Anthology of Black Humor. André Breton
Justine; or, the Misfortunes of Virtue. Aline and Valcour. Philosophy in the Bedroom. Juliette. The 120 Days of Sodom. The Gothic Tales. Selected Letters.
JULIETTE
Leaving the volcanic plain of Pietra-Mala, we climbed for an hour back up a tall mountain situated to the right. From the crest of this mountain, we noticed chasms more than two thousand fathoms deep, toward which our path was leading us. The entire area was enveloped by woods that were so remarkably thick, so laden with foliage, that one could scarcely see the road ahead. After descending a rigid slope for nearly three hours, we arrived at the edge of a vast lake. On an island located in the middle of that body of water, one could see the keep of the palace that served as our guide’s retreat; because of the high walls surrounding it, we could see no more than its roof. We had been walking for six hours without noticing a single house; not a single individual had crossed our sight. A small black skiff like a Venetian gondola was waiting for us at the edge of the lake. It was from there that we could take in the horrible basin in which we found ourselves: it was surrounded on all sides by mountains as far as the eye could see, whose summits and arid flanks were covered with green pine, larch, and oak trees. It would have been impossible to see anything more rustic and somber; it was as if we had reached the end of the universe. We climbed into the skiff, which the giant steered all by himself. It was still three furlongs from the dock to the castle. We then arrived at the foot of an iron door cut into the thick rampart surrounding the castle, after which a six-foot-wide moat lay before us; we crossed over it on a bridge that was raised the moment we had passed. When a second rampart stood before us, we passed through another iron door, and found ourselves in a clump of woods so dense that we thought it impossible to go any farther. And indeed we would not: this clump, formed by a living hedge, offered only spikes and no passage. In the heart of it stood the last rampart of the castle; it was ten feet thick. The giant lifted an enormous block of stone that only he could have moved, revealing a tortuous stairway. The stone closed over it again, and it was through the bowels of the earth that we arrived (still in blackness) in the midst of the building’s cellars, from which we climbed back up by means of an opening that was blocked by a stone similar to the one just mentioned. We finally found ourselves in a low-ceilinged room covered from end to end with skeletons. The seats in this place were formed only by dead men’s bones, and one had no choice but to sit on skulls. Horrible cries seemed to reach us from below the earth, and we soon learned that it was in the vaults of this room that were located the dungeons in which this monster’s victims were moaning.
“I have you now,” he told us once we were seated. “You are in my power; I can do with you as I please. Do not be alarmed, however: the actions I have seen you commit are too close to my own way of thinking for me not to feel you are worth knowing and worthy of sharing the pleasures of my retreat. Listen to me: I have time to tell you all before supper. They should be preparing it as I speak.
“I am a Muscovite, born in a small village on the banks of the Volga. My name is Minsky. My father, when he died, left me enormous wealth, and nature endowed me with physical faculties and tastes in proportion to the favors with which fortune gratified me. Sensing that I was not cut out to vegetate in the depths of some obscure province such as the one in which I first saw the light of day, I traveled; the entire universe did not seem large enough to contain the breadth of my desires. It tried to impose limitations: I did not want any. Born a libertine, impious, debauched, bloodthirsty, and fierce, I traveled the world over in search only of vices, which I tried the better to refine them. I began with China, Mongolia, and Tartary; I visited all of Asia. Heading up toward Kamchatka, I entered America by the famous Bering Strait. I crossed through that vast portion of the world, living alternately with civilized populations and with savages, imitating the crimes of one group, the vices and atrocities of the other. I brought back to Europe penchants so dangerous that I was sentenced to be burned alive in Spain, broken on the wheel in France, hanged in England, and crushed under rocks in Italy: my wealth protected me from everything.
“I headed on to Africa. It was there that I learned that what you have the madness to call depravity is nothing more than man’s natural state, and still more often the result of the very soil onto which nature has thrown him. Those good children of the sun laughed at me when I tried to scold them for their barbarity toward their women. ‘And what is a woman,’ they answered, ‘except the domestic animal that nature has given us to satisfy both our needs and our desires? What right does she have to be worthy of us, any more than the cattle in our farmyards? The only difference we can see,’ these sensible people told me, ‘is that our domestic animals might warrant some indulgence because of their gentle and submissive natures, whereas women deserve only harshness and barbarity, given their perpetual state of fraud, spitefulness, betrayal, and perfidy….’
“… I’ve maintained these tastes. All the debris of corpses that you see here are the remains of creatures I’ve devoured. I live exclusively on human flesh. I hope you will enjoy the feast that I’ve had prepared for you …
“… I have two harems. The first contains two hundred young girls, ranging in age from five to twenty; I eat them when the ways of lust have sufficiently mortified them. The second contains two hundred women aged twenty to thirty; you shall see how I treat them. Fifty valets of both sexes are employed in the service of this considerable number of objects of lubricity, and for recruitment I have a hundred agents deployed over every large city in the world. Would you believe that with the phenomenal movement that all of this requires, there is still but one way to enter my island: the road you have just taken? One would surely not suspect the number of creatures who pass by this mysterious path.
“Never have the veils I’ve thrown over all this been pierced. It’s not that I have the slightest reason to fear: this belongs to the estates of the Grand Duke of Tuscany: they know the full extent of my irregular conduct, and the money I spread around keeps me safe from everything….
“… The furniture you see here,” our host told us, “is alive: each will walk at the slightest sign.” Minsky made this sign and the table moved forward; it had been in a corner of the room, and now came toward the middle. Five armchairs went to group themselves around it; two chandeliers descended from the ceiling and floated over the center of the table. “The mechanism is simple,” said the giant, seeing us looking closely at the composition of these furnishings. “You can see that this table, these chandeliers, these armchairs are composed exclusively of groups of girls artistically arranged. My dishes shall be served piping hot on the backs of these creatures….”
“Minsky,” I observed to our Muscovite, “the role these girls have to play is exhausting, especially if you prolong your stay at table.”
“In the worst case,” said Minsky, “a few of them drop dead, and such losses are too easily repaired for me to worry about for even a second …
“… My friends,” our host said, “I have warned you that we eat only human flesh here. There is not a single dish before you that is not made from it.”
“We shall try it,” said Sbrigani. “Repugnance is an absurdity: it derives only from lack of habit. All meats are fit for nourishing man, all of them have been given us by nature, and there is nothing more extraordinary about eating a man than there is about eating a chicken.” And so saying, my husband plunged his fork into a quarter of young boy that seemed particularly well prepared, and having put at least two pounds on his plate, he devoured it. I did likewise. Minsky urged us on; and as his appetite matched all his other passions, he had soon emptied a dozen dishes.
Minsky drank the way he ate: he was already on his thirtieth bottle of burgundy when they served the last course, which he washed down with champagne. Aleatico, falernian, and other precious Italian wines were drunk with dessert.
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Sade’s posthumous good fortune, as if meant to compensate by some mysterious process for the insane harshness of the fate he suffered in life, has not only drawn long-distance the worthiest exegetes