“Most assuredly.”
“Her maidenhead should then be lost upon the altars of murder; her two mothers must present her to the sacrificer, and—”
“And her sufferings must be ghastly!” the Countess interjected.
“By all means, but rather than settle their specific kind beforehand it is probably better that we wait and see what actual circumstances suggest. Arising spontaneously from the context, they will be a thousand times more voluptuous.”
The rest of the night was given over to the most frenzied Lesbian exercises. We kissed each other, sucked each other, devoured each other; each fitted with a dildo, we fenced fiercely, mercilessly, and for hours. And having completed our arrangements to remove for several days to Prato, where the Countess had a superb estate, we deferred the execution of our delicious scheme until the following week.
Madame Donis adroitly announced to her mother and daughter that they were all embarking upon a six-month journey, thereby preparing the ground for the sad report that the two dear ones her fury was to destroy had been taken away by some illness in the course of their travels. For my part I was to bring Sbrigani and two thoroughly reliable valets. Thus upon the appointed day were met at Prato a total of eight persons: the Countess and I, my husband and my two hirelings, Madame Donis’ mother, her daughter and, lastly, an elderly nursemaid who had been many years in the service of her disorders.
Hitherto I had seen Aglaia upon but one or two brief occasions, only now was I able to examine her closely. She proved a perfectly enchanting young thing, as pretty as a picture, gracefully made, with a skin incredibly smooth and soft and fair, big blue eyes which seemed to be only waiting to come alive, faultless teeth, golden tresses. But to all that direction was lacking, it drifted aimlessly: the Graces had set only a caressing hand to Aglaia, she yet required molding. The impression made upon me by that heavenly girl is something beyond my power to describe, it was an age since anyone had stirred me so profoundly.
And as I gazed at her a thought entered my head.
“Why not change the victim,” I said to myself, “is not the commission the Countess has entrusted to me her death warrant? If I sincerely desire to steal this money—and the urge is undeniably upon me—then must I not straightway do her to death who assigned it to my safekeeping? My purpose in coming here is to commit crimes, that which ends the daughter’s days satisfies only my libertinage, whereas another which lays her mother low will stimulate my passions just as well and will amply content my greed into the bargain: the five hundred thousand francs will be mine, and I will be dispensed from any obligation to account for them, mine also shall be two pretty girls to use as I please and, finally, I shall have murdered their mother who nicely twiddled my clitoris for a time, and of whom I have now had enough. As for the grandmother, bah, we can kill her too, there’ll be nothing to it; but this charming and virtually unknown creature I behold before me, ’twould be a pity not to spare her until familiarity has had a chance to breed contempt.”
I communicated these ideas to my husband, he applauded them and recommended that I send immediate word to my women, instructing them to pack up our belongings and to proceed with all dispatch to Rome and to await us there, for that was the city we had chosen for our next stay after our allotted term in Florence expired. Attached to me as Elise and Raimonde were, I could expect them to comply punctually and conscientiously with my orders, and was not disappointed. The very same day I convinced Madame Donis that to ensure the safe and satisfactory accomplishment of the task at hand it was indispensable to clear the house of every servant and to have all she owned of gold and gems sent down to the country so that she not be entirely without resources in the event plans went somehow astray. Acclaiming the wisdom of these precautions, Madame Donis, in blissful ignorance of those I was taking at the same time, arranged to have all her acquaintances in Florence informed that she had gone off to Sicily and would be absent until late in the fall; and keeping by her only the old nurse I mentioned a moment ago, the improvident creature put herself entirely in our power: even had she deliberately tried she could not have tumbled more unerringly into all the traps we were laying for her. Everything was settled the next day, and the Countess, ours, had received by courier six hundred thousand francs in effects, two million in bank notes, and three thousand sequins in cash; her whole defense consisted in one aged woman, whereas my forces included, apart from Sbrigani, a pair of strapping valets.
These dispositions completed and as I was enormously relishing my idea of having the daughter commit the very crime whereof her mother wished to make her the victim, I induced the Countess to postpone all action until the following Friday, which, said I, would allow us three or four days to entrench ourselves in the appropriate calm.
