Juliette

Part One

’T was at Panthemont we were brought up, Justine and I, there that we received our education. The name of that celebrated retreat is not unfamiliar to you; nor does it require telling that for many a long year the prettiest and most libertine women gracing Paris have regularly emerged from that convent. Euphrosine, the young lady in whose footsteps I was eager to follow and who, dwelling close by my own parents’ home, had fled her father’s household to fling herself into libertinage, had been my boon companion at Panthemont. As ’twas from her and from a certain nun, a friend of hers, that I acquired the basic precepts of the morality which, as you listened to the tales my sister has just finished recounting, you were somewhat surprised to find in a person of my young years, it would seem to me that before anything else I ought to tell you something about those women, and to provide you with a circumstantial account of those earlier moments of my life when, seduced, corrupted by that pair of sirens, the seed destined to flower into vices without number was sown in the depths of my soul.

The nun I refer to was called Madame Delbène. For five years she had been the abbess of the house and was nearing her thirtieth year when I made her acquaintance. To be prettier than she were a thing impossible; a fit model to any artist, she had a sweet, celestial countenance, fair tresses, large blue eyes where shone something tender and inviting, a figure copied after one of the Graces. The victim of others’ ambition, young Delbène had been shut up in a cloister at the age of twelve in order that an elder brother, whom she detested, might be rendered wealthier by the dowry their parents were thus spared from having to set aside for her. Imprisoned at an age when the passions begin to assert themselves clamorously, although none of this had been of her choosing, for she’d then been fond of the world and of men in general, it was only by mastering herself, by coming triumphant through the severest tests, that she at last decided to give over and obey. Very precocious, having conned all the philosophers, having meditated prodigiously, Delbène, while accepting this condemnation to retirement, had all the same kept two or three friends by her. They came to visit her, to console her; and as she was exceedingly rich, they continued to furnish her all the literature and all the delights she could desire, even those which were to do the most to fire her imagination, already very lively and little cooled by the effects of seclusion.

As for Euphrosine, she was fifteen when I became attached to her; and she had been Madame Delbène’s pupil a year and a half when the two of them proposed that I enter their society—it was the same day I entered into my thirteenth year. Euphrosine’s complexion was somewhite less than white, she was tall for her age, very slender, had engaging eyes, considerable spirit and vivacity, but in looks she was no match for our Superior, and was far less interesting.

I have no need to say that among recluse women the thirst for the voluptuous is the sole motive for close friendship: they are attached one to the other, not by virtue, but by fucking: one is pleased by her who soaks one at sight, one becomes the intimate of her by whom one is frigged. Endowed with the most energetic temperament, I had, starting at the age of nine, accustomed my fingers to respond to whatever desires arose in my mind, and from that period onward I aspired to nothing but the happiness of finding the occasion for instruction and to launch myself into a career the gates unto which my native forwardness had already flung wide, and with such agreeable effects. Euphrosine and Delbène were soon to offer me what I was seeking. Eager to undertake my education, the Superior one day invited me to luncheon. Euphrosine was there: the weather was incredibly warm, and this excessive ardor of the sun afforded them an excuse for the disarray I found them in: apart from an undergarment of transparent lawn maintained by nothing more than a large bow of pink ribbon, they were perfectly naked.

Since you first arrived at this establishment, Madame Delbène began, kissing me rather carelessly upon the forehead, her eye and hand betraying a certain restlessness, I have had an unabating desire to make your intimate acquaintance. You are very attractive. You appear to me to be in possession of some wit and aptitude, and young maids of your sort have a very definite place in my heart—do you blush, little angel? But I forbid you to blush! Modesty is an illusion—resulting from what? ’tis the result of nought but our cultural manners and our upbringing, it is what is known as a conventional habit. Nature having created man and woman naked, it is unthinkable that she could have implanted in them an aversion or a shame thus to appear. Had man only faithfully observed Nature’s promptings, he would never have fallen subject to modesty: the which iron-clad truth, my heart, proves that there are certain virtues whose source lies nowhere save in total negligence, or ignorance, of the code of Nature. Ah, but might one not give a wrench to Christian morals were one in this way to scrutinize all the articles which compose it! But we’ll chat about that later on. Let’s speak of other matters for the nonce. Will you join us in our undress?

Then those two minxes, laughing merrily, stepped up to me and soon had me in a state identical to theirs; whereupon Madame Delbène’s kisses assumed a completely different character.

