opportunities for crime are not always present each time we have the need to commit it, and Nature, having given us souls of fire, ought at least to furnish us somewhat more fuel. Is it not true, my beauty, that you have already and, it may well be, often found your desires far in advance of your means?”
“Oh yes, yes,” sighed the ravishing Countess.
“Just as I thought. It is a frightful situation, many, many are the times I have been in it too, it is the bane of my existence; but let me impart my secret.4
“Go a whole fortnight without lewd occupations, divert yourself, amuse yourself at other things; for the space of those two weeks rigorously bar every libertine thought from your mind. At the close of the final day retire alone to your bed, calmly and in silence; lying there, summon up all those images and ideas you banished during the fasting period just elapsed, and indolently, languidly, nonchalantly fall to performing that wanton little pollution by which nobody so cunningly arouses herself or others as do you. Next, un-pent your fancy, let it freely dwell upon aberrations of different sorts and of ascending magnitude; linger over the details of each, pass them all one by one in review; assure yourself that you are absolute sovereign in a world groveling at your feet, that yours is the supreme and unchallengeable right to change, mutilate, destroy, annihilate any and all the living beings you like. Fear of reprisals, hindrances you have none: choose what pleases you, but leave nothing out, make no exceptions; show consideration to no one whomsoever, sever every hobbling tie, abolish every check, let nothing stand in your way; leave everything to your imagination, let it pursue its bent and content yourself to follow in its train, above all avoiding any precipitate gesture: let it be your head and not your temperament that commands your fingers. Without your noticing it, from among all the various scenes you visualize one will claim your attention more energetically than the others and will so forcefully rivet itself in your mind that you’ll be unable to dislodge it or supplant it by another. The idea, acquired by the means I am outlining, will dominate you, captivate you; delirium will invade your senses, and thinking yourself actually at work, you will discharge like a Messalina. Once this is accomplished, light your bedside lamp and write out a full description of the abomination which has just inflamed you, omitting nothing that could serve to aggravate its details; and then go to sleep thinking about them. Reread your notes the next day and, as you recommence your operation, add everything your imagination, doubtless a bit weary by now of an idea which has already cost you fuck, may suggest that could heighten its power to exacerbate. Now turn to the definitive shaping of this idea into a scheme and as you put the final touches on it, once again incorporate all fresh episodes, novelties, and ramifications that occur to you. After that, execute it, and you will find that this is the species of viciousness which suits you best and which you will carry out with the greatest delight. My formula, I am aware, has its wicked side but it is infallible, and I would not recommend it to you if I had not tested it successfully.
“Lovely and delicious friend,” I went on, remarking the warm impression my lessons were making upon her, “permit me to append yet a few more observations to the advice I have just offered you; my single interest is in your happiness, my desire is to labor in its behalf.
“When once one has decided to commit a crime of amusement, it is of utmost importance, firstly, that it be given all the scope whereof it is susceptible; secondly, that it be of such force as to be forever beyond reparation. This latter characteristic is all the more important in that it eliminates any room for remorse; for when one feels remorseful, that feeling is almost always accompanied by the consoling thought that one can somehow palliate or by means of reparations efface the evil one has done. This idea sends remorse off to sleep, but only to sleep; at the very first mishap, the slightest illness, or simply when the passions are stilled, remorse reawakes and drives you to despair; if however the act committed is of a kind that leaves you without a shadow of a hope of repairing it, your reason annihilates remorse. What is the use of crying over spilt milk? The proverb is logical; by frequently repeating it to yourself you will shortly obliterate your capacity for remorse altogether, and you may then venture into any situation without subsequently being annoyed by its pangs. Adding to this an intense criminal activity, you will achieve a flawless inward serenity. On the one hand, the impossibility of reparation, on the other, that of making out which of your crimes you ought to repent most, and the conscience, first dizzied, then rendered incoherent, is finally reduced to utter silence; thus we see that conscience is distinct from all other maladies of the soul, it dwindles away to nothingness as more is added to it.