“Between now and then,” I suggested to her, “let us employ ruse, constraint only if need be. Since we are on the eve of losing this delightful Aglaia you have only now introduced to me and to whom I shall have to bid adieu so soon, let me at least pass these few remaining nights with the child.”
All I said, all I asked, all I proposed was law to the Countess, such was her infatuation with me that nothing could have opened her eyes. And such are the mistakes which they who are in the midst of meditating wickedness are only too prone to make: dazzled by their passions, they are completely blind to everything else and, thoroughly persuaded that their accomplices are going to derive as much benefit or pleasure as they from the deeds in question, they are oblivious of anything that might dim others’ enthusiasm for the project they dote upon. Madame Donis consented to everything; Aglaia was ordered to give me a warm reception in her bed, and I repaired thither that same evening. Oh, my friends, what an array of charms! Suspect me neither of poetic license nor unreasoning bias, for truly I do not exaggerate when I declare to you that Aglaia would all alone have sufficed to him who in his search for a model ransacked all Greece and even in the one hundred loveliest women of that land failed to find the beauties he needed for the composition of the sublime Venus I admired in the Grand Duke’s gallery. Never, no, never had I seen forms so deliriously rounded, an ensemble so voluptuous, nor details so compelling; nothing so narrow as her sweet little cunt, nothing so chubby as her dear little ass, nothing so pert, so fresh, so winningly shaped as her breasts; and fully aware of what it is I am saying, and stating it as a cold fact, I do now assure you that Aglaia was the divinest creature with whom up until that time I had ever had anything carnal to do. No sooner had I brought these marvels to light than I devoured them with caresses, and in my swift passage from one to the next, each time it seemed to me that I ought to have paused longer over what I had just relinquished for something equally wonderful. The pretty little minx had as lascivious a temperament as you could wish for, and was soon sighing her heart away. Her mother’s pupil, she frigged me like Sappho; but my studied languors, my voluptuous distress, my ecstatic sufferings, my twitchings, my nervous tremors, my spasms, my screams, my foul tirades, all these attributes of far-reaching corruption, all these symptoms of the havoc wrought by Nature in a body and a soul, my grimaces, my sugared, my sickly smiles and kisses, my sneaking gestures and insinuating remarks, my hoarse, lewd whisperings, all these amazed and then alarmed her gentle innocence, and she ended up avowing to me that her mother’s style of enjoyment was a great deal less refined, at any rate milder, than mine. Finally, after hours of matchless voluptuousness, after having discharged in every imaginable manner, five or six times in each, after having kissed, sucked each other everywhere, after having exchanged nips, bites, pinches, tonguings, whippings, after having done, in short, everything that can possibly be invented of the utterly crapulous, the utterly unbridled, the utterly obscene, and the simply inconceivable, to this delightful girl I spoke more or less as follows.
“Dear girl,” I began, “I do not know where you stand as regards principles, nor whether the Countess, when she started to initiate you into the mysteries of pleasure, concerned herself also for the culti
vation of your soul; but whatever the case may be, that which I have to reveal to you is too important to be withheld another minute from your knowledge. Your mother, that most traitorous, that most unworthy, that most criminal of women, has plotted against your life—exactly, do not interrupt me—: tomorrow, Aglaia, you are to be her victim unless you parry the blow: by which I mean you have no choice but to strike it first.”
“Good heaven, what fearful thing do you tell me?” said Aglaia, trembling in my arms.
“The truth, my dove, it is atrocious, but I could not hide it from you.”
“I wonder if this could be the reason for the odd change in her attitude toward me of late … for her chilliness, for that treatment—”
“To what treatment do you refer?”
Aglaia then disclosed to me that her mother, become cruel in her pleasure, had been tormenting her, slapping her, beating her, and taken to saying the harshest things to her. Curious to know the precise degree of disorder and license that characterized Madame Donis’ lewd commerce with her daughter. I discovered that she required of the child one of those libidinous excesses whose violence brings disgust in its wake. After having gone down the list of libertine practices, this indecent mother had now come to the point where she had no pleasure from her daughter save in the form of a mouthful of her shit, which she would swallow.