Oh, but my Juliette is lovely! cried she, admiringly; see how those delicious little breasts have begun to heave! Euphrosine, I do declare she’s better fleshed there than you are … and, would you believe it? she’s barely thirteen.

Our charming Superior’s fingers were tickling my nipples, and her tongue quivered in my mouth. She was not slow to observe her caresses were having so powerful an influence upon my senses that I was in serious danger of being entirely overcome.

O fuck! she apostrophized, unable to restrain herself and startling me with the vigor of her expressions. Ah, by sweet Christ! what verve, what a fiery temper! Let’s be rid of all these damnable hindrances, my little friends, to the devil with everything that yet screens from clear view charms Nature never created to remain hidden!

And directly flinging away the filmy costume which had enveloped her, she revealed herself to our eyes, lovely as Venus, that sea-risen goddess who exacted homage from the Greeks. It were impossible to be better formed, to have a skin more white, more sweet, to have more beauteous curves, forms better pronounced. Euphrosine, who imitated her almost at once, delivered fewer charms to my view: she was less plump than Madame Delbène; rather darker in her skin, she would perhaps have pleased less universally; but what eyes I what vivacity! Stirred by such a quantity of wonders, earnestly solicited by the two women they belonged to, besought to follow their example and be rid of all modesty’s restraints, you may be very certain that I yielded. Her head reeling from sublimest drunkenness, Delbène bore me to her bed and devoured me with her kisses.

One moment, she panted, wholly ablaze, one moment, my dears, we had best introduce a little method into our pleasures’ madness: they’re not relished unless organized.

So saying, she stretches me out, spreads wide my legs and, lying belly down upon the bed with her head lodged between my thighs, she sets to cunt-sucking me, the while exposing the world’s most handsome buttocks to my companion’s view, from that pretty little girl’s fingers she receives the same services her tongue is rendering me. Euphrosine knowing full well what was apt to flatter Delbène’s tastes, amidst her pollutions interspersed sharp slaps upon the nun’s behind: they had an indubitable effect upon our amiable instructress’ physical being. Quite electrified by libertine proceedings, the whore bolted the whey she was making squirt in a steady stream from my little cunt. Now and again she paused to gaze at me, to contemplate me in these throes of pleasure.

The beautiful creature! the tribade exclaimed. Oh, great God, was there ever a more inspiring child! Have at it, Euphrosine, frig me, my love, lay on, I want to die drunk on her fuck! Quick now, we’ll change about, let’s vary what we’re doing, she cried a moment later; you must wish for something in return, dear Euphrosine? But how shall I be able to repay you for the pleasures you’re giving me! Wait, wait, little angels, I’m going to frig you both at the same time.

She places us side by side on the bed; following her recommendation, we each advance a hand and set to polluting each other. Delbène’s tongue first probes far into the recesses of Euphrosine’s cunt, and she uses either hand to tickle our assholes; from time to time she relinquishes my companion’s cunt so as to pump mine, and thus both Euphrosine and I, experiencing three pleasures simultaneously, did, as you may be fully persuaded, discharge like muskets. Several instants later the resourceful Delbène has us turn over, and we put our asses at her disposal; while frigging us beneath, she applies determined lips to Euphrosine’s anus, then to mine, sucking with libidinous choler. She praised our buttocks’ conformation, spanking them teasingly, and half slew us with joy. When done, she drew away:

Do unto me everything I have done unto you, spake she in a thickened voice, frig me, the both of you. Frig me. I shall lie in your arms, Juliette, I shall kiss your mouth, our tongues shall intertwine … shall strain … shall suck. You shall bury this fair dildo in my womb, she pursued, putting the instrument into my hands; and you, my Euphrosine, you shall assume charge of my ass, you shall employ this lesser tube to arouse me in that sector: infinitely straiter than my cunt, it asks for no bulkier apparatus…. You, my pigeon, she went on, kissing me with inordinate feeling, you’ll not leave my clitoris unattended, will you? ’Tis there the true seat of woman’s pleasure: rub it, worry it, I say, use your nails if you like—never fear, I know how to bear a little pressure … and I am weary, Christ’s eyes! I am jaded and I require to be dealt with stoutly: I want to melt absolutely into fuck, fuck I want to become, if I am able I want to discharge twenty times over. Make it so.

