“And the others?” Cleontine abruptly demanded.
“Ah, little minx,” said I, folding her in my arms, “every passing minute brings added proof that Nature created us for each other. And so here is how we shall be rid of those others, my angel: once Lady Tilson has acted upon my advice and removed her husband from the picture, I shall unveil the whole intrigue to her father who, likewise pressed by my solicitations, shall, I am confident of it, call in the police. She will be brought to trial. Her lawyer, selected and perfectly feed by me, will embrace Clotilda’s cause and so plead it as to shift the guilt onto the father who will be shown to have murdered his son-in-law and had his daughter arraigned on false charges. The witnesses, the testimony, the proofs: with guineas all that is to be found in London, just as with louis it is in Paris. A fortnight and Burlington is lying in one of His Majesty’s jails.”
“Your benefactor?”
“Ah, Cleontine, what must I call the man whose existence casts a cloud upon our future together? This arch-enemy is no sooner flung into prison, condemned (he will be, Cleontine, inside a month from today), than he mounts the scaffold; he is no sooner dead, I say, than your sister is freed and we leave. We leave England, I wed you, and simply consider how easy it will be to eliminate the last obstacle preventing you from taking exclusive possession of Burlington’s estate.”
“Oh, my friend, you are a villain!”
“I am but a man and one who adores you, Cleontine, who cares for nought but to see you rich and his married wife.”
“But my father … and all he has done for you—”
“Beside the sentiments I owe you all others pale, they vanish: I must possess you, Cleontine, there is nothing I do not sacrifice in order to succeed.”
The ardent creature effuses her gratitude, showers kisses upon me; she swears to aid me, and streams of fuck, shot from one side and from the other, seal vows I have not the faintest intention of keeping.
However, since the first act of the play was to bring me to the catastrophe I was secretly planning, I hastened to stage that first act. Directed by me, Clotilda surprises her husband in her sister’s arms. But it is not to revenge herself solely upon the faithless one that I recommend, it is to immolate them both.
“Yes, that is how I feel in the matter, and it concerns me,” I tell her. “I am too furious at what has been done to you not to sacrifice those who have inflicted this outrage. From now on your life itself shall be in danger from such monsters; you must either consent to their destruction or reconcile yourself to being destroyed by them.”
An expressive silence is Clotilda’s response to this; and the same beverage rids her, at a stroke, of a sister and a husband…. I had fucked them both that morning.
I turn now to the second act in the Burlington tragedy.
“Oh, Clotilda,” I say, rushing to her in great terror, “these two sudden deaths have alarmed your father, I fear suspicion is wakening in his breast. Why would he not attribute the loss of his son-and-law and daughter to your vengeance, aware as he is of the motives that would lead you to seek it? Well, if he comes to a very obvious conclusion, you, my dear, are in a damnable case; you must have the best defense ready if this misfortune arises.”
An hour later I am in conference with the father.
“You are baffled, Sir? You search far afield for the assassin of Tilson and Cleontine, you need not look beyond Clotilda,” I pointed out to that honest man; “for whose interests are so closely associated with this horror? And if, as there is scarce any room for doubt, the wretch has been to this point capable of scorning her duties and the yet more powerful voice of Nature, presume the dire danger that must accrue to you in letting this tiger remain at your side.”
To these calumnious assertions I add a string of spurious proofs; Milord is convinced; his daughter is taken into custody. My barrister hirelings fly to find her; they have no trouble persuading Clotilda that some recrimination is imperative, everything needed to support the counterattack is furnished her. This interesting creature entreats me not to abandon her; her hand, if I deign accept it, will be the reward for my loyalty. I swear to hold steadfast by her, come what may. Burlington, sharply suspected of the crime he ascribes to his daughter, is dragged promptly before his judges; he is, at my instigation and at my expense, himself accused of having had treacherously murdered his daughter and son-in-law, and of having had Clotilda imprisoned as guilty of an atrocity he alone has committed. The trial created enough stir in London to last only a month; and in that brief period I had the satisfaction of freeing from behind bars her for whose sake I had perpetrated my terrible acts, and of seeing their third victim expire.
