THE TWENTY-FIRST DAY
    Preparations for that ceremony were started early in the morning; they 
were of the usual sort but, and I have no idea whether or not it was by a 
stroke of chance, the inspection uncovered signs of the young bride's 
misbehavior. Durcet declared he had found shit in her chamber pot; she 
denied having put it there, asserting that, to cause her to be punished, 
the duenna had come and done the thing during the night, and that 
governesses often planted such evidence when they wished to embroil the 
children in difficulties. Well, she defended herself very eloquently and to 
no purpose whatever, for she was not carefully heard, and as her little 
husband-to-be was already on the list, the prospect of correcting both of 
them was the cause of great amusement. 
    Nevertheless, the young bride and groom, once the mass had been said, 
were conducted with much pomp to the salon where the ceremony was to be 
completed before mealtime; they were both of the same age, and the little 
girl was delivered naked to her husband, who was permitted to do whatever 
he wanted. Is there any voice so compelling as example's? And where if not 
in Silling were it possible to receive very bad examples and the most 
contagious ones? The young man sped like an arrow to its mark, hopped upon 
his little wife, and as his prick was greatly stiff, although not yet 
capable of a discharge, he would inevitably have got his spear in her . . . 
but mild as would have been the damage done her, the source of all 
Messieurs' glory lay in preventing anything from harming the tender flower 
they wished alone to pluck. And so it was the Bishop checked the lad's 
impetuous career, and profiting from his erection, straightway thrust into 
his ass the very pretty and already very well-formed engine wherewith 
Zelamir was about to plumb his young spouse. What a disappointment for that 
young man, and what a discrepancy between the old Bishop's slack-sprung 
vent and the strait and tidy cunt of a little thirteen-year-old virgin! But 
Zelamir was having to deal with people who were deaf to common-sense 
arguments. 
    Curval laid hands on Colombe and thigh-fucked her from in front while 
licking her eyes, her mouth, her nostrils, in a word, her entire face. 
Meanwhile, he must surely have been rendered some kind of service, for he 
discharged, and Curval was not a man to lose his fuck over silly trifles. 
    They dined, the wedded couple appeared at the meal and again in the 
salon for coffee, which that day was served by the very cream of the 
subjects, by, I wish to say, Augustine, Zelmire, Adonis, and Zephyr. Curval 
wished to stiffen afresh, had absolutely to have some shit, and Augustine 
shot him as fine an artifact as it were in human power to create. The Duc 
had himself sucked by Zelmire, Durcet by Colombe, the Bishop by Adonis. The 
last named shitted into Durcet's mouth after having dispatched the Bishop. 
But no sign of fuck; it was becoming rare, they had failed to exercise any 
restraint at the outset of the holiday, and as they realized the extreme 
need of seed they would have toward the end, Messieurs were growing more 
frugal. They went next to the auditorium where the majestic Duclos, invited 
to display her ass before starting, exposed that matchless ensemble most 
libertinely to the eyes of the assembly, and then began to speak: 
    Here is still another trait of my character, Messieurs, said that 
sublime woman; after having made you well enough acquainted with it, you 
will be so kind as to judge what I intend to omit from what I am going to 
tell you . . . and you will, I trust, dispense me from having to say more 
about myself. 
    Lucile's mother had just fallen into a state of the most wretched 
poverty, and it was only by the most extraordinary stroke of chance that 
this charming girl, who had received no news at all of her mother since 
having fled her house, now learned of her extreme distress: one of our 
street scouts - hard in pursuit of some young girl for a client who shared 
the tastes and designs of the Marquis de Mesanges, for a client, that is to 
say, who was eager to make an outright and final purchase - one of our 
scouts came in to report to me, as I was lying in bed with Lucile, that she 
had chanced upon a little fifteen-year-old, without question a maid, 
extremely pretty, and, she said, closely resembling Mademoiselle Lucile; 
yes, she went on, they were like two peas in a pod, but this little girl 
she'd found was in such bedraggled condition that she'd have to be kept and 
fattened for several days before she'd be fit to market. And thereupon she 
gave a description of the aged woman with whom the child had been 
discovered, and of the frightful indigence wherein that mother lay; from 
certain traits, details of age and appearance, from all she heard 
concerning the daughter, Lucile had a secret feeling the persons being 
discussed might well be her own mother and sister. She knew she had left 
home when the latter was still very young, hence it was hard to be sure of 
the thing, and she asked my permission to go and verify her suspicions. 
    At this point my infernal mind conceived a little horror; its effect 
was to set my body afire. Telling the street scout to leave the room, and 
being unable to resist the fury raging in my blood, I began by entreating 
Lucile to frig me. Then, halting halfway through the operation: 
    "Why do you want to go to see that old woman?" I asked Lucile; "what do 
you propose to do?" 
    "Why, but don't you see," said Lucile, whose heart was still 
undeveloped, "there are certain things that one is expected to do . . . I 
ought to help her if I can, and above all if she turns out to be my 
mother." 
    "Idiot," I muttered, thrusting her away from me, "go sacrifice alone to 
your disgusting popular prejudices, and for not daring to brave them, go 
lose the most incredibly fine opportunity to irritate your senses by a 
horror that would make you discharge for a decade." 
    Bewildered by my words, Lucile stared at me, and I saw I had to explain 
this philosophy to her, for she apparently had not the vaguest 
understanding of it. I therefore did lecture her, I made her comprehend the 
vileness, the baseness of the ties wherewith they seek to bind us to the 
author of our days; I demonstrated to her that for having carried us in her 
womb, instead of deserving some gratitude, a mother merits naught but hate, 
since 'twas for her pleasure alone and at the risk of exposing us to all 
the ills and sorrows the world holds in store for us that she brought us 
into the light, with the sole object of satisfying her brutal lubricity. To 
this I added roughly everything one might deem helpful in supporting the 
doctrine which same right-thinking dictates, and which the heart urges when 
it is not cluttered up with stupidities imbibed in the nursery. 
    "And what matters it to you," I added, "whether that creature be happy 
or wretched? Does her situation have anything to do with yours? does it 
affect you? Get rid of those demeaning ties whose absurdity I've just 
proven to you, and thereby entirely isolating this creature, sundering her 
utterly from yourself, you will not only recognize that her misfortune must 
be a matter of indifference to you, but that it might even be exceedingly 
voluptuous to worsen her plight. For, after all, you do owe her your 
hatred, that has been made clear, and thus you would be taking your 
revenge: you would be performing what fools term an evil deed, and you know 
the immense influence crime exerts upon the senses. And so here are two 
sources of pleasure in the outrages I'd like to have you inflict upon her: 
both the sweet delights of vengeance, and those one always tastes whenever 
one does evil." 
    Whether it was that I employed a greater eloquence in exhorting Lucile 
than I do in recounting the fact to you now, or whether it was because her 
already very libertine and very corrupt spirit instantly notified her heart 
of the voluptuous promise contained in my principles, she tasted them, and 
I saw her lovely cheeks flush in response to that libertine flame which 
never fails to appear every time one violates some prohibition, abolishes 
some restraint. 
    "All right," she murmured, "what are we to do?" 
    "Amuse ourselves with her," said I, "and make some money at the same 
time; as for pleasure, you can be sure to have some if you adopt my 
principles. And as for the money, the same thing applies, for I can make 
use of both your old gray-haired mother and your young sister; I'll arrange 
two different parties which will prove very lucrative." 
    Lucile accepts, I frig her the better to excite her to commit the 
crime, and we turn all our thoughts to devising plans. Let me first 
undertake to outline the first of them, since it deserves to be included in 
the category of passions I have to discuss, although I shall have to alter 
the exact chronology in order to fit it into the sequence of events, and 
when I shall have informed you of this first part of my scheme, I shall 
enlighten you upon the second. 
    There was a man, well placed in society and exceedingly wealthy, 
exceedingly influential and having a disorder of the mind which surpasses 
all that words are able to convey; as I was acquainted with him only as the 
Comte, you will allow me, however well advised of his full name I may be, 
simply to designate him by his title. The Comte was somewhat above thirty-
five years of age, and all his passions had reached their maximum strength; 
he had neither faith nor law, no god and no religion, and was above all 
else endowed, like yourselves, Messieurs, with an invincible horror of what 
is called the charitable sentiment; he used to say that to understand this 
impulse was totally beyond his powers, and that he would not for an instant 
assent to the notion that one dare outrage Nature to the point of upsetting 
the order she had imposed when she created different classes of 
individuals; the very idea of elevating one such class through the 
bestowing of alms or aid, and thus of overthrowing another, the idea of 
devoting sums of money, not upon agreeable things which might afford one 
pleasure, but rather upon these absurd and revolting relief enterprises, 
all this he considered an insult to his intelligence or a mystery his 
intelligence could not possibly grasp. Thoroughly instilled, nay, 
penetrated though he was with these opinions, he reasoned still further; 
not only did he derive the keenest delight from refusing aid to the needy, 
but he ameliorated what was already an ecstasy by outrageously persecuting 
the humble and injured. One of his higher pleasures, for example, consisted 
in having meticulous searches made of those dark, shadowy regions where 
starving indigence gnaws whatever crust it has earned by terrible toil, and 
sprinkles tears upon its meager portion. He would stiffen at the thought of 
going abroad not only to enjoy the bitterness of those tears, but even . . 
. but even to aggravate their cause and, if 'twere possible, to snatch away 
the wretched substance that kept the damned yet amongst the living. And 
this taste of his was no whim, no light fantasy, 'twas a fury; he used to 
say that he knew no more piercing delight, nothing that could more 
successfully arouse him, inflame his soul, than these excesses I speak of. 
Nor was this rage of his, he one day assured me, the fruit of depravation; 
no, he had been possessed by this mania since his youngest years, and his 
heart, perpetually toughened against misery's plaintive accents, had never 
conceived any gentler, milder feelings for it. 
    As it is of the greatest importance you be familiar with the subject, 
you must first of all know that the same man had three different passions: 
the one I am going to relate to you, another, which Martaine will explain 
to you later when she refers to this same personage, and a third, yet more 
atrocious, which Desgranges will doubtless reserve for the end of her 
contribution as doubtless one of the most impressive upon her list. But 
we'll begin with the one on mine. 
    Straightway I had informed the Comte of the nest of misery I had 
discovered for him, of the inhabitants of that nest, he was transported 
with joy. But it so happened that business intimately connected with his 
fortune and having an important bearing upon his advancement, which he took 
much care not to neglect, in that he held them vital to his misconduct, 
business, I say, was going to occupy his attention for the next two weeks, 
and as he did not want to let the little girl slip through his fingers, he 
preferred sacrificing the pleasure the first scene promised him, and to be 
certain of enjoying the second. And so he ordered me to have the child 
kidnaped at whatever cost, but without delay, and to have her deposited at 
the address he indicated to me. And in order to keep you in suspense no 
longer, my Lords, that address was Madame Desgranges', for she was the 
agent who furnished him with material for his third class of secret 
parties. And now to return to the objects of all our maneuvering. 
    So far, we had done little but locate Lucile's mother, both to set the 
stage for the recognition scene between mother and daughter and to study 
the problems associated with the kidnaping of the little girl. Lucile, well 
coached in her part, only greeted her mother in order to insult her, to say 
that it was thanks to her she had been hurled into libertinage, and to 
these she added a thousand other similarly unkind remarks, which broke the 
poor woman's heart and ruined the pleasure of rediscovering her daughter. 
During this first interview, I thought I glimpsed the appropriate way to 
talk with the woman, and pointed out to her that, having rescued her elder 
child from an impure existence, I was willing to do as much for the younger 
one. But the stratagem did not succeed, the poor wretch fell to weeping and 
said that nothing in the world would induce her to part with the one 
treasure she had left, that the little girl was her one resource, she 
herself was old, infirm, that the child cared for her, and that to be 
deprived of her would be to lose life itself. At this juncture, Messieurs, 
I must confess, and I do so with shame, that I felt a faint stirring in the 
depths of my heart; it advised me that my voluptuous pleasure was bound 
only to be increased by the horrible refinements I was about to give to my 
meditated crime, and having informed the old lady that shortly thereafter 
her daughter would come to pay her a visit with a man of great influence, 
who could perhaps render her great services, we left, and I bent all my 
efforts to employing the lures and devices I usually relied upon to snare 
game. I had carefully examined the little girl, she was worth my going to 
some trouble: fifteen years of age, a pretty figure, a very lovely skin, 
and very pretty features. She arrived three days later, and after having 
examined every part of her body and found nothing but what was very 
charming, dimpled, and very neat despite the poor nourishment she had for 
so long had to put up with, I passed her along to Madame Desgranges: this 
transaction marked the beginning of our commercial relations. 
    His private affairs attended to, our Comte reappeared; Lucile conducts 
him to her mother's home, and 'tis at this point begins the scene I wish to 
describe. The old mother was found in bed, the room was without heat 
although we were then in the midst of a bitterly cold winter; beside her 
bed sat a wooden crock containing milk. The Comte pissed into the crock as 
soon as he had entered. To prevent any possible trouble, and in order to 
feel himself the undisputed master of the fort, the Comte had posted two of 
his minions, a pair of strapping lads, on the stairway, and they were to 
offer a stubborn obstacle to any undesirable coming up or going down. 
    "My dear old buggress," intoned the Comte, "we have come here with your 
daughter, you see her there, and a damned pretty whore she is, upon my 
soul; we have come here, I say, to relieve what ails you, wretched old 
leper that you are, but before we can help you, you must tell us what's 
amiss. Well, go on, speak," he said, seating himself and beginning to 
palpate Lucile's buttocks, "go on, I say, itemize your sufferings." 
    "Alas!" said the good woman, "you come with that vixen not to help me 
but to insult me." 
    "Vixen? How's this," said the Comte, "you dare use insults with your 
daughter? By God," he went on, rising to his feet and dragging the old 
thing from her litter, "get out of that bed, get down on your knees, and 
ask to be forgiven for the language you have just employed." 
    There was no resist. 
    "And you, Lucile, lift your skirts and have your mother kiss your 
cheeks, and I am damned certain she wants nothing more than to kiss them, 
eager as she must be for some kind of reconciliation." 
    The insolent Lucile rubs her ass upon the seamed and wrinkled visage of 
her dear old mother; overwhelming her with a tirade of playful epithets, 
the Comte permits the poor woman to crawl back into bed, and then resumes 
the conversation. "I tell you once again," he says, "that if you recite all 
your troubles to me, I'll take the best care of you." 
    The woe-ridden are credulous; and they love to lament. The old woman 
made them privy to all her sufferings, and complained especially, with 
great bitterness, of the theft of her daughter; she sharply accused Lucile 
of having had a hand in it and of knowing where the child presently was, 
since the lady with whom she had come a little while ago had proposed to 
take her under her wing; that was the basis for her supposition (and there 
was considerable logic in the way she argued) that this same lady had taken 
her away. Meanwhile, the Comte, directly facing Lucile's ass, for by this 
time he had got her to step out of her skirts, the Comte, I say, now and 
again kissing that handsome ass and frigging himself uninterruptedly, 
listened, put questions to her, requested details, and regulated all the 
titillations of his perfidious lust according to the old woman's replies. 
But when she said that the absence of her daughter, thanks to whose work 
she was procure her wherewithal, was going to lead her gradually but 
inexorably to the grave, since she had nothing and for four days had been 
kept barely alive by that small quantity of milk he had just spoiled: 
    "Why, then, bitch," said the Comte, aiming his prick at the old 
creature and continuing to explore Lucile's buttocks, "why, then go ahead 
and croak, you foul old whore, do you suppose the world will be any worse 
off without you?" 
    And as he concluded his question he loosed his sperm. 
    "Were that to happen," he observed, "I believe I'd have only one 
regret, and that would be not having myself hastened the event." 
    But there was moreto it than that, the Comte was not the sort of a man 
to be appeased by a mere discharge; Lucile, fully aware of the role she was 
to play, now that he had been relieved, busied herself preventing the old 
woman from noticing what he was about, and the Comte, rummaging through 
every corner of the room, came upon a silver goblet, the last vestige of 
the material well-being that had once upon a time been this poor wretch's; 
he put the goblet in his pocket. This fresh outrage having put new hardness 
into his prick, he again dragged the old woman from her bed, stripped her 
naked, and bade Lucile frig him upon the matron's withered old frame. Once 
again nothing could be done to stop him, and the villain darted his fuck 
over that ancient flesh, redoubled his insults, and said that the poor 
wretch could rest perfectly assured he was not yet done with her, and that 
she would soon have news of himself and of her little girl who, he wished 
to have her know, was in his power. He then proceeded to that last 
discharge, his transports of lust were ignited by the horrors wherewith his 
perfidious imagination was already in a ferment, by the ruin of the entire 
family he was contemplating, and he left. But in order not to have to 
return to this affair, hear, Messieurs, how I surpassed myself in villainy. 
Seeing that he might have confidence in me, the Comte informed me of the 
second scene he was preparing for the benefit of the old woman and her 
little daughter; he told me he wanted the child brought to him without 
delay and, as he wanted to reunite the whole family, he wished to have me 
cede Lucile to him too, for he had been deeply moved by her lovely ass; he 
made no effort to conceal that his purpose was to ruin Lucile as well as 
her ass, together with her mother and sister. 
    I loved Lucile. But I loved money even more. He offered me an unheard-
of price for these three creatures, I agreed to everything. Four days 
later, Lucile, her little sister and her aged mother were brought together; 
Madame Desgranges will tell you about that meeting. As for your faithful 
Duclos, she continues and resumes the thread of her story this anecdote has 
interrupted; indeed, she wonders whether she ought not have recited it at 
some later time, for, esteeming it a very stirring episode, she considers 
it would have proven a fitting climax to her contribution. 
    "One moment," said Durcet, "I cannot hear such stories without being 
affected, their influence upon me would be difficult to describe. I have 
been restraining my fuck since the middle of the tale, kindly allow me to 
unburden myself now." 
    And he dashed into his closet with Michette, Zelamir, Cupidon, Fanny, 
Therese, and Adelaide; several minutes later his shouts began to ring out, 
and soon after the uproar started, Adelaide emerged in tears, saying that 
all this made her very unhappy, and wondering why they had to excite her 
husband with such dreadful stories; she who told them, Adelaide declared, 
not others, ought by rights to be the victim. During the interim the Duc 
and the Bishop had not wasted an instant, but the manner in which they 
operated belonging to the class of procedures circumstances compel us still 
to mask from the reader's view, we beg him to suffer the curtain to remain 
down, and to allow us to move on to the four tales Duclos had yet to relate 
before bringing this twenty-first meeting of the assembly to a close. 
    A week after Lucile's departure, I handled a rascal blessed with a 
rather curious mania. Warned several days in advance of his intended 
arrival, I had let a great number of turds accumulate in my one-holed 
chair, and I had induced one of my young ladies to add a few more to the 
collection. Our man appeared costumed as a Savoyard rustic; 'twas in the 
morning, he swept out my room, removed the pot from beneath the chair, and 
went out to empty it (this emptying, I might note in parantheses, took a 
considerable length of time); when he returned he showed me how carefully 
he'd cleaned it out and asked for his payment. But, and this of course was 
all stipulated in our prior agreement, instead of giving him a coin, I 
seize the broom and fall to belaboring him with the handle. 
    "Your payment, villain?" I cry, "why, here's what you deserve." 
    And I bestow at least a dozen blows upon him. He seeks to escape me, I 
pursue him, and the libertine, whose critical moment has arrived, 
discharges all the way down the stairs, bawling out at the top of his voice 
that they're cracking his skull, that they want to kill him, and that he's 
got himself into the house of a scoundrel, she's not by any means the 
honest woman he at first took her for, etc. 
    Another carried, in a small pocket case, a little knotty stick which he 
kept for an unusual purpose; he wanted me to insert the stick into his 
urethral canal, and, having plunged it in to a depth of three inches, to 
rattle it with utmost vigor, and with my other hand to pull back his 
foreskin and frig his poor device. At the very instant he discharged, one 
had to pull out the stick, raise one's skirts in front, and he would 
discharge upon one's mound. 
    Six months later I had to do with an abbot who wanted me to take a 
burning candle and direct the drops of molten tallow so that they fell upon 
his penis and balls; it required nothing more than the sensation this 
ceremony produced to bring about his discharge. His machine required no 
touching, but it remained limp throughout; before they would yield fuck, 
his genitals had to be given such a heavy coating of wax that toward the 
end there was no recognizing this strange object as a part of the human 
anatomy. 
    That ecclesiastic had a friend who loved nothing so much as to offer 
his bum to be perforated by a multitude of gold pins, and when thus 
decorated, his hindquarter far more resembling a pincushion than an 
ordinary ass, he would sit down, the better to savor the effect he 
cherished, and, presenting one's very wide-spread buttocks to him, he would 
twiddle his member and discharge into one's vent. 
    "Durcet," said the Duc, "I should very much like to see that sweet 
chubby ass of yours studded all over with golden pins, ah yes, I'm 
persuaded 'twould thus appear more interesting than ever." 
    "Your Grace," quoth the financier, "you know that for forty years it 
has been my glory and my honor to imitate you in all things; I but ask you 
to have the kindness to set me an example, and you have my word that I will 
follow it." 
    "God's loin-scum!" exclaimed the good Curval, who had not until now 
been heard from, "by His sacred seed, I do declare that story about Lucile 
has made me stiff! I've held my peace, but my head's been at work none the 
less. Look here," said he, exhibiting his prick standing high, "see whether 
I do not say true. I've a furious impatience to hear the denouement of the 
story of those three buggresses; I have the highest hope they'll meet one 
another in a common grave." 
    "Softly there, softly," said the Duc, "let's not anticipate events. 
Were you not stiff, Monsieur le President, you'd not be in such a hurry to 
hear talk of wheels and gibbets. You resemble a great many other of 
Justice's servitors, whose pricks, they say, rise up every time they 
pronounce the sentence of death." 
    "Never mind the magistrature," Curval replied, "the fact remains that I 
am enchanted by Duclos' doings, that I find her a charming girl, and that 
her story of the Comte has put me in a dreadful state, and in this state, I 
say, I could be easily persuaded to go abroad, stop a carriage on the 
highway, and rob its occupants." 
