The eighteenth century dubbed itself the age of reason and enlightenment, and its portrait of God changed from that of a Stern Churchman closely concerned with His handiwork-the earth, its creatures and mankind-to that of a Great Clockmaker, who had started the universe to ticking and had now gone off to perform other mysteries. The Clockmaker had given man a marvelous mechanism and a road to His horological heaven easily identified by the traveler because the milestones offered assurances and directions how to trudge ever upward in spirit, ethic and intellect. The road was well marked, the milestones were clear, their instructions and advices legible to even the illiterate, so why man failed to follow, even missed the marked road, posed a question to the eighteenth century philosopher, as it posed the same question to thinkers before that century, and has posed this perplexing question, which will not go away even when it is severely ignored, for thinkers of our time. Furthermore, there are so many parallels between the eighteenth century and our own that an examination of these similarities immediately poses an even more awful question-if our philosophical, ethical and moral creeds all agree on the true nature of man, who-if he follows God's advice-can accomplish the ideal society, then why do man and his society develop so consistently, with such strength, along lines that only can be called at best cynical, opportunistic, immoral and evil, at worst-ungodly? If the good society as the humanist conceives it is contrasted with the actual society in which all mankind lives, one of two more awful conclusions must be accepted. The first: man is not a rational being and his nature, ambitions and objectives are meretricious, base and cruel. The second: that man is a rational being, capable of consistent intellectual and ethical evolutions, but his reasoning is dedicated to egocentric, pragmatic achievements of the I; therefore, his neighbor's and mankind's welfare are not his concern.
By their very nature these propositions are depressing and frightful. To anyone who has ever believed or hoped that mankind becomes ever better, the hopelessness of such conclusions is quite evident. To each man, whatever his century, his time was the worst, not only because of its iniquitous institutions deserving of his condemnation, but because in that time there were so many opportunities and institutions for the betterment of mankind.
To our century the Marquis de Sade is one of the dramatic proofs of the failure of the eighteenth century aristocracy in France. This is the easy conclusion. The more difficult conclusion, but far more logical even if it is distasteful, is that de Sade was a triumph of intellect and breeding, a man capable of great good and accomplishment, with every facility to perform virtuous deeds, but who succumbed to the naturalistic pressures of his society and not only made for himself an infamous place in the history of letters and abnormal psychology but gave his name to a form of illness which afflicted men, their communities and nations for thousands of years before his time, and has afflicted men, communities and nations for the two centuries since his death; and it is most probable that the evils catalogued and recorded by de Sade will stay with us as long as there are men left on earth who prefer misanthropy, misogyny, xenophobia and social myopia to humanity, and can find rocks to throw when all other weapons have been taken from them.
Donatien Alphonse Francois de Sade was born on July 2, 1740 (in the reign of Louis XV), in Paris. At birth, because he was the eldest son, he inherited the title of marquis, and from his father he would inherit the rank of comte. Both the maternal and paternal sides of his family were distinguished, and in the fourteenth century, an ancestor, Hugues de Sade, married Laura, who-seen by Petrarch at the church of Saint Clare at Avignon on the Monday of Holy Week, April 6, 1327-was immortalized for all time by the poet in his sonnets.
At the age of seven the young marquis was placed in the household of his uncle, Jacques Francois Paul Alphonse de Sade, who was Vicar-General to the Archbishop of Toulouse and Narbonne. The Vicar-General was a prince of the secular and ecclesiastical worlds, intellectually adapted to reconcile the worlds of flesh and spirit so that neither reproached nor embarrassed the other, and in Paris he was popular with the royal court because he participated in its dissolutions and kept them as secret as the disclosures he heard in the confessional booth. Suddenly tiring of the Dionysian life, the Vicar-General retired to a chateau in the valley of Vacluse, where he devoted himself to meditation, scholarship and family memoirs. His extant works reveal talent and a critical literary craftsmanship.
So, in 1747, Jacques became guardian and tutor to his nephew, and in his household the youngster was given the advantages of an eclectic library and the tutelage of his uncle for three years, until at ten the young marquis was enrolled in the College LouisIe-Grand in Paris, a leading school for young aristocrats, where instruction in good education included training in social deportment and the development of taste and wit. Student standards were high, and were maintained at an elevated level by a stern discipline enforced by the whip, which was wielded quite democratically on the boys, regardless of rank or station. That some of the boys developed a taste for the whip and its use when they became adults was more than alumni loyalty to their old school.
At the college de Sade was a bright student who excelled in literature, science and philosophy, and in the graces of music, drama, painting, sculpture and fencing. It is also quite certain that at this school he was initiated into passive then active homosexual practices.
At the age of fourteen de Sade was graduated from the college, and before he was fifteen he joined the Regiment des Chevaux Legers and was appointed a sub-lieutenant in the Regiment du Roi. Shortly thereafter he was promoted to a Lieutenant de Caribiniers: as a captain of cavalry he saw active service in Germany during the Seven Years' War. Then as now, military life and service were raw, cynical and given over to death in the field and life in the beds of vanquished women. Although there is no direct evidence, de Sade was believed to have visited Constantinople, where he would have become acquainted at first hand with Oriental refinements and sexual niceties which had intrigued and delighted three generations of Crusaders.
In 1763, when de Sade was a young adult but experienced beyond his years, he returned to Paris and entered into the dissolute social life of the capital, made available to him by rank and income and which custom demanded of young courtiers who sought careers in government. Several scrapes brought him to the attention of the authorities, and his concerned father decided to fetter his son to respectability by arranging his proper marriage with a daughter of good family. Monsieur de Montreuil, President of the Auxiliary Court of Paris, had two daughters-Renee who was twenty, a stately beauty but religious, and Louise, who, at the age of thirteen, was lively, fun-loving and worldly. Although it was arranged for the young marquis to marry Renee, he met Louise first and found her charming; then he met Renee and took an instant dislike to her. To his parents and Monsieur de Montreuil, de Sade confessed his love for Louise, and pleaded for their permission to marry the younger sister. His request was refused, and under great family pressure he married the bride chosen for him on May 17, 1763. Renee was loyal, faithful and uncomplaining, the best of all possible wives-which may explain de Sade's hatred of her-and she bore her husband's three children and his disfavor with dignified resignation. Religion was her solace, which in part explains de Sade's intolerance of any creed which gave his wife comfort, resolution and determination to remain at his side.
Havelock Ellis, in the third volume of his Studies in the Psychology of Sex (1913), says of de Sade: "It is evident that this unhappy marriage was decisive in determining de Sade's career; he at once threw himself recklessly into every form of dissipation, spending his health and his substance sometimes among refined debauched nobles and sometimes coarsely debauched lackeys. He was, however, always something of an artist, something of a student, something of a philosopher, and at an early age he began to write, apparently at the age of twenty-three."
Of the remaining fifty-one years of his life, de Sade spent a total of thirty in prison. The first arrest was in September, 1763, because of an orgy in which he had participated in a petite maison, as the private retreats for fun and games by noblemen and ladies were euphemistically called. For this breach of good manners de Sade was imprisoned for six months, which proves his offense to have been considered no more than a serious misdemeanor. On April 5, 1768, de Sade was arrested again, for L'Affaire Keller; this time he had persuaded a young widow to visit his petite maison, where he had imprisoned her, deprived her of all clothing, and subjected her to severe flagellation and the infliction of a variety of wounds with a small knife; de Sade's excuse was that he was testing the healing properties of a new ointment! (Note: Hitler's physicians did far worse and for less salutary avowed ends.) Rose Keller escaped, made her way to the police; the marquis was arrested and confined for a short time to a prison at Lyon, after Rose Keller was paid a sufficient sum for damages, which enabled her to make an advantageous second marriage.
The marquis' family and that of his wife obtained de Sade's release from prison, but Monsieur de Montreuil used his influence to obtain a judicial order which forbade his son-in-law's return to Paris; in addition, the order compelled de Sade to reside at his family's chateau in Provence, some miles from Marseille. The news that de Sade was filling his time with the writing and production of plays pleased both families. Then came more disquieting news: the marquis was presenting Mademoiselle de Beauvoisin, an actress of the Palais Royal, as his marquise. In addition to the plays, theatricals of a more torrid nature were also being performed at the family estate, which prompted de Sade's real wife to join him at the chateau, where her presence would end the actress' reign and, it was hoped, persuade her husband to devote himself to less scandal and more matrimony.
Unfortunately for Renee she made the mistake of bringing Louise to the chateau. Louise was now twenty-one, and more beautiful, and de Sade's love for her was rekindled. Now he pleaded his suit anew, Louise listened, and although she was tempted, family loyalty compelled her to reject her brother-in-law.
Frustration and anger decided de Sade to go to Marseilles, ostensibly on business. Accompanied by his valet, he arrived in that seaport city on June 21, 1772, and arranged to give a party in a notorious house of assignation. Friends of the marquis, plus a group of accommodating ladies of the house, made up the guest list. Food was plentiful, wine was in abundance and the humor which preceded the physical activity was broad. Although the final ceremonies had been arranged for before the party began, de Sade wished to prove himself a lavish host, so he plied his guests with elaborate candies whose rich ingredients included cantharides, which, taken with the wine, made a noisy orgy of the party. De Sade and his valet had not eaten the spiced candies, and were able to leave the party after they were surfeited of the impromptu and highly original turns, but many of the guests had to be hospitalized.
Although Marseilles was a city which catered to the amusements of mariners, its local magistrate, Chancellor Maupeou, took a dim view of sexual immorality, especially when it took outrageous tangents, and he decided to make an example of the marquis by lodging a complaint against him with the Parliament of Aix-enProvence. A warrant for de Sade's arrest was issued, but he had fled the chateau for Italy-with his sister-in-law Louise! On September 11, 1772, the Parliament at Aix declared the marquis and his valet to be outlaws, found them guilty of participating in unnatural offenses-a polite euphemism for sodomy and oral genital contact-a capital crime, so both men were condemned to death in absentia. It should be noted that there was no evidence of anyone at the party being poisoned, no one died or suffered lastingly, and the use of aphrodisiacs by polite French society was a common and casual practice; the cachous of the Due de Richelieu and the pastiles de serail of Madame du Barry were famous, and both recipes made liberal use of cantharides.
The marquis and his mistress were in Italy, where his happiness with Louise lasted only a matter of months, for before her twenty-second birthday, she died. However, he could not return to France because of the sentence of death passed upon him. It was not until June 30, 1778--some six years later-that the harsh sentence against him was revoked and he was fined fifty francs, which is some evidence that calmer minds prevailed over the rancor of the magistrate in the matter of justice.
Although the sentence of death hung over him for six years, by 1773 de Sade could no longer stay out of France; he ventured across the border into Chambery from Geneva, was arrested and imprisoned in the Chateau de Moilans. There he lingered for a year before his wife helped him to escape again into Italy, where they remained for three years. However, in January, 1777, he was rash enough to return to Paris. He was again recognized and imprisoned. Once again the influence of his wife and her family were brought to bear, and on June 14, 1778, he was permitted to plead in court, where the fine of fifty francs which had been previously assessed against him was ordered paid, and he was forbidden to visit Marseilles for three years.
Now it would seem that the marquis was free, but he had not reckoned with his mother-in-law, Madame de Montreuil, who had not wanted him condemned to death because of the disgrace this would have brought upon her family, her daughter and her grandchildren; nevertheless, because she resented her son-in-law's harsh treatment of her elder daughter, and his affair with her younger daughter, she decided that imprisonment would keep her daughter and their reputation safe, and her son-in-law apart from temptation and notorious comrades of both sexes. Although her daughter did not see eye-to-eye and again plotted her husband's escape, de Sade remained prisoner from 1778 until 1790 and was moved from a prison at Vincennes to the Bastille, and then to Charenton. At Vincennes, de Sade met another remarkable prisoner, Mirabeau, but they did not enjoy each other's company. A serious quarrel between them made them social and literary enemies.
In 1790 the French Revolution freed the marquis, who became Citizen de Sade. Shortly thereafter, his oral and written eloquence for the republic, for democracy, for equal justice for all men, for rationality rather than extremes of terror, gave him some importance in the Republic. Paris was divided into sections, and de Sade became Secretary of the Section des Piques. If he had been a man who carried grudges against people rather than against institutions, he could have done nothing and seen his father-in-law and mother-in-law executed. Rather, he helped save their lives.
A sincere Republican, de Sade was opposed to capital punishment and extremities of revenge, even against the old aristocracy. Long imprisoned by a lettre de cachet which his mother-in-law had obtained against him, he wished to see such a cruel device banished from the Republic, and he propagandized energetically against the use of similar illegal restraints by new officials. It is also interesting to note that if the marquis had been a bloodthirsty psychotic, as he has been painted for a century and a half, he would have gloried in the opportunities for torture, bloodshed and execution made possible by the Terror, for it would have been a comparatively simple matter to have himself assigned as a chief investigator to the provinces, where he could have dispensed whatever tortures and punishment he saw fit, and where he could easily have obtained victims for his personal lusts and satiations. In truth, what did he do? He remained in Paris, attended to his duties as secretary to his section, and concerned hinself with the state of hospitals and their improvement. Jules Janin, in 1834, published an article in the Revue de Paris about de Sade, noting that he was actually "a philosopher of vice rather than an opportunistic practitioner or politician. " Janin continues: "an absolute villian in theory, in reality he was very gentle, prudent and full of virtuous phrases. "
From 1790-when he secured a legal separation from his wife-to 1803, the marquis devoted himself to government and literary activity, and everything he had written while in prison now saw publication. Several of his plays were produced, and in 1791 appeared the first edition of Justine, which was entirely rewritten and expanded in length when it was republished six years later. In 1793 he published Aline et Valcour, a sentimental love tale with practically no extended scenes of cruelty, although there is some mention of flagellation.
In 1795 de Sade wrote his famous La Philosophie dans le Bou doir, which is a series of cynical intellectual discourses spaced by sexual scenes and dialogues of unbridled license. However, the book is important for the essays on a variety of subjects pertinent to his time and even to ours, for the marquis discourses at length on the Bible and Christianity, the role of hereditary nobility in European society and government, why government should benefit the greater number of men, the need for a balanced ratio between crime and the severity of punishment, and of one justice for all degrees of men (which became the great thesis of Cesare Beccaria some generations later), the elimination of all capital punishment, and sexual freedom for all men and women. The book has had a strong influence on students of social and cultural psychology, for nowhere does de Sade display to better advantage his extensive reading and close acquaintance with the best of literature from the classic to the modern.
In 17% he published the first edition of Juliette, which is a savage satire on the rewards of vice. In fact, Juliette emphatically illustrates de Sade's firm conviction, which he recapitulated time and time again in every word he authored, that "Vice is always recompensed and virtue punished. " Proof of this to the marquis was that when he saved the life of his wife's parents and publicly proclaimed to Republican activists his opposition to the death penalty, he was arrested in December, 1793, charged by the government with "moderation" and confined until the following October!
In 1797 the marquis rewrote Justine and combined it with Juliette, to produce his most famous or infamous work, depending upon the critic's view of literature and what should be printed or read. Under the new title of La Nouvelle Justine, ou les Malheurs de la Vertu, suive de Vilistoire de Juliette, sa soeur, the novel was published in ten volumes; the virtues of Justine were told in four, the vices of Juliette in six. The novel was an immediate success; it amused the public and outraged no one. And it is a lugubrious irony that Justine, who had suffered every indignity, including multiple rape, while her sister Juliette, who had indulged herself in every vice and cruelty until she occupied an important position in the French realm, is kept from the corruption of her sisterwho is about to eat at her table-by a bolt of lightning which strikes Justine dead, so that her virtue is not impaired by taking even a morsel from her immoral sister.
De Sade left the government in 1794, and for the next six years details of his life are obscure, except that we know he continued his literary activity; his books were sold openly throughout France and could be found in all libraries and catalogues. Sophisticated literateurs considered the corpus of de Sade's work to be ironic, and averred that if the scenes of cruelty and sex were eliminated, the major books could stand on their merits as satire and justifiable criticism-which could be fully documented-of the regimes of Louis XV, Louis XVI and the Directoire. Although de Sade's fortune and estate had been destroyed by the Revolution, the profits from the sale of his books throughout all Europe enabled him to live well and to practice the activity closest to his heart, that of literature.
In his Index Librorum Prohibitorum (1877) Pisanus Fraxi observed that, "During the first Revolution, the most objectionable books with the lewdest plates were publicly catalogued, and openly exposed for sale in the booksellers' windows of the Palais Royal. " It was estimated by an English volume published in 1885 that at least two thousand works as startling as anything written by de Sade were published in France between 1750 and 1825, and C. R. Dawes in his study of de Sade (1927) observed, "the more notorious works of the Marquis de Sade sold well and were circulated freely. It was their `philosophical' discussions and their scenes of cruelty, rather than their sexuality, that distinguished them from innumerable other books of the period. "
Other literary men of distinguished reputation-Mirabeau, Diderot and Voltaire-also produced works that were as sexually bold and forthright as de Sade's. Therefore we can conclude without straining credulity, that the marquis was a cynical product of his time who had a devoted interest in sex (remember, he was imprisoned for most of the most vigorous years of his adult life and denied normal sexual expression), but his interests ranged from the drama and art to all forms of literature, ancient and contemporary history, anthropology, historical analysis of comparative religions, politics, and contemporary manners and mores. The contemporary reader-if he reads carefully-will become aware of a remarkable writer; one who wrote a remarkable indictment of his time, which can be documented by any student of history on the college level. However, for the reader who demands assurance that it is quite all right to read about actual not fictional men who had a knowledge of sex, C. P. Snow in The New Men says wisely, "As I observed what others had observed before; I could not recall of those who had known more than their share of the erotic life, one who, when the end came, did not think that his time had been tolerably well spent. "
Now de Sade did a foolish thing, for in July, 1800, he published Zoloe et ses deux Acolytes, which was a thinly disguised vicious libel against Napoleon Bonaparte, who was then First Consul of France, and his wife. Bonaparte was Baron d'Orsec, which is a simple anagram for "Corse", which is French for Corsican. To worsen the case against him, de Sade declared he was writing truth and "living history. "
The book created a sensation, and on March 5, 1801, de Sade and his publisher were arrested and taken to prison, where they were charged with the publication of Juliette-"a work contrary to morality and manners!" The absurdity did not go unnoticed, for Justine and Juliette had been in circulation for almost ten years.
Why de Sade became so reckless as to attack Napoleon has never been discovered. Whether it was a whim, some deepseated grievance, or a belief in his immunity as a satiristare conjectural. But Napoleon had de Sade confined to prison for the remainder of his natural life. The marquis was now more than sixty years of age, and would spend the next thirteen years, until he died, in confinement. In 1803 it was established that de Sade was mad, and he was transferred to Charenton, which was more of an asylum than a prison. Contemporary observers knew that it was the practice of the First Consul and future Emporer to have men who had offended him declared insane and institutionalized as incurable. Attempts were made time and again to have de Sade released, but to no avail, and when he died at Charenton on December 2, 1814, he was seventy-five, and-irony-Napoleon was in exile at Elba.
Pisanus Fraxi, in his Notes on Curious and Uncommon Books (1879), stated that "The Marquis de Sade is perhaps one of the most extraordinary men who ever lived, and a very interesting subject for psychological study. " To assess de Sade without knowledge of his time would be wasteful; for only by knowing his actual background and his time can he be understood.
To know the Greek philosophers one must know something of the classic Greece; to understand Hitler the student must know something of World War I, and of German history before and after that war.
Scholars are not in disagreement that the courts of Louis XV and Louis XVI were among the most immoral of all of Europe. Luxury and refinement were thin veneers for corruption, depravity and erosion of character. The ruling classes of France, who were among the richest of all Europe, were also the most debauched, and were assisted in maintaining their grip on the common people and government by a large number of profligate priests, who disregarded their vows. Throughout the court, and for that matter all of Europe, great attention was devoted to dress, manners, table, drink, entertainments; lechery and its refinements were practiced in secret clubs with names such as "lie de la Felicite, ou la Societe des Hermaphrodites," the "Societe des Aphrodites," and the "Societe du Moment. " And the Illuminati was a secret order of terrorist utopists dedicated to the reform of society by the knife, poison and terror.
At the same time there existed an absolute disregard for law, and robbery, pillage and highwaymen were accepted as normal institutions of the land. Thieves and robbers were also employed as instruments of state, and skilled poisoners were as influential as cabinet ministers. When a culprit was brought to justice the punishment always included torture, and executions were as popular with the mobs as parades, Lenten festivals and theatrical entertainments.
Cruelty was another sign of the age, not only in sports but in mass attendance at baitings between men and beasts, and fights between birds and beasts. In addition to these, it should be noted that the Terror of the Revolution, which began shortly after de Sade was released from his first thirteen-year term in 1790, provided the mob with an extended spectacle of mass executions that went unequaled until the twentieth century, when the infamous concentration camps of Hitler's Reich flourished before and during World War II.
Hitler's Germany was a terrible manifestation or symptom of a modern syndrome of contemporary civilization, so aptly expressed by Joseph Heller in Catch-22, where "It was almost no trick at all, he saw, to turn vice into virtue and slander into truth, impotence into abstinence, arrogance into humility, plunder into philanthropy, thievery into patriotism, and sadism into justice. Anybody could do it; it required no brains at all. It merely required no character. "
"No character!" Herein is encapsulated an indictment of our time which is, strangely enough very similar to the eighteenth century with its emphasis on reason. The catch is, however, how is this reason used? To explain, or to justify?
Even the kindest, most generous appraisal of our contemporary society is that it is cynical, egopinionated, selfish and psychopathic in its ambition, rationale and conduct.
The average American, European too, considers law to be a convenient device to be manipulated in individual case and advantage, as if the social forces which have been set in motion by the machine, intercontinental weapons of total destruction, nuclear fission, space, and a worship of installment buying and built-in obsolesence of what we buy hold society in so firm a grip that individuals no longer have control over their individual behavior. This popular belief is diametrically opposed to the "free will" concept which reasons that a man chooses to become antisocial and is not a victim of environment.
A fundamental error of fright is over-simplification, an attempt to find magical causes and hexes to explain human failures and social malaise. Rather, as in the eighteenth century, we find that war, empirical anomie and community normlessness are the societal forces which have led us-as they did de Sade-to accept certain sound pragmatic conclusions for survival in a delinquent and psychopathic society; it is not important what you know, but who you know; no one is concerned where your money came from; if you don't cheat someone first, he will cheat you; money is more important than an education; a sucker is born every minute; the more you steal the less you will be punished; forget about the community-think only of what's in it for me; everyone has a pitch, so always throw a curve; what was the pay-off, who got it; if you've the money to pay for it, you can get your picture on the cover of a magazine, be awarded an honorary doctorate, get elected to public office, become a distinguished member of the jet set; teachers and ministers are dopes because they earn lots less money than baseball players and rock and roll singers.
The principle of differential association of crime and delinquency is not indigenous to our century, nor to the eighteenth, nor to any other period of time where an individual or community became delinquent because of an excess of definitions favorable to violations of common, ethical or legislated law.
Furthermore, the process of learning delinquent behavior makes use of all the mechanics which are involved in straight-line thinking, and this process has created an atmosphere of psychological abnormality in our society; on the surface there is no apparent evidence of psychosis or neurosis, but we know-as our news media inform us after the fact-that abnormal responses to apparently good environment and superior opportunities and advantages are increasingly commonplace.
Why? Because we lack social conscience of any strength or longevity, and are unable to evaluate truly enduring ethical values. Because our egocentricity demands a continuing' manipulation of environment and people to stimulate our egocentricity, so there is no altruism in most of our behavioral patterns. Because at certain times whole groups of our future mothers, fathers and PTA stalwarts have impulsive breakouts in which entire communities are wrecked. Because our milieu has become increasingly Dionysian rather than Apollonian, and we are reluctant to forego immediate pleasures for future goals. Because the cult of charming personality-Mike Hammer, James Bond, Humphrey Bogart-where brutality to men and women is accomplished with a smile in and out of bed-is admired and emulated in action and fantasy by the community. Because our defective social ability has made it well nigh impossible for us to see anyone else's point of view. Because we have become increasingly adroit in our ability to rationalize, project, blame and eschew compassion. Because we only have limited anxiety, limited concern about our neighbors; we can simulate sympathy, but nothing happens empirically. Because we simulate social insight, make the proper sounds of understanding and sympathy, but are doing so to produce the proper, correct dimensions of a people and a society concerned with appearances rather than deeds. Because we basically distrust Everyman, although we indicate confidence in our neighbors, representatives and community. Because we lack real regret for deviant or criminal action, although our overt expressions of despair are offered dramatically, for good audience reaction.
All of the "becauses" add up to individual and community psychopathology, to moral imbecility.
The same contemporary personal, group and envirpnmental "becauses" accounted for de Sade in the eighteenth century, as they do for Jean Genet in the twentieth. Both men were French, both were homosexual, both were imprisoned for considerable terms, both began to write with purpose while in prison, both have created masterpieces, both have had to endure attempts to have their work suppressed (Genet's work has been reviled as "acts of vengeance," he has been called "the most depraved author now writing for the stage," and Francois Mauriac has ordered him to stop writing), both were concerned with man's inhumanity to man, and both used physical cruelty and sex to dramatize their indictments.
Both men mirrored their times. Genet recently observed that "Anything can happen in America. Even a little humanity can appear there. " This is not the statement of a foreigner who believes his own country and people alone are virtuous. Rather it is the statement of a writer who is aware of the elimination of the time-space boundaries of our continuum,, which makes all cultures and influences one, and who is certainly aware, as de Sade was, of the continuing truth of John Aldridge's statement in his recent essay on "Highbrow Authors and Middlebrow Books," that:
The middlebrow reader of fiction . . . . in spite of his high moral pretensions . . . wants the various extraliterary dividends which he would get from trash if he dared to read it. He wants sex and sensation and violence and outrage, and he wants them on the only terms on which he can be sure of a clear and powerful response, in the form of massive copulations, giant orgasms, hidden rapes and Cinemascopic murders and pillages-the bloodcurdling extremity of which is in perfect proportion to the emotional impoverishment of his life. He wants them on these terms, that is, if he can persuade himself, at whatever cost to the truth, that they are the terms of serious literature.
Let us attempt the truth; the attempt may be painful, but it is certainly worth-while, de Sade wrote about a universal place, a universal time, wrote his universal indictments which have persevered as the indictments of Genet will persevere. This is no crime; opposition to hypocrisy is no crime, although the hypocrite claims it to be. If we wish to rid ourselves of hyprocrites and candid writers who present us with the hideous evils of our societies, why, let us cleanse ourselves of these evils. That's all there is to it.
But is this "it" beyond the capability of Everyman?
-Irving Shulman
TO LIBERTINES
Voluptuaries of all ages and of every sex, it is to you only I tender this work; nourish yourselves upon its principles', they favor your passions, and these passions, whereof coldly insipid moralists put you in fear, are naught but the means Nature employs to cause Man to arrive at the ends she prescribes to him; harken only to these delicious promptings, for there is no voice but that of the passions that can conduct you to happiness.
Lewd women, may the voluptuous Saint-Ange be your model; after her example, scorn all that contradicts pleasures divine laws, by which all her life she was enchained.
You, young maidens, overlong wrought round by a fanciful virtue's absurd and dangerous bonds and by those of a disgusting religion, imitate the fiery Eugenie; with a celerity the equal of hers, destroy, spurn all those ridiculous precepts inculcated in you by imbecile parents.
And you, amiable debauchees, you who since youth have known no limits but those of your desires and have been governed by your caprices alone, have the cynical Dolmance for your example, go quite as far as he if, like him, you would travel all the flowered pathways your lechery prepares for you; in Dolmanc's academy be at last convinced it is only by enlarpng the sphere of his tastes and whims, it is only by sacrificing everything to the sense's pleasure that this individual, despite himself cast into a universe of woe, that this wretch who goes under the name of Man may be able to cause a few roses to smile upon life's thorny stem.
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DIALOGUE THE FIRST
Madame De Saint-Ange, Le Chevalier De Mirval.
Madame de Saint-Ange. -Good day, my friend. And what of Monsieur Dolmanc?
Le Chevalier. -He'll be here at exactly four; we'll not dine until seven-and will have, as you observe, ample time to chat.
Madame de Saint-Ange. -You know, my dear Chevalier, I do begin to have a few misgivings about my curiosity and the obscene goings-on planned for today. Chevalier, you overindulge me, really. The more sensible I should be, the more inspired and libertine this bloody mind of mine becomes-and all that you have given me but serves to spoil me . . . At twenty-six, why, I should be sanctimonious and at peace-and I'm still nothing but the most licentious of women . . . Oh, you've no idea what I envision, my friend, no idea what I'd like to do. I supposed that by confining myself to women I'd become wise, prudent-that were my desires concentrated upon my own sex I would no longer pant after yours-blasted illusions, Chevalier: my imagination has only been pricked the more by the pleasures I wanted to deprive myself of. I have discovered that when it is a question of someone like myself, born for libertinage, it is useless to think of imposing limits or restraints-impetuous desires immediately do away with them. In a word, my dear, I am an amphibious creature: I love everything, everyone, whatever it is, I am amused, I'd like to combine every species-but, admit it, Chevalier, is it not the height of wildness in me to wish to know this unusual Dolmanc! who in all his life, you tell me, has been unable to see a woman according to the prescriptions of common usage, Dolmance who, a sodomist by principle, not only worships his own sex but never yields to ours save when we agree to put at his disposal those so well beloved charms of which he habitually makes use when consorting with men. Tell me, Chevalier, if my fancy is not bizarre! I want to be Ganymede to this new Jupiter, I want to enjoy his tastes, his debauches, I want to be the victim of his errors. Until now, and well you know it, dear one, until now I have only thus given myself to you, through complaisance, or to some ones among my servants who, paid to use me in this manner, adopted it for the sake of their interest only. But today it is no longer the desire to oblige nor caprice that moves me. I believe that, between my past experiences with this curious mania and the courtesies to which I am going to be subjected, there is an inconceivable difference, and I wish to be acquainted with it. Paint your Dolmanc^ for me, do, that I may have him well fixed in my head before I see him arrive-for you know my acquaintance with him is limited to an encounter the other day in a house where we were together for but a few minutes.
Le Chevalier. -Dolmance, my little sister, has just turned thirty; he is tall, well-favored, eyes very alive and spirited, but all the same there is some suspicion of hardness, or chill, and a little of what is wicked in his features; he has the whitest teeth in the world, a shade of softness about his figure and his attitude, owing, doubtless, to his habit of taking on effeminate airs so often; he has an extreme elegance, a pretty voice, talents, and above all else an exceedingly philosophic genius.
Madame de Saint-Ange. -But I trust he does not believe in God!
Le Chevalier. -Oh, upon my word, no! The most notorious atheist, the most immoral fellow . . . oh, no; rather, the most complete and thoroughgoing corruption, the most evil individual, the greatest rascal in all the wide world.
Madame de Saint-Ange. -Ah, how that warms me-think you, Chevalier, that I'll be wild about this man and his fancies?
Le Chevalier. -You know it very well, sodomy's delights are often as cherished in their active as in their passive form. For his pleasures, he cares for none but men; if however he sometimes consents to employ women, it is only upon condition they be obliging ejiough to exchange sex with him. I've spoken of you to him; I advised him of your intentions, he agrees, and in his turn reminds you of the game's rules. I warn you, my dear, he will refuse you altogether if you attempt to engage him to undertake anything else. "What I consent to do with your sister is," he declares, "an extravagance, an indiscretion whereby one does not often soil oneself, nor without taking ample precautions. "
Madame de Saint-Ange. -Soil oneself! Precautions! Oh, how can I tell you how I adore the language these agreeable persons use! Between ourselves, we women also have exclusive considerations which too give an idea of the profound horror we have of all those who are not of the orthodox faith . . . Tell me, my dear, has he had you? With your adorable face and your twenty years, one may, I dare say, captivate such a man?
Le Chevalier. -We've committed follies together-I'll not hide them from you; you have too much wit to condemn them. Matter of fact, I favor women; I only give myself up to these odd whimsies when an attractive man urges me to them. And then there's nothing I stop at: I've none of that ludicrous arrogance which make our young puppies believe that its by cuts with your walking-stick you respond to such propositions. Is man master of his preferences? One must console those who have strange tastes; but insult them? Never. Their wrong is Nature's too; they were no more responsible for coming into the world with penchants unlike ours than are we for being born bandy-legged or well-proportioned. Is it, however, that a man utters something offensive to you when he evinces his desire to enjoy you? No, surely not; it is a compliment you are paid; why then answer with injuries and insults? Only fools can think thus; never will you hear an intelligent man discuss the question in a manner different from mine; but the trouble is, the world is peopled with abject idiots who believe it is to want respect for them to avow one finds them fitted for one's pleasures, and who, pampered by women-themselves forever jealous of what has the look of infringing upon their rights-, fancy themselves those ordinary rights' Don Quixotes, and brutalize whoever does not acknowledge the entirety of their extent.
Madame de Saint-Ange. -Come, little one, kiss me. Were you to think otherwise, you'd not be my brother. A little detail, I beg of you, both with what regards this man's appearance and his pleasures with you.
Le Chevalier. -One of his friends informed Monsieur Dolmance of the superb member wherewith you know me provided, and he obtained the consent of the Marquis de V*** to bring us together at a supper. Once there, I was obliged to discover my furniture: curiosity appeared at first to be his single motive; how ever, a very fine ass which turned my way and with which I was besought to amuse myself soon caused me to see that penchant alone was the cause of this examination. I gave Dolmance due notice of all the enterprise'* difficulties; he was steadfast. "A buck ram holds no terrors for me," he said, "and you'll not have even the glory of being the most formidable amongst the men who have perforated the asshole I offer you. " The Marquis was on hand; he encouraged us by fingering, dandling, kissing whatever the one or the other of us brought to light. I took up my position. "Surely, some kind of priming?" I urged. "Nothing of the sort," said the Marquis, "you'll rob Dolmance of half the sensations he awaits from you; he wants you to cleave him in two, he wants to be torn asunder. "
"Well,'* said I, blindly plunging into the gulf, "he'll be satisfied. " Perhaps, my dear sister, you think I met with a great deal of trouble . . . not at all; my prick, enormous as it is, disappeared, contrary to all my expectations, and I touched the rock-bottom of his entrails without the bugger seeming to feel a thing. I dealt kindly with Dolmance; the extreme ecstasy he tasted, his wrigglings and quiverings, his enticing utterances, all of it soon rendered me happy too, and I inundated him. Scarcely was I withdrawn when Dolmance, turning towards me, his hair in disarray and red as a bacchante :"You see the state you've put me in, my dear Chevalier,' said he, simultaneously presenting a pert, tough rogue of a prick, very long and at least six inches around, "deign, O my love, deign to serve me as a woman after having been my lover, and let me be able to say that in your divine arms I have tasted all the delights of the fancy I cherish supremely. " Finding as little difficulty in the one as in the other, I readied myself; the Marquis, dropping his breeches before my eyes, conjured me to have the kindness to be yet a little of the man with him while I played wife to his friend; and I dealt with him as I had with Dolmance, who paid me back a hundredfold all the blows and jars wherewith I belabored our third; and soon, into the depths of my ass, he exhaled that enchanted liquor with which at virtually the same instant, I sprayed the ass of V***.
Madame de Saint-Ange. -You must have known the most extreme pleasure, thus to find yourself sandwiched between two-they say it is charming-.
Le Chevalier. -My angel, it is surely the best place to be; blit whatever may be said of them, they're all extravagances which I should never prefer to the pleasure of women.
Madame de Saint-Ange. -Well, my beloved, in order to recompense your touching complaisance, I am going today to hand over to your passions a young virgin, a girl, more beautiful than love itself.
Le Chevalier. -What! With Dolmance . . . you're bringing a woman here?
Madame de Saint-Ange. -It is a matter of an education-a little girl I knew last autumn at the convent, while my husband was at the baths. We could do nothing there, we dared try nothing, too many eyes were fixed upon us, but we made a promise to meet again, to get together as soon as possible. Occupied with nothing but this desire, I have, in order to satisfy it, become acquainted with her family. Her father is a libertine-I've enthralled him. At any rate, the lovely one is coming, I am waiting for her-we'll pass two days together, two delicious days-and I shall employ the better part of the time educating the young lady. Dolmanc^ and I will put into this pretty little head every principle of the most unrestrained libertinage, we will set her ablaze with our fire, we will feed her upon our philosophy, inspire her with our desires, and as I wish to join a little practice to theory, as I like the demonstrations to keep abreast of the dissertations, I have destined to you, dear brother, the harvest of Cythera's myrtle, and to Dolmance shall go the roses of Sodom. I'll have two pleasures at once: that of enjoying these criminal lecheries myself, and that of giving the lessons, of inspiring fancies in the sweet innocent I am luring into our nets. Very well, Chevalier, answer me: is the project worthy of my imagination?
Le Chevalier. -It could not have risen in another, it is divine, my sister, and I promise to enact to perfection the charming role you reserve for me. Ah, mischievous one, how much pleasure you are going to take in educating this child; what a delectation you'll find in corrupting her, in stifling within this young heart every seed of virtue and of religion planted there by her tutors. Indeed, really, it's too much the rout for me.
Madame de Saint-Ange. -Be certain I'll spare nothing to pervert her, degrade her, demolish in her all the false ethical principles with which they may already have been able to dizzy her-two lessons, and I want to render her as criminal as am I, as impious, as debauched, depraved. Notify Dolmance, explain everything to him immediately he gets here so that his immoralities' poison, circulating in this young spirit together with the venom I'll inject there, will in the shortest possible time wither and still all the seeds of virtue that, but for us, might gelminate there.
Le Chevalier. -It should be impossible to find a better man-irreligion, impiety, inhumanity, libertinage spill from Dolmance's lips as once upon a time there fell mystic unction from those of the celebrated Archbishop of Cambrai. He is the most profound seducer, oh, the most corrupt, the most dangerous man . . . My dear, let your pupil but comply with this teacher's instructions, and I guarantee her straightway damned.
Madame de Saint-Ange. -It should certainly not take long, considering the dispositions I know her to possess-.
Le Chevalier. -But tell me, is there nothing to fear from the parents? May not this little one chatter when she returns home?
Madame de Saint-Ange. -Rest assured. I have seduced the father . . . he's mine. I must confess to you, I surrendered myself to him in order to close his eyes: he knows nothing of my designs, and will never dare to scan them. I have him.
Le Chevalier. -Your methods are appalling.
Madame de Saint-Ange. -Such they must be, else they're not sure.
Le Chevalier. -And tell me, please, about this youngster Madame de Saint-Ange. -Her name is Eugenie, daughter of a certain Mistival, one of the wealthiest commercial figures in the capital, aged about thirty-six; her mother is thirty-two at the very most, and the little girl fifteen. Mistival is as libertine as his wife is pious and correct. As for Eugenie, dear one, I should in vain undertake to figure her to you; she is quite beyond my descriptive powers . . . satisfy yourself with being persuaded that assuredly neither you nor I have ever set eyes on anything so delicious, anywhere.
Le Chevalier. -But at least sketch a little if you cannot paint the portrait, so that, knowing fairly well with whom I am to have to deal, I may better fill my imaginadon with the idol to which I must sacrifice.
Madame de Saint-Ange. -Very well, my friend: her abundant chestnut hair-there's too much of it to grasp in one's hand-descends to below her buttocks; her skin is of a dazzling whiteness, her nose rather aquiline, her eyes ebony black and of a warmth . . . ah, my friend, 'tis impossible to resist those eyes . . . you've no conception of the stupidities they've driven me to . . . could you but see the pretty eyebrows that crown them . . . the extraordinary lashes that border them; a very small mouth, superb teeth, and, all of it, of a freshness . . . One of her beauties is the elegant manner whereby her lovely head-is attached to her shoulders, the air of nobility she has when she turns . . . Eugenie is tall for her age-one might think her seventeen. Her figure is a model of elegance, of finesse, her throat, her chest delicious . . . and there indeed are the two prettiest little breasts . . . scarcely enough there to fill the hand, but so soft . . . so fresh . . . so very white; twenty times have I gone out of my head while kissing them, and had you been able to see how she came alive under my caresses . . . how her two great eyes represented to me the whole state of her spirit . . . my friend, I know nothing of the rest. Ah, but if I must judge of her by what I know, never, I say, had Olympus a divinity comparable with this . . . But I think I hear her . . . Leave us, go out by way of the garden to avoid meeting her, and be on time at the rendezvous.
Le Chevalier. -The portrait you have just made for me assures my promptness. Ah, heaven! to go out . . . to leave you, in the state I am in . . . Adieu . . . a kiss . . . a kiss, my dear sister, to satisfy me at least till then. (She kisses him, touches the prick straining in his breeches, and the young man leaves in haste. )
* * *
DIALOGUE THE SECOND
Madame De Saint-Ange, Eugenie
Madame de Saint-Ange. -Well, good day, my pet, I have been awaiting you with an impatience you fully appreciate if you can read my heart's sentiments.
Eugenie. -Oh, my precious one, I thought I should never arrive, so eager was I to find myself in your arms. An hour before leaving, I dreaded all might be changed-my mother was absolutely opposed to this delightful party, declaring it ill became a girl of my age to go abroad alone; but my father had so abused her the day before yesterday that a single one of his glances was quite enough to cause Madame Mistival to subside utterly, and it ended with her consenting to what my lather had granted me, and I rushed here. I have two daysyour carriage and one of your servants must without fail take me home the day after tomorrow.
Madame de Saint-Ange. -How short is this period, my dearest angel, in so little time I shall hardly De able to express to you all you excite in me . . . and indeed we have to talk. You know, do you not, that during this interview, by means of it, I am to initiate you into the most secret of Venus' mysteries-shall two days be adequate time?
Eugenie. -Ah, were I not to arrive at a complete knowledge, I should remain . . . I came hither to be instructed, and will not go till I am informed. . . .
Madame de Saint-Ange, kissing her. -Dear love, how many the things we are going to do and say, reciprocally-but, by the way, do you wish to take lunch, my queen? For there is a possibility the lesson might be prolonged.
Eugenie. -I have no other need, my dear friend, but to listen to you. We lunched a league from here; I'll be able to wait until eight o'clock this evening without feeling the least hunger.
Madame de Saint-Ange. -Then let's go into my boudoir, where we will be more at our ease. I have already spoken to the servants. Be certain no one shall take it into his head to interrupt us. (They enter, linked arm in arm. )
* * *
DIALOGUE THE THIRD
The scene is in a delightful boudoir Madame De Saint-Ange, Eugenie, Dolmance.
Eugenie, greatly surprised to find a man in the room. Great God! Dearest friend, we are betrayed!
Madame de Saint-Ange, equally surprised. -Strange, Monsieur, to find you here-were you not expected at four?
