Донасьен Альфонс Франсуа де Сад – Justine (страница 2)
‘Oh heaven!’ cried the poor little creature, ‘must it be that the first step I take in the world leads me only to further miseries…This woman loved me once! Why, then, does she cast me away today?…Alas, it must be because I am orphaned and poor…Because I have no resources in the world, and because people are esteemed only by reason of the help or the pleasure which others hope to receive from them.’
Reflecting thus, Justine called on her parish priest and asked his advice. But the charitable ecclesiastic equivocally replied that it was impossible for him to give her any alms, as the parish was already overburdened, but that if she wished to serve him he would willingly provide her with board and lodging. In saying this, however, he passed his hand under her chin, and kissed her in a fashion much too worldly for a man of the Church. Justine, who understood his intentions all too well, quickly drew back, expressing herself as follows: ‘Sir, I am asking of you neither alms nor yet the position of a servant. I am not so far reduced from my recent position in society as to beg two such favours; all I ask of you is the advice of which my youth and my present misfortune stand so much in need. Yet you would have me buy it with a crime…’ The priest, insulted by this expression, opened the door and pushed her brutally on to the street. Thus Justine, twice repulsed on the first day of her isolation, walked into a house displaying a notice and rented a small furnished room, paying in advance. Here, at least, she was able to abandon herself in comfort to the grief caused not only by her situation but by the cruelty of the few individuals with whom her unlucky star had constrained her to have dealings.
With the reader’s permission we shall abandon our heroine for a while, leaving her in her obscure retreat. This will allow us to return to Juliette, whose career we will sum up as briefly as possible – indicating the means whereby, from her humble state as an orphan, she became within fifteen years a titled woman possessing an income of more than thirty thousand livres, the most magnificent jewels, two or three houses in the country as well as her residence in Paris, and – for the moment – the heart, the wealth, and the confidence of M. de Corville, a gentleman of the greatest influence, and a Counsellor of State who was about to enter the Ministry itself…
That her path had been thorny cannot be doubted, for it is only by the most severe and shameful of apprenticeships that such young women attain their success; and she who lies today in the bed of a prince, may still carry on her body the humiliating marks of the brutality of depraved libertines into whose hands she had once been thrown by her youth and her inexperience.
On leaving the convent, Juliette quickly went to find the woman she had once heard named by a corrupt friend from her neighbourhood, and whose address she had carefully kept. She arrived with abrupt unconcern, her bundle under her arm, her little dress in disorder, with the prettiest face in the world and the undeniable air of a schoolgirl. She told the woman her story, and begged her to protect her, just as, several years previously, she had protected her friend.
‘How old are you, my child?’ asked Madame du Buisson.
‘In a few days’ time I shall be fifteen, Madame.’
‘And nobody has ever…?’
‘Oh, no, Madame, I swear it to you!’
‘Nevertheless it is not unknown for convents to harbour a chaplain, a nun, or even a schoolfriend who…So I must be supplied with certain proofs!’
‘All that you need do is look for them, Madame…’
And du Buisson, fixing herself up with a pair of spectacles, and having verified the exact state of things, said to Juliette: ‘Well, my child, all you need do is stay here. But you must strictly observe my advice, show the utmost-compliance with my customs, be clean and neat, economical and candid so far as I am concerned, courteous towards your companions, and as dishonest and unscrupulous as you like with men. Then, a few years from now, you will be in a position to retire to a nicely furnished place of your own, with a servant, and such proficiency in the art you will have acquired in my establishment that you will have the means quickly to satisfy each and every desire you may wish.’