    "Ah, President, take care," said the Bishop; "keep a hand upon 
yourself, my dear fellow, else we'll cease to be in safety here. One such 
slip, and the least we could expect would be the noose for all of us." 
    "The noose? Ah, the noose, yes . . . but not for us. However, I don't 
for a minute deny I'd myself gladly condemn these young ladies here to be 
hanged, and especially Madame la Duchesse, who's lying like a cow upon my 
sofa and who, merely because she's got a spoonful of modified fuck in the 
womb, fancies no one dares touch her any more." 
    "Oh," said Constance, "'tis surely not with you I count upon being 
respected because of my state. Your loathing for pregnant women is only too 
notorious." 
    "A prodigious loathing, isn't it?" said Curval with a chuckle, "why, 
indeed it is prodigious." 
    And, transported by enhusiasm, he was, I believe, on the verge of 
committing some sacrilege against that superb belly, when Duclos 
intervened. 
    "Come, Sire, come with me," said she; "since 'tis I who have caused the 
hurt, I'd like to repair it." 
    And together they passed into the secluded boudoir, followed by 
Augustine, Hebe, Cupidon, and Therèse. It was not long before the 
President's braying resounded through the castle, and despite all Duclos' 
attentions, little Hebe returned weeping from the hurlyburly; there was 
even more to it than tears, but we dare not yet disclose just what it was 
had set her to trembling. A little patience, friend reader, and we shall 
soon hide nothing from your inquisitive gaze. 
    And now Curval himself returns, grumbling between his teeth and 
swearing that all those dratted laws prevent a man from discharging at his 
ease, etc.; their Lordships sit down at table. After supper they withdrew 
to mete out punishment for the misbehavior that had accrued during the 
week, but the guilty were not that evening in great number: only Sophie, 
Colombe, Adelaide, and Zelamir merited correction, and received it. Durcet, 
who since the beginning of the evening had waxed very hot, and who had been 
particularly inspired by Adelaide, granted her no quarter; Sophie, whom 
they had detected shedding tears during the story of the Comte, was 
punished for that misdemeanor as well as for her former one, and the Duc 
and Curval, we understand, treated the day's little newlyweds, Zelamir and 
Colombe, with a severity that almost bordered upon barbarity. 
    The Duc and Curval, in splendid form and singularly wrought up, said 
they had no wish to retire, and having had a quantity of beverages fetched 
in, they passed the night drinking with the four storytellers and Julie, 
whose libertinage, increasing every day, gave her the air of a very amiable 
creature who deserved to be ranked among these objects for whom Messieurs 
had some regard. The following morning, while making his rounds, Durcet 
found all seven of them dead drunk. The naked girl was discovered lodged 
between her father and her husband and in a posture which gave evidence of 
neither virtue nor decency in libertinage; it was plain enough to the 
financier that (to hold the reader in suspense no longer) they had both 
enjoyed her simultaneously. Duclos, who, from all appearances, had 
functioned as an instrument to this crime, lay sprawled near the compact 
trio, and the others were strewn in a confused heap in the corner opposite 
the fire, which someone had taken care to keep burning throughout the 
night. 




THE TWENTY-SECOND DAY
    As a result of these all-night bacchanals, exceedingly little was 
accomplished on the twenty-second day of November; half the customary 
exercises were forgot, at dinner Messieurs appeared to be in a daze, and it 
was not until coffee they began to come somewhat to their senses. The 
coffee was served them by Rosette and Sophie, Zelamir and Giton. In an 
effort to return to his usual old self, Curval had Giton shit, and the Duc 
swallowed Rosette's turd; the Bishop had himself sucked by Sophie, Durcet 
by Zelamir, but no one discharged. They moved dutifully into the 
auditorium; the matchless Duclos, weak and quesy after the preceding day's 
excesses, took her place with drooping eyelids, and her tales were so 
brief, they contained so few episodes, were recounted so listlessly, that 
we have taken it upon ourselves to supply them, and in the reader's behalf 
to clarify the somewhat confused speech she made to our friends. 
    In keeping with prescription, she recounted five passions: the first 
was that of a man who used to have his ass frigged with a tin dildo priorly 
charged with warm water, the which liquid was pumped into his fundament at 
the same instant he ejaculated; nothing else was required to obtain that 
effect, he needed no one else's ministry. 
    The second man had the same mania, but was wont to use a far greater 
number of instruments; initially, he called for a very minute one, then 
gradually increased the caliber, ascending the scale by small fractions of 
an inch until he reached a weapon with the dimensions of a veritable 
fieldpiece, and only discharged upon receiving a torrent from its muzzle. 
    Far more of the mysterious was required to please the third one's 
palate: at the outset of the game, he had an enormous instrument introduced 
into his ass, then it was withdrawn, he would shit, would eat what he had 
just rendered, and next he had to be flogged. The flogging administered, it 
was time to reinsert the formidable device in his rectum, then once again 
it was removed, and it was the whore's turn to shit, and after that she 
picked up the whip again and lashed him while he munched what she had done; 
a third time, yes, a third time the instrument was driven home, and that, 
plus the girl's turd he finished eating, was sufficient to complete his 
happiness. 
    In her fourth tale, Duclos made mention of a man who would have all his 
joints bound with strings; in order to make his discharge even more 
delicious, his neck itself was compressed, and, half choking, he would 
shoot his fuck squarely at the whore's asshole. 
    And in her fifth, she referred to that individual who used to tie a 
slender cord tightly to his glans; the girl, naked, would pass the other 
end of the cord between her thighs, and walk away from him, drawing the 
cord taut and offering the patient a full view of her ass; he would then 
discharge. 
    Truly exhausted after having fulfilled her task, the storyteller begged 
to leave to retire, and she was allowed to. A few moments were devoted to 
uttering smutty comments upon this and that, and then the four libertines 
went to supper, but everyone felt the effects of our two principal actors' 
disorderliness. At the orgies they were also as prudent and restrained as 
'twere possible for such debauchees to be, and the entire household went 
more or less quietly to bed. 




THE TWENTY-THIRD DAY
    "But how is it possible to shout and roar the way you do when you 
discharge?" the Duc demanded of Curval upon bidding him good morning on the 
23rd. "Why the devil must you scream that way? I've never seen such violent 
discharges." 
    "Why, by God," Curval replied, "is it for you, whom one can hear a 
league away, to address such a reproach to a modest man like myself? Those 
little murmurs you hear, my good friend, are caused by my extremely 
sensitive nervous system; the objects which excite our passions create such 
a lively commotion in the electrically charged fluid that flows in our 
nerves, the shock received by the animal spirits composing this fluid is of 
such a degree of violence, that the entire mechanism is rattled by these 
effects, and one is just as powerless to suppress one's cries when 
overwhelmed by the terrible blows imparted by pleasure, as one would be 
when assailed by the powerful emotions of pain." 
    "Well, you define the thing very well, President, but what was the 
delicate object that could have produced such a vibration in your animal 
spirits?" 
    "I was very energetically sucking Adonis' prick, his mouth, and his 
asshole, for I was cast down with despair at not being able to do more to 
my couch companion; all the while I made the best of my hard situation, 
Antinoüs, seconded by your dear daughter Julie, labored, each in his own 
way, to evacuate the liquor whose eventual outpouring occasioned the 
musical sounds which, you say, struck your ears." 
    "And it all worked so well that now, today," said the Duc, "you're as 
weak as a baby." 
    "No, your Grace, not at all," Curval declared; "deign but to observe my 
career, my motions today, and but do me the honor of judging my style and 
vehemence in sport, and you shall see me conduct myself quite as ever, and 
assuredly as well as you yourself." 
    They were at this point in the conversation when Durcet arrived to say 
breakfast was being served. They passed into the qirls' quarters, where 
those eight charming little houris were distributing cups of coffee and hot 
water; the Duc therewith demanded to know of Durcet, the month's steward 
and presiding officer, why was it the coffee was being served with water? 
    "You'll have it with milk whenever you wish," said the financier. 
"Would you prefer it thus now?" 
    The Duc said that yes, he would. 
    "Augustine, my dear," Durcet said, "a little milk in Monsieur le Duc's 
cup, if you please." 
    Thereupon the little girl, prepared for any eventuality, placed 
Blangis' cup beneath her ass, and through her anus squeezed three or four 
spoonfuls of milk, very clear and perfectly fresh. This cunning feat 
produced much pleasant laughter, everyone requested milk in his coffee. All 
the asses were charged in the same way Augustine's was: 'twas an agreeable 
little surprise the month's director of games had thought to give his 
colleagues. Fanny poured some into the Bishop's cup, Zelmire into Curval's, 
and Michette into the financier's; the friends took a second round of 
coffee, and the four other girls performed over these new cups the same 
ceremony their comrades had over the first cups; and so on and on; the 
whole thing entertained their Lordships immoderately. It heated the 
Bishop's brain; he affirmed he wanted something beside milk, and the lovely 
Sophie stepped forth to satisfy him. Although all eight definitely wished 
to shit, they had been strongly urged to exercise self-restraint while 
dispensing the milk, and this first time to yield absolutely nothing else. 
    Next, they paid the little boys a good-morning visit; Curval induced 
Zelamir to shit from him, the Duc applauded what Giton brought to light. 
Two subaltern fuckers, Constance, and Rosette provided the spectacle in the 
chapel latrine. Rosette was one of those upon whom the old formula for 
promoting indigestion had beed tried out; at coffee, she had had the 
world's worst time keeping her milk free of foreign ingredients, and now, 
seated upon the throne, she released the most superb turd you could hope to 
lay eyes upon. Duclos was congratulated, they said her system was a 
resounding success, and from then on they used it every day; never once did 
it fail them. The conversation at the dinner was enlivened by the 
breakfast's pleasantry, and a number of other things of the same kind were 
invented and proposed; we shall perhaps have occasion to mention them in 
the sequel. 
    After-dinner coffee was served by four subjects of the same age: to 
wit, Zelmire, Augustine, Zephyr, and Adonis. The Duc thigh-fucked Augustine 
while tickling her anus with his thumb, Curval did the same thing with 
Zelmire, but may or may not have used his thumb, his hand was not in clear 
view; the Bishop toiled between Zephyr's tightly squeezed legs, and the 
financier fucked Adonis' mouth. Augustine announced that she was ready to 
shit, how would they like her to do a little shit? The poor dear could not 
wait another moment, she too had been exposed to the indigestion-producing 
experiments. Curval beckoned her to him, opened his mouth, and the 
delightful little girl dropped a monstrous turd into it; the President 
gobbled it up in a trice, not without unleashing a veritable stream of fuck 
into Fanchon's hands. 
    "There you are," he said to the Duc, "you see that night-time merriment 
has no damaging effect upon the following day's pleasures; you're lagging 
behind, Monsieur le Duc." 
    "I'll not be behind for long," said the latter, to whom Zelmire, 
inspired by an urge no less imperious, was rendering the same service 
Augustine had a moment before rendered Curval. And, yes, as he pronounces 
those words, the Duc topples over, utters piercing shrieks, swallows shit, 
and discharges like a madman. 
    "Enough of this," said the stern, austere voice of the Bishop, 
moderation's exponent; "at least two of us must preserve our strength for 
the stories." 
    Durcet, who, unlike the Duc and Curval, had no surfeit of fuck to fling 
carelessly about, assented wholeheartedly, and after the shortest possible 
nap, they installed themselves in the auditorium, where, in the following 
terms, the spellbinding Duclos resumed her brilliant and lascivious 
history: 
    Why is it, Messieurs, the radiant creature inquired, that in this world 
there are men whose hearts have been so numbed, whose sentiments of honor 
and delicacy have been so deadened, that one sees them pleased and amused 
by what degrades and soils them? One is even led to suppose their joy can 
be mined nowhere save from the depths of opprobrium, that, for such men, 
delights cannot exist elsewhere save in what brings them into consort with 
dishonor and infamy. To what I am going now to recount to you, my Lords, to 
the various instances I shall lay before you in order to prove my 
assertion, do not reply, saying that 'tis physical sensation which is the 
foundation of these subsequent pleasures; I know, to be sure, physical 
sensation is involved herein, but be perfectly certain that it does not 
exist in some sort save thanks to the powerful support given it by moral 
sensation, and be sure as well that, were you to provide these individuals 
with the same physical sensation and to omit to join to it all that the 
moral may yield, you'd fail entirely to stir them. 
    There very often came to me a man of whose name and quality I was 
ignorant, but who, however, I knew most certainly to be a man of 
circumstance. The kind of woman with whom I married him made no difference 
at all: beautiful or ugly, old or young, it was all the same to him; his 
partner had only to play her role competently, and that role was as 
follows: ordinarily, he would come to the house in the morning, he would 
enter, as though by accident, into a room where a girl lay upon a bed, her 
skirts raised to above her waist and in the attitude of a woman frigging 
herself. Immediately his entrance was noticed, the woman, as if surprised, 
would spring from the bed. 
    "What are you doing here, villain?" she would ask very crossly; "who 
gave you permission to disturb me?" 
    He would beg forgiveness, his apologies would go unheeded, and all the 
while showering him with a renewed deluge of the harshest and most biting 
invectives, she would fall to giving him furious kicks upon the posterior, 
and she would become all the more certain of her aim as the patient, far 
from dodging or shielding his behind, would unfailingly turn himself and 
present the target within easy range, although looking for all the world as 
if he wished only to escape this punishment and flee the room. The kicking 
is redoubled, he cries to be spared, blows and curses are the only replies 
he receives, and as soon as he feels he is sufficiently excited, he 
promptly draws his prick from his breeches, which he has hitherto kept 
tightly buttoned, and lightly giving his device three or four flicks of the 
wrist, he discharges while rushing away under an unremitting storm of kicks 
and abuses. 
    A second personage, either tougher or more accustomed to this sort of 
exercise, would not enter the lists save with a street porter or some other 
stout rascal willing to sweat for his hire. The libertine enters furtively 
while his opponent is busily counting his money; the churl cries thief; 
whereupon the hard language and blows begin. Whereas with the former 
debauchee, the blows were scattered somewhat over his body, this one, 
keeping his breeches down about his ankles, wishes to receive everything 
squarely in the center of his unclothed bum, and that bum has to be 
buffeted by a good heavy boot, amply studded with hobnails and well coated 
with mud. At the moment he felt himself about to discharge, our gentleman 
ceased to parry the blows; planted firmly in the middle of the room, his 
breeches still lowered, and agitating his prick with all his strength, he 
braved his enemy's assaults, and, at this crucial juncture, dared him do 
his worst, insulting him in his own turn, and swearing he was about to die 
of pleasure. The more vile, the more lowly the man I found for this 
stalwart libertine, the more scurvy his antagonist, the heavier and the 
more filthy his boot, the more overpowering would be my client's ecstasy; I 
had to employ the same tact and discrimination in selecting his assailant 
that I would have had to devote to embellishing and beautifying another 
man's woman. 
    A third wished to find himself in what in a whorehouse is called the 
harem, at the same instant two other men, paid so to do and on hand for no 
other purpose, began a dispute. Both would turn upon our libertine, he 
would ask to be spared, would throw himself upon his knees, would not be 
listened to, and one of the two champions would directly snatch up a cane 
and fall to belaboring him all the while he crept to the entrance of 
another room where he would take refuge. There he would be received by a 
girl, she would console him, caress him as one might a child who has come 
to be comforted, she would raise her skirts, display her ass, and the 
libertine, all smiles, would spray his fuck upon it. 
    A fourth required the same preliminaries, but as soon as the strokes of 
the cane began to rain down upon his back, he would frig himself within 
sight of all. Then this last operation would be suspended for a moment; 
there would, however, be no interruption in the dual attack of blows and 
oaths; then he'd get hot again, frig some more, and when they saw his fuck 
was about to fly, they'd open a window, pick him up by the waist, and fling 
him out; he would land upon a specially prepared dung heap after a fall of 
no more than six feet. And that was the critical moment; he had been 
morally aroused by the foregoing preliminaries, and his physical self only 
became so thanks to his fall; 'twas never but upon that dung heap he loosed 
his fuck. When one went to look from the window, he was gone; there was an 
obscure little door below (he had a key to it), and he'd disappear through 
it at once. 
    A man paid for the purpose and dressed like a rowdy would abruptly 
enter the chamber in which the man who furnishes us with the fifth example 
would be lying with a girl, kissing her ass while awaiting developments. 
Accosting the expectant libertine, the bully, having forced the door, would 
insolently ask what right he had thus to meddle with his mistress and then, 
laying his hands upon his sword, he would tell the usurper to defend 
himself. All confused, the latter would fall to his knees, ask pardon, 
grovel on the floor, kiss his rival's feet too, and swear he was ready to 
relinquish the lady at once, for he had no desire to fight over a woman. 
The bully, whom his adversary's pliability rendered all the more insolent, 
now called his enemy a coward, a contemptible fellow, a whoreson ass-
fucker, and a dog, and threatened to carve up his face with the edge of his 
sword. And the more ugly became the one's behavior, the more humble and 
fawning became the other's. Finally, after a few minutes of debate, the 
assailant offered to make a settlement with his enemy: 
    "I see damned well that you've got no guts at all," said he, "and so 
I'll let you go, but upon condition you kiss my ass." 
    "Oh, Monsieur, I'll do whatever you like," said the other, enchanted by 
this solution, "I'd even kiss it if 'twere all beshitted, if you wish, 
provided you do me no harm." 
    Sheathing his sword, the bully directly pulled down his breeches, the 
libertine, only too delighted, leapt enthusiastically to work, and while 
the young man let fly half a dozen farts at his nose, the old rake, having 
attained the summit of ecstasy, loosed his fuck and swooned with pleasure. 
    "Every one of those excesses makes sense to me," Durcet said in a 
faltering tone, for the little libertine was stiff after hearing tell of 
these turpitudes. "Nothing more logical than to adore degradation and to 
reap delight from scorn. He who ardently loves the things which dishonor, 
finds pleasure in being dishonored and must necessarily stiffen when told 
that he is. Turpitude is, to certain spirits, a very sound cause of joy. 
One loves to hear oneself called what one wishes only to merit being, and 
it is truly impossible to guess how far a man may go in this direction, 
provided he be ashamed of nothing. 'Tis once again the story of certain 
sick persons whom nothing delights like the disintegration of their body." 
    " 'Tis all a question of cynicism," was Curval's deliberated opinion, 
pronounced while toying with Fanchon's buttocks. "Who is unaware that even 
punishment produces enthusiasms, and have we not seen certain individual's 
pricks stiffen into clubs at the same instant they find themselves publicly 
disgraced? Everyone knows the story of the brave Marquis de S*** who, when 
informed of the magistrates' decision to burn him in effigy, pulled his 
prick from his breeches and exclaimed: 'God be fucked, it has taken them 
years to do it, but it's achieved at last; covered with opprobrium and 
infamy, am I? Oh, leave me, for I've got absolutely to discharge'; and he 
did so in less time than it takes to tell." 
    "Those are undisputed facts," the Duc commented, nodding gravely. "But 
can you explain to me their cause?" 
    "It resides in our heart," Curval replied. "Once a man has degraded 
himself, debased himself through excesses, he has imparted something of a 
vicious cast to his soul, and nothing can rectify that situation. In any 
other case, shame would act as a deterrent and incline him away from the 
vices to which his mind advises him to surrender, but here that possibility 
has been eliminated altogether: 'tis the first token of shame he has 
obliterated, the initial call he has definitively silenced, and from the 
state in which one is when one has ceased to blush, to that other state 
wherein one adores everything that causes others to blush, there is no 
more, nor less, than a single step. All that before affected one 
disagreeably, now encountering an otherwise prepared soul, in metamorphosed 
into pleasure, and from this moment onward, whatever recalls the new state 
one has adopted can henceforth only be voluptuous." 
    "But what a distance one must first have ventured along the road of 
vice to arrive at that point!" said the Bishop. 
    "Yes, yes, 'tis so," Curval acknowledged; "but little by little one 
makes one's way along, and the path one treads is strewn with flowers; one 
excess leads to another, the imagination, never sated, soon brings us to 
our destination, and as the traveler's heart has only hardened as he has 
pursued his career, immediately he reaches his goal, that heart which of 
old contained some virtues, no longer recognizes a single one. Accustomed 
to livelier things, it promptly shrugs off those early impressions, those 
soft and unsweet, those tasteless ones which till then had made it drunk, 
and as it strongly senses that infamy and dishonor are going surely to be 
the consequences of its new impulsions, in order to have nothing to fear of 
them, it begins by making itself familiar with them. It no sooner caresses 
than it is seized with a fondness for them, because they are of the same 
nature as its new conquests; and now that heart is fixed unalterably, 
forever." 
    "And that," the Bishop observed, "is what makes mending one's way so 
difficult." 
    "Say rather that it is impossible, my friend. And how are the 
punishments inflicted upon him you wish to reform ever to succeed, since, 
with the exception of one or two privations, the state of degradation which 
characterizes the situation in which you place him when you punish him, 
pleases him, amuses him, delights him, and inwardly he relishes the self 
that has gone so far as to merit being treated in this way?" 
    "Oh, what is this glory, jest, and riddle of the world!" sighed the 
Duc. 
    "Yes, my friend, an enigma above all else," said the grave Curval. "And 
that perhaps is what led a very witty individual to say that better every 
time to fuck a man than to seek to comprehend him." 
    And the arrival of supper interrupting our interlocutors, they seated 
themselves at table without having achieved a thing during the soiree. 
Natheless, at dessert, Curval, his prick as hard as a demon's, declared 
he'd be damned if it wasn't a pucelage he wanted to pop, even if he had 
twenty fines to pay, and instantly laying rude hands upon Zelmire, who had 
been reserved for him, he was about to drag her off to the boudoir when his 
three colleagues, casting themselves in his path, besought him to 
reconsider and submit to the law he had himself prescribed; and, said they, 
since they too had equally powerful urges to breach the contract, but held 
themselves somehow in check all the same, he should imitate them, at least 
out of a feeling of comradeship. And as they had straightway sent word to 
have Julie fetched in, for Curval was fond of her, she, upon arriving, took 
him directly in hand, and, together with Champville and Bum-Cleaver, they 
all four went into the salon; the other three friends soon joined them 
there, for the orgies were scheduled to begin. Upon entering, they found 
Curval close at grips with his aides, who, adopting the most lubricious 
postures and providing the most libertine exhortations, finally caused him 
to yield up his fuck. 