Dolmance. -One always hastens as much as possible the advent of the happiness which comes of seeing you, Madame. I encountered Monsieur, your brother-he sensed the necessity of my presence at the lessons you are to give Mademoiselle, and he knew the lyceum where the courses would be given would be here. Unperceived, he introduced me into this chamber, far from imagining you would disapprove; and as for himself, as he is aware his demonstrations will only be necessary after the dissertations on theory, he will not make his appearance until later.
Madame de Saint-Ange. -Indeed, Dolmance, this is a turn Eugenie. -By which I am not deceived, my good friend-it is all your work . . . at least, you should have consulted me . . . At the moment, I am covered with a shame which, certainly, will prejudice all our projects.
Madame de Saint-Ange. -Eugenie, I protest the idea of this surprise belongs only to my brother. But do not be alarmed by it; I know Dolmance to be a most agreeable man, and he possesses just that degree of philosophic understanding we require for your enlightenment. He can be of nothing but the greatest service to our schemes. With what regards his discretion, I am as willing to answer for it as for my own. Therefore, dear heart, familiarize yourself with this man who in all the world is the best endowed to form you and to guide you into a career of the happiness and the pleasures we wish to taste together.
Eugenie, blushing. -O la! I could not be less confused Dolmance!-Come, my lovely Eugenie, put yourself at ease . . . modesty is an antiquated virtue which you, so rich in charms, ought to know wonderfully well how to do without.
Eugenie. -But decency Dolmance. -Ha! a Gothicism not very much defended these days. It is mightily hostile to Nature. (Dolmance seizes Eugenie, presses her in his arms, and kisses her. )
Eugenie, defending herself. -Have an end to it, Monsieur . . . indeed, you show me very little consideration.
Madame de Saint-Ange. -Eugdnie, listen to me: let's both of us cease behaving like prudes with this charming gentleman; I am not better acquainted with him than are you, yet watch how I accede to him. (She kisses him most indecently upon the mouth. ) Imitate me.
Eugenie. -Oh, most willingly; whence might I find better examples? (She puts herself in Dolmances arms; he kisses her Ardently, his tongue in her mouth. )
Dolmance. -Amiable, delicious creature!
Madame de Saint-Ange, kissing her in the same way. -Did'st think, little chit, I'd not have my turn as well? (At this point Dolmance, holding first one in his arms, then the other, tongues both, each for a quarter of an hour, and they both tongue one another and him. )
Dolmance. -Ah, those are preliminaries that make me drunk with desire! Mesdames, upon my word, it is extraordinarily warm here; let's put ourselves at our ease: we'll chatter with infinitely greater comfort.
Madame de Saint-Ange. -I agree; we'll don these gauze negligees-of our charms, they'll conceal only those that must be hidden from desire.
Eugenie. -Indeed, dear one, you lead me to do things Madame de Saint-Ange, helping her to undress. Completely ridiculous, isn't it?
Eugenie. -Most indecent at the very least, I'd say . . . My! how you do kiss me!
Madame de Saint-Ange. -Pretty chest! a rose but barely in full flower.
Dolmance, considering, without touching, Eugenie's breasts. -And which promises yet other allurements . . . infinitely preferable.
Madame de Saint-Ange. -Infinitely preferable?
Dolmance. -Oh yes, 'pon my honor. (Upon saying which, Dolmance appears eager to turn Eugenie about in order to inspect her from the rear. )
Eugene. -No, I beg of you!
Madame de Saint-Ange. -No, Dolmancg . . . I don't want you yet to see . . . an object whose sway over you is so great that, the image of it once fixed in your head, you are unable thereafter to reason coolly. We need your lessons, give them to us-and the myrtle you covet will then form your crown and reward.
Dolmance. -Very well, but in order to demonstrate, in order to give this beautiful child the first lessons of libertinage, we must, Madame, at least have your cooperation and willingness to lend yourself to those exercises.
Madame de Saint-Ange. -In good time-well, then, look you here-I'm entirely nude. Make your dissertations upon me as much as you please.
Dolmance. -Oh, lovely body! 'Tis Venus herself, embellished by the Graces.
Eugenie. -Oh, my dear friend, what charms! delights! Let me drink them in with my eyes, let me cover them with my kisses. (She does so. )
Dolmance. --Excellent beginnings. Rather less passion, lovely Eugenie, for the moment you are only Deing asked to show a little attention.
Eugenie. -Let's continue, I'm listening . . . But how beautiful she is . . . so plump, so fresh: ah, how charming my dear friend is. Is she not, Monsieur?
Dolmance. -Beautiful, assuredly . . . she is perfectly lovely; but I am persuaded you yield to her in nothing . . . Well, now, my pretty little student, do you pay attention to me-beware lest, if you are not docile, I exercise over you the rights amply conferred upon me by my tide as your instructor.
Madame de Saint-Ange. -Why, indeed, yes, Dolmance, I put her into your safekeeping. She must have a severe scolding if she misbehaves.
Dolmance. -It is very possible I might not be able to confine myself to remonstrances.
Eugenie. -Great heaven! You terrify me-what then would you do to me, Monsieur?
Dolmance, stammering, and kissing Eugenie on the mouth. -Punishments . . . corrections . . . I might very well hold this pretty little ass accountable for mistakes made by the head. (He strikes the former through the gauze dressing gown in which Eugenie is presently arrayed. )
Madame de Saint-Ange. -Yes, I approve the project but not the gesture. Let's begin our lesson, else the little time granted us to enjoy Eugenie will be passed thus in preliminaries, and the instruction will not be accomplished.
Dolmance, who as he discusses them, one by one, touches the parts of Madame de Saint-Ange's body. -I begin. I will say nothing of these fleshy globes; you know as well as I, Eugenie, that they are indifferently known as mammaries, breasts, tits. Pleasure may very profitably put them to use: while amusing himself, a lover has them continually before his eyes: he caresses, handles them, indeed, some lovers form of them the very seat of their pleasure and niche their member between those twin mounts of Venus which the woman then squeezes, compresses about this member; after a little management, certain men succeed in spreading thereupon the delicious balm of life whose outpouring causes the whole happiness of libertines . . . But this member of which we shall be obliged to speak incessantly-should we not be well advised, Madame, to give our scholar a lecture upon it?
Madame de Saint-Ange. -Indeed, I think so.
Dolmance. -Very well, Madame, I am going to stretch out upon this couch, and do you place yourself near me. Then you will lay hands upon the subject and you will yourself explain its properties to our young student. (Dolmance lies down and Madame de Saint-Ange demonstrates. )
Madame de Saint-Ange. -This symbol of venery you have before your eyes, Eugenie, is the primary agent of love's pleasure; it is called, and richly deserves to be known as, the member: there is not a single part of the human body into which it does not introduce itself! Always obedient to the passions of the person who wields it, sometimes it nests there (she touches Eugenie's cunt)-the ordinary route, the one in widest use, but not the most agreeable-; in pursuit of a more mysterious sanctuary, it is often here (she spreads wide Eugenie's buttocks and indicates the asshole) that the libertine seeks enjoyment-we will return to this most delicious pleasure of them all-; there are as well the mouth, the breasts, the armpits which provide him with further altars whereupon to burn his incense. And finally whatever be the place among all these he most prefers, after a few instants of agitation the member may be seen to spurt a white and viscous liquor, whose flowing plunges the man into a delirium intense enough to procure for him the sweetest pleasures he can hope to ave in life.
Eugenie. -How much I should like to see this liquor flow!
Madame de Saint-Ange. -I need but vibrate my hand-you see how the thing becomes irritated the more I pull on it These movements are known as pollution, and in the language of libertinage this action is called frigging.
Eugenie. -Oh, please, dear friend, allow me to frig this splendid member!
Dolmance. -Look out! I'll not be able . . . don't interfere with her, Madame, this ingenuousness has got me horribly erected Madame de Saint-Ange. -I entirely disapprove of this excitement. Be sensible, Dolmance: once that semen flows, the activity of your animal spirits will be diminished and the warmth of your dissertations will be lessened correspondingly.
Eugenie, fondling Dolmance's testicles. -Ah, my dear friend, how sorry I am you resist my desires . . . and these balls, what might be their use? What are they called?
Madame de Saint-Ange. -The technical word is genitals, male genitals . . . testicles belongs to art, the balls contain the reservoir of this abundant semen I have just mentioned and which, ejaculated into the woman's matrix, or womb, produces the human species-but we will not place emphasis upon these details, Eugenie, for they relate more to medicine than to lib-rtinage. A pretty girl ought simply to concern herself with fucking, and not at all with engendering. We will glide over all that pertains to the dull business of pollution in order to confine ourselves principally, nay, uniquely to those libertine lecheries whose spirit is in no wise reproductive.
Eugenie. -But, dear friend, when this enormous member I can scarcely grip in my hand, when this member penetrates, as you assure me it can, into a hole as little as the one in your behind, that must cause the woman a great deal of pain.
Madame de Saint-Ange. -Whether this introduction be wrought before or behind, provided she not yet be accustomed to it, a woman always suffers. It has pleased Nature to cause us to attain happiness only by way of trouble. But once vanquished and had this way, nothing can equal the joy one tastes upon the entrance of this member into our asses; it is a pleasure incontestably preferable to all those procured by introduction of this member into the cunt. And, besides, how many dangers docs not a woman avoid! Less risk to her health, and none at all of pregnancy. For the present I'll go no further upon this delight-your master and mine, Eugenie, will soon award it a full analysis and by uniting practice with theory will, I trust, convince you, my precious one, that among all the bedroom's pleasures, that is the only one for which you should have a preference.
Dolmance. -I beg you to speed your demonstrations, Madame, for I can no longer restrain myself. I'll discharge despite my efforts-and this redoubtable member, reduced to nothing shall be unable to aid your lessons.
Eugenie. -What! Reduced to nothing! But, dear heart, if he were to lose this semen you speak of . . . oh, allow me to help him lose it, so that I may see how . . . what-oh, I should take such pleasure in seeing it flow!
Madame de Saent-Ange. -No, Dolmance, no, up with you. Remember the price of your labors and that I'll not turn her over to you until you've merited her.
Dolmance. -So be it; but the better to convince Eugenie of all we are going to relate concerning pleasure, would it be prejudicial to Eugenie's instruction if, for instance, you were to frig her in front of me?
Madame de Saint-Ange. -Why, doubtless no, and I'll go happily straight to the matter, certain that this lubricious episode will only enrich our lessons. Onto the couch, my sweet.
Eugenie. -Oh dear God! the delicious niche! But why all these mirrors?
Madame de Saint-Ange. -By repeating our attitudes and postures in a thousand different ways, they infinitely multiply those same pleasures for the persons seated upon this ottoman. The method ensures that everything is visible, that no part of the body remains hidden: so many groups disposed around those enchained by love, so many delicious images wherewith their lewdness becomes drunk and which soon serve to provide its climax.
Eugenie. -What a marvelous invention!
Madame de Saint-Ange. -Dolmance, undress the victim.
Dolmance. -That, shan't be difficult-merely a question of removing this gauze in order to discern naked the most appealing features. (He strips her, and his first glances are instantly directed upon her behind. ) And so I am about to see this divine, this priceless ass of which I have such ardent expectations . . . Ah, by God! What fullness of flesh and cool tint of freshness, what stunning elegance! Never, never have I seen one lovelier!
Madame de Saint-Ange. -Rascal! How clearly your initial homages betray your tastes and pleasures!
Dolmance. -But can there be anything in the world to equal this? Where might love find a more divine altar? Eugenie . . . sublime Eugenie, let me overwhelm this ass of yours with the softest caresses. (He fingers and kisses it, transported. )
Madame de Saint-Ange. -Stop, libertine! You forget Eugenie belongs to me only. She's to be your reward for the lessons she awaits from you-but you'll not have your recompense before she has been given those lessons. Enough of this ardor or you'll anger me.
Dolmance. -Scoundrel! It's your jealousy . . . Very well. Pass me yours and I'll pay it a similar homage. (He raises Madame de Sainte-Ange's nigligl and caresses her behind. ) 'Tis lovely, my angel, 'tis delicious too; let me compare them both . . . I'd see them one next to the other--Ganymede beside Venus. (He lavishes kisses upon each. ) In order to have the bewitching spectacle of so much beauty constantly before me eyes, Madame, could you not, by interlacing yourselves, uninterruptedly offer my gaze these charming asses I worship?
Madame de Saint-Ange. -Perfectly well-there . . . are you satisfied? (They intertwine their bodies in such a manner that both asses confront Dolmance. )
Dolmance. -It could not be better-'tis precisely what I asked for. And now agitate those superb asses with all luxury's fire-let them sink and rise in cadence, together, let them obey the stimuli whereby pleasure is going to stir them . . . oh, splendid, splendid, 'tis delicious.
Eugenie. -Ah, my dearest one, what pleasures you give me . . . What is it you call what you are doing now?
Madame de Saint-Ange. -Frigging, my pet, giving oneself pleasure. Stop a moment; we'll alter our positions. Examine my cunt-thus is named the temple of Venus. Look sharply at that coign your hand covers, examine it well. I am going to open it a little. This elevation you notice above it is called the mound, which is garnished with hair, generally, when one reaches the age of fourteen or fifteen, when, that is, a girl begins to assume her true condition. Here above is a little tongue-shaped thing-that is the clitoris, and there lies all a woman's power of sensation. It is the center of all mine-impossible to tickle this little bit of me without observing me to swoon with delight . . . try it . . . ah, sweet little bitch, how well you do it! One'd think you've done nothing else all your life . . . enough . . . stop . . . no, I tell you, no, I do not wish to surrender myself . . . Oh, Dolmance, keep me under the enchanted fingers of this pretty child, I am ready to go out of my mind.
Dolmance. -You might be able to lower the temperature of your ideas by varying them: frig her in your turn, keep a grip on yourself, and let her go to work . . . there, yes, in this position, in this manner her pretty little ass is between my hands, I'll pollute it ever so lightly with a finger-raise yourself Eugenie, abandon all your senses to pleasure, let it be the one object, the one god of your existence-it is to this God a girl ought to sacrifice everything, and in her eyes, nothing must be as holy as pleasure.
Eugenie. -Nothing in the world is so delightful, I do feel that . . . I am beyond myself . . . I no longer know what I am saying, or doing . . . What a drunkenness steals away my senses!
Dolmance. -Look at the little rascal discharge! And squeeze! Her anos nearly nipped off the end of my finger . . . how splendid to bugger her at such an instant! (He stands and claps his prick to the girl's ass. )
Madame de Saint-Ange. -Yet another moment's patience-the dear girl's education must be our exclusive occupation . . . how pleasant to enlighten her!
Dolmance. -Well then, Eugenie, you observe that, after a more or less prolonged pollution, the seminal glands swell, enlarge, and finally exhale a liquid whose flow plunges the woman into the most intense rapture-this is known as discharging. When it pleases your good friend there, I'll show you, but in a more energetic and a more imperious manner, bow the same operation occurs in a man.
Madame de Saint-Ange. -Wait, Eugenie. I shall now teach you a new way to drown a woman in the extremist joy. Spread your thighs . . . Dolmance, you see how I am adjusting her-her ass is all your own. Suck it for her while my tongue licks her cunt, and between the two of us let's see if we can get her to squirt three or four times. Your little mound is charming, Eugenie, how I adore kissing this downy flesh . . . I have your clitoris more clearly now-'tis but somewhat formed-yet most sensitive . . . how you do quiver and squirm . . . let me spread you . . . ah, you're a virgin indeed. Describe what you feel when our two tongues run at once into your two apertures.
Eugenie. -Ah, my dearest, it thrills me so-it is a sensation impossible to depict; I'd not be able to say which of your tongues plunges me further into my delirium.
Dolmance. -In this posture, Madame, my prick is well within your reach. Condescend to frig it, I beg of you, while I suck this heavenly ass. Thrust your tongue yet further, Madame; don't be content to suck her clitoris-make your voluptuous tongue penetrate into her womb; its the surest way to hasten die ejaculation of her fuck.
Eugenie, stiffening. -I can stand no more! oh, I am dying! Don't abandon me, dear friends, I am ready to swoon. (She discharges between her two initiators. )
Madame de Saint-Ange. -Well then, my pet! What think you of the pleasure we have given you?
Eugenie. -I am dead, exhausted . . . but I beg you to explain two words you pronounced and which I do not understand. First of all, what does womb signify?
Madame de Saint-Ange. -'Tis a kind of vessel much resembling a bottle whose neck embraces the male's member, and which receives the fuck produced in the woman by glandular seepage and in the man by the ejaculation we will exhibit for you; and of the commingling of these liquids is born the germ whereof result now boys, now girls.
Eugenie. -Oh, I see; this definition simultaneously explains the word fuck whose meaning I did not thoroughly grasp until now. And is the union of the seeds necessary to the formation of the fetus?
Madame de Saint-Ange. -Assuredly; although it is proven that the fetus owes its existence only to the man's sperm, this latter, by itself, unmixed with the woman's, would come to naught. But that which we women furnish has a merely elaborative function; it does not create, it assists the creation, without being its cause. Indeed, there are several contemporary naturalists who urge its inutility; whence die moralists, always guided by science's discoveries, have decided and the conclusion has its degree of plausibility-that such being the case the child born of the father's blood owes filial tenderness to him alone, an assertion not without appealing qualities and one which, even though a woman, I should not be inclined to contest.
Eugenie. -It is in my heart I find confirmation of what you tell me, my dear; for I love my father to distraction, and I feel I detest my mother.
Dolmance. -But there is nothing to astonish in that predilection; I have always thought as you. I am not yet consoled over my father's death, and when I lost my mother, I lit a perfect bonfire from joy . . . I held her in cordial contempt. Be unafraid, Eugenie, and adopt these same sentiments; they are natural: uniquely formed of our sires' blood, we owe absolutely nothing to our mothers. What, furthermore, did they do but cooperate in the act which our fathers, on the contrary, solicited? Thus, it was the father who desired our birth, whereas the mother merely consented thereuntowith what regards sentiment, what a difference!
Madame de Saint-Ange. -Yet a thousand more reasons in your favor, Eugenie, since your mother is still living. If in all the world there is a mother who ought to be detested, she is certainly yours-superstitious, pious, a shrew, a scold . . . and what with her revolting prudery I dare wager this blue-nose has never in her life committed a faux-pas. Ah, my dear, how I abhor virtuous women . . . But we'll return to that question.
Dolmance. -And now would it not be fitting for Eugenie, directed by me, to learn to pay back what you have just done in her behalf? I think she might frig you before me.
Madame de Saint-Ange. -I welcome the suggestion-indeed, I believe it is useful. Doutbless, during the operation, you, Dolmance, would relish a view of my ass?
Dolmance. -Are you able to doubt, Madame, of the pleasure with which I will render it my gentlest homages?
Madame de Saint-Ange, presenting her buttocks to him. -Do you find me suitable thus?
Dolmance. -Wonderfully. I should never find a better manner to render you all the services Eugenie found so hugely to her taste. And now, my little wildcat, place yourself for a moment between your friend's legs, so, and with that pretty little tongue of yours, care for her as she has for you. Why, bless me! This way I shall be able to possess both your asses: I'll fondle Eugenie's while sucking her lovely friend's . . . There, admirable . . . How agreeably we are all together.
Madame de Saint-Ange. -Good God, I'm dying . . . Dolmance, how I love to handle your prick while I discharge . . . I'd have it drown me in fuck, so frig it! Suck me! Oh, heavenly fuck! 'How I love to play the whore when my sperm flows this way . . . it's done, finished, I can't go on . . . You've ruined me, both of you, I think that I have never had as much pleasure in my life.
Eugenie. -And how happy I am to be its cause! But, dear friend, you have just uttered another unfamiliar word. What do you understand this expression whore to men? Forgive me; you know I am here to learn.
Madame de Saint-Ange. -My most lovely one, in such wise are called the public victims of the debauchery of men, creatures forever prepared to surrender themselves whether from temperament or for reward-happy and respectable creatures common opinion assails but whom license crowns and who, far more necessary to the society which they endeavor to serve than are prudes, sacrifice the consideration of which society does most unjustly deprive them. A long life to them in whose eyes this title is an honor! Such are truly lovable women, the only authentic philosophers! As for myself, dear heart, I, who for twelve years have striven to deserve the laurel, I assure you that, far from undertaking the formality, I amuse myself in the role-better still, I love thus to be named when I am fucked: 'tis a vilification that fires my brain.
Eugenie. -My dear, I fancy I too, should not be sorry so to be addressed. The more so in that I scarcely merit the title. But is not virtue opposed to such misconduct, and does it not reproach us for behaving as we do?
Dolmance. -Ah, Eugenic, have done with virtues. Among the sacrifices that can be made to those counterfeit divinities, is there one worth an instant of the pleasures one tastes in outraging them? Tush, my sweet, virtue is but a chimera whose worship consists exclusively in perpetual immolations, in unnumbered rebellions against the temperament's inspirations-can such impulses be natural* Does Nature recommend what offends her? Eugenie, be not the dupe of those women you hear called virtuous. Theirs are not, if you wish, the same passions as ours; but they harken to others, and often more contemptible-there is ambition, there pride, there you find personal self-interest, and often, again, it is a question of mere chilliness of temper which urges them to nothing; are we, I ask, to revere such beings? No; have they not merely obeyed the impressions pure selfishness inspires? Is it then better, wiser, more just to perform sacrifices to egotism than to one's passions? As for me, I believe one far more worthy than the other, and who heeds but this latter voice is far better advised, no question of it, since it only is the organ of Nature, while the former is simply that of stupidity and prejudice. One single drop of fuck shed from this member, Eugenie, is more precious to me than the sublimest acts of a virtue I scorn.
Eugenie (Calm being to some degree re-established during these expositions, the women, clad again in their nigliges, are reclining upon a couch and Dolmance, sealed in an armchair, is close by. )-But there is more than one species of virtue. What think you of, for example, pity?
Dolmance. -What can be that virtue for whomsoever has no belief in religion? And who is able to have religious beliefs? Come now, Eugenie, let's reason systematically. Do you not call religion the act that binds man to his creator and which obliges im to give his creator evidence, by means of worship, of his gratitude for the existence received of this sublime author?
Eugenie. -It could not be better defined.
Dolmance. -Excellent. It is demonstrated that man owes his existence to nothing but Nature's irresistible schemes; if man is thus proven as anciently in this world as is ancient the globe itself, he is but as the oak, as grain, as the minerals to be found in the earth's entrails, which are bound only to reproduce, reproduction being necessitated by the globe's existence, which owes its own to nothing whatsoever; if it is demonstrated that this God, whom fools behold as the author and maker of all we know there to be, is simply the nee plus ultra of human reason, merely the phantom created at the moment this reason can advance its operations no further; if it is proven that this God's existence is impossible, and that Nature, forever in action, moving always, has of herself what it pleases idiots to award God gratuitously; if it is certain this inert being's existence once supposed, he would be of all things the most ridiculous, since he would have been useful only one single time and, thereafter and throughout millions of centuries, fixed in a contemptible stillness and inactivity; that, supposing him to exist as religions figure him to us, this would be the most detestable of creatures, since it would be God who permits evil to be on earth while his omnipotence could prevent it; if, I say, all that is admitted to be proven, as incontestably it is, do you believe, Eugenie, that it is a very necessary virtue, this piety which binds man to an idiot, insufficient, atrocious, and contemptible creator?
Eugenie, to Madame de Saint-Ange. -What! Then God's existence is an illusion!
Madame de Saint-Ange. -And without doubt one of the most deplorable.
Dolmance. -To believe therein one must first have gone out of one's mind. Fruit of the terror of some and of the weakness of others, that abominable phantom, Eugenie, is of no use to the terrestrial scheme and would infallibly be injurious to it, since the will of God would have to be just and should never be able to compound with the essential injustices decreed by Nature; since he would have constantly to will the good, while Nature must desire it only as compensation for the evil which serves her laws; since it would be necessary that he, God, exert his influence at all times, while Nature, one of whose laws is this perpetual activity, could only find herself in competition with and unceasing opposition to him. Am I to hear in reply, that God and Nature are one? 'Tis an absurdity. The thing created cannot be the creative being's equal. Might the pocket-watch be the clocktower? Very well, they will continue, Nature is nothing, it is God who is all. Another stupidity. There are necessarily two things in the universe: the creative agent and the individual created; now, to identify this creative agent is the single obstacle one must overcome, the one question to which one has got to provide a reply. If matter acts, is moved by combinations unknown to us, if movement is inherent in Nature; if, in short, she alone, by reason of her energy, is able to create, produce, preserve, maintain, hold in equilibrium within the immense plains of space all the spheres that stand before our gaze and whose uniform march, unvarying, fills us with respect and admiration, what then becomes of the need to seek out a foreign agent, since this active faculty essentially is to be found in Nature herself, who is naught else than matter in action-well, now: do you suppose your deific chimera will shed light upon anything? I defy anyone to prove him to me; it being supposed that I am mistaken upon matter's internal faculties, I have before me, at least, nothing worse than a difficulty; what do you do for me when you offer your God to me? And how would you have me acknowledge as cause of what I do not understand, something that I understand even less? Will it be by means of the Christian religion that I shall examine . . . that I shall obtain a view of your appalling God? Then let's cast a glance upon the God Christianity figures. What do I see in the God of that infamous sect if not an inconsistent and barbarous being, today creator of a world of destruction he repents of tomorrow; what see I there? a frail being forever unable to bring man to heel and force him to bend a knee. This creature, although emanated from' him, dominates him, knows how to offend him and thereby merit torments eternally. What a weak fellow, this God! how able he was to mould all that we know and to fail to form man in his own guise! Whereunto you will answer, that had man been created so, man would have been little deserving of his author; what a platitude is this! and what necessity is there that man be deserving of his God? By forming him entirely good, man should never have been able to do evil, and only from this moment would the work be worthy of a God. To allow man to choose was to tempt him; and God's infinite powers very well advised him of what would be the result. Immediately the being was created, it was hence to pleasure God doomed the creature he had himself formed . . . A horrible God, this God of yours, a monster! Is there a criminal more worthy of our hatred and our implacable vengeance than he! However, little content with a task so sublimely executed, he drowns man to convert him, he burns him, he curses him, nothing in all that alters him one jot; more powerful than this villainous God, a being still in possession of his power, forever able to brave his author, the Devil, by his seductions incessantly succeeeds in debauching the herd that the Eternal reserved unto himself. Nothing can vanquish the prise this demon's energy has upon us: but picture, in your own terms, the frightful God you preach: he has but one son; a single boy he possesses in consequence of I have no idea what commerce; for, as man doth fuck, so he hath willed that his Lord fucketh too; and the Lord didst detach and send down out of heaven this respectable part of himself; one perhaps imagines that it is upon celestial rays, in the midst of an angelic cortege, within sight of all the universe this sublime creature is going to appear . . . not at all; 'tis upon a Jewish whore's breast, tis in the center of a pig-sty that there is announced the God who has come to save the earth; behold the worthy extraction accorded this personage; but his mission is honorable-will he disappoint us? Let's follow this person for an instant; what's in his mouth? what is it he does? what is his sublime errand? what mystery is he about to reveal? what will be the act wherein at last his grandeur will shine? I see, first of all, an obscure childhood, a few doubdess very libertine services this smutty fellow renders the priests at the Temple of Jerusalem, next, a fifteen years' disappearance during which the scoundrel goes to poison himself with all the reveries of the Egyptian school, which at length he drags back to Judaea; scarcely does he reappear when his raving begins: he says he is the son of God, his father's peer; to this alliance he joins another phantom he calls the holy ghost, and these three persons, he swears, must be but one; the more this preposterous mystery amazes the reason, the more the low fellow declares there is merit in swallowing it . . . and dangers in destroying it. It is to save us one and all, the imbecile argues, that he has assumed a fleshly shape, although he is God, mortally incarnate in the breast of a child of man. And the glittering wonders one is about to see him perform will speedily convince all the world of it During a ribald supper, indeed, the cheat transforms, so they say, water into wine; in a desert he feeds a few bandits upon the victuals previously hidden there by his devoted confederates; one of his cronies plays dead, our impostor restores him to life again; he betakes himself to a mountain and there, before two or three of his friends only, he brings off a jugglery that would cause the worst among our contemporary mountebanks to redden with shame. Roundly damning, moreover, all those who do not accredit him, the scoundrel promises the heavens to whomever will listen. He writes nothing, for he is ignorant; talks very little, for he is stupid; does even less, for he is weak; and, finally, completely exhausting the patience of the magistrates with his seditious outbursts, nowever rare they be, the charlatan has himself put to the cross after having assured the rogues who follow him that, every time they invoke him, he will descend to them to get himself eaten. He is put to torture, he puts up with it; Monsieur his Papa, that sublime God whence he dares affirm he descends, succours him not in the least, and there you have him, this scoundrel, used like the last of the bandits of whom he was such a fitting chief. His satellites assemble: "It's all up with us," they say, "and all our hopes are perished lest we save ourselves with a lightning maneuver. We'll besot the guard set to watch over Jesus; then make off with his body, bruit it abroad he is risen: the trick's sure; if we manage to get this knavery believed, our new religion's founded, propagated; it'll seduce all the world . . . To work!" The blow is struck, it succeeds. In how many blackguards has not boldness occupied the place of merit! The corpse is filched, fools, women, children bawl out "Miracle!" at the top of their lungs; nevertheless, in this city where such great prodigies have just been wrought, in this city stained with a God's blood, no one cares to believe in this God; not a single conversion is operated there. Better yet: so little worthy of transmission is the event that no historian alludes to it. Only this impostor's disciples think they have something to gain from the fraud; but not at the hour. This consideration is crucial; let's note it well. They permit several years to pass before putting their notorious stunt to work and use; at length, they erect upon it the jerry-built edifice of their unwholesome doctrine. Men are pleased by any ndvelty. Weary of the emperors' despotism, the world agrees to the necessity of a revolution. These cheats are heard, they make a very rapid progress; 'tis the story of every error. Soon the altars of Venus and Mars are changed to those of Jesus and Mary; the life of the impostor is published, the insipid fiction finds its dupes; he is represented as having said a hundred things which never came into his head; some few of his own driveling instantly become the basis of his morality, and as this novelty is preached to the poor, charity becomes its foremost virtue. Weird rites are instituted under the name of sacraments; the most offensive and the most abominable of them all is the one whereby a priest, covered with crimes, has, notwithstanding, thanks to a few magical words, the power to bring God back in a morsel of bread. Let there be no mistake: at its very birth, this shameful cult might have been hopelessly destroyed had one but employed against it those weapons of the contempt it deserved; but men took it into their heads to employ persecution; the cult grew; 'twas inevitable. Were one today to attempt to cover it with ridicule, it would fall. The adroit Voltaire never used any other arm, and he among all writers is the one who may congratulate himself upon having made for himself the greatest number of proselytes. Such, in one word, Eugenie, is the history of God and of religion; consider the treatment these fables deserve, and adopt a determined attitude towards them.
Eugenie. -My choice is unperplexed; I scorn the lot of these unhealthy reveries and this God himself to whom I lately clove through weakness or through ignorance, is no longer for me anything but an object of horror.
Madame de Saint-Ange. -Swear to me to think no more of him, never to be concerned for him, never to invoke him at any instant in your life, and while you see the day, never to return to him.
Eugenie, flinging herself upon Madame de SaintAnge's breast. -I take oath to it in your arms! How readily I see that what you demand is in my own welfare's interest, and that you would never have such reminiscences disturb my tranquility!
Madame de Saint-Ange. -What other motive could I have?
Eugenie. -But, Dolmance, it seems to me it was the analysis of virtues that led us to the examination of religions. Let us now return to the former. Might there not exist in this religion, completely ridiculous as it is, some virtues prescribed by it, whose cultivation could contribute to our happiness?
Dolmance-Splendid! let's see. Shall chastity be that virtue your own eyes destroy although, Eugdnie, you wear its image in your whole aspect? Are you going to respect the obligation to combat all Nature's operations, will you sacrifice them all to the vain and ludicrous honor of never having had a weakness? Be fair and answer me, pretty little friend: think you to find in this absurb and dangerous purity of soul all the pleasures of the contrary vice?
Eugenie. -No, I'm bound to declare I see nothing there; I do not feel the least inclination to be chaste, but rather the most compelling urge to the opposite vice. But, Dolmance, might not charity and benevolence bring happiness to some sensitive souls?
Dolmance. -Begone those virtues which produce naught but ingratitude! But, my charming friend, be not at all deceived: benevolence is surely rather pride's vice than an authentic virtue in the soul; never is it with the single intention of performing a good act, but instead ostentatiously that one relieves one's fellow man; most annoyed one would be were the alms one has just bestowed not to receive the maximum possible publicity. Nor, Eugenie, are you to imagine that this action has quite the fine effects commonly supposed; as for myself, I envisage it as nothing other than the greatest of all duperies; it accustoms the poor man to doles which provoke the deterioration of his energy; when able to expect your charities, he ceases to work and becomes, when they fail him, a thief or assassin. On every hand I hear them ask after the means to suppress mendicity and meanwhile they do everything possible to increase it. Would you have no flies in your bed-chamber? Don't spread about sugar to attract them into it. You wish to have no poor in France? Distribute no alms and above all suppress your poorhouses. The individual born in misfortune thereupon seeing himself deprived of these perilous resources, will employ all the courage, every means he will have received of Nature, to extricate himself from the condition into which he was born; he will importune you no longer. Destroy, overthrow with entire unpity those detestable houses wherein you have the effrontery to secrete the destined rewards of this poor wretch's libertinage, appalling doacas, each day spewing forth into society a swarm of these newmade creatures whose unique hope resides in your purse. What purpose, I ask, is there in pre serving such individuals with so much care? Does anyone fear France's depopulation? Ha! dread not. One of the foremost of this government's faults consists in a population far too numerous and much is wanting when such overabundances become considered the State's riches. These supernumerary beings are like the parasitical branches which, living only at the trunk's expense, always bring about its final attenuation. Remember that, in no matter what political organization, every time the population exceeds the whcrewithall necessary to its existence, that society will languish. Examine France well, and you will observe that to be her situation. What results of it? 'Tis clear. The Chinese, wiser than we, were most careful to avoid falling under the domination of a too abundant populace. No asylum for the shameful fruit of debauchery: these resultant horrors are abandoned like so many consequences of digestion. No establishments for poverty: such a thing is totally unknown in China. There, everyone works: there, everyone is happy; nothing saps the poor man's energy and everyone can say, as did Nero, Quid est pauper?
Eugenie, to Madame de Saint-Ange. -Beloved friend, my father thinks exactly as Monsieur Dolmance: never in his life has he performed a good work, and he is continually abusing my mother for the money she spends in such practices. She belonged to the Maternal Society, to the Philanthropic Club; I have no idea of what association she is not a member; he obliged her to stop all that by promising her he would reduce her to the narrowest pension were she to relapse into similar follies.
Madame de Saint-Ange. -There is nothing more ludicrous and at the same time more dangerous, Eugenie, than all these socialities; it is to them, to free public schools and to charitable establishments we owe the terrible disorder in which we presently live. Never give alms, my dear, I beseech you.
Eugenie. -Nothing to fear on that head; it was long ago my father put me under the same obligation, and benevolence is too slight a temptation for me to disregard his orders . . . my heart's impulses, and your desires.
Dolmance. -Let us in no wise share that portion of sensibility wherewith Nature has endowed us: to extend is to annihilate it. What to me are the ills that beset others! have I not enough of my own without afflicting myself with those that are foreign to me! May this sensibility's hearth warm naught but our pleasures! let us be aware of all that caresses them, absolutely inflexible upon all the rest. From this spiritual condition there results a kind of cruelty which is sometimes not without its delights. One cannot always do evil; deprived of the pleasure it affords, we can at least find the sensation's equivalent in the minor but piquant wickedness of never doing good.
Eugenie. -Dear God, how your discourses inflame me! I believe I would now be sooner killed than be made to perform a good act!
Madame de Saint-Ange. -And were the opportunity presented to do an evil one, would you be ready to commit it?
Eugenie. -Be still, temptress . . . I'll not answer that until you have completed my instruction. In the light of all you tell me, it seems, Dolmance, that there is nothing on earth as indifferent as the doing of good or evil; ought not our tastes, our temperament alone counsel us?
Dolmance. -Ah, be in no doubt of it, Eugenie, these words vice and virtue contain for us naught but local ideas. There is no deed, in whatever the unusual form you may imagine it, which is really criminal, none which may be really called virtuous; all is relative to our manners and the climate we inhabit; what is a crime here is often a virtue several hundred leagues hence, and the virtues of another hemisphere might well reverse themselves into crimes in our own. There is no horror that has not been consecrated, no virtue that has not been flailed. Of these purely geographical differences is born the slight import we must attach to mankind's esteem or contempt, ridiculous and frivolous sentiments against which we must be impeccably armed, to the point, indeed, that we fearlessly prefer their scorn if the actions which excite it are for us sources of even the most modest voluptuousness.
Eugenie. -But it would however appear to me that there must be actions in themselves so dangerous and so evil that they have come to be considered from one end of the earth to the other as generally criminal.
Madame de Saint-Ange. -There are none, my love, none, not even theft, nor incest, neither murder nor parricide itself.
Eugenie. -What! such horrors are somewhere tolerated?
Dolmance. -They have been honored, crowned, beheld as deeds of excellence, whereas in other places, humaneness, candor, benevolence, chastity, in brief, all our virtues were regarded as monstrosities.
Eugenie. -I would have you explain that to me; I demand a succinct analysis of each one of those crimes-but I beg you to begin by exposing your opinions upon the libertinage of young girls, then upon the adultery of women.
Madame de Saint-Ange. -Then listen to me, Eugenie. It is absurd to say that immediately a girl is weaned she must continue the victim of her farents' will in order to remain thus to her last breath, t is not in an age when the scope of the rights of man has been so exhaustively investigated that girls ought to continue to believe themselves their families' slaves, when it is clearly established that these families' power over them is totally illusory; let us consult Nature upon this so interesting question, and may the laws that govern animals, in much straiter consonance with Nature, provide us for a moment with examples. Amongst beasts, do paternal duties extend beyond primary physical needs? Does not the fruit of the male and female's pleasure possess all their liberty, all their rights? As soon as they are able to walk alone and feed themselves, beginning at this instant, are they any longer recognized by the authors of their days? And do the young believe themselves in any sense indebted to those whence they have received breath? Surely not. By what right, hence, are other duties incumbent upon the children of men? And what is the basis of these duties if not the fathers' greed or ambition? Well, I ask if it is just that a young girl who is beginning to feel and reason be submitted to such constraints. Is it' not prejudice which all unaided forges those chains? and is there anything more ridiculous than to see a maiden of fifteen or sixteen, consumed by desires she is compelled to vanquish, wait, and, while waiting, endure worse than hell's torments, until it pleases her parents, having first rendered her youth miserable, further to sacrifice her riper years by immolating them to their perfidious cupidity by associating her, despite her wishes, with a husband who either has nothing wherewith to make himself loved, or who possesses everything to make himself hated? Ah! no. No, Eugenie, such bonds are quickly dissolved; it is necessary that when once she reaches the age of reason the girl be detached from the paternal household and, after having received a national education, it is necessary that at the age of fifteen she be left her own mistress, to become what she wishes. She will be delivered unto vice? Ha! what does that matter? Are not the services a young girl renders, in consenting to cause the happiness of all who apply to her, infinitely more important than those which, isolating herself, she affords her husband? Woman's destiny is to be wanton, like the bitch, the shc-wolf: she must belong to all who claim her. Clearly, it is to outrage the fate Nature imposes upon women to fetter them by the absurd ties of a solitary marriage. Let us hope eyes will be opened, and that, while assuring the liberty of every individual, the sort of unhappy girls will not be overlooked; but should they have the great misfortune to be forgotten, then, of their own accord rising above usage and prejudice, let them boldly fling off and spurn the shameful irons wherewith others presume to keep them subjugated; they will rapidly conquer custom and opinion; man become wiser, because he will be freer, will sense the injustice that would exist in scorning whomever acts thus, and will sense too that the act of yielding to Nature's promptings, beheld as a crime by a captive people, can be so no longer amongst a free. Begin, therefore, with the legitimacy of these principles, Eugenie, and break your shackles at no matter what the cost; be contemptuous of the futile remonstrances of an imbecile mother to whom you legitimately owe but hatred and a curse. If your father, who is a libertine, desires you, why, then, go merrily to him; let him enjoy you, but enjoy without enchaining you; cast off the yoke if he wishes to enslave you; more than one daughter has treated thus with her father. Fuck, in one word, fuck: 'twas for that you were brought into the world; no limits to your pleasure save those of your strength and will; no exceptions as to place, to time, to partner; all the time, everywhere, every man has got to serve your pleasures; continence is an impossible virtue for which Nature, her rights violated, instantly punishes us with a thousand miseries. So long as the laws remain such as they are today, employ some discretion: opinion forces us to; but in silence let us compensate our losses to that cruel chastity we are obliged to have in public. Let our young maiden strive to procure herself a companion who, unattached and abroad, can secretly cause her to taste the world's pleasures; failing of that, let her concert to seduce the Arguses posted round her; let her beg them to prostitute her, and promise them all the money they can earn from her sale; either those Arguses alone, or the women they will find and whom one calls procuresses, will soon realize the little one's objectives; then let her kick up the dust into the eyes of everyone at hand, brothers, cousins, friends, parents; let her give herself to everyone if that is necessary to hide her conduct; let her even make the sacrifice, if 'tis required, of her tastes and affections; one intrigue which might displease her, and into which she would enter only for reasons of policy, will straightway lead her to another more agreeable; and there she is, launched. But let her not revert to her childhood prejudices; menaces, exhortations, duties, virtues, religion, advice, let her give not a damn for the one or the lot of them; let her reject stubbornly and despise all that which but tends to her re-entry into thralldom, and all that which, in a word, does not hie her along the road to the depths of impudicity.
"Tis but folly in our parents when they foretell the disasters of a libertine career; there are thorns everywhere, but along the path of vice roses bloom above them; Nature causes none to smile along virtue's muddy track. Upon the former of the routes, the one snare to fear is men's opinion; but what mettlesome girl, with a little reflection, will not render herself superior to that contemptible opinion? The pleasures of respectability and high esteem, Eugenic, arc nothing but moral pleasures, acceptable to none but certain minds; those of fuckery please all, and their winning characteristics soon compensate the hallucinatory scorn from which escape is difficult when one flaunts the
Eugenie's views at which several cool-headed women ave so much laughed as there from to derive one pleasure the more. Fuck, Eugenie, fuck, my angel; your body is your own, yours alone; in all the world there is but yourself who has the right to enjoy it as you see fit. Profit from the happiest period in your fife; these golden years of our pleasure are only too brief. If we are so fortunate as to have enjoyed them, delicious memories console and amuse us in our old age. These years lost . . . and we are racked by bitterest regrets, appalling remorse conjoins with the sufferings of decrepitude and the fatal oncoming of the grave is all tears and splines . . . But have you the madness to hope for immortality?
