The Marquis de Sade - Philosophy in the Bedroom
Marquis de Sade, Philosophy in the Bedroom, translated by Richard Seaver and Austryn Wainhouse.
Girl reading the Marquis de Sade's Philosophy in the Bedroom
Contents
To Libertines
Dialogue the First
Dialogue the Second
Dialogue the Third
Dialogue the Fourth
Dialogue the Fifth
Yet Another Effort, Frenchmen, If You Would Become Republicans
Dialogue the Sixth
Dialogue the Seventh And Last
To Libertines
Voluptuaries of all ages, of every sex, it is to you only that I offer 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 bring man to the ends she prescribes to him; hearken only to these delicious Promptings, for no voice save that of the passions can conduct you to happiness.
Lewd women, let the voluptuous Saint‑Ange be your model; after her example, be heedless of all that contradicts pleasure's divine laws, by which all her life she was enchained.
You young maidens, too long constrained by a fanciful Virtue's absurd and dangerous bonds and by those of a disgusting religion, imitate the fiery Eugénie; be as quick as she to destroy, to 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 who have been governed by your caprices alone, study the cynical Dolmancé, proceed like him and go as far as he if you too would travel the length of those flowered ways your lechery prepares for you; in Dolmancé's academy be at last convinced it is only by exploring and enlarging the sphere of his tastes and whims, it is only by sacrificing everything to the senses' pleasure that this individual, who never asked to be cast into this universe of woe, that this poor creature who goes under the name of Man, may be able to sow a smattering of roses atop the thorny path of life.
Dialogue The First
MADAME DE SAINT‑ANGE
LE CHEVALIER DE MIRVEL
MADAME DE SAINT-ANGE — Good day, my friend. And what of Monsieur Dolmancé?
LE CHEVALIER — He'll be here promptly at four; we do not dine until seven—and will have, as you see, ample time to chat.
MADAME DE SAINT-ANGE — You know, my dear brother, I do begin to have a few misgivings about my curiosity and all the obscene plans scheduled for today. Chevalier, you overindulge me, truly you do. The more sensible I should be, the more excited and libertine this accursed mind of mine becomes—and all that you have given me but serves to spoil me… At twenty‑six, I should be sober and staid, and I'm still nothing but the most licentious of women... Oh, I've a busy brain, my friend; you'd scarce believe the ideas I have, the things I'd like to do. I supposed that by confining myself to women I would become better behaved...; that were my desires concentrated upon my own sex I would no longer pant after yours: pure fantasy, my friend; my imagination has only been pricked the more by the pleasures I thought to deprive myself of. I have discovered that when it is a question of someone like me, born for libertinage, it is useless to think of imposing limits or restraints upon oneself—impetuous desires immediately sweep them away.
In a word, my dear, I am an amphibious creature: I love everything, everyone, whatever it is, it amuses me; I should like to combine every species—but you must admit, Chevalier, is it not the height of extravagance for me to wish to know this unusual Dolmancé who in all his life, you tell me, has been unable to see a woman according to the prescriptions of common usage, this Dolmancé who, a sodomite out of principle, not only worships his own sex but never yields to ours save when we consent 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, my friend, until now I have given myself thus only to you, through complaisance, or to a few of my servants who, paid to use me in this manner, adopted it for profit only. But today it is no longer the desire to oblige nor is it caprice that moves me, but solely my own penchants. 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 Dolmancé for me, please do, that I may have him well fixed in my mind 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 — Dolmancé, my dear sister, has just turned thirty‑six; he is tall, extremely handsome, eyes very alive and very intelligent, but all the same there is some suspicion of hardness, and a trace of wickedness in his features; he has the whitest teeth in the world, a shade of softness about his figure and in his attitude, doubtless owing to his habit of taking on effeminate airs so often; he is extremely elegant, has a pretty voice, many talents, and above all else an exceedingly philosophic bent to his mind.
MADAME DE SAINT-ANGE — But I trust he does not believe in God!
LE CHEVALIER — Oh, perish the thought! He is the most notorious atheist, the most immoral fellow… Oh, no; his is the most complete and thoroughgoing corruption, and he the most evil individual, the greatest scoundrel in the world.
MADAME DE SAINT-ANGE — Ah, how that warms me! Methinks that I'll be wild about this man. And what of his fancies, brother?
LE CHEVALIER — You know them full well; Sodom's delights are as dear to him in their active as in their passive form. For his pleasures, he cares for none but men; if however he sometimes deigns to employ women, it is only upon condition they be obliging enough 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 rules of the game. 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 with which one soils oneself but rarely and only by taking ample precautions."
MADAME DE SAINT-ANGE — Soil oneself!… Precautions... Oh, how I adore the language those agreeable persons use! Between ourselves, we women also have exclusive words which like these just spoken, give an idea of the profound horror they have of all those who show heretical tendencies… 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. The fact is, 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 makes our young upstarts believe that it's by cuts with your walking stick you respond to such propositions. Is man master of his penchants? One must feel sorry for those who have strange tastes, but never insult them. Their wrong is Nature's too; they are no more responsible for having come into the world with tendencies unlike ours than are we for being born bandy‑legged or well‑proportioned. Is it, however, that a man acts insultingly to you when he manifests 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 poor idiots who believe it is to lack 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 to be the Don Quixotes of those ordinary rights, and brutalize whoever does not acknowledge the entirety of their extent.
