                        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 Prsident
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 Grve; 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
tte--tte. 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 Prsident 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, Hb, Antinos, and Zphyr. 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 Zphyr; 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 Zphyr 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.