Why, then, 'tis by fucking, my dear, you will remain permanently in human memory. The Lucreces were soon forgot whereas the Theodoras and the Messalinas are occasion for life's sweetest and most frequent conversation. How, Eugenie, may one refuse to elect an alternative which twines in our hair the flowers of this world and yet leaves us the hope of reverence when we are gone out of it? How, I say, may one not prefer this course to another which, causing us stupidly to vegetate upon earth, promises us nothing after our existence but scorn and oblivion?
Eugenie, to Madame de Saint-Ange. -Oh, my love, how these seductive words inflame my mind and captivate my soul! I am in a state hardly to be painted . . . And, say, will you be able to acquaint me with some of these women (troubled) who will, if I tell them to, prostitute me?
Madame de Saint-Ange. -For the moment and until you have become more experienced, the matter is entirely my concern, Eugenie; entrust your care to me and above all the precautions I am taking to mask your excesses; my brother and this solid friend instructing you will be the first to whom I wish you to give yourself; afterwards, we will discover others. Be not disturbed, dear heart: I shall have you fly from one pleasure to the next, I'll plunge you in a sea of delights, I will fill your cup to overflowing . . . I will sate you.
Eugenie, throwing herself into Madame de SaintAnge's arms. --Oh, my dearest one, I adore you; you will never have a more submissive scholar. But it seems to me you gave me to understand in our old conversations that it were a difficult thing, for a young person to fling herself into libertinage without the husband she is to wed perceiving it later on?
Madame de Saint-Ange. -'Tis true, my heart, but there are secrets which heal all those breaches. I promise to make them known to you and then, had you fucked like Antoinette, I charge myself to send you home as much a virgin as you were the day you were born.
Eugenie. -Oh, my delightful one! Come, continue to instruct me. Be quick then; teach me what should be a woman's conduct in marriage.
Madame de Saint-Ange. -In whatever the circumstances, a woman, my dear, whether unwedded, wife, or widow, must never have for objective, occupation, or desire anything save to have herself fucked from daybreak to eventide; 'tis for this unique end Nature created her; but if, in order to answer this intention, I require her to tread in the dust all the prejudices of her childhood, if I prescribe to her the most formal disobedience to her family's orders, the most arrant contempt for all her relatives' advice, you will agree with me, Eugenie, that, among all the bonds to be burst, I ought very surely to recommend that the very first be those of wedlock. Indeed, Eugenie, think of the young girl scarcely out of her father's house or her pension, knowing nothing, having no experience: of a sudden, she is obliged to pass thence into the arms of a man she has never seen, she is called to the altar and compelled to swear to this man an oath of obedience, of fidelity, the more unjust for her often having nothing in the depths of her heart but the greatest desire to break her word. In all the world, is there a more terrible fate than this, Eugenie?
However, whether her husband pleases her or no, whether or not he has tenderness in store for her or vile treatment, behold! she is married; her honor binds her to her oaths; it is attainted if she disregards them; she must be doomed or shackled: either way, she must perish of suffering. Ah, no! Eugenie, no! 'tis not for that end we are born; those absurd laws are the handiwork of men, and we must not submit to them. And divorce? Is it capable of satisfying us? Certainly not. What greater assurance have we of finding the happiness in a later bondage that fled us in an earlier? Therefore, in secrecy let us compensate ourselves for all the frustration imposed by such absurd unions, and let us be certain indeed that this species of disorders, to whatever extreme we carry them, far from outraging Nature, is but a sincere homage we render her; it is to obey her laws to cede to the desires she alone has placed in us; it is only in resisting that we affront her. The adultery men deem a crime, which they have dared punish as such by depriving us of life, adultery, Eugenie, is hence nothing but an acquittance sanctioned by a natural law the whims of those tyrants shall never be able to steal away from us. But is it not horrible, say our husbands, to lay us open to cherishing as our own children, to embracing as ours the fruit of your licentiousness? The objection is Rousseau's; it is, I admit, the only faintly specious one wherewith adultery may be combatted. Well! Is it not extremely simple to surrender oneself to libertinage without fear of pregnancy? Is it not easier yet to destroy it if through our oversight or imprudence it should occur? But, as we shall return to the subject, let's now but treat the heart of the matter: we will see that, however plausible it at first appears, the argument is but chimerical nevertheless. Firstly, provided I sleep with my husband, provided his semen flows to the depths of my womb, should I sec ten men at the same time
I consort with him, nothing will ever be able to prove to him that the child born does not belong to him; it is just as likely the child is his as not, and in a case of uncertainty he cannot and ought never (since he has had some part in bringing about this creature's existence) fret himself or have any qualms about avowing this existence. Immediately it can be his, it is his; and every man who vexes himself with suspicions upon this head would be equally vexed were his wife a vestal, because it is impossible to be certain of a woman and because she who has behaved well for years may someday suspend her good behaviour. Hence, if this husband is suspicious, he will be so in any case: never, then, will he be sure the child he embraces is really his own. Now, if he can be suspicious in any case, there can be no disadvantage in some times justifying his suspicions: with what regards his state of happiness or unhappiness, it will be all one; therefore, 'tis just as well things be thus. Well, suppose him in complete error: picture him caressing the fruit of his wife's libertinage: where is the crime in that? Are not our goods held in common? In which case, what ill do I cause by introducing into the menage a child to whom must be accorded a share of these goods? 'Twill be my share the child will have; he'll steal nothing from my tender mate: I consider as a levy upon my dowry this portion to which the child will be heir; hence, neither it nor I take anything from my husband. Had this child been his, by what title would it have been a claimant to a part of my chattels and monies? Is it not by reason of the fact the child would have been my offspring? Very well, the child is going to inherit this part, rightfully the child's by virtue of the same intimate alliance. It is because this child belongs to me that I owe it a share of my wealth. With what are you to reproach me? The child is provided for. "But you deceive your husband; thus to be false is atrocious. "
"No, it's tit for tat," say I, "and there's an end to it: I was the dupe of the first of the attachments he forced upon me: I take my revenge: what could be more simple?"
"But your husband's honor has suffered a real outrage. "
"What ludicrous notion is this! My libertinage in no wise affects my husband; mine are personal faults. This alleged dishonor was valid a century ago; we're rid of our illusions today, and my husband is no more sullied by my debauches than I might be by his. I might fuck with the whole wide world without causing him a scratch or a gibe. This pretended hurt is therefore a mere fable whose authentic existence is impossible. Of the two things, one: either my husband is brutal, a jealous man, or he is a delicate one; in the former hypothesis, the best course for me is to avenge myself for his conduct; in the latter, I should be unable to aggrieve him; the fact I am tasting pleasures will make him happy if he is large-spirited; no man of refinement fails to relish the spectacle of the happiness of the person he adores. "
"But, were you to love him, would you wish him to do the same thing?"
"Ah, woe unto the wife who decides to be jealous of her husband! Let her be content with what he gives her, if she loves him; but let her make no attempt to constrain him; not only will she have no success, but she will soon make herself detested. So long as I am reasonable, I shall never be afflicted by my husband's debauches; let him be thus with me, and peace will reign in the house. "
We will sum up: Whatever be adultery's issue, were it even to introduce into the home children who do not belong to the husband, because they are the wife's they have certain rights to a portion of that wife's dowry; if the husband has intelligence of the thing, he must consider them as he would children his wife might have had by an earlier marriage; if he knows nothing, he'll not be the worse for it, for one cannot be distressed by what one is unaware of; if the adultery is followed by no consequences and if it be unknown to the husband, no jurist can prove, in this case, the existence of crime: here, adultery appears as no more than an act of perfect indifference to the husband, who knows nothing of it, and perfectly splendid for the wife, whom it delights; if the husband discovers the adultery, 'tis no longer the adultery which is an evil, for it was not such a moment ago, and it could not have altered its nature: there is no longer any evil but the husband's discovery of it: well, that fault belongs only to him: it has nothing to do with his wife. Those who punished the adulterer in former times were, hence, but hangmen, tyrannical and jealous, who, viewing everything subjectively, unjustly imagined that in order to be criminal it was but necessary to offend them, as if a personal injury were always to be considered a crime, and as if one might justly describe as a crime an act which, far from outraging Nature or Society, clearly serves the one and the other. There are, however, cases when adultery, easy to prove, becomes more embarassing for the woman without for that reason being any more criminal; witness, for example, the case wherein the husband is found either impotent or subject to inclinations disfavorable to engendering. As she is susceptible of pleasure, and as her husband never is, her deportment, doubtless, then becomes more open; but ought she be disquieted on that account? Surely not The one precaution she must take is to produce no children, or to have an abortion if devices should happen to deceive her. If it is thanks to her husband's unseemly penchants that she is compelled to compensate herself for his negligence, she has first of all to satisfy him, without repugnance and according to his tastes, of whatever character they may chance to be; next, let her make it known to him that such complacencies well entitle her to consideration; let her demand an entire liberty in return for the one she accords; thereupon, the husband refuses or he consents: if he consents, as mine, one puts oneself at his free disposal and redoubles one's ministrations and condescensions to his caprices; if he refuses, then one intensifies one's concealments and one fucks peacefully in their shadow. Is he impotent? Why, then one parts company; but, whatever may be the case, one gives oneself: one fucks, my lamb, the particular situation notwithstanding, because we are born to fuck, because by fucking we carry out and obey Nature's ordinations, and because all man-made law which would contradict Nature's are made for naught but our contempt.
A silly gull is the woman tics as absurd as those of wedlock inhibit from surrendering to her penchants, who dreads either pregnancy or the yet more vain tarnishing of her reputation. You have just seen, Eugenie, yes, you have just sensed what a dupe is she when basely she immolates both her happiness and all life's joys to the most preposterous prejudices. Oh! let her fuck with impunity! Will a little false glory, a few frivolous religious anticipations compensate her sacrifices? No; no, virtue, vice, all are confounded in the grave. A few years hence, will the public any more exalt the ones than it condemns the others? Why, no, once again, I say no, and the wretch, having lived a stranger to joy, dies, alas, unrewarded.
Eugenie. -How thoroughly you persuade me, my angel, what a straight way you make with my prejudices, what short work you make of all the false principles my mother planted in me! Oh, I would be married tomorrow in order immediately to put your maxims into use. How seductive they are, how true, and how much I love them! Only one thing troubles me, dear one; in what you have just said to me, and as I understand it not at all, I beg you to explain: your husband, you declare, does not, when he takes his pleasure with you, strike an attitude such as would produce children: what then, pray tell, does he do?
Madame de Saint-Ange. -My husband was already old when I married him. On our wedding night he gave me notice of his fancies, the while assuring me that, on his part, never would he hinder mine; I swore to obey him and we have always, since then, lived, he and I, in the most delicious independence. My husband's whim is to have himself sucked, and here is the most unusual practice joined as a corollary to that one: while, as I bend over him, my buttocks squarely over his face, I cheerily pump the fuck from his balls, I must shit in his mouth . . . he swallows it down.
Eugenie. -La! there's a most extraordinary notion!
Dolmance. -None may be qualified thus, my dear: all are a part of Nature; when she created men, she was pleased to vary their tastes as she made different their countenances, and we ought no more be astonished at the diversity she has put in our features than at that she has placed in our affections. The fancy, your friend has just mentioned could not be more d la mode; an infinite number of men, and principally those of a certain age, are prodigiously addicted to it; would you refuse your cooperation, Eugdnie, were someone to require it of you?
Eugenie, turning red. -In accordance with the maxims wherewith I am being indoctrinated here, can I refuse anything? I only ask to be forgiven my surprise; this is the first time I have heard of these lubricities: I must first of all visualize them; but between the solution of the problem and the execution of the act, I believe my tutors can rest assured there will never be but the distance they themselves impose. However all that may be, my dear, you won your liberty by acquiescing to this duty?
Madame de Saint-Ange. -The most entire liberty, Eugenie. On my side, I did everything I wished without his raising any obstacles, but I took no lover: I was too fond of pleasure for that. Unlucky woman, she who is attached; she has but need of a lover to be lost, while ten scenes of libertinage, repeated every day, if she wishes, vanish into the night of silence instantly they are consummated. I was wealthy: I had young men in my pay, they fucked me incognito, I surrounded myself with charming valets, assured of tasting the sweetest pleasures with me upon condition of discretion, certain they would be released if they spoke a word. You have no idea, dear heart, of the torrent of delights into which, in this manner, I did plunge. Such is the conduct I will always urge to every woman who would imitate me. During my twelve married years I have perhaps fucked above ten or twelve thousand individuals . . . and in the company I keep I am thought well-behaved! Another would have had lovers; by the time she had taken her second she would have been doomed.
Eugenie. -This seems the safest axiom; most decidedly, it shall be mine; I must, like yourself, marry a rich man, and above all one with fancies . . . But, my dear, your husband is strictly bound by his tastes? Docs he never ask anything else of you?
Madame de Saint-Ange. -Never in a dozen years has he been untrue to himself a single day, save when I am on an outing. A very pretty girl he very much wanted me to take into the house substitutes, then, for me.
Eugenie. -But he doesn't stop there, surely? There are other objects, outside the house, competing to diversify his pleasures?
Dolmance. -Be certain there are, Eugenie; Madame's husband is one of the greatest libertines of the day; he spends above one hundred thousand crowns a year upon the obscene tastes your friend described to you but a moment ago.
Madame de Saint-Ange. -To tell the truth, I doubt the figure; but what are his excesses to me, since their multiplicity authorizes and camouflages my own?
Eugenie. -I beseech you, let us follow in detail the manners by which a young person, married or not, may preserve herself from pregnancy, for I confess I am made most timorous by dread of it, whether it be the work of the husband I must take, or the effect of a career of libertinage. You have just indicated one means while speaking of your husband's tastes; but this fashion of taking one's pleasure, which may be highly agreeable to the man, seems less pleasurable for the woman, and it is dalliance exempt from the risks I fear that I desire you-to discuss.
Madame de Saint-Ange. -A girl risks having a child only in proportion to the frequency with which she permits the man to invade her cunt. Let her scrupulously avoid this manner of tasting pleasure; instead, let her offer indiscriminately her hand, her mouth, her breasts, or her ass. This last thoroughfare will yield her considerable pleasure, far more, indeed, than any other; by means of the others, she will give pleasure.
In the first instance-that is to say, the one which brings the hand into play-, one proceeds in the fashion you observed a short while ago, Eugenie; one shakes one's friend's member as if one were pumping it; after a little agitation, the sperm is emitted; meanwhile, the man kisses, caresses you, and with this liquid covers that part of your body whereof he is fondest. If one wishes to have it distributed over the breasts, one stretches upon the bed, the virile member is fitted between the two tits, they are compressed, and after a few passes the man discharges so as to flood your breasts and sometimes your face. This manner is the least voluptuous of all and can only suit those women whose breasts, owing to repeated usage, have already acquired that flexibility needed to squeeze the man's member as they close upon it. Pleasure incepted at the mouth is infinitely more agreeable, quite as much for the man as for the woman. The best way to go about it is for the woman to lie prone, contrariwise to her fucker and upon his body: he pops his prick into your mouth and, his head being lodged between your thighs, he repays in kind what you do for him, by introducing his tongue into your cunt or by playing it over your clitoris; when employing this attitude, one must be aroused, catch hold of the buttocks, and each should tickle the other's asshole, a measure always necessary to complete voluptuousness. Spirited lovers, those full of imagination, therewith swallow the fuck which squirts into their mouths, and thus delicately they enjoy the exquisite pleasure of mutually causing this precious fluid, mechanically diverted from its customary destination, to pass into their entrails.
Dolmance. -Eugenie, 'tis a delicious method; I recommend to you its execution. Thus to cheat propagation of its rights and to contradict what fools call the laws of Nature, is truly most charming. The thighs, the armpits also sometimes provide asylum to the man's member and offer him retreats where his seed may be spilled without risk of pregnancy.
Madame de Saint-Ange. -Some women insert sponges into the vagina's interior; these, intercepting the sperm, prevent it from springing into the vessel where generation occurs. Others oblige their fuckers to make use of a little sack of Venetian skin, in the vulgate called a condom, into which the semen flows without any chance of attaining its objective. But of all the possibilities, that presented by the ass is without any doubt the most delicious. Dolmance, to you I reserve the dissertations thereupon. Who might better be able to describe a taste in whose defense, were it to require any defense, you would lay down your life?
Dolmance. -I acknowledge my weakness. I admit as well that in all the world there is no mode of pleasure-taking preferable to this; I worship it in either sex; but I'll confess a young lad's asshole gives me yet more pleasure than a girl's. Buggers is the appellation designating those who are this fancy's adepts; now, Eugenie, when one goes so far as to be a bugger, one must go the entire distance. To fuck women's assholes is but the half of buggery; 'tis with men Nature wishes men to practice this oddity, and it is especially for men she has given us a predilection. Absurd to say the mania offends Nature; can it be so, when 'tis she who puts it into our head? can she dictate what degrades her? No, Eugenie, not at all; the asshole's as good a place to serve her as any other, and perhaps it is there she is most devoudy worshipped. Propagation owes its existence to her forbearance: how could she have prescribed as law an act which deprives her of her omnipotent privileges, since propagation is but a consequence of her primary intentions, and since new constructions, wrought by her hand, were our species to be destroyed absolutely, would become again primordial intentions whose accomplishment would be far more flattering to her pride and to her power?
Madame de Saint-Ange. -Do you know, Dolmance, that by means of this system you are going to be led to prove that totally to extinguish the human race would be nothing but to render Nature a service?
Dolmance. -Who doubts of it, Madame?
Madame de Saint-Ange. -My God! wars, plagues, famines, murders would no longer be but accidents, necessary to Nature's laws, and man, whether instrumental to or the object of these effects, would hence no longer be more a criminal in the one case than he would be a victim in the other?
Dolmance. -Victim he without doubt is when he bends before the blows of ill fortune; but criminal, never. We shall have more to say about all these things; for the moment, in the lovely Eugenie's behalf, let's analyze sodomistic pleasures, which presently is the subject of our discussion. In this mode of fucking, the posture most commonly adopted by the woman is supine: she lies belly down upon the edge of the bed, the buttocks well spread, the head as low as possible; after having mused for an instant upon the ass' splendid perspective, after having slapped it a bit, handled it, sometimes after having beaten or whipped it, pinched and bitten it, the rake moistens with his mouth the pretty little hole he is about to perforate, and prepares his entry with the tip of his tongue; in similar wise, he wets his engine with saliva, or with pomade, and gently presents it to the aperture he intends to pierce; he guides it with one hand, with the other he lays wide open the cheeks of his delight; immediately he feels his member penetrate, he must thrust energetically, taking all due care not to give ground; then it is, occasionally, the woman suffers, if she is new, or young; but, totally heedless of the pangs which are soon to change into pleasures, the fucker must be lively and drive his engine ahead, step by step, gradually, till at last he is arrived at his objective, till, that is to say, his device's hairs precisely rub the anal rim of the embuggered party. Then may he give free rein to himself; all the thorns are plucked from out his path, there remain roses only there. To complete the metamorphosis into pleasures of what agonies his object still experiences, if it be a boy, let him seize his prick and frig it; let him twiddle her clitoris, if 'tis a girl; the titillations of the pleasure he will cause to be born, will in turn work a prodigious contraction in the patient's anus, and will redouble the joys of the agent who, overwhelmed with comfort and pleasure, will soon dart, to the very depths of the ass of his delight, a sperm quite as abundant as thick, thus determined by so many lubricious details. There are some who do not care to have the patient take leasure in the operation; an attitude we will account or in good time.
Madame de Saint-Ange. -Allow me to be the scholar for a moment, and let me ask you, Dolmance, in what state the patient's ass must be in order to ensure the agent a maximum of pleasure?
Dolmance. -Full, by all means; 'tis essential the object in use have the most imperious desire to shit, so that the end of the fucker's prick, attaining the turd, may drive deep into it, and may more warmly and more softly deposit there the fuck which irritates and sets it afire.
Madame de Saint-Ange. -I fear the patient's pleasure is less.
Dolmance. -Error! This method of conferring is such that there exists no possibility of the fucker's receiving hurt nor of the employed object's failing to be transported into a very heaven. No other matches this in value, no other can so completely satisfy each of the protagonists, and dhey who have tasted of it know a great difficulty in abandoning it for another. Such, Eugenie, are the best ways of taking pleasure with a man if the perils of pregnancy are to be avoided; for one enjoys-and be very certain of it-not only offering a man one's ass, but also sucking and frigging him, etc. , and I have known libertine ladies who often had a higher esteem for these stunts than for real pleasures. The imagination is the spur of delights; in those of this order, all depends upon it, it is the mainspring of everything; now, is it not by means of the imagination one knows joy? is it not of the imagination that there come the most piquant delights?
Madame de Saint-Ange. -Indeed; but let Eugenie beware thereof; the imagination serves us not save when our mind is absolutely free of prejudices: but a single one will suffice to chill it This capricious portion of our mind is so libertine nothing can restrain it; its greatest triumph, its most eminent delights come of exceeding all limits imposed upon it; of all regularity it is an enemy, it worships disorder, idolizes whatever wears the brand of crime; whence derived the extraordinary reply of an imaginative woman who was fucking coolly with her husband: "Why this ice?" quoth he. "Ah, truly," answered this singular creature, "tis all very dull, what you are doing with me. "
Eugenie. -I adore the remark . . . Ah, my dear, how great is my urge to become acquainted with these divine outbursts of a disordered imagination! You'd never believe it, but during our stay together . . . since the instant we met-no, no, my darling, never could you conceive all the voluptuous ideas my brain has caressed . . . Oh, how well I now understand what is evil . . . how much it is desired of my heart!
Madame de Saint-Ange. -May atrocities, horrors, may the most odious crimes astonish you no more, my Eugenie; what is of the filthiest, the most infamous, the most forbidden, 'tis that which best rouses the intellect, 'tis that which always causes us most deliciously to discharge.
Eugenie. -To how many incredible perversities must you not, the one and the other, have surrendered yourselves! And how I should relish hearing the details!
Dolmance, kissing and fondling the young lady. beauteous Eugenie, a hundred times more would I love to see you experience all I should love to do, rather than to relate to you what I have done.
Eugenie. -I know not whether it would be too good for me to accede to everything.
Madame de Saint-Ange. -I would not advise it, Eugenie.
Eugenie. -Very well, I spare Dolmance his narrations; but you, my dear, tell me, I beseech you, what arc the most extraordinary things you have done in your life?
Madame de Saint-Ange. -I engaged fifteen men, alone; in twenty-four hours, I was ninety times fucked, as much before as behind.
Eugenie. -Mere debauches, those, tours de force; I dare wager you have done yet more uncommon things.
Madame de Saint-Ange. -I passed a term in a brothel.
Eugenie. -And what means that word?
Dolmance. -Such are called the public houses where, in consideration of an agreed upon price, each man finds young and pretty girls in good sort to satisfy his passions.
Eugenie. -And you gave yourself there, my dearest?
Madame de Saint-Ange. -Yes; there I was, a perfect whore; there, during an entire week, I satisfied the whims of a goodly number of lechers, and there I beheld the most unusual tastes displayed; moved by a similar libertine principle, like the celebrated empress Theodora, Justinian's wife (i), I waylaid men in the streets, upon public promenades, and the money I earned from these prostitutions I spent at the lottery.
Eugenie. -My dear, I know that mind of yours: you've gone still further than that
Madame de Saint-Ange. -Were it possible?
Eugenie. -Why, yes! Yes, and this is how I fancy it: have you not told me our most delicious moral sensations come of the imagination?
Madame de Saint-Ange. -I did say so.
Eugenie. -Then, by allowing this imagination to stray, by according it the freedom to overstep those ultimate boundaries religion, decency, humaneness, (i) See the Anecdotes of Procopius. virtue, in a word, all our pretended obligations would like to prescribe to it, is it not possible that the imagination's extravagances would be prodigious?
Madame de Saint-Ange. -No doubt
Eugenie. -Well, is it not by reason of these extravagances' immensity that the imagination will be the more inflamed?
Madame de Saint-Ange. -Nothing more true.
Eugenie. -If that is so, the more we wish to be agitated, the more we desire to be moved violently, the more we must give free rein to our imagination; we must bend it towards the inconceivable; our enjoyment, thereby, will be increased, made better for the track the intellect follows, and Dolmance, kissing Eugenie. -Delicious.
Madame de Saint-Ange. -My, but how our little rascal has progressed, and in such a brief space. But, do you know, my charming one, that one can go very far by the route you trace for us?
Eugenie. -I understand it very nicely; and since I will subject myself to no inhibitions, you see at what destination I suppose one may arrive.
Madame de Saint-Ange. -At crime, vicious thing, at the blackest, most frightful crimes.
Eugenie, in a lowered and halting voice. -But you say no crime exists there . . . and after all, it is but to fire the mind: one thinks, but one does not do.
Dolmance. -However, 'tis very sweet to carry out what one has fancied.
Eugenie, flushing. -Well, then . . . carry it out . . . do you not undertake to persuade me, dear teachers, that you have always done what you have conceived?
Madame de Saint-Ange. -It has sometimes been given to me thus to have it. . . .
Eugenee. -There! We are there!
Dolmance. -Ah! what a mind.
Eugenie, continuing. -What I ask you is this: what have you fancied? and then, having fancied, what have you done?
Madame de Saint-Ange, stammering. -Someday, Eugenie, I shall . . . relate my life to you. Let us continue our instruction . . . for you would bring me to say things . . . things. . . .
Eugenie. -Ah, be gone! I see you do not love me enough fully to open your soul to me; I will wait, you order it; let's get on with the particulars. Tell me, my dear, who was the happy mortal who intended at your beginnings?
Madame de Saint-Ange. -My brother: from childhood on he adored me, during our earliest years we often amused each other without attaining our object; I promised to give myself to him immediately I married; I kept my word; happily, my husband damaged nothing: he, my brother, harvested all. We continue with our intrigue, but without hampering ourselves; we do not, he and I, plunge ourselves, he on his part, I on mine, into anything but the most divine of libertinage's excesses; we even mutually serve one another: I procure women for him, he makes me acquainted with men.
Eugenie. -Delicious arrangement! But, is not incest a crime?
Dolmance. -Might one so regard Nature's gentlest unions, the ones she most insistently prescribes to us and councils most warmly? Eugenie, a moment of reason: how, after the vast afflictions our planet sometime knew, how was the human species otherwise able to perpetuate itself, save through incest? Of which we find, do we not, the example and the proof itself in the books Christianity respects most highly. By what other means could Adam's family and that of Noah (i) have been preserved? Sift, examine, scry universal custom: everywhere you will detect incest authorized, considered a wise law and proper to cement familial ties. If, in a word, love is born of resemblance, where may it be more perfect than between brother and sister, between father and daughter? An ill founded policy, one produced by the fear lest certain families become too powerful, bans incest from our midst; but let us not abuse ourselves to the point of mistaking for natural law what is dictated to us by nothing but interest or ambition; let us delve into our hearts: 'tis always there I send our pedantic moralists; let us but question this sacred organ and we will notice that nothing is more delicate than carnal connection within the family; let us cease to be blind with what concerns a brother's feelings for his sister, a father's for his daughter: in vain does one or the other disguise them behind a mask of legitimate tenderness: the most violent love is the unique sentiment ablaze in them, the only one Nature has deposited in their hearts. Hence, let us double, triple these delicious incests, fearlessly multiply them, and let us believe that, the more straightly the object of our desires does belong to us, the greater charm shall there be in enjoying it.
One of my friends has the habit of living with the girl he had by his own mother; not a week ago he deflowered a thirteen year old boy, fruit of his commerce with this girl; in a few years' time, this same lad will wed his mother: such are my friend's wishes; he is readying for them all a destiny analogous to the projects he delights in and his intentions, I know very well, are yet to enjoy what this marriage will bring to bear; he is young and he has cause to
(i) Adam was nothing, nor was Noah, but a restorer at humankind. An appalling catastrophe left Adam alone in the world, just as a similar event did Noah; but Adam's tradition is lost to us, Noah's has been preserved. hope for the best. Consider, gentle Eugenie, with what a quantity of incests and crimes this honest friend would be soiled were there a jot of truth in the low notion that would have us define these alliances as evil. To be brief, in all these matters, I base my attitude upon one principle: had Nature condemned sodomy's pleasures, incestuous correspondences, pollutions, and so forth, would she have allowed us to find so much delight in them? That she may tolerate what outrages her is unthinkable.
Eugenie. -Oh, divine teachers, I see full well that, according to your doctrine, there are very few crimes in the world, and that we may peacefully follow the bent of all our desires however singular they may appear to fools who, shocked and alarmed by everything, stupidly mistake social institutions for Nature's divine ordinations. Yet, however, my friends, do you not at least acknowledge that there exist certain actions absolutely revolting and decidedly criminal although enjoined by Nature? I am nothing loath to agree with you, that this Nature, as extraordinary in the productions she creates as various in the penchants she gives us, sometimes moves us to cruel deeds; but if, . having surrendered to depravity, we were to yield to this bizarre Nature's promptings, were we to go so far as to attempt, let me suppose, the lives of our fellows, you will surely grant me, at least I do hope so, that such an act would be a crime?
Dolmance. -Indeed, Eugenie, little good would it do for us to grant you anything of the sort. Destruction being one of the chief laws of Nature, nothing that destroys can be criminal; how might an action which so well serves Nature ever be outrageous to her? This destruction of which man is won't boastingly to be proud is never other than an illusion; murder is no destruction; he who commits it does but alter and traffic in forms, he gives back to Nature the elements whereof the hand of this skilled artisan instantly re creates other beings: well, as creations cannot but afford delight to him by whom they are wrought, the murderer thus prepares for Nature a pleasure most agreeable, he furnishes her materials, she employs them without delay, and the act idiots have had the madness to blame is aught but meritorious in the universal agent's eye. 'Tis our pride prompts us to elevate murder into crime; esteeming ourselves the foremost of the universe's creatures, we have stupidly imagined that every hurt this sublime creature endures must necessarily be an enormity; we have believed Nature would perish were it to happen that our marvelous species were blotted out of existence, while the whole extirpation of the breed would, by restoring to Nature the creative faculty she has entrusted to us, reinvigorate her, she would have again that energy we deprive her of by propagating our own selves; but what an inconsequence, Eugenie! indeed! an ambitious sovereign can destroy, at his ease and without the least scruple, the enemies prejudicial to his grandiose designs . . . Cruel laws, arbitrary, imperious laws could likewise every century assassinate millions of individuals and we, feeble and wretched particulars, we are not to be permitted to sacrifice a single being to our vengeance or our caprice! Is there anything so barbarous, so ridiculously outlandish, so wild? and, cloaking ourselves in the profoundest mystery, must we not amply compensate ourselves for this ineptitude, and have revenge? (i)
Eugenie. -Assuredly, of course . . . Oh, but your ethics seduce me, and how I savour their bouquet! Yet, wait, Dolmance, tell me now, in good conscience, whether you have not sometimes had satisfaction in. crime?
(i)
This article will be treated exhaustively further on; for the time being, we content ourselves to lay some of the bases for the system to be developed later.
Dolmance. -Do not force me to reveal my faults to you: their number and kind might bring me excessively to blush; perhaps, someday, I'll avow them to you.
Madame de Saint-Ange. -While guiding the law's blade, the criminal has often employed it to satisfy his passions.
Dolmance. -Might that I have no other reproaches to make myself.
Madame de Saint-Ange, throwing her arms about his neck. -Divine man! I adore you! What spirit, what courage are needed to have tasted every pleasure, as have you! 'Tis to the man of genius only there is reserved the honor or shattering all the links and shackles of ignorance and stupidity. Kiss me-oh, you are charming!
Dolmance. -Be frank, Eugenie, tell me: have you never wished the death of anyone?
Eugenie. -Oh, I have! Yes! there is every day before my eyes an abominable creature I have long wished to sec in her grave.
Madame de Saint-Ange. -Now, I dare say I have guessed her name.
Eugenie. -Whom do you suspect?
Madame de Saint-Ange. -Your mother?
Eugenie. -Oh, let me hide myself upon your breast!
Dolmance. -Voluptuous creature! in my turn I would overwhelm her with the caresses that should be the reward of her heart's energy and her exquisite mind. (Dolmance kisses her entire body and bestows light smacks upon her buttocks; he has an erection; his hands, from time to time, stray also over Madame de Saint-Ange's behind, which is luxuriously tendered him; restored a little to his senses, Dolmance proceeds. ) By why should we not put this sublime idea into execution?
Madame de Saint-Ange. -Eugenie, I detested my mother quite as much as you hate yours, and I hesitated not.
Eugenie. -The means have been lacking to me.
Madame de Saint-Ange. -The courage, rather.
Eugenie. -Alas! still so young.
Dolmance. -But, Eugenie, presently what would you do?
Eugenie. -Everything . . . only show me the way and you'll see!
Dolmance. -It will be shown you, Eugenie, I promise it; but thereunto, I put a condition.
Eugenie,-And what is it? or rather what is the condition I am not ready to accept?
Dolmance. -Come, my rascal, come into my arms: I can hold off no longer; your charming behind must be the price of the gift I promise you, one crime has got to pay for another. Come hither! nay, both, the two of you, run to drown in floods of fuck the heavenly fire that blazes in us!
Madame de Saint-Ange. -If you please, do let us put a little order in these revels; measure is required even in the depths of infamy and delirium.
Dolmance. -Nothing easier: the major object, so it appears to me, is that I discharge the while giving this charming girl all possible pleasure; I am going to insert my prick in her ass; meanwhile, reclining in your arms, you will frig her; do your utmost; by means of the position I place you in, she will be able to retaliate in kind; you will kiss one another. After a few runs into this child's ass, we will vary the picture; I will have you, Madame, by the ass; Eugenie, on top of you, your head between her legs, will present her clitoris to me; I'll suck it: thus I'll cause her to jet her fuck a second time. Next, I will lodge my prick in her anus; you will avail me of your ass, t'will take the place of the cunt she had under my nose, and now you will have at that cunt in the style she shall have employed, her head now between your legs; I'll suck your asshole as I have just sucked her cunt, you will discharge, so will I, and all the while my hand, embracing the dear sweet pretty little body of this charming novice, will go ahead to tickle her clitoris that she too may swoon from delight.
Madame de Saint-Ange. -Capital, my dear Dolmance, but will not there be something missing?
Dolmance. -A prick in my ass? Madame, you are right
Madame de Saint-Ange. -Let's do without it this morning: we'll have it in the afternoon: my brother will join us and will aid us and our pleasures will be at their height. Now let's to work.
Dolmance. -I think I'll have Eugenie frig me for a moment. (She does so. ) Yes, quite, that's it . . . a bit more quickly, my heart . . . watch to keep the prepuce drawn neatly back, that rosy head must be naked, don't let it be covered over, the more 'tis kept taut--drawn the more you facilitate the erection . . . never, you must never cap the prick you frig . . . Fine! . . . thus your own self put into a proper state the member that is to perforate you . . . You notice how it responds, gets sturdily up . . . give me your tongue, little bitch . . . let your ass rest on my right hand, while my left goes on to toy with your clitoris.
Madame de Saint-Ange. -Eugenie, would you like to cause him to taste the extremest pleasures?
Eugenie. -By all means . . . I wish to do everything to give him them.
Madame de Saint-Ange. -Why, then take his prick in your mouth and suck it a few instants.
Eugenie does it. -Thus?
Dolmance. -Delicious mouth! what warmth! Worth as much to me as the prettiest ass . . . Voluptuous, tactful, accomplished women, never deny your lovers this pleasure: 'twill bind them to you forever . . . Ah! by God! ah, by God's own fuck!. . . .
Madame de Saint-Ange. -My, you do use blasphemies, my friend.
DoluancI. -I'll have your ass, Madame, if you please . . . yes, give it me, let me kiss it while I'm sucked, and be not astonished at my language: one of my largest pleasures is to swear in God's name when I'm stiff. It seems that then my spirit, at such a moment exalted a thousand times more, abhors, scorns this disgusting fiction; I would like to discover some way better to revile it or to outrage it further; and when my accursed musings lead me to the conviction of the nullity of this repulsive object of my hatred, I am irritated and would instantly like to be able to reedify the phantom so that my rage might at least fall upon some target; imitate me, charming women, and you will observe such discourses to increase without fail your sensibility. But, by God's very damnation, I say, I've got absolutely, whatever be my pleasure, I've got to retire from this celestial mouth . . . else I'll leave my fuck in it . . . Hey, Eugenie, up! move! let's get on with the scene I proposed and, the three of us, let's be plunged into the most voluptuous drunkenness. (The positions are arranged. )
Eugenie. -Oh, how I fear, dear one, that your efforts will come to naught! The disproportion is exceedingly strong.
Dolmance. -Why, I sodomize the very youngest every day; just yesterday a little lad of seven was deflowered by that prick, and in less than three minutes . . . Courage, Eugenie, courage!
Eugenie. -Oh! You're tearing me!
Madame de Saint-Ange. -A little management there, Dolmance; remember, I am responsible for the creature.
Dolmance. -Then frig her, Madame, she'll feel the pain less; but there! 'tis said, 'tis done! I'm in up to the hair.
Eugenie. -Oh heaven! it is not without trouble . . . see the sweat on my forehead, dear friend . . . Ah! God, I've never undergone such agonies!
Madame de Saint-Ange. -Yet there you are, dear heart, half deflowered, there you are, arrived at a woman's estate; 'tis well worth purchasing the glory at the cost of a little inconvenience; my fingers then do not soothe you at all?
Eugenie. -Could I have borne it without them! . . . Tickle away, rub, my angel . . . I feel it, imperceptibly the pain metamorphoses into pleasure . . . Push, Dolmance! . . . thrust! thrust! oh, I am dying!. . . .
Dolmance. -O by God's holy fuck! thrice bloody fuck of God! Let's change! I'll not be able to hold . . . your behind, kind lady, I beseech you, your ass, quick, place yourself as I told you. (Shift of attitude, and Dolmance goes on. ) 'Tis easier so . . . how my prick
!)enetrates . . . but, Madame, this noble ass is not the ess delicious for that. . . .
Eugenie. -Am I as I should be, Dolmance?
Dolmance. -Admirably! I've got this little virgin cunt all to myself, delicious-oh, I'm a guilty one, a villain, indeed I know it; such charms were not made for my eyes; but the desire to provide this child with a firm grounding in voluptuousness overshadows every other consideration. I want to make her fuck to flow, if 'tis possible I want to exhaust her, drink her dry . . . (He sucks her. )
Eugenie. -This pleasure will kill me, I cannot resist it!. . . .
Madame de. Saint-Ange. -I'm coming, I say! Oh fuck! . . . fuck! . . . Dolmance, I am discharging!. . . .
Eugenie. -And I too, my darling! Oh, my God, how he does suck me!. . . .
Madame de Saint-Ange. -Then swear, little whore, curse! . . . Then cry an oath!. . . .
Eugenie. -Oh God damn thee! I discharge! Damn thee! . . . I am so sweetly drunk!. . . .
Dolmance. -To your post! Take up your station! . . . Eugenie! I'll be the dupe of these handlings and shifts. (Eugenie assumes her place. ) Ah, good! here again am I, at my original place and abode . . . exhibit your asshole, Madame, I'll pump it at my leisure . . . Oh, but I love to kiss an ass I've just left off fucking . . . eh! lick up mine, do you hear, while I drive my sperm deep home into your chum's . . . Would'st believe it, Madame? in it goes, and this time effortlessly! Ah, fuck! fuck! you've no idea how it squeezes, how she clamps me! Great sacred fucking God, what is this ecstasy! . . . Oh, 'tis there, 'tis done, I resist no longer . . . flow! my fuck springs! . . . and I die!. . . .
Eugenie. -He causes me to die also, my friend, I swear it to you. . . .
Madame de Saint-Ange. -The wench! how promptly she's got herself addicted to it!
Dolmance. -Yes, but I know countless girls of her age nothing on earth could force to take their pleasure otherwise; 'tis only the first encounter that taxes; a woman has no sooner tried the sauce and she'll eat no other cookery . . . Oh skies! I'm spent; let me get my breath, a few moments respite, I do implore you.
Madame de Saint-Ange. -There they are, my dear: men. A glance at us, no more, and their desires are satisfied; the subsequent annihilation conducts them to disgust, soon to contempt.
Dolmance, coolly. -Why, what an insult, heavenly creature! (They embrace. ) The one and the other of you are made for naught but homages, whatever be the state wherein one finds oneself.
Madame de Saint-Ange. --Console yourself, Eugenie; while they may have acquired the right to neglect us because they are sated, have we not in the same way that to scorn them, when their conduct bids us to it? If Tiberias sacrificed to Caprea the objects that had just appeased his hungers (1), Zingua, Africa's queen, also immolated her lovers. (2)
Dolmance. -Such excesses, perfectly simple and very intelligible to me, needless to say, all the same ought never be committed amongst ourselves: "Wolves are safe in their own company," as the proverb has it, and trivial though it may be, 'tis true. My friends, dread nothing from me, ever: I'll perhaps have you do much that is evil, but never will I do any to you.
Eugenie. -No, my dear, I dare be held answerable for it: never will Dolmance abuse the privileges we grant him; I believe he has the rout's probity: it is the best; but let us bring our teacher back to his theorems and let us return, I beg of you, to the great design that inflamed us before our senses are become calm.
Madame de Saint-Ange. -What, dost think yet on that? I thought 'twas no more than a little intellectual effervescence.
Eugenie. -It is the most certain impulse of my heart, and I'll not be content till the crime is done.
Madame de Saint-Ange. -Oh splendid! splendid! Let her off, though; consider: she is your mother.
Eugenie. -Noble title!
Dolmance. -She is right: did this mother think of Eugenie when she brought her into the world? The jade let herself be fucked because she found it agreeable, but she was very far from having this daughter in mind. Let her act as she sees fit with what regards her mother; let's allow her an entire liberty and we'll be content to assure her that, to whatever the extreme lengths she goes, never will she render herself guilty of any evil.
Eugenie. -I abhor her, I detest her, a thousand causes justify my hate; I've got to have her life at no matter what the price!
Dolmance. -Very well, since your resolve is unshakable, you'll be satisfied, Eugenie, I give you my
(it See Suetonius and Dion Cassius of Nicaea.