MADAME DE SAINT-ANGE — Come, my friend, kiss me. Were you to think otherwise, you'd not be my brother. A few details, I beseech you, both with what regards this man's appearance and his pleasures with you.
LE CHEVALIER — One of his friends informed Monsieur Dolmancé of the superb member wherewith you know me provided, and he obtained the consent of the Marquis de V*** to bring us together at supper. Once there, I was obliged to display my equipment: at first curiosity appeared to be his single motive; however, a very fair ass turned my way, and with which I was invited to amuse myself, soon made me see that penchant alone was the cause of this examination. I had Dolmancé notice all the enterprise's difficulties; he was steadfast. "A 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 anus 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 Dolmancé of half the sensations he awaits from you; he wants you to cleave him in two, he wants to be torn asunder."
"Well," I said, blindly plunging into the gulf, "he'll be satisfied."
Perhaps, my dear sister, you think that 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 bottom of his entrails without the bugger seeming to feel a thing. I dealt kindly with Dolmancé; the extreme ecstasy he tasted, his wrigglings and quiverings, his enticing utterances, all this soon made me happy too, and I inundated him. Scarcely was I withdrawn when Dolmancé, turning toward me, his hair in disarray and his face 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 enable me 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, begged 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 Dolmancé, who paid me back a hundredfold for all the blows 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 bowels of V***.
MADAME DE SAINT-ANGE — You must have known the most extreme pleasure, to find yourself thus between two; they say it is charming.
LE CHEVALIER — My angel, it is surely the best place to be; but 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 chivalrous friend, as reward for your touching consideration, today I am going to hand over to your passions a young virgin, a girl, more beautiful than Love itself.
LE CHEVALIER — What! With Dolmancé... you're bringing a woman here?
MADAME DE SAINT-ANGE — It is a matter of an education; that of a little thing I knew last autumn at the convent, while my husband was at the baths. We could accomplish 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 spend two days together… two delicious days; I shall employ the better part of the time educating the young lady. Dolmancé and I will put into this pretty little head every principle of the most unbridled libertinage, we will set her ablaze with our own 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 Dolmancé 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 pleasure you will find in corrupting her, in stifling within this young heart every seed of virtue and of religion planted there by her tutors! Actually, all this is too roué for me.
MADAME DE SAINT-ANGE — Be certain I'll spare nothing to pervert her, degrade her, demolish in her all the false ethical notions with which they may already have been able to dizzy her; in two lessons, I want to render her as criminal as am!… as impious… as debauched, as depraved. Notify Dolmancé, explain everything to him immediately he gets here so that his immoralities' poison, circulating in this young spirit together with the venom I shall inject, will in the shortest possible time wither and still all the seeds of virtue that, but for us, might germinate there.
LE CHEVALIER — It would be impossible to find a better man: irreligion, impiety, inhumanity, libertinage spill from Dolmancé’s lips as in times past mystic unction fell from those of the celebrated Archbishop of Cambrai. He is the most profound seducer, the most corrupt, the most dangerous man… Ah, 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, my dear sister, is there nothing to fear from the parents? May not this little one chatter when she returns home?
MADAME DE SAINT-ANGE — Have no fears. 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, who is this youngster?
MADAME DE SAINT-ANGE — Her name is Eugénie, 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. As for Eugénie, dear one, I should in vain undertake to figure her to you; she is quite beyond my descriptive powers… satisfy yourself with the knowledge 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 deal, I may better fill my imagination 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 jet black and of a warmth!… Ah, my friend, 'tis impossible to resist those eyes… You've no idea 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… Eugénie is tall for her age: one might think her seventeen; her figure is a model of elegance and finesse, her throat, her bosom delicious… 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 mind… My friend, I ignore the rest. Ah I but if I must judge of her by what I know, never, I say, had Olympus a divinity comparable with this… But 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 I 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 — Welcome, my pet I have been awaiting you with an impatience you fully appreciate if you can read the feelings I have in my heart.
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 father had granted me, and I rushed here. I have two days; your 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 be able to express to you all you excite in me… and indeed we have to talk. You know, do you not, that 'tis during this interview that I am to initiate you into the most secret of Venus' mysteries; shall two days be time enough?
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 things are we going to do and say to one another! But, by the way, do you wish to take lunch, my queen? For the lesson may be prolonged.
EUGENIE — I have no need, dear friend, than 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. You may be certain no one shall take it into his head to interrupt us. (They enter the boudoir, linked arm in arm.)
Dialogue the Third
In a Delightful Boudoir
MADAME DE SAINT‑ANGE
EUGENIE
DOLMANCE
EUGENIE, greatly surprised to find in this room a man whom she had not expected — 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 the advent of that happiness which comes of seeing you, Madame. I encountered Monsieur, your brother—he anticipated the usefulness of my presence at the lessons you are to give Mademoiselle, and knew this to be the lyceum where they would be given. Unperceived, he introduced me into this chamber, far from imagining you might disapprove; and as for himself, 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, Dolmancé, this is an unforeseen turn…
EUGENIE — By which I am not deceived, my good friend; it is all your work… At least, you should have consulted me... instead of exposing me to this shame. It will certainly prejudice all our projects.