“Clotilda,” I cried, once gratitude had brought that lovely woman to my feet, “make haste, claim your inheritance; having no child by Tilson you unfortunately cannot pretend to anything there, but realize what belongs to you and let us be off. Our conduct will not bear too close scrutiny, let us not wait for eyes to open but get us speedily away from here.”
“Oh, Borchamps, it is a terrible thing for me, to owe my life only to my father’s death!”
“Ha, an end to idiot remorse, stifle it directly,” was my quick reply to my charming mistress; “remind yourself that your father aspired only to your doom, and that any measure enforced by self-preservation is warranted.”
“But you shall at least be there, Borchamps, to dry away my tears?”
“Can you doubt it, dear angel?”
“Ah, then call a priest, let the ceremony be for tomorrow; let wedlock’s sweet pleasures crown us the same day, and the next morning let sunrise see us set forth from a land where the consequences of this horrible affair might at any moment turn to our disadvantage.”
All is done as I desire it, and Clotilda is my wedded wife. Clotilda’s mourning for her first husband had been too brief for us to dare publish our marriage, but it nonetheless received the sanction of the law, human and divine.
I wish here to make it very plain that Clotilda cannot be considered even partly responsible for any of the pieces of mischief I have just related to you. The passive instrument of my maneuvers, she was in no wise their cause; no, I shall not hear of that gentle and charming person being blamed for anything that had befallen: the murder of her sister and husband, to which she had consented only through silence, was all alone my doing, she was still less guilty of her father’s death, and had it not been for my interventions, my briberies, perjurers and the rest, she would surely have gone to the gallows instead of Burlington.
All this I am at pains to say lest in the eyes of my auditors there be lost to Clotilda’s character one jot of the candor, modesty, or rectitude I accorded her when first I gave her description. And so also it was that however I might reason with her, she remained forever the prey of remorse; it is true that the manner whereby I acquiesced in the love she confessed for me did for a while attenuate her sufferings from that quarter. But let me repeat it once and for all, so long as the sequence of events obliges me to speak of her, never visualize Clotilda as anything but conscience-stricken, guilt-ridden. As such appearing to me a thousand times more piquant, she gave me the most extraordinary inspirations. Who would believe it? Even before enjoying her charms I thought to profane them. Clotilda was no sooner my wife than I hardened over the twofold idea of fucking her in a brothel that first night and of prostituting her charms to the first comer.
Early on in my stay at London I had made the acquaintance of a celebrated procuress at whose house I used to sport with the prettiest rascals in town, to compensate myself for the monotonies entailed by a regular intrigue. I go off to find Miss Bawil, I impart to her my resolutions, she answers for their success; in the bargain I put the clause that the libertines to whom Clotilda is to be surrendered confine themselves to pollutions, nastiness, and brutalities. Everything arranged between us, I return to Clotilda and propose that after the wedding ceremony we consummate our marriage elsewhere than in this mansion fraught with gloomy memories
; a friend, I tell her, has invited us to stay the night. Trusting Clotilda accompanies me to Miss Bawil’s, where a merry feast is spread before us. Someone less a scoundrel than I would have enjoyed this moment during which happiness displaced Clotilda’s chagrins and she was oblivious to all save the charm of belonging to me. The poor fool was kissing me tenderly in her joy when three rascals posted by break suddenly in upon us, daggers in their hands.
“Run for your life!” they say to me. “Begone and leave this woman to us, we’ve some frolicking to do before you get to her.”
