Justine, or the Misfortunes of Virtue (Oxford) by Marquis de Sade

Author:Marquis de Sade [Sade, Marquis de]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780199572847
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Published: 2012-11-08T05:00:00+00:00

In my terror I had unfortunately forgotten to tear up the Comtesse’s letter. Suspecting I have it, he asks me for it, and I am about to deny it, but seeing the fateful letter sticking out of the handkerchief in my bosom, Gernande seizes hold of it, reads it furiously, and orders me to follow him.

We return to the castle by a secret staircase leading down beneath the vaults. The profoundest silence still reigned there. After a few twists and turns, the Comte opens a dungeon and throws me into it.

‘Impudent girl,’ he then says to me, ‘I had warned you that the crime you have just committed was punishable here by death. Prepare yourself, therefore, to suffer the punishment which you have brought upon yourself. After dinner tomorrow I shall come to dispatch you.’

Once again I throw myself at his feet, but grabbing hold of my hair, he drags me all around the floor of my cell, repeating this several times, finally hurling me hard enough against the walls to crush me to death.

‘You deserve to have all four veins opened this instant,’ he said as he closed the cell door, ‘and if I am delaying your sentence, rest assured that it is only to make it all the more horrible.’

He is outside and I am shaking in the most violent manner. I cannot describe to you the night I spent. The torments of my imagination combined with the physical pains that this monster’s initial cruelty had just caused me made it one of the most dreadful nights of my life. You cannot conceive the anguish of a wretch who awaits her punishment at any time, from whom all hope has been taken away, and who does not know whether each moment she is still breathing will be the last moment of her life. Unsure what sentence awaits her, she pictures it to herself in a thousand different ways, each more horrible than the other, and she thinks the slightest noise she hears is that of her executioners approaching. Her blood curdles, her heart stops, and the sword that will end her days is less cruel than these fatal moments when death threatens her.

It is likely that the Comte began by exacting revenge on his wife. The event that saved me will convince you of this, as it did me. I had been in the awful state I have just described to you for a day-and-a-half without anyone coming to help me, when my door opened and the Comte appeared. He was alone and his eyes gleamed with fury.

‘You must have a good idea of the kind of death that you are about to suffer,’ he said to me. ‘Your perverse blood must flow in abundance. You will be bled three times a day. I want to see how long you can live like that. This is an experiment I have been longing to conduct, you know, and I thank you for providing me with the means.’

And with revenge

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