Oh, God, with what liberality we did repay her in the one coin she valued! It were not in human power more passionately to labor at giving a woman pleasure … impossible to imagine one who had a greater appetite for it. The thing was done at last.

My angel, that charming creature said to me, I attempt to express my delight at having come to know you, and words fail me. You are a veritable discovery, from now on I propose to associate you with all my pleasures and you shall find that we may avail ourselves of some very poignant ones, despite the fact male company is, strictly speaking, forbidden us. Ask of Euphrosine whether she is content with me.

Oh, my beloved, allow my kisses to speak for me! exclaimed our young friend as she cast herself upon Delbène’s breast; ’tis you I am indebted to for an understanding of myself and of the meaning of my existence. You have trained my mind, you have rescued it from the darkness wherein childhood prejudices enshrouded it. Thanks alone to you I have achieved being in this world. Lucky Juliette, if you will condescend to lavish similar attentions upon her!

Yes, Madame Delbène replied, why yes, I am anxious to take her education in hand. Just as I have told you, I should like to cleanse her of all those infamous religious follies which spoil the whole of life’s felicity, I should like to guide her back to Nature’s fold and doctrine and cause her to see that all the fables whereby they have sought to bewitch her mind and clog her energies are in actuality worthy of nought but derision. But now to luncheon, my friends’, we’d best refresh ourselves; when one has discharged abundantly, what one has expended must be replenished.

A delicious collation, which we took entirely naked, soon restored to us the strength necessary to begin afresh. Once again we fell to frigging one another—and immediately were all three plunged back into the wildest excesses of lubricity. We struck a thousand different poses; continually altering our roles, we were sometimes wives to fuckers whom the next instant we dealt with as husbands and, thus beguiling Nature, for the length of an entire day we compelled that indulgent mother to set the crown of her voluptuousness most sweet upon all the little infractions of her laws we committed.

A month was so spent; at its end Euphrosine, her brain nicely crazed by libertinage, left the convent, then bade farewell to her family and went off to practice all the disorders of frenzied whoring and low license. Later, she returned and paid us a visit; she figured her situation, and we being too corrupted to find anything amiss in the career she was pursuing, pity was farthest from our thoughts, and our last wish was to discourage her from forging ahead.

I must say she has managed very well, Madame Delbène remarked to me; "a hundred times over I have yearned to respond to the same call, and indeed I surely would have, had my taste for men been strong enough to surmount this uncommon liking I have for women. However, dear Juliette, in fating me to inhabit the cloister all my life long, heaven also had the kindness to provide me with only a mediocre desire for any sort of pleasure other than those this sanctified place plentifully affords me; that which women may mutually procure one another is so delicious that my aspirations do not go very much farther. Nevertheless, I do recognize that one may take an interest in men; it is no mystery to me that one will now and then do everything under the sun to lay hands on them; whatever is connected with libertinage makes powerful sense to me…. My fancy has roved very far. Who knows, perhaps I have even gone beyond what one may imagine, have been gripped by wants whose satisfaction defies all conception?

The fundamental tenet of my philosophy, Juliette, went on Madame Delbène, who, since the loss of Euphrosine, had become more and more fond of me, is scorn for public opinion. You simply have no idea, my dear one, to what point I am contemptuously indifferent to whatever may be said about me. And, pray tell, what beneficial or other influence can the vulgar fool’s opinion have upon our happiness? Only our overdelicate sensitivity permits it to affect us; but if, by dint of stern and clear thinking, we succeed in deadening these susceptibilities, eventually reaching the stage where opinion’s effects upon us are null, even when it be a question of those things which touch us most intimately—then, I say, then that the good or bad opinion of others may have any influence whatsoever upon our happiness becomes utterly unthinkable. We alone can make for our personal felicity: whether we are to be happy or unhappy is completely up to us, it all depends solely upon our conscience, and perhaps even more so upon our attitudes which alone supply the bedrock foundation to our conscience’s inspirations. For the human conscience, continued that deep-learned woman, is not at all times and everywhere the same, but rather almost always the direct product of a given society’s manners and of a particular climate and geography. Is it not so, for example, that the same acts the Chinese do not in any sense consider inadmissible would cause us to shudder here in France? If then this most unrigid organ is, depending merely upon latitude and longitude, able to excuse and justify any extreme behavior, true wisdom must advise us to adopt a rational, a moderate, position between extravagances and chimeras, and to evolve attitudes which will prove compatible simultaneously with the penchants we have individually received from Nature and with the laws of the country we happen to dwell in; and these are the attitudes out of which we must elaborate our conscience. And that is why the sooner one sets to work adopting the philosophy one intends to be guided by, the better, since that philosophy alone supplies its form to the conscience, and our conscience is responsible for governing and regulating all the actions we perform in life.