“These elementary principles of mine well assimilated, you are ready to undertake anything and should stop at nothing. Admittedly, you will not be able to procure yourself this peaceful situation save at the expense of others; but you will procure it. And of what account are others when it is a question of oneself! If from immolating three million human victims you stand to gain no livelier pleasure than that to be had from eating a good dinner, slender though this pleasure may appear in the light of its price, you ought to treat yourself to it without an instant’s hesitation; for if you sacrifice that good dinner, the necessary result is a privation for you, whereas no privation results from the disappearance of the three million insignificant creatures you must do away with to obtain the dinner, because between it and you there exists a relationship, howe
ver tenuous, whereas none exists between you and the three million victims. Well now, put case that the pleasure you expect from destroying them ceases to be tepid and becomes one of the most voluptuous sensations your soul can experience; how now, I ask you, how can there be any thinkable alternative to committing the crime at once?5
“Everything hinges upon the total annihilation of that absurd notion of fraternity whose existence they inculcate in us in the course of our upbringing. Completely demolish this fictitious link, remove yourself completely from its influence, convince yourself that between your self and some other self no connection whatever exists, and you will observe your pleasures expand while simultaneously your faculty of remorse withers. That one of your fellow creatures is subject to a dolorous sensation is of no importance provided the result is not a dolorous sensation for you. This then would be a case in which three million victims sent to their doom must be a matter of indifference to you; you ought not hence to oppose their destruction even if you are able to prevent it, since from their loss Nature gains; but it is exceedingly important that this destruction occur if it affords you delight, because between it and your pleasure there is no proportion: everything must be to the advantage of the sensation you taste. You ought hence to concert this destruction resolutely and without remorse if you can achieve it with prudence; not that prudence is a virtue in itself, but the advantages you derive from it give it a value; and not that prudence is always necessary, for it often has a chilling effect upon pleasures. But it must nonetheless be employed in certain cases because it ensures impunity, and the certitude that you will get away scot-free enormously enhances the charms of crime; however, what with your wealth, the consideration and the credit you enjoy, your position is already strong and you need be less concerned for security than another. And so you may fling caution more or less to the winds, and banish prudence when it looks to you likely to blunt your pleasures.”
Filled with enthusiasm by my discourse, the Countess’ thousand kisses expressed her gratitude.
“I am eager to try out your secret,” said she; “let’s not meet again until two weeks have passed. I swear to see no one during that interval, when it is over we shall spend a night together: I shall tell you my ideas and we shall work jointly at their realization.”
As she had promised, the Countess sent me word a fortnight later; we sat down to an exquisite supper. After we had raised our spirits with dainties of all kinds and delicious wines, the servants were dismissed, the doors locked, and we shut ourselves up in a little chamber which much art and expense had turned into a veritable laboratory for lubricious research.
Throwing herself straight into my arms, “Oh, Juliette,” the Countess said, “I need such tenebrous surroundings as these if I am to gather courage to confess what your perfidious prescriptions have brought me to. Perhaps never was a more atrocious crime conceived, it is appalling, words fail me … but my cunt seeps while I plot it … I discharge as I visualize myself performing it. … Oh, my love, however shall I be able to reveal this horror to you! Whither are we borne by a disordered imagination! To what infernal lengths is not a weak and helpless mortal dragged by satiety, by the abandonment of principles, by the atrophy of conscience, by the taste for vice, by the immoderate use of lust…. Juliette, I have a mother and a daughter, you know that.”
“Of course.”
“The one, that woman who carried me in her womb, today scarcely fifty years of age, is yet in possession of all beauty’s traits. She adores me. Aglaia, my daughter, sixteen years old—Aglaia whom I idolize, with whom I have been frigging myself daily for the past two years, just as my mother did with me—well, Juliette, these two creatures….”
“Go on.”
“These two women whom I ought so to cherish, who ought to be so precious to me—I wish to steep my hands in their blood. I wish to bathe in it, Juliette; you and I, that is what I wish, you and I, lying together in a bathtub, each frigging the other, I want the blood of those two whores to drench us, I want it to cascade over us, I want us both to be covered by it, I want us to swim in it … these two women I worshiped before I met you and whom I loathe today, I want them to die while we watch, and in that manner…. I want us to take fire from their dying breaths; I want them to be thrown dead into that same bathtub, upon their corpses and in their blood, I want it to be there our pleasures culminate.”
Countess Donis, who while making this avowal had been frigging herself uninterruptedly, now fainted as she discharged. Being myself singularly aroused by what I had just heard, I had no easy time reviving her; she embraced me anew upon opening her eyes.