    In the course of the orgies, Durcet had the duennas give him two or 
three hundred kicks in the ass; not to be outdone, his peers had the 
fuckers serve them identically, and before retiring for the night, no one 
was exempted from shedding more or less fuck, depending upon the faculties 
wherewith by Nature he had been endowed. Fearing some fresh return of the 
defloratory whim Curval had just announced, the duennas were, through 
precaution, assigned to sleep in the boys' and girls' chambers. But this 
measure was unnecessary, and Julie, who looked after the President all 
night long, the following morning turned him over to the society as limp as 
an empty glove. 




THE TWENTY-FOURTH DAY
    Piety is indeed a true disease of the soul. Apply whatever remedies you 
please, the fever will not subside, the patient never heals; finding 
readier entry into the souls of the woebegone and downtrodden, because to 
be devout consoles them for their other ills, it is far more difficult to 
cure in such persons than in others. Such was the case with Adelaide: the 
more that vista of debauchery and of libertinage unfolded before her eyes, 
the more she recoiled and sought sanctuary in the arms of that comfort-
giving God she hoped one day would come and deliver her from the evils 
which, she saw only too well, her dreadful situation was going to bring 
down upon her head. No one had a more profound appreciation of her 
circumstances than she; her mind could not more clearly have foreseen 
everything that was necessarily to follow the fatal beginning of which 
already she had been a victim, however mildly; she wonderfully well 
understood that, as the stories grew progressively stronger, the men's use 
of her and of her companions, evolving sympathetically, would also grow 
more ferocious. All that, despite everything she was told, made her avidly 
seek out, as often and for as long as she could, the society of her beloved 
Sophie. No longer did she dare go in quest of her at night; her overseers 
were sharp-eyed, wary, and drastic steps had been taken to thwart any more 
of those escapades, but whenever she found herself free for an instant, she 
would fly to her soul mate, and upon this very morning of the day we are 
presently chronicling, having risen early from the Bishop's bed, where she 
had lain that night, she went into the young girls' quarters to chat with 
her dearest correspondent. Durcet, who because of his duties that month 
used also to rise earlier than the others, found her there and declared to 
her there was nothing for it, he could not both carry out his functions and 
overlook this infraction of the rules; the society would have to decide the 
matter according to its pleasure. Adelaide wept, tears were her sole 
weapon, and she resorted to them. The only favor she dared beg from her 
husband was to try to prevent Sophie from being punished; for Sophie, she 
argued, could not be guilty, since it had been she, Adelaide, who had come 
looking for her, not Sophie who had gone in search of Adelaide. Durcet said 
he would report the fact as he had observed it, would disguise nothing; no 
one is less apt to be melted than a punisher whose keenest interest lies in 
punishing. And such was the case here, of course; was there anything 
prettier to punish than Sophie? Surely not, and what cause might Durcet 
have for sparing her? 
    Their Lordships assembled, the financier made his report. Here was an 
habitual offender; the President recollected that, when he had been at the 
Palais de Justice, his ingenious confreres used to contend that recidivism 
in a man proves Nature is acting more strongly in him than education or 
principles; hence, by repeated errors, he attests, so to speak, that he is 
not his own master; hence, he must be doubly punished - the President now 
reasoned just as logically and with the same inspired verve that, as had 
won him his schoolmates' admiration, and he declared that, as he viewed the 
thing, one had no choice but to invoke the law and punish the incurable 
Adelaide and her companion with all permissible rigor. But as the law fixed 
the death penalty for this offense, and as Messieurs were disposed to amuse 
themselves yet a little longer with these ladies before taking the final 
step, they were content to summon them, to make them kneel, and to read 
them the article out of the ordinances applying to their case, drawing 
their attention to the grave risk they had just run in committing such a 
transgression. That done, their judges pronounced a sentence thrice as 
severe as the one which had been executed upon them the previous Saturday, 
they were forced to swear they would not repeat their crime, they were 
advised that, should the same thing occur again, they would have to endure 
the extreme penalty, and their names were inscribed in the register. 
    Durcet's inspection added three more names to the page; two from 
amongst the little girls, one of the boys rounded out the morning's 
capture. All this was the result of the experimenting with minor 
indigestions; it was succeeding extremely well, but those poor children, 
unable to restrain themselves another moment, were beginning to tumble one 
after another into states of culpability: such had been the experience of 
Fanny and of Hebe amongst the girls, and of Hyacinthe amongst the boys. The 
evidence found in their pots was enormous, and Durcet frolicked about with 
it for a long time. Never had so many permissions been requested on any 
given morning, and certain subordinate personages were heard to curse 
Duclos for having imparted her secret. Notwithstanding the multitude of 
requests, leave to shit was granted only to Constance, Hercule, two second-
rank fuckers, Augustine, Zephyr, and Desgranges; they provided a few 
minutes' entertainment, and Messieurs sat down to dine. 
    "Well, now you see your mistake in allowing your daughter to receive 
religious instruction," Durcet said to Curval; "there's nothing to be done 
about her now. Those imbecilities have taken root in her head. And I told 
you they would, ages ago." 
    "In faith," said Curval, "I thought that acquaintance with them would 
be just one more reason she'd have for despising them, and that as she grew 
up she would convince herself of the stupidity of those infamous dogmas." 
    "What you say is all very well for reasoning minds," said the Bishop, 
"but one simply must not expect it to succeed with a child." 
    "I'm afraid we're going to be forced to resort to violent measures," 
said the Duc, who knew very well Adelaide could overhear him. 
    "Oh yes, in good time," Durcet nodded. "I can assure her that if she 
has no one but me for her advocate, she'll be poorly defended in court." 
    "Oh, I know that, Monsieur!" Adelaide stammered through her tears; 
"everyone is aware of your feelings toward me." 
    "My feelings?" protested Durcet. "But, my dear wife, I ought perhaps to 
begin by informing you I have never had any feelings whatsoever for a 
woman, and assuredly fewer for you, who belong to me, than for any other. I 
hate religion, as well as those who practice it, and I warn you that, from 
the indifference I have in your regard, I shall pass damned quickly to the 
most violent aversion if you continue to revere infamous and execrable 
illusions, phantoms which have ever been the object of my contemptuous 
scorn. One must first have lost one's mind to be able to acknowledge a god, 
and to have gone completely mad to worship such a thing. In short, I 
declare to you before your father and these other gentlemen that there are 
no lengths to which I shall not go if I ever again find you guilty of such 
a sin. You should have been sent to a nunnery if you wanted to pray to your 
fuck-in-the-ass God; there you'd have been able to worship the bugger to 
your heart's content." 
    "Ah!" put in Adelaide, groaning, "a nun, Great God, a nun, would to 
heaven that I were such." 
    And Durcet, who at the time was sitting opposite her, annoyed by her 
response, hurled a silver plate at her face; it would have killed her had 
it struck her head, for the shock was so violent the missile bent double 
upon crashing against the wall. 
    "You're an insolent creature," Curval said to his daughter, who, to 
avoid plate, had leapt between her father and Antinoüs. "You deserve to 
have your belly kicked in." 
    And driving her away from him with a blow of his fist: 
    "Go crawl on your knees and beg your husband's forgiveness," said he, 
"or we'll expose you to the severest ordeal you've ever dreamt of." 
    In tears, she cast herself at Durcet's feet, but he, having got a very 
solid erection from hurling the plate, and declaring he'd have given a 
thousand louis to have hit his mark, Durcet said that he felt an immediate, 
a general, and an exemplary punishment was in order; another would of 
course be executed on Saturday, but he proposed that this one time they do 
without the children's services at coffee and devote that period to amusing 
themselves with Adelaide. Everyone consented to the proposal; Adelaide, 
Louison, and Fanchon, the most wicked of the four elders and the most 
dreaded by the women, moved into the salon; certain considerations obliged 
us to draw a curtain over what transpired there. But of one thing we may be 
perfectly certain: our four heroes discharged during that set-to, and 
Adelaide was allowed to take to her bed. 'Tis for the reader to invent the 
combinations and scene he'd like best, and kindly consent to be conveyed, 
if 'twould please him to accompany us, directly to the throne room where 
Duclos is about to resume her narrative. All of the friends have taken 
their places near their wives, all, that is to say, save the Duc, who was 
to have Adelaide that afternoon, and who has replaced her with Augustine; 
everyone then being ready, Duclos begins to speak. 
    One day, said that talented orator, while I was maintaining before one 
of my fellow procuresses that I had surely seen all it were possible to see 
of the most furious by way of passive flagellation, in that I had flogged 
and witnessed others flog men with thorns and the bull's pizzle: 
    "Oh, by God," my colleague answered, "you still have a great deal to 
see, my dear, and to persuade you that you've by no means observed the 
worst, I'll send one of my clients around tomorrow." 
    And having given me notice of the hour of the visit, and advised me of 
the ritual expected by that elderly post-office commissioner whose name, I 
remember, was Monsieur de Grancourt, I made full preparations and awaited 
for our man; I was to give him my personal attention, the thing was so 
arranged. He arrives at the house, and after we have retired to a room 
together: 
    "Monsieur," I say, "I deeply regret having to make the following 
disclosure, but I am bound to inform you that you are a prisoner and cannot 
leave this place. I further regret to say that Parliament has delegated me 
to arrest and punish you, and the Legislature has so willed it, and I have 
its order in my pocket. The person who sent you to me set a trap for you, 
for she knew full well the implications of your coming here, and she could 
most assuredly have enabled you to avoid this scene. As for the rest, you 
know the facts in the case: 'tis not with impunity one perpetrates the 
black and dreadful crimes you have committed, and I consider you 
exceedingly fortunate to get off with so little." 
    Our man had listened with the keenest attention to my harangue, and 
immediately I had done, he burst into tears and fell down on his knees 
before me, imploring me to deal leniently with him. 
    "Well I know," said he, "that I have greatly misbehaved. I know I have 
affronted God and justice; but since 'tis you, my sweet lady, who are 
appointed to chasten me, I most earnestly entreat your indulgence in my 
regard." 
    "Monsieur," I replied, "I shall do my duty. How can you be sure I am 
not myself being closely watched? What makes you suppose I have it in my 
power to respond to your pleas for merciful compassion? Remove your clothes 
and adopt a docile attitude, that is all I can say to you." 
    Grancourt obeyed; in a trice he was as naked as the palm of your hand. 
But, great God! what was this body he offered to my sight! I can only 
compare its skin to a ruffled taffeta. Upon that whole body, marked 
everywhere, there was not a single spot which did not bear terrible 
evidence of the lash. 
    However, into the fire I had thrust an iron scourge garnished with 
pointed steel tips; I had received the weapon that morning together with 
the final instructions. This murderous instrument had reached a bright-red 
color about the same moment Grancourt had removed his last stitch. I 
snatched the scourge from the coals and, starting to beat him with it, 
gently at first, then with increasing severity, then with all my strength, 
and that heedless of where my blows fell, rending him from the nape of his 
neck to his heels, I had my man streaming blood in an instant. 
    "You are a villain," I told him as I brought the scourge whistling down 
upon his body, "you're a villain and you've committed all sorts of crimes. 
Nothing is sacred to you, and I've lately heard that you've poisoned your 
own mother." 
    "'Tis true, Madame, oh, 'tis only too true. I'm a monster, I'm a 
criminal," said he as he frigged himself. "There's no infamy I've not 
perpetrated and am not prepared to do again. Come now, your blows are 
utterly in vain, I'll never mend my ways, I find too much delight in crime. 
You'd have to kill me to put a stop to my joy; crime is my element, 'tis my 
life, I've lived in crime, I'll die in it." 
    And you may well imagine how, these remarks of his inspiring my arm and 
tongue, I redoubled my blows and invectives. The word "fuck" escaped his 
lips, however: that was the signal: I lay on with all my might and endeavor 
to strike his most sensitive parts. He skips, hops, jumps, and capers, he 
eludes me and, discharging, he scampers into a tub of warm water specially 
prepared to purify him after this bloody ceremonial. Ah, upon my soul, yes! 
I ceded to my friend the honor of having seen more of this sort of thing 
than I, and I believe we two were able to say at the time that we had seen 
more than all the rest of Paris, for our Grancourt's needs never varied, 
and for above twenty years he had been going every day to that woman's 
establishment for the same treatment. 
    Shortly afterward, that same woman arranged to have me meet another 
libertine whose idiosyncrasy, I fancy, will seem at least unusual to you. 
The scene transpired in his little house at Roule. I am introduced into a 
rather obscurely lit room, where I find a man lying in bed, and, posed in 
the center of the room, a coffin. 
    "You see before you," our libertine said to me, "a man reclining upon 
his deathbed, one who would not close his eyes without rendering a last 
homage to the object he worships. I adore asses, and if I am to perish, I 
want to die while kissing one. When life shall have fled this frame, you 
yourself shall lift me into that coffin, draw round the shrouds, and nail 
down the lid. It is my design thus to die in pleasure's embrace, and at 
this last moment to be served by the very object of my lubricious heats. 
Come . . . come," he continued in a broken, weak, gasping voice, "make 
haste, for I am nigh to the threshold." 
    I draw near to him, turn around, I exhibit my buttocks. 
    "Ah, wondrous ass!" he cries. "'Tis well, I am easy thus to be able to 
take with me to the grave the idea of a behind as pretty as that one!" 
    And he fondled it, opened it, nuzzled and kissed it just the way the 
healthiest man in the world might have done. 
    "Oh, indeed!" said he a moment later as he left off his task and rolled 
toward the wall, "well I knew 'twould not be for long I'd savor this 
pleasure; I do now expire, remember what I have enjoined you to do." 
    And so saying, he uttered a profound sigh, grew rigid, and played his 
part with such skill that damn me if I didn't think he was dead. I kept my 
wits about me; eager to see the end of this droll ceremony, I wrapped him 
in the shroud. He had ceased to stir, and whether it was that he knew some 
secret for feigning death, or whether my imagination had been affected, he 
felt as rigid and cold as a bar of iron; only his prick gave some hints of 
life: it too was rigid, but not cold, and glued to his belly, and drops of 
fuck seemed to come oozing from it despite his moribund condition. Directly 
I have him swathed in the sheet, I take him up in my arms, and it wasn't 
easy, for the way he'd become rigid made him as heavy as a steer. I 
succeeded nevertheless in transporting him to the coffin. As soon as I have 
laid him out, I start reciting the prayer for the dead, and finally I nail 
the coffin shut; that was the critical instant for him: no sooner have I 
driven the last nail home than he sets to screeching like a madman: 
    "Holy name of God, I'm coming! Get out, whore, get out, for if I catch 
you, you're done for!" 
    I'm seized by fear, I dart to the stairs, upon which I meet a tactful 
manservant who is thoroughly acquainted with his master's manias and who 
gives me two louis; I proceed to the door, while the valet hastens into the 
patient's bedchamber to free him from the sealed coffin. 
    "Now there's a quaint taste," said Durcet. "Well, Curval, what do you 
think of that one?" 
    "Marvelous," the President replied; "there you have an individual who 
wishes to make himself familiar with the idea of death, and hence unafraid 
of it, and who to that end has found no better means than to associate it 
with a libertine idea. There is absolutely no doubt about it: that man will 
die fondling an ass." 
    "Nor any doubt," said Champville, "that he is proudly impious; I know 
him, and I shall have occasion to describe the use he makes of religion's 
holiest mysteries." 
    "I don't wonder he is an unbeliever," said the Duc. "He's clearly a man 
who laughs at the whole business and who wishes to accustom himself to 
acting and thinking the same way during his last minutes." 
    "For my part," the Bishop said, "I find something very piquant in that 
passion, and I'll not hide the fact I'm stiff from hearing about it. 
Continue, Duclos, go on, for I have the feeling I might do something silly, 
and I'd prefer to leave well enough alone for the rest of the day." 
    Very well, said that splendid raconteur, here's one less complex; 'tis 
the story of a man who for five years regularly applied at my door for the 
single pleasure of getting me to sew up his asshole. He used to stretch out 
belly down upon a bed, I would seat myself between his legs and, equipped 
with a stout needle and half a spool of heavy cobbler's thread, I'd sew his 
anus completely closed, and this fellow's skin in that area was so 
toughened and so used to needle thrusts that my operation would not draw a 
single drop of blood from his hide. While I worked, he would frig himself, 
and he used to discharge like a mule when I'd taken the last stitch. His 
ecstasy dissipated, I'd promptly undo my work, and that would be that. 
    Another used to have brandy rubbed over every part of his body where 
Nature had placed hair, then I'd put a match to those areas I'd rubbed with 
alcohol, and all the hair would go up in flames. He would discharge upon 
finding himself afire, meanwhile I'd shown him my belly, my cunt, and so 
forth, for that fellow had the bad taste never to want to see anything but 
fronts. 
    "But, tell me, Messieurs, did any of you know Mirecourt, today 
president in the upper chamber, and in those days attorney to the Crown?" 
    "I knew him," said Curval. 
    "Well, my Lord, do you know what used to be, and what I dare say still 
is, his passion?" 
    "No; and he passes, or wishes to pass, for a devout and good subject, 
I'd be most pleased to know." 
    "My Lord," Duclos said, "he likes also to be taken for an ass. . . ." 
    "Ah! by God! said the Duc; and turning to Curval: "what do you think of 
that, my friend? Damned strange taste, don't you think, for a judge? I'll 
wager that once he's an ass he thinks he's going to pronounce judgment. 
Well, what next?" he asked of Duclos. 
    "Next, your Grace, one must lead him by the halter, walk him about the 
room for an hour, he brays, one mounts astride him, and when one's in the 
saddle, one whips his entire body with a switch, as if to quicken his gait. 
He breaks into a trot, and as he's started by now to frig himself, he soon 
discharges and, while he does so, makes loud noises, bucks, rears, and 
throws the rider." 
    "That, I'd say, is more diverting than lubricious. And pray tell me, 
Duclos," the Duc went on, "did that man ever tell you he had some comrade 
who shared his taste?" 
    "Why, indeed, he did tell me so," said the amiable Duclos, entering 
into the joke with a merry laugh and descending from her platform, for her 
day's stint was over; "Yes, Sire, he told me he had a quantity of comrades, 
but that not all of them would allow themselves to be mounted." 
    The seance had come to an end, Messieurs were disposed to perform a few 
stunts before supper; the Duc hugged Augustine in close embrace. 
    "You know," he said dreamily, frigging her clitoris and directing her 
to grasp his prick, "you know, I'm not at all surprised that Curval is 
sometimes tempted to violate the pact and pop a pucelage or two, for I feel 
at this very moment, for example, that I could willingly send Augustine's 
to the devil." 
    "Which one?" Curval inquired. 
    "Both of them, bless my soul," answered the Duc; "but one must behave 
oneself during this sojourn; in having thus to wait a little while for our 
pleasures, we make them far more delicious. Well, little girl," he 
continued, "show me your buttocks, perhaps 'twill change the character of 
my ideas. . . . Bleeding Christ! look at that little whore's ass! Curval, 
what do you advise me to do with this thing?" 
    "Put some vinegar sauce on it," said Curval. 
    "Mercy!" exclaimed the Duc, "what a notion. But patience, patience . . 
. everything will come in good time." 
    "My very dear brother," said the Bishop in a halting voice, "there's 
something in your words that smells of fuck." 
    "Really? For indeed I have the greatest desire to lose some." 
    "And what prevents you?" the Bishop wanted to know. 
    "Oh, many things, many things," the Duc replied. "First of all, I see 
no shit in the pipe, and I'd like shit, and then . . . I don't know - there 
are so many things I'd like. . . ." 
    "What?" asked Durcet just before Antinoüs' turd cascaded into his 
mouth. 
    "What?" echoed the Duc. "There's, to begin with, a little infamy I 
simply must perform." 
    And retiring to the distant boudoir with Augustine, Zelamir, Cupidon, 
Duclos, Desgranges, and Hercule, he was heard, a minute later, to utter 
ringing cries and oaths which proved the Duc had finally managed to calm 
his brain and soothe his balls. Little precise information exists upon what 
he did to Augustine, but, notwithstanding his love for her, she was seen to 
return in tears and, ominous sign! one of her fingers had been twisted. We 
deeply regret not yet to be able to explain all this to the reader, but it 
is quite certain that these gentlemen, on the sly and before the arrival of 
the day heralding open season, were giving themselves over to tricks which 
have not so far been embodied in story, hence to unsanctioned deeds, and in 
so doing they were acting in formal violation of the regulations they had 
sworn in honor to observe; but, you know, when an entire society commits 
the same faults, they are commonly pardoned. The Duc came back and was 
pleased to see that Durcet and the Bishop had not been wasting their time, 
and that Curval, in Bum-Cleaver's arms, was deliciously doing everything 
one may possibly do with all the voluptuous objects one may possibly 
assemble around oneself. 
    Supper was served, orgies followed as usual, the household retired to 
bed. Lame and aching as Adelaide was, the Duc, who was scheduled to have 
her by him that night, wanted her there, and as he had come from the orgies 
rather drunk, as was his wont, it is said that he did not deal tenderly 
with her. But by and large the night was passed just like all the preceding 
nights, that is to say, in the depths of delirium and debauchery, and fair-
haired Aurora having come, as the poets say, to fling open the gates of the 
palace where dwelt Apollo, that god, somewhat a libertine himself, only 
mounted his azure chariot in order to bring light to shed upon new 
lecheries. 




THE TWENTY-FIFTH DAY
    However, a new intrigue was quietly taking form within the impenetrable 
walls of the Château of Silling; but it did not have the dangerous 
significance that had been attributed to Adelaide's league with Sophie. 