With these words la du Buisson seized Juliette’s little bundle, enquiring, at the same time, if she were absolutely without money. And Juliette having too frankly admitted that she had a hundred crowns, her new-found mama quickly took possession of them, assuring her young pupil that she would invest this small sum to her profit, and that it was unnecessary for a girl to have money, especially as it could be a means towards the indulgence of wickedness. Moreover, in such a corrupt century, any wise and highly-born young lady must carefully avoid anything which might cause her to fall into a trap. This sermon completed, the newcomer was introduced to her companions, taken to her room in the house, and from the following day her first-fruits were on sale. Within four months’ time the same merchandise had successively been sold to eighty different people, all of whom paid for it as new; and it was not until the end of this thorny novitiate that Juliette took out her patents as a lay-sister. From that moment, however, she was readily accepted as a daughter of the house, and entered the new novitiate of partaking in all its libidinous fatigues…If, excepting a few slight deviations, she had served nature during her early days in this place, she now forgot all natural laws and began to indulge in criminal researches, shameful pleasures, dark and crapulous orgies, scandalous and bizarre tastes and humiliating caprices – all of which arose, on the one hand, from a desire for pleasure without risk to health – and, on the other, from a pernicious satiety which so wearied her imagination that she could delight only in excess and revive herself only by way of lubricity…
Her morals were totally corrupted in this second school; and the triumphs of vice which she witnessed completed the degradation of her soul. She began to feel that she was born only for crime, and that she might as well cultivate only wealthy and important people rather than languish in a subordinate state wherein, though she committed the same faults and debased herself just as much, she could not hope to gain anything like the same profit. She was fortunate in pleasing an old and very much debauched nobleman, whose original intention had merely been the passing of a pleasantly salacious fifteen minutes. But she was clever enough to persuade him to keep her in magnificent style, and finally showed herself at the theatre or walking in company with the most aristocratic members of the Order of Cythera. She was admired, discussed, envied; and the roguish little cheat knew so well the art of grabbing what she wanted that within four years she had ruined three men, the poorest of whom had boasted an income of one hundred thousand crowns a year. Nothing more was necessary to establish her reputation. For the blindness of the present century is such that, the more one of these miserable creatures proves her dishonesty, the more envious men become of finding a place on her list. It would seem that the degree of her degradation and corruption becomes, in fact, the measure of those amorous feelings for her which men dare to proclaim.
Juliette had scarcely passed her twentieth year when the Comte de Lorsange, a forty-year-old nobleman from Anjou, became so infatuated by her that he determined to give her his name – not being rich enough to keep her. He allowed her an income of twelve thousand livres and assured her of the remainder of his fortune – a further eight thousand – if he died before she did. He also presented her with a house and servants, her own livery, and built up for her the kind of social importance which, within two or three years, caused people to forget the means by which she had attained such celebrity. This was the time when the wretched Juliette, forgetting all the sentiments due to her honourable birth and her excellent education, perverted by evil theories and dangerous books, anxious to be completely independent – to have a name, yet not be chained by it – began to ponder the criminal idea of shortening her husband’s life…The odious project once conceived, she nursed it, caressed it, and finally executed it with so much secrecy that she was, unfortunately, protected against all investigation. Thus she managed to bury, together with her troublesome husband, all traces of her heinous crime.
Free once more, and still a Countess, Madame de Lorsange resumed her former habits. But, considering herself something of an important figure in society, she maintained an outward appearance of decency. She was no longer a kept woman but a rich widow who gave delightful suppers to which the townspeople and the court were only too happy to be admitted. She was, we might say, a respectable woman who would go to bed with anyone for two hundred louis, or accept a lover on receipt of five hundred a month. Until her twenty-sixth year she continued to make brilliant conquests, ruining three ambassadors, four financiers, two bishops, and three Chevaliers of the Ordres du Roi; and, as the criminal rarely stops at his first crime – especially when it has been successful – the vicious and guilty Juliette blackened herself with two more of a similar nature. The first was committed in order that she might rob one of her lovers who had entrusted her with a considerable sum of money of which his family knew absolutely nothing; the second, in order that she might more speedily come by a legacy of a hundred thousand francs, which another of her adoring lovers had included in his will in the name of a third person, who was instructed to hand it over to the said lady after his friend’s decease.