“Juliette,” she said, “the things I told you are frightful, but from the state they have put me in you can appreciate their prodigious effect upon my senses…. Do I repent having spoken? Far from it, I shall carry out the whole of what I have conceived, and promptly: we must busy ourselves at this infamy tomorrow.”
“Sweet friend, delicious friend,” I said to this engaging person, “you are not afraid, heaven forbid! of finding a censor in me. Far be it from me to carp at your project, but I ask that it be explored to the limit and enriched by a few episodes. It strikes me that some spices could be included in the dish. In what manner do you mean to have your victims wet us with their blood? Is it not essential to your complete enjoyment that nothing short of the most excruciating tortures cause it to flow?”
“Ah,” was the Countess’ vibrant reply, “you think that my perversity has not already invented them, arranged them? I wish these tortures to be equally prolonged, gruesome, and violent, I wish to feast ten whole hours upon their hideousness and upon the victims’ groans and curses, I wish to have us discharge twenty times while first the one, then the other is adying, glutting ourselves on their screams, drinking ourselves drunk on their tears. Ah, Juliette,” the inspired woman pursued, masturbating me with the same ardor she employed for defiling herself, “all this to which my heart gives vent is nought but the fruit of your advice and instructions. This cruel but saving truth entitles me to your indulgence. So hark to what I have still to say: having gone so far as to disclose these dangerous desires I harbor I cannot now beg off, but must complete my confession and at the same time solicit your aid in an affair of great importance to me. Aglaia is the child of my husband, that is my reason for hating her; my sentiments for her father were no less hostile, and had Nature not heeded my prayers I would have resorted to art and forced her to fulfill them … you catch my drift. I have another daughter, a man I worship is her father. Fontange, so is she called, the darling issue of my passion and its token, she is now in her thirteenth year; she is being raised at Chaillot, near Paris. My desire is that she have a brilliant future, this requires means and means she shall not lack. Here, Juliette,” continued Madame Donis, handing me a bulging pocketbook, “my legitimate heirs will be deprived of these five hundred thousand francs; invest the sum in my Fontange’s name when you return to France, I wish also to entrust her to you, you will look after her, you will find a suitable match for her, you will see to her welfare and happiness. But your interest in the child must appear to stem from benevolence. Otherwise all would soon be brought to light: my family would assert claims to this gift, and lawyers would contrive to get it away from my daughter. I place my confidence in you, dear Juliette: swear that you will be a loyal friend to me and keep secret both my good and my evil deeds. This pocketbook contains an added fifty thousand francs which I beg you to have the kindness to accept for yourself. So then, swear to serve as the executioner of the two persons I have marked for death and at the same time as the protectress of the charming creature I place in your care—speak. Oh, Juliette, I am prepared to have faith in you—have you not told me a hundred times over that there is honor amongst rakes? will you give this maxim the lie? No, surely not … my love, I am waiting for your reply.”
Although infinitely less likely to keep a promise to cooperate in an act of generosity than in a crime, each of the propositions the Co
untess made me had its interesting side, and I agreed to both.
“Dear friend,” I said to Madame Donis after sealing our pact with a kiss, “it shall be as you will it: be certain that before a year is out your beloved Fontange shall be the beneficiary of your generosity and of my devoted attentions. But for the present, my dearest, pray let us concentrate our thoughts upon executing your abominable designs. Virtue fairly turns my stomach when my soul is oriented toward crime—”
“Ah, Juliette,” said Madame Donis, plucking at my sleeve, “you perhaps disapprove my laudable action?”
“Why no, surely not,” I hastily replied, and I had my reasons for reassuring the lady, “no, of course not, I disapprove of nothing at all but simply feel that there is a proper time and place for each of these so dissimilar subjects.”
“Very well then, we shall give all our thought to the one which has just had such potent effects upon me. There is the question of details: let us compare our ideas. I have a few in mind, but tell me yours first: I want to see if our imaginations are in tune.”
“To begin with,” I replied, “the scene must transpire not here in town but in a rural setting, cruel pleasures are most successful in the silence and peacefulness only the countryside can provide. And then let me ask you, is Aglaia a virgin?”