This latest association was being hatched between Aline and Zelmire; those 
two young girls' conformity of character contributed greatly to their 
attachment to each other: both were mild-natured and sensitive, no more 
than thirty months separated them in age, they were both very childlike, 
very simple, very good-hearted: they had, in brief, almost all of the same 
virtues, and almost all the same vices, for Zelmire, sweet and tender, was 
also, like Aline, careless and lazy. They suited one another so admirably 
that, on the morning of the 25th, they were discovered in the same bed, and 
this is how it happened: being destined for Curval, Zelmire slept, as we 
know, in his bedchamber. Aline was Curval's bedwife that same night. But 
Curval, having returned dead drunk from the orgies, wished to sleep with no 
one but Invictus, and thus it fell out that these two little doves, 
abandoned and brought together by fortune, from dread of the cold both 
camped in the same bed and, in bed, 'twas maintained, their little fingers 
itched more than their dear little elbows. 
    Upon opening his eyes in the morning and seeing these two birds sharing 
the same nest, Curval demanded to know what they were doing there, and 
ordering them both to come instantly into his bed, he sniffed about just 
below each one's clitoris, and clearly recognized that both of them were 
still full of fuck. The case was grave: Messieurs did indeed wish the young 
ladies to be victims of impudicity, but they insisted that, amongst 
themselves, they behave decently - oh, for what will libertinage, 
perpetually inconsistent libertinage, not insist upon! - and if they 
sometimes consented to permit the ladies to indulge in a little reciprocal 
impurity, it all had to be both upon Messieurs' express instructions and 
before their eyes. And thus it was the case was brought before the council, 
and the two delinquents, who neither could nor dared deny the thing, were 
ordered to demonstrate what they had been up to, and before a crowd of 
spectators to display just what their individual talents were. They did as 
they were told, with much blushing and not a little weeping, and asked to 
be forgiven their mistakes. But too attractive was the prospect of having 
that pretty couple amongst the culprits to be punished the following 
Saturday; consequently, they were not forgiven, but were speedily included 
in Durcet's book of sorrows which, incidentally, was being very agreeably 
filled up that week. 
    This chore completed, breakfast was finished, and Durcet conducted his 
searches. The fatal indigestions yielded still another miscreant: 'twas the 
little Michette, she'd been unable to hold the bridge, she said they'd made 
her eat too much the night before, and these were followed by a thousand 
other infantile excuses which did not prevent her name from being written 
down. Curval, his prick jumping like a young colt, seized the chamber pot 
and devoured its contents. And then bringing his angry eyes to bear upon 
her: 
    "Oh yes, by Jesus," said he, "yes, by the Saviour's fuck, you shall be 
spanked, my little rascal, my own hand will see to that. There are rules 
against shitting that way; you should at least have given us notice; you 
know damned well that we are prepared to receive shit at any hour of the 
day or night." 
    And he fondled her buttocks very vivaciously while repeating the rules 
to her. 
    The boys were found intact, no chapel permissions were distributed to 
them, and Messieurs repaired to table. During the meal, there was plentiful 
and penetrating discussion of Aline's deed; they ascribed a holier-than-
thou attitude to her, said she appeared a little hypocrite, and behold! 
here was proof of her real temperament at last come to light. 
    "How now, my friend," Durcet said to the Bishop, "is one still to lay 
any store by appearances, above all those that girls parade?" 
    'Twas unanimously agreed nothing was more deceitful than a girl, and 
that, as they were every one of them false, they never made use of their 
wits save to be more skillfully false. These observations brought the table 
talk around to women, and the Bishop who abhorred them, gave vent to all 
the hatred they inspired in him. He reduced them to the state of the vilest 
animals, and proved their existence so perfectly useless in this world that 
one could extirpate them from the face of the earth without in the 
slightest countercarrying the designs of Nature who, having in times past 
very surely found the means to create without women, would find it again 
when only men were left. 
    They proceeded to coffee; it was presented them by Augustine, Michette, 
Hyacinthe, and Narcisse. The Bishop, one of whose greatest uncomplex 
pleasures was to suck little boys' pricks, had been spending a few minutes 
playing this game with Hyacinthe, when all of a sudden he reared back and 
let out, not a shout, but a bubbling noise, for his mouth was full; his 
exclamation was interpreted thus: "Ah, by God's balls, my friends, a 
pucelage! That's the first time this little rascal has discharged, I'm sure 
of it!" And, truth to tell, no one had so far observed Hyacinthe carry 
things to that point; he was indeed thought still too young to bring it 
off. But he was well advanced in his fourteenth year, 'tis the age when 
Nature customarily heaps her favors upon us, and nothing could have been 
more real than the victory the Bishop thought he had achieved. None the 
less, the others were anxious to verify the thing, and each wishing to be 
witness to the adventure, they drew up their chairs in a semicircle around 
the young man. Augustine, the most accomplished frigger in the seraglio, 
received permission to manualize the lad within clear sight of the 
assembly, and Hyacinthe was given leave to fondle and caress her in 
whatsoever part of her body he desired. There's no spectacle more 
voluptuous than that offered by a young maid of fifteen, lovely as the day, 
lending herself to the caresses of a boy of fourteen and provoking, by 
means of the most delicious pollutions, his springtide discharge. 
    Hyacinthe, aided perhaps by Nature, but yet more certainly by the 
examples he had before his nose, fondled, handled, kissed naught but his 
frigger's pretty little buttocks, and it required little more than an 
instant of this to bring color to his cheeks, to fetch two or three sighs 
from his lips, to induce his pretty little prick to shoot, to a distance of 
one yard, five or six jets of sweet fuck white as cream, which emissions 
happened to land on Durcet's thigh, for the banker was seated nearest the 
boy and was having himself frigged by Narcisse while watching the 
operation. The fact once indubitably established, they caressed and kissed 
the child rather universally, each swore he'd love to receive a small 
portion of that youthful sperm, and as it appeared that, at his age and for 
a beginning, six discharges were not too many, in that he had after all 
just delivered himself of two without the least difficulty, our libertines 
induced him to shed another in each of their mouths. 
    Much heated by this performance, the Duc laid hands on Augustine and 
frigged her clitoris with his tongue until he had elicited several solid 
discharges from her; full of fire and blessed with a mettlesome spirit, 
that little minx shot them off in short order. While the Duc was thus 
polluting Augustine, nothing was more engaging than to see Durcet, come up 
to gather symptoms of the pleasure he was not provoking, kiss that 
beautiful child's mouth a thousand times over, and swallow, so to speak, 
the voluptuousness another was causing to circulate throughout her senses. 
The hour was advanced, they were obliged to omit the midday nap and to pass 
directly into the auditorium where Duclos had been awaiting them for a long 
time; as soon as everyone had arranged himself, she took up the thread of 
her adventures and spoke as hereafter you may read: 
    I have already had the honor to remark in your Lordships' presence, 
that it is most difficult to fathom all the tortures man invents for 
himself in order to find, in the degradation they produce, or the agonies, 
those sparks of pleasure which age or satiety have made to grow faint in 
him. Hard it is to credit the assertion that one such gentleman of this 
sort, a person of sixty years and to a singular degree jaded by all the 
pleasures of lubricity, used only to be able to restore his senses to life 
by having the flames of burning candles applied to every part of his body, 
and principally to the ones Nature has intended for those selfsame 
pleasures. He would have his thighs seared, his prick, his balls roasted, 
and above all else his asshole: while all this was going forward, he would 
be kissing an ass, and after the grievous operation had been repeated for 
the fifteenth or twentieth time, he would discharge while sucking the anus 
of the girl who'd been burning him. 
    Soon after that one, I had dealings with another who obliged me to use 
a horse's currycomb on him, to rub down his entire body with that 
instrument, quite as one does to the animal I have just named. Directly his 
body was all an open wound, I'd next rub him with alcohol, and this second 
torture would cause him abundantly to discharge upon my breasts - that was 
the battlefield he chose to spray with his fuck. I would kneel before him, 
squeeze his prick between my bubs, and he'd quietly wash them with his 
balls' acrid humor. 
    A third would have would have every hair on his ass plucked out one by 
one. While that lengthy operation was advancing, he would frig himself upon 
a warm turd I'd just done for him. Then, at the crisis' approach, I had, to 
give it the necessary encouragement, to drive the point of a scissors deep 
enough into each of his buttocks to draw a jet of blood. His ass was a maze 
of wounds and scars, I was scarce able to find an open space for my two 
gashes; immediately the steel entered him, he'd plunge his nose into the 
shit, smear it upon his face, and floods of sperm would crown his ecstasy. 
    A fourth put his prick in my mouth and bade me bite it as hard as I 
could; in the meantime, as I chewed his poor device, I was expected to 
lacerate his buttocks with an iron comb whose teeth were ground to sharp 
points; and then, at the moment I sensed his prick ready to melt - a very 
faint, a barely perceptible erection would tell me so - and then, I say, 
I'd spread his buttocks prodigiously wide, ease them close to a burning 
candle I'd kept in readiness on the floor, and I'd braise his asshole with 
it. 'Twas the burning sensation of that candle under his anus decided his 
emission; I'd therewith redouble my bitings, and would soon find my mouth 
full. 
    "One moment, if you please," said the Bishop. "Every time I hear of 
someone discharging into a mouth I am reminded of the good fortune I had 
earlier today, and my spirits are disposed to tasting further pleasures of 
the same sort." 
    Saying which, he draws Invictus near, for that champion wsa on duty in 
the Bishop's alcove that afternoon, and falls to sucking the brave fellow's 
prick with all the energetic lustiness of a true bugger. Fuck explodes, the 
prelate gobbles it up, and straightway goes to repeat the operation upon 
Zephyr. The Bishop was brandishing his knobkerrie, and 'twas seldom that 
women would feel completely at their ease when he was in this critical 
state and they were near him. Unfortunately, it was his niece Aline who 
happened to be within range. 
    "What are you doing there, bitch?" he rasped; "I want men for my fun." 
    Aline seeks to elude him, he seizes her by the hair and, dragging her 
into his closet along with Zelmire and Hebe, the two girls in his quartet: 
    "You'll see," says he to his friends, "you'll see how I'm going to 
teach these wenches to slip cunts under my hand when I'm doing my best to 
find some pricks." 
    Upon his order, Fanchon accompanied the three maidens, and an instant 
later Aline was heard to utter very shrill cries; then came tidings of 
Monseigneur's discharge, reverberating howls which blended with his dear 
niece's dolorous accents. Everyone returned . . . Aline was weeping, 
squeezing and clutching her behind. 
    "Come show me what he did to you," said the Duc; "I love nothing better 
than to see traces of my distinguished brother's brutality." 
    Aline displayed I've no idea what, for I have never been able to 
discover what went on in those infernal closets, but the Duc exclaimed: "By 
fuck, 'tis delicious, I think I'll go off and do the same." But Curval 
having pointed out to him that time was growing short, and having added 
that he had an amusing enterprise in mind for the orgies, which scheme 
would demand a clear head and all his fuck, Duclos was asked to go ahead 
with the fifth story in order that the sitting be brought to a proper 
conclusion; the storyteller therewith addressed the convocation once again: 
    Belonging to that group of extraordinary individuals, said she, whose 
mania consists in wallowing in degradation and in insulting their own 
dignity, was a certain judge of the circuit court whose name was Foucolet. 
There's truly no believing the point to which that fellow would carry his 
furor; he had to be given a sample of almost every torture. I used to hang 
him, but the rope would break just in time and he would fall upon a 
mattress; the next instant, I would strap him to a St. Andrew's cross and 
make as if to break his limbs with a bar, but it was only a roll of 
pasteboard; I used to brand him upon the shoulder, the iron I used was warm 
and left a faint imprint, no more; I would flog his back in precise 
imitation of the public servant who performs those noble feats, and whilst 
I was doing all this I had to overwhelm him with a stream of atrocious 
invectives, bitter reproaches for various crimes, for which, during each 
successive operation, he would demand, a candle in his hand and wearing 
only his shirt, God's forgiveness and the law's, pronouncing his entreaties 
in a very humble and contrite tone; finally, the meeting would be brought 
to a close on my ass, where the libertine would yield up his fuck when his 
head had reached the ultimate degree of distraction. 
    "Well now, are you going to let me discharge in peace now that Duclos 
has finished?" the Duc asked Curval. 
    "No, not a bit of it," the President replied; "preserve your fuck, I 
tell you I need it for the orgies." 
    "Oh, so you take me for your valet, do you?" the Duc exclaimed. "You 
take me for a worn-out bugger? Do you suppose that the small quantity of 
fuck I'm going to lose in a moment will prevent me from joining in all the 
infamies which are going to pop into your head four hours from now? Come 
now, President, you know me better than that; banish your fears, I'll be 
fit again for anything inside fifteen minutes, but my good and holy brother 
has been pleased to give me a little example of an atrocity I'd be grief-
stricken not to execute with Adelaide, your dear and estimable daughter." 
    And pushing her forthwith into his closet, along with Therèse, Colombe, 
and Fanny, the female elements of his quatrain, he probably did there, with 
them, what the Bishop had done to his niece, and discharged with the same 
episodes, for, as not long before they heard Aline's terrible scream, so 
now their ears were treated to another from the lips of Adelaide and the 
bawdy Duc's yells of lust. Curval wished to learn which of the two brothers 
had been the better behaved; he summoned the two women, and having pored at 
length over their two behinds, he decided that the Duc had not merely 
imitated, but surpassed the Bishop. 
    They sat down at table, and having by means of some drug or other 
stuffed the bowels of all the subjects, men and women, with an abundance of 
wind, after supper they played the game of fart-in-the-face: Messieurs, all 
four of them, lay back upon couches, their heads raised, and one by one the 
members of the household stepped up to deliver their farts into the waiting 
mouths. Duclos was requested to do the counting and mark down the scores; 
there were thirty-six farters against only four swallowers: hence there 
were certain persons who received as many as one hundred and fifty farts. 
It had been for this rousing ceremony Curval had wanted the Duc to keep 
himself fit, but such precautions, as Blangis had made perfectly clear, 
were quite unnecessary; he was too great a friend of libertinage to allow 
some new excess to find him unprepared; to the contrary, any new excess 
always had the greatest effect upon him, his situation notwithstanding, and 
he did not fail to produce a second discharge thanks to the humid mistral 
Fanchon wafted into his mouth. As for Curval, they were Antinoüs' farts 
which cost him his fuck, whereas Durcet bent before the gale that swept out 
of Martaine's asshole, and the Bishop lost all control in the face of what 
Desgranges offered him. The youthful beauties' efforts, 'twill be remarked, 
came to naught; but is it not true that it is always the crapulous 
individual who best executes the infamous deed? 




THE TWENTY-SIXTH DAY
    In that nothing was more delicious than meting out punishments, in that 
nothing prepared the way for so many pleasures, and those very sorts of 
pleasures Messieurs had mutually promised not to taste until in the stories 
mention thereof should permit fullest indulgence in them, the libertines 
sought by every imaginable means to trip the subjects into states of 
delinquency, and so procure themselves the joy of chastising their hapless 
victims; to this end, the friends, having convoked an extraordinary 
assembly that morning, their purpose being to deliberate upon this problem, 
they added several articles to the household regulations, infraction of 
which was necessarily to occasion punishment. Firstly, the wives, the small 
boys, and the girls were expressly forbidden to fart anywhere save in the 
friends' mouths. Instantly they were seized by the desire to break wind, 
they were without delay to go and find one of the friends and administer 
unto him what required to be set at large; a severe afflictive penalty 
would be the reward for disobedience. Secondly, the use of bidets and ass-
wipings of any kind were absolutely outlawed; it was generally proclaimed 
that all subjects without exception would hereafter never wash themselves, 
and never under any circumstances wipe the ass after having shitted; that, 
whenever an ass were found clean, upon the subject concerned would lie the 
burden of proving it had been licked clean by one of the friends, and that 
friend would have to be mentioned by name. In response to which citation, 
the friend would be questioned, and, being in a position to procure himself 
two pleasures, instead of only one, to wit: that of having cleaned the ass 
with his tongue, and that of having punished the subject who had afforded 
him this first pleasure. . . . Examples of this will be provided. 
    Thirdly, a new ceremony was introduced: at the time of the morning 
coffee, at the time of their entry into the girls' quarters, and also when, 
after that, they passed into the boys', each of the subjects would 
hereafter, one by one, step forth and, in a loud and clear voice, say to 
each of the friends: "I don't care a fuck for God; there's shit in my ass, 
would you like some?" and those who should fail in an intelligible voice to 
pronounce both the blasphemy and the invitation, would instantly be 
inscribed in the dread book. The reader will readily imagine what 
difficulties the pious Adelaide and her young pupil Sophie had to surmount 
before being able to utter such infamies, and their inner struggles 
procured Messieurs some excellent entertainment. 
    The foregoing once framed in law, they turned to consider delations and 
decided to admit them; this barbarous means of multiplying vexations, 
accepted by every tyrant, was warmly embraced by these. It was decided, 
fourthly, that every subject who should lodge complaint against some other, 
would thereby earn a one-half reduction of the punishment he was to suffer 
for the next fault he committed. Messieurs were in no way deprived by this 
system, because the subject who had just accused another subject could 
never know the extent of the punishment a half of which, he was promised, 
would be suppressed; and so it was a simple matter indeed to give him 
precisely what one wished to give him, and still to persuade him he had got 
off more lightly than otherwise he might. Messieurs agreed upon and 
published their decision, that no delation required substantiating proof in 
order to be believed, and that, to be inscribed, accusation brought by 
anyone would suffice. The duennas' authority, furthermore, was increased, 
and upon the basis of their slightest complaint, whether true or false, the 
subject would be condemned immediately. In a word, over this small 
population they established all the vexation, all the injustice one could 
imagine, certain in the belief that the more harshly their tyranny was 
exercised, the greater the sum of pleasures they would derive from their 
privileged situation. 
    All this legislation composed and voted, they visited the chamber pots. 
Colombe was found guilty; her excuses hinged upon the food they had made 
her eat between meals the day before; she had, said she, been unable to 
resist, she was dreadfully unhappy about the whole thing, and this was the 
fourth successive week she had been punished. The statement was true, and 
she had only to blame her ass, which was the freshest, the sweetest, the 
best-made and most endearing little ass you could hope to see. She pointed 
out she'd not wiped herself, and that, she supposed, should be regarded as 
a point in her favor. Durcet examined her, and having indeed discovered a 
very thick and very broad patch of shit, he assured her that, in the light 
of this, she'd be treated a little less rigorously. Curval, stiff at the 
time, laid hands on her, and having completely cleaned her anus, he had her 
produce her turd and ate it while having her frig him, periodically 
interrupting his chewing to kiss her upon the mouth and to order her to 
swallow, in her turn, what of her own creation he brought to her lips. They 
next inspected Augustine and Sophie, who had been solemnly enjoined, after 
the stools they had yielded up the night before, to remain in the most 
impure state. Sophie's appearance conformed with her instructions, even 
though she had slept in the Bishop's chamber, but Augustine was as neat as 
a pin. Sure of her reply, she advanced proudly and said that they knew very 
well she had, as was her custom, lain the night in Monsieur le Duc's 
bedchamber, and that before going to sleep he had summoned her to his bed, 
where he had licked her asshole while she had frigged his prick in her 
mouth. When interrogated, the Duc said that he had no remembrance of the 
thing (although the story was completely true), that he had fallen asleep 
with his prick in Duclos' ass, that they could substantiate the fact. They 
went about the matter with all possible seriousness and gravity, they sent 
for Duclos who, seeing clearly what was afoot, lent her support to 
everything the Duc advanced, and maintained that Augustine had been called 
to Monsieur's bed only for a brief instant, that Monsieur had shitted into 
Augustine's mouth and then, upon second thought, had bade her return to the 
bed in order that he might eat his turd. Augustine sought to defend her 
thesis and dispute Duclos' contentions, but silence was imposed upon her 
and, although perfectly innocent, her name was written down. 
    Amongst the boys, whose chambers they visited next, Cupidon was found 
guilty; he had done the world's most gorgeous turd in his chamber pot. The 
Duc snatched it up and gobbled it up while the young malefactor sucked his 
member. 
    All requests for chapel permissions were refused; they then went to 
dine. The beautiful Constance, whom they sometimes dispensed from serving 
at table because of her state, was however feeling fit that day, and made 
her appearance naked; the sight of her belly, which was beginning somewhat 
to swell, made Curval's head very hot; the others, seeing his treatment of 
the poor creature's buttocks and breasts growing rather rough - Curval's 
horror for her was doubling every day, that was plain - were swayed by her 
entreaties and their common desire to preserve her fruit, at least until a 
certain date, and she was allowed to absent herself from all the day's 
functions, save for the narrations, wherefrom she was never excused. Curval 
started in again with his frightful speeches about child-breeders, he 
declared that if he had government of the country he would borrow their law 
from the inhabitants of Formosa, where pregnant women under thirty are, 
together with their fruit, ground in a large mortar; should that law, he 
protested, be introduced into France, the population would still be twice 
what it ought to be. 
    Coffee came next; it was presented by Sophie, Fanny, Zelamir, and 
Adonis, but served in a passing strange manner: 'twas in the children's 
mouths, one had to sip it therefrom. Sophie served hers to the Duc, Fanny 
Curval's, Zelamir the Bishop's, and Durcet got his out of Adonis. They 
extracted a mouthful, gargled it a moment, and returned it into the mouths 
of those who'd served them. Curval, who had risen from the table in a great 
ferment, got stiff all over again thanks to this ceremony, and when it had 
been completed, he laid hands on Fanny and discharged into her mouth, 
ordering her to swallow the whey; the threats accompanying his instructions 
succeeded in making the poor wretch obey without the flutter of an eyelash. 
The Duc and his two other confreres collected shit or farts; having 
finished their nap, they all trooped in to listen to Duclos, who spoke to 
them in this wise: 
    I will move with dispatch, said that amiable girl, through my last two 
adventures concerning these unusual men who find their delight only in the 
pain they are made to undergo, and then with your leave we will pass on to 
a different variety. 
