                         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
Zlamir 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 Zlamir 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
Zphyr. 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, Zlamir, Cupidon,
Fanny, Thrse, 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 Prsident, 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, Prsident, 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, Hb, Cupidon, and Thrse. It was not long before the
Prsident's braying resounded through the castle, and despite all
Duclos' attentions, little Hb 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 Zlamir 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, Zlamir 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.