(2)
See the History of Zingua, Queen qf Angola. oath; but permit me a few words of advice which, before you act, are of the highest necessity. Never let your secret go out of your mouth, my dear, and always act alone: nothing is more dangerous than an accomplice: let us always beware of even those whom we think most closely attached to us: "One must", wrote Machiavelli "either have no confederates, or despatch them as soon as one has made use of them. " Nor is that all: guile, Eugenie, guile is indispensable to the projects you are forming. Move closer than ever to your victim before destroying her; have the look of sympathy for her, seem to console her; cajole her, partake of her sufferings, swear you worship her; do yet more: persuade her of it: deceit, in such instances, cannot be carried too far. Nero caressed Agrippina upon the deck of the very bark together with which she was to be engulfed: imitate his example, use all the knavery, all the imposture your brain can invent. To lie is always a necessity for women; above all when they choose to deceive, falsehood becomes vital to them.
Eugenie. -Those instructions will be remembered and, no doubt, put into effect; but let us delve deeper into this deceit whose usage you recommend to women; think you then this scheme of being is absolutely essential in this world?
Dolmance. -Without hesitation I say I know of none more necessary in life; one certain truth shall prove its indispensability: everyone employs it; I ask, m the light of that, how is a sincere individual not always to founder in the midst of a society of false people? Now, if 'tis true, as they declare, that virtues are of some usefulness in civil life, how would you have someone unprovided with either will, or power, or the gift of any virtue, which is the case with many persons, how, I ask you, would you have it that such a personage essentially not be obliged to feign, pretend in order to obtain, in his turn, a little portion of the happiness his competitors seek to wrest away from him? and, in effect. is it very surely virtue, or might it not be the appearance of virtue, which really becomes necessary to social man? Let's not doubt that the semblance alone is quite sufficient to him: he has got that, and he possesses all he needs. Since one does nothing in this world but graze, rub, and elbow others, is it not enough for them to display their skin to us? Let us be well persuaded of it: at the very most, the practice of virtue is hardly useful save to him who has it; others reap so little therefrom that, provided the man who must live amidst us appear virtuous, it becomes a matter of
E:rfect indifference whether he is so in fact or not. eceit, furthermore, is almost always an assured means to success; he who possesses deceit necessarily acquires a sort of priority or advantage over whomsoever has commerce or correspondance with him: by dazzling him with a false exterior, he convinces him; as of this moment, he has succeeded. I perceive someone has deceived me, I have only myself to blame, and he who has suborned me has done all the more nicely if because of pride I make no complaint and bear it all nobly; his ascendancy over me will always be pronounced; he will be right, I wrong; he will advance, I'll recede, he is great, I am nothing; he will be enriched, I ruined; in a word, always above me, he'll straightway capture public opinion; once arrived there, useless for me to inculpate him, I'll simply not be heard; and so boldly and unceasingly we'll give ourselves over to the most infamous deceit; let us behold it as the key to every grace, every favor, all reputation, all riches, and by means of the keen pleasure of acting villainously, let us placate the little twinge our conscience feels at having manufactured dupes.
Madame de Saint-Ange. -Having there infinitely more on the matter than, so it appears to me, is needed, Eugenie, well convinced, ought also to be appeased, encouraged: she will take action when she pleases. It now strikes me we had better continue our dissertations upon men's different libertine caprices; the field must be vast; let's scan it; we've just initiated our student into a few of the practice's mysteries, let's not neglect theory.
Dolmance. -The libertine details of masculine passions, Madame, have little of what to provide suitable stuff for the instruction of a girl who, like Eugenie, is not destined for the whoring metier; she will marry and, such being the hypothesis, one may stake ten to one on it, her husband will have none of those inclinations; however, were he to have them, her wiser conduct is readily to be described: much gentleness, a great deal of complacency with him, good humor; on the other hand, much deceit and ample, but secret, compensation: those few words contain it all. However, were you, Eugenie, to desire some analysis of men's preferences when they resort to Iibertinage, we might, in order most lucidly to examine the question, generally reduce those tastes to three: sodomy, sacrilegious fancies, and penchants for cruelty. The first of these passions is universal today; to what we have already said upon it, we shall join a few choice reflections. It divides into two classes, active and passive: the man who embuggers, be it a boy, be it a woman, acquits himself of an active sodomization; he is a passive sodomite when he has himself fucked. The question has often been raised, which of the two fashions of sodomistic behaviour is the more voluptuous? assuredly, 'tis the passive, since one enjoys at a single stroke the sensations of before and behind; it is so sweet to change sex, so delicious to counterfeit the whore, to give oneself to a man who treats us as if we were a woman, to call that man one's lover, to avow oneself his mistress! Ah! my friends, what voluptuousness! But, Eugenie, we limit ourselves here to a few details of advice, relating only to women who, transforming themselves into men, wish, like us, to enjoy this delicious pleasure. I have just familiarized you with those attacks, Eugdnie, and I have observed enough to be persuaded you will one of these days make admirable progress on this career; I exhort you to pursue it diligently as one of the most delightful of the Cytherean isle, and am perfectly sure you will follow my counsel. I'll keep myself to two or three suggestions essential to every person determined henceforth to know none but these pleasures or ones analogous. First of all, be considerate of yourself, insist your clitoris be frigged while you are being buggered: there are no two things that consort as do these two pleasures; avoid a douche, let there be no rubbing upon the sheets, no wiping with towels, when you have just been fucked in this style; 'tis a good idea to have the breach open always; whereof result desires, and titillations, which soon obviate any concern for tidiness; there is no imagining to what point the sensations are prolonged. Thus, when you are in the act of amusing yourself in this way, Eugenie, avoid acids: they aggravate haemorrhoids and render introductions painful: do not permit several men to discharge one after the other into your asshole: this mixtures of sperms, however it may excite the imagination, is never beneficial and often dangerous to the health; always excrete, rid yourself of these various emissions after each has been deposited.
Eugenie. -But if they were to be made into my cunt, should that purging not be a crime?
Madame de Saint-Ange. -Imagine nothing of the sort, poor little idiot; there is not the least evil or wrong in adopting whatever may be the measure to divert a man's semen into a detour, because propagation is in no wise the objective of Nature; it is but tolerated by her; and when we leave it quite alone, her intentions arc far better answered. Eugenie, be the sworn enemy of this wearisome child-getting, and incessantly deflect, even in marriage, that perfidious liquor whose vegetation serves only to spoil our figures, which deadens our voluptuous sensations, withers us, ages and makes us fade and disturbs our health; get your husband to accustom himself to these wastes; offer him every passage which can busy him and keep him away from doing an homage at the temple; tell him you detest children, say you beg him to make none. Keep a close watch over yourself in this article, my dear, for, I declare to you, I hold generation in such horror I should cease to be your friend the instant you were to become full. If, however, the misfortune occurs, without yourself having been at fault, notify me within the first seven or eight weeks, and I'll have it very neatly got rid of. Dread not infanticide; the crime is imaginary: we are always mistress of what we carry in our womb, and we do no more harm in destroying this kind of matter than in evacuating another, by medicines, when we feel the need.
Eugenie. -But if the child is near its birth?
Madame de Saint-Ange. -Were it alive, we should still have the right to destroy it. In all the world there is no prerogative more secure than that of mothers over their children. No race has failed to recognize this truth: 'tis founded in reason, in principle.
Dolmance. -The right is natural . . . it is incontestable. The deific system's extravagance was the source of every one of those gross errors. Imbeciles who believed in God, idiots persuaded our existence is had of none but him and that immediately an embryo begins to mature, a little soul, emanate of God, comes straightway to animate it; these fools, I say, assuredly had to regard as a capital crime this small creature's undoing, because, according to them, it no longer belonged to men; 'twas God's work; 'twas God's own: dispatch it without crime? No. But, since then, the torch of philosophy has dissipated all those impostures, since, the celestial chimera has been tumbled in the dust, since, better instructed of physics' laws and secrets, we have evolved the principle of generation, and now that this material mechanism offers nothing more astonishing to the eye than the development of a germ of wheat, we have been called to Nature and away from human error. As we have broadened the horizon of our rights, we have recognized that we are perfectly free to take back what we only gave up reluctantly, or by accident, and that it is impossible to demand of any individual whomsoever that he become a father or a mother if he has no wish to become one; that this creature whether more or less on earth is not of very much consequence, and that we become, in a word, as certainly the masters of this morsel of flesh, however it be animated, as we are of the nails we pare from our fingers, the fleshy excrescences on our body we extirpate, or the food digested we squeeze through our bowels, because the one and the other are our own, and because we are absolutely proprietors of what emanates from us. Having had elaborated for you, Eugenie, the very mediocre importance the act of murder has here on earth, you have been obliged to see of what slight consequence, similarly, must be everything that has to do with child-bearing even if the act is perpetrated against a person who has arrived at the age of reason; unnecessary to embroider upon it: your high intelligence adds its own arguments to support my proofs, 'eruse the history of the manners of all the world's peoples and you will be unable to avoid seeing that the practice is global; finally, you will be convinced there would be aught but imbecility in according a very indifferent action the title of evil.
Eugenie, first to Dolmance. -I cannot tell you to what point you persuade me. (Now addressing herself to Madame de Saint-Ange. ) But tell me, my most dear, have you ever had occasion to employ the remedy you propose to me in order internally to destroy the foetus?
Madame de Saint-Ange. -Twice, and either time with copious success; but I should confess I only put it to the test at pregnancy's outset; however, I am acquainted with two ladies who have used the same remedy at mid-term, and they assure me it all came as happily out with them. Should you be in need, count upon me, my dear, but I urge you never to put yourself in a state of having need; an ounce of prevention . . . But back we go, and on with the lubricious details we have promised this young lady. Pursue, Dolmance, we've reached the sacrilegious fancies.
Dolmance. -I suppose Eugenie is sufficiently disabused on the head of religious errors to be intimately persuaded that all connected with the sport to be had with the objects of fools' piety can have no sort of consequence. These fancies have so little to them that indeed they cannot heat any but very youthful brains, for which any rupture of restraint occasions enjoyment; 'tis a kind of little vindictiveness which fires the imagination and which, very probably, can bring about several moments of enjoyment; but these delights, so it would seem to me, must become insipid and cold when one has lived long enough to understand and to be convinced of the nullity of the objects of which the idols we jeer at are mere skinny representations. The profanation of relics, the images of saints, the host, the crucifix, all that, in the philosopher's view, must ne nothing more than the degradation of a pagan statue. Once your scorn has condemned those execrable baubles, you must leave them to contempt, and concern yourself no more for them; 'tis not wise to preserve anything for all that but blasphemy, not that it has a much greater reality, blasphemy, for as of the moment God is no more, what's the use of insulting his name? but it is essential to pronounce hard and filthy words during pleasure's intoxication, and the language of blasphemy very well serves the imagination. Be utterly unsparing; one must decorate those titles with the richest expressions; they must scandalize to the last degree; for 'tis sweet to scandalize: it is there that exists a little triumph for pride, and 'tis not to be disdained: I say it openly, Mesdames, such is one of my secret delights: few are the moral pleasures which have a more lively effect upon my imagination. Try it, Eugenie, and you shall see what are its results. Above all, labor to articulate a prodigious impiety when you find yourself with persons of your own age who yet vegetate in superstition's twilight; parade your debauchery, announce your libertinage; affect a whorish air, let them spy your breast when you go with them into secluded places, garb yourself indecently; flauntingly expose the most intimate parts of your body; require of your friends that they do the same; seduce them, lecture them, cause them to see what is ridiculous in their prejudices; put them eye to eye with what is called evil; in their company, swear like a man, a trooper; if they are younger than you, take them by force, entertain yourself with them, either by examples or by councils, or again by all you can think of that is, in a word, most apt to pervert them, thuswise corrupt them; similarly, be extremely free with men; display irreligion and impudence to them; far from taking alarm at the liberties they will take, jestingly grant them everything which can amuse them without compromising yourself; let yourself be handled by them, frig them, get yourself frigged; yes, go even so far as to lend them your ass; but, since the fictitious honor of women is bound up with their anterior integrity, be in a less willing humor to have it demolished; once married, secure a lackey, not a lover, or pay a few reliable young men: from there on, all is to be masked, and is; no more peril to your reputation and without anyone ever having been able to suspect you, you have learned the art of doing whatever you please. We move on. Cruel pleasures comprise the third sort we promised to analyze. This variety is, in the present day, exceedingly common amongst men, and here is the argument they employ to legitimate them: we wish to be roused, stirred, they say, 'tis the objective of every man who pursues pleasure, and we would be moved by the most active means. Taking our departure from this point, it is not a question of knowing whether our proceedings please or displease the object that serves us, it is purely a question of exposing our nervous system to the most violent possible shock; now, there is no doubt that we are much more keenly affected by pain than by pleasure: the reverberations that result in us when the sensation of pain is produced in others will essentially be of a more vigorous character, more vibrant, will more energetically resound in us, will put the animal spirits more violently into circulation and these, directing themselves towards the nether regions by the retrograde movement essential to them, instantly will ignite the organs of voluptuousness and dispose them to pleasure. Pleasure's effects, in women, are always deceiving; it is, furthermore, very difficult for an old or an ugly man to produce them. When it does happen that they are produced, they are feeble, and the nervous concussions fainter; hence, pain must be preferred, for pain's effects cannot deceive, and its vibrations are more powerful. But, one may object to men infatuated by this mania, but this pain is afflictive to one's fellow; is it charitable to do others ill in order to delight oneself? In answer thereto, the rascals reply that, accustomed, in the pleasure-taking act, to thinking exclusively of themselves and accounting others as nothing, they are persuaded that it is entirely reasonable, in accordance with natural impulsions, to prefer what they feel to what they do not feel. What, they dare ask, what do these pains occasioned in others do to us? Do we echo them? No; on the contrary, we have just demonstrated that from their production results a sensation delicious to us. For what reason then ought we to go softly with an individual who has nothing to do with us? Why should we spare him a torment that will cost us never a tear, when it is certain that from this suffering a very great pleasure for us will be born? Have we ever felt a single natural impulse which advises us to prefer others to ourselves? and is not each of us alone, and for himself in this world? 'Tis a very false tone you use when you speak to us of this Nature which you interpret as telling us not to do to others what we would not have done to us; this advice never came but from the lips of men, and weak men. Never does a strong man take it into his head to speak such a language. They were the first Christians who, daily persecuted on account of their imbecile doctrine, used to cry at whomsoever chose to hear: "Don't burn us, don't flay us! Nature says one must not do unto others that which unto oneself one would not have done!" Fools! How could Nature, who always urges us to delight in ourselves, who never grains other instincts in us, other motions, other inspirations, how could Nature, the next moment, assure us that we must not, however, decide to love ourselves if that might cause others pain? Ah! believe me, Eugenie, believe me, Nature, mother to us all, never speaks to us save of ourselves; nothing has more of the egotistic than her voice, and what we recognize most clearly to be therein is the immutable and sacred counsel she gives us: prefer thyself, love thyself, no matter at whose expense. But the others, they say to you, may avenge themselves . . . Let them! the mightier will vanquish; he will be right. Very well, there it is, the primitive state of perpetual strife and destruction for which Nature's hand created us, and within which alone it is of advantage to her that we remain.
Thus, my dear Eugenie, is the manner of these persons' arguing, and, according to my experience and studies, I add thereunto that cruelty, very far from being a vice, is the primary sentiment Nature injects in us all. The infant breaks his toy, bites his nurse's breast, strangles his canary long before he is able to reason; cruelty is stamped in animals, in whom, as I think I have said, Nature's laws are more emphatically to be read than in ourselves; cruelty exists amongst savages, so much nearer to Nature than civilized men are; absurd, then, to maintain cruelty is a consequence of depravity. I repeat, the doctrine is false. Cruelty is natural. All of us are born furnished with a dose of cruelty education modifies; but education does not belong to Nature, and is as damaging to Nature's sacred effects as culture is to trees. In your orchards, compare the tree abandoned to Nature's ministry with the other your art cares for by constraining it, and you will see which is the more beautiful, you will discover from which you will pluck the superior fruit. Cruelty is simply the energy in a man civilization has not yet altogether corrupted: therefore, it is a virtue, not a vice. Strike out your laws, do away with your chastisements, your habits, and cruelty will have dangerous effects no more, since it will never be active but when subject to immediate conflict with and repression by competing cruelties; it is in the civilized state cruelty is dangerous, because the assaulted person nearly always lacks the force or the means to repel injury; but in the state of uncivilization, if cruelty's target is strong, he will repulse it, and if weak, the person attacked will succumb--thus, there is merely assailed a being who, anyhow, Nature's law makes yield to the strong-: 'tis all one, and no trouble to it.
We have no cause to analyze cruelty in man's lubricious pleasure; you are able rather well to see, Eugenie, the several excesses into which they may be transported, and your ardent imagination ought easily to make you understand that, for a firm and stoical spirit, they should never have any limits. Nero, Tiberias, Heliogabalus slaughtered their children to stiffen their pricks; the Marechal de Retz, Charolais, Condi also committed murders of debauch; the first declared upon being questioned that he knew no delight more powerful than the one he extracted from the torture inflicted by his chaplain and himself upon young infants of either sex. Seven or eight hundred sacrificed children were found in one of his Brittany chateaux. All quite conceivable, I've just proven it to you. Our constitution, our scheme, our organs, the flow of liquids, the animals spirits' energy, such are the physical causes which in the same hour make for the Tituses and the Neros, the Messalinas or the Chantals; we can no longer take pride in the virtue that repents of vice, no more accuse Nature of having caused us to be born good than of having created us criminal: she has acted in keeping with her designs, her views, her needs: let us submit to them. And so I will only examine, in what follows, female cruelty, which is always more active than male, owing to the powerful reason of the excessive sensibility of women's organs.
In general, we distinguish two sorts of cruelty: that born of stupidity, which, never reasoned, never analyzed, assimilates the individual so born into a ferocious beast: this cruelty affords no pleasure, for he inclined to it is incapable of discrimination; such a being's brutalities are rarely dangerous: it is always easy to find protection against them; the other species of cruelty, the fruit of extreme organic sensibility, is known only unto them who are extremely delicate in their person, and the extremes to which it drives them are never but refinements of their delicacy; it is this delicacy, all too promptly impaired because of its excessive finesse, which, to be awakened, presses into service every resource of cruelty. How few are they who are able to grasp these distinctions! . . . and how few there are who sense them! Nevertheless, they do exist, they arc indubitable. Now, it is this second kind of cruelty you will most often find in women. Study them well: you will see whether it is not their excessive sensitivity that has led them to this; you will see whether it is not their extremely active imaginations, their spiritual, mental strength that renders them criminal, ferocious; oh, they are all, every one, charming; and there is not one of the breed who is unable to turn a wise man into a wizard if she tries; unhappily, the inflexibility, or rather the absurdity, of our manners affords scant encouragement to their cruelty; they are obliged to conceal themselves, to feign, to cover over their inclinations with ostensibly good and benevolent works which they detest to the depths of their soul; only behind the darkest curtain, by taking the greatest precautions, aided by a few dependable friends, are they able to surrender to their inclinations; and as there are many of this sort, so there are many who are miserable. Would you meet them? Announce a cruel spectacle, a burning, a battle, a fight of gladiators, you will see droves of them come running; but these occasions are not numerous enough to feed their fury: they contain themselves, and they suffer. Let's cast a rapid glance at women of this variety. Zingua, queen of Angola, cruellest of women, killed her lovers as soon as they had taken their way with her; often, she had warriors struggle before her eyes and was the victor's prize; to flatter her ferocious spirit, she had every pregnant woman of less than thirty years ground in a mortar (i). Zoe, a Chinese emperor's wife, knew no pleasure greater than what she felt upon witnessing the execution of criminals; wanting these, she had slaves put to death, and the while would fuck with her husband, and proportioned her discharges to the anguishes she made these wretches endure. 'Twas she who, searching to improve the kind of tortures to impose upon her victims, invented the famous hollow column of brass one warms after having sealed the patient within. Theodora, Justinian's wife, amused herself seeing eunuchs made; and Messalina frigged herself while, by the process of iterated masturbation, men were destroyed before her. The women of Florida cause their husband's member to swell and
(i) See the History of Zingua, Quota qf Angola, written by a deposit little insects upon the gland, which produces very horrible agonies; they league together to perform the operation, several of them attacking one man in order to be more sure of the thing. When they beheld the Spaniards, they themselves held their husbands while those European barbarians assassinated them. Mesdames Voisin and Brinvilliers poisoned for the simple pleasure of committing crime. In one word, history nirnishes a thousand thousand details of women's cruelty, and it is because of the natural penchant they have, because of their instincts to cruelty, that I should like to have them get accustomed to active flagellation, a means by which cruel men appease their ferocity.
Some few among them have the habit already, I know, but it is not yet in use amongst women, at least to the point I should desire. By means of this outlet given women's barbarity, society would have much to gain; for, unable to be evil in one way, they are in some other, and, thus broadcasting their poison everywhere about, they cause their husbands and their families to despair. The refusal to perform a good action, when the occasion presents itself, and that to relieve misfortunes, surely gives considerable impetus, if you wish, to that ferocity into which certain women naturally are led, but all this is pale, weak stuff, and often falls far short of the need they have to do yet worse. There would be, without doubt, other devices whereby a woman, at once sensitive and ferocious, might calm her intemperate emotions, but, Eugenie, they are dangerous means, and I should never dare recommend them to you . . . But, my stars! What is the matter with you, dear angel? Madame, look at the state your pupil is in!
Eugenie, frigging herself. -O Christ! you drive me wild! That's what your fucking speeches do!
Dolmance. . -To the rescue, Madame, help me if you will! Are we going to allow this lovely child to come without our aid?
Madame de Saint-Ange. -Oh, what an injustice 'twould be! (Taking Eugenie in her arms. ) Adorable creature, never have I beheld a sensibility like yours, never so delicious a mind!. . . .
Dolmance. -Take care of the fore-end, Madame, I am going to enlarge this pretty little asshole with my tongue, and give her a few light slaps on these cheeks; she must be made to discharge at least seven or eight times in this manner.
Eugenie, wild-eyed, beside herself. -Ah. by fuck! it won't be difficult!
Dolmance. -In your present posture, ladies, I notice you might be able to suck my prick, one after the other; thus excited, I could with much more energy advance to our charming pupil's pleasures.
Eugenie. -My dear, I dispute with you the honor of sucking this noble prick. (She seizes it. )
Dolmance. -Oh, what delights! what voluptuous warmth! Eugenie, will you behave well at this critical instant?
Madame de Saint-Ange. -She'll swallow, oh, I promise you, she'll swallow it down; yet . . . on the other hand, if she were through childishness . . . for I do not know what reason . . . were she to neglect the duties lubricity imposes upon her. . . .
Dolmance, greatly aroused. -I'd not forgive her. Madame, there would be no pardon for her! . . . An exemplary punishment . . . I swear to you she'd be whipped . . . whipped till her blood flowed . . . Ah, damn the both of you, I discharge . . . my fuck's coming . . . Swallow . . . swallow, Eugenie, let there not be one drop lost! and you, Madame, look to my asshole; it's ready for you . . . do you see how it yawns, my fucking ass? do you not see how it calls for your fingers? By God's fuck! my ecstasy is complete . . . drive them in further, to the wrist! Ah, back on our feet, I can no more . . . this delicious girl has sucked me like an archangel. . . .
F. ugenie. -My dear, my adorable instructor, I've not lost a drop. Kiss me, my love, your fuck is now in the depths of my bowels.
Dolmance. -She is delicious . . . and how the wench discharged!
Madame de Saint-Ange. -She is inundated but what's that I hear? Someone knocks? who can have come to trouble us? My brother . . . imprudent creature!
Eugenie. -But, my dear, this is treason!
Dolmance. -Unparalleled, is it not? Fear not, Eugenie, we labor for naught but to procure you pleasures.
Madame de Saint-Ange. -Well, we'll very soon convince her of it! Come in, dear brother, and have a laugh at this little girl's shyness; she's hiding herself so as not to be seen by you.
* * *
DIALOGUE THE FOURTH
Madame De Saint-Ange, Eugenie Dolmance, Le Chevalier De Mirval
Le Chevalier. -Lovely Eugenie, I beg you to be easy; my discretion is entire; there is my sister and there my friend who, both of them, can be held answerable for me.
Dolmance. -I visualize but one thing that may quickly terminate this ridiculous ceremony: here, Chevalier, look ye: we are educating this pretty girl, we are teaching her all a little girl of her age should know and, in order better to instruct her, we join some practice to theory. She must have a tableau dressed for her: it is to feature a prick discharging, that's where presently we are; would you like to serve as model?
Le Chevalier. -Surely, the proposal is too flattering for me to refuse, and Mademoiselle has the charms that will very quickly guarantee the desired lesson's effects.
Madame de Saint-Ange. -Then let's go on; to work!
Eugenie. -Oh, indeed, 'tis too much; you abuse my inexperience to such a degree . . . but for what is Monsieur going to take me?
Le Chevalier. -For a charming girl, Eugenie . . . for the most adorable creature I have ever clapped eyes on. (He kisses her; his hands rove over her charms. ) Oh God! What fresh, what sweet attractions . . . enchanting . . . what charm!
Dolmance. -Let's talk less, Chevalier, and act more; I'll direct the scene, 'tis my right; the object here is to exhibit to Eugenie the mechanics of an ejaculation; but, since it should be difficult for her to observe in cold blood such a phenomenon, the four of us are going to group ourselves close together. You, Madame, will frig your friend, I'll be responsible for the Chevalier. When 'tis a question of a man's pollution, he would infinitely prefer to entrust the business to another man, not to a woman; as a man knows what suits himself, so he knows how to manage for another . . . well, off we go. Positions! (They arrange themselves. )
Madame de Saint-Ange. -Are we not too close?
Dolmance, who as already got his hands upon the Chevalier. -Impossible to be too close, Madame; we must have your friend's face and breast inundated by the proofs of your brother's virility; he has got to take aim and discharge at her nose, as they term it. Master of the pump, I'll direct the stream in such wise she'll be covered quite absolutely. Meanwhile, do you frig her in every lubricious part of her body; Eugenie, give all of your imagination up to dwelling upon libertinage's ultimate extravagances; think that you are about to see its most splendid mysteries operated before your very eyes; cast away every restraint, spurn every one: never was modesty a virtue. Had Nature desired some part of our body to be hidden, she would have seen to the matter herself; but she created us naked; hence, she wishes that we go nude, and all contrary practice thoroughly outrages her laws. Children, who do not yet have any notion of pleasure and consequently of the necessity to render it more keen by modesty, exhibit all of themselves. One also sometimes meets with a yet stranger curiosity: there are countries where although modesty of manners is not to be encountered, modesty of costume is in usage. At Tahiti, girls are dressed, and when one demands it, they strip. . . .
Madame de Saint Ange. -What I love about Dolmance is that he wastes not a moment; all the while he discourses, observe how he acts, look how approvingly he inspects my brother's superb ass, how voluptuously he frigs the young man's handsome prick . . . Come, Eugenie, let's not tarry. There's the pump's nozzle in the air; it won't be long before we're flooded.
Eugenie. -Oh, dearest friend, what a monstrous member! I can scarcely get my hand around it! Dear God, are they all as big as this?
Dolmance. -Eugenie, you know that mine is much inferior in size; such engines are redoubtable for a youngster; you are fully aware one such as this could not without danger perforate you.
Eugenie, already being frigged by Madame de Saint Ange. -I'd brave anything to enjoy it!
Dolmance. -And you would be right: a girl ought never be terrified by such a thing; Nature lends a helping hand, and the torrents of pleasure wherewith she overwhelms you soon compensate the slight inconveniences that precede them. I have seen girls younger than you sustain still more massy pricks: with courage and patience life's greatest obstacles are surmounted; 'tis madness to thmk one must, as far as possible, have a child deflowered by only very small pricks; 'tis my view, on the contrary, that a virgin should be delivered unto none but the vastest engines to be had, in order that, the hymeneal ligaments sooner burst, 'pleasure's sensations can more promptly occur in her. To be sure, once launched on this diet, she will have much to do to quit it for another less piquant, more meager; but if she is wealthy, lovely, and youthful, she'll find as many of this size as she can wish. Let her keep her wits about her: should something mediocre be offered her, and should she nevertheless have the desire to make use of it, let her put it into her asshole.
Madame de Saint-Ange. -Indeed, and to be still happier, let her employ the greater and the lesser at once; let the voluptuous jars wherewith she will agitate him who encunts her serve to precipitate the ecstasy of the other who buggers, and, drowned in the fuck of the two, let her squirt her own as she dies of pleasure.
Dolmance. -(It should be pointed out that the pollutions continue throughout all of the dialogue. ) It seems to me two or three more pricks should figure in the picture you describe, Madame; this woman of yours ought to have, don't you think, a prick in her mouth and another in each hand?
Madame de Saint-Ange. -She might have some clapped under her armpits and a few in her hair, if it were possible she ought to have thirty ranged round her; under such circumstances, one must have, touch, devour nothing but pricks, be inundated by them all, at the same instant one discharges oneself. Ah, Dolmance! libertine that you are, I defy you to equal me in these delicious combats of luxury . . . on this head, I've done all that it is possible to do.
Eugenie, continously frigged by her friend, as is the Chevalier by Dolmance. -Oh, my darling! . . . I grow dizzy! . . . Why, I too could procure myself such pleasures! . . . I could give myself . . . to a perfect army of men! Ah, what delight! . . . How you frig me, dearest one . . . you are the very goddess of pleasure . . . and how this wondrous prick does swell . . . how its majestic head enlarges and grows red!. . . .
Dolmance. -He's not far from the denouement.
Le Chevalier. -Eugenie . . . sister . . . approach . . . oh, what divine breasts! . . . what soft, plump thighs! Discharge! discharge both, my fuck will join thine! It flows! leaps! Christ! (During the crisis, Dolmance has carefully directed his friend's outpourings of sperm upon the two women and principally upon Eugenie, who finds herself drenched. )
Eugenie. -Magnificent spectacle! how noble, how majestic it is . . . I'm completely covered . . . it sprang into my very eyes!. . . .
Madame de Saint-Ange. -Wait, dear heart, let me gather up these priceless pearls; I'll rub some upon your clitoris more speedily to provoke your own discharge.
Eugenie. -Yes, my darling, yes! delicious idea . . . go ahead, and I'll come in your arms.
Madame de Saint-Ange. -Divine child, kiss me a thousand times over . . . let me suck your tongue . . . let me breathe your voluptuous respiration all fired by pleasure's heat! Ah, fuck! I discharge myself . . . Brother, finish me, I beg you to finish me!. . . .
Dolmance. -Yes, Chevalier . . . frig your sister.
Le Chevalier. -I'd prefer to fuck her . . . I'm still fat.
Dolmance. -Very well, press it in and give me your ass; I'll fuck you throughout this voluptuous incest. Eugenie, armed with this India rubber prick, will bugger me. Destined someday to have enacted all the roles of luxury, she has got to strive, in the lessons we're giving here, to fulfill each of them with equal adeption.
Eugenie, mounting the artificial penis. -Willingly! You will never find me wanting when it is a question of libertinage; it is now my single god, the unique rule of my conduct, the single basis of all my actions. (She buggers Dolmance. ) In like wise, my dear master? Is it well done?. . . .
Dolmance. -Splendidly! . . . Truly, the little rascal buggers me mannishly! Fine! it seems to me we are all four perfectly attached one to the other; we have but to commence.
Madame de Saint-Ange. -Oh, I'm dying, Chevalier! . . . I am incapable of becoming accustomed to your lovely prick's blows and thumps!. . . .
Dolmance. -Ah, but this God-damned asshole, this charming asshole affords me pleasure! Oh fuck! fuck! all of us, let's discharge together! God's bloody fuck, but I perish! I expire! Ah, in my life never have I come more voluptuously! Hast lost thy sperm, Chevalier?
Le Chevalier. -Look you at this cunt: smeared, muddied up, is it not?
Dolmance. -Oh, my friend, wouldst I had as much in my ass!
Madame de Saint-Ange. -Rest, stop, I am a mort.
Dolmance, kissing Eugenie. -This matchless girl has fucked me like a god.
Eugenie. -In truth, I took some pleasure therein.
Dolmance. -All excesses procure it, provided one is libertine; and a woman is best advised to multiply those excesses even to beyond the possible.
Madame de Saint-Ange. -I have-deposited five hundred louis with a notary, and the purse will belong to any individual, whomsoever he be, who can teach me a passion I am ignorant of now, and who can plunge me into an ecstasy I have not yet enjoyed.
Dolmance-(At this point the interlocutors, set to rights, have ceased to occupy themselves with all but conversation. ) The idea is bizarre, Madame, and I'd accept to try, but I am in doubt whether this uncommon desire, after which you chase, resembles the delicate pleasures you have just tasted.
Madame de Saint-Ange. -What indeed!
Dolmance. -'Tis that, in honor, I know nothing as boring as enjoyment of the cunt and when once, Madame, one has, like yourself, tasted what the ass has to offer, I cannot conceive how one may forget that pleasure for others.
Madame de Saint-Ange. -They are old habits. When one thinks as I do, one wishes everywhere to be fucked and, whatsoever be the part an engine perforates, one is made happy upon feeling it there. However, I am wholly of your opinion and herewith attest to all voluptuous women that the pleasure they will experience of ass-fucking will always by much surpass the one they experience in having a man by the cunt. Let them refer, in what concerns the subject, to that woman who in all Europe has accomplished most in the one manner and in the other: I certify there is not the least comparison to be made, and that very reluctantly will they return to cunt-usage after having put their asses to the proof.
Le Chevalier. -My thoughts are not entirely identical. I am prepared for whatever is expected of me, but, by taste, in women, I really love only the altar Nature indicates for the rendering of an homage.
DouiANci. -Why, to be sure, and it's the ass! My dear Chevalier, never did Nature, if you scrupulously examine her ordinations, never did Nature indicate another altar for our homages than the asshole, but this latter she expressly commands. Ah, by God! were not her intention that we fuck assholes, would she have so exactly proportioned this orifice to fit our member? is not this aperture circular, like this instrument? Why, then! What person, no matter how great an enemy of common sense, can imagine that an oval hole could have been created for our cylindrical pricks! Nature's intentions announce themselves in this deformity; she thereby causes us very plainly to see that too frequent sacrifices made in this part, by increasing a propagation of which only her forbearance makes us capable, would displease her infallibly. But let us go on with our education. Eugenie has just, entirely at her leisure, contemplated the sublime mystery of a discharge; presently, I would like to have her learn how to direct its Bow.
Madame de Saint-Ange. -Considering your exhaustion, 'tis to expose her to a great deal of trouble.
Dolmance. -To be sure; and that is why I should desire that we be able to have, from your house or your fields, some robust young lad who could be employed as a mannequin, and upon whom we could give our lessons.
Madame de Saint-Ange. -I've precisely what you need.
Dolmance. -It might not be, by chance, a young gardener, with a delicious aspect, of about eighteen years or twenty, whom I saw just a short while ago, working in your kitchen garden?
Madame de Saint-Ange. -Augustin? Exactly, yes, Augustin, whose member measures thirteen inches in length and has a circumference of eight and an half inches.
Dolmance. -Great heaven! what a monster! . . . and that discharges?
Madame de Saint-Ange. -Like a waterfall. I'll go fetch him.
* * *
DIALOGUE THE FIFTH
Dolmance, Le Chevalier, Augustin, Eugenie, Madame De Saint-Ange
Madame de Saint-Ange, introducing Augustin. Behold the man I mentioned. Let's on with it, friends, let's amuse ourselves; what would be life without its little amusements? . . . Come hither, simpleton! Oh, the ninny! . . . Would you believe it, I have spent six months struggling to turn this great pig into something presentable, and I've got nowhere with him.
Augustin. -Golly, Mum, you say however sometimes like that I'm beginning not to get on so bad right now and when there's a piece of ground lying fallow you always give it to me to till, I'm the one gets it.
Dolmance, laughing. -Oh, precious! Charming! The sweet chap; he's as frank as he is fresh . . . (Exhibiting Eugenie. ) Augustin, look sharp, my lad, there's a bed of flowers lying fallow; would you like to try a spade on it?
Augustin. -Oh Jemmy, Sir! Such neat little oddments ain't made for such as me.
Dolmance. -To it, Mademoiselle.
Eugenie, blushing. -Heavens! I am so ashamed!
Dolmance. -Rid yourself of that weak hearted sentiment; all actions, and eminently those of libertinage, being inspired in us by Nature, there is not one, of whatever the sort you may suppose it, of which we should conceive shame. Be smart, Eugenie, commit a whorish act with this young man; consider that every provocation sensed by a boy and originating with a girl is a natural offertory, and that your sex never serves Nature better than when it prostitutes itself to ours; that it is, briefly, to be fucked that you were born, and that she who refuses her obedience to this intention Nature has for her does not deserve to sec the light longer. You yourself, lower this young man's trousers to below his handsome thighs, roll his short up under his vest, so that his fore-end . . . and his after, which, parenthetically, is damnably fine, are at your disposal . . . Now, let one of your hands catch up that ample morsel of flesh, pendant now, but which, soon, so I wager, will terrify you in a new form, and with your other hand, explore his buttocks, and, thus, tickle his rectal gap . . . Yes, in this manner . . . (To show Eugenie how 'tis to be done, he socratizes Augustin himself. ) Uncap this rubicund head; never, as you pollute it, never allow it to be covered over; keep it naked . . . stretch the skin, yea, to the breaking point . . . Now there; dost see what effect my lesson has had already? . . . And you, my child, I beseech you, don't stand there holding your hands behind your back; isn't there something you might put them to? let them stray about upon this superb breast, over these wondrous buttocks. . . .
Augustin. -Sir, couldn't I coll this miss, give 'er a smack or two, it would make me right happy.
Madame de Saint-Ange. -Well, kiss her, imbecile, kiss her as much as you like; do you not kiss me when I'm in bed with you?
Augustin. -Oh, golly! Pretty little mouth, all fresh and nice-tasting! Seems like I've got my nose in the roses in our garden. (Showing his rising prick. ) Look, Sir, that's what it does, d'ye see it?
Eugenie. -Sacred heaven! How it enlarges!
Dolmance. -Attempt now to put rather more regularity in your motions, let them be more energetic . . . Here, yield me your place for an instant, and watch closely what I do. (He frigs Augustin. ) Do you observe? These movements are more firm, more determined and at the same time softer. There, begin again and above all keep the head bare . . . Good! there it is in its full vigor; now let's ascertain whether it's bigger than the Chevalier's.
Eugenie. -Be certain of it: you see very well I cannot get my hand around it.
Dolmance, measuring. -Yes, right you are: thirteen long, eight and an half around. I've never seen one larger; 'tis what is called a superb prick. And you, Madame, you say you employ it?
Madame de Saint-Ange. -Regularly, every night I spend here in the country.
Dolmance. -But not, I hope, in the ass?
Madame de Saint-Ange. -Rather more often there than in the cunt.
Dolmance. -Well, by God's own sweet fuck! what libertinage! Ton my honor, I don't know whether I could manage it.
Madame de Saint-Ange. -Don't pinch, Dolmance, and he'll penetrate your ass as neatly as he does mine.
Dolmance. -We shall see; I flatter myself in the belief our Augustin will do me the honor of squirting a little fuck into my behind: I'll repay him in the same coin; but let's continue, we have lessons to give . . . Look sharp, Eugenie, mind, the serpent is about to vomit its poison: prepare yourself; let your eyes be fixed upon this sublime weapon's head; and when, by way of proof positive of its imminent ejaculation, you see it inflate, take on a deeper, more lovely purple hue, let your activities then acquire the maximum of vigor; let your fingers now tickling his anus dig as deep as possible, before the event occurs; give yourself entirely to the libertine who is amusing himself with you; seek out his mouth in order to suck it; let your charms fly, so to speak, to do your hand's bidding . . . He discharges, Eugenie, 'tis the moment of your triumph.
Augustin. -Ale! Ale! Miss, it's killing me! I can't do no more! More, go on and do me more, harder, Miss, please, Miss! Ah, fuck them all, fuck them, I can't see straight!. . . .
Dolmance. -Redouble your efforts, Eugenie! Triple them! Caution to the winds, he's drunk and in his throes! God, what abundance of sperm! with what power it springs forth! Behold the traces of the initial jet: it leapt ten feet, nay, more! By God's fuck! the room's awash! Never have I seen a comparable discharge, and you tell me, Madame, this article fucked you last night?
Madame de Saint-Ange. -Nine or ten times, I believe; we gave over counting long ago.
Le Chevalier. -Lovely Eugenie, you're covered with it.
Eugenie. -Wouldst I were drowned. (To Dolmance. ) Well, my dear master, are you content?
Dolmance. -Mightily, for a beginning; but there remain several episodes you have neglected.
Madame de Saint-Ange. -Wait; they can mean nothing to her lest they are the fruit of experience; for my part, I confess I am exceedingly pleased with my Eugenie; the happiest dispositions are apparent in her, and I believe that, now, we ought to have her enjoy another spectacle. Let's have her see the effects of a prick in the ass. Dolmance, I am going to offer you mine; I shall be in my brother's arms; he will encunt me, I'll be buggered by you, and Eugenie will prepare your prick, will insert it in my ass, will supervise all the exercises, will study them, all this in order to familiarize herself with this operation to which, afterwards, she will submit; it will then be a question of this Hercules' prick, enormous object.
Dolmance. -I rejoice in the expectation this pretty little behind will soon be rent before our eyes by brave Augustin's violent blows. In the nonce, I approve your recommendation, Madame, but if you wish me to deal well with you, allow me to add a clause to it: Augustin, whom I'll have stiff again with two strokes of my wrist, will bugger me while I sodomize you.
Madame de Saint-Ange. -The amended arrangement has my whole ratification; 'tis I who shall gain thereby, and for my scholar there will be two excellent lessons instead of one.
Dolmance, fisting Augustin. -Come, my big boy, I'll restore thee to life . . . How fine he is! . . . Kiss me, dear friend . . . You are still all wetted over with fuck, and 'tis fuck I ask of thee. Ah, by God, I simply must pump his asshole while frigging him!. . . .
Le Chevalier. -Approach, sister; in order to comply with Dolmance's strictures and with yours, I am going to stretch out on his bed; you will lie in my arms, and expose your gorgeous buttocks to him, and very wide indeed you shall spread them . . . Yes, just so: we're fit to begin.
Dolmance. -No, not quite; wait for me; I must first of all enter your sister's ass, since Augustin whispers me to do it; next, I'll marry you: 'tis my fingers which must attach you: remember, let's not fall short of any of our principles and remember, also, a student is observing us, and we owe her precise demonstrations. Eugenie, come frig me while I determine this low fellow's enormous engine; lend a hand with my own erection, pollute my prick, very lightly, roll it upon your buttocks . . . (She does so. )
Eugenie. -Is this as it ought to be?