    The first, while he had me frig him, naked and standing up, wanted 
floods of hot water poured down on us through an opening in the ceiling; 
our bodies were to be showered during the entire operation. It was quite in 
vain I argued that, while not sharing in this passion of his, I was 
nevertheless, like himself, to be a victim of it; he replied, assuring me I 
would suffer no hurt from the experience, and that these showers were good 
for one's health. I believed him and let him have his way; as this scene 
transpired in his house, the temperature of the water, a critical detail, 
was something lying beyond my control. It was indeed nearly boiling. 
Messieurs, there is no conceiving the pleasure he felt upon being drenched 
by it. As for myself, all the while operating with all possible speed, I 
screeched, yes, I confess it, I screeched like a drowning tomcat; my skin 
came peeling off, and I made myself the firm promise never to return to 
that man's house. 
    "Ah, buggerfuck!" exclaimed the Duc, "I have the strongest inclination 
to give the beauteous Aline a comparable scalding." 
    "Your Grace," the latter replied in a humble but decided tone, "I am 
not a tomcat." 
    And the naive candor in her childlike reply having fetched a chuckle 
from everyone, Duclos was asked to give the second and final example of the 
same genre. 
    It was a great deal less painful for me, said Duclos; I had simply to 
don a stout glove, then with this protected hand to take burning grit from 
a frying pan I'd been heating on a stove, and, my hand filled, to rub that 
fiery sand over my man's body, from head to toe. His body was so inured to 
this exercise that he seemed to be covered not with skin, but with leather. 
When one reached his prick, one had to seize it and massage it in a handful 
of that same sand; he'd be up like a shot. Then, with the other hand, I 
placed a small fire shovel, heated red-hot for this purpose, under his 
balls. This rubbing with one hand, the consuming heat which rose to bake 
his testicles, perhaps a little touching of my two buttocks, which I had to 
keep well exposed and within reach during the operation, this combination 
of elements melted him altogether and he discharged, being very careful to 
spill his seed upon the hot shovel where, to his unutterable delight, he 
watched it sizzle and evaporate in steam. 
    "Curval," said the Duc, "there's a man who, 'twould appear to me, has 
no greater fondness than have you for population." 
    "It looks that way to me," Curval assented; "I make no bones about the 
fact I love the idea of watching fuck burn." 
    "Oh, I know all the ideas fuck inspires in you," said the Duc with a 
hearty laugh. "And even were the seed to ripen, the egg to hatch, you'd 
perform a combustion with the same pleasure, wouldn't you?" 
    "Upon my soul, I do fear I would," said Curval, as he did I know not 
what to Adelaide that brought a loud scream from her lips. 
    "And who the devil do you think you are dealing with, whore?" Curval 
demanded of his daughter. "What are these chirpings and squallings all 
about? Remember the company you are in. Can't you see that the Duc's trying 
to talk to me of burning, provoking, instilling good manners into hatched 
fuck, and what are you, pray tell me, but a little something hatched out of 
my balls' fuck? Duclos, I say, continue, if you please," Curval added, "for 
I have the feeling this bitch's tears might make me discharge. And I'd 
prefer not to." 
    And here we are, said our heroine, come to details which, bringing with 
them characters of a more singular piquancy, will perhaps please you more. 
You know of course that in Paris we have the custom of exposing the dead 
before the doors of houses. There was a particular gentleman, well placed 
in society, who used to pay me twelve francs for every one of these 
lugubrious objects to which, in a given evening, I could lead him; his 
whole delight consisted in going up with me as near to them as possible, to 
the very edge of the coffin if we were able, and once we had posted 
ourselves there, I had to frig him in such wise his fuck would shoot out 
upon the coffin. We used to run from one to another, would often pay our 
respects to three or four in an evening; it all depended upon the number I 
had located for him in advance, and we performed the same operation beside 
each of them; he never touched anything but my behind while I toiled over 
his prick. He was a man of about thirty, and I had his trade for at least 
ten years. I'm sure that, during the period of our collaboration, I made 
him discharge upon more than two thousand coffins. 
    "But would he not say something during the rite?" inquired the Duc. 
"Did he not speak either to you or to the corpse?" 
    "He would shower invectives upon the deceased," Duclos replied; for 
example: 'Here, you rascal, here, take it, you villain, you bugger, take my 
fuck along with you to hell.'" 
    "A very unusual mania, that one," Curval commented. 
    "My friend," said the Duc, "you can be certain that man was one of our 
own sort, and that he surely did not stop at that." 
    "You are quite right, my Lord," spoke up Martaine, "and I shall have 
occasion to bring that actor back upon the stage." 
    Taking advantage of the silence which succeeded Martaine's 
interjection, Duclos went on. 
    Another one, said she, carrying a more or less similar fantasy a good 
deal further, wanted me to keep spies on the watch near the cemeteries and 
to bring in word every time there was a burial of some young girl whose 
death had been caused by anything but a dangerous disease - he was very 
emphatic upon that point. As soon as I had got wind of something suitable, 
and he always paid me very handsomely for those discoveries, we would set 
off after sundown, enter the cemetery by one means or another, and heading 
at once for the grave our informant had indicated, above which the earth 
had only recently been broken, we would both fall to work, dig down to the 
cadaver, and when once we'd uncovered it, I'd frig him over it while he 
spent his time handling it and, above all, if 'twere possible, its 
buttocks. If perchance, and it frequently occurred, he stiffened a second 
time, he'd therewith shit, and have me shit also, upon the corpse, and 
discharge thereupon, all the while palpating whatever parts of the body he 
could lay his hands on. 
    "Oh, my, but that one does strike a response in me," said Curval, "and 
if I have to make my confession to you here and now, I'll assure you I've 
done the same thing from time to time. To be sure, I added a few little 
episodes I dare say our rules prevent me from describing at this point. Be 
that as it may, my prick's got monstrously fat; spread your thighs, 
Adelaide. . . ." 
    And I've not the faintest idea what happened next; all we know is that 
the couch groaned beneath its burden, unmistakable sounds of a discharge 
pealed from the President niche, and I am led to suppose that, very simply 
and very virtuously, his honor the judge had just committed incest. 
    "President," the Duc called over, "I'll wager you thought she was 
dead." 
    "Why, indeed, that's true," said Curval, "else how in the world could I 
have discharged?" 
    And hearing not another word from the several alcoves, Duclos brought 
that evening's stories to a close with the following one: 
    Lest I leave you, Messieurs, with dark images and sad thoughts, I am 
going to conclude the soiree with the story of the Duc de Bonnefort's 
passion. That young lord, whom I amused five or six times, and who used 
frequently to see one of my close friends for the same operation, required 
a woman, armed with a dildo, to frig herself naked in his presence - to 
frig herself, I say, both before and behind and to keep it up for three 
hours without a moment's interruption. He has a clock there to guide you, 
and if you drop the work before having completed the third hour, no payment 
for you. He sits opposite you, he observes you, makes you turn this way, 
that way, some other way, exhorts you to ply the dildo more energetically, 
he would have you go out of your mind with pleasure, and if indeed 
transported by the effects of the operation, you should really swoon away 
with delight, 'tis very certain you will hasten his. But if you keep your 
head, at the precise instant the clock strikes the third hour, up he gets, 
approaches you, and discharges in your face. 
    "Truly," quoth the Bishop, "I fail to understand, Duclos, why you 
didn't prefer to leave us with those other images and thoughts rather than 
with this innocuous picture. They had some spice to them, some color, and 
excited us powerfully, whereas here we have some sort of milksop business 
which, now that the session is over, leaves us with nothing at all in our 
heads." 
    "No, she did the right thing, insofar as I'm concerned," said Julie, 
who was lying with Durcet, "and I give her my warmest thanks. We'll all be 
allowed to go to bed more peacefully now that they don't have all those 
frightful ideas in their heads." 
    "Ah, lovely Julie, you may be very gravely mistaken," said Durcet, "for 
I never remember anything but the earlier one when the later one displeases 
me; you doubt my word? why, then pray have the kindness to follow me." 
    And, together with Sophie and Michette, Durcet fled into his closet to 
discharge I don't know how, but none the less in a manner which must not 
have suited Sophie, for she uttered a piercing scream and emerged from the 
sanctuary as red as a cockscomb. 
    "Well," drawled the Duc, "you surely could not have wanted to confuse 
her with a corpse for that stunt; for you've just made her give out the 
most furious sign of life." 
    "She was afraid, that's all," Durcet explained; "ask her what I did to 
her and make her tell you in a whisper." 
    He sent Sophie to speak to the Duc. 
    "Ah," said the latter aloud, "there's nothing in that either to warrant 
screams, or, for that matter, a discharge." 
    And because the supper call sounded, they suspended their conversation 
and their pleasures in order to go and enjoy those of the table. The orgies 
were celebrated rather quietly, and Messieurs retired to bed in good order; 
not one of them had even the appearance of being drunk; and that was 
extremely unusual. 




THE TWENTY-SEVENTH DAY
    The denunciations, authorized on the previous day, began early that 
morning; the sultanas, having remarked that, save for Rosette, they were 
all listed for correction, decided that all eight of themselves ought to be 
included in the game and promptly went to level accusations against her. 
They reported she had spent the whole night farting, and as this was really 
only a teasing they were giving her, she had the entire harem against whom 
to pit her denials; her name was straightway inscribed. Everything else 
moved along splendidly and, except for Sophie and Zelmire, who stuttered 
just a little, the friends were thrilled by the new compliment they had 
from these brazen little hussies: "God's fuck, I've an assful of shit, 
wouldst care for some?" And, as a matter of fact, there was shit everywhere 
to be had indeed, for, from fear of some temptation to wash, the 
governesses had removed every pot, every receptacle, every towel, and all 
water. The diet of meat but no bread was beginning to warm all those little 
unwashed mouths, Messieurs noticed that there was already a very 
appreciable difference in the little girls' breaths. 
    "Damn my eyes!" exclaimed Curval as he withdrew his tongue from 
Augustine's gullet; "that now signifies at least something; kissing this 
one makes me stiff." 
    Everyone agreed there had been a distinct improvement. 
    As there was nothing new or out of the ordinary until coffee, we are 
going to transport the reader directly to the salon. Coffee was served by 
Sophie, Zelmire, Giton, and Narcisse. The Duc said he was perfectly sure 
Sophie was the sort of girl who could discharge; the experiment, in his 
view, had absolutely to be made. He asked Durcet to keep a close eye on her 
and, laying her upon a divan, he simultaneously polluted the edges of her 
vagina, her clitoris, and her asshole, at first with his fingers, next with 
his tongue; and Nature triumphed: after fifteen minutes of this, the lovely 
girl became uneasy, troubled, she flushed crimson, she sighed, she panted, 
Durcet drew Curval's and the Bishop's attention to all these 
manifestations, for 'twas they who'd doubted her discharging capacities; 
the Duc suggested that, since he had always been confident of them, it was 
for the others to convince themselves, and so they all fell to imbibing 
that young fuck, and the little rascal's cunt left all their lips moist. 
The Duc could not resist the experiment's lubricious appeal; he got up and, 
squatting over the child, discharged upon her half-opened fur, then used 
his fingers to work as much as possible of his seed into the interior of 
her cunt. His head inspired by what he was watching, Curval seized the 
little one and demanded something other than fuck of her; she tendered her 
cunning little ass, the President glued his mouth to it, the intelligent 
reader will have no trouble guessing what he received therefrom. Zelmire 
was meanwhile amusing the Bishop: she first frigged, then sucked his 
fundament. And all that while, Curval was having himself frigged by 
Narcisse, whose ass he kissed ardently. However, no one but the Duc lost 
his fuck; Duclos had announced some pretty stories for that afternoon 
which, she promised, would outdo what she had served up the day before, and 
Messieurs were disposed to save their forces for the auditorium. The hour 
having come, they passed to their alcoves, and that interesting girl 
expressed herself in the following manner: 
    A man of whose circumstances and existence I had not previously known 
anything, she said, and about whom I was later to learn only a little, and, 
therefore, a man about whom I can give you no better than an imperfect 
portrait, sent me a note, and in it besought me to come to his house, in 
the rue Blanche-du-Rempart, at nine o'clock in the evening. I had no reason 
to be suspicious, his note said; although I had no acquaintance of him, I 
could be certain that neither would I have cause to complain were I to come 
as he bade me do. Two louis accompanied the letter, and despite my usual 
cautiousness, which ought certainly to have opposed my accepting the 
invitation of a man of whom I knew nothing, despite all that, I took the 
risk, trusting to I know not what intuition which, in a very low voice, 
told me I had nothing to fear. And so I went; and I arrived at the given 
address. I am greeted by a valet who informs me that I am to undress 
entirely, for, he explains, it is only if I am naked that he can introduce 
me into his master's apartment; I execute the order, and directly he sees 
me in the state desired, he takes me by the hand, and having led me through 
several intervening chambers, finally knocks upon a door. It opens, I 
enter, the valet withdraws, the door closes again; but, with what regards 
the amount of light in the room, there was precious little difference 
between that place and the inside of a hat, neither light nor air 
penetrated into that room from any opening whatever. No sooner am I in than 
a naked man comes up to me and seizes me without a word; I keep my wits 
about me, persuaded that the whole thing surely boiled down to nothing more 
than a little fuck to be shed by one means or another; that job once over 
with, I say to myself, I'll be quits with this whole nocturnal ceremony. 
And so I waste not a moment placing my hand upon his groin, with the 
intention of draining the venom from the monster as rapidly as possible. I 
discover a very large prick, very hard and also very rebellious, but 
scarcely have I touched it than my fingers are forced away: my opponent 
seems not to want me to find out anything about him; I am edged toward a 
stool and made to sit down. The unknown libertine plumps himself down near 
me, and grasping my tits one after the other, he squeezes and wrings them 
so violently that I protest that he is hurting me. Wherewith his 
brutalities cease, he leads me to an elevated sofa, and has me stretch out 
flat upon it; then seating himself between my parted legs, he falls to 
doing to my buttocks what he has just left off doing to my breasts: he 
palpates and squeezes them with unparalleled violence, he spreads them, 
compresses them again, kneads them, mauls, kisses, and bites them, he sucks 
my asshole, and as these reiterated attacks were less dangerous on that 
side than they might have been on the other, I held my peace and put up no 
resistance, and as I let him toil over my hindquarters I wondered what 
could be the purpose of this mysteriousness when, after all, the things he 
was doing were perfectly ordinary. I was trying to guess what he was 
driving at when all of a sudden my man began to utter bloodcurdling 
shrieks: 
    "Run for it, you damned whore, run for it, I tell you," he shouted, 
"get out of here, you bitch, for I'm discharging and won't be held 
responsible for your life!" 
    As you may readily imagine, my first movement was to leap to my feet; I 
spied a feeble glimmer of light - it was coming through the doorway I had 
entered - I dashed toward it - ran into the valet who had received me at 
the door - flung myself into his arms. . . . He gave me back my clothes, 
also gave me two louis, I left the place at once, very pleased to have got 
off so cheaply. 
    "And you had excellent cause to congratulate yourself," said Martaine, 
"for what you were exposed to was merely a diminutive version of his 
ordinary passion. I shall present the man to you again, Messieurs," that 
worldly dame continued, "but in a more dangerous aspect." 
    "I expect my characterization of him will be even darker," said 
Desgranges, "and I wish to join Madame Martaine in assuring you that you 
were exceedingly fortunate to have had to put up with no more than you did, 
for the same gentleman has far more unusual passions." 
    "But let us wait and hear his entire story before arguing the point," 
the Duc suggested, "and, Duclos, make haste to tell us another so as to 
remove from our minds the image of an individual who will unfailingly 
arouse us if we dwell any longer on him." 
    The libertine with whom next I came into contact, Duclos went on, 
wished to have a woman who had a very handsome bust, and as that is one of 
my beauties, after having exposed it to his scrutiny, he preferred me to 
any of my girls. But what use did that wretched libertine design to make of 
both my breasts and my face? He had me lie down, entirely naked, upon a 
divan, straddled my chest, desposited his prick between my dugs, ordered me 
to squeeze them together as tightly as I was able, and after a brief 
career, the wicked fellow inundated them with fuck while expectorating at 
least twenty mouthfuls of thick spittle, all of which landed on my face. 
    "Well," grumbled Adelaide, in whose face the Duc had just been 
spitting, "I fail to see any necessity for imitating that infamy. Are you 
done now?" she continued as she wiped her face. But the Duc had not 
discharged. 
    "I'll finish when it suits my convenience, sweet child," the Duc 
replied to her; "bear well in mind that, alive though you may be, you are 
only so in order to obey and to let be done to you what we please. Proceed 
with your story, Duclos, for I might do something worse and, adoring this 
beautiful creature as I do," he said, resorting to a bit of persiflage, 
"I'd hardly wish entirely to outrage her." 
    I know not, Messieurs, Duclos said as she resumed her discourse, 
whether you have ever heard tell of the Commander de Saint-Elme's passion. 
He had a gaming house where all who came to risk their money were deftly 
fleeced; but the most extraordinary part of it all was that cheating his 
visitors used to make the Commander's prick stiffen: every time he'd pick 
someone's pocket he'd discharge in his breeches, and a woman with whom I 
used to be on the very best terms, and whom he had been keeping for a long 
time, once told me that sometimes the thing would heat him to such a point 
that he would be obliged to go to her to seek some relief from the ardor 
devouring him. He did not confine himself to robbing customers at roulette; 
every other kind of theft was just as attractive in his eyes, and no 
article was safe when he was in the vicinity. Were he to dine at your 
table, he would make off with the silverware; when he entered your study, 
he'd pilfer your jewels; if near your pocket, he'd appropriate your 
snuffbox or your handkerchief. Everything was subject to seizure: he took a 
keen interest in anything provided he could get his hands on it, and 
everything gave him a stout erection, and would even cause him to discharge 
once he had made it his own. 
    But in that eccentricity of his he was certainly less outstanding than 
the parliamentary judge with whom I had to cope shortly after my arrival at 
Fournier's establishment, and whom I had as a client for many years: his 
being a rather ticklish case, he would deal with no one but me. 
    The jurisconsult had a little apartment, which he rented the year 
around, looking out upon the place de Grève; an old servant lived as a 
caretaker in the apartment, and her only duties were these two: to keep the 
premises in good order and to send word to her employer whenever 
preparations for an execution were visible upon the square. The judge would 
immediately get in touch with me, tell me to hold myself in readiness; he 
would disguise himself and come to fetch me in a cab, and we would repair 
to his little apartment. 
    In the salon the casement window was placed in such a manner it 
commanded a direct view of, and was situated near, the scaffold; we would 
post ourselves there, the judge and I, behind a latticework screen upon one 
of whose horizontal slats he rested an excellent pair of opera glasses, and 
while waiting for the patient to make his appearance, Themis' wise henchman 
would amuse himself upon a bed which had been drawn close to the window; 
while waiting, I say, he would kiss my ass, an episode which, by the by, 
pleased him enormously. Finally, the crowd's hubbub would announce the 
victim's arrival, the man of the gown would return to his place at the 
window and would have me take mine beside him, with the injunction to frig 
his prick gently, proportioning my strokes to the progress of the execution 
he was about to watch, in such sort that the sperm would not escape until 
the moment the patient rendered up his soul unto God. Everything was 
arranged, the criminal mounted upon the platform, the jurist contemplated 
him; the nearer the patient approached to death, the more furious became 
the villain's prick in my hands. The axe was raised, the axe was brought 
down, 'twas the instant he discharged: "Ah, gentle Jesus!" he'd say, 
"double-fucked Christ! How I'd like to be the executioner myself, and how 
much better than that I'd swing the blade!" 
    Moreover, his pleasures' impressions would be measured by the method of 
execution, a hanging produced in him little more than an exceedingly mild 
sensation, a man being broken on the wheel threw him into a delirium, but 
were the criminal to be either burned alive or quartered, my client would 
swoon away from pleasure. Man or woman, it made no difference to him. 
    "I dare say," he once remarked, "that only a pregnant woman would have 
a stronger effect upon me, and, unfortunately, the thing cannot be brought 
about." 
    "But, your honor," I said to him upon another occasion, "through your 
public function you have cooperated in the destruction of this luckless 
victim." 
    "Assuredly, yes," he replied, "and that precisely is what creates all 
the diversion for me; I have been judging for a good thirty years and have 
never pronounced any but the death sentence." 
    "And do you suppose," I said, "that you have not, if only a little, to 
reproach yourself for the death of these people, which so resembles 
murder?" 
    "Splendid," he murmured; "must one, however, look at the matter so 
closely?" 
    "But in society such a thing is called a horror," I protested. 
    "Oh," said he, "one has got to learn how to make the best of the 
horror; there is in horror matter to produce an erection, you see, and the 
reason therefor is quite simple: this thing, however frightful you wish to 
imagine it, ceases to be horrible for you immediately it acquires the power 
to make you discharge; it is, hence, no longer horrible save in the eyes of 
others, but who is to assure me that the opinion of others, almost always 
erroneous or faulty in every other connection, is not equally so in this 
instance? There is nothing," he pursued, "either fundamentally good, nor 
anything fundamentally evil; everything is relative, relative to our point 
of view, that is to say, to our manners, to our opinions, to our 
prejudices. This point once established, it is extremely possible that 
something, perfectly indifferent in itself, may indeed be distasteful in 
your eyes, but may be most delicious in mine; and immediately I find it 
pleasing, immediately I find it amusing, regardless of our inability to 
agree in assigning a character to it, should I not be a fool to deprive 
myself of it merely because you condemn it? Come, come, my dear Duclos, a 
man's life is something of such slight importance that one may sport with 
it as much as one likes, just as one might with a cat's life or with that 
of a dog; 'tis up to the feeble and weak to defend themselves, they have 
virtually the same weapons we possess. And since you are so scrupulous," my 
man added, "my stars! what would you think of the fantasy of one of my 
friends!" 
    And, with your Lordships' leave, I shall terminate the evening by 
giving, as my fifth story, the account of the taste the judge related me. 