MADAME DE SAINT-ANGE — Eugénie, I protest—my brother is responsible for this, not I. But there's no cause for alarm: I know Dolmancé for 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. As for 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 — Oh I still find all this most upsetting…
DOLMANCE — Come, my lovely Eugénie, 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 so hostile to Nature! (Dolmancé seizes Eugénie, folds her in his arms, and kisses her.)
EUGENIE, struggling in his embrace — That's quite enough, Monsieur… Indeed, you show me very little consideration!
MADAME DE SAINT-ANGE — Eugénie, 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 give myself to him. (She kisses him indecently on the mouth.) Imitate me.
EUGENIE — Oh, Most willingly; where might I find better examples? (She puts herself in Dolmancé’s arms; he kisses her ardently, tongue in mouth.)
DOLMANCE — Amiable, delicious creature!
MADAME DE SAINT‑ANGE, kissing her in the same way — Didst think, little chit, I'd not have my turn as well? (At this point Dolmancé, 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, such preliminaries make me drunk with desire! Mesdames, upon my word, it is extraordinarily warm here; more lightly attired, we might converse with infinitely greater comfort.
MADAME DE SAINT-ANGE — You are right, sit; 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 undress — Completely ridiculous, isn't it?
EUGENIE — Most improper at the very least, I'd say… My how you kiss me!
MADAME DE SAINT-ANGE — Pretty bosom!… a rose only now reaching full bloom.
DOLMANCE, considering, without touching, Eugénie's breasts — And which promises yet other allurements… infinitely to be preferred.
MADAME DE SAINT-ANGE — Infinitely to be preferred?
DOLMANCE — Oh yes, upon my honor. (Saying which, Dolmancé appears eager to turn Eugénie about in order to inspect her from the rear.)
EUGENIE — No, I beg of you!
MADAME DE SAINT-ANGE — No, Dolmancé… 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, first give them to us—and afterward the myrtle you covet will be your reward.
DOLMANCE — Very well, but in order to demonstrate, in order to give this beautiful child the first lessons of libertinage, we will require willing cooperation from you, Madame, in the exercise that must follow.
MADAME DE SAINT-ANGE — So be it! All right then, look you here—I'm entirely naked. 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 — What excellent predispositions! A trifle less passion, lovely Eugénie, for the moment you are only being 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 wondrous to see; but I am persuaded you yield to her in nothing… Well, now, my pretty little student, either you pay attention to me or beware lest, if you are not docile, I exercise over you the rights amply conferred upon me by my title as your mentor.
MADAME DE SAINT-ANGE — Oh, yes, yes indeed, Dolmancé, 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 Eugénie 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 Eugénie is presently arrayed.)
MADAME DE SAINT-ANGE — Yes, I approve of the project but not of the gesture. Let's begin our lesson, else the little time granted us to enjoy Eugénie will be spent in preliminaries, and the instruction shall remain incomplete.
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, Eugénie, that they are indifferently known as bosoms, breasts, tits. Pleasure may put them to profitable use: while amusing himself, a lover has them continually before his eyes: he caresses them, handles them, indeed, some lovers form of them the very seat of their pleasure and niche their member between these twin mounts of Venus which the woman then squeezes together, compressing 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 student a lecture upon it?
MADAME DE SAINT-ANGE — Verily, I do think so.
DOLMANCE — Very well, Madame, I am going to recline upon this couch; place yourself near me. Then you will lay hands upon the subject and you will yourself explain its properties to our young student. (Dolmancé lies down and Madame de Saint‑Ange demonstrates.)
MADAME DE SAINT-ANGE — This scepter of Venus you have before your eyes, Eugénie, is the primary agent of love's pleasure: it is called the member: there is not a single part of the human body into which it cannot introduce itself. Always obedient to the passions of the person who wields it, sometimes it nests there (She touches Eugénie's cunt.), this is 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 Eugénie's buttocks and indicates the anus.) 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 upon which 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 vent a white and viscous liquor, whose flowing forth plunges the man into a delirium intense enough to procure for him the sweetest pleasures he can hope to have 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 chafe and 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 — No good will come of this excitement. Be reasonable, Dolmancé: 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 Dolmancé’s testicles — Ah, my dear friend, how sorry I am you resist my desires!… And these balls, what might be their purpose? What are they called?
MADAME DE SAINT-ANGE — The technical term is genitals, male genitals... testicles belongs to art, the balls are the reservoir containing the abundant semen I have just mentioned and which, expelled into the woman's matrix, or womb, produces the human species; but we will not stress these details, Eugénie, for they relate more to medicine than to libertinage. A pretty girl ought simply to concern herself with fucking, and never with engendering. No need to touch at greater length on what pertains to the dull business of population, from now on we shall address 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, if she is not yet accustomed to it a woman always suffers. It has pleased Nature so to make us that we attain happiness only by way of pain. But once vanquished and had this way, nothing can equal the joy one tastes upon the entrance of this member into our ass; it is a pleasure incontestably superior to any sensation procured by this same introduction in front. And, besides, how many dangers does not a woman thus avoid! Fewer risks to her health, and none at all of pregnancy. For the present I'll say no more about this delight—your master and mine, Eugénie, will soon award it a full analysis, and by uniting practice with theory will, I trust, convince you, my precious one, that amongst 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, will be unable to aid your lessons.