Dolmance. -There is always too much of the timorous in your movements; far more pleasurably squeeze the prick you frig, Eugenie; since masturbation is only agreeable in that there exist a greater compression in it than in fucking, it is therefore necessary that the cooperating hand become, for the engine over which it works, an infinitely straighter passage than anywhere else in the body exists . . . Better! Yes, that's better! Spread your behind yet a little more so that with each stroke the head of my prick can glide to touch your asshole . . . yes, that's it! quite! While waiting, Chevalier, frig your sister; we will be at your disposal in a minute . . . Ah, excellent! there's my man stiffening! Good; now ready yourself, Madame; open that sublime ass to my impure ardor; Eugenie, guide the dart, it must be your hand that conducts it to the vent, it must be your hand that makes it penetrates; immediately it is in, get a grip on good Augustin here, and fill my entrails up with him; those are an apprentice's chores and thence there is much instruction to be had; that, my dear, is why I put you to this trouble.
Madame de Saint-Ange. -Are my buttocks where you wish them, Dolmance? Ah, my angel, if you but knew how much I desire you, how long I have been waiting to be buggered by a sodomist!
Dolmance. -Thy will shall be done, Madame; but suffer me to halt an instant at my idol's feet; I would praise it before entering into the depths of its sanctuary . . . What divine ass is this! . . . let me kiss it! let me lick it, lick it a thousand times over and a thousand more! Here, that's the prick you yearn for! Dost feel it, bitch? Tell me, say, dost feel it penetrate?. . . .
Madame de Saint-Ange. Oh, drive it to darkness in my bowels! . . . Oh sweet lechery, what is not your empire!
Dolmance. -'Tis an ass such as never in my days have I fucked; worthy of Ganymede himself! To it, Eugenie, be immediately intendent upon my buggering by Augustin.
Eugenie. -I bring him to you; there. (To Augustin. ) Wake, sweet angel, do you spy the hole you've to pierce?
Augustin. -Aye, I see it. Mother of God! there's a big one I say, lots of space! I'll go in easier than into you, Miss. Kiss me a little so it will enter better.
Eugenie, embracing him. -Oh, as much as you like, you are so fresh . . . But push, do you hear! The head's swallowed up quickly! and I dare say the rest will not be long behind. . . .
Dolmance. -Thrust, thrust, my good fellow . . . tear me, if so it must be . . . Dost see my ass? Is it not ready? Doth it not beckon? Well, drive . . . ah, by Christ! what a bludgeon! never have I received one of such amplitude . . . Eugenie, how many inches rest outside?
Eugenie. -Scarcely two.
Dolmance. -Then I have eleven in my ass! . . . What ecstasy! He cleaves me in twain, I can no more! Chevalier! Are you ready?
Le Chevalier. -Feel, and give me your impression.
Dolmance. -Come hither, my children, let me wed thee . . . let me do all I may to expedite this heavenly incest (He introduces the Chevalier's prick into his sister's cunt. )
Madame de Saint-Ange. -Why, my dears, there I am fucked from either side! By Jesus! What a divine pleasure! No, there's none like it in all the world. Ah, fuck! How I pity the woman who has not tasted it! Shake me, Dolmance, smite away . . . by the violence of your movements force me to be impaled upon my brother's blade and you, Eugenie, do you contemplate me; come, regard me in vice; come, learn, from my example, to savour it, to be transported, to taste it with delectation . . . Behold, my love, behold all that I simultaneously do: scandal, seduction, bad example, incest, adultery, sodomy! Oh, Satan! one and unique god of my soul, inspire thou in me something yet more, present further perversions to my smoking heart, and then thou shalt see how into them all I shall plunge myself!
Dolmance. -Ah voluptuous creature, how you do stir up my fuck, how your sentiments and the uncommon temperature of your asshole do encourage it to be discharged! 'Twill all have me coming in an instant . . . Eugenie, fire my fucker's courage, ply, press his flanks, pry apart his buttocks; you are now somewhat skilled in the art of reviving the desires in him who vacillates . . . your approach alone gives energy to the prick which fucks me . . . I feel it, the strokes are more puissant . . . oh, thou bitch, I must yield to you what I should never have wanted but to owe to my own ass-end . . . wait for me! wait, dost hear? Oh, my friends, let us not discharge but in unison: 'tis life's single pleasure!. . . .
Madame de Saint-Ange. -Fuck! fuck! come when you wish . . . for I can withstand it no longer! Oh double name of God befucked! Sacred bugger-God! I come! . . . Inundate me, my friends, soak, drench, drown your whore! spray floods of your scum-fuck to the very seat of this blazing soul! it exists for aught but to be slaked, quenched by your tides! Ale! ale! ale! . . . fuck! . . . fuck! . . . what incredible excess of voluptuousness! . . . I am slain! . . . Eugenie, let me kiss thee, let me eat thee! let me consume, batten upon thy fuck as I loose my own!. . . .
(Augustin, Dolmance, and the
Chevalier act in chorus; the fear of appearing monotonous prevents us from rendering expressions which, upon such occasions, are all very apt to resemble one another. )
Dolmance. -And there is one of the fairest fucks I have ever had. (Showing Augustin to the others. ) This bugger glutted me with sperm! but Madame, I consider I passed as much on to you.
Madame de Saint-Ange. -Ah, speak not to me of it; I am sunk in it.
Eugenie. -I cannot say as much, not I! no! (Casting herself playfully into her friend's arms. ) You say you have committed abundant sins, my dearest, but, as for me, blessed God! not a one. Oh, if I have got to eat my soup cold this way, if this regime continues long, I'll have an indigestion.
Madame de Saint-Ange, bursting into laughter. How droll the creature is!
Dolmance. -But how charming! Come here, little one, I'd whip thee a bit. (He strikes her ass. ) Kiss me, your turn is soon to come.
Madame de Saint-Ange. -In future, we must be exclusively occupied with her, my brother; consider her, she's thy prey; examine that charming maidenhead; 'twill soon belong to thee.
Eugenie. -Oh, no! not by the fore-end! 'twould hurt me overmuch; ass-wise as much as you please, as Dolmance dealt with me a short while ago .
Madame de Saint-Ange. -Naive and delicious girl! She demands of you precisely what one has so much difficulty obtaining from others.
Eugenie. -Oh, 'tis not without a little remorse; for you have not by any means reassured me upon the criminal enormity I have always heard ascribed to this, especially when it is done between man and man, as has just occurred with Dolmance and Augustin; tell me, Monsieur, tell me how your philosophy explains this species of misdemeanor. 'Tis frightful, is it not?
Dolmance. -Start from one fundamental point, Eugenie: in libertinage, nothing is frightful, because everything libertinage suggests is equally a natural inspiration; the most extraordinary, the most bizarre acts, those which most arrantly seem to conflict with every law, every human institution (as for heaven, I have nothing to say), well Eugenie, even those are not frightful at all, and there is not one amongst them all that cannot be demonstrated within Nature's boundaries; it is certain that the one you speak of, lovely Eugenie, is the very same relative to which one finds a so strange fable in the tasteless fictions of the Holy Writ, that tedious compilation of an untutored Jew during a Babylonian Captivity; but the anecdote is false, wants all likelihood, all verisimilitude, when it is affirmed that, in retribution for these depravities, those cities, those towns rather, perished by fire; having their site upon the craters of ancient Anges, Sodom, Gomorrah too, perished like those Italian cities Vesuvius' lavas overcame; and that's all there is to the miracle, yet, all the same, 'twas from his most uncomplex event one departed in order uncouthly to invent the torture of fire to be used against those misfortunate humans who, in one area of Europe, delivered themselves over to this natural fancy.
Eugenie. -Oh. Natural. I see.
Dolmance. -Yes, natural, so I maintain it to be; Nature has not got two voices, you know, one of which whiles away the day condemning what the other commands, and it is very certain that it is of none but her organ that those men who are infatuated with this mania receive the impressions that drive them to it. They who wish to proscribe or condemn the taste declare it is harmful to population; how dull-witted they are, these imbeciles who have nothing but the idea of population in their heads, and who never see but what is criminal in all that takes a direction opposite to the generative. Is it really so firmly established that Nature has a great need for this overcrowding, as they would like to have us believe? is it very certain that one is guilty of an outrage whenever one abstains from this stupid propagation? To convince ourselves, let us for an instant scrutinize both her operation and her laws. Were it that Nature did nothing but create, and never destroy, I might be able to believe, with those wearying sophists, that the sublimest of all actions would be incessantly to labor at production, and, following that, I should grant, with them, that the refusal to reproduce would be, would have necessarily to be, a crime; however, does not the most fleeting glance upon natural operations prove that destructions are just as necessary to her plan as are creations? that the one and the other of these functions are interconnected and enmeshed so intimately that for either to operate without the other becomes impossible? that nothing would be born, nothing would be regenerated without destructions? Destruction, hence, is, like creation, one of Nature's mandates.
This principle once acknowledged, how may I offend Nature by refusing to create? the which, supposing there to be some evil in the action, would appear infinitely less evil, no question about it, than the act of destruction, which latter is numbered among her laws, as I have but a moment ago proven. If, on the one hand, I admit the penchant Nature has given me to manufacture these losses and ruins, I must exa mine, on the other hand, to see whether they are not necessary to her and whether I do not conform with her will when I destroy; thus considered, where then, I ask you, is the crime? But, continue to object the fools and the populators-the terms are synonymous-, but that productive sperm cannot have been placed in your loins for any other purpose than that of reproduction; to misuse it is an offense. I have just proven the contrary, since this loss, or waste, would not even be equivalent to destruction, and since destruction, far more important than loss, or waste, would not itself be criminal. Secondly, it is false that Nature wishes this spermatic liquid absolutely and entirely to be destined to production; were that true, not only would she not permit this spillage to occur in any other case, as experience proves to us sometimes may happen, since we lose it both when we wish to and where, and, next, she would forbid the occurrence of those losses save in coitus, losses which, however, do take place, both when we dream and when we remember; were Nature miserly about this so precious sap, 'twould never but be into the vessel of reproduction she would tolerate its flow; assuredly, she would not wish this voluptuousness, wherewith at such moments she crowns us, to be felt by us when we divert our tribute; for it would not be reasonable to suppose she could consent to give us pleasures at the very moment we heaped insults upon her. Let us go further; were women not born save to produce-which most surely would be the case were this production so dear to Nature-, would it happen that, throughout the whole length of a woman's life, there are, however, but seven years, all the arithmetic performed, during which she is in a state capable of giving birth to a child? What! Nature avidly seeks populousness, does she! and everything which does not tend to this end offends her, does it! and out of a hundred years of life the sex destined to produce cannot do so during more than seven years! Nature wishes for propagation only, and the semen she accords man to serve in these reproducings is lost, wasted whenever and as often as it please man! He takes the same pleasure in this loss as in useful employment of his seed, and never the least inconvenience!
Let's cease, good friends, let us cease to believe in such absurdities: they cause good sense to shudder. Ah! far from outraging Nature on the contrary-and let us be well persuaded of it-, the sodomist and Lesbian serve her by stubbornly abstaining from a conjunction whose resultant progeniture can be nothing but irksome to her. Let us make no mistake about it, this propagation was never one of her laws, nothing she demanded of us, but at the very most something she tolerated; I have told you so. Why! what difference would it make to her were the race of men entirely to be extinguished upon earth, annihilated! she laughs at our pride when we persuade ourselves all would be over and done for were this misfortune to occur! Why, she would simply fail to notice it. Do you fancy races have not already become extinct? Buffon counts several of them perished, and Nature, dumbstruck by a so precious loss, doesn't so much as murmur! The entire species might be wiped out and the air would not be the less pure for it, nor the star less brilliant, nor the universe's march less exact. What idiocy would be required, however, to think that our kind is so useful to the world that he who might not labor to propagate it or he who might disturb this propagation would necessarily become a criminal! Let's bring this blindness to a stop, may the example of more reasonable peoples serve to persuade us of our errors. There is not one corner of the earth where the alleged crime of sodomy has not had temples and senators. The Greeks, who made of it, so to speak, a virtue, raised a statue unto Venus Callipygea; Rome sent to Athens for law, and returned with this divine taste.
And under the emperors, behold the progress it made! sheltered by the Roman eagle, it spread from one end of the earth to the other; at the Empire's collapse, it took refuge near the diadem, it followed the arts in Italy, it is handed down to those of us who govern ourselves aright. We discover a hemisphere, we find sodomy in it. Cook casts anchor in a new world: sodomy reigns there. Has our balloons reached the moon, it would have been discovered there as well. Delicious preference, child of Nature and of pleasure, thou must be everywhere men are to be found, and wherever thou shalt be known, there they shall erect altars to thee! O my friends, can there be an extravagance to equal that of imagining that a man must be a monster deserving to lose his life because he has
Preferred enjoyment of the asshole to that of the cunt, because a young man with whom he finds two pleasures, those of being at once lover and mistress, has appeared to him preferable to a young girl, who promises him but half as much! He shall be a villain, a monster, for having wished to play the role of a sex not his own! Indeed! Why then has Nature created him susceptible of this pleasure?
Let us inspect his conformation; you will observe radical differences between it and that of other men who have not been blessed with this predilection for the behind; his buttocks will be more fair, more plump; never a hair will shade the altar of pleasure, whose interior, upholstered with a more delicate, more sensual, more sensitive membrane, will be found to be positively of the same variety as the interior of a woman's vagina; this man's character, once again unlike that of others, will be softer, more pliant, subtler; in him you will find almost all the vices and all the virtues native to women; you will recognize even their weaknesses there; all will have feminine manias and sometimes feminine habits and traits. Would it then be possible that Nature, having thuswise assimilated them into women, could be irritated by what they have of women's tastes? Is it not evident that this is a category of men different from the other, a class Nature has created in order to diminish or minimize propagation, whose over-great extent would infallibly be
E rejudicial to her? Ah, dear Eugenie, did you but now how delicate is one's enjoyment when a heavy prick fills the behind, when, driven to the ballocks, it flutters there, palpitating; and then, withdrawn to the foreskin mark, it hesitates, and returns, plunges in again, up to the hair! No, no, in the wide world there is no pleasure worth as much as this one: 'tis the delight of philosophers, of heroes, it would be that of the gods were not the parts used in this heavenly conjugation the only gods we on earth should reverence! (i)
Eugenie, very much moved. -Oh, my friends, let me be buggered! . . . Here, my buttocks stand ready, start agape! . . . I present them to you! . . . Fuck me, for I discharge! . . . (Upon prononcing these words, she falls into the arms of Madame de Saint-Ange, who clasps her, embraces her, and offers the young lady's elevated flanks to Dolmance. )
Madame de Saint-Ange. -Divine teacher, will you resist the proposal? Will you not be tempted by this sublime ass? See how it doth yawn, how it winks at thee!
Dolmance. -I ask your forgiveness, beautiful Eugenie: it shall not be I, if indeed you wish it, who shall undertake to extinguish the fires I have lit. Dear child, in my eyes you possess the large fault of being a woman. I was so considerate as to forget much in order to harvest your virginity; deign to think well of me for going no further: the Chevalier is going to
(i) A later part of this work promising us a much more extensive dissertation upon this subject, we have, here, limited ourselves to an analysis but roughly sketched and but boldly outlined. take the task in hand. His sister, equipped with this artificial prick, will bestow the most redoubtable buffets upon her brother's ass, all the while presenting her noble behind to Augustin, who shall bugger her and whom I'll fuck meantimes; for, I make no attempt to conceal it, this fine lad's ass has been signaling to me for an hour, and I wish absolutely to repay him for what he has done to me.
Eugenie. -I accept the revision; but, in truth, Dolmance, the frankness of your avowal little offsets its impoliteness.
Dolmance. -A thousand pardons, Mademoiselle; but we buggers are very nice on the question of candor and the exactitude of our principles.
Madame de Saent-Ange. -However, a reputation for candor is not the one we commonly grant those whom, like yourself, are accustomed only to taking people from behind.
Dolmancee. -Something of the treacherous, yes; a little false, you may believe it. But after all, Madame, I have demonstrated to you that this character is indispensable to man in society. Condemned to live amidst people who have the greatest interest in hiding themselves from our gaze, in disguising the vices they have in order to exhibit nothing but virtues they never respect, there should be the greatest danger in the thing were we to show them frankness only; for then, 'tis evident, we would give them all the advantages over us they on their part refuse us, and the dupery would be manifest. The needs for dissimulation and hypocrisy are bequeathed us by society; let us yield to the fact. Allow me to offer my example to you, Madame, for an instant: there is surely no Deing more corrupt anywhere in the world; well, my contemporaries are deceived in me; ask them what they think of Dolmance, and every one will tell you I am a capital fine fellow, whereas there is not a single crime whose most exquisite delights I have not tasted.
Madam de Saint-Ange. -Oh, you do not convince me that you have committed atrocities.
Dolmance. -Atrocities . . . indeed, Madame, I have wrought horrors.
Madame de Saint-Ange. -Why, yes, you are like the man who said to his confessor: "Needless to go into details, Sir; murder and theft excepted, you can be sure I've done everything. "
Dolmance. -Yes, Madame, I should say the same thing, omitting those exceptions. More or less.
Madame de Saint-Ange. -What! libertine, you have permitted yourself Dolmance. -Everything, Madame, everything; with a temperament and principles like mine, does one deny oneself anything?
Madame de Saint-Ange. -Oh, let's fuck! fuck! . . . I can bear such language no longer; we'll return to it, Dolmance; but to add greater sincerity or conviction to your confessions, I do not wish to hear them save when we are clear-headed. When you have an erection, you love to speak horrors and perhaps you would give us here, in the guise of truths, the libertine glitterings of your inflamed imagination. (They take their places. )
Dolmance. -One moment, Chevalier, one moment; I am the one who shall introduce it; but, by way of preliminary, and I ask the lovely Eugenie's pardon for it, she must allow me to flog her in order she be put in the proper humor. (He beats her. )
Eugenie. -I assure you, this ceremony serves no purpose . . . Admit, Dolmance, that it merely satisfies your lewdness; but, in carrying it out, don't take on airs, I beg of you, and suppose you arc doing anything in my behalf.
Dolmance, whipping merrily away. -Ah, you'll have news for me in a moment! . . . You have no acquaintance with this preliminary's influences . . . Come, come, little bitch, you'll be lashed. . . .
Eugenie. -My God, how he does wax hot! And my buttocks too, they are all afire! . . . But, indeed, you're hurting me!
Madame de Saint-Ange. -I'll avenge you, dear heart; I'll retaliate in kind. (She has up a whip and flogs Dolmance. )
Dolmance. -With all my heart; I ask but one favor of Eugenie: that she consent to be fiogged as vigorously as I myself desire to be; you notice how well within natural law I am; but wait, let's arrange it: let Eugenic mount your flanks, Madame, she will clutch your neck, like those children whose mothers carry them on their backs; that way, I'll have two asses under my hand; I'll drub them together; the Chevalier and Augustin, both at once, will work upon me, striking my buttocks . . . Yes, 'tis thus . . . Well, there we are! . . . What ecstasy!
Madame de Saint-Ange. -Do not spare this little rascal, I conjure you, and as I ask no quarter, I want you to grant it to no one.
Eugenie. -Ale! ale! ale! I believe my blood is flowing!
Madame de Saint-Ange. -'Twill embellish our buttocks by lending color to them . . . Courage, my angel, courage; bear in mind that it is always by way of pain one arrives at pleasure.
Eugenie. -I can no more!
Dolmance halts a minute to contemplate his work; then, starting in again. -Another sixty, Eugenie; yes, precisely, sixty more on either cheek will do it. O bitches! how great shall now be your pleasure in fucking! (The posture is dissolved. )
Madame de Saint-Ange, examining Eugenie's buttocks. -Oh, the poor little thing, her behind is all bloodied over! Beast, how much pleasure you take thus in kissing cruelty's vestiges!
Dolmance, polluting himself. -Yes, I mask nothing, and my pleasures would be more ardent were the wounds more cruel.
Eugenie. -But you are a monster!
Dolmance. -Indeed I am.
Le Chevalier. -There's good faith in him at least
Dolmance. -Off with you, Chevalier. Sodomize her.
Le Chevalier,-Hold her body and in three shakes 'twill be done.
EuogNiE. -Oh heavens! Yours is thicker than Dolmance's . . . Chevalier, you are tearing me apart! . . . go softly, for Christ's sake!. . . .
Le Chevalier. -Impossible, my angel, I must reach bottom . . . Consider: I'm performing before my master's eyes; I have got to render myself worthy of his teachings.
Dolmance. -'Tis there! I prodigiously love to see a prick's hair rub the border of an anus . . . Right you are, Madame, embugger your brother. Here we have Augustin's prick, in an admirable way to be introduced into you, and I promise you I'll spare your fucker nothing . . . Excellent! it seems to me we've got our rosary well strung together; not another thought now but of discharging.
Madame de Saint-Ange. -Cast an eye on this little tramp! How she quivers and wriggles!
Eugenie. -Is it my fault? I am dying from pleasure! That whipping . . . this immense prick . . . the amiable Chevalier who frigs me the while! My darling, my darling, I can no more!
Madame de Saint-Ange. -Sacred Jesus! nor can I! I discharge!. . . .
Dolmance. -A little unity, my friends; were you to grant me but two more minutes I could overtake you and we should be able to come all of us together.
Le Chevalier. -There's no time left; my fuck runs into lovely Eugenie's ass . . . I am dying! Ah sacred name of the fucking Almighty! what pleasure!. . . .
Dolmance. -I follow you, friends . . . I follow hard after you . . . I too am blinded by fuck. . . .
Augustin. -Me too! . . . and me!. . . .
Madame de Saint-Ange. -What a scene! . . . This bugger has filled up my ass!. . . .
Le Chevalier. -To the wash-basin, ladies, have a rinse!
Madame de Saint-Ange. -No, indeed, no, I like that, I do, I like to feel fuck in my ass; I never wash when it's in me.
Eugenie. -No more, enough . . . My friends, tell me now if a woman must always accept the proposal, when 'tis made to her, thus to be fucked?
Madame de Saint-Ange.-Always, dear heart, unfailingly; she must do even more: as this mode of fucking is delicious, she ought to require it of those of whom she makes use; but if she is dependent upon the person with whom she amuses herself, if she hopes to obtain favors from him, gifts or thanks, let her make herself worthy, let her cause herself to be urged, besought, wheedled; there is not a man of all those who possess the taste who, in such a case, would not ruin himself for a woman clever enough to deny him nothing but with the design of inflaming him further; she will extract from him all she wants if she well has the art of according nothing but what is asked of her.
Dolmance.-Well, little angel, are you converted? have you given over believing sodomy a crime?
Eugenie.-And were it one, what care I? Have you not demonstrated the non-existence of crime? There are now very few actions which appear criminal in my view.
Dolmance-There is crime in nothing, dear girl, regardless of what it be: the most monstrous of deeds has an auspicious aspect.
Eugenie. -Who's to gainsay it?
Dolmance. -Well, as of this moment, it ceases to be a crime; for, in order that what serves one by harming another be a crime, one should first have to demonstrate that the injured person is more important, more precious to Nature than the person who performs the injury and serves her; now, all individuals being equated in her eyes, this predilection for some one of them is impossible; hence, the deed that serves one person by causing suffering to another is of perfect indifference to Nature.
Eugenie. -But if the action were harmful to a very great quantity of individuals . . . and if it rewarded us with only a very small quantity of pleasure, would it not then be a frightful thing, to execute it?
Dolmance. -No more so, because comparison is possible of what others experience and what we sense; the heaviest dose of agony in others ought, assuredly, to be as naught to us, and even the faintest quickening of pleasure, registered in us, does touch us; therefore, we should, at whatever the price, prefer this most minor excitation which enchants us, to the immense sum of others' miseries, which cannot affect us; but, on the contrary, should it happen that the singularity of our organs, some bizarre construction or other, renders agreeable to us the sufferings of our fellows, as sometimes occurs, who can doubt, then, that we should incontestably prefer that agony in others, which entertains us, to that agony's absence, which would become, for us, a kind of privation? The source of all our moral errors lies in the ridiculous acknowledgment of that thread of brotherhood the Christians invented in the age of their ill-fortune and sore distress. Constrained to beg pity from others, 'twas not unclever to establish they were all brothers; how is one to refuse aid if this hypothesis be accepted? But there is no possibility of accepting it or the doctrine; are we not all born solitary, isolated? I say more: are we not come into the world all enemies, the one of the other, all in a state of perpetual and reciprocal warfare? Now, I ask whether such would be the situation were we to accredit the supposition of this tie of brotherhood and the virtues it enjoins? Are they really natural? Were they inspired in man by Nature's voice, men would be aware of them at birth. From that time onward, pity, good works, generosity would be native virtues against which struggle would be fruitless, and which would render the primitive state of savage man totally contrary to what we observe it to be.
Eugenie. -Yet if, as you say, Nature caused man to be born alone, totally independent of other men, you will at least grant me that his needs, bringing him together with other men, must necessarily have established some ties between them; whence blood relationships, born of their reciprocal alliance, ties of love too, of friendship, of gratitude: you will, I hope, respect those at least.
Dolmance. -No more than the others, I am afraid; but let's analyze them, I should like to: a swift glance, Eugenie, at each one in particular. Would you say, for example, that the need to marry or to prolong my race or to arrange my fortune or destiny must establish indissoluble or sacred ties with the object to which I am allied? Would it not, I ask you, be an absurdity to argue thus? So long as the act of coition lasts, I may, to be sure, continue in need of that object-in order to participate in coitus-; but once the act is done and I am satisfied, what, I wonder, will attach the results of this commerce to me or to it? These latter relationships were the results of the terror of parents who dreaded lest they be abandoned in old age, and the politic attentions they show us when we are in our infancy have no object but to make them deserving of the same consideration when they are become old. Let us no longer be the dupes of this rubbish: we owe nothing to our parents . . . not the least thing, Eugenie, and since it is far less for us than for themselves they have labored, it is permitted to us to detest them, even to rid ourselves of them if their behaviour annoys us; we ought to love them only if they comport themselves well with us, and this tenderness, then, ought not to be one degree greater than what we might feel for other friends, because the rights of birth establish nothing, are basis to nothing, and, once they have been wisely scrutinized and with deliberation, we will surely find nothing there but reasons to hate those who, exclusively thoughtful of their own pleasures, have often given us nothing but an unhappy and unhealthy existence.
You mention, Eugenie, ties of love; may you never know them! Ah! for the happiness I wish you, may such a sentiment never approach your breast! What is love? One can only consider it, so it seems to me, as the resulting effect upon us of a beautiful object's qualities; these effects distract us; they inflame us; were we to possess this object, all would be well with us; if 'tis impossible to have it, we are in despair. But what is the foundation of this sentiment? desire. What are this sentiment's consequences? madness. Let us confine ourselves to the cause and guarantee ourselves against the effects. The cause is to possess the object: splendid! let's strive to succeed, but with wisdom; let's enjoy it when 'tis ours and we've got it; let's console ourselves in the contrary case: a thousand other identical and often by much superior objects will soothe our feelings over the loss of that: all men, all women resemble each other: there is no love which resists the effects of sane reflection. O, 'tis a very great cheat and a dupery, this intoxication which, absorbing into ourselves the senses' results, puts us in such a state that we see no more, exist no more save through this object madly adored! Is this really to live? Is it not rather voluntarily to deprive oneself of all life's sweetness? Is it not to wish to linger in a burning fever which devours, consumes us, without affording us other than metaphysical joys, which bear such a likeness to the effects of derangement? Were we always to love this adorable object, were it certain we should never have to quit it, 'twould still be an extravagance without doubt, but at least an excusable one. Does this happen, however? Has one many examples of these deathless liaisons which are never dissolved or repudiated? A few months of doting and dalliance soon restores the object to its proper level and shape, and we are made to blush to think of the incense we have squanderingly burned upon that altar, and often we come to wonder that it ever could have seduced us at all.
O voluptuous young women, deliver your bodies unto us as often and as much as you wish! Fuck, divert yourselves, that's the essential thing; but be quick to fly from love. There is none but physical good in it, said the naturalist Buffon, and as a good philosopher he exercised his reason on nothing but that. I repeat it, amuse yourselves; but love not at all; nor be any more concerned to make yourselves loved: to exhaust oneself in lamentation, waste in sighs, denature oneself in leering and ogglings, play with billets doux, 'tis not that which you must do; it is to fuck, to multiply and often change your fuckers, it is above all to oppose yourselves resolutely to enslavement by any one single person, because the outcome of that constant love, by binding you to him, would be to prevent you from giving yourself to someone else, a cruel selfishness which soon would become fatal to your pleasures. A woman is not made for one single man; 'tis for them all Nature created her. Listening only to this sacred voice, let women surrender themselves, indifferently, to all who want them: always whores, never mistresses, eschewing love, worshipping pleasure; it will be roses only they will discover in ife's career; it will no longer be but flowers they proffer us! Ask, Eugenie, ask the charming woman who is so kind as to consent to undertake your education, ask her what is to be done with a man after one has enjoyed him. (In a lower voice, so as not to be heard by Augustin. ) Ask her if she would lift a finger to save this Augustin who, today, is the cause of her delights. Should it fall out that someone wished to steal him from her, she would take on another, would think no more of this one and, soon weary of the new, would herself sacrifice him within two months' time, were new pleasures to be born of this Angeuver.
Madame de Saint-Ange. -Let my dear Eugenie be very sure that Dolmance describes the impulses of my heart, mine and that of every other woman, as if she were to unfold it to him herself.
Dolmance. -The final part of my analysis treats the bonds of friendship and those of gratitude. We shall respect the former, very well, provided they remain useful to us; let us keep our friends as long as they serve us; forget them immediately we have nothing further from them; 'tis never but selfishly one should love people; to love them for themselves is nothing but dupery; never has Nature the desire to inspire other movements in mankind's soul, other sentiments than those which ought to prove useful in some sort, good for something; nothing is more an egoist than Nature; then let us be egoists too, if we wish to live in harmony with her dictates. As for gratitude, Eugenie, 'tis doubtless the most feeble of all the bonds. Is it then for ourselves men are obliging to us? Not a bit of it, my dear; 'tis through ostentation, through pride. Is it not humiliating thus to become the toy of the amour-propre of others? Is it not yet more so to fall into indebtedness to them? Nothing's more burdensome than a kindness one has received. No middle way, no compromise: you've got to repay it or ready yourself for abuse. Upon proud spirits the weight . of a good deed sits very ill: it weighs upon them with such violence that the one feeling they exhale is hatred for their benefactors. What then, in your opinion, are now the ties which supply the isolation wherein Nature creates us? What are they, those which should establish relationships between men? By what title should we love them, those others, cherish them, prefer them to ourselves? By what right should we relieve them, who says that we must relieve them in misfortune? Where now in our souls is that cradle of the fine and useless virtues of generosity, humanity, charity, those enumerated in the absurd codes of a few imbecile religious doctrines? doctrines which, preached by impostors or by beggars, were intended to provide for their sustenance and toleration? Why, Eugenie, why do you yet acknowledge something sacred in men? Do you conceive some reasons for not always preferring yourself to them?
Eugenie. -These lessons my heart anticipates suit me too well for my mind to take exception to them.
Madame de Saint-Ange. -They stem from Nature, Eugenie; the very approval you accord them demonstrates it; scarcely hatched from her womb, how could what you sense be the fruit of corruption?
Eugenie. -But if all the errors you cry up are in Nature, why are her laws opposed by them?
Dolmance. -Because her laws are not made for the particular but for the generality, which puts them in perpetual conflict with personal interest, whereasjust as-personal interest is always in contradiction with the general interest. But the laws, good for society, are very bad for the individuals whereof it is composed; for, if they one time protect or give security to the individual, they hinder, trouble, make a captive of him for three quarters of his life; and so the wise man, the man full of contempt for them, tolerates them, as he does reptiles and vipers which, although they wound or envenom, are nevertheless sometimes useful to medicine; he will protect himself against the laws as he would against noxious beasts; he will shelter himself behind precautions, behind mysteries, the which, by prudence, is easily done. Should the fancy to execute a few crimes inflame your spirit, Eugenie, be very certain you may commit them peacefully in the company of your friend and me.
Eugenie. -Ah, the fancy is already in my heart!
Madame de Saint-Ange. -What caprice agitates you, Eugenie? you may tell us with confidence.
Eugenie, wild-eyed. -I want a victim.
Madame de Saint-Ange. -And of what sex would you desire her to be?
Eugenie. -Of mine!
Dolmance. -Well, Madame, are you content with your student? does she make a sufficiently rapid progress?
Eugenie, as above. -A victim, my dearest, a victim! . . . Oh God, that would cause my life's happiness!. . . .
Madame de Saint-Ange. -And what would you do with her?
Eugenie. -Everything! . . . everything! . . . all that could render her the most wretched of creatures. Oh, my dearest, my dearest, have pity on me! I can stand it not longer!
Dolmance. -By God, what an imagination! . . . Come Eugenie, you are delicious . . . come, let me bestow a thousand kisses upon you!
(He takes her in his arms. )
Look, Madame, do you see it? Do you see this libertine discharge mentally, without anyone having touched her? I must absolutely embugger her once again.
Eugenie. -And afterwards will I have what I request?
Dolmance. -Yes, mad creature! . . . yes, we assure you, you shall!. . . .
Eugenie. -Oh, my friend, there is my ass! . . . do with it what you wish!. . . .
Dolmance. -One moment, while I arrange the exercise so as to ensure a little luxuriance. (As Dolmance gives his orders, each person executes them, taking his post. ) Augustin, lie down on the edge of the bed; Eugenie, do you recline in his arms; while I sodomize her, I'll frig her clitoris with the head of Augustin's superb prick, and Augustin will husband his fuck and take good care not to discharge; the gentle Chevalier, who, without saying a word, softly frigs himself while listening to us-will have the kindness to arrange himself upon Eugenie's shoulders so as to expose his fine buttocks to my kisses: I'll frig him again; which will cause me to have my engine in an asshole and a prick in either hand, to pollute; and you, Madame, after having been yout master, I want you to become mine: buckle on the most gigantean of your synthetic pricks. (Madame de Saint-Ange opens a chest filled with a store of them, and our hero selects the most massive. ) Splendid! This, according to the label, is fourteen by ten around; fit it about your loins, Madame, and shower me with the most terrible blows.
Madame de Saint-Ange. -Indeed, Dolmance, you are out of your senses. I will cripple you with this device.
Dolmance. -Fear not; push, my angel, penetrate: I'll not enter your dear Eugenie's ass until your enormous member is well advanced into mine . . . and it is! it is! oh, little Jesus! . . . You put me into the skies! . . . No pity, my lovely one . . . I tell you I am going to fuck your ass without preparations . . . oh, sweet God! magnificent ass!. . . .
Eugenie. -Oh, my friend, you are tearing me . . . at least oil the machine.
Dolmance. -I'll do nothing of the sort, by God: half the pleasure's lost to these stupid attentions. Put yourself in mind of our principles, Eugenie: I labor in my behalf only: now victim for a moment, my lovely angel, soon you'll persecute in your turn . . . Ah, holy God, it enters!. . . .
Eugenie. -You are putting me to death!
Dolmance. -Ah huck of God! I touch bottom!. . . .
Eugenie. -Ah, do what you will, 'tis arrived . . . I feel nothing but pleasure!. . . .
Dolmance. -How I love to frig this vast prick on a virgin's clitoris! . . . You, Chevalier, show me a good ass . . . Do I frig you well, libertine? . . . And you, Madame, do you fuck me, fuck your slut . . . yes, I am she and wish to be . . . Eugenie, discharge, my angel, yes, discharge! . . . Despite himself, Augustin fills me with his fuck . . . I receive the Chevalier's, mine goes to join his . . . I resist no more . . . grip my prick: I am going to jet a blazing fuck-stream into the depth of your entrails . . . ah! fucking bugger of a God! I die! (He withdraws, the circle breaks. ) Hold, Madame, here's your little libertine full of fuck again; the entrance to her cunt is smeared thick with it; frig her, vigorously smite her clitoris all with sperm: 'tis one of the most delicious things that may be done.
Eugenie, palpitating. -Oh, my blessed one, what pleasure you give me! Ah, dear love, I burn with lubricity! (The posture is assumed. )
Dolmance. -Chevalier, as 'tis you who'll deflower this lovely child, contribute your ministrations to those of your sister, that she may swoon in your arms, and strike an attitude that will furnish me with your ass: I am going to fuck your behind while Augustin cmbuggers me. (The disposition is effected. )
Le Chevalier. -Is my position satisfactory?
Dolmance. -Your ass ever so gently raised, up with it, a fraction of an inch, my love; there, just so . . . without lubrication, Chevalier?
Le Chevalier. -Why, bless my soul! as you damned well please; can I feel anything but pleasure in this delicious girl's womb! (He kisses, frigs her, burying a finger in her cunt while Madame de Saint-Ange agitates Eugenie's clitoris. )
Dolmance. -As for myself, my dear, I, be assured of it, I take far more pleasure with you than with Eugenie; there is an immense difference between a boy's and a girl's asses . . . and so bugger me, Augustin! what a bloody effort is required to get you to move!
Augustin. -By damn, Master, it's because it's just been running and dripping a moment ago into this pretty little turtle-dove here and now you're wanting it to get up quick right smart for your bum there which really ain't so pretty, dah!
Dolmance. -The dolt! But why complain? 'Tis Mother Nature. Everyone strives after his own salvation. Well, go on,' go on, trustworthy Augustin, keep on with your penetrating; and when one day you have a little more experience, you will tell me whether asses aren't worth much more than cunts . . . Eugenie, deal equitably with the Chevalier; you are thoughtless of everyone but yourself; well, libertine, you are right; but in your own pleasure's interest, frig him, since he is to gather your first fruits.
Eugenie. -But I am frigging him, I do kiss him, I am going out of my head . . . Ale! ale! ale! my friends, I can stand it no longer! . . . pity my condition . . . I am dying . . . I discharge! Ah, Clod's sweet fuck! I am in an ecstasy!. . . .
Dolmance. -Now, as for myself, I have chosen prudence and restraint: I wish merely to have this fine ass put me in form; the fuck that's being fired in me I am saving for Madame de Saint-Ange: 'tis wonderfully amusing to begin in one ass the operation one wishes to terminate in another. I say there, Chevalier, you seem nicely got up . . . shall we to the deflowering?. . . .
Eugenie. -Oh, heavens! no, I do not wish to be deflowered by him, I'd perish from it; yours is jmaller, Dolmance: may it be you to whom I owe thanks for the operation, I beg of you!
Dolmance. -'Tis out of the question, my angel; I've never fucked a cunt in my life: allow me not to have to begin at my age. Your hymen belongs to the Chevalier: of us all here, he alone is worthy of its capture: do not steal his rights away.
Madame de Saint-Ange. -Refuse a maidenhead . . . as fresh, as pretty as this-for I defy anyone to say my Eugdnie is not the loveliest girl in Paris-: oh, Monsieur! Monsieur, indeed, that's what I call sticking over-decently to one's principles!
Dolmance. -Impossible to be too scrupulous, Madame, for there are multitudes of my colleagues who would most assuredly not bugger you . . . I, I've done it, and would do it again: it is not, thus, as you suspect, a question of carrying my worship to the point of fanaticism.
Madame de Saint-Ange. -Well, then, proceed, Chevalier, but have a little care what you do; consider the narrowness of the channel you are going to navigate: do you find any proportion between the contents and the container?
Eugenie. -Oh, 'twill kill me, I'm sure of it, 'tis inevitable . . . But my furious desire to be fucked makes me chance it fearlessly . . . Go on, penetrate, my dear, I abandon myself to you.
Le Chevalier, taking a firm grip upon his rampant prick. -Fuck, yes! let it go in . . . sister, Dolmance, each of you take one of her legs . . . Ah, by God, what an enterprise! Yes, yes, she must be split like a melon, ripped, God's bleeding fuck, yes, it's got to enter!
Eugenie. -Gently, gently, I can't bear it . . . (She screams; tears roll down her cheeks. ) Help me! my good friend . . . (She struggles. ) No, I don't want it to enter! . . . I'll cry for help if you persist!. . . .
Le Chevalier. -Cry away as much as you please, little chit, I tell you it must go in even were it to shatter you a thousand times over!
Eugenie. -What barbarity!
Dolmance. -Fuck! is one expected to be a gentleman when one's stiff?
Le Chevalier. -Ha! look! it's sunk . . . it's in! by God! . . . Fuck! there's the maidenhead blasted to the devil! . . . Look how the pig bleeds!
Eugenie. -Go on, tiger! . . . tear me in pieces if you wish, I don't care a damn! . . . kiss me, you butcher, I adore you! . . . Oh, 'tis nothing when it's inside: all the pains are forgot . . . Woe unto girls who shy away from such an attack! . . . What tremendous pleasures they deny themselves at the cost of a little trouble! . . . Thrust! thrust! push! Chevalier, I am coming! . . . spray your fuck into the wounds and lacerations . . . drive it to the bottom of my womb . . . ah! suffering gives way to pleasure . . . I am ready to swoon! . . . (The Chevalier discharges; while he fucked, Dolmance toyed with his ass and his balls, and Madame de Saint-Ange tickled Eugenie's clitoris. They dissolve their position. )
Dolmance. -'Twould be my opinion that, while the avenue is open, the little bitch might instantly be fucked by Augustin!
Eugenie. -By Augustin! . . . a prick of those dimensions! . . . ah, immediately! . . . While I am still bleeding! . . . Do you then wish to kill me?
Madame de Saint-Ange. -Dear heart . . . kiss me, I have sympathy for you . . . but the sentence has been pronounced; there is no appeal, my dearest: you have got to submit to it.
Augustin. -Oh, 'Zwounds! here I am, all ready: just tell me I've got to stick this little girl and I'd come by God all the way from Rome, walking.
Le Chevalier, grasping Augustin's mammoth device. Look at it, Eugenic, look how it is erect . . . how worthy it is to replace me. . . .
Eugenie. -Oh merciful heaven, what equipage! . . . Oh, 'tis clear, you design my death!. . . .
Augustin, seizing Eugenie. -Oh no Ma'am'zelle, that's never killed anybody.
Dolmance. -One instant, my fine boy, one instant: she must present her ass to me while you fuck her . . . yes, that's it, come hither, Madame; I promised to sodomize you, I'll keep my word; but situate yourself in such a way that, as I fuck you, I can be within reach of Eugenie's fucker. And let the Chevalier flog me in the meantime. (All is arranged. )
Eugenie. -Oh fuck! he cracks me! . . . Go gently, great lout! . . . Ah, the bugger! he digs in! . . . there 'tis, the fucking-john! . . . he's at the very bottom! . . . I'm dying! . . . Oh, Dolmance, how you strike! . . . 'tis to ignite me before and behind; you're setting my buttocks afire!