I flee from the room and pass into an adjoining one whence, through a spyhole, I am able to observe everything. Clotilda, half in a swoon, is promptly stripped by these ruffians who expose her naked to my gaze. The effect was enchanting as libertinage here performed the usual office of love. ’Twas thus profaned I had my first glimpse of the graces with which Nature had endowed the exquisite creature, ’twas thus the world’s most beauteous ass was revealed to my lascivious stare. A superb courtesan was frigging me in the meantime, and at a previously arranged signal the outrages redoubled. Clotilda, sprawled over the knees of one of the three was flagellated by the other two, after that condemned to the most lubricious and the most humiliating penances. Obliged to tongue the. asshole of one, she had also, at the same time, to frig the other two. Her face—that moving emblem of her sensitive soul—her breast, her lily-white and rosy breast, were washed by the impure jets of that unholy trio’s ardor, who, so instructed by me and to humiliate the heavenly creature’s virtue that much more thoroughly, ended by pissing and shitting upon her body while I proceeded to embugger another whore sent to complete my excitement during the scene. Quitting this second girl’s ass without having discharged there, I pick up a rapier and rush into the dining room; I look as though I have returned at the head of reinforcements, I rescue Clotilda, my bought ruffians take to their heels and, casting myself theatrically at my beloved’s feet, “Oh, dearest soul,” I cry, “have I not arrived too late? May not these monsters have already—”
“No, my friend,” replies Clotilda as she is being wiped and made tidy, “no, your wife is still worthy of you—humiliated, mistreated for a certainty, but not dishonored. Oh, Borchamps, why ever did you bring me to this house?”
“Ah, be calm, my angel, all danger is past. Miss Bawil has enemies, this untimely incursion was their work; but my call for help was heard, the house freed, and we can spend the rest of the night here in safety.”
Clotilda was not easily reassured; at length, however, she recovered from her experience and we betook ourselves to bed. Greatly heated by the scene I had lately provoked, astonishingly electrified to hold beauty, virtue sullied in my arms, I wrought prodigies of vigor…. While this charming creature wanted something of her sister’s disorderly imagination, she made up for that shortcoming by a more just, more lucid spirit and by an infinitely fetching beauty of physical detail. It would be impossible to be fairer of skin, better made of body, impossible to have sweeter, more winsome, more tantalizing parts. Clotilda absolutely untutored in lubricity and new to its pleasures, was ignorant even of the possibility of traveling Cythera’s narrower bypath.
“My angel, a husband must find some first fruits to pluck on the wedding night; having none but these,” said I, touching her asshole, “you will surely not refuse them to me.”
So saying I catch a good grip on her flanks and from sodomizing her five times in succession bring my seed to a boil; it was however in her cunt I deposited it. And ’twas there and then that Clotilda, luckier or more ardent with me than with Tilson, conceived a very unlucky daughter, who due to my inconstancy and neglect, I never saw at her birth.
Dawn found me so tired of my goddess that had I consulted my sentiments alone, Clotilda would indeed never have got out of London; but, persuaded that this creature could perhaps be useful during my travels, we readied ourselves for departure. Helped by me, Clotilda assembled her fortune, it came to twelve thousand guineas all told and, taking them with us, I and my wife left London two years to the day after I had first set foot there.
Since I was ever bent on visiting the courts of the North we now headed for Sweden. We had already been traveling some nine or ten weeks when one day, looking back over our adventures together, Clotilda hazarded a few reproachful remarks upon the violence of the means I had employed to win her. My prompt reply was framed in such language as to give my dear wife very clearly to understand that I was perfectly ready to have her commit crimes but by no means prepared to see her repent them. Clotilda’s tears flowed forth afresh; I then revealed to her the whole truth of what had happened.
“And every single part of it,” I told her in conclusion, “was my handiwork; the desire to be rid of your sister and your husband, both overmuch fucked by me; that of fucking you too and of appropriating your money by killing your father: such, my sweet, were the real motives behind all my enterprises. Whence you will observe that in all this I have toiled for none but my own sake, and not one instant for yours. To this I may usefully add, dear creature, that my intention being to plunge into a very nefarious career, I did not unite you to my destiny in order to have you thwart that aim, but to promote it.”
“In that case, what is the distinction you draw, Sir, between a slave and a wife?”