EUGENIE — What! It would be reduced to nothing, dear heart, if it were to lose this semen you speak of!… Oh, do allow me to help him lose it, so that I may see what happens to it… And besides, I should take such pleasure in seeing it flow
MADAME DE SAINT-ANGE — No, no, Dolmancé, up with you. Remember that this is the payment 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 Eugénie of all we are going to relate concerning pleasure, would it be in any way prejudicial to Eugénie's instruction if, for instance, you were to frig her in front of me?
MADAME DE SAINT-ANGE — Why, doubtless not, and I shall do so all the more happily since I am certain this lubricious episode will only enrich our lessons. Onto the couch, my sweet.
EUGENIE — Oh dear God! the delicious nichel 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 here upon this ottoman. Thus everything is visible, no part of the body can remain hidden: everything must be seen; these images are so many groups disposed around those enchained by love, so many delicious tableaux wherewith lewdness waxes drunk and which soon drive it to its climax.
EUGENIE — What a marvelous invention!
MADAME DE SAINT-ANGE — Dolmancé, undress the victim yourself.
DOLMANCE — That will not be difficult, since 'tis 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 what coolness, what stunning elegance!… 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?… Eugénie… 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 Eugénie 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 Saint‑Ange's negligee and caresses her behind.) Ah, '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 my 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 Dolmancé.)
DOLMANCE — It could not be better: 'tis precisely what I asked for. And now agitate those superb asses with all the fire of lubricity; let them sink and rise in cadence; let them obey the proddings 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 have periods. 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; it would be impossible to tickle this part of me without seeing me swoon with delight… Try it… Ah, sweet little bitch, how well you do it! One would think you've done nothing else all your life!… enough!… stop!… No, I tell you, no, I do not wish to surrender myself … Oh, Dolmancé, stop me!… under the enchanted fingers of this pretty child, I am about 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… Let yourself go Eugénie, 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 beside myself… I no longer know what I am saying, nor what I am doing… What a drunkenness steals through all my being!
DOLMANCE — Look at the little rascal discharge! And squeeze!… Her anus nearly nipped off the end of my finger… how splendid it would be to bugger her at such a moment! (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 sole occupation!… How pleasant it is to enlighten her!
DOLMANCE — Well then, Eugénie, you observe that after a more or less prolonged pollution, the seminal glands swell, enlarge, and finally exhale a liquid whose release hurls the woman into the most intense rapture. This is known as discharging. When it pleases your good friend here, I'll show you, but in a more energetic and more imperious manner, how the same operation occurs in a man.
MADAME DE SAINT-ANGE — Wait, Eugénie, now I'm going to teach you a new way to drown a woman in joy. Spread your thighs… Dolmancé, you see how I am adjusting her, her ass is all yours. 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 swoon three or four times. Your little mound is charming, Eugénie, how I adore kissing this downy flesh!… I see 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. (They do as they have said.)
EUGENIE — Ah, my dear, it thrills me so; it is a sensation impossible to depict! I'd be hard put 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: 'tis the surest way to hasten the ejaculation.
EUGENIE, stiffening — I cannot bear it any more! oh, I'm dying! Don't abandon me, dear friends, I am about to swoon. (She discharges between her two initiators.)
MADAME DE SAINT-ANGE — Well, 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 liquors 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 furthers creation without being its cause. Indeed, there are several contemporary naturalists who claim it is useless; whence the moralists, always guided by science's discoveries, have decided—and the conclusion has a 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 its 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 a loathing for my mother.
DOLMANCE — But there is nothing unusual about that predilection; I have always thought as you. I still lament my father's death; when I lost my mother, I lit a perfect bonfire from joy… I detested her. Be unafraid, Eugénie, 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 thereto. As regards sentiment, what a difference!
MADAME DE SAINT-ANGE — Yet a thousand more reasons in your favor, Eugénie, if it is a mother still alive. If in all the world there is a mother who ought to be abhorred she is certainly yours! Superstitious, pious, a shrew, a scold… and what with her revolting prudery I dare wager the fool has never in her life committed a faux pas. Ah, my dear, how I hate virtuous women!… But we'll return to that question.
DOLMANCE — And now would it not be fitting for Eugénie, 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 applaud the suggestion—and while she frigs me, would not you, Dolmancé, relish the sight 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 Eugénie found so enormously to her liking. And now, my little wildcat, station 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 manage both your asses: I'll fondle Eugénie's while sucking her lovely friend's… There, admirable… How agreeably we are all together.
MADAME DE SAINT‑ANGE, swooning — Good God, I'm dying… Dolmancé, 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 cannot go on… You've ruined me, both of you… I think I have never had so 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 mean? Forgive me, but you know I'm 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 prepared at all times to surrender their persons, whether from temperament or for reward; happy and deserving creatures common opinion assails but whom license crowns and who, far more necessary to the society which they strive to serve than are prudes, forgo the esteem an unjust society denies them. All hail to those 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 endeavored to merit the laurel, I assure you that if I do not work as a whore, I always play as one. 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 to be called a whore, though 'tis true I scarcely merit the name; but is not virtue opposed to such misconduct, and does it not reproach us for behaving as we do?