Dolmance, swinging his whip with all his strength. You'll be afire . . . you'll be afire, little bitch! . . . and you'll only discharge the more deliciously. How you frig her, Saint-Ange . . . how your deft fingers must soothe the hurt Augustin and I cause her! . . . But your anus contracts . . . I see it, Madame, I see it! we're going to come together . . . Oh, 'tis I know not how divine thus to be, 'twixt brother and sister!
Madame de Saint-Ange, to Dolmance. -Fuck, my star, fuck! . . . Never do I believe I have had so much pleasure!
Le Chevalier. -Dolmance, let's change hands: a displacement . . . it's in order: be rumble: pass from my sister's ass to Eugenie's so as to acquaint her with the intermediary's pleasures, and I will embugger my sister who, meanwhile, will shower upon your ass the very whip-strokes wherewith you've just brought Eugenie's behind to blood.
Dolmance, executing the proposal. -Agreed . . . there, my friend, hast ever seen a shift more cunningly effected?
Eugenie. -What! both of them on top of me, good heavens! . . . I have no idea what to expect next: I've really had enough of this oaf! . . . Ah, how much fuck this double pleasure is going to cost me! . . . it flows already. Without that sensual ejaculation, I believe I would be already dead . . . Why, my dearest, you imitate me . . . Oh, how the bitch swears! . . . Discharge, Dolmance, squirt . . . squirt, my love . . . this great peasant inundates me: he shoots to the depths of my hole . . . Oh, my good fuckers, what is this? Two at a time? Good Christ! . . . receive my fuck, dear companions, it conjoins itself with your own . . . I am annihilated . . . (The attitudes are dissolved. ) Well, my dear, what think you of your scholar? . . . Am I enough of a whore now? . . . But what a state you do put me in . . . what an agitation . . . Oh, yes, I swear, in my drunkenness, I swear I would have gone, if necessary, and got myself fucked in the middle of the street. . . .
Dolmance. -How beautiful she is thus.
Eugenie. -You! I detest you: you refused me.
Dolmance. -Could I contradict my dogmas?
Euoenie. -Oh, very well, I forgive you, and I must respect the principles which lead us to will conduct ; how could I not acknowledge and adopt them, I who wish not to live save in crime? Let's sit down and chat a little; I'm greatly tired out. Continue my instruction, Dolmance, and say something that yvill console me for the excesses to which I have given myself over; stifle my remorse; encourage me.
Madame de Saint-Ange. -'Tis fair enough: as we say, a little theory must succeed practice: it is the means to make a perfect disciple.
Dolmance. -Well then! Upon what subject, Eugenie, would you like to have a discussion?
Eugenie. -I should like to know whether manners are truly necessary in a governed society, whether their influence has any weight with the national genius.
Dolmance. -Why, by God, as I left home this morning I bought, by the Palace of Equality, a little pamphlet which, if one can believe the title, ought surely to answer your question . . . it's scarcely come from the press.
Madame de Saint-Ange. -Let me see it (She reads: "Yet Another Effort, Frenchmen, If You Would Become Republicans". ) 'Pon my word, 'tis an unusual title: 'tis promising; Chevalier, you possess a fine organ, read it to us.
Dolmance. -Unless I am much mistaken, this should perfectly' reply to Eugenie's queries.
Eugenie. -Assuredly!
Madame pe Saint-Ange. -Out with you, Augustin: this is not for you; but don't go too far; we'll ring when we want you back.
Le Chevalier. -Well, I'll begin.
YET ANOTHER EFFORT, FRENCHMEN, IF YOU WOULD BECOME REPUBLICANS
RELIGION
I am about to propose some large ideas; they will be heard and pondered. If not all of them please, surely a few will; in some sort, then, I shall have contributed to the advancement of learning, and shall be content. It gives me pain-I don't deny it-to see with what halting steps we approach our destination; I am disturbed by the presentiment we are on the eve of failing once again to arrive there. Is it thought that goal will be reached when we have been given laws? Abandon the idea. What should we, who have no religion, do with laws? We must have a creed, something suitable to the Republican character which is now so far removed from as never to be able to resume the worship of Rome. In this age, convinced that morals must be the basis of religion, and not religion of morals, we need a belief in keeping with our customs and habits, something that would be their necessary consequence, and that could, by lifting up the spirit, keep it perpetually at the high level of this precious liberty, of which, today, the spirit has made its unique idol.
Well, I ask, is it thinkable that the doctrine of one of Titus' slaves, of an abject histrionic from Judea, be fitting to a free and war-like nation that has just regenerated itself? No, my fellow countrymen, no; you think nothing of the sort. If, to his misfortune, the Frenchman were Jto entomb himself in the grave of Christianity, then on one side the priests' pride, their tyranny, their despotism, vices forever cropping up in that impure horde, on the other side the baseness, the narrowness, the platitudes of dogma and mystery of this infamous and fabulous religion, would, by blunting the fine edge of the Republican mind, rapidly put about the Frenchman's neck the yoke his vitality but yesterday shattered. Let us not lose sight of the fact this puerile religion was among our tyrants' best weapons: one of its principal dogmas was to render unto Caesar that which unto Caesar doth belong. However, we have dethroned Caesar, and we no longer wish to render him anything. Frenchmen, it should be in vain you were to flatter yourselves that the spirit of an oath-taking clergy must no longer be that of a non-juring clergy: there are inhering vices beyond all possibility of correction. Before ten years' time, by means of the Christian religion, of its superstition, of its prejudices, your priests, their pledges notwithstanding and despite their poverty, would once again assert their empire over the souls they would have undermined and captured; once again they would enchain you with kings, because the power of the latter re-enforced that of the former, and, lacking foundations, your Republican edifice would collapse.
O you who find scythes within your grasp, deal the final blow to the tree of superstition; be not content to prune the branches: uproot entirely a plant whose effects are so contagious. Be perfectly convinced that your system of liberty and equality too rudely affronts the ministers of Christ's altars for there ever to be one of them who will either adopt it in good faith or give over seeking to topple it, if he is able to recover any dominion over consciences. What priest, comparing the condition to which he has been reduced with the one he formerly enjoyed, will not do all in his power to win back both the confidence and the authority he has lost? And how many feeble and pusillanimous creatures will not speedily become again the thralls of this ambitious shaven-headed fellow! Why is it imagined that the nuisances which existed before cannot be born again? In the Christian Church's infancy, were not the priests what they are today? You observe how far they advanced; what do you suppose brought them here? Was is not the means with which religion furnished them? Well, if you do not absolutely interdict this religion, those who preach it, having yet the same means, will soon achieve the same ends. Then annihilate forever what may one day destroy your work. Consider that the fruit of your labors being reserved for your grandchildren only, your duty and your probity command you to leave them not one of those dangerous germs which could plunge them anew into the chaos whence we have with so much trouble just emerged.
Even now our prejudices are dissipating; the people have already abjured the Catholic absurdities; they have already suppressed the temples, sent the relics flying, and agreed that marriage is a mere civil undertaking; the smashed confessionals serve as public meeting places; the would-be faithful, deserting the apostolic banquet, leave the gods of flour dough to the mice. Frenchmen, do not hesitate a moment: all of Europe, one hand already raised to the blindfold that fascinates her eyes, awaits that effort by which you must snatch it from her head. Make haste: holy Rome strains every nerve to repress your vigor; hurry: do not leave to Rome the time needed to secure her grip upon a few more proselytes. Strike unsparingly and recklessly her proud and trembling head; and before two months the tree of liberty, overshadowing the wreckage of Peter's Chair, will cover with the weight of its victorious palms all those contemptible Christian vestiges and idols raised with such effrontery over the ashes of Cato and Brutus.
Frenchmen, I repeat it to you: Europe awaits her deliverance from sceptre and censer alike. Know well that it is not possible for you to liberate her from royal tyranny without breaking for her the fetters of religious superstition: the shackles of the one are too intimately joined to those of the other; allow one of the two to continue, and you cannot avoid falling subject to the other you have neglected to dissolve. It is no longer before the knees of either an imaginary being or a vile impostor a Republican must prostrate himself; his only gods must now be Courage and Liberty. Rome disappeared immediately Christianity was preached there, and France is doomed if she continues to revere it.
Let the absurd dogmas, the appalling mysteries, the impossible morality of this disgusting religion be but examined with attention, and it will be seen whether it is suitable to a Republic. Do you sincerely believe I would let myself be dominated by the opinion of a man I had just seen at the feet of the idiot priest of Jesus? No; certainly not. That eternally base fellow will eternally adhere, by dint of the baseness of his attitudes, to the atrocities of the ancient regime: as of the moment he were able to submit himself to the stupidities of a religion as abject as the one we, with what madness! acknowledged, he is no longer competent to dictate laws or to transmit learning to me; no longer see him as other than a slave to prejudices and superstition.
To convince ourselves, we have but to cast our eyes upon the few individuals who remain attached to our fathers' insensate worship: we will see whether they are not all irreconcilable enemies of the present system, we will see whether it is not amongst their numbers that all of that justly condemned caste of royalists and aristocrats is included. Let the slave of a crowned brigand grovel, if he pleases, at the feet of a paste image; such an object is ready-made for his soul of mud. He who can serve kings must adore gods; but we, Frenchmen, but we, my fellow countrymen, we, rather than once again crawl beneath such contemptible traces, we would die a thousand times over rather than abase ourselves anew! Since we believe a cult necessary, let us imitate the Romans': actions, passions, heroes-those were the objects of its respect. Idols of this sort elevated the soul, electrified it, and more: they communicated to the spirit the virtues of the respected being. Minerva's devotee wished to be prudent. Courage dwelt in the heart of the man one noticed at the feet of Mars. Not a single one of this great people's gods was deprived of energy; all of them infused into the spirit of him who venerated them the fire with which they were themselves ablaze; and as one hoped someday to be adored oneself, one aspired to become as great at least as him one took for a model. But what, on the contrary, do we find in Christianity's futile gods? What, I want to know, what does this idiot's religion offer you? (i)
(i) An attentive inspection of this religion will reveal to anyone that the impieties with which it is filled come in part from the Jews' ferocity and innocence, and in part from the indifference and confusion of the Gentiles; instead of appropriating
Does the grubby Nazarene fraud inspire the birth of any great ideas in you? his unwholesome, his repellent mother, the indecent Mary-does she excite any virtues? and do you discover in the saints who garnish its Elysia, any example of greatness, of either heroism or virtue? It is so clear this stupid religion affords nothing by way of lofty concepts, that no artist can employ its attributes in the monuments he raises; even at Rome itself, most of the embellishments and ornaments of the papal palaces have their originals in paganism, and as long as this world shall continue, paganism alone will arouse the verve of great men.
Shall we find more motifs of grandeur in pure theism? Will it be by the acceptance of a chimera that, their spirits infused with the high degree of energy essential to Republican virtues, men will be moved to cherish and practice them? Let us imagine nothing of the kind; we have bid farewell to that phantom and, at the present time, atheism is the one doctrine of all those capable of reason. As we gradually proceeded to our enlightenment, we came more and more to feel that, motion being inherent in matter, the agent needed to impart the motion was becoming a creature of illusion; and that all that exists essentially having to be in motion, the motor was useless; we sensed that this chimerical divinity, prudently invented by the earliest legislators, was, in their hands, simply one more means to enthrall us, and that, reserving unto themselves the right to make the phantom speak, they knew very well how to get him to say nothing but what would shore up the preposterous laws whereby they declared they served us. Lycurgus, Numa, Moses, Jesus Christ, Mahomet, all those great rogues, all our great thought-tyrants, knew how to associate the divinities they manufactured with their own immeasurable was good in what the ancient peoples had to offer, the Christians seem only to have formed their doctrine of a mixture of the vices they found everywhere. able ambition; and, pertain of captivating the people with the sanction of those gods, they were always studious, as everyone perfectly well knows, either to consult them exclusively about, or to make them exclusively respond to, what they thought likely to serve their own interests. Therefore, today, let us equally despise both that hollow cheat of a god impostors have celebrated, and all the religious subtleties that its ridiculous acknowledgment exudes: it is no longer with that bauble free men are to be amused. Let the total extermination of cults and denominations therefore find entrance into the principles we broadcast throughout all Europe. Let us not be content with breaking scepters; we will pulverize the idols forever: there is never more than a single step from superstition to royalism, (i) How can there be any doubt of it? It must be held firmly in mind that one of the primary articles sacred to kings was, in all times, the maintenance of the dominant religion as one of the political bases that best sustains the throne. But, since it is shattered, that throne, and since it is, happily, shattered for all time, let us have not the slightest qualm about extirpating in the same manner the thing that supplied its plinth.
Yes, citizens, religion is incompatible with the libertarian system; you have sensed as much. Never will a free man stoop to Christianity's gods; never will its dogmas, its rites, its mysteries, or its morals suit a Republican. One more effort; since you labor to destroy all the old foundations, do not permit one of them to survive, for only one is needed, and all the
(i) Inspect the history of every race: never will you find one of them changing the government it has for a monarchic system, save by reason of the brutalization or the superstition that grips them; you will see kings always upholding religion, and religion sanctifying kings. One knows the story of the steward and the cook: Hand me the pepper; I'll pass you the butter. Wretched mortals! are you then destined forever to resemble these two rascals' master? rest will be restored. And how much more certain of their revival must we not be if the one you tolerate is positively the source and cradle of all the others.
Let us give over thinking religion can be useful to man; once good laws are decreed unto us, we will be able to dispense with religion. But, they assure us, the people stand in need of one; it amuses them, they are soothed by it. Splendid; give us then, if that be the case, a religion proper to free men; give us the gods of paganism. We will most willingly worship Jupiter, Hercules, Pallas; but we have no use for a dimensionless god who nevertheless fills everything with his immensity, an omnipotent god who never achieves what he wills, a supremely good being who creates malcontents only, a friend of order in whose government everything is in turmoil. As for ourselves, we want no more of a god who is at sword points with Nature, who is the father of confusion, who moves man at the moment man abandons himself to horrors; such a god makes us quiver with indignation, and we consign him forever to the oblivion whence the infamous Robespierre wished to call him forth, (i) Frenchmen, in the stead of that unworthy phantom, we will substitute the imposing simulacra that rendered Rome mistress of the earth; let us treat every Christian image as we have those betokening kings. Upon the bases where once tyrants reposed we have mounted emblems of liberty; in like manner we will rebuild, and put effigies of great men on the pedestals of those cunning ones Christianity adored. (2) Let us cease
(1) All religions are agreed in exalting the divinity's wisdom and power; but as soon as they expose his conduct, we find nothing but imprudence, weakness, and folly. God, they say, created the world for himself, and up until the present time his efforts to make it honor him have proven unsuccessful; God created us to worship him, and our days are spent mocking him! Unfortunate fellow, that God!
(a) We are only speaking here of those whose reputation has been for a long time secure. to entertain doubts as to the effect of atheism in the country: have not the peasants felt the necessity of the annihilation of the Catholic cult, so contradictory to the true principles of freedom? Have they not, undaunted, and without sorrow or pain, watched their altars and presbyteries battered to bits? Ah! rest assured, they will renounce their ridiculous god in the same way. The statues of Mars, of Minerva, and of Liberty will be placed in the most conspicuous
Places in the villages; an annual feast will be celebrated there every year; the prize will be decreed to the citizen who will have merited it most from the land; at the entrance to a secluded wood, Venus, Hymeneaus, and Love, erected beneath a rustic temple, will receive lovers' homages; there, by the hand of the Graces, Beauty will crown Constancy. More than mere loving will be required in order to pose one's candidacy for the tiara; it will be necessary to have merited love. Heroism, capabilities, humaneness, largeness of spirit, a proven civism-those are the titles the lover shall be obliged to establish at his mistress' feet, and they will be of far greater value than the titles of birth and wealth a fool's pride used to require. Some virtues at least will be born of this worship, whereas nothing but crimes come of that other we had the weakness to profess. This worship will ally itself to the liberty we serve; it will animate, nourish, inflame liberty, whereas theism is in its essence and in its nature the most deadly enemy of the liberty we adore.
Was a drop of blood spilled when the pagan idols were destroyed under the Oriental Roman Empire? The revolution, prepared by the stupidity of a people become slaves again, was carried off without the slightest hindrance. Why do we dread the work of philosophy as more painful than that of despotism? It is only the priests who still hold the people, whom you fear to enlighten, captive at the feet of their imaginary god: take the priests from the people, and the veil will fall away naturally. Be persuaded these people, a good deal wiser than you suppose them, once disencumbered of tyranny's irons, will soon get rid of superstition's. You are afraid of the people unrestrained-what an extravagance! Ah, believe me, citizens, the man unchecked for an instant by the substantial sword of law will hardly be halted by the moral fear of hell's torments at which he has laughed since childhood; in one word, many crimes have been committed as a consequence of your theism, but never has it prevented a single one.
If it is true that passions blind, that their effect is to cover our eyes with a cloud and conceal from us the dangers that surround us, how may we suppose that those dangers which are remote, such as the punishments announced by your god, can successfully dispel the cloud not even the blade of the law itself, constantly suspended above the passions, is able to penetrate? If then it is patently clear, that this supplementary check imposed by the idea of a god becomes useless; if it is demonstrated that by its other effects it is dangerous, I wish to know, to what use can it be put, and from what motives should we lend our support m order to prolong its existence?
Is someone about to tell me that we are not yet mature enough to consolidate our revolution in so brilliant a manner? Ah, my fellow citizens, the road we have taken since '89 has been much more difficult than the one we have still to traverse, and we have much less to do in order to mould the opinion we have in every sense been harrying since the time of the overwhelming of the Bastille. We may firmly believe that a people wise enough and brave enough to lead an impudent monarch from the uppermost pinnacle of grandeur to the foot of the scaffold, a people that, in these last few years, have been able to vanquish so many prejudices and sweep away so many ridiculous impediments, will be sufficiently wise and brave to immolate, in order to bring the affair to a proper conclusion and in the interests of the Republic's prosperity, a phantom a great deal more illusory than ever could be a king's.
Frenchmen, you will strike the initial blows; your national education will see to the rest. But get promptly to work at the task; let it become one of your most important concerns; above all, let it have, as a basis, this fundamental morality, so neglected in your religious education. Rather than fatiguing the young organs of your children with deific stupidities, replace them with excellent social principles; instead of teaching them futile prayers which, by the time they are sixteen, they will glory in having forgotten, let them be instructed in their duties towards society; teach them to cherish the virtues you scarcely ever mentioned in former times and which, without your religious fables, are sufficient for their individual happiness; make them sense that that happiness consists in rendering others as fortunate as we desire to be ourselves. If you repose these truths upon Christian chimeras, as you so foolishy used to do, scarcely will your pupils have detected the absurd futility of its foundations than they will overthrow the entire edifice, and they will become bandits for the simple reason they believe the religion they have toppled forbids them to be bandits. On the other hand, if you make them sense the necessity of virtue, uniquely because their happiness depends upon it, egoism will turn them into honest people, and this law which dictates their behaviour to men will always be the surest, the soundest of all. Let there then be the most scrupulous care taken to avoid mixing religious fantasies into this national education. Never lose sight of the fact it is free men we wish to form, not the wretched worshippers of a god. Let a simple philosophy instruct these new pupils in the incomprehensible sublimities of Nature; let it prove to them that awareness of a god, often highly dangerous to men, never contributed to their happiness, and that they will not be more happy in acknowledging as a cause of what they do not understand something they will understand even less; that it is far less essential to hear the voice of Nature than to enjoy her and obey her laws; that these laws are as wise as they are simple; that they are written in the hearts of all men; and that it is but necessary to interrogate that heart to discern its impulse. If they wish absolutely that you speak to them of a creator, answer that things always having been what now they are, never having had a beginning and never going to have an end, it thus becomes as useless as impossible for man to be able to trace things back to an imaginary origin which would explain nothing and do not a jot of good. Tell them that men are incapable of obtaining true notions of a being who does not make his influence felt on one of our senses. All our ideas are representations of objects that strike us: what is to represent to us the idea of a god, who is plainly an idea without object? Is not such an idea, you will add when speaking to them, is not such an idea quite as impossible as effects without causes? Is an idea without prototype anything other than an hallucination? Some doctors, you will continue, are assured the idea of a god is innate, and that men have this idea in their mothers' bellies. But, you will remark, that is false; every principle is a judgment, every judgment the outcome of experience, and experience is only acquired by the exercise of the senses; whence it follows that religious principles have no bearing upon anything and are not in the slightest innate. How, you will go on, how have they been able to convince reasonable beings that the most difficultly understood of things is the most vital to them? it is that they have been greatly terrified; it is that when one is afraid one ceases to reason; it is, above all, that they have been advised to be defiant of their reason and that, when the brain is disturbed, one believes everything and examines nothing. Ignorance and fear, you will repeat to them, ignorance and fearthose are the two bases of every religion.
Man's uncertainty with respect to his god is, precisely, the cause for his attachment to his religion. Man's fear in dark places is as much physical as moral; fear becomes habitual in him, and is cnanged into need: he would believe he were lacking something even were he to have nothing more to hope for or dread. Next, return to the utilitarian value of morals: apropos of this vast subject give them many more examples than lessons, many more demonstrations than books, and you will make good citizens of them: you will turn them into fine warriors, fine fathers, fine husbands: you will create men that much more devoted to their country's liberty, whose minds will be forever impregnable to any thought of servitude, whose genius will never be troubled by any religious terror. And then true patriotism will shine in every spirit, and will reign there in all its force and purity, because it will become the sole sovereign sentiment there, and no alien notion will dilute or cool its energy; then your second generation will be sure, reliable, and your own work, consolidated by it, will go on to become the law of the universe. But if, through fear or faint-heartedness, these counsels are ignored, if the foundations of the edifice we thought we destroyed are left intact, what then will happen? They will rebuild upon those foundations, and will set thereupon the same colossi, with this difference, and it will be a cruel one: the new structures will be cemented with such strength that neither your generation nor ensuing ones will avail against diem. Let there be no doubt of it: religions are the cradles of despotism: the foremost amongst all the despots was a priest: the first king and the first emperor of Rome, Numa and Augustus, associated themselves, the one and the other, with the sacerdotal; Constantine and Clovis were rather abbots than sovereigns; Heliogabalus was priest of the sun. At all times, in every century, every age, there has been such a connection between despotism and religion that it is far more than apparent and demonstrated that, in destroying one, the other must be undermined, for the simple reason that the first will always put the law into the service of the second. I do not, however, propose either massacres or expulsions, horrors are at too great a remove from my spirit for me to dare even for a minute to conceive of them. No, don't assassinate at all, don't expel at all; those are royal atrocities, or the brigands' who imitate kings; it is not at all by acting as they you will force men to look with horror upon them who practiced those crimes. Let us reserve the employment of force for the idols; ridicule alone will suffice for those who serve them: Julian's sarcasm wrought a greater injury to Christianity than all Nero's tortures. Yes, we shall destroy for all time all notion of god, and make soldiers of his priests; a few of them are already; let them keep to this trade, soldiering, so worthy of a Republican; but let them give us no more of their chimerical being nor of his nonsensefilled religion, the single object of our scorn.
Let us condemn the first of those blessed charlatans who comes to us to say a few more words either of god or of religion, let us condemn him to be jeered, ridiculed, covered with filth at all the crossroads of France's largest cities: imprisonment for life will be the reward of whomsoever falls a second time into the same error. Let the most insulting blasphemy, the most atheistic works next be fully and openly authorized, in order to complete the extirpation from human heart and memory of those appalling pastimes of our childhood; let there be put in circulation the work most capable of finally illuminating the Europeans upon a matter so important, and let a considerable prize, to be bestowed by the Nation, be the reward of nim who, having said and demonstrated everything upon this head, will leave to his countrymen no more than a scythe to sweep clean all those phantoms, and a steady heart to hate them. In six months, the whole will be done; your infamous god will be as naught, and all that without ceasing to be just, jealous of the esteem of others without ceasing to be honest men; for it will have been sensed that the real friend of his country must in no way be led about by chimeras, as is the slave of kings; that it is not, in a word, either the frivolous hope of a better world nor fear of the greatest ills Nature sends us that must lead a Republican, whose only guide is virtue and whose one restraint is remorse.
MANNERS
After having made it clear that theism is in no wise suitable to a Republican government, it seems to me necessary to prove that French manners are equally unsuitable to it. This article is the more crucial, for the laws to be promulgated will issue from manners, and will be motivated by them.
Frenchmen, you are too intelligent to fail to sense that new government will require new manners. That the citizen of a free state conduct himself like a despotic king's slave is unthinkable: the differences of interests, of their duties, of their relations amongst one another essentially determine an entirely different manner of behaving in the world; a crowd of minor faults and of little social indelicacies, thought of as very fundamental indeed under the government of kings whose expectations rose in keeping with the need they felt to impose curbs in order to appear respectable and unapproachable to their subjects, are going to become as nothing with us; other crimes with which we are acquainted under the names of regicide and sacrilege, in a system whcreunto kings and religion will be unknown, in the same way must be annihilated in a Republican State. In according freedom of conscience and of the press, consider, citizens-for it is practically the same thing-whether freedom of action must not be granted too and, excepting direct clashes with the underlying principles of government, there remain to you it is impossible to say how many fewer crimes to punish, because in fact there are very few criminal actions in a society whose foundations are liberty and equality. Matters well weighed and things closely inspected, only that is really criminal which rejects the law; for, Nature equally dictating vices and virtues to us, in reason of our constitution, yet more philosophically, in reason of the need Nature has of the one and the other, what she inspires in us would become a very reliable gauge by which to adjust exactly what is good and bad. But, the better to develop my thoughts on so important a question, we will classify the different acts in man's life that until the present it has pleased us to call criminal, and we will next square them to the true obligations of a Republican.
In every age, the duties of man have been considered under the following three headings:
1. Those his conscience and his credulity impose upon him, with what regards the supreme being;
2. Those he is obliged to fulfill towards his brethren;
3. Finally, those that relate only to himself.
The certainty in which we must be that no god is meddling with our affairs and that, as necessary creatures of Nature, like plants and animals, we are here because it would be impossible for us not to be-, this unshakable certainty, it is clear enough, at one stroke annihilates the first group of duties, those, I wish to say, those duties towards the divinity for which we falsely believe ourselves responsible; and with them vanish all religious crimes, all those comprehended under the indefinite names of impiety, sacrilege, blasphemy, atheism, etc. , all those, in brief, which Athens so unjustly punished in Alcibiades, and France in the unfortunate Labarre. If there is anything extravagant in this world it is to see men, whose shallow ideas alone make them aware of their god and of what this God expects of them, nevertheless wish to determine what pleases and what angers their imagination's ridiculous phantom. It would hence not be merely to tolerating indifferently each of the cults that I should like to see us limit ourselves; I should like there to be perfect freedom to laugh at and deride them all; I should like men, gathered in no matter what temple to invoke the eternal who wears their image, to be seen as so many comics in a theatre, at whose antics everyone may go to laugh. Regarded in any other light, religions become serious, and then important once again; they will soon stir up and patronize opinions, and no sooner will people fall to disputing over religions than some will be beaten into favoring religions, (i) Equality once wrecked by the preference or protection tendered one of them, the government will soon disappear, and out of the rebuilt theocracy the aristocracy will be reborn in a trice. I cannot repeat it to you too often: no more gods, Frenchmen, no more gods, lest under their fatal influence you wish to be plunged back into all the horrors of despotism; but it is only by jeering that you will destroy them; all the dangers they bring in their wake will instantly be revived en masse if you pamper or ascribe any consequence to them.
(i) Each nation declares its religion the best of all and relies, to persuade one of it, upon an endless number of proofs not only in disagreement with one another, but nearly all contradictory. In our profound ignorance, what is the one which may please God, supposing now that there is a God? We should, if we are wise, either protect them all and equally, or proscribe them all in the same way; well, to proscribe them is certainly the surer, since we have the moral assurance that all are mummeries, none of which can be more pleasing than another to a God who does not exist.
Carried away by anger, you overthrow their idols? Not for a minute; have a bit of sport with them, and they will be demolished; once withered, the opinion will collapse of its own accord.
I have, I hope, said enough to demonstrate that no laws ought to be decreed against religiotis crimes, for that which offends an illusion offends nothing, and it should be the height of inconsistency to punish those who outrage or who despise a creed or a cult whose priority before all others is established by no evidence whatsoever. No, that would necessarily be to exhibit a partiality and, consequently, to influence the scales of equality, that foremost law of your new government.
We move on to the second class of man's duties, those which bind him to his fellows; this is of all the classes the most extensive.
Excessively vague upon man's relations with his brothers, Christian morals propose bases so filled with sophistries that we are completely unable to accept them, since, if one is pleased to erect principles, one ought scrupulously to guard against founding them upon sophistries. This absurd morality tells us to love our neighbor as we love ourselves. Assuredly, nothing would be more sublime were it ever possible for what is false to bear the lineaments of the beautiful. The point is not at all to love one's brethren as oneself, since that is in defiance of all the laws of Nature, and since hers is the sole voice which must direct our entire life; it is only a question of loving others as brothers, as friends given us by Nature, and with whom we should be able to live much better in a Republican State, wherein the disappearance of distances must necessarily tighten the bonds.
May humanity, fraternity, benevolence prescribe our reciprocal obligations, and let us individually fulfill them with the simple degree of energy Nature has given us to this end; let us do so without blaming, and above all without punishing, those who, of chillier temper or more acrimonious humor, do not notice in these howbeit very touching social ties all the sweetness and gentleness others discover therein; for, it will be agreed, to seek to impose universal laws would be a palpable absurdity: such a proceeding would be as ridiculous as that of the general who would have all his soldiers dressed in a uniform of the same size; it is a terrible injustice to require men of unequal character to bend before equal laws: what is good for one is not at all good for another.
That one cannot devise as many laws as there are men must be admitted; but the laws can be lenient, and so few in number, that all men, of whatever character, can easily observe them. Furthermore, I would demand that this small number of laws be of such a sort as to be adaptable to all the various characters; he who would formulate the code would have as a guide the principle of striking more or less severely, according to the person in question. It has been pointed out that there are certain virtues whose practice is impossible for certain men, just as there are certain remedies which do not agree with certain constitutions. Now, would it not be to carry your injustice beyond all limits were you to send the law to strike the man incapable of bowing to the law? Would not the iniquity with which you would cover yourselves in this instance equal that of which you would be guilty were you to wish to force the blind to distinguish among colors?
From these first principles there follows, one feels, the necessity to make lenient, gentle laws and especially to get rid forever of the atrocity of capital punishment, because the law which attempts a man's life is impractical, unjust, inadmissible. It is not, as I will say in a moment, that we lack an infinite number of cases where, without offense to Nature (and that is what I shall demonstrate), men have received from this common mother complete freedom to take one another's lives; but it is that it is impossible that the law obtain the same privileges, since the law, cold and harsh of itself, can never have access to the passions which are able to legitimate in man the cruel act of murder. Man receives his impressions from Nature, who is able to forgive him this act; the law, on the contrary, always opposed as it is to Nature and receiving nothing from her, cannot be authorized to permit itself the same extravagances: not having the same motives, it is impossible that the law have the same rights. Those are wise and delicate distinctions which escape many people, because very few of them reflect; but they will be received and welcomed by the instructed to whom I recommend them, and will, I hope, exert some influence upon the new code being reached for us.
The second reason why the death penalty must be done away with is that it has never repressed crime; for crime is every day committed at the foot of the scaffold.
This punishment must be suppressed, in a word, because it would be difficult to conceive of a worse method of calculation than this, by which a man is put to death for having killed another: the apparent result of the present arrangement is not one man less but, of a sudden, two; such arithmetic is customary amongst headsmen and idiots only.
However all that may be, the injuries we can work against our brothers may be reduced to four types: calumny; theft; the crimes which, caused by impurity, may in a disagreeable sense affect others; and murder.
All these were acts considered of the highest importance under the monarchy; but are they quite as serious in a Republican State? That is what we arc going to examine with the aid of philosophy's torch, for by its light alone may such an enquiry be undertaken. Let no one tax me with being a dangerous innovator; let no one say that I risk blunting die remorse in evildoers' hearts, as perhaps these writings shall, that the tenderness of my morality is evil because it augments those same evildoers' penchant for crime. I wish formally to certify immediately that I have none of these perverse intentions; I expose the ideas which, since the age when I first began to reason, have indentified themselves in me and to whose impetus and expression the infamous despotism of tyrants has been opposed for uncounted centuries. So much the worse for those whom large ideas corrupt; so much the worse for them who only know how to fasten upon the harmful in philosophic opinions, who are likely to be corrupted by everything. Who knows? They may have been poisoned by reading Seneca and Charron. It is not to them I speak; I only address myself to . people capable to hearing me out, and they will read me without any danger.
It is with utmost candor I affirm that never have I considered calumny an evil, and, especially in a government like our own, under which all of us, bound closer together, nearer one to the other, have, evidently, a greater interest in becoming acquainted with one another. Either one or the other: calumny attaches to a truly perverse man, or it falls upon a virtuous man. It will be agreed that, in the first case, it becomes little more than a matter of indifference if one imputes a little more evil to a man known for having done a great deal of it; perhaps indeed the evil which does not exist will bring to light evil which does, and there you have him, the malefactor, better known than ever before.
We will suppose now that an unwholesome influence reigns over Hanover, but that the chances are that the only risk I will run, in exposing myself to the inclemency of the air, will be a bout of fever; may I reproach the man who, to prevent me from going to
Hanover, tells me that one perishes upon arriving there? No, surely not; for, by using a great evil to frighten me, he spared me a lesser one.
If, on the contrary, a virtuous man is calumniated, let him not be alarmed; he need but exhibit himself, and all the calumniator's venom soon will be turned back upon the latter. For such people, calumny is merely a test of purity and a purification whence their virtue emerges with greater resplendence than ever. As a matter-of-fact, the mass of the Republic's virtues may profit from the ordeal; for this virtuous and sensitive man, stung by the injustice he has just experienced, will apply himself to the cultivation of still greater virtue; he will yvant to overcome this calumny from which he thought himself sheltered, and his
Sjlendid actions will acquire that much greater a egree of energy. Thus, in the first instance, the calumniator produces quite favorable results by inflating the vices of the dangerous object of his attacks; in the second, the results achieved are excellent, for virtue is obliged to offer itself to us entire.
Well now, I am at a loss to know for what reason the calumniator deserves your fear, especially under a regime where it is essential to be aware of the wicked, and to augment the energy of the good. Let us hence very carefully avoid any declarations prejudicial to calumny; we will consider it both a lantern and a stimulant, and in either case something of the highest usefulness. The legislator, all of whose ideas must be as large as the work he undertakes is great, must never be concerned with the effect of that crime which strikes only the individual. It is the general, massive effect he must study; and when in this manner he observes the effects calumny produces, I defy him to find anything punishable in it. I defy him to find any shadow or hint of justice in the law that would punish it; our legislator becomes the man of greatest justice and integrity if, on the contrary, he encourages and rewards it.
Theft is the second of the moral offenses whose examination we proposed.
If we glance at the history of ancient times, we will sec theft permitted, nay, recompensed in all the Greek republics; Sparta and Lacaedaemon openly favored it; several other peoples regarded it as a virtue in a warrior; it is certain that stealing nourishes courage, strength, skill, tact, in a word, all the virtues useful to a Republican system and consequently to our own. Dare I ask, without any partiality, whether theft, whose effect is to distribute wealth more evenly, is a greater wrong in a government which aims at equality? Plainly, the answer is no: for if it supports equality on the one hand, it creates, on the other, greater obstacles to the conservation of one's goods. There was once a people which punished not the thief but him who allowed himself to be robbed, in order to teach him to care for his property. This leads us to reflections of a more ample scope.
God forbid that I should wish here to assail the vow to respect property the Nation has just uttered; but will I be permitted some thoughts upon this vow's injustice? What is the spirit of the oath spoken by all a nation's individuals? Is it not to maintain a perfect equality amongst citizens, to expose them all, and equally, to the law protecting the possessions of all? Well, I ask you now whether that law is truly just which orders the man who has nothing to respect another who has everything? What are the elements of the social contract? Does it not consist in one's yielding a little of one's freedom and of one's belongings in order to assure and sustain the preservation of each?
Upon those foundations all the laws repose; they are the motives for the punishments inflicted upon him who abuses his liberty; in the same way, they authorize the imposition of conditions; these latter prevent a citizen from protesting when there is demanded of him those things the giving of which he knows to be the means whereby the rest of what he has is safeguarded for him; but, once again, by what right will he who has nothing be enchained by an agreement which protects only him who has everything? If, by your vow, you perform an act of equity in protecting the property of the rich, do you not commit one of injustice in requiring this oath of the owner who owns nothing? What advantage docs your vow give the latter? and how can you expect him to swear to something exclusively beneficial to someone who, by his wealth, differs so greatly from him? Certainly, nothing is more unjust: an oath must have an equal effect upon all the individuals who utter it; that it may bind him who has no interest in its maintenance is impossible, because it would no longer be a pact amongst free men; it would be the weapon of the strong against the weak, against whom the latter would have to be in incessant revolt. Well, such, exactly, is what occurs in the vow of respect for property the Nation has just required: by it only the rich enchain the poor, the rich alone reap the benefits of an oath to which the poor man subscribes with so little thought that he fails to see that by means of this oath, wrung from his good faith, he engages himself to do a thing that cannot be done with respect to himself.
Thus convinced, as you must be, of this barbarous inequality, do not therefore worsen your injustice by punishing the man who has nothing for having dared to filch something from the man who has everything: your inequitable vow gives him a greater right to it than ever. In driving him to perjury through that oath which, for him, is absurd, you legitimate all the crimes to which this perjury will impel him; it is not for you to punish something for which you have been the cause. I have no need to say more to make you sense the terrible cruelty of chastising thieves.
Imitate the wise law of the people I spoke of just a moment ago; punish the man neglectful enough to let himself be robbed; but proclaim no kind of penalty against robbery. Consider whether your oath does not authorize the act, and whether he who commits it does any more than put himself in harmony with the most sacred of Nature's movements, that of preserving one's own existence at the expense of no matter whom.
The transgressions we are considering in this second class of man's duties towards his kinsmen include actions for whose undertaking libertinage may be the cause; among those which distinguish themselves as particularly threatful to what each owes others, are prostitution, incest, rape, and sodomy. We surely must not for one moment doubt that all those known as moral crimes, that is to say, all acts of the variety to which those we have just cited belong, are of total inconsequence under a government whose sole duty consists in preserving, by whatever may be the means, the form essential to its continuance: there you have a Republican government's unique morality. Well, since it is always opposed by the despots surrounding it, one cannot reasonably imagine these means to preservation as moral means, for it will preserve itself only by war, and nothing is less moral than war. I ask how one will be able to demonstrate that in a State made immoral by its obligations, it is essential that the individual be moral I will go further: it is a very good thing he is not. The Greek law-givers perfectly appreciated the capital necessity of corrupting the member-citizens in order that, their moral dissolution coming into conflict with that useful to the machine, there would result the insurrection that is always indispensable to a political system which, being one of perfect happiness, like Republican government, must necessarily excite the hatred and envy erf all the others surrounding it Insurrection, thought these sage legislators, is not at all a moral condition; however, it has got to be a Republic's permanent condition. It would then be as absurd as dangerous to require that those who are to maintain the perpetual immoral subversion of the machine themselves be moral beings: for the state of a moral man is one of tranquillity and peace, the state of an immoral man is one of perpetual motion that draws him close to and identifies him with the necessary insurrection in which the Republican must always keep the government of which he is a member.
We may now enter into detail and begin by analyzing modesty, that faint-hearted negative impulse of contradiction to impure affections. Were it among Nature's intentions that man be modest, assuredly she would not have caused him to be born naked; unnumbered peoples, less degraded by civilization than we, go about nude and feel no shame on that account; there can be no doubt that the custom of dressing has had its single origin in harshness of climate and the coquetry of women who sensed they would soon lose all the effects of desire were they to give warning in advance, instead of permitting them to be born. They fancied that Nature, furthermore, not having created them without blemishes, they would be far better assured of all the means needed to please by concealing these flaws behind adornments; thus modesty, far from being a virtue, was no more than one of corruption's first effects, one of the first devices of female guile.
Lycurgus and Solon, penetrated by the knowledge that immodesty's results are to keep the citizen in the immoral state indispensable to the laws of a Republican administration, obliged girls to exhibit themselves naked at the theatre, (i) Rome imitated the example:
(i) It has been said the intention of these legislators was, by dulling the passion men experienced for a naked girl, to render more active the one men sometimes experience for their own sex. at the games of Flora they danced naked; the greater part of pagan mysteries were thus celebrated; among some peoples, nudity even passed for a virtue. At any event, immodesty is born of lewd inclinations; what comes of these inclinations comprises the alleged criminality we are discussing, of which prostitution is the foremost effect.
Now that we have got back upon our feet and broken with the host of prejudices that held us captive; now that, brought closer to Nature by the quantity of prejudices we have recently obliterated, we listen only to Nature's voice, we are fully convinced that, if anything were criminal, it would be to resist the penchants she inspires in us, rather than fairly to come to grips with them. We are persuaded that lust, being a consequence of those penchants, is not at all to be extinguished, and that it is, rather, a matter of arranging for the means whereby the passion may be satisfied in peace. We must hence take it upon ourselves to introduce order into this aspect of things, and to establish all the security necessary so that, when need brings the citizen near the objects of lust, he can give himself over to doing with them all that his passions stipulate, without ever being hampered by anything, for there is no passion in man which so stands in need of the whole amplitude of liberty. Various stations, clean, healthy, capacious, properly furnished and in every respect safe, will be erected, deployed about each city; in them, all sexes, all ages, all creatures possible will be offered to the caprices of the libertines who shall come to divert themselves, and the most absolute subordination will be the rule of the individuals participating; the slightest refusal or recalcitrance will be
Those sages caused to be shown that for which they wanted there to be disgust, and to be hidden what they thought made to inspire sweeter desires; in either case, did they not strive after the objective we have just mentioned? One sees that they sensed the need of immorality in Republican mannets. instantly and arbitrarily punished by the injured person. I must explain this last more fully, and weigh it against Republican manners; I promised I would employ the same logic from beginning to end, and I shall keep my word.
Although, as just a moment ago I told you, no passion has a greater need of the widest horizon of iberty than has this, none, doubtless, is as despotic; here it is man likes to command, to be obeyed, to surround himself with slaves compelled to satisfy him; well, every time you withhold from man the secret means whereby he exhales the dose of despotism Nature instilled into the depths of his heart, it will recoil and make itself felt upon nearby objects; it will trouble the government. If you would avoid that danger, permit a free flight and rein to those tyrannical desires which, despite himself, torment man ceaselessly: content with having been able to exercise his small dominion in the middle of the harem of sultanas and youths whose submission your good offices and his money procure for him, he will go away satisfied and without any notion to disturb a government which with such complaisance affords him every means of appeasing his concupiscence; proceed, on the other hand, after a different fashion, impose upon those objects of public lust the ridiculous obstacles in olden times invented by ministerial tyranny and by the lubricity of our Sardanapaluses (i)-, do that, and the man, soon embittered against your regime, soon jealous of the despotism he sees you exercise all by yourself, will shake off the yoke you lay upon him, and, weary of your manner of ruling, will, as he has just done, change it.