“Dear love,” I said to the maiden, “you would have been wiser to have been somewhat more sparing of the favors you granted your mother; too little reserve on your part, an overly accommodating spirit have resulted in satiety on hers. But the past cannot be altered, you must ready yourself for what is to come. The fatal hour is at hand.”
“But how am I to escape?”
“Of escape there can be no question. You cannot wait until the attack is delivered and then hope to dodge it; my advice to you is to take the offensive yourself.”
And here I began truly to enjoy the little piece of mischief I was up to; I had arrived at Prato with no fairer prospect than aiding a scoundrel to satisfy one of her passions; and now I was suborning an essentially mild-tempered and virtuous girl, I was urging her on to matricide, and however the deed might be justifiable, was it not a crime withal? While as for the trick I was playing upon my friend, it positively filled me with glee.
Impressionable, delicate, sensitive, Aglaia was sorely shaken by my revelation and reduced to tears by this awful deed I proposed that she do.
“My child,” said I, stroking her hair as she sobbed upon my breast, “this is no time for tears, ’tis courage and determination we require. Owing to her fell designs, Madame Donis has forfeited title to any of the consideration which might be shown a mother, and become an ordinary woman to be done quickly and remorselessly away with: to deprive of life those who threaten our own is the summit of human virtue. You do not suppose gratitude can bind you to an abominable woman who only gave you life in order to place it in jeopardy? Come, sweet Aglaia, don’t be mistaken, if you owe anything to such a monster it is vengeance; can you passively turn the other cheek to be insulted and hope to retain your self-respect? And supposing you were to survive this present attempt, what security remains to you? You will be your mother’s victim tomorrow if she fails to kill you today. Rash child, thoughtless child, open your eyes: can you be ashamed to shed such criminal blood? Can you yet cling to the illusion that between this villain and thee there still subsists any relation save that of the hunter to his quarry?”
“You were her friend?”
“Could I continue to be once I learned that she was bent on destroying all I love in this world?”
“Your tastes and passions resemble hers.”
“Perhaps; but, unlike her, I do not venerate crime; unlike her, I am not a she-wolf thirsting for blood, I abhor cruelty; I love my fellow man, and murder is an infamy that revolts me. An end to such comparisons, Aglaia, an end to them, they are pointless, they dishonor me, and they are causing us to lose precious moments. The time for words is over, that for deeds is upon us.”
“What! You would have me, Aglaia, thrust a dagger into my mother’s heart?”
“A mother, say you? Can you call by that name the one who labors at the destruction of her child? Why no, having become your mortal enemy, this woman must be considered a mad beast fit only for extermination.”
And taking Aglaia in my arms again, I strove to bury her misgivings beneath an avalanche of libertine attentions: and sure enough, she forgot her qualms by and by and, quite won over, promised everything.6 Guided by my pernicious reasonings, the heavenly little slut reached the stage where it dawned upon her that revenge might hold a few thrills in store for her; in a word, I maneuvered her into discharging over the thought of assassinating her mother. After that, we rose from bed.
“My friend,” I said to Sbrigani, “we have now but to lay hands on the victims; call in your men and have them clap the ladies in irons.”
The grandmother is seized first and dragged down into the cellars of the château, where she is very shortly joined by the Countess. Understanding nothing of these untoward proceedings, she appears stunned by surprise. Aglaia is there.
“Monster!” I say to Madame Donis, “justice cries out that you be made the victim of your own wickedness.”
“What’s this? Perfidious wretch, was not this plot as much your handiwork as mine?”
“Ha, I put on a show of vice and so lured you into divulging your secret; but now, having you in my power, I have no further need to feign.”