    This philosophical jurist told me that his friend would deal only with 
women scheduled to be executed. The nearer the moment that they are 
delivered to him borders on the moment they are going to perish, the better 
he pays for them. But he insists that the conference be held after they 
have been notified of their sentence. Thanks to his position in society 
within easy reach of this sort of prize, he never lets one slip through his 
fingers and," my informant went on, "I have seen him pay up to one hundred 
louis for this kind of tête-à-tête. However, he does not carnally enjoy 
them, or rather he requires nothing of them but that they exhibit their 
buttocks and shit before his eyes; for taste of shit, he maintains, there 
is nothing to equal what one gets from a woman who has just heard the death 
penalty pronounced against her. He will go to any lengths to obtain these 
private interviews, and of course, as you may well suppose, he does not 
wish to be known by the victim. He sometimes passes himself off as the 
confessor, or at other times as a friend of the family, and his proposals 
are always fortified by the promise that, if they indulge his little 
whimsies, he may very possibly be able to be of help to them. 
    "And when he has finished, when he has satisfied himself, by what, my 
dear Duclos," said the judge, "do you fancy he concludes his operation? 
Just as I do, my worthy friend; he reserves his fuck for the climax, and 
releases it at last when before his delighted gaze the condemned person 
expires." 
    "Ah, that's true villainy," I told him. 
    "Villainy?" he interrupted. "My dear child, all that's mere verbiage, 
prattle. Nothing's villainous if it causes an erection, and the single 
crime that exists in this world is to refuse oneself anything that might 
produce a discharge." 
    "And so it was he refused himself nothing," said Martaine; "Madame 
Desgranges and I shall have, or so I hope, occasion to entertain the 
company with several lubricious and criminal anecdotes relating to the same 
personage." 
    "Excellent," said Curval, "for there's a man I'm already hugely fond 
of. That's just the way one should reason about one's pleasures, and his 
philosophy pleases me infinitely. It is truly incredible the way man, 
already restricted in all his amusements, in all his faculties, seeks 
further to narrow the scope of his existence through his contemptible 
prejudices. For example, it is not commonly suspected what limitations he 
who has raised up murder as a crime has imposed upon all his delights; he 
has deprived himself of a hundred joys, each more delicious than the other, 
by daring to adopt the odious illusion which founds that particular 
nonsense. What the devil difference can it make to Nature whether there are 
one, ten, twenty, five hundred more or fewer human beings on earth? 
Conquerors, heroes, tyrants - do they inhibit themselves by that absurd 
law? Do you hear them saying that we ought not do unto others that which 
onto ourselves we would not have done? Forsooth, my friends, I tell you 
frankly that I tremble, I groan when I hear fools dare to tell me that such 
is the law of Nature, etc. . . . Merciful Heaven! all athirst for crimes 
and murders, 'tis to see to it they are committed, to inspire them Nature 
has wrought her law, and the one commandment she graves deep in our hearts 
is to satisfy ourselves at no matter whose expense. But patience; I shall 
perhaps soon have a better occasion to expand upon these questions, I have 
made the profoundest study of them, and, in communicating my conclusions to 
you, I hope to convince you, as convinced am I, that the single way of 
serving Nature is blindly to respond to her desires, of whatever kind they 
may be, because, for the sake of maintaining the divine balance she has 
struck universally, vice being quite as necessary to the general scheme as 
virtue, she is wont to urge us to do this, now to do that, depending upon 
what is at the moment necessary to her design. Yes, my friends, I shall 
someday discuss all that before you, but for the moment I must be still, 
for I have fuck that needs spilling, that devilish fellow at the executions 
has made my poor balls swell dreadfully." 
    And the President departed for the boudoir at the end of the corridor, 
with him went Desgranges and Fanchon, his two dear friends, for they were 
as great scoundrels as he; and with him also went Aline, Sophie, Hebe, 
Antinoüs, and Zephyr. I have little definite information upon what the 
libertine took it into his head to do in the midst of those seven persons, 
but his absence was prolonged and he was heard to shout: "Come, damn it, 
turn this way, do you hear? But that's not what I told you to do" and other 
ill-humored remarks interspersed with oaths to which he was known to be 
greatly addicted while enacting scenes of debauchery; the women finally 
returned, their faces very red, their hair very untidy, and with the air of 
having been furiously mauled and pawed in every sense. Meanwhile, the Duc 
and his two friends had scarcely been marking time, but of their number 
only the Bishop had discharged, and in a manner so extraordinary that we 
had better say nothing about it at present. 
    They went to the supper table, where Curval philosophized a little 
more, for, with that man, passions had not the least influence upon 
doctrines; firm in his principles, he was just as much an atheist, an 
iconoclast, a criminal after having shed his fuck as when, before, he had 
been in a lubricious ferment, and that precisely is how all wise, level-
headed people should be. Never ought fuck be allowed to dictate or affect 
one's principles; 'tis for one's principles to regulate one's manner of 
shedding it. And whether one is stiff, or whether one is not, one's 
philosophy, acting independently of passions, should always remain the 
same. 
    The amusement at the orgies consisted in a verification which had not 
until then been undertaken, but which was interesting none the less: 
Messieurs were moved to decide who amonst the boys, who amongst the girls 
had the most beautiful ass. And so, first of all, they had the eight boys 
form a line: they were standing erect . . . yes, but, on the other hand, 
they were made to bend forward just a little, for that is the only way 
properly to judge an ass. The examination was both very long and very 
severe, opinions clashed, opinions were reversed, rectified, each ass was 
inspected fifteen times, and the apple was generally accorded to Zephyr; it 
was unanimously agreed that it was physically impossible to find anything 
more perfect, better molded, better cleft. 
    Next they turned to the girls, who adopted the same posture. 
Deliberation was at first very slow, very prolonged, it proved all but 
impossible to decide from amongst Augustine, Zelmire, and Sophie. 
Augustine, taller, better made than the other two, would doubtless have 
triumphed had the jury been composed of painters; but libertines call 
rather for grace than exactitude, for fullness sooner than regularity. 
There was in her disfavor a shade too much of the slender and of the 
delicate; the two other contestants offered a carnation so fresh, so 
healthy, so plump, buttocks so fair and so round, a back whose line 
descended so voluptuously, that Augustine was eliminated from further 
consideration. But how were they to decide between the two who remained? 
After ten rounds of balloting, opinion was still equally divided. 
    At last, Zelmire won the prize; the two charming winners were 
assembled, were kissed, handled, frigged for the rest of the evening, 
Zelmire was ordered to frig Zephyr who, discharging like a musket, 
afforded, in the throes of pleasure, the most entrancing spectacle; then, 
in his turn, he frigged the young lady who all but fainted away in his 
arms, and all these scenes, of unspeakable lubricity, brought about the 
loss of the Duc's fuck and of his brother's, but only mildly stirred Curval 
and Durcet, who agreed that what they needed were scenes far less Arcadian, 
far less ethereal if their weary old souls were to be cheered, and that all 
these winsome frolickings were only good for youngsters. They went to bed, 
and Curval, plunged into the thick of fresh infamies, compensated himself 
for the tender pastorals he had been obliged to witness. 




THE TWENTY-EIGHTH DAY
    'Twas a wedding day, and the turn of Cupidon and Rosette to be united 
in holy matrimony, and by still another fateful combination of accidents, 
both were listed for punishment that evening. As no one was found at fault 
that morning, that entire part of the day was devoted to the wedding 
ceremony, and when it was over, the newlyweds were brought into the salon 
to see what they would do together. The mysteries of Venus were, as we 
know, often celebrated in these children's presence; although none of them 
had so far taken an active part in them, they were well enough grounded in 
the theory of the thing to be able to execute about everything that there 
is to do. Cupidon, his prick very rigidly aloft, insinuated his little peg 
between Rosette's thighs, and she lent herself to his maneuvers with all 
the candor of the most thorough innocence; the young lad was managing so 
nicely that he was probably well on the way to success when the Bishop, 
taking him in his arms, had put in himself what, I fancy, the child would 
greatly have liked to put into his little wife; all the while he perforated 
the Bishop's ample hole, he regarded her with eyes which declared his 
regrets, but she was herself soon occupied: the Duc thigh-fucked her. 
Curval stepped up in the lewdest fashion to fondle the ass of the Bishop's 
little fucker, and as that pretty little ass was found, in keeping with 
instructions, in the desired state, he licked it and began to stiffen. 
Durcet was up to the same tricks with the little girl the Duc was holding 
with her chest pressed to his. 
    However, no one discharged, and Messieurs went in to dine; the young 
bride and groom, who had been admitted to the table, also appeared to serve 
coffee, together with Augustine and Zelamir. And the voluptuous Augustine, 
deeply distressed over not having won the prize for beauty the night 
before, had, as though sulking, left her hair in just that kind of disarray 
which rendered her a thousand times more intriguing to see. Curval was 
stirred by the sight, and, examining her buttocks: 
    "I fail to understand how it happened that this little rascal did not 
win the palm," said he, "for devil take me if in all the world there exists 
a finer ass than this one here." 
    So saying, he pried it open, and inquired of Augustine whether she were 
ready to do her old friend a great kindness. "Oh, yes," she replied, "a 
very great one indeed, for I really have to get rid of what I have there." 
Curval rests her upon a sofa and, kneeling before that radiant behind, he 
devours its turd in a flash. 
    "Sacred name of God," says he, licking his lips, turning toward his 
colleagues, and pointing to the prick straining against his abdomen, "I'm 
in a state for furiously undertaking something or other." 
    "And what would it be?" asked the Duc, who was very fond of making the 
President utter horrors when he was in that particular state. 
    "What?" said Curval. "Why, whatever infamy you wish to propose, even 
were it to dismember Nature and unhinge the universe." 
    "Come along now," said Durcet, upon seeing him cast furious glances in 
the direction of Augustine, "come along, let's go listen to Duclos, it's 
story time. I'm persuaded," he went on, addressing the others, "that if he 
gets the bit in his teeth, that poor little duckling is going to spend a 
trying quarter of an hour." 
    "Oh, yes!" said the inflamed President, "a very trying one, I can vouch 
for that." 
    "Curval," said the Duc, whose prick was nodding in the air like a 
vengeful lance, and who had just finished eliciting some shit from Rosette, 
"let the others entrust the harem to the two of us, and two hours from now 
we'll have turned in a capital performance." 
    Durcet and the Bishop, at the moment calmer than their coproprietors, 
each took one of them by the arm, and it was thus, that is to say, breeches 
about their ankles and pricks aloft, that those libertines made their 
solemn entrance into the auditorium, where the assembly was already 
gathered and ready to hear Duclos' latest offerings; she, having 
anticipated, from those two gentlemen's state, that she would soon be 
interrupted, began in these terms: 
    A nobleman at the court, aged about fifty-five, came and asked me for 
one of the prettiest girls I could lay my hands on. He said nothing to 
indicate his favorite mania, and to satisfy any need he might have, I gave 
him a young dressmaker who had never yet attended a party and who was 
incontestably one of the loveliest creatures France could boast. I 
introduce them to each other and, curious to observe what is about to 
transpire, I quickly repair to my post at the spy hole. 
    "Now where in the devil has Madame Duclos been," he opened by saying, 
"to find an ugly chit like yourself? Has she been raking over someone's 
dung heap? You must have been servicing a couple of soldiers when they came 
to fetch you here." 
    And the young lady, blushing to the ears with shame, for she had been 
forewarned of nothing, was at a loss to know what tack to take. 
    "Well, get your clothes off then," the courtier continued. "My God, but 
you're a clumsy slut! I've seen ugly whores in my life, but never one the 
likes of you, nor so stupid. Well, then? Are we going to be able to get 
this over with today? Ah, yes, there's that body they've been praising to 
the skies. Sacred Mother, what are those dugs! you'd think they'd been 
grafted from an old cow." 
    And he fell to handling them brutally. 
    "And this belly! What could have caused those wrinkles? You surely 
haven't whelped twenty children at your age?" 
    "Not one, Monsieur, I assure you." 
    "Oh, I see, not one, eh! That's how all these bitches talk; listen to 
them a while and they'll be trying to convince you they're all virgins. . . 
. Well, move about, will you, turn around . . . infamous ass you've got 
dragging there. Flabby, disgusting buttocks - I understand now why they 
described you as unusual. It must have taken a lot of kicks in the ass to 
have arranged things this way." 
    And you will allow me, Messieurs, to remind you that the ass he was 
referring to was as beautiful an ass as one could find anywhere. Be that as 
it may, the girl began to grow upset; I could almost make out the 
flutterings of her little heart, and I saw her lovely eyes become worried, 
then misty. And the more troubled she became, the more energetically the 
scoundrel sought to mortify her. I cannot possibly remember all the 
ungenerous things he said to her; one would not dare say anything more 
stinging, more biting, to the vilest, most infamous of creatures. Finally, 
a lump welled up in her throat and her tears began to flow; 'twas for this 
last development the libertine, who had been polluting himself with might 
and main, had reserved the bouquet of his litanies. 'Tis impossible, once 
again, to render for you all the horrible observations he made upon her 
skin, her figure, her features, the sickening odor he declared she exhaled, 
how he criticized her bearing, her mind; in brief, he hunted up everything, 
he invented everything to humiliate her pride, and discharged all over her 
while vomiting atrocities a street sweeper would never dare utter. This 
scene had a most amusing outcome: the girl seemed to have taken it as a 
lesson, and it prompted her to take an oath; she swore never again to 
expose herself to such an adventure, and a week later I learned she had 
entered a convent for the rest of her life. I related this to the young 
man, who found it all prodigiously funny, and who later asked me for 
someone else to convert. 
    Another, Duclos continued, requested me to find him extremely sensitive 
girls who were awaiting news of an event whose unfavorable outcome might 
cause them an access of profoundest grief. I had unending difficulty 
finding anything to answer this description, and it was virtually 
impossible to pawn off a makeshift upon the connoisseur. He knew what he 
was about, had been playing the game for ages, and one glance was 
sufficient to tell him whether the blow he was to strike would reach the 
mark. And so I made no effort to deceive him, and managed somehow always to 
get him girls who were in the mental state he desired. I one day produced a 
maid who was expecting word from Dijon of a young man she idiolized and 
whose name was Valcourt. I presented the girl to the libertine. 
    "Where do you come from, Mademoiselle?" he asked her in a decent and 
respectful tone. 
    "From Dijon, Monsieur." 
    "From Dijon? Why, that's a strange coincidence, for I have just this 
instant had a letter from Dijon containing tidings which have sore 
distressed me." 
    "And what is the trouble?" the girl asked with great interest; "I know 
everyone in the town, this news you have heard may be of some importance to 
me." 
    "Oh, not at all," our man replied, "it relates only to me; it has to do 
with the death of a young man - I was keenly fond of him, he had just 
married a girl whom my brother, who also lives in Dijon, had found for him, 
a girl to whom he was passionately attached, and the day after the wedding, 
he suddenly died." 
    "His name, Monsieur, if you please?" 
    "His name was Valcourt; he was originally from Paris," and the 
libertine named the street and the number at which Valcourt had lived. "You 
cannot possibly have known him, though." 
    But the young girl had collapsed in a faint. 
    Therewith our libertine, beside himself with delight, muttered a string 
of oaths, unbuttoned his breeches, and set to frigging himself upon her 
supine body. "Ah, by Christ! that's what I want. Make haste now, hurry," he 
said to himself, "the buttocks, I only need the buttocks to discharge." 
    And turning her over, and pulling up her skirts, he darts seven or 
eight jets of fuck upon the motionless girl's ass, and then takes himself 
off without a thought either for the consequences of what he has said, or 
for what will become of the unhappy creature. 
    "And did she croak as a result?" inquired Curval, who was being fucked 
at a great rate. 
    "No," Duclos admitted, "but she fell ill and lay six weeks at death's 
door." 
    "Very fine stunt, oh my, yes!" said the Duc. "But," that scoundrel went 
on, "I should have preferred it had your man chosen the period of her 
menstruation for his disclosure." 
    "Yes," Curval said, "quite. But, Monsieur le Duc, tell us all the 
truth: your prick's in the air, I can sense it from here: you would have 
preferred that she drop dead on the spot." 
    "Well, have it your own way," called back the Duc. "Since you'd wish it 
so, I consent, for, you know, I've not many scruples over a girl's death." 
    "Durcet," said the Bishop, "if you don't send those two rascals out to 
discharge, there'll be a merry to-do this evening." 
    "Ah, by the Almighty's balls," Curval shouted toward the Bishop's 
niche, "you're afraid for your flock. But what difference would two more or 
two less make? Well, Monsieur le Duc, you've heard Monseigneur the Bishop's 
suggestion, let's go to the boudoir, but we'll go together, for it's all 
too evident these other gentlemen wish to avoid a scandal tonight." 
    No sooner said than done; and our two libertines had themselves 
followed by Zelmire, Augustine, Sophie, Colombe, Cupidon, Narcisse, 
Zelamir, Adonis, escorted by Bum-Cleaver, Invictus, Therèse, Fanchon, 
Constance, and Julie. A brief interval ensued, then two or three women's 
screams were heard, then the bellowings of our two lechers, who were 
disgorging their fuck simultaneously. Augustine reappeared dabbing at her 
bleeding nose, Adelaide's breast was covered by a scarf. As for Julie, 
always libertine enough and clever enough to get through any ordeal 
unscathed, she was laughing like one in hysterics and saying that had it 
not been for her they'd never have been able to discharge. The rest of the 
troupe returned; Zelamir and Adonis still had their buttocks smeared with 
fuck. Having assured their confreres they had conducted themselves with all 
possible decency and modesty, that they might have nothing to be reproached 
for, and that now, perfectly calm, they were in a fit state to listen, 
Messieurs gave Duclos the signal to proceed and she did so in the following 
terms: 
    I sincerely regret Monsieur de Curval's precipitate haste to relieve 
his needs, said that superb creature, for I had two pregnant-woman stories 
to tell him, and they would perhaps have afforded him some real pleasure. I 
know his taste for the fruit-laden, and I am certain that, had he a flicker 
of warmth left in his bowels, these two tales would divert him. 
    "Tell them all the same," said Curval. "You are aware, I trust, that 
fucking has not the least effect upon my sentiments, and that the moment 
when I am most infatuated with evil is always the moment after I have 
performed it." 
    Very well, said Duclos, I have seen a man whose mania was straitly 
connected with observing a woman give birth; he would frig himself when 
seeing her labor pains begin, and used to discharge squarely upon the 
infant's head directly it hove into view. 
    A second would perch a seven-month-pregnant woman upon an isolated 
pedestal at least fifteen feet high. She was obliged to keep her balance, 
and her mind on what she was about, for if by mischance she were to have 
grown dizzy, she and her issue would have been definitively ruined. The 
libertine I speak of, very little affected by the situation of the poor 
creature he paid for her acrobatic skill, kept her where she was until he 
had discharged, and frigged himself before her while exclaiming: "Ah, the 
lovely statue, the beautiful ornament, the empress upon her dais!" 
    "Well, Curval, you'd have shaken that column, wouldn't you, eh?" said 
the Duc. 
    "Ah, not at all, you're mistaken; I have too much respect for Nature 
and her works. Is not the most interesting of them all the propagation of 
our species? is it not a kind of miracle we ought to adore incessantly, and 
ought we not to have the warmest interest in those who perform it? For my 
part, I never see a pregnant woman without being melted; think for a moment 
what a marvelous thing is a woman who, just like an oven, can make a little 
snot hatch deep in her vagina. Is there anything more beautiful, anything 
quite as fetching as that? Constance, dear girl, come hither, I beseech 
you, come let me kiss the sanctuary wherein, at this very moment, such a 
profound mystery is in progress." 
    And as he found her right there in his alcove, he was not long 
searching after the temple he wished to minister to. But there is reason to 
suppose Constance took a somewhat different view of his intentions, or, at 
least, that she only half believed his professions, for an instant later 
she was heard to vent a scream which bore no relationship at all to the 
consequences of a reverence or an homage. Then silence closed again; 
observing that all lay quiet, Duclos concluded her narrations with the 
following little tale: 
    I knew a man, said she, whose passion consisted in hearing children 
wail and cry; he had to have a mother with a child of no more than three or 
four. He required this mother to give her offspring a sound thrashing; it 
had to be done before him, and when the little creature, aroused by this 
treatment, began to bawl, the mother had next to catch hold of the rogue's 
prick and frig it industriously, directing the glans at the child, in whose 
face he would discharge when the little one was singing his loudest. 
    "Now, I wager," the Bishop said to Curval, "that fellow was no more a 
friend of increase than you are." 
    "I dare say not," Curval conceded. "He must be, according to the 
argument of a lady reputed to possess a great fund of wit, he must be, I 
say, a great scoundrel; for, in keeping with the development of her 
thought, any man who loves neither animals, nor children, nor swollen-
bellied women, is a monster fit to be put on the rack. Well, by that 
agreeable old fool's judgment, my case is heard and decided and writ off 
the agenda," said the President, "for I certainly have no affection for any 
one of those three things." 
    And as it was late, and as interruptions had consumed a sizable portion 
of the seance, they went straight to supper. At table, they debated the 
following questions: what need has man for sensibility? and is it or is it 
not useful to his happiness? Curval proved that it was nothing if not 
dangerous, and that it was the first sentiment, this one of human kindness, 
one had to extirpate from children, by early making them grow accustomed to 
the most ferocious spectacles. Each of them having differently approached 
the problem, by many and long detours they all finally ended up agreeing 
with Curval. Supper over, the Duc and he were of the opinion the women and 
youngsters should be sent to bed, and they proposed the orgies be made an 
entirely masculine tournament; everyone concurred, the idea was adopted, 
Messieurs enchambered themselves with the eight fuckers and spent almost 
all the night having themselves fucked and drinking liqueurs. They stumbled 
to bed two hours before dawn, and the morrow brought with it both events 
and stories the reader will perhaps find entertaining if he will give 
himself the trouble to read what follows. 




THE TWENTY-NINTH DAY
    There is a proverb - and what splendid things proverbs are - there is 
one, I say, which maintains that the appetite is restored by eating. This 
proverb, coarse, nay, vulgar though it be, has none the less a very 
extensive significance: to wit, that, by dint of performing horrors, one's 
desire to commit additional ones is whetted, and that the more of them one 
commits, the more of them one desires. 