DOLMANCE — Ah, Eugénie, 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? Come, 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? Eugénie, be not the dupe of those women you hear called virtuous. Theirs are not, if you wish, the same passions as ours; but they hearken to others, and often more contemptible… There is ambition, there pride, there you find self‑seeking, and often, again, it is a question of mere situational numbness, of torpor: there are beings who have no urges. Are we, I ask, to revere such as them? No; the virtuous woman acts, or is inactive, from pure selfishness. Is it then better, wiser, more just to perform sacrifices to egoism than to one's passions? As for me, I believe the one far worthier 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, Eugénie, is more precious to me than the most sublime deeds of a virtue I scorn.
EUGENIE — (Calm being to some degree reestablished during these expositions, the women, clad again in their negligees, are reclining upon a couch, and Dolmancé, seated 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 it be for whosoever has no belief in religion? And who is able to have religious beliefs? Come now, Eugénie, let's reason systematically. Do you not call religion the pact that binds man to his Creator and which obliges him to give his Creator evidence, by means of worship, of his gratitude for the existence received from this sublime author?
EUGENIE — It could not be better defined.
DOLMANCE — Excellent! If it is demonstrated that man owes his existence to nothing but Nature's irresistible schemes; if man is thus proven as ancient 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, who 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 ne 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, forever moving, has of herself what it pleases idiots to award God gratuitously; if it is certain that 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 portray 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, Eugénie, that it is a very necessary virtue, this piety which binds man to an idiotic, insufficient, atrocious, and contemptible Creator?
EUGENIE, to Madame de Saint-Ange — What! Then you mean to say, dear friend, 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 frailty of others, that abominable phantom, Eugénie, 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 ally itself to the essential injustices decreed by Nature; since He would constantly have 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 watchmaker? Very well then, 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 being created; now, to identify this creative agent is the single task before us, 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 awe 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? 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? Nothing but offering one more god. 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 us cast a glance upon the God Christianity propounds…
What do I see in the God of that infamous sect if not an inconsistent and barbarous being, today the creator of a world of destruction he repents of tomorrow; what do I see there but 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 mold 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 this is! and what necessity is there that man be deserving of his God? Had man been formed wholly good, man should never have been able to do evil, and only then 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 that 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 man 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 succeeds in leading astray the flock that the Eternal reserved unto himself. Nothing can vanquish the hold this demon's energy has upon us. But picture, in your own terms, the frightful God you preach: he has but one son; an only son, begot of some passing strange 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 a proper pigsty 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 disabuse us? Let us have a close look at him for an instant. What does he say? What is it he does? What is his sublime mission? What mystery is he about to reveal? What is the dogma he is going to prescribe for us? What will be the act wherein at last his grandeur will shine?
I see, first of all, an obscure childhood, a few doubtless 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 fetches back to Judea. 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 danger in refusing 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 whatever fools 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, the charlatan has himself fixed 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, succors him not in the least, and there you have him, this scoundrel, used like the last of the outlaws of whom he was such a fitting chief.
His henchmen assemble: "It's all up with us," they say, "and all our hopes are perished lest we save ourselves with a quick piece of cunning. 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 detail is crucial; let's note it well. They permit several years to pass before exploiting their artifice; at length, they erect upon it the shaky edifice of their unwholesome doctrine. Men are pleased by any novelty. Weary of the emperors' despotism, the world agrees to the need for 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 drivelings instantly become the basis of his morality, and as this romance 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 utterly 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 throve; 'twas inevitable.
Even today were one to cover it with ridicule, it would fall. The adroit Voltaire never used any other arm, and among all writers he is the one who may congratulate himself upon having the greatest number of proselytes. Such, in a few words, Eugénie, is the history of God and of religion; consider the treatment these fables deserve, and adopt a determined attitude toward 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 henceforth nothing for me 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 moment in your life, and so long as breath be in you never to return to him.
EUGENIE, flinging herself upon Madame de Saint‑Ange's breast — I pledge it in your arms! How readily I see that what you demand is for my own good, and that you would never have such reminiscences disturb my tranquility!
MADAME DE SAINT-ANGE — What other motive could I have?
EUGENIE — But, Dolmancé, 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 though it is, some virtues prescribed by it, whose cultivation could contribute to our happiness?
DOLMANCE — All right, let us see. Shall chastity be that virtue your own eyes destroy, Eugénie, although you and all about you are the very image of it? 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 absurd 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, Dolmancé, 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 aids one's fellow man; one would be most annoyed were the alms one has just bestowed not to receive the utmost possible publicity. Nor, Eugénie, are you to imagine that, as is the popular view, this action has only excellent consequences; for my part I behold 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 all sides I hear them ask after the means to suppress mendacity, and meanwhile they do everything possible to encourage 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 shut down your poorhouses. The individual born in misfortune thereupon seeing himself deprived of these dangerous crutches, will fend for himself, summoning up all the resources put in him by Nature, to extricate himself from the condition wherein he started life; and he will importune you no longer. Destroy, with entire unpity, raze to the ground, those detestable houses where you billet the progeny of the libertinage of the poor, appalling cloacas, wherefrom there every day spews forth into society a swarm of new‑made creatures whose unique hope resides in your purse. What purpose, I ask, is there in preserving such individuals with so much care? Does anyone fear France's depopulation? Ha! dread not.