(i) It is well known that the infamous and criminal Sartine devised, in the interests of the king's lewdness, the plan of having Dubarry read to Louis XV, thrice each week, the private details, enriched by Sartine, of all that transpired in the evil comers of Paris. This department of the French Nero's libertinage coat the State three millions.
But observe how the Greek legislators, thoroughly imbued with these ideas, treated debauchery at Lacaedaeroon, at Athens: rather than prohibiting, they made the citizen drunk with it; no species of lechery was forbidden him; and Socrates, whom the oracle described the wisest philosopher of the land, passing indifferently from Aspasia s arms into those of Aldbiades, was not on that account less the glory of Greece. I am going to advance somewhat further, and however contrary my ideas to our present customs, as my object is to prove that we must make all haste to alter those customs if we wish to preserve the government we have adopted, I am going to try to convince you that the prostitution of women who bear the name of honest is no more dangerous than the prostitution of men, and that not only must we associate women with the lecheries practiced in the houses I have set up, but we must even build some for them, where their whims and the requirements of their temper, ardent like ours but in a quite different way, may too find satisfaction with every sex.
First of all, what right have you to assert that women ought to be exempted from the blind submission to men's caprices Nature dictates? and, next, by what other right do you defend their subjugation to a continence impossible to their physical structure and of perfect uselessness to their honor? I will treat each of these questions separately.
It is certain, in a state of Nature, that women are born vulgur-vaguous-that is to say, are born enjoying the advantages of other female animals and belonging, like them and without exception, to all males; such were, without any doubt, both the primary laws of Nature and the only institutions of those earliest societies into which men gathered. Self-interest, egoism, and love degraded these primitive attitudes, at once so simple and so natural; one thought oneself enriched by taking a woman, and with her the goods of her family-there we find satisfied the first two feelings I have just indicated-; still more often, this woman was taken by force, and thereby one became attached to her-there we find the other of the motives in action, and, in every case, injustice.
Never may an act of possession be exercised upon a free being; the exclusive possession of a woman is no less unjust than the possessing of slaves; all men are free born, all have equal rights: never should we lose sight of those principles; according to which never may there be granted to one sex the legitimate right to lay monopolizing hands upon the other, and never may one of these sexes, or classes, arbitrarily possess the other. Similarly, a woman existing in the purity of Nature's laws cannot allege, as justification for refusing herself to someone who desires her, the love she bears another, because such a response is based upon exclusion, and no man may be excluded from the possession of a woman as of the moment it is clear she definitely belongs to all men. The act of possession can only be exercised upon a chattel or an animal, never upon an individual who resembles us, and all the ties which can bind a woman to a man are quite as unjust as illusory.
If then it becomes incontestable that we have received from Nature the right indiscriminately to express our wishes to all women, it likewise becomes incontestable that we have the right to compel their submission, not exclusively, for I should then be contradicting myself, but temporarily, (i) It cannot be
(i) Let it not be said that I contradict myself here, and that after having established, at some point further above, that we have no right to bind a woman to ourselves, I destroy those principles when I declare now we have the right to constrain her; I repeat, it is a question of enjoyment only, not of property: I have no right of possession upon that fountain I find by the road, but I have certain rights to its use; I have the right to avail myself of the limpid water it offers my thirst; similarly, I have no real right of possession upon such-and-such a woman, but I have denied that we have the right to decree laws that compel woman to yield to the flames of him who would have her; violence itself being one of that right's effects, we can employ it legally. Indeed! has not Nature proven we have that right, by bestowing upon us the strength needed to bend women to our will?
It is in vain women seek to bring to their defense either modesty or their attachment to other men; these illusory grounds are worthless; earlier, we saw how contemptible and factitious is the sentiment of modesty. Love, which may be termed the soul's madness, is no more a title by which their constancy may be justified: love, satisfying two persons only, the beloved and the loving, cannot serve the happiness of others, and it is for the sake of the happiness of everyone, and not for an egotistical and privileged happiness, that women have been given to us. All men, therefore, have an equal right of enjoyment ol all women; therefore, there is no man who, in keeping with natural law, may lay claim to an unique and personal right over a woman. The law that will oblige them to prostitute themselves as much as we wish in the houses of debauchery of which it was a question but a moment ago, and which will coerce them if they balk at prostitution, which will punish them if they fumble or dawdle, is thus one of the most equitable of laws, against which there can be no legitimate or just complaint.
A man who would like to enjoy whatever woman or girl will henceforth be able, if the laws you promulgate are just, to have her summoned at once to duty at one of the houses; and there, under the guardianship of the matrons of that temple of Venus, she will be surrendered to him, to satisfy, with equal amounts of humility and submissiveness, all the fancies incontestable rights to the enjoyment of her; I have the right to force from her this enjoyment, if she refuses me it for whatever the cause may be. in which he will be pleased to indulge with her, of whatever strangeness or irregularity they may be, since there is no extravagance which is not in Nature, none which she does not acknowledge as her own. There remains but to fix the woman's age; now, I maintain it cannot be fixed without restricting the freedom of a man who desires a girl of any given age.
He who has the right to eat the fruit of a tree may assuredly pluck it ripe or green, according to the inspiration of his taste. But, it will be objected, there is an age when the man's proceedings would be definitely harmful to the girl's health. This consideration is utterly without value; once you concede me the proprietary right of enjoyment, that right is independent of the effects enjoyment produces; from this moment on, it becomes one, whether this enjoyment be beneficial or damaging to the object which must submit itself to me. Have I not already proven that it is legal to force the woman's will in this connection? and that immediately she excites the desire to enjoy she has got to expose herself to this enjoying, all egotistical sentiments being disregarded? The same applies to her health. As soon as regard for this consideration threatens to destroy or enfeeble the enjoyment of him who desires her, and who has the right to appropriate her, this concern for age is extinguished; for what the object may experience, condemned by Nature and by the law to slake momentarily the other's thirst, is nothing to the point; in this study, we are only interested in what suits him who desires. But we will redress the balance.
Yes, we will redress it; doubdess, we ought to. These women we have just so cruelly enslaved-there is no denying we must recompense them, and that is what is going to form the response to the second question I proposed myself. If we admit, as we have just admitted, that all women ought to be subjugated to our desires, we may certainly allow then ample satisfaction of theirs. Our laws must be favorable to their fiery temperament. It is absurd to have located both their honor and their virtue in the antinatural strength they employ to resist the penchants with which they have been far more profusely endowed than we; this injustice of manners is the more flagrant in our consenting at once to render them weak by means of seduction, and then to punish them for what they yield to all the efforts we have made to provoke them to their fall. All the absurdity of our manners is graven, it seems to me, in this inequitable atrocity, and that exposition alone ought to make us feel the extreme need we are in to exchange them for manners more pure.
I say then that women, having been injected with considerably more violent penchants for carnal
J)leasure than we, will be able to eat their fill, absolutely ree of all encumbering hymeneal ties, of all false notions of modesty, absolutely restored to a state of Nature; I want the laws to permit them to give themselves to as many men as they see fit; I would have them accorded the enjoyment of all sexes and, as in the case of men, the enjoyment of all parts of the body; and under the special clause that prescribes their surrender to all who desire them, they must have the freedom of equal enjoyment of all they may consider worthy to satisfy them.
What, I demand to know, what dangers are there in this license? Children who will lack fathers? Ha! what difference does that make in a Republic where every individual must have no other dam than the Nation, where everyone born is the Motherland's child. And how much more they will love her, they who, never having known any but her, will comprehend from birth that it is only from her all must be expected. Do not suppose you are fashioning good Republicans while children, who ought to belong to the Republic alone, are isolated, immured in their families. By giving to the family, to only a fcw persons, the portion of affection they ought to distribute amongst their brothers, they inevitably adopt those persons' sometimes very dangerous prejudices; their opinions, their thoughts are particularized, malformed, and all the virtues of a Man of the State become completely unavailable to them. Finally abandoning their heart altogether to those by whom they have been given breath, they no longer find any affection in their heart for what will cause them to live, to understand, and to shine, as if these latter blessings were not more important than the former. If there is the greatest disadvantage in thus letting children imbibe from their family interests often in sharp disagreement with those of their country, there is then the most excellent argument for separating them from their family; are they not naturally weaned away by the means I suggest, since in absolutely destroying all marital bonds, there are no longer born, as fruits of the woman's pleasure, anything but children to whom knowledge of their father is absolutely forbidden and with that the means of belonging to only one family, instead of being, as they must be, solely Us enfants de la patrie.
There will then be houses intended for women's libertinage and, like the men's, under the government's protection; in these establishments there will be furnished all the individuals, of either sex, the women will be able to desire, and the more they frequent these places the more they will be esteemed. There is nothing as barbarous or more ludicrous than to have identified their honor and their virtue with the resistance women show the desires Nature implants in them, and which continually inflame those who are barbaric enough to pass censure on them. From the most tender age (i) a girl released from her paternal
(i) The Babylonians scarcely awaited their seventh year to carry their first fruits to the temple of Venus. The first impulse scence a young girl feels is the moment when Nature fetters, no longer having anything to preserve for marriage (completely abolished by the wise laws I advocate) and superior to the prejudices which in former times imprisoned her sex, will therefore, in the houses created for the purpose, be able to indulge in everything to which she is prompted by her constitution; she will be received with respect, copiously satisfied, and, returned once again into society, she will be able to speak of the pleasures she tasted quite as publicly as today she speaks of a ball or promenade. O charming sex, you will be free: as do men, you will enjoy all the pleasures of which Nature makes a duty, from not one will you be withheld. Must the more divine part of humankind be laden with irons by the other? Ah, break those irons; Nature wills it. For a bridle have nothing but your inclinations, for law, only your desires, for morality Nature's alone; languish no longer under brutal prejudices which wither your charms and hold captive the divine impulses of your hearts (i); like us, you are free, and just as for us the field of action whereon one contends for Venus' favors is open to you; have no fear of absurd reproaches; pedantry and superstition are annihilated; no longer will you be seen to blush at your charming delinquencies; crowned with myrtle and roses, the esteem we will conceive for you will be henceforth in direct proportion to the scale you will allow yourselves to give your extravagances. bids her prostitute herself, and without any other kind of consideration she must yield instantly Nature speaks; if she resists, she outrages Nature's law.
(i) Women are unaware to what point their lasciviousness embellishes them. Let one compare two women of roughly comparable age and beauty, one of whom lives in celibacy, and the other in libertinage: it will be seen by how much the latter exceeds in iclai and freshness; all violence done Nature is far more wearing than the abuse of pleasures; everyone knows beds improve a woman's looks.
What has just been said ought doubtless to dispense us from examining adultery; nevertheless, let's cast a glance upon it, however non-existent it be according to the laws I am establishing. To what point was it not ridiculous in our former institutions to consider it criminal! Were there anything absurd in the world, very surely it is the timelessness ascribed to conjugal relations; it appears to me it is but necessary to scrutinize, or sense the weight of, those bonds in order to cease to view as criminal the act which lightens them; Nature, as we remarked recently, having supplied women with a temper more ardent, with a sensibility more profound than she awarded persons of the other sex, it is unquestionably for women that the marital contract proved more onerous.
Tender women, you ablaze with love's fire, compensate yourselves now, and do so without fear; persuade yourselves that there can exist no evil in obedience to Nature's promptings, that it is not for one man she created you, but to please them all, without discrimination. Let no anxiety check you. Imitate the Greek Republicans; never did the philosophers whence they had their laws contrive to make adultery a crime for them, and nearly all authorized disorderliness among women. Thomas Moms proves in his Utopia that it becomes women to surrender themselves to debauchery, and that great man's ideas were not always pure dreams, (i)
Amongst the Tartars, the more profligate a woman, the more she was honored; about her neck she publicly wore the marks of her impudicity, and those who were not at all decorated were not at all admired. In the Burmese capitol, Pegu, families cede their wives and daughters to traveling strangers; they are rented at
(i) The same thinker wished affianced couples to see each other nude before marriage. How many alliances would fail, were this law enforced! It might be declared that the contrary is indeed what is termed purchase of merchandise sight unseen. io much the day, like horses, or carriages. Volumes, finally, would not suffice to demonstrate that lewd behaviour has never been esteemed criminal among the illuminated peoples of the earth. Every philosopher knows very well it is solely to the Christian impostors we are indebted for having set it up as crime.
The priests had excellent cause to forbid us lechery: this injunction, by reserving to them acquaintance with and absolution for these private sins, gave them an incredible sway over women, and opened up to them a career of lubricity whose scope knew no limits. One knows perfectly well how they profited from and how they would abuse again their powers, were they not hopelessly discredited.
Is incest more dangerous? doubtless, it is not; it broadens family ties and consequently renders the citizens' love for country more active; the primary laws of Nature dictate it to us, we feel it, and the enjoyment of the objects we own seems to us all the more delectable. The most primitive institutions smiled upon incest; it is found in society's origins: it was consecrated in every religion, every law encouraged it. If we traverse the world we will find incest everywhere established. The blacks of the Ivory Coast and Gabon prostitute their wives to their own children; in Judah, the eldest son must marry his father's wife; the people of Chile sleep indifferently with their sisters, their daughters, and marry mother and daughter at the same time. I dare say, in a word, that incest ought to be every government's law-every government whose basis is fraternity. How is it that reasonable men were able to carry absurdity to the point of believing that the enjoyment of one's mother, sister, or daughter could ever be criminal? Is that not, I ask, an abominable view wherein it is made to appear a crime for a man to place higher value upon the enjoyment of an object to which natural feeling draws him close? One might just as well say that we are forbidden to love too much the individuals Nature enjoins us to love best, and that the more she gives us a hunger for some object, the more she orders us away from it. These are absurd ambiguities; only people bestialized by superstition can believe or adopt them. The community of women I am establishing necessarily leading to incest, there remains little to say upon a supposed misdemeanor, whose inexistence is too plainly evident to warrant further pursuit of the matter, and we shall turn our attention to rape, which at first glance seems to be, of all libertinage excesses, the one whose wrongful ness is best established, by reason of the outrage it appears to cause. It is certain, however, that jape, an act so very rare and so very difficult to prove, wrongs one's neighbor less than theft, since the latter encroaches upon property the former is content merely to damage. Beyond that, what objections have you to the ravisher? What will you say, when he replies to you that, as a matter-of-fact, the injury he has committed is mediocre indeed, since he has done no more than place a little sooner the object he has abused in the very state in which she would soon have been put by marriage and love.
But sodomy, that alleged crime which will draw the fire of heaven upon cities addicted to it, is sodomy not a monstrous deviation whose punishment could not be severe enough? Indeed, it causes us sorrow to have to reproach our ancestors for the judiciary murders in which, upon this head, they dared indulge themselves. Is it possible to be so savage as to dare condemn to death an unhappy person all of whose crime amounts to not sharing your tastes? One shudders to think that not forty years ago the legislators' unwisdom remained at that height. Console yourselves, citizens; such absurdities will no longer occur: the intelligence of your law-makers will answer for it. Thoroughly enlightened upon this weakness of some few men, people deeply sense today that such error cannot be criminal, and that Nature, who places such importance upon the essence that flows in our loins, cannot wax wrath against the choice of avenue for this liquor it pleases us to make. What single crime can exist here? Certainly, it is not of introducing oneself into such-and-such a cavity, unless one were to wish to maintain that all the parts of the body do not resemble each other, that there are some which are pure, and others defiled; but, as it is unthinkable such nonsense be advanced seriously, the only possible crime would consist in the loss of semen. Well, is it likely that this semen is so precious to Nature that its loss is necessarily criminal? Were that so, would she every day institute those losses? and is it not to authorize them to permit them in dreams, to permit them in the act of taking one's pleasure with a pregnant woman? Is it possible to imagine Nature having allowed us the possibility of committing a crime that would outrage her? Is it possible that she consent to the destruction by man of her own pleasures, and to his thereby becoming stronger than she? It is unheard of-into what a gulf of folly one is hurled when, in order to reason, one abandons the aid of reason's torch! Let us abide in our unshakable assurance that it is as easy to enjoy a woman in one manner as in another, that it makes absolutely no difference whether one enjoys a girl or a boy, and as soon as it is clearly understood that no inclinations or tastes can exist in us save the ones we have from Nature, that she is too wise and too consistent to have given us any which could ever offend her.
The penchant for sodomy is the result of physical formation, to which we contribute nothing and cannot alter. At the most tender age, some children announce that taste, and it is never corrected in them. Sometimes, it is the fruit of satiety; but, even in this case, is it less Nature's doing? Regardless of how it is viewed, it is her work, and, in every instance, what she inspires must be respected by men. If, were one to take an exact inventory, it should come to be proven that this taste is infinitely more affecting than the other, that the pleasures resulting from it are far more lively, and that for this reason its exponents are a thousand times more numerous than its enemies, would it not then be possible to conclude that, far from affronting Nature, this vice serves her intentions, and that she is less enthusiastic about procreation than we are so mad as to believe? Why, as we travel about the world, how many peoples do we not see holding women in contempt! TTiere are some who absolutely avoid employing them for anything but the having of the child necessary to replace them. The habit men have of living together in Republics always renders this vice more frequent amongst them; but it is not dangerous. Would the Greek legislators have introduced it into their Republics had they thought it so? Quite the contrary, they deemed it necessary to a war-like race. Plutarch speaks with enthusiasm of the battalion of lovers and beloved: for a long time, they alone defended Greece's freedom. The vice reigned among the comrades-in-arms, and cemented their society. The greatest of men lean towards sodomy. The whole of America, at the time it was discovered, was found inhabited by people of this taste. In Louisiana, amongst the Illinois, Indians appareled as women prostituted themselves as courtesans; nearly all the seraglios of Algiers are, today, filled with young boys exclusively. They were not content to tolerate, with the Thebans love for young boys was mandatory; the philosopher of Chaeronea prescribed it to sweeten love for young men. We know to what extent it was prevalent in Rome, where one found public places in which young boys, costumed as girls, and girls as boys, prostituted themselves. Martial, Catullus, Tibullus, Horace, and Virgil wrote to men as if to their mistresses; and we read in Plutarch (i) that women must in no way figure in men's love. The Amasians of Crete used to abduct boys, and their initiation was accompanied by the most singular ceremonies. When they were taken with love for one, they notified the parents upon what day the ravisher wished to carry him off; the youth put up some resistance if his lover failed to please him; in the contrary case, they went away together, and the seducer restored him to his family as soon as he had made use of him; for in this passion as in that for women, one always has too much when one has enough of it. Strabo informs us that on this very island, seraglios were peopled with boys only; they were prostituted openly. Is one more authority required to prove how useful this vice is in a Republic? Let us lend an ear to Jerome the Peripatetic: "The love of youths," says he, "spread throughout all of Greece, for it gave us strength and courage, and it served to drive out the tyrants; conspiracies were formed between lovers, and they preferred torture to discovering their accomplices; thus, patriotism sacrificed everything to the State's prosperity; it was beheld as a certain thing, that these attachments steadied the Republic, women were declaimed against, and to entertain connections with such creatures was a frailty reserved for despots. " Pederasty used always to be the vice of warrior races. From Caesar we learn that the Gauls were to an extraordinary degree given to it. The wars fought to sustain the Republics brought about the separation of the two sexes, and hence the propagation of the vice, and when its consequences, so useful to the State, were recognized, religion speedily blessed it. That the Romans sanctified the love of Jupiter and Ganymede is well known. Sextus Empiricus assures us that this caprice was compulsory amongst the Persians. At last, the women, jealous
(l) The Mrralitus: "On Love. " and contemned, offered to render their husbands the same service they received from young boys; some few men made the experiment, and returned to their former habits, finding the illusion impossible. The Turks, greatly inclined towards this depravity Mohammed consecrated in the Koran, were nevertheless convinced that a very young virgin could well enough be substituted for a youth, and rarely did they grow to womanhood without having passed through the experience. Sextus Quintus and Sanchez allowed this debauch; the latter even undertook to prove it was of use to procreation, and that a child created after this preliminary exercise was infinitely better constituted thanks to it. Finally, women found restitution by turning to each other. This latter fantasy, doubtless, has no more disadvantages than the other, since its only result is the refusal to create, and since the means of those who have a bent for reproduction are powerful enough for reproduction's adversaries never to be able to harm population. Among the Greeks, this female perversion was also supported by political considerations: the result of it was that, finding each other sufficient, their communications with men were less frequent, and thus they were not injurious to the Republic's affairs. Lucian informs us of what progress this license promoted, and it is not without interest we sec it in Sappho.
In fine, nothing dangerous may be found in any of these manias; were women to carry them even further, were they to go so far as to caress monsters and animals, as the example of every race teaches us, there would not be, in all this trifling stuff, the least disadvantage, because the corruption of manners, often of prime utility to a government, would not in any sense be able to harm it, and we must require enough wisdom and enough prudence of our legislators to be entirely sure that no law will emanate from them that would repress those misfortunes which, in that they are inseparable from the physical organization, could never render the person inclined towards them any more guilty than the person Nature created deformed.
In the second category of man's crimes against his brethren, there is left to us only murder to examine, and then we will move on to man's duties towards himself. Of all the offenses man may commit against his fellows, murder is without question the cruellest, since it deprives man of the single asset he has received from Nature, the only one, and its loss is irreparable. Nevertheless, at this stage several questions arise, leaving aside the wrong murder does him who becomes its victim.
1. With what regards the laws of Nature only, is this act really criminal?
2. Is it criminal with what regards the laws of politics?
3. Is it harmful to society?
4. What must be a Republican government's attitude towards it?
5. Lastly, must murder be repressed by murder?
Each of these questions will be treated separately; the subject is important enough that we be permitted to pause over it; our ideas, perhaps, will be found on the strong side. But what does that matter? Have we not acquired the right to say anything? Let us develop great truths for men; men expect them of us. The time has come for error to disappear, her blindfold must fall beside that of kings. From Nature's point of view, is murder a crime? That is the first question posed.
It is probable that we are going to humiliate man's pride by lowering him again to the rank of all of Nature's other products, but the philosopher does not flatter small human vanities; always burning to pursue truth, he discerns it behind the stupid notions of amour-propre, fastens upon it, develops it, and boldly shows it to the astonished world.
What is man? and what difference is there between him and other plants, between him and all the other animals of the world? None, obviously. Fortuitously placed, like them, upon . this globe, he is born like them; like them, he reproduces, rises and falls, like them be arrives at old age and sinks like them into nothingness after the lifespan Nature assigns each species of animal, in accordance with the construction of its organs. Since the parallels are so exact that the enquiring eye of philosophy is absolutely unable to perceive any dissimilarity, there is then just as much evil in killing animals as men, or just as little, and whatever be the distinctions we make, they will be found to stem from our pride's prejudices, than which, unhappily, nothing is more absurd. Let us all the same press on to the question. You cannot deny it is one, to destroy either a man or a beast; but is not the destruction of all living animals decidedly an evil, as the Pythagoreans believed and as yet believe they who dwell on the banks of Ganges? Before answering that, we remind the reader that we are only examining the question in terms of Nature and in relation to her; later on, we will envisage it with reference to men. Well, then, what value can Nature set upon the individuals which cost her neither the least trouble nor the slightest concern? The worker only esteems his work in terms of the labor it demands and the time spent creating it. Does man cost Nature anything? And, under the supposition that he does, does he cost her more than an ape or an elephant? I go further: what are the regenerative materials of Nature? Of what are composed the beings which come into life? Do not the three elements of which they are formed result from the primary destruction of other bodies? If the eternity of beings is impossible to Nature, their destruction therefore becomes one of her laws. Now, once we observe that destruction is so useful to her that she absolutely cannot do without it, and that she cannot achieve her creations without drawing from those masses of destruction which death prepares for her, from this moment onwards the idea of annihilation which we attach to death will no longer be real; there will be no more authentic annihilation; what we call the end of the living animal will no longer be a true end, but a simple transformation, a transmutation of matter, what every modem philosopher acknowledges as one of Nature's fundamental laws. According to these irrefutable principles, death is hence no more than a change of form, than an imperceptible passage from one existence into another, and that is what Pythagoras called metempsychosis.
These truths once admitted, I ask whether it can ever be proposed that destruction is a crime? Will you dare tell me, with the design of preserving our absurd illusions, that transmutation is destruction? No, surely not; for, to prove that, it would be necessary to demonstrate matter inert for an instant, for a moment in repose. Well, you will never discover that moment. Little animals are formed immediately a great animal expires, and these little animals' life is simply one of the necessary effects determined by the great animal's temporary sleep. Once aware of all that, dare you suggest one pleases Nature more than another? To support that, you would have to prove what cannot be proven: that elongated or square are more useful, more agreeable to Nature than oblong or triangular shapes; you would have to prove that, with what regards Nature's sublime scheme, a sluggard who fattens in idleness and indolence is more useful than the horse, whose service is of such importance, or than a steer, whose body is so precious that there is no part of it which is not useful; you would have to say that the poisonous serpent is more necessary than the faithful dog. As not one of these systems can be upheld, one must, hence, consent unreservedly to acknowledge our inability to annihilate Nature's works; in light of the certainty that the only thing we do when we give ourselves over to destroying is merely to work an alteration in forms which does not extinguish life, it becomes beyond human powers to prove that there may exist anything criminal in the alleged destruction of a creature, of whatever age, or sex, or species you may suppose it. Led still further by the series of our inferences which proceed one from the other, the act you commit in varying the forms of Nature's different productions, is of advantage to her, since, by such action, you supply her with the primary material for her reconstructions, work upon which would become impracticable were you not to annihilate.
Well, let her do it, they tell you; one ought to let her do it, of course, but they are Nature's impulses man follows when he indulges in homicide; it is Nature who advises him, and the man who destroys his fellow is to Nature what are the plague or famine, like them sent by her hand which employs every possible means more speedily to obtain of destruction this primary matter, itself absolutely essential to her works. Let us deign for a moment to illumine our spirit by philosophy's holy flame; what other than Nature's voice suggests to us personal hatreds, revenges, wars, in a word, all those causes of perpetual murder? Now, if she recommends them to us, she has need of them; that once grasped, how may we suppose ourselves guilty towards her, when we do nothing more than obey her intentions? But that is more than what is needed to convince every enlightened reader, that for murder ever to be an outrage to Nature is impossible.
Is it a political crime? We must avow, on the contrary, that it is, unhappily, merely one of policy's and politics' greatest resources. Is it not by dint of murders that France is free today? Needless to say, we only speak here of the murders occasioned by war, not of the atrocities committed by the factious and the rebellious; the latter, condemned to the public's execration, have only to be recollected forever to excite general horror and indignation. What humane study, what science has greater need of murder's support than that which tends only to deceive, whose sole end is the expansion of one nation at another's expense? Are wars, the unique fruit of this political barbarism, anything but the means whereby it is nourished, whereby it is strengthened, whereby it is buttressed? And what is war if not the science of destruction? A strange blindness in man, who publicly teaches the art of killing, who rewards the most accomplished killer, and who punishes him who for some particular reason does away with his enemy! Is it not high time errors so savage be repaired?
Is murder then a crime against society? But how could that reasonably be imagined? What difference does it make to this numerous society, whether it have one member more, or less? Will its laws, its manners, its customs be vitiated? Has an individual's death ever had any influence upon the general mass? And after the loss of the greatest battle, what am I saying? after the obliteration of half the world, why, if one wishes, of all the world would the little number of survivors be sensible of the faintest material alteration in things? No, alas. All of Nature would experience no more; and the stupid pride of man, who believes everything created for him, would be astonished indeed, after the total extinction of the human species, were it to see that nothing in Nature were different, and that the stars' flight had not for that been retarded. We continue.
What must be the attitude of a war-like and Republican state towards murder?
Dangerous it should certainly be, either to cast discredit upon the act, or to punish it. Republican mettlesomeness calls for a touch of ferocity: if he grows soft, if his energy deserts him, the Republican will be subjugated in a trice. A most unusual thought comes to mind at this point, but if it is audacious it is also true, and I will mention it. A nation that begins by governing itself as a Republic will only be sustained by virtues because, in order to attain the most, one must always start with the least. But an already old and decayed nation which courageously casts off the yoke of its monarchic government in order to adopt a Republican one, will only be maintained by many crimes; for it is criminal already, and if it were to wish to pass from crime to virtue, that is to say, from a violent to a pacific, benign condition, it should fall into an inertia whose result would soon be its certain ruin. What could become of the tree you would transplant from a soil full of vigor to a sandy, dessicate plain? All intellectual ideas are so greatly subordinate to Nature's physical aspect that the comparisons supplied us by agriculture will never deceive us in morals.
Savages, the most independent of men, the nearest to Nature, daily indulge in murder which amongst them goes unpunished. In Sparta, in Lacaedaemon, they hunted Helots, just as we in France go on partridge shoots. The freest of people are they who are most friendly to murder: on Mindanao, a man who wishes to commit a murder is raised to the rank of warrior brave, he is straightway decorated with a turban; among the Caraguos, one must have killed seven men to obtain the honors of this headdress: the inhabitants of Borneo believe all those they put to death will serve them when they themselves depart life; devout Spaniards made a vow to St. James of Galicia to kill a dozen Americans every day; in the kingdom of Tangut, a young man, strong and vigorous, is chosen: on certain days of the year he is allowed to kill whomever he encounters; was there ever a people better disposed to murder than the Jews? one sees it under every form, upon every page of their history.
Now and again, China's emperor and mandarins take measures to produce a revolt amongst the people, in order to derive, from these Angeuvers, the right to transform them into horrible slaughters. May that soft and effeminate people rise against their tyrants; the latter will be massacred in their turn, and with much greater justice; murder, adopted always, always necessary, will have but changed its victims; it used to be the delight of some, and will become the felicity of others. An infinite number of nations tolerate public assassinations; they are freely permitted in Genoa, Venice, Naples, and throughout Albania; at Kachao on the San Domingo River, murderers, in well-known guise and unashamedly, upon your orders and before your very eyes, cut the throat of the person you have pointed out to them; Indians take opium to encourage themselves to murder; afterwards, flinging themselves into the street, they butcher everyone they meet; English travelers have found this idiosyncrasy in Batavia, too. What people were at once greater and more cruel than the Romans, and what nation longer preserved its splendor and freedom? The gladiatorial spectacles fed its bravery, it became war-like through the habit of making a game of murder. Twelve or fifteen hundred victims filled the circus' arena every day, and there the women, more cruel than the men, dared demand that the dying fall gracefully and be sketched while still in death's throes. The Romans moved from that to the pleasures of seeing dwarfs cut each other to pieces; and when the Christian cult, then infecting the world, came to persuade men there was evil in killing one another, the tyrants immediately enchained that people, and everyone's heroes became their toys.
Everywhere, in short, it was rightly believed that the murderer, that is to say, the man who stifled his sensibilities to the point of killing his fellow-man, and of braving public or private vengeance; everywhere, I say, it was thought such a man could only be very courageous, and consequently very precious to a war-like or Republican community. We may discover certain nations which, yet more ferocious, could only satisfy themselver by immolating children, and very often their own, and we will see these actions universally adopted, and upon occasion even made part of the law. Several savage tribes kill their children immediately they are born. Mothers, on the banks of the Orinoco, firm in the belief their daughters were born only to be miserable, since their fate was to become wives in this country where women were found insufferable, immolated them as soon as they were brought into the light. In Trapobane and in the kingdom of Sopit, all deformed children were immolated by their own parents. If their children are born on certain days of the week, the women of Madagascar expose them to wild beasts. In the Republics of Greece, all the children who came into the world were carefully examined, and if they were found not to conform to the requirements determined by the Republic's defense, they were sacrificed on the spot: in those days, it was not deemed essential to build richly furnished and endowed houses for the preservation of human nature's vile scum, (i) Up until the transference of the seat of the Empire, all the Romans who were not disposed to feed their offspring flung them upon the dung heaps. The ancient legislators had no scruple about condemning children to death, and never did one of their codes repress the rights of a father, over his family. Aristotle urged abortion; and those ancient Republicans, filled with enthusiasm, with patriotic fervor, failed to appreciate this commiseration for the individual person that
(i) It must be hoped the nation will eliminate this expense, the most useless of all; every individual born lacking the qualities to become useful someday to the Republic, has no right to live, and the best thing for all concerned is to deprive him of life the moment he receives it. one finds in modern nations: they loved their children less, but their country more. In all the cities of China, one found every morning an incredible number of children abandoned in the streets; a dung-cart picked them up at dawn, and they were tossed into a trench; often the midwives themselves disencumbered mothers by instantly plunging their issue into vats of boiling water, or by throwing it into the river. In Peking, infants were put into little reed baskets that were lm on the canals; everyday, these canals were skimmed clean, and the famous traveler Duhalde calculates as above thirty thousand the number of infants collected in the course of each search.
It cannot be denied that it is extraordinarily necessary, extremely politic to erect a dyke against over-population in a Republican system; for entirely contrary reasons, the birthrate must be encouraged in a monarchy; there, the tyrants being rich only by the number of their slaves, they assuredly have to have men; but do not doubt for a minute that populousness is a genuine vice in a Republican government. However, it is not necessary to butcher people to lessen it, as our modern decemvirs used to say; it is but a question of not leaving it the means of extending beyond te limits its happiness prescribes. Beware of too great a multiplication in a race whose every member is sovereign, and be certain that revolutions are never but the effect of a too numerous population. Ie for the State's splendor, you accord your warriors the right to destroy men, for the preservation of that same State grant also unto each individual the right to give himself over as much as he pleases, since this he may do without offending Nature, to ridding himself of the children he is unable to feed, or upon which the government cannot depend for assistance; in the same way, grant him the right to rid himself, at his own risk and peril, of all the enemies capable of harming him, because the result of all these acts, in themselves of perfect inconsequence, will be to keep your population in a moderate state, and never numerous enough to overthrow your regime. Let the monarchists say a State is great only by reason of its extreme population: this State will forever be poor, if its population exceeds the wherewithal by means of which it can subsist, and it will flourish always if, contained within its proper limits, it can make traffic of its superfluity. Do you not prune the tree when it has over many branches? and to save the trunk, do you not trim the twigs? Every system which deviates from these principles is an extravagance whose abuses would conduct us directly to the total subversion of the edifice we have just raised with so much trouble; but it is not . at the moment the man reaches maturity one must destroy him in order to reduce population. It is unjust to cut short the days of a well-shaped person; it is not unjust, I say, to prevent the arrival in the world of a being who will certainly be useless to it. The human species must be purged from the cradle; what you foresee as useless to society is what must be stricken out of it; there you have the only reasonable means to the diminishment of a population, whose excessive size is, as we have just proven, the most dangerous of indulgences.
The time has come to sum up.
Must murder be repressed by murder? Surely not. Let us never impose any other penalty upon the murderer than the one he may risk from the vengeance of the friends or family of him he has killed. "I grant you pardon," said Louis XV to Charolais who, to divert himself, had just killed a man; "but I also pardon whoever will kill you. " All the bases of the law against murderers may be found in that sublime motto, (i)
(i) The Salic Law only punished murder by exacting a simple fine, and as the guilty one easily found ways to avoid payment, Childebert, king of Austrasia, decreed, in a writ publish Briefly, murder is a horror, but an often necessary horror, never criminal, which it is essential to tolerate in a Republican State. I have made it clear the entire universe has given as example of it; but ought it be considered an act to be punished by death?
They who will respond to the following dilemma will have answered the question:
Is it or is it not a crime?
If it is not, why make laws for its punishments? And if it is not, by what barbarous and stupid inconsistency will you punish it with a similar crime?
We have but to speak of man's duties towards himself. As the philosopher only adopts these duties in the measure to which they tend to his pleasure or to his preservation, it is most useless to recommend their practice to him, still more useless to threaten him with penalties if he fails to adopt them.
The only offense of this variety man can commit is suicide. I will not entertain myself here by demonstrating the imbecility of the people who make of this act a crime; those who might have any doubts upon the matter are referred to the famous letter of Rousseau. Nearly all early governments, through policy or religion, authorized suicide. Before the Areopagites Athenians exposed their reasons for self-destruction; then they stabbed themselves. Every Greek government tolerated suicide; it entered into the ancient legislators' scheme; one killed oneself in public, and one made of one's death a spectacle of magnificence.
The Roman Republic encouraged suicide; those so greatly celebrated instances of devotion to country ed at Cologne, the death penalty, not against the murderer, but against him who would shirk the murderer's fine. Ripuarian Law similarly ordained no more against this act than a fine proportionate to the individual killed. A priest was extremely costly: a leaden tunic, 'cut to his measurements, was tailored for the assassin, and he was obliged to produce the equivalent of this tunic's weight in gold; in default of which the guilty one and his family remained slaves of the Church. were nothing other than suicides. When Rome was taken by the Gauls, the most illustrious senators consecrated themselves to death; as we imitate that spirit, we adopt the same virtues. During the campaign of '92, a soldier, grief-stricken to find himself unable to follow his comrades to the Jemmapes affair, killed himself. Incessantly standing at the high level of those proud Republicans, we will soon surpass their virtue: it is the government that makes the man. Accustomed for so long to despotism, our courage was utterly crippled; despotism depraved our manners; we are being reborn; it will shortly be seen of what sublime actions the French genius and character are capable when they are free; let us maintain, at the
Erice of our fortunes and our lives, this liberty which as already cost us so many victims, of whom we regret not one if we attain our objective; every one of them sacrificed himself voluntarily; let us not permit that their blood should have been shed in vain; but union . . . union, or we will lose the fruit of all our troubles. Upon the victories we have just achieved let us seat excellent laws; our first legislators, then slaves of the despot we have just slaughtered, gave us nothing but laws worthy of that tyrant they continued to reverence: let us re-do their work, let us consider that it is at last for Republicans we are going to labor; may our laws be gentle, like the people they must rule.
In pointing out, as I have just done, the nullity, the indifference of an infinite number of actions our ancestors, seduced by a false religion, beheld as criminal, I reduce our labor to very little. Let us create few laws, but let them be good; rather than multiplying hindrances, it is purely a question of giving an indestructible quality to the law we employ, of seeing to it that the laws we promulgate have, as ends, nothing but the citizen's tranquility, his happiness, and the State's glory. But, Frenchmen, after having driven the enemy from your lands, I should not have the zeal to broadcast your principles lead you any further; it is with fire and steel only that you will be able to carry them to the ends of the earth. Before taking upon yourselves such resolutions, remember the unhappy success of the crusades. When the enemy will have fled beyond the Rhine, heed me, guard your frontiers, and stay at home behind them. Revive your commerce, restore energy and markets to your manufacturing; cause your arts to flourish again, encourage agriculture, both so necessary in a government such as yours, and whose spirit must be to be able to provide for everyone without standing in need of anyone. Leave the thrones of Europe to crumble of themselves: your example, your prosperity will soon send them flying, without your having to meddle in the business at all.
Invincible within and because of your administration and your laws a model to every race, there will not be a single government which will not strive to imitate you, not one which will not be honored by your alliance; but if, for the vainglory of carrying your principles beyond your country, you neglect to care for your own felicity, despotism, which is no more than asleep, will awake, you will be rent by intestine discord, your will have exhausted your monies and your soldiers, and all that, all that to return to kiss the manacles the tyrants, who will have subjugated you during your absence, will impose upon you; all you desire may be wrought without quitting your home: let other people observe you happy, and they will rush to happiness by the same road you have traced for them, (t)
Eugenie, to' Dolmance. -Now, it strikes me as a very solidly composed document, that one, and it seems to me in such close agreement with your prin (i) Let it be remembered that foreign warfare was never proposed save by the infamous Dumouriez. Disciples, at least with many of them, that I should be , tempted to believe you its author.
Dolmance. -Indeed my thinking does correspond with some part of these reflections and my discourses-they've proven it to you-even give to what has just been read to us the appearance of a repetition. . . .
Eugenie. -That I did not notice; wise and good words cannot be too often uttered; however, I find several amongst these principles a trifle dangerous.
Dolmance. -In this world there is nothing dangerous but pity and beneficence; goodness is never but a weakness of which the ingratitude and impertinence of the feeble always force honest folk to repent. Let a keen observer calculate all of pity's dangers, and let him compare them With those of a staunch, resolute severity, and he will see whether the former are not the greater. But we are straying, Eugdnie; in the interests of your education, let's compress all that has just been said into this single word of advice: Never listen to your heart, my child; it is the most untrustworthy guide we have received from Nature; with greatest care close it up to misfortune's fallacious accent; far better for you to refuse a person whose wretchedness is genuine than to run the great risk of giving to a bandit, to an intriguer, or to a caballer: the one is of a very slight importance, the other may be of the highest disadvantage.
Le Chevalier. -May I be allowed to cast a glance upon the foundations of Dolmance's principles? for I would like to try to annihilate them, and may be able to. Ah, how different they would be, cruel man, if, stripped of the immense fortune which continually provides you with the means to gratify your passions, you were to languish a few years in that crushing misfortune of which your ferocious mind dares to fashion knouts wherewith to lash the wretched! Cast a pitying look upon them, and stifle not your soul to the point at which the piercing cries of need shall never more be heard by you; when your frame, wearied from ought but pleasure, languorously reposes upon swansdown couches, look ye at those others wasted by the drudgeries which support your existence, and at their bed, scarcely more than a straw or two for protection against the rude earth whereof, like beasts, they have nothing but the chill crust to lie down upon; cast a glance at them while, surrounded by succulent meats wherewith every day twenty of Comus' students awake your sensuality, cast a glance, I say, at those wretches in the woods yonder, disputing with wolves the dry soil's bitter root; when the most affecting objects of Cythera's temple are with games, charms, laughter led to your impure bed, consider that poor luckless fellow stretched out near his grieving wife: content with the pleasures he reaps at the breast of tears, he does not even suspect the existence of others; look ye at him when you are denying yourself nothing, when you are swimming in the midst of glut, in a sea of surfeiture; behold him, I tell you, see how there are wanting to him even the primary necessaries of life; regard his desolated family, his trembling wife who tenderly divides herself between the cares, she owes her husband, languishing near her, and those Nature enjoins for love's offspring, deprived of the possibility to fulfill any of those duties so sacred unto her sensitive heart; if you can do it, without a tremor hear her beg of you the leavings your cruelty refuses her!