Heavens! I cried, have you carried indifference to the point of not caring in the slightest about your reputation?

Quite, I do not care about it in the slightest, Madame Delbène answered. I might even confess that I take a greater inner pleasure from my conviction that this reputation is extremely bad than I would reap from knowing it was good. Oh, Juliette, never forget this: a good reputation is a valueless encumbrance. It cannot ever recompense us for what in sacrifice it costs us. She who prizes her good reputation is subject to at least as many torments as she who behaves neglectfully of it: the first lives in unceasing dread of losing what is precious to her, the other trembles before the prospects opened up by her own carelessness. If thus the paths conducting the one to virtue and the other to vice are equally bestrewn with briars, why is it that we subject ourselves to such vexations in selecting between these ways, why do we not consult Nature and loyally observe her directives?

But, I objected, were I to make these maxims mine, Madame Delbène, I greatly fear I should have to flout far too many conventions.

Why indeed, my dear, she retorted, I believe I’d prefer to have you tell me you greatly fear you’d taste too many pleasures. And what precisely are these conventions? Shall we inspect the matter soberly? Social ordinances in virtually every instance are promulgated by those who never deign to consult the members of society, they are restrictions we all of us cordially hate, they are common sense’s contradictions: absurd myths lacking any reality save in the eyes of the fools who don’t mind submitting to them, fairy tales which in the eyes of reason and intelligence merit scorn only…. We’ll have more to say on that subject, you have but to wait a little, my dear. Have confidence in me. Your candor and naïveté indicate you are in singular need of a tutor. For very few is life a bed of roses: only heed me, and you’ll be one of those who, with the thorns that must be there, will find a goodly number of flowers in her path.

Seldom indeed does one come across a reputation in shabbier repair than this one of Madame Delbène. A nun who held me in especially high esteem, being disturbed by my rapport with the Abbess, warned me that she was a doomed woman. She had, I was told, poisoned the minds of nearly every pensionnaire in the convent, and thanks to her advice at least fifteen or sixteen of them had already gone the way of Euphrosine. It was, she assured me, an unprincipled, lawless, a faithless, an impudent brazen creature who flaunted her wicked notions; vigorous measures would long ere this have been taken against her were it not for her influential position and distinguished birth. These exhortations meant nothing to me: a single one of Delbène’s kisses, a single phrase from her had a greater effect upon me than all the weapons it were possible to employ with a view to sundering us. Even had it meant being dragged over the precipice, it seemed to me I should have preferred definitive ruin at her side to celebrity in another’s sight. Oh, my friends! there is a certain perversity than which no other nourishment is tastier; drawn thither by Nature … if for a moment Reason’s glacial hand waves us back, Lust’s fingers bear the dish toward us again, and thereafter we can no longer do without that fare.

But it was not long before I noticed our amiable Superior’s attentions were not concentrated exclusively on me, and I as quickly perceived that others were wont to cooperate with her in exercises where libertinage had a more preponderant share than piety.

And will you take lunch with me tomorrow? she inquired one day. I expect Elizabeth, Flavie, Madame de Volmar and Madame de Sainte-Elme. We’ll be six in all; we ought surely to be able to accomplish some truly startling things, I dare say.

Goodness! I exclaimed. Do you amuse yourself with all those women?

"Of course. But you mustn’t for one instant suppose I am limited to them. There are thirty nuns in our establishment, I have had commerce with twenty-two; we have eighteen novices: I have still to make the acquaintance of one of them; and of the sixty pensionnaires presently with us, only three have resisted me so far. Whenever a new one arrives I simply have to get my hands on her: I accord her one week, never longer, to think over my proposals. Oh, Juliette, Juliette, my libertinage is an epidemic, whosoever is in my vicinity is bound to be infected by it. How very fortunate for society that I restrict myself to this dilute form of evil-doing: oh, what with my proclivities and principles, I could perhaps adopt another which might easily prove more of a nuisance to the world."