One of the foremost of this nation's defects consists in a population by far too numerous, and much is wanting when such overabundances become considered the State's riches. These supernumerary beings are like unto the parasitical branches which, living only at the trunk's expense, always bring it to final decline. Remember that in no matter what political organization, whenever the size of the population exceeds what is strictly necessary to its existence, that society languishes. Examine France well, and you will observe that to be her situation. What results of it? 'Tis clear. The Chinese, wiser than we, are most careful to avoid the perils of excessive numbers. No asylum for the shameful fruit of debauchery: it is not preserved, it is abandoned, just as are the aftermaths 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 Dolmancé: 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, Eugénie, than all these sodalities; 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 score; it was long ago my father put me under the same obligation, and I am too little tempted to benevolence to disregard his orders… my heart's impulses, and your desires.
DOLMANCE — Nature has endowed each of us with a capacity for kindly feelings: let us not squander them on others. What to me are the woes that beset others? have I not enough of my own without afflicting myself with those that are foreign to me? May our sensibility's hearth warm naught but our pleasures! Let us feel when it is to their advantage; and when it is not, let us be absolutely unbending. From this exact economy of feeling, from this judicious use of sensibility, 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 sooner suffer death 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, Dolmancé, that there is nothing on earth as indifferent as the committing of good or evil; ought not our tastes, our temperament alone counsel us?
DOLMANCE — Ah, be in no doubt of it, Eugénie, 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 somewhere, no virtue that has not been blasted. When geography alone decides whether an action be worthy of praise or blame, we cannot attach any great importance to ridiculous and frivolous sentiments, but rather should be impeccably armed against them, to the point, indeed, where we fearlessly prefer the scorn of men if the actions which excite it are for us sources of even the mildest 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 exemplary deeds, whereas in other places, humaneness, candor, benevolence, chastity, in brief, all our virtues have been regarded as monstrosities.
EUGENIE — I would have you explain that to me; I ask for a succinct analysis of each one of those crimes, but I beg you to begin by exposing your opinions upon libertinage in young girls, then upon the adultery of married women.
MADAME DE SAINT-ANGE — Then listen to me, Eugénie. It is absurd to say that immediately a girl is weaned she must continue the victim of her parents' will in order to remain thus to her dying day. It is not in this age of preoccupation with the rights of man and general concern for liberties 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 so interesting a question as this, and may the laws that govern animals, in much stricter conformance with Nature, provide us for a moment with examples. Amongst beasts, do paternal duties extend beyond primary physical needs? Do not the offspring of animals possess all their parents' 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 fancy themselves in any sense beholden 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 suppress, 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 when they associate 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, Eugénie, 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 public 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 procure the happiness of all who apply to her, infinitely more important than those which, isolating herself, she performs for her husband? Woman's destiny is to be wanton, like the bitch, the she‑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 we go about assuring the liberty of every individual, the fate 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 whoever 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 people.
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 only 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: loud opinion forces us to do so; but in privacy and silence let us compensate ourselves for that cruel chastity we are obliged to display in public.
Let our young maiden strive to procure herself a companion who, unattached and abroad in the world, can secretly cause her to taste the world's pleasures; failing of that, let her contrive 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 watchdogs alone, or the women they will find and whom one calls procuresses, will soon supply the little one's wants; 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, 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 stubbornly reject and despise all that which but tends to her reentry 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 received through esteem, Eugénie, are nothing but moral pleasures, acceptable to none but certain minds; those of fuckery please all, and their winning characteristics soon eclipse the hallucinatory scorn from which escape is difficult when one flouts the public's views at which several cool‑headed women have so much laughed as therefrom to derive one pleasure the more. Fuck, Eugénie, 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 fairest period in your life; these golden years of our pleasure are only too few and 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, gnawing remorse conjoins with the sufferings of age and the fatal onset of the grave is all tears and brambles… But have you the madness to hope for immortality?
Why, then, 'tis by fucking, my dear, you will remain in human memory. The Lucretias were soon forgot whereas the Theodoras and the Messalinas are subjects for life's sweetest and most frequent conversation. How, Eugénie, may one not 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, I pray, will you be able to acquaint me with some of these women… (worried) 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, Eugénie; trust 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; afterward, 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, my angel, I will sate you.
EUGENIE, throwing herself into Madame de Saint‑Ange'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 earlier 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 render you 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 DF SAINT‑ANGE — In whatever 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 morning to night: 'tis for this unique end Nature created her; but if, in order to answer this intention, I require her to trample upon 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, Eugénie, that among all the bonds to be burst, I ought very surely to recommend that the very first be those of wedlock.
Indeed, Eugénie, consider the young girl scarcely out of her father's house or her pension, knowing nothing, without 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, Eugénie? 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 despair. Ah, no! Eugénie, 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? Probably not. What greater assurance have we of finding the happiness in a later bondage that eluded us in an earlier?
Therefore, in secrecy let us compensate ourselves for all the restraint 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 in us even with death, adultery, Eugénie, is hence nothing but an acquittance sanctioned by a natural law the whims of those tyrants shall never be able to abrogate. 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 opposed. Well! Is it not extremely simple to surrender oneself to libertinage without fear of pregnancy? Is it not easier yet to check 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 chimerical nevertheless.
First, provided I sleep with my husband, provided his semen flows to the depths of my womb, should I see ten men at the same time I consort with him, nothing will ever be able to prove to him that the child I bear does not belong to him; it is quite as likely the child is his as not, and in a case of uncertainty he cannot justifiably disclaim his part in bringing about something which may perhaps have been all of his doing. Immediately it can be his, it is his; any man who vexes himself with suspicions upon this head seeks vexations, even were his wife a vestal he would plague himself with worries, for it is impossible to be sure of a woman, and she who has behaved well for years may someday interrupt her good behavior.