    Well, such exactly was the case with our insatiable libertines. Through 
unpardonable harshness, through a detestable refinement of debauchery, 
they, as we know, had condemned their wives to render them the vilest and 
most unclean services upon their emergence from the privy. They were not 
content with that, and on the 29th of November they proclaimed a new (which 
appeared to have been inspired by the previous night's sodomistical 
libertinage), a new law, I say, which ruled that, as of the 1st of 
December, those wives would serve as the only pots to their masters' needs, 
and that the said needs, both the greater and the lesser, would never be 
executed anywhere save in their wives' mouths; that whenever Messieurs were 
moved to satisfy these fundamental urges, they would be followed about by 
four sultanas who would, once the urge had been satisfied, render them the 
service which heretofore the wives had rendered them and which the said 
wives would hereafter be unable to render them, since they were going to 
have graver employment; that the four officiating sultanas would be Colombe 
for Curval, Hebe for the Duc, Rosette for the Bishop, and Michette for 
Durcet; and that the least error or failure committed in the course of 
either of these operations, whether in the course of that involving the 
wives or in that other involving the four little girls, would be punished 
with prodigious severity. 
    The poor women had no sooner learned of this new regulation than they 
wept and wrung their hands, unfortunately, it was all but in vain. It was 
however ordained that each wife would serve her husband, and Aline the 
Bishop, and that for this one operation Messieurs would not be allowed to 
exchange them. Two of the duennas were ordered to take turns presenting 
themselves for the same service, and the time for their rendering it was 
unalterably fixed at the hour Messieurs would depart the evening orgies; it 
was decided that Messieurs would at all times proceed to this ritual in 
each other's company, that while the elders were operating, the four 
sultanas, while waiting to give the service required of them, would make 
conspicuous display of their asses, and that the elders would move from one 
anus to the next, to press it, open it, and encourage it generally to 
function. This regulation promulgated, the friends proceeded that morning 
to administer the punishments which had not been distributed the night 
before because of the decision to perform the orgies with the assistance of 
men only. 
    The operation was undertaken in the sultanas' quarters; they were all 
eight taken care of, and after them came Adelaide, Aline, and Cupidon, who 
also were included upon the fatal list; the ceremony, with the details and 
all the protocol observed under such circumstances, dragged on for nearly 
four hours, at the end of which their Lordships descended to dinner, their 
heads swimming, especially Curval's head, for he, prodigiously cherishing 
these exercises, never took part in them without the most definite 
erection. As for the Duc, he had discharged in the thick of the fray, and 
so had Durcet. This latter, who was beginning to develop a very mischievous 
libertine testiness toward his wife Adelaide, was unable to discipline her 
without shudders of pleasure which ultimately loosened his seed. 
    Dinner was, as usual, followed by coffee; Messieurs, disposed to have 
some neat little asses on hand, had appointed Zephyr and Giton to serve the 
cups, and to these two might have added a large number of others; but there 
was not one sultana whose ass was in anything like an appropriate state. In 
accordance with schedule, the coffee-serving team was rounded out by 
Colombe and Michette. Curval, examining Colombe's ass, the bedaubed 
condition whereof, in part the President's own work, generated some 
singular desires in him, thrust his prick between her thighs from behind, 
while so doing fondling her buttocks vivaciously; now and again, as it 
moved to and fro, his engine, as if through maladdress, nudged up against 
the dear little hole he would have given a kingdom to perforate. For a 
moment he studied it attentively. 
    "O sacred God," he said, turning to his friends, "I'll pay the society 
two hundred louis on the spot for leave to fuck this ass." 
    Reason prevailed, however, he kept a grip upon himself and did not even 
discharge. But the Bishop had Zephyr discharge into his mouth and yielded 
up his own sanctified fuck as he swallowed that delicious child's; Durcet 
had himself kicked in the ass by Giton, then had Giton shit, and remained 
chaste. Messieurs removed to the auditorium, where each father, by an 
arrangement which was encountered rather frequently, had his daughter on 
his couch beside him; breeches lowered, they listened to our talented 
storyteller's five tales. 
    It seemed as though, since the day I had so exactly executed Fournier's 
pious will, happiness smiled ever more warmly upon my house, said that 
distinguished whore. Never had I had so many wealthy acquaintances. 
    The Benedictine prior, among my most faithful clients, one day came to 
tell me that, having heard of a quite remarkable fantasy and having 
subsequently observed it performed by one of his friends who was wild about 
it, he had a powerful desire to enact it himself, and hence he asked me for 
a girl well fledged with hair. I gave him a big creature of twenty-eight 
years who had veritable thickets both under the arms and upon her mound. 
"Splendid," said the prior upon beholding the goods, "that's just what I 
need." And as he and I were very closely attached to each other, as we had 
taken many a gay tumble together, he made no objections when I requested 
leave to watch him at work. He had the girl undress and half recline upon a 
couch, her arms extended above her head, and, armed with a sharp pair of 
scissors he set to cropping the hear beneath her arms. Once he had clipped 
away every bit of it, he turned to her mound, and barbered it also, but so 
thoroughly that when he was done one would never have believed the least 
vestige of hair had ever grown on any of the areas he had worked over. The 
job done, he kissed the parts he'd shorn and spurted his fuck upon that 
hairless mound, in a perfect ecstasy over the fruit of his labor. 
    Another required a doubtless much more bizarre ceremony: I am thinking 
now of the Duc de Florville; I was advised to bring him one of the most 
beautiful women I could find. A manservant welcomed us at the Duc's 
mansion, and we entered by a side door. 
    "We will now prepare this attractive creature," the valet said to me; 
"for there are several adjustments to be made in order that she be in a 
state to amuse my Lord the Duc . . . come with me." 
    By way of detours and corridors equally somber and immense, we finally 
reached a lugubrious suite of rooms, lighted only by six tapers placed on 
the floor around a mattress covered with black satin; the entire room was 
hung in funereal stuffs, and the sight, as we entered, woke the worst 
apprehensions in us. 
    "Calm your fears," said our guide, "you will not suffer the least hurt; 
but be ready for anything," he added, speaking to the girl, "and above all 
see to it that you do everything I tell you." 
    He had her remove all her clothes, loosened her coiffure, and indicated 
she was to leave her hair, which was superb, to hang free. Next, he bade 
her lie down upon the mattress surrounded by tall candles, enjoined her to 
feign death and to be exceedingly careful, throughout the whole of the 
scene to follow, neither to stir nor breathe more deeply than she had to. 
    "For if unhappily my master, who is going to imagine you are really 
dead, perceives you are only pretending, he'll be furious, will leave you 
at once, and surely will not pay you a sou." 
    Directly he had placed the girl upon the pallet in the attitude of a 
corpse, he had her twist her mouth in such a way as to give the impression 
of pain, her eyes too were to suggest she had died in agony; he scattered 
her tresses over her naked breast, lay a dagger beside her, and near her 
heart smeared chicken's blood, painting a wound the size of one's hand. 
    "I repeat to you," he said to the girl, "be not afraid, you have 
nothing to say, nothing to do, you have simply to remain absolutely still 
and to draw your breath at the moments when you see he is farthest from 
you. And now, Madame," the valet said to me, "we may withdraw from the 
room. Come with me, please; that you not be worried about your girl, I am 
going to place you where you will be able to hear and watch the entire 
scene." 
    We quit the room, leaving the girl, who was not without her misgivings, 
but whom the manservant's speeches had reassured somewhat. He conducts me 
to a small chamber adjoining the apartment where the mystery is to be 
celebrated, and through a crack between two panels, over which the black 
material was hung, I could hear everything. To see was still easier, for 
the material was only crepe, I could distinguish objects on the other side 
quite as clearly as if I had been in the room itself. 
    The valet drew the cord that rang a bell, that was the signal, and a 
few minutes later we saw a tall, thin, wasted man of about sixty enter upon 
the stage. Beneath a loose-flowing dressing robe of India taffeta he was 
completely naked. He halted upon coming through the doorway; I had best 
tell you now that the Duc, supposing he was absolutely alone, had not the 
faintest idea his actions were being observed. 
    "Ah, what a beautiful corpse!" he exclaimed at once. "Death . . . 'tis 
beautiful to behold. . . . But, my God, what's this!" said he upon catching 
sight of the blood, the knife. "It must have been an assassin . . . only a 
moment ago . . . ah, Great God, how stiff he must be now, the person who 
did that." 
    And, frigging himself: 
    "How I would have loved to see him strike that blow!" 
    And fondling the corpse, moving his hand over its belly: 
    "Pregnant? . . . No, apparently not. What a pity." 
    And continuing to explore with his hands: 
    "Superb flesh! It's still warm . . . a lovely breast." 
    Wherewith he bent over her and kissed her mouth with incredible 
emotion: 
    "Still drooling," he said; "how I adore this saliva!" 
    And once again he drove his tongue almost into her gullet; no one could 
possibly have played the role more convincingly than did that girl, she lay 
stock-still, and whenever the Duc drew near she ceased entirely to breathe. 
Finally, he rolled her over upon her stomach: 
    "I must have a look at this lovely ass," he murmured. 
    And after having scanned it: 
    "Jesus Christ! What matchless buttocks!" 
    And then he opened them, kissed them, and we distinctly saw him place 
his tongue in that cunning little hole. 
    "Oh, upon my word!" he cried, sweating with admiration, "this is 
certainly one of the most superb corpses I have ever seen in my life; happy 
he who took this girl's life, oh, enviable person, what pleasure he must 
have known!" 
    The very idea made him discharge; he was lying beside her, squeezing 
her, his thighs glued against her buttocks, and he discharged upon her 
asshole, giving out unbelievable signs of pleasure, and, as he yielded his 
sperm, crying like a demon: 
    "Ah fuck, fuck, ah good God, if only I had killed her, if only I had 
been the one!" 
    Thus the operation ended, the libertine rose and disappeared; we 
entered the room to resurrect our brave little friend. She was exhausted, 
unable to budge: constraint, fright, everything had numbed her senses, she 
was about ready in all earnestness to become the character she had just 
personified so expertly. We departed with four louis the valet gave us; as 
you may well imagine, he doubtless surrendered no more than half of our 
pay. 
    "Ye living gods!" cried Curval, "now that is a passion! To say the 
least, the thing has flavor, aroma." 
    "I'm as stiff as a mule," said the Duc; "I'll stake my fortune on it, 
that fellow had other tricks up his sleeve." 
    "Right you are, my Lord," said Martaine; "he now and again employed a 
greater realism. I think Madame Desgranges and I have evidence to prove it 
to you." 
    "And what the devil are you going to do while waiting?" Curval asked 
the Duc. 
    "Don't disturb me, don't disturb me," the Duc shouted, "I'm fucking my 
daughter, I'm pretending she's dead." 
    "Rascal," Curval rejoined, "that makes two crimes in your head." 
    "Ah, by fuck," said the Duc, "would that they were more real. . . ." 
    And his impure seed burst into Julie's vagina. 
    "Well now, Duclos, what comes next? Go on with your stories," said he 
as soon as he had finished his affair, "go on, my dear friend, don't allow 
the President to discharge, for I can hear him over there effecting an 
incestuous connection with his daughter; the funny little fellow is working 
up some evil ideas in his head; his parents have made me his tutor, they 
expect me to keep an eye on his behavior and I'd be distressed were it to 
become perverted." 
    "Too late," said Curval, "too late, old man, I'm discharging; ah, 
Christ be doublefucked, 'tis a pretty death." 
    And while encunting Adelaide, the scoundrel fancied to himself, as had 
the Duc, that he was fucking his murdered daughter; O incredible 
distraction of the mind of a libertine, who can naught hear, naught see, 
but he would imitate it that instant! 
    "Duclos, you must indeed continue," said the Bishop, "else I'll be 
seduced by those bawdy fellows' example, and in my present state I might 
carry things a good deal further than they." 
    Some time after that last adventure I went alone to the home of another 
libertine, said Duclos, whose mania, more humiliating perhaps, was not 
however so saturnine. He receives me in a drawing room whose floor was 
covered with a very handsome rug. He bids me remove all I am wearing and 
then, having me get down on my hands and knees: 
    "Let's see," says he, stroking and patting the heads of two great Danes 
lying on either side of his chair, "let's see whether you are as nimble and 
quick as my dogs. Ready? Go get it!" 
    And with that he tosses some large roasted chestnuts on the floor; 
speaking to me as if I were an animal, he says: 
    "Go fetch them!" 
    I run on all fours after a chestnut, thinking it best to play the game 
with good humor and enter into the spirit of his eccentricity; I run along, 
I say, I endeavor to bring back the chestnuts, but the two dogs, also 
springing forward, outrun me, seize the chestnuts, and take them back to 
their master. 
    "Well, you're clearly in need of some practice before you'll be in good 
form," said the gentleman; "it's not, by chance, that you are afraid my 
dogs might bite you? Don't worry yourself about them, my dear, they'll do 
you no harm, but inwardly, you know, they'll look down upon you if they see 
that you're a clumsy creature. So let's try again - try harder. Here's your 
chance to get even . . . bring it back!" 
    Another chestnut thrown, another victory carried off by the dogs, 
another defeat for me; well, to make a long story short, the game lasted 
two hours, during which I managed to get the chestnut only once and to 
bring it back in my mouth to him who had thrown it. But whether triumphant 
or bested, never did the dogs do me any harm; on the contrary, they seemed 
to be having a good time playing and to be amused by me, quite as though I 
were a dog too. 
    "That's enough," said the gentleman. "You've worked hard enough; it's 
time to eat." 
    He rang, a servant entered. 
    "Bring some food for my animals," he said. 
    And a moment later the servant returned, carrying an ebony feeding 
trough which was filled with a kind of very delicate chopped meat. He set 
the trough on the floor. 
    "Very well," my gentlemen said to me, "get down and eat with my dogs, 
and try to put on a better show while eating than you did while playing." 
    There was nothing for me to reply; I had to obey. Still on all fours, I 
plunged my head into the trough; the trough was very clean, the food very 
good, I fell to munching away beside the dogs, which very politely moved 
over, leaving me peacefully to my share. And that was the critical instant 
for our libertine; the humiliation of a woman, the degradation to which he 
reduced her, wonderfully stimulated his spirits. 
    "Oh, the buggress!" said he, frigging himself assiduously, "the tramp, 
look at her there, gorging herself with the dogs, that's how one should 
deal with all women, and if they were to be handled thus, we'd have no more 
sauciness from them, ah no! Domestic animals like those dogs, why should 
they not be treated in the same way? Ah! impudent bitch that you are, 
whore, slime, scum!" he cried, stepping near and spraying his fuck over my 
bum, "buggress, I'll have you eat with my dogs." 
    And that was the end of that; our man vanished, I dressed promptly, and 
lying by my mantelet I found two louis, the current price and doubtless the 
one the rogue was accustomed to paying for his pleasures. 
    At this point, Messieurs, Duclos continued, I am obliged to retrace my 
steps and, by way of conclusion to the evening's narrations, to recount two 
adventures I had during my youth. As they are somewhat on the strong side, 
they would have been out of place amidst the mild escapades with which you 
had me start at the beginning of the month; and so I set them aside and 
kept them for the end of my contribution. 
    I was only sixteen at the time, and was still with Madame Guerin; I had 
been sent to the home of a man of unchallenged distinction, and, upon 
arriving there, was simply told to wait in a small antechamber, told to be 
at my ease, told to be sure to obey the lord who would soon be coming to 
sport with me; but they were careful not to tell me anything else: I'd not 
have had such a fright if I'd been forewarned, and our libertine would 
certainly not have had as much pleasure. I had been in the room for about 
an hour when the door opened at last. It was the master of the house 
himself. 
    "What the devil are you doing here," he demanded with an air of 
surprise, "at this time of day? . . . What about it, whore!" he cries, 
seizing me by the throat and all but choking the breath out of me, "what 
about it! Has the slut come here to rob me?" 
    He calls to someone, a trustworthy servant immediately appears. 
    "La Fleur," says his angry master, "I've got a thief here; she was 
hiding when I came in. Strip her and prepare to carry out the orders I give 
you." 
    La Fleur does as he is told, I am despoiled of my clothes in a trice, 
they are tossed aside as they are peeled off my body. 
    "Very well," the libertine says to his servant, "go find a sack, then 
sew this creature up inside it and toss her into the river." 
    The valet goes to find the sack. I leave it to you to wonder whether I 
did not take advantage of these few moments to cast myself at the 
nobleman's feet and beg him to spare me, assuring him that it was Madame 
Guerin, his usual procuress, who had herself sent me to his house. But the 
lewd gentleman will have none of it, he grasps my two buttocks, and 
kneading them brutally between his fists: 
    "Why, fuck my eyes," says he, "I think I'll feed this pretty ass to the 
fish." 
    That was the single lubricious action he seemed inclined to permit 
himself, and until then he had exposed nothing which might have led me to 
suppose libertinage had something to do with the scene. The valet returns, 
bringing a sack with him; despite all my protests, and they were heated, I 
am dumped into it, the mouth of the sack is sewn up, and La Fleur lifts me 
upon his shoulders. It was then I heard the effects of our libertine's 
mounting crisis; he had probably begun to frig himself as soon as I had 
been put in the sack. At the same instant La Fleur raised me to his 
shoulders, the villain's fuck departed him. 
    "Into the river, into the river, do you hear me, La Fleur?" he said, 
stammering with pleasure. "Yes, into the river with her, and you'll slip a 
stone into the sack, so that the whore will drown all the more quickly." 
    And that was all he had to say, I was borne out, we went into the 
adjacent room where La Fleur, having ripped open the sack, returned me my 
clothes, gave me two louis, and also gave me some unequivocal proof of the 
manner, radically unlike his master's, in which he conducted himself in the 
pursuit of happiness; then I returned to Guerin's. I severely scolded 
Guerin for having sent me there so poorly prepared; to placate me, she 
arranged another party: it took place two days later, and I was even less 
well prepared for the battle I was to wage with this new foe. 
    More or less as in the adventure I have just related, I was to go and 
wait in an antechamber of the apartment belonging to a farmer-general, but 
this time I waited in the company of the valet who, sent thither by his 
master, had come to fetch me at Guerin's. To while away the time before my 
gentleman's arrival, the valet diverted me by bringing out and displaying 
several precious stones kept in a desk drawer in the room. 
    "Bless me," said the good pander, "were you to take one or two of them 
I don't fancy it would make much difference; the old Croesus is so damned 
rich I wager he doesn't even know how many of 'em or what kind he's got 
here in his desk. Go right ahead, if you like, don't bother yourself about 
me, I'm not the sort of fellow to betray a little friend." 
    Alas! I was only too well disposed to follow this perfidious advice; 
you know my predilections, I've told you about them; and so, without his 
having to say another word, I put my hand upon a little gold box worth 
seven or eight louis, not daring to make off with any more valuable object. 
That was all that rascal of a valet desired, and to avoid having to return 
to the matter later on, I afterward learned that, had I refused to take 
something, he would, without my being aware of it, have slipped a jewel or 
two into my pocket. The master arrives, greets me with kindness and 
courtesy, the valet leaves the room, we two remain there together. This 
man, unlike the other, amused himself in a very real sense; he scattered a 
profusion of kisses over my ass, had me flog him, fart in his mouth, he put 
his prick in mine, and in one word had his fill of every kind and shape of 
lubricity save for that sometimes sought in the cunt; but 'twas all to no 
purpose, he did not discharge. The propitious moment for that had not yet 
come, all this he had been doing was secondary, preparatory; you will soon 
see to what it was leading. 
    "Why, my stars!" he suddenly exclaimed, "it had entirely slipped my 
mind. There's a domestic still waiting in the other room for a gem I just a 
moment ago promised to give him for his master. Excuse me, my dear, but I 
really must keep my word to him; then we'll get back to work." 
    Guilty of the little larceny I'd just committed at the instigation of 
that accursed valet, you may well suppose that this remark made me tremble. 
I thought for an instant to stop him, confess to the theft, then I decided 
it would be better to play innocent and run the risk. He opens the desk, 
looks through first one drawer then the next, rummages about, and failing 
to find what he is after, he darts furious glances at me. 
    "You slut, you alone," says he, "apart from a valet in whom I have 
entire confidence, you have been the only person to enter this room during 
the past three hours; the article is missing; you must have taken it." 
    "Oh, Monsieur," I say, shaking in every limb, "you may be sure I am 
incapable . . ." 
    "Damn your eyes," he roars (now, you will remark that his breeches were 
still unbuttoned, that his prick was protruding from them, that this prick 
held a vertical slope; all this, you would suppose, ought to have 
enlightened me and dispelled my fears, but I had all but lost my head, and 
noticed nothing), "come along, buggress, my valuable has got to be found." 
    He ordered me to strip; twenty times I besought him on bended knee to 
spare me the humiliation of such a search, he would be moved by nothing, 
nothing melted him, he himself angrily tore off my clothes, and as soon as 
I was naked, he went through my pockets and, of course, it was not long 
before he came across the box. 
    "Ah, you bitch!" he cried, "I need no more than that to be convinced. 
So, buggress, you come to a man's house to steal from him?" 
    And immediately summoning his lieutenant: 
    "Go bring an officer of the police at once," he said. 
    "Oh, Monsieur!" I cried, "have pity upon my youthful truancy, I have 
been beguiled into this, 'twas not done of my own will, I was told to . . 
." 
    "Well," the lecherous gentleman interrupted, "you will explain all that 
to the officer, for I'll be damned if I don't mean to put a stop to all 
this crime." 
    The valet leaves again; the libertine, still wearing a blinding 
erection, flings himself into an armchair and while he fumbles about his 
crotch, he showers a thousand invectives upon me. 
    "This tramp, this monster," said he, "she comes to my house to rob me, 
I who wanted to give her the reward her services deserve . . . ah, by God, 
we shall see." 
    As he utters these words a knock is heard at the door, and I see a 
gendarme enter. 