Barbaric one, are these not at all human beings like you? and if they are of your kind, why should you enjoy yourself while they lie dying? Eugenie, Eugenie, never slay the sacred voice of Nature in your breast: it is to benevolence it will direct you despite yourself when you extricate from out of the fire of passions that absorb it the clear tenor of Nature. Leave religious principles far behind you-very well, I approve it; but abandon not the virtues sensibility inspires in us; 'twill never be but by practicing them we will taste the sweetest, the most delicious of the soul's delights: a good deed will buy pardon for all your mind's depravities, it will soothe the remorse your misconduct will bring to birth and, forming in the depths of your conscience a sacred asylum whereunto you will sometimes repair, you will find there consolation for the excesses into which your errors will have dragged you. Sister, I am young, yes, I am libertine, impious, I am capable of every mental obscenity, but my heart remains to me, it is pure and, my friends, it is with it I am consoled for the irregularities of this my age.
Dolmance. -Yes, Chevalier, you are young, your speeches illustrate it; you are wanting in experience; the day will come, and I await it, when you will be seasoned; then, my dear, you will no longer speak so well of mankind, for you will have made its acquaintance. 'Twas men's ingratitude dried out my heart, their perfidy which destroyed in me those baleful virtues for which, perhaps, like you, I was also born. Now, if the vices of the one establish these dangerous virtues in the other, is it not then to render youth a great service when one throttles those virtues in youth at an early hour? Oh, my friend, how you do speak to me of remorse! Can remorse exist in the soul of him who recognizes crime in nothing? Let your principles weed it out of you if you dread its sting; will it be possible to repent an action with whose indifference you are profoundly penetrated? When you no longer believe evil anywhere exists, of what evil will you be able to repent?
Le Chevalier. -It is not from the mind remorse comes; rather, 'tis the heart's issue, and never will the intellect's sophistries blot out the soul's impulsions.
Dolmance. -However, the heart deceives, because it is never anything but the expression of the mind's miscalculations; allow the latter to mature and the former will yield in good time; we are constantly led astray by false definitions when we wish to reason logically: I don't know what the heart is, not I: I only use the word to denote the mind's frailties. One single, one unique flame sheds its light in me: when I am whole and well, sound and sane, I am never misled by it; I am old, hypochondriacally or pusillanimous, and it deceives me; in which case I tell myself I am sensitive, but in truth I am merely weak and timid. Once again, Eugenie, I say it unto you: be not abused by this perfidious sensibility; be well convinced of it, it is nothing but the mind's weakness; one weeps not save when one is afraid, and that is why kings are tyrants. Reject, contemn the Chevalier's insidious advice; in telling you to open your heart to all of misfortune's imaginary ills, he strives to ready for you a host of troubles which, not being your own, would soon plunge you into an anguish and that for no purpose. Ah, Eugenie, believe me when I tell you that the delights born of apathy are worth much more than those you get of your sensibility; the latter can only touch the heart in one sense-and lightly-; the other titillates and overwhelms all of one's being. In one word, is it possible to compare permissible pleasures with pleasures which, to far more piquant delights, join those inestimable joys that come of bursting socially imposed restraints and of the violation of every law?
Eugenie. -You triumph, Dolmance, the laurel belongs to you! The Chevalier's harangue did but barely touch my spirit, yours seduces and entirely wins it over. Ah, Chevalier, take my advice: speak rather to the passions than to the virtues when you wish to persuade a woman.
Madame de Saint-Ange, to the Chevalier. -Yes, my friend, fuck us to be sure, but let's have no sermons from you: you'll not convert us, and you might upset the lessons with which we desire to irrigate this charming girl's mind.
Eugenie. -Upset? Oh, no, no; your work is finished; what fools call corruption is by now firmly enough established in me to leave not even the hope of a return, and your principles are far too thoroughly riven into my heart ever to be destroyed by the Chevalier's casuistries.
Dolmance. -She is right, let's speak no more of it, Chevalier; you would come off poorly, and we wish nothing from you but excellence.
Le Chevalier. -So be it; we are met here for a purpose very different, I know, from the one I wished to achieve; let's go directly to that destination, I agree with you; I'll save my ethics for others who, less besotted than are you, will be in a better way to hear me.
Madame de Saint-Ange. -Yes, dear brother, yes, exactly, give us nothing but your fuck; we'll spare you your morals; 'tis too sweet for rouis of our breed.
Eugenie. -I greatly fear, Dolmance, lest this cruelty you recommend with such warmth somewhat influence your pleasures; I believe I have already remarked something of the sort: you are hard when you take your pleasure; and I too might be able to confess to feeling a few dispositions to the vice . . . In order to clear my thoughts on the matter, please do tell me with what kind of an eye you view die object that serves your pleasures?
Dolmance. -As absolutely null, that is how I view it, my dear; whether it does or does not share my enjoyments, whether it feels contentment or whether it doesn't, whether apathy or even pain, provided I am happy, the rest is absolutely all the same to me.
Eugenie. -Why, it is even preferable to have the object experience pain, is it not?
Dolmance. -To be sure, 'ds by much to be preferred; I have given you my opinion on the matter; this being the case, the repercussion within us is much more pronounced, and much more energetically and much more promptly launches the animal spirits in the direction necessary to voluptuousness. Explore the seraglios of Africa, those of Asia, those others of southern Europe, and discover whether the masters of these celebrated harems are much concerned, when their pricks are in the air, about giving pleasure to the individuals they use; they give orders, and they are obeyed, they enjoy and no one dares make them answer; they are satisfied, and the others retire; amongst them are those who would punish as a lack of respect the audacity of partaking of their pleasure. The king of Achem pitilessly commands to be decapitated the woman who, in his presence, has dared forget herself to the point of sensing pleasure, and not infrequently the lung himself performs the operation of beheading. This despot, one of Asia's most interesting, is exclusively guarded by women; he never gives them orders save by signs; the cruellest death is the reward reserved for her who fails to understand him, and the tortures are always executed either by his hand or before his eyes.
All that, Eugenie, is founded entirely upon the principles I have already developed for you. What is it one desires when taking one's pleasure? that everything around us be occupied with nothing but ourselves, think of naught but of us, care for us only. If the objects we employ know pleasure too, you can be very sure they are less concerned for us than they are for themselves, and lo! our own pleasures consequently are hurled into confusion. There is not a man living who does not wish to play the despot when he is stiff: it seems to him his joy is less when others appear to take as much as he; by an impulse of pride, very natural at this juncture, he would like to be the only one in the world capable of experiencing what he feels: the idea of seeing another enjoy as he enjoys reduces him to a kind of equality with that other, which impairs the unspeakable charm despotism causes him to feel, (i) 'Tis false as well to say there is pleasure in affording pleasure to others; that is to serve them, and the man whose prick upstandeth is far from desiring to be useful to anyone. On the contrary, by causing them hurt he experiences all the charms a nervous personality tastes in putting its strength to use; 'tis then he dominates, is a tyrant; and what a difference is there for the amour-propre!-think not that it is silent during such episodes.
The act of enjoyment is a passion which, I affirm, subordinates all others to it, but which, simultaneously, unites them. This desire to dominate at this moment is so powerful in Nature that one notices it even in animals. See whether those in captivity procreate as do those others that are free and wild; the camel carries the matter further still: he will engender no more if he does not suppose himself alone: surprise him and, consequently, snow him a master, and he will fly, will instantly separate from his companion. Had it not been Nature's intent that man possess this feeling of superiority, she would not have created him stronger than the . beings she destines to belong to him at those moments. The debility to which Nature condemned woman incontestably proves that her design is that man, who then more than ever enjoys his strength, exercise it in all the violent forms that suit him best, by means of tortures, if he be so inclined, or worse. Would pleasure's climax be a kind of fury were it not the intention of this mother of humankind that behaviour during copulation be the same as behaviour in anger? What well-made man, in one word, what man endowed with vigorous organs does not desire, in one fashion or in another, to molest his
(1) The poverty of the French language compels us to employ words which, today, our happy government, with so much good tense, disfavors; we hope our enlightened readers will understand us well and will not at all confound absurd political despotism with the very delightful despotism of libertinage's passions. partner during his enjoyment of her? I know perfectly well that whole armies of idiots, who are never conscious of their sensations, will have much trouble to understand the systems I am establishing; but what the devil care I for these fools? 'tis not to them I am speaking; soft-headed women-worshippers, I leave them prostrate at their insolent Dulcineas' feet, there let them wait for the sighs that will make them happy and, basely the slaves of the sex they ought to dominate, I abandon them to the vile delights of wearing the chains wherewith Nature has given them the right to overwhelm others: let these beasts vegetate in the abjection which defiles them-'twould be in vain to preach to them!-but let them not denigrate what they are incapable of understanding, and let them be persuaded that those who wish to establish their principles pertinent to this subject only upon the free outbursts of a vigorous and untrammeled imagination, as do we, you, Madame, and I, those like ourselves, I say, will always be the only ones who merit to be listened to, the only ones proper to prescribe laws unto them and to give lessons! . . . Fuck! I've an erection!. . . .
Get Augustin to come back here, if you please. (They ring; he reappears. ) 'Tis unheard of-how this fine lad's superb ass does preoccupy my mind while I talk! All my ideas seem involuntarily to relate themselves to it . . . Show my eyes that masterpiece, Augustin . . . let me kiss it and caress it, oh! for a quarter of an hour. Hither, my love, come, that I may, in your lovely ass, render myself worthy of the flames with which Sodom sets me aglow. Ah, he has the most beautiful buttocks . . . the whitest! I'd like to have Eugenic on her knees; she will suck his prick while I advance; in this manner, she will expose her ass to the Chevalier, who'll plunge into it, and Madame de Saint-Ange, astride Augustin's back, will present her buttocks to me: I'll kiss them; armed with a cat-o'nine-tails, she might surely, it should seem to me, by bending a little, be able to flog the Chevalier who, thanks to this stimulating ritual, might resolve not to spare our student. (The position is arranged. ) Yes, that's it; let's do our best, my friends; indeed, it is a great pleasure to commission you to execute tableaux; in all the world, there's not an artist fitter than you to realize them! . . . This rascal does have a nipping tight asshole! . . . 'tis all I can do to get a foot-hold in it. Would you do me the great kindness, Madame, of allowing me to bite and pinch your lovely flesh while I'm at my fuckery?
Madame de Saint-Ange. -As much as you like, my brave one; but, I warn you, I am ready to take my revenge: I swear that, for every vexation you give me, I'll blow a fart into your mouth.
Dolmance. -By God, now! that is a threat!. . . .
?uite enough to drive me to offend you, my dear. He bites fur. ) Well! Let's see if you'll keep your word. (He receives a fart. ) Ah, fuck, delicious! delicious! . . . (He slaps her and immediately receives another fart. ) Oh, 'tis (divine, my angel! Save me a few for the critical moment . . . and, be sure of it, I'll then treat you with the extremist cruelty . . . most barbarously I'll use you . . . Fuck! I can tolerate this no longer . . . I discharge! . . . (He bites her, strikes her, and she farts uninterruptedly. ) Dost see how I deal with you, my fine fair bitch! . . . how I dominate you . . . once again here . . . and there . . . and let the final insult be to the very idol at which I sacrificed! (He bites her asshole; the circle of debauchees is broken. ) And the rest of you-what have you been up to, my friends?
Eugenie, spitting out the fuck in her mouth, and squeezing forth more from her ass. -Alas! dear master . . . you see how your disciples have arranged things with me. I have a mouthful of fuck and half a pint in my ass, I disgorge nothing but fuck, am running fuck left and right!
Dolman ce, sharply. -Hold there! I want you to deposit in my mouth what the Chevalier introduced into your behind.
Eugenie, assuming a proper position. -What an extravagance!
Dolmance. -Ah, there's nothing that can equal the fuck that is drained out of the depths of a pretty behind . . . 'tis a food fit for the gods. (He swallows some. ) Behold, 'tis neatly wiped up, eh? (Moving to Augustin's ass, which he kisses. ) Mesdames, I am going to ask your permission to spend a few moments in a nearby room with this young man.
Madame de Saint-Ange. -But can't you do here all you wish to do with him?
Dolmance, in a low and mysterious tone. -No; there are certain things which strictly require to be veiled.
Eugenie. -Ah, by God, tell us what you'd be about!
Madame de Saint-Ange. -I'll not allow him to leave if he does not
Dolmance. -You then wish to know?
Eugenie. -Absolutely.
Dolmance, dragging Augustin. -Very well, Mesdames, I am going . . . but, indeed, it cannot be said.
Madame de Saint-Ange. -Is there, do you thinly any conceivable infamy we are not worthy to hear of and execute?
Le Chevalier. -Wait, sister. I'll tell you. (He whispers to the two women. )
Eugenie, with a look of revulsion. -You are right 'tis hideous.
Madame de Saint-Ange. -Why, I don't know. . . .
Dolmance. -You see very well I had to be silent upon this caprice; and you grasp now that one must be alone and in the deepest shadow in order to give oneself over to such turpitudes.
Eugenie. -Do you want me to accompany you? I'll frig you while you amuse yourself with Augustin.
Dolmance. -No, no, this is an affaire d'honneur and should take place between men only; a woman would disturb us . . . At your service in a moment, dear ladies. (He goes out, taking Augustin with him. )
* * *
DIALOGUE THE SIXTH
Madame De Saint-Ange, Eugenie, Le Chevalier
Madame de Saint-Ange. -Indeed, brother, your friend is greatly a libertine.
Le Chevalier. -Then I've not deceived you in presenting him as such.
Eugenie. -I am persuaded there is not his equal anywhere in the world . . . Oh, my dearest, he is charming; I do hope we will see him often.
Madame de Saint-Ange. -I hear a knock . . . whom might it be? . . . I gave orders . . . it must be very urgent. Go see what it is, Chevalier, if you will be so kind.
Le Chevalier. -A letter Lafleur has brought; he left hastily, saying he remembered the instructions you have given him, but that the matter appeared to him as important as it was pressing.
Madame de Saint-Ange,-Ah ha! what's this? 'Tis your father, Eugenie!
EugJLnie. -My father! . . . then we're lost!
Madame de Saint-Ange. -Let's read it before we become discouraged. (She reads. ) "Would you believe it, my dear lady? my insupportable wife, alarmed by my daughter's journey to your house, is leaving immediately, with the object of bringing Eugenie home. She imagines all sorts of things . . . which, even were one to suppose them real, would, in truth, be but very ordinary and normal indeed. I request you to punish her impertinence with exceeding rigorousness ; yesterday, I chastised her for something similar: the lesson was not sufficient: therefore, mystify her well, I beseech you on bended knee, and believe that, no matter to what lengths you carry things, no complaint will be heard from me . . . 'Tis a very long time this whore's been oppressing me . . . indeed . . . Do you follow me? what you do will be well done: that is all I can say to you; she will arrive shortly after my letter comes to you; keep yourselves in readiness. Adieu; I should indeed like to be numbered in your company. Do not, I beg of you, return Eugenie to me until she is instructed. I am most content to leave the first gatherings to your hands, but be well convinced however that you will have labored in some sort in my behalf. "
Why, there, Eugenie! you see? There is nothing over which to be disturbed; it must be admitted, though, that the little wife in question is a mightily insolent one.
Eugenie. -The sluttish whore! Ha! since Papa gives us a carte blanche, we must, by God, receive me creature in the manner she deserves.
Madame de Saint-Ange. -Hither, kiss me, my heart. How comforted I am thus to perceive such dispositions in you! . . . Well, be at ease; I guarantee you we will not spare her. Eugenie, you desired a victim, and behold! here is one both Nature and fate are giving you.
Eugenie. -We will enjoy the gift, my dear, I swear to you we'll put her to use!
Madame de Saint-Ange. -How eager I am to know how Dolmance will react to the news.
Dolmance, entering with Augustin. -'Tis the best news possible, Madame; I was not too far away not to be able to overhear; I know all . . . Madame de Mistival's arrival could not be more opportune. . . .
You arc firmly determined, I trust, to satisfy her husband's expectations?
Eugenie, to Dolmance. -Satisfy them? . . . to exceed them, my love . . . oh, may the earth sink beneath me if you see me falter whatever be the horrors to which you condemn the tramp! . . . Dear friend, entrust to me the entire proceeding's superintendence. . . .
Dolmance. -Allow your friend and me to take charge; you others need merely obey the orders we give you . . . oh, the insolent creature! I've never seen anything like it!. . . .
Madame de Saint-Ange. -Clumsy fool! Well, shall we rather more decently deck ourselves in order to receive her?
Dolmance. -To the contrary; from the instant she enters, there must be nothing to prevent her from being very sure of the manner in which we pass the time with her daughter. Let us all be rather in the greatest disorder.
Madame de Saint-Ange. -I hear sounds; 'tis she! . . . Courage, Eugenie; think upon our principles . . . ah, by God's fuck! 'twill be a delicious scene. . . . '
* * *
DIALOGUE THE SEVENTH AND LAST
Madame De Saint-Ange, Eugenie, Le Chevalier, Augustin, Dolmance, Madame De Mistival
Madame de Mistival, to Madame de Saint-Ange. I beg your forgiveness, Madame, for arriving unannounced at your home; but I hear that my daughter is here and as her few years do not yet permit her to venture abroad alone, I beg you, Madame, to be so very good as to return her to me, and not to disapprove my request or behaviour.
Madame de Saint-Ange. -This behaviour is eminently impolite, Madame; one would say, upon hearing your words, that your daughter is in bad hands.
Madame de Mistival. -Faith! if one must judge by the state I find her in, and you, Madame, and your company, I believe I am not greatly mistaken in supposing her in no good sort while she is here.
Dolmance. -Madame, this is an impertinent beginning and, without being exactly informed of the degree of familiarity which obtains between Madame de Saint-Ange and you, I see no reason to pretend that I would not, were I in her place, already have had you pitched out of the window.
Madame de Mistival. -I do not completely understand what you mean by "pitched out of the window. " Be advised, Monsieur, that I am not a woman to be pitched out of windows; I have no idea who you are, but from your language and the state I observe you to be in, it is not impossible to arrive at a speedy conclusion concerning your manners. Eugenie! Follow me.
Eugenie. -I beg your pardon, Madame, but I cannot enjoy that honor.
Madame de Mistival. -What! my daughter resists me!
Dolmance. -Nay, 'tis worse yet: 'tis a case of formal disobedience, as, Madame, you observe. Believe me, do not tolerate it in her. Would you like me to have whips brought in for this indocile child's correction?
Eugenie. -I should be greatly afraid, were they to be sent for, that they would be employed rather upon Madame than upon me.
Madame de Mistival. -Impertinent creature!
Dolmance, approaching Madame de Mistival. -Softly, my sweet, we'll have no invectives here; all of us are Eugenie's protectors, and you might regret your vivacities with her.
Madame de Mistival. -What! my daughter is to disobey me and I am not to be able to make her sensible of the rights over, her I have!
Dolmance. -And what, if you please, are these rights, Madame? Do you flatter yourself they are legitimate? When Monsieur de Mistival, or whomever it was, spurted into your vagina the several drops of fuck that brought Eugenie into being, did you then, in the act, have her in mind? Eh? I dare say you did not. Well, then, how can you expect her to be beholden to you today for your having discharged when years ago someone fucked your nasty cunt? Take notice, Madame: there is nothing more illusory than fathers' and mothers' sentiments for their children, and children's for the authors of their days. Nothing supports, nothing justifies, nothing establishes such feelings, here in currency, there held in contempt, for there are countries where parents kill their children, others where the latter cut the throats of those whence they have breath. Were reciprocal love to have some natural sanction, consanguinity's power would no longer be chimerical and, without being seen, without mutually being known, parents would distinguish, would adore their sons and, reversibly, these would discern their unknown fathers, would fly into their arms and would do them reverence. Instead of which, what is it we see? Reciprocal hatreds inveterate; children who, even before reaching their ratiocinative hour, have never been able to suffer the sight of their fathers; fathers sending away their children because never could they support their approach. Those alleged instincts, hence, are fictitious, absurd; self-interest only invents them, usage prescribes, habit sustains, but never did Nature grain them in our hearts. Tell me: do animals. know these feelings? no, surely not; however, 'tis always them one must consult when one wishes to be acquainted with Nature. O fathers! be well at ease with what regards the so-called injustices your passions or your interest lead you to work upon these beings, for you non-existent, to which a few drops of your sperm has given life; to them you owe nothing, you are in the world not for them but for yourself: 'tis for no one but yourself you ought to live; great fools you would be to be troubled about, to be occupied with anything but your own selves; for yourselves alone you ought to live; and you, dear children, you who are far more exempted-if it is possible to be far more exempted-from this filial piety whose basis is a true chimera, you children must be persuaded also that you owe nothing to those individuals whose blood hatched you out of the darkness. Pity, gratitude, love-not one of these sentiments is their due; they who have given you existence have not a single right to require them from you; they labor for themselves only: let them look after themselves; but the greatest of all the duperies would be to give them either the help or the ministry no relationship can possibly oblige you to give; no law enjoins you, there is no prescription and if, by chance, you should hear some inner voice speaking to you-whether it is custom that inspires these announcements, whether it is your character's moral effects that produces these twinges-, unhesitatingly, remorselessly throttle those absurd sentiments . . . local sentiments, the fruit of geographical accident, climate, which Nature repudiates and reason disavows always!
Madame de Mistival. -But the care I have lavished upon her, the education I have given her Dolmance-Why, as for the care, 'tis never but the creature of convention or of vanity; having done no more for her than what is dictated by the customs of the country you inhabit, assuredly, Eugenie owes you nothing. As for her education, it appears to have been damnably poor, for we are presently obliged to replace all the principles you had put into her head; not one of the lot you gave her provides for her happiness, not one is not absurd or chimerical. You spoke to her of God as if there were some such thing; of virtue as if it were necessary; of religion as if every religious cult were something other than the result of the grossest imposture and the most minuscule imbecility; of Jesus Christ as if that trimmer were anything but a cheat and a bandit. You have told her that it is sinful to fuck, whereas to fuck is life's most delicious act; you have wished to give her good manners, as if a young girl's happiness were not inseparable from debauchery and immorality, as if the happiest of all women had not incontestably to be she who wallows the most in ordure and in libertinage, she who most and best defies every prejudice and who most laughs reputation to scorn. Ah, Madame, disabuse yourself: you have done nothing for your daughter, in her regard you have not fulfilled a single one of the obligations Nature dictates: Eugenie owes you aught but hatred.
Madame de Mistival. -Oh merciful heavens! my Eugenie is doomed, 'tis evident. . Eugenie, my beloved Eugenie, for the last time heed the supplications of her who gave you your life; these are orders no longer, but prayers; unhappily, it is only too true that you are amidst monsters here; tear yourself from this perilous commerce and follow me, on my knees I ask it of you! (She falls to her knees. )
Dolmance. -Ah, very pretty! a tearful scene. To it, Eugenie! Be tender.
Eugenie, half naked, as the reader surely must remember. -Here you are, dear little Mummy, I bring you my buttocks . . . There they are, positively at the level of your lips; kiss them, my sweet, suck them, 'tis all Eugenic can do for you . . . Be certain of it, Dolmance: I shall always show myself worthy of having been your pupil
Madame de Mistival, thrusting Eugenie away, with horror. -Monster! I disavow you forever, you are no longer my child!
Eugenie. -Add a few curses to it, if you like, my dearest mother, in order to render the thing more touching yet, and you will see me equally phlegmatic.
Dolmance. -Softly, Madame, softly; there is insult here; in our view, you have just rather too harshly repulsed Eugenie; I told you that she is in our safekeeping: a punishment is needed for this crime; have the kindness to undress yourself, strip to the skin, so as to receive what your brutality deserves.
Madame de Mistival. -Undress myself!
Dolmance. -Augustin, act as this lady's maid-in-waiting, since she resists. (Augustin goes brutally to work; Madame de Mistival seeks to protect herself. )
Madame de Mistival, to Madame de Saint-Ange. My God, where am I? Are you aware, Madame, of what you allow to be done to me in your house? Do you suppose I shall make no complaint?
Madame de Saint-Ange. -It is by no means certain you will be able to.
Madame de Mistival. -Great God! then I am to be killed here!
Dolmance. -Why not?
Madame de Saint-Ange. -One moment, gentlemen. Before exposing this charming beauty's body to your gaze, it would be well for me to forewarn you of the condition you are going to find it in. Eugenie has just whispered the entire story into my ear: yesterday, her husband used the whip on her, all but broke his arm beating her for some minor domestic mismanagement . . . and, Eugenie assures me, you are going to find her ass' cheeks looking like cretonned taffeta.
Dolmance, immediately Madame de Mistival is nude. -Well, by God, 'tis the absolute truth! I don't believe I've ever seen a body more mistreated than this . . . but, by Jesus! she's got as many cuts anteriorly as she has behind! . . . Yet . . . I believe I espy a very fine ass here. (He kisses and fondles it. )
Madame de Mistival. -Leave me alone, leave me, else I'll cry for help!
Madame de Saint-Ange, coming up to her and seizing her by the arm. -Listen to me, whore! I'm going to explain everything to you! . . . You are a victim sent us by your own husband; you have got to submit to your fate; nothing can defend you against it . . . what will it be? I've no idea; perhaps you'll be hanged, wheeled, quartered, racked, burnt alive; upon your daughter depends the torture's choice: 'tis she will give the order for your period; but, my whore, you are going to suffer . . . oh, yes, you will not be immolated until after having undergone an infinite number of preliminary embarrassments. As for your cries, I warn you they will be to no purpose: one could slaughter a steer in this chamber without any risk of his bellowings being overhead. Your horses, your servants have already left; once again, my lovely one, your husband authorizes what we are doing, and your coming here is nothing but a trap baited for your simplicity and into which, you observe, you could not have fallen better.
Dolmance. -I hope that Madame is now perfectly tranquillized.
Eugenie. -Thus to be forewarned is certainly to have been the object of a very ample consideration.
Dolmance, still feeling and slapping her buttocks. Indeed, Madame, 'tis clear you have a warm friend in Madame de Saint-Ange . . . Where, these days, does one come across such candor? What forthrightness in her tone when she addresses you! . . . Eugenie, come here and place your buttocks beside your mother's . . . I'd like to make a comparison of your asses. (Eugenie obeys. ) My goodness! yours is splendid, my dear, but, by God, Mummy's is not bad either . . . not yet . . . in another instant I'll be amusing myself fucking you both . . . Augustin, lay a hand upon Madame.
Madame de Mistival. -Merciful skies! what an outrage!
Dolmance, continuing throughout to realize his projects, and beginning them with an embuggery of the mother. Why, not at all! Nothing easier! . . . Look ye! You scarcely felt it! . . . Ha! 'tis abundantly clear your husband has many times trod the path! Your turn now, Eugenie . . . What a difference! . . . There, I'm content,; I simply wished to volley the ball a little, to put myself in form . . . well, a little order now. Firstly, Mesdames, you, Saint-Ange, and you, Eugenie, have the goodness to arm yourselves with artificial pricks in order, one after the other, to deal this respectable lady, now in the cunt, now in the asshole . . . the most fearsome strokes. The Chevalier, Augustin and I, acting with our own members, will relieve you with a prompt exactitude. I am going to begin and, as you may well believe, it b once again her ass which will receive my homage. During the games, parenthetically, each b invited to decide for himself what torture he wishes to inflict upon her; but bear it in mind; the suffering must increase gradually, so as not to kill her off beforetimes . . . Augustin, dear boy, console me, by buggering me, for the obligation I am under to sodomize thb ancient cow. Eugenie, let me kiss your beautiful behind while I fuck your mamma's, and you, Madame, bring yours near, so that I can handle it . . . socratize it. One must be walled round by asses when 'tb an ass one fucks.
Eugenie. -What, my friend, what are you going to do to the bitch? While losing your sperm, to what do you intend to condemn her?
Dolmance, all the while plying his whip. -The most natural thing in the world: I am going to depilate her and lacerate her with thb pincers.
Madame de Mistival, undergoing this dual vexation. The monster! Criminal! . . . he is mutilating me! oh, God Almighty!
Dolmance. -Implore him not, my dove: he will remain deaf to your voice, as he is to that of every other person: never has this puissant figure bothered to entangle himself in an affair concerning a mere ass.
Madame de Mistival. -Oh, how you are hurting me!
Dolmance. -Incredible effects of the human mind's idiosyncrasies! . . . You suffer, my best beloved, you weep and, wondrous thing! I discharge . . . ah, double whore! I'd strangle you if I did not wish to leave the pleasure of it to others. She's yours, Saint-Ange. (Madame de Saint-Ange embuggers and encunts her with her rubber device; she bestows a few blows of her fist upon her; the Chevalier succeeds her; he too avails himself of the two avenues and, as he discharges, boxes her ears. 'Tis Augustin who comes next: he acts in like wise and ends with a few digs with his fingers, pokes, pulls, and punches. During these various attacks, Dolmance has sent his engine straying about all the agents' asses, the while egging them on with encouragements. ) Well, pretty Eugenie, fuck your mother; first of all, encunt her.
Eugenie. -Come, dear lovely Mama, come, let me serve you as a husband. 'Tis a little thicker than your spouse's, is it not, my dear? Never mind, 'twill enter . . . Oh, dear Mummy, you cry, you scream, scream when your daughter fucks you! . . . And you, Dolmance, you bugger me! . . . Here I am: at one stroke incestuous, adultress, sodomite, and all that in a girl who only lost her maidenhead today! . . . What progress, my friends! . . . with what rapidity I advance along the blasted road of vice! . . . Oh, right enough, I am a doomed girl! . . . I believe, dear Mother, you are discharging . . . Dolmance, look at her eyes! she comes, it's certain, is it not? Ah, whore! I'm going to teach you to be a libertine . . . will, bitch, what think you of that? (She squeezes, twists, wrenches her mother's breasts. ) Ah, fuck, Dolmance. . fuck, my gentle friend, I am dying! . . . (As she discharges, Eugenie showers ten or twelve jarring blows upon her mother's breast and sides. )
Madame de Mistival, about to loose consciousness. Have pity upon me, I beg of you . . . I . . . I am not well . . . I am fainting . . . (Madame de Saint-Ange seems to wish to aid her; Dolmance lifts a restraining hand. )
Dolmance-Why, no, leave her in her swoon: there is nothing so lubricious as to see a woman in a faint; we'll flog her: that should restore her to her senses . . . Eugenie, come, stretch out upon your victim's body . . . 'tis here I wish to discover whether you are steadfast. Chevalier, fuck her as she lies upon her failing mother, and let her frig us, Augustin and me, with each of her hands. You, Saint-Ange, frig her while she's being fucked.
Le Chevalier. -Indeed, Dolmance 'tis horrible, what you have us do; this at once outrages Nature, heaven and the most sacred laws of humanity.
Dolmance-Nothing diverts me like the Chevalier's impassioned outbursts of virtuousness; but in all we are doing where the devil does he see the least outrage to Nature, to heaven, to mankind? My friend, it is from Nature rouis obtain the principles they put into action; I've told you a thousand times over that Nature, who for the perfect maintenance of the laws of her general equilibrium, has sometimes need of vices and sometimes of virtues, inspires now this impulse, now that one, in accordance with what she requires; hence, we do no kind of evil in surrendering ourselves to these impulses, of whatever sort you may suppose them to be. With what regards heaven, my dear Chevalier, I beg of you, let's have no more dreading its effects: one single motor is operative in this universe, and that motor is Nature. The miracles rather, the physical effects-of this mother of the human race, differently interpreted by men, have been deified by them under a thousand forms, each more extraordinary than the other; cheats and intriguers, abusing their fellows' credulity, have propagated their ridiculous daydreams, and that is what the Chevalier calls heaven, that is what he fears offending! . . . Humanity's laws are violated, he adds, by the petty stuff and nonsense in which we are indulging ourselves this afternoon. Get it once and for all into your head, my simple and very faint-hearted fellow, that what fools call humaneness is nothing but a weakness born of fear and egoism; that this chimerical virtue, enslaving only weak men, is unknown to those whose character is formed by stoicism, courage, and philosophy. Then act, Chevalier, act, and fear nothing; were we to pulverize this whore, there'd noft be a suspicion of crime in the thing: it is impossible for man to commit a crime; when Nature inculcated in him the irresistible desire to commit crime, she most prudently arranged to put beyond his reach those acts which could disturb her operations or conflict with her will. Ha, my friend, be sure that all the rest is entirely permitted, and that she has not been so idiotic as to give us the power of discomfiting her or of disturbing her workings. The blind instruments of her inspirations, were she to order us to set fire to the universe, the only crime possible would be in resisting her: all the criminals on earth are nothing but the agents of her caprices . . . well, Eugenie, take your place. But what do I see? . . . she's turning pale!. . . .
Eugenie, lying down upon her mother. -Turning pale! I! God's fuck! you'll very soon see the contrary! (The attitude is executed; Madame de Mistival remains unconscious. When the Chevalier has discharged, the group is broken. )
Dolmance. -What! the bitch is not yet awake! Whips! I say, bring me whips! . . . Augustin, run and gather me a handful of thorns from the garden. (While waiting, he slaps her face. ) Oh, upon my soul, I fear she may be dead; nothing seems to have any effect upon her.
Eugenie, with irritation. -Dead! dead! what's this? Then I'll have to go about wearing black this summer, and I have had the prettiest dresses made for me!
Madame de Saint-Ange. -Ah! the little monster! (She bursts into laughter. )
Dolmance, taking the thorns from Augustin, who returns. -We shall see whether this final remedy will not have some results. Eugenie, suck my prick while I labor to restore a mother to you and, Augustin, do you give me back the blows I am going to deal this stricken lady. I should not be sorry, Chevalier, to see you bugger your sister: you would adopt such a posture as to permit me to kiss your buttocks during the operation.
Le Chevalier. -Well, let's comply with it, since there seems no way of persuading this rascal that all he is having us do is appalling. (The stage is set; as the whipping of Madame de Mistival proceeds, she comes slowly to life. )
Dolmance. -Why, do you see the medicine's effects? I told you it would not fail us.
Madame de Mistival, opening her eyes. -Oh heavens! why do you recall me from the grave's darkness? Why do you plunge me again into life's horrors?
Dolmance, whipping her steadily. -Indeed, little Mother, it is because much conversation remains to be held. Must you not hear your sentence pronounced? must it not be executed? . . . Come, let's gather round our victim: let her kneel in the center of the circle and, trembling, hear what will be announced to her. Madame de Saint-Ange, will you please begin. (The following speeeches are pronounced while the actors are in full action. )
Madame de Saint-Ange. -I condemn her to be hanged.
Le Chevalier. -Cut into eighty thousand pieces, after the manner of the Chinese.
Augustin. -As for me, by Gad, I'd let her get off with being broken alive.
Eugenie. -Into my pretty little mamma's body there will be driven wicks garnished with sulfur and I will undertake to set them afire, one by one. (The circle is dissolved. )
Dolmance, coolly. -Well, my friends, as your leader and instructor, I shall lighten the sentence; but the difference which will be discovered between what I decree and what you have demanded, this difference, I say, is that your sentences would be in the nature of the effects of mordant practical joking; mine, on the contrary, is going to be the cause of a little knavery. I have, waiting outside, a valet, and he is furnished with what is perhaps one of the loveliest members to be found in all of Nature; however, it distills disease, for 'tis eaten by one of the most impressive cases of syphillis I have yet anywhere encountered; I'll have my man come in: we'll have a coupling: he'll inject his poison into each of the two natural conduits that ornament this dear and amiable lady, with this consequence: that so long as this cruel disease's impressions shall last, the whore will remember not to trouble her daughter when Eugenie has herself fucked. (Everyone applauds; the valet is called in. Dolmance speaks now to him. ) Lapierre, fuck this woman; she is exceptionally healthy; this amusement might cure you: at least, there may be some precedent for the miracle's success.
Lapierre. -In front of everyone, Monsieur?
Dolmance. -Are you afraid to exhibit your prick?
Lapierre. -No, by God! for it's very attractive . . . Let's be off, Madame, be so good as to ready yourself.
Madame de Mistival. -Oh, my God! what an hideous damnation!
Eugenie. -Better that than to die, Mummy; at least I'll be able to wear some gay dresses this summer.
Dolmance. -Meanwhile, we might amuse ourselves; my opinion would be for us all to flagellate one another: Madame de Saint-Ange will thrash Lapierre, so as to ensure Madame de Mistival's obtaining a good encuntment; I'll flay Madame de Saint-Ange, Augustin will whip me, Eugenie will have at Augustin and herself will be very vigorously beaten by the Chevalier. (All of which is arranged. When Lapierre has finished cunt-fucking, his master orders him to fuck Madame de Mistival's ass, and he does so. When all is completed, Dolmance continues. ) Capital! Out with you, Lapierre. Wait. Here are ten louis. Ha! by God, that was a better inoculation than Tronchin made in all his life!
Madame de Saint-Ange. -I believe it is now of the highest importance to provide against the escape of the poison circulating in Madame's veins; consequently, Eugenie must very carefully sew your cunt and ass so that the virulent humor, more concentrated, less subject to evaporation and not at all to leakage, will more promptly cinder your bones.
Eugenie. -Excellent idea! Quickly, quickly, fetch me neddle and thread! . . . Spread your thighs, Mummy, so I can stitch you together-so that you'll give me no more little brothers and sisters. (Madame de Saint-Ange gives Eugenie a large needle, through whose eye is threaded a heavy red waxed thread; Eugenie sews. )
Madame de Mistival. -Oh, my God! the pain!
Dolmance, laughing like a madman. -By God! excellent idea indeed! it does you honor, my dear; it would never have occurred to me.
Eugenie, from time to time pricking the lips of the cunt, occasionally stabbing its interior and sometimes using her needle on her mother's belly and mons veneris. -Pay no attention to it, Mamma. I am simply testing the point.
Le Chevalier. -The little whore wants to bleed her to death!
Dolmance, causing himself to be frigged by Madame de Saint-Ange, as he witnesses the operation. -Ah, by God's fuck! how this extravagance stiffens me! Eugenie, multiply your stiches, so that the seam will wear well.
Eugenie. -I'll take, if necessary, over two hundred of them . . . Chevalier, frig me while I work.
Le Chevalier, obeying. -I've never seen a girl as vicious as this one!
Eugenie, much inflamed. -No invectives, Chevalier, or I'll prick you! Confine yourself to tickling me in the correct manner. A little asshole, if you please, my friend; have you only one hand? I can see no longer, my stitches go everywhere . . . Look at it! do you see how my needle wanders . . . to her thighs, her tits . . . Oh, fuck! what pleasure!. . . .
Madame de Mistival. -You are tearing me to pieces, vile creature! . . . Oh, how I blush that it was who gave you life!
Eugenie. -Come, come, be quiet, little Mummy; it's finished.
Dolmance, emerging, with a great erection, from Madame de Saint-Ange's hands. -Eugenic, allow me to do the ass; that part belongs to me.
Madame de Saint-Ange. -You're too stiff, Dolmance, you'll make a martyr of her.
Dolmance. -What matter! have we not written permission to make of her what we please? (He turns Madame de Mistival upon her stomach, catches up the needle, and begins to sew her asshole. )
Madame de Mistival, screaming like a banshee. Ale! aie! ale
Dolmance, driving the needle deep into her flesh. Silence, bitch! or I'll make a hash of your buttocks . . . Eugenie, frig me. . . .
Eugenie. -Willingly, but upon condition you prick her more energetically, for, you must admit, you arc proceeding with strange forbearance. (She frigs him. )
Madame de Saint-Ange. -Work upon those two great checks for me!
Dolmance. -Patience, I'll soon have her carved like a shank of beef; Eugenie, you are forgetting your lessons: you capped my prick!
Eugenie. -'Tis because this bitch's sufferings are inflaming my imagination to the point I no longer know exactly what I am doing.
Dolmance. -Sweet fucking God! I'm beginning to go out of my mind! Saint-Ange, have Augustin bugger you in front of my eyes while your brother flies into your cunt, and above all dress me a panorama of asses: the picture will finish me. (He stabs Madame de Mistival's buttocks while the posture he has called for is arranged. ) Here, dear Mummy, take this . . . and again that! . . . (He drives his needle into at least twenty places. )
Madame de Mistival. -Oh pardon me, Monsieur, I beg your pardon a thousand-thousand times over . . . you are slaying me. . . .
Dolmance, wild with pleasure. -I should like to . . . 'tis an age since I have had such an erection; never would I have thought it possible after so many consecutive discharges.
Madame de Saint-Ange, executing the called-for attitude. -Are we as we should be, Dolmance?
Dolmance. -Augustin, turn a little to the right; I don't see enough ass; have him lean forward: I must see the hole.
Eugenie. -Ah fuck! look at the bugger bleed!
Dolmance. -Rather a good deal of blood, isn't there? Well, are the rest of you ready? As for myself, one minute more and I'll spray life's very balm upon the wounds I have just opened.
Madame de Saint-Ange. -Yes, my heart, yes . . . I am coming . . . we arrive at the end at the same time. . . .
Dolmance, who has finished his task, does nothing but increase his stabbing of the victim's buttocks as he discharges. Ah triple bloody fucking God! . . . my sperm flows . . . 'tis lost, by bleeding little Jesus! . . . Eugenie, direct it upon the flanks I have just mutilated . . . oh fuck! fuck! 'tis done . . . over . . . I've no more . . . oh, why must weakness succeed passions so alive?. . . .
Madame de Saint-Ange. -Fuck! fuck me, brother, I discharge! . . . (To Augustin. ) Stir yourself, great fucking-john! Don't you know that it is when I come that you've got to sink your tool deepest into my ass? . . . Ah, sacred name of God! how sweet it is, thus to be fucked by two men . . . (The group disperses. )
Dolmance. -And now all's been said. (To Madame de Mistival. ) Hey! whore, you may clothe yourself and leave when you wish. I must tell you that your husband authorized the doing of all that has just been done to you. We told you as much; you did not believe it. (He shows her the Utter. ) May this example serve to remind you that your daughter is old enough to do what she pleases; that she likes to fuck, loves to fuck, that she was born to fuck, and that, if you do not wish to be fucked yourself, the best thing for you to do is to let her do what she wants. Get out; the Chevalier will escort you to your home. Salute the company, whore! on your knees, bcw down before your daughter, and beseech her pardon for your abominable use of her . . . You, Eugenie, bestow two good smacks upon Madame your Mother and as soon as she gains the threshold, help her cross it with a few lusty kicks aimed at her ass. (All this is done. ) Farewell, Chevalier; don't fuck Madame on the highway: remember, she's sewn up and has got the pox. (After the Chevalier's departure and Madame de Mistival's. ) And now, good friends, let's to dinner and afterwards the four of us will retire for the night . . . and in the same bed. Well, we've had a fine active day. I never eat as well, I never sleep as soundly as when I have, during the day, sufficiently befouled myself with what our fools call crimes.