Hence, if this husband is suspicious, he will be so in any case: never, then, will he be convinced the child he embraces is really his own. Now, if he can be suspicious in any case, there can be no disadvantage in sometimes justifying his suspicions: with what regards his state of happiness or unhappiness, it will all be 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 ménage 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 in the first place 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 signified something 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 wounding him in the slightest. This so‑called hurt is therefore a mere fable whose authentic existence is impossible. Of the two things, one: either my husband is a 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 honest; 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?" "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."
Let us recapitulate: 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 remain unknown to the husband, no jurist can prove, in this case, the existence of crime: here, adultery appears as 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: if evil there be, it is in the husband's discovery of it: well, that fault belongs only to him: it has nothing to do with his wife.
Those who in former times punished the adulterer were hence mere hangmen, tyrannical and jealous, who, viewing everything subjectively, unjustly imagined that in order to be criminal it was only 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 embarrassing 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 these precautions should happen to fail her. If it is thanks to her husband's unseemly penchants that she is compelled to compensate herself for his neglect, 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 entitle her to a counterpart; let her demand an entire liberty in return for the one she accords; thereupon, the husband refuses or else he consents: if he consents, as has mine, one puts oneself at his disposal and redoubles one's ministrations and condescensions to his caprices; if he refuses, then one perfects 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 obey and fulfill Nature's ordinations, and because all man‑made laws which would contravene Nature's are made for naught but our contempt.
A silly gull is the woman whom ties as absurd as those of wedlock inhibit from surrendering to her penchants, who dreads either pregnancy or the injury to her husband, or the yet more vain tarnishing of her reputation! You have just seen, Eugénie, yes, you have just sensed what a dupe she is 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 balance the weight of 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 who has 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 advanced in years when I married him. On our wedding night he gave me notice of his fancies, the while assuring me that, for his part, never would he interfere with mine; I swore to obey him and we have always, since then, he and I, lived in the most delicious independence and mutual understanding. 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 and cheerily pumping the fuck from his balls, I must shit in his mouth!… He swallows it down!…
EUGENIE — Now 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 à la mode; an infinite number of men, and principally those of a certain age, arc prodigiously addicted to it; would you refuse your cooperation, Eugénie, were someone to require it of you?
EUGENIE, turning red — In accordance with the maxims where. with I am being inculcated here, can I refuse anything? I only ask to be forgiven my surprise; this is the first time I have heard of all 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, Eugénie. 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 needs but take 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 thrown out‑of‑doors if they so much as opened their mouths. 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 upon every woman who would imitate me. During my twelve married years I have been fucked by upward of 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 exchanged the first for the second she would have been doomed.
EUGENIE — This seems the safest way of proceeding; 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? Does 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 then substitutes for me, and things proceed exceeding well.
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, Eugénie; 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 suspect the figure may be higher; 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, does not seem as pleasurable for the woman, and it is our dalliances, 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 delight; in its stead, 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, Eugénie; 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 wets 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 you sometimes up to the height of your face. This manner is the least voluptuous of all and can only suit those women whose breasts, from repeated usage, have acquired that flexibility, that looseness needed to grip the man's member tightly when clamped between them. 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 show spirit, catch hold of the buttocks, and the partners should finger and tickle each 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 liquid, mechanically diverted from its customary destination, to pass into their entrails.
DOLMANCE — Eugénie, '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, which the semen fills and where it is prevented from flowing farther. But of all the possibilities, that presented by the ass is without any doubt the most delicious. Dolmancé, to you I reserve the dissertations thereupon. Who better than you might 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 ass gives me yet more pleasure than a girl's. Buggers is the appellation designating those who are this fancy's adepts; now, Eugénie, when one goes so far as to be a bugger, one must not stop halfway. To fuck women in the rear is but the first part of buggery; 'tis with men Nature wishes men to practice this oddity, and it is especially for men she has given us an inclination. 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, Eugénie, not at all; this is as good a place to serve her as any other, and perhaps it is there she is most devoutly worshiped. Propagation owes its existence to her forbearance. How could she have prescribed as law an act which challenges her omnipotence, 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, Dolmancé, 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 is, without doubt, 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 Eugénie's behalf, let's analyze sodomistic pleasures, which presently are the subject of our discussion. In this mode of pleasure‑seeking, the posture most commonly adopted by the woman is for her to lie 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 splendid prospect of a ready and beckoning ass, after having patted it, 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 checks 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, inch by inch, gradually, but with determination, 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 distresses 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 double the delight of the agent who, overwhelmed with comfort, 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 pleasure in the operation; an attitude we will account for in good time.
MADAME DE SAINT-ANGE — Allow me to be the scholar for a moment, and let me ask you, Dolmancé, 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, reaching 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 pleasure‑taking is such that there exists no possibility of the fucker's receiving hurt nor of the employed object's failing to be transported into seventh heaven. No other matches this in value, no other can so completely satisfy each of the protagonists, and they who have tasted of it know a great difficulty in abandoning it for another. Such, Eugénie, 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 an higher esteem for this byplay 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 Eugénie 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 Eugénie; 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 Eugénie, 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, Eugénie.