    "Officer," says the master of the premises, "I have a thieving wench 
here I wish to put in your safekeeping, and I turn her over to you naked, 
for I put her in that state in order to search her clothing; there is the 
girl, over there are her garments, and here is the stolen article; I urge 
you to have her hanged, officer, and good night to you." 
    Whereupon he reeled backward, sat down in his chair, and discharged. 
    "Yes, hang the bitch, by sweet Jesus, I want to see her hanged, 
officer, do you understand me? Hang her, that's all I ask of you!" he 
fairly screamed. 
    The pretended gendarme leads me away with my clothes and the damning 
box, takes me into a nearby room, removes his uniform, and reveals himself 
to be the same valet who received me and incited me to steal; so upset had 
I been, I'd not recognized him hitherto. 
    "Well, well!" said he, "were you frightened?" 
    "Alas," I murmur, hardly able to speak, "out of my very wits." 
    "It's all over," he said, "and here is your money." 
    So saying, he presents me with the same box I had stolen, 'tis a gift 
from his master, he restores my clothes to me, hands me a glass of brandy, 
and escorts me back to Madame Guerin's. 
    "That's an odd and pleasant mania," the Bishop observed; "the major 
part of it can be extracted for use in other connections. My one criticism 
is that it contains an excess of delicacy; you know, of course, that I 
don't greatly favor mixing fine feelings with libertinage. Leave that 
element out of it, I say, and from that story one may learn the infallible 
method of preventing a whore from complaining, regardless of the iniquitous 
ways one might be disposed to take with her. One has only to proffer the 
bait, draw her into the trap, and when you've caught her redhanded, why 
then you are at liberty to do what you wish with her, there's nothing more 
to fear, she won't dare emit a peep for fear either of being accused or the 
object of your recriminations." 
    "It is indeed," said Curval, "and I am sure that had I been in that 
gentleman's place, I would have permitted myself to go somewhat further, 
and you, my dear Duclos, might not have got off so lightly." 
    The stories having been long that evening, the supper hour arrived 
before Messieurs had the opportunity to indulge in any frolicking. They 
thus repaired to table firmly resolved to make the most of the period 
following the meal. It was then that, having assembled the entire 
household, they decided to determine which of the little girls and boys 
could be justifiably ranked as mature men and women. To establish the 
critical facts, Messieurs thought best to frig everyone of the one sex and 
of the other about whom they had any doubts, or rather suspicions; amongst 
the women, they were sure of Augustine, Fanny, and Zelmire: these three 
charming little creatures, aged between fourteen and fifteen, all 
discharged in response to the lightest touch; Hebe and Michette, each being 
only twelve, were hardly worth considering, and so it was simply a question 
of experimenting with Sophie, Colombe, and Rosette, the first of whom was 
fourteen, the latter two being thirteen years old. 
    Amongst the boys, it was a matter of common knowledge that Zephyr, 
Adonis, and Celadon shot their fuck like grown men; Giton and Narcisse were 
too young to bother putting through their paces; the abilities of Zelamir, 
Cupidon, and Hyacinthe remained to be ascertained. The friends formed a 
circle about a pile of well-stuffed pillows arranged on the floor, 
Champville and Duclos were nominated for the pollutions; one, owing to her 
qualities as a tribade, was to act as the young girls' fricatrice, the 
other, absolute mistress of the art of frigging the male member, was to 
pollute the three little lads. They entered the ring formed by the friends' 
chairs and filled with pillows, and there Sophie, Colombe, Rosette, 
Zelamir, Cupidon, and Hyacinthe were turned over to Champville and Duclos; 
and each friend, the better to appreciate the spectacle, took a child 
between his thighs: the Duc appropriated Augustine, Curval had Zelmire to 
do his bidding, Durcet entrusted himself to Zephyr's skill, the Bishop 
favored Adonis to supply his needs. 
    The ceremony began with the boys; Duclos, her breasts and ass 
uncovered, her sleeve rolled to the elbow, mobilized all her many talents 
and set to polluting each of those delicious Ganymedes one after the other. 
The human hand could not possibly have wandered and tugged, squeezed and 
patted more voluptuously; her wrist, her fingers flew with a deftness . . . 
her movements were of a delicacy and of a willfulness . . . she offered 
those little boys her mouth, her breast, her ass, made all of herself 
available with such art that there could be no question but that they who 
were not finally to discharge had not yet the power to do so. Zelamir and 
Cupidon hardened, but all Duclos' lore, all her agility, was quite in vain. 
With Hyacinthe, however, the storm burst after the sixth flick of the 
wrist: fuck leapt over Duclos' breast, and the child went half out of his 
mind while fondling her ass. Messieurs were careful to observe that 
throughout the entire operation it had never once occurred to the lad to 
touch her in front. 
    The girls' turn came next; virtually naked, her hair very elegantly 
arranged and equally stylish in every other part of herself, Champville did 
not look thirty years old, although she was fifty if a day. The lubricity 
of this operation, whence, as a thoroughgoing tribade, she expected to mine 
the greatest pleasure, animated her large dark-brown eyes which, since her 
youth, had always been extremely handsome. She put at least as much verve, 
daring, and brilliance into her actions as Duclos had into hers, she 
simultaneously polluted the clitoris, the entrance to the vagina, and the 
asshole, but Nature developed nothing worthy of notice in Colombe and 
Rosette; there was not even the faintest appearance of pleasure in their 
expressions. But things were not thus with the beautiful Sophie: the tenth 
digital foray brought her fainting upon Champville's breast; little broken 
sighs, little panting sounds, the tender shade of crimson which sprang into 
her lovely cheeks, her parted lips which grew moist, everything manifested 
the delirium whereinto Nature had hurled her, and she was declared a woman. 
The Duc, his device as solid as a mace, ordered Champville to frig her a 
second time, and when she discharged afresh, the villain chose that moment 
to mix his impure fuck with that young virgin's. As for Curval, he had 
wrought his fell deed between Zelmire's thighs, and the two others theirs 
with the young boys they held locked between their legs. 
    The company retired for the night, and the following morning having 
furnished no event which deserves to be cited in this catalogue of 
exceptional feats, and dinner having furnished nothing, nor coffee, we 
shall remove at once to the auditorium, where the magnificently arrayed 
Duclos appears once again upon the platform, this time to end, with five 
new stories, the one hundred and fifty narrations which have been entrusted 
to her for the thirty days of the month of November. 




THE THIRTIETH DAY
    I am not sure, Messieurs, said the beauteous storyteller, whether you 
have heard of the caprice, quite as unusual as dangerous, for which the 
Comte de Lernos is celebrated, but my several liaisons with him having 
afforded me a thorough acquaintance of his maneuvers, and as I found them 
most extraordinary indeed, I believe they ought to be included amongst the 
delights you have ordered me to detail. The Comte de Lernos' passion to 
lead into evil as many girls and married women as he is able, and apart 
from the books he employs to seduce them, there is truly no sort of device 
he will not invent to deliver them up to men; he either exploits their 
secret yearnings by uniting them with the object upon whom they only think 
longingly, or he finds them lovers if such they are lacking. He has a house 
devoted to nothing else, and in it all the matches he has made are tested 
when the individuals concerned come to grips. He unites them, guarantees 
them freedom from intrusion, provides them with all the facilities needed 
for recreation, and then goes into an adjoining chamber to enjoy the 
pleasure of spying upon them while they are in action. But the point to 
which he multiplies these disorders simply defies belief, nor would one 
credit an account of the immense number of obstacles he is willing to 
surmount in order to form these little marriages. He has associates in 
nearly every convent in Paris and amongst a vast quantity of married women, 
and this army is led by a general of such great skill that not a day passes 
but at least three or four little skirmishes are fought in his house. Never 
does he fail to watch the voluptuous jousts - without the participants 
suspecting his presence - but once he has gone to take up his observation 
post at the hole, as he stands watch all alone, no one knows how he 
proceeds to his discharge, nor what its character is; nothing but the fact 
is known, and that is all; I thought none the less that it was worthy of 
being mentioned to you. 
    The fantasy of the elderly President Desportes will perhaps prove more 
amusing to you. Fully informed of the etiquette observed at the home of 
this habitual debauchee, I arrive at his house toward ten o'clock in the 
morning and, perfectly naked, I present my buttocks to be kissed; he is 
seated in an armchair, very grave, very solemn, and the first thing I do is 
fart in his face. My president is irritated, he gets to his feet, seizes a 
bundle of switches he has close at hand, and falls to pursuing me; my first 
impulse is to get out of his way. 
    "Impudent hussy," says he, chasing after me all the while, "I'll teach 
you to come to my home to behave in this outrageous fashion." 
    I'm to flee, he's to follow on my heels; I finally gain a narrow alley, 
I take cover in an impregnable retreat, but, lo! there he is, he's somehow 
managed to get at me. The president's threats and imprecations redouble as 
he sees he has me trapped; he brandishes the switches, threatens to use 
them upon me: I creep into a corner, cower there, put on a terrified air, I 
shrink to the size of a mouse; this terrified, groveling attitude of mine 
finally awakes his fuck, and the roue squirts it over my breasts while 
shouting with pleasure. 
    "What! Do you mean to say he didn't give you a single lick with the 
switches?" the Duc demanded. 
    "He didn't bring them within a yard of me," Duclos replied. 
    "A very patient individual, that one," Curval remarked; "my friends, I 
believe we all agree that we are somewhat less so when we have in our hands 
the instrument Duclos mentions." 
    "But you need only a small amount of patience, Messieurs," said 
Champville, "for I shall shortly present to you other samples of the same 
breed, but they'll be rather less mild tempered than Madame Duclos' 
president." 
    And Duclos, observing that silence had succeeded these comments, saw 
she could continue with her stories, and proceeded in the following manner: 
    Soon after this adventure had befallen me, I went to the town house of 
the Marquis de Saint-Giraud, whose fantasy consisted in seating a naked 
woman upon a children's swing and having her swing to a great height, back 
and forth. Each time you pass by his nose, he's waiting for you, and you've 
got either to let fly a fart at him or expect a slap upon your ass. I did 
my best to satisfy him; I received several slaps, but also gave him some 
overpowering farts. And the Marquis having finally discharged after an hour 
of this monotonous and fatiguing ceremony, the swing was brought to a halt, 
and my audience came to an end. 
    About three years after I had become the mistress of Fournier's 
establishment, a man came to make an unusual proposal to me: he wished me 
to find libertines who would amuse themselves with his wife and daughter, 
the only condition being that he be hidden in a place whence he could 
observe everything that transpired. Not only would whatever money I might 
earn from their employment be mine, but, he went on, he planned to give me 
an additional two louis for every encounter I could arrange for them; and 
there was only one final condition to the bargain: for his wife's partners 
he wished none but men of a certain taste, and for his daughter, men 
addicted to another kind of whimsy: his wife's men were all to shit upon 
her breasts, and the procedure to be observed with his daughter involved 
having the men raise her skirts, broadly expose her behind in front of the 
hole through which he would be doing his spying, and then discharge into 
her mouth. He would surrender the merchandise for the said passions, but 
for no others. After having made this gentleman promise to accept all 
responsibility in the event his wife and daughter brought complaint for 
having been made to come to my house, I agreed to all he wanted and in my 
turn promised that the two ladies would be furnished in strict accordance 
with his instructions. He arrived with his wares the very next day: madame 
was a woman of thirty-six, not very pretty, but tall and majestically 
formed, with a great air of sweet mildness and of modesty; her daughter was 
fifteen years old, blond, rather inclining toward heaviness, with the most 
tender, most winning countenance in all the world. . . . 
    "Indeed, Monsieur," quoth his wife, "you have us do strange things. . . 
." 
    "I know, my dear, I know," said the lecher, "and it mortifies me, but 
so it must be. Accept your lot, do as you're told, there's nothing for it, 
I shall not give over. And if you balk in the slightest way at the 
propositions and the actions we are going to submit you to - you, Madame, 
and you, Mademoiselle - I shall tomorrow convey you to a place I know, and 
it is highly unlikely you'll ever return alive from it." 
    Wherewith the wife she a tear or two; as the man for whom I intended 
her was waiting, I requested her to pass without further delay into the 
chamber I had set aside for their bout; mademoiselle would remain in 
another room with one of my girls, she would be perfectly safe there and 
would be notified when her turn had come. At this cruel moment there were a 
few more tears, and it seemed clear to me that this was the first time the 
brutal husband had required such a thing of his wife; unhappily, her debut 
was arduous, for aside from the baroque taste of the individual to whom I 
was surrendering her, he was an imperious and brusque old libertine who 
would surely not treat her with any excess of courtesy or consideration. 
    "That will do, no more tears," said the husband. "Bear in mind that I 
am watching your conduct, and that if you do not give ample satisfaction to 
the thoughtful gentleman who is going to take you in hand, I will come in 
myself and force you to do his bidding." 
    She enters the arena, the husband and I go into the neighboring room 
from which we are to watch it all. It is difficult to imagine the point to 
which this old scoundrel's imagination was excited by contemplating his 
miserable wife being made a victim of some stranger's brutality; he was 
thrilled by each thing she was forced to do; that poor humiliated woman's 
modesty and candor beneath the atrocious assaults of the libertine engaged 
to exercise her, composed a delicious spectacle for her husband. But when 
he saw her thrown brutally to the floor, and when the old ape to whom I had 
delivered her shit upon her chest, and her husband saw the tears, beheld 
the horrified shudders of his wife as she first heard proposed and then saw 
this infamy executed, he could restrain himself no longer, and the hand 
with which I was frigging him was straightway soaked with fuck. This first 
scene ended at last, and if it had afforded him pleasure, it was as nothing 
compared to the climax produced by the second. It was only with great 
difficulty, and above all with numerous and grave threats, that we 
succeeded in getting the young lady to enter the ring; she had witnessed 
her mother's tears but knew nothing of what had been done to her. The poor 
little girl raised all kinds of objections; we finally helped her make up 
her mind. The man to whom I turned her over was fully instructed of all 
that was required to be done: he was one of my regular clients whom I 
delighted with this windfall and who, to express his gratitude, consented 
to all I prescribed. 
    "Oh, the lovely ass!" cried the libertine father once his daughter's 
stud displayed her entirely naked. "Oh, sacred Jesus, what adorable 
buttocks!" 
    "Gracious!" I exclaimed, "am I to take it that this is the first time 
you have set eyes on them?" 
    "Yes, indeed it is," said he, "I required this expedient to enjoy the 
spectacle; but if 'tis the first time I see that superb ass, you may rest 
assured it shall not be the last." 
    I frigged him at a lively pace, he grew ecstatic; but when he saw the 
appalling things that young virgin was being forced to submit to, when he 
saw a consummate libertine's hands straying over that extraordinary body 
which had never before suffered such fondlings, when he saw her compelled 
to sink to her knees, open her mouth, when he saw a fat prick introduced 
into it, and saw that engine discharge inside, he tottered backward and, 
swearing like one possessed, shouting that he'd never in his life tasted 
any pleasure as keen as this, he left certain proof of his statements 
between my fingers. Their adventure had drawn to a conclusion, the two poor 
women retreated, weeping abundant tears, and the husband, but too 
enthusiastic over the drama they had enacted for him, doubtless found the 
means to persuade them to provide him with additional performances, for I 
received that family at my house for more than six years and, always 
following the orders the husband gave me, I made those two unlucky 
creatures acquainted with practically all the different passions I have 
mentioned in the course of my thirty days of storytelling; there were, to 
be sure, ten or twelve of the passions they had no opportunity to satisfy, 
because we did not practice them in my house. 
    "Oh, yes," said Curval, "there are many ways to prostitute a wife and a 
daughter. As if these bitches were made for anything else! Are they not 
born for our pleasures, and from that moment onward, must they not satisfy 
them at no matter what price? I've had a quantity of wives," said the 
President, "and three or four daughters of whom, thank God, I've only one 
left, and if I'm not mistaken Monsieur le Duc is fucking Mademoiselle 
Adelaide at this very instant; but had any one of those creatures ever 
balked at being prostituted, in any of the numerous manners of prostitution 
I regularly submitted them to, may I be damned alive or condemned never to 
fuck anything but cunts for the rest of my life - which is worse - if I'd 
not have blown their bloody brains out." 
    "President, your prick is in the air again," said the Duc; "your 
fucking remarks always betray you." 
    "My prick in the air? No," the President said, "but I am on the verge 
of getting some shit from our dear little Sophie, and I have high hopes her 
delicious turd will precipitate something. Oh, upon my soul, even more than 
I'd suspected," said Curval, after he'd gobbled up the hash; "by the good 
God I'd like to fuck, I believe that my prick is taking on some 
consistency. Who from amongst you, Messieurs, would like to accompany me 
into the boudoir?" 
    "I'd be honored," said Durcet, dragging along Aline, whom he had been 
pawing steadily for an hour. 
    And our two libertines, having summoned Augustine, Fanny, Colombe, 
Hebe, Zelamir, Adonis, Hyacinthe, and Cupidon, and enlisted Julie and two 
duennas, Martaine and Champville, Antinoüs and Hercule, absented themselves 
for half an hour, at the end of which they returned triumphant, each having 
yielded up their vital liquor to the sweetest excesses of crapulence and 
debauchery. 
    "Move on," Curval said to Duclos, "give us your final tale, dear 
friend. And if it manages to make this prick of mine dance up again, you 
shall be able to congratulate yourself upon having wrought a miracle, for 
in faith, it is at least a year since I've lost so much fuck at a single 
sitting. On the other hand, it is true that . . ." 
    "Very well," the Bishop interrupted, "that will do; if we listen to 
you, we will hear something much worse than the passion Duclos is likely to 
describe to us. And so, since that would be to retreat from the stronger to 
the weaker, permit us to bid you be silent and listen instead to our 
storyteller." 
    That gifted whore thereupon terminated her recitations with the 
following passion: 
    The time has finally arrived, my Lords, to relate the passion of the 
Marquis de Mesanges to whom, you will recall, I sold the daughter of the 
unfortunate shoemaker, Petignon, who perished in jail with his wife while I 
enjoyed the inheritance his mother had left for him. As 'twas Lucile who 
satisfied him, you will allow me to place the story in her mouth. 
    "I arrive at the Marquis' mansion," that charming girl told me, "at 
about ten o'clock in the morning. As soon as I enter, all the doors are 
shut. 
    "'What are you doing here, little bitch?' says the Marquis, all afire. 
'Who gave you permission to disturb me?' 
    "And since you gave me no prior warning of what was to happen, you may 
readily imagine how terrified I was by this reception. 
    "'Well, take off your clothes, be quick about it,' the Marquis 
continues. 'Since I've got my hands on you, whore, you'll not get out of 
here with your skin intact . . . indeed, you're going to perish - your last 
minutes have arrived.' 
    "I burst into tears, I fall down at the Marquis' feet, but nothing 
would bend him. And as I was not quick enough in undressing, he himself 
tore my clothes off, ripping them away by sheer force. But what truly 
petrified me was to see him thrown them one after another into the fire. 
    "'You'll have no further use for these,' he muttered, casting each 
article into a large grate. 'No further need for this mantelet, this dress, 
these stockings, this bodice, no,' said he when all had been consumed, 'all 
you'll need now is a coffin.' 
    "And there I was, naked; the Marquis, who had never before seen me, 
contemplated my ass for a brief space, he uttered oaths as he fondled it, 
but he did not bring his lips near it. 
    "'Very well, whore' said he, 'enough of this, you're going to follow 
your clothes, I'm going to bind you to those andirons; yes, by fuck, yes 
indeed, by sweet Jesus, I'm going to burn you alive, you bitch, I'm going 
to have the pleasure of inhaling the aroma of your burning flesh.' 
    "And so saying he falls half-unconscious into an armchair and 
discharges, darting his fuck upon the remnants of my burning clothes. He 
rings, a valet enters and then leads me out, and in another room I find a 
complete new outfit, clothes twice as fine as those he has incinerated." 
    That is the account of it I had from Lucile; it remains now to discover 
whether 'twas for that or for worse he employed the girl I sold him. 
    "For something far worse," said Desgranges; "I am glad you have 
introduced the Marquis to their Lordships, for I believe I too shall have 
something to say about him." 
    "May it be, Madame," Duclos said to Desgranges, "and you, my amiable 
companions," she added, speaking to her two other colleagues, "may it be 
that you speak with greater energy than have I, with livelier images, 
brighter diction, superior wit, and more persuasive eloquence. 'Tis now 
your turn, I have done, and I would but beseech Messieurs to have the 
kindness to forgive me if I have perchance bored them in any wise, for 
there is an almost unavoidable monotony in the recital of such anecdotes; 
all compounded, fitted into the same framework, they lose the luster that 
is theirs as independent happenings." 
    With these words, the superb Duclos respectfully saluted the company, 
bowed, and descended from her throne; she next went from alcove to alcove 
and was generally applauded and caressed by all the friends. Supper was 
served, Duclos was invited to sit at the table, a favor which had never 
before been accorded to a woman. Her conversation was quite as agreeable as 
her storytelling had been, and by way of recompense for the pleasure she 
had given them, Messieurs named her to be the governor-general of the two 
harems, and the four friends also made the promise, in an aside, that no 
matter what the extreme treatment to which they might expose the women in 
the course of the sojourn, she would always be dealt with gently, and very 
certainly taken back with them to Paris, where the society would amply 
reward her for the trouble she had gone to in order to help Messieurs 
procure themselves a little good cheer. She, Curval, and the Duc so 
completely besotted themselves at supper that they were practically 
incapacitated and barely managed, with the expense of much effort, to reach 
the orgies, which they soon left, allowing Durcet and the Bishop to carry 
on alone, and betook themselves to the remote boudoir; Champville, 
Antinoüs, Bum-Cleaver, Therèse, and Louison accompanied them, and one may 
be perfectly confident that they uttered and had done to them at least as 
many horrors and infamies as, at their end, their two more sober friends 
were able to invent. 
    Everyone repaired to his bed at two in the morning, and 'twas thus the 
month of November ended, thus came to a close the first phase of this 
lubricious and interesting holiday, for whose second part we will not keep 
the public waiting if to our consideration it has kindly received what we 
have chronicled so far.