When night falls I have these two prisoners brought up to the salon Madame Donis had converted into the theater for her horrors. Aglaia, stiffened in her purpose, steeled to anything by my mingled scoldings and cajoleries, is amused by the spectacle; she is quite as unmelted by the plight in which she beholds her grandmother as by the fate that has overtaken her mother. I had been clever enough to inform her in advance that the Countess had contrived her evil plans at the old lady’s instigation; and the tortures began.
They followed the course Madame Donis had charted, except that instead of being the agent the hapless creature was the patient. Reclining, her daughter and I, in a large bathtub and frigging ourselves amain, upon us the blood of the two women poured, running from the thousand and one gashes inflicted by Sbrigani. Here I should say in Aglaia’s honor that her courage and determination wavered not once; progressing swiftly from pleasure to ecstasy, her delirium held at a frenzied pitch to the end of the operation, and it was not brief. Sbrigani devised all sorts of ingenious expedients to lengthen the ordeal, and the accomplished fellow crowned it, rather as you might have guessed, by bum-stuffing the victims, who gave up the ghost under his belly.
“And that,” said I, after congratulating my barbarous husband when he was done, “makes us the masters of the place; let us sack it and beat a rapid retreat. Aglaia,” I went on, “you presently grasp the object of my crime: as your mother’s friend I had only a share of her wealth, all of it is mine now. The fires you kindled in my heart burn there yet; you know Elise and Raimonde? I mean to include you in my troupe. But along with certain pleasures this includes certain services, like the others you too shall be called upon to contribute to the commonwealth, you will have to lie, cheat, steal, seduce, commit every crime, as do we when our advantage enjoins it; to rallying to our colors the alternative is abandonment and poverty. Which shall it be?”
“Oh, my dear friend, I shall never quit your side,” the girl exclaimed, tears in her eyes; “it is not my situation that dictates my choice, it is not fear of hardship, but my heart, and my heart belongs entirely to you.”
The heat still in him, my husband was not an impassive spectator to this moving scene; his feverish eyes and prick led me to suspect that he was bent on fucking, and his words shortly confirmed it.
“God’s blood and balls!” he declared, “this dastardly thing I have done I heavily regret now, and nothing short of raping the daughter will make up for the loss of the mother I have killed; turn her over to
me, Juliette.”
And being rather too pressed to wait for my response, the libertine, his prick up solid and true, caught the lass and deflowered her at a stroke. Blood emanating from that youthful cunt has scarce stained those white thighs when the Italian withdraws, turns the seamy side up, gives three lusty heaves and lo! he’s implanted his device in her ass.
“Juliette,” he inquired while he sawed away, “what’s to be done with this article now? A moment ago we could perhaps have found a buyer for her first fruits, but they have been picked and there’s an end to the whore’s usefulness. It’s dull, I tell you, it lacks intrigue,” he continued, fucking apace, “it lacks character, Juliette, believe me; so let us reunite what Nature originally assembled and leave this family in peace; of the murder of this child something superb might be made—fuck my eyes, the mere thought causes me to discharge.”
And here, my friends, I confess it to you, my native ferocity swept all other considerations aside, Sbrigani’s pathetic appeal had stirred me as the rascal knew it would, and a sudden spate of fuck rising in my cunt sealed Aglaia’s doom.
“You are going to go the way of your kin,” I said to her; “the idea of putting you to death stiffens us, and we are of that reprobate breed that has never bowed to any law but its passions.”
Despite her shrill protests and entreaties she was delivered over to our valets, and while the rascals tupped her in the manners they fancied, Sbrigani toiled to brilliant effect over me. From pleasures our satellites soon turned to brutalities; grossly insulting the object they had latterly favored with their homages, they advanced in short order from expletives to threats, from threats to blows. And of succor Aglaia had none from me, nor comfort: she stretched her lovely arms imploringly toward me, wrung her pretty hands, called my name; I did not heed her. The luckless child seemed to remind me tacitly of our secret pleasures and to conjure me to hark again to the sentiment which guided me then. I was deaf. Incredibly aroused by Sbrigani who was embuggering me the whole while, I felt things other than compassion for the child; I became at once her accuser and her executioner.