“And you, tell me now, what distinction do you draw between a slave and a wife?”
“Ah, Borchamps, why did you not take this line the very first day I met you? How bitter have now become the tears you force me to shed over my unhappy family!”
“No more weeping, Madame,” was my harsh warning to her, “and no more illusions concerning your fate; I expect utter submission from you. If it so pleased me to have the carriage stopped this instant and to have you suck the prick of the man who’s driving it, you’d suck that prick, my dear, you’d suck it. For if you did not, I’d blow your brains out on the spot.”
“My God, Borchamps! Is this love?”
“Why, I do not love you, Madame, what an idea. I have never loved you; I wanted your money and your ass, I have them both, and it may not be long before I have had altogether enough of the latter.”
“And the fate then in store for me will probably be the one Cleontine met?”
“With you I shall probably resort to less mystery and surely a great deal more artistry.”
At this point Clotilda thought to use the weapons of her sex: she leaned toward me in an effort to kiss and sprinkle me with her tears; I thrust her rudely away.
“Cruel man,” she said, half-choked by her sobs, “if you wish to offend the mother at least respect the poor creature who owes its life to your love: I am pregnant … I beg you to stop at the first town we come to, for I do not feel at all well.”
We did indeed stop and Clotilda, who took directly to bed, fell gravely ill. Irritated at having to interrupt my journey and at being delayed by a creature for whom I was beginning to have the keenest distaste, to which there had to be added the loathing wherewith I had always beheld pregnant women, I was on the point of taking a charitable leave of them both, she and her child, when a woman who was staying in a chamber near ours, stopped me in the hallway and bade me come for a moment into her room. Great heavens! what was my surprise upon recognizing Princess Sophia’s pretty confidante, the same Emma of whom I spoke a short while ago.
“What an unexpected encounter, Madame,” said I, “and what a fortunate one! But are you here by yourself?”
“I am indeed,” that charming personage replied, “I too have had to flee from an insatiable, ambitious mistress whom it must become damnation to serve. Well-advised you were, Borchamps, to have been of such firm resolve! You did not then know and may still be unaware of the chores her perfidious politics were reserving for you. She told you the Stadtholder was party to her scheme; she lied; her intention was to have you put that prince out of the way, and had the attempt failed you would have been a dead man. In despair after your escape, nevertheless she continued to har
bor her wicked designs for another two years, and finally insisted that I undertake the murder she was meditating. Had it been a question merely of an ordinary crime, I would doubtless have executed it, for crime amuses me; I enjoy the shock it imparts to the mechanism, its effervescence delights me, and rid as I am of all prejudice, I give myself over to it without qualms before or regrets afterward; but a deed so important as that one—well, discretion is the better part of valor and I followed your example in order that having declined to be her accomplice, I not become her victim.”
“Charming woman,” said I, putting my hand in Emma’s bosom, “let us banish all ceremony, we are nearly enough acquainted for it to be of no purpose. Let me tell you once again, dear angel, how very pleased I am to have found you again. Restrained by the exigent Sophia, we were unable to act in accordance with what we felt for each other; here, however, nothing hinders us—”
“You say so, my friend; but this woman accompanying you, might one know who she is?”
“She is my wife.”
And I hasten to recount to my new friend the whole of the London story, and how I whittled the Burlington family down to the sole survivor now lying sick in another room of this inn. Emma, a great rascal at heart, saw all the humor in the adventure and when she was done laughing asked if I would not introduce her to my tender spouse.
“Surely, you shall not go on dragging her about forever,” she said to me, “leave her here, I’m a more suitable companion for you than this prude. And I ask no sacraments from you, not I. I’ve always detested Church ceremonies. Although noble-born, but a lost woman through my debauchery and thanks to my attachment to Sophia, from you I want only the title of mistress and dearest friend. How are your finances?”
“In the very best order. I am extremely rich.”
“A pity. I have one hundred thousand crowns and was counting upon offering them to you, thinking thereby to get you somewhat into my power, which would be agreeable to me.”