EUGENIE — Very well, I spare Dolmancé his narrations; but you, my dear, pray tell me what they are, 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.
UGENIE — 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 does that word mean?
DOLMANCE — Such are called the public houses where in consideration of a price agreed upon, 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,[1] 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, 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 the immensity of these extravagances 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 rein to our imagination; we must bend it toward the inconceivable; our enjoyment will thereby be increased, made better for the track the intellect follows, and…
DOLMANCE, kissing Eugénie — 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 thus; and since I will subject myself to no inhibitions, you see to what lengths I suppose one may go.
MADAME DE SAINT-ANGE — To crime, vicious creature, to 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… Would you not like to persuade me, dear teachers, that you have never done what you have conceived?
MADAME DE SAINT-ANGE — It has sometimes been given to me to do it…
EUGENIE — There we are!
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, Eugénie, I shall… relate my life to you. Let us continue our instruction… for you would bring me to say things… things…
EUGENIE — Ah, begone! I see you do not love me enough fully to open your soul to me; I shall wait as long as you say; 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 goal; I promised to give myself to him immediately I married; I kept my word; happily, my husband damaged nothing: my brother harvested all. We continue with our intrigue, but without hampering ourselves; we do not—he on his part, I on mine—plunge ourselves into anything but the most divine of libertinage's excesses; we even mutually serve one another: I procure women for him, he introduces me to men.
EUGENIE — Delightful 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 counsels most warmly? Eugénie, a moment of reason: how, after the vast afflictions our planet sometime knew, how was the human species otherwise able to perpetuate itself, if not 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[2] and that of Noah have been preserved? Sift, examine 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 only by 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 exquisite 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 straitly 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 hope for the best. Consider, gentle Eugénie, 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! My 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 confuse social institutions for Nature's divine ordinations. And yet, 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, 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, Eugénie, 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 wont to boast is, moreover, nothing but an illusion; murder is no destruction; he who commits it does but alter forms, he gives back to Nature the elements whereof the hand of this skilled artisan instantly recreates other beings; now, 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 fools have had the madness to blame is nothing 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 perforce be an enormity; we have believed Nature would perish should our marvelous species chance to be blotted out of existence, while the whole extirpation of the breed would, by returning 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, Eugénie! 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 can likewise every century assassinate millions of individuals and we, feeble and wretched creatures, we are not allowed to sacrifice a single being to our vengeance or our caprice! Is there anything so barbarous, so outlandish, so grotesque? and, cloaking ourselves in the profoundest mystery, must we not amply compensate ourselves for this ineptitude, and have revenge? [3]
EUGENIE — Yes, of course… Oh, but your ethics seduce me, and how I savor their bouquet! Yet, wait, Dolmancé, tell me now, in good conscience, whether you have not sometimes had satisfaction in crime?
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 confess them to you.
MADAME DE SAINT-ANGE — While guiding the law's blade, the criminal has often employed it to satisfy his passions.
DOLMANCE — Would 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 of shattering all the links and shackles of ignorance and stupidity. Kiss me‑oh, you are charming!
DOLMANCE — Be frank, Eugénie, 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 see 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. (Dolmancé 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 lubriciously tendered him; restored a little to his senses, Dolmancé proceeds.) But why should we not put this sublime idea into execution?
MADAME DE SAINT-ANGE — Eugénie, 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, Eugénie, now what would you do?
EUGENIE — Everything… only show me the way and you'll see!
DOLMANCE — It will be shown you, Eugénie, I promise it; but thereunto, I put a condition.
EUGENIE — And what is it? or rather what is the condition 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, 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, as she reclines 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; Eugénie, 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 come a second time. Next, I will lodge my prick in her anus; you will avail me of your ass, 'twill take the place of the cunt she had under my nose, and now you will have at it in the style she will 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 Dolmancé, 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 our pleasures will be at their height. Now let's to work.
DOLMANCE — I think I'll have Eugénie frig me for a moment. (She does so.) Yes, quite, that's it… a bit more quickly, my heart… that rosy head must always be kept naked, never let it be covered over, the more 'tis kept taut the more you facilitate the erection… never, you must never cap the prick you frig… 'Tis very well done… thus you yourself put into a proper state the member that is to perforate 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 — Eugénie, 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 woman, 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, what blasphemies, my friend.
DOLMANCE — 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 then that 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 re‑edify 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!… All right, Eugénie, 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, Eugénie, courage!…
EUGENIE — Oh! You're tearing me!
MADAME DE SAINT-ANGE — A little management there, Dolmancé; 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 hilt.
EUGENIE — Oh heaven! it is not without trouble… see the sweat on my forehead, dear friend… Ah I 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, Dolmancé!… 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 Dolmancé goes on.) 'Tis easier so… how my prick penetrates… but, Madame, this noble ass is not the less virtuous for that …
EUGENIE — Am I as I should be, Dolmancé?
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 can't resist it I . . .
MADAME DE SAINT-ANGE — I’m coming, I say! Oh fuck!… fuck!… Dolmancé, I'm 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 — All right then, damn thee! I discharge! Damn thee!… I am so sweetly drunk!…
DOLMANCE — To your post!… Take up your station!… Eugénie!… I'll be the dupe of these handlings and shifts. (Eugénie assumes her place.) Ah, good! here again am!, 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… Ah! lick up