Justine. Маркиз де Сад
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I have a right to expect.’
These speeches seemed so obscure to me that I never knew how to reply to them. I made random remarks, however – and with perhaps a little too much facility.
Which brings me, Madame, to the moment when I must inform you of the only real fault for which I have felt any need to reproach myself during the whole of my life. While I am describing it as a fault, it was certainly an unparalleled extravagance, but at least it was not a crime. It was a simple enough error, and one for which only I myself was punished; but it also seems to me one which heaven’s equitable hand ought not to have employed to draw me into the abyss which, unknown to me, was opening beneath my feet It had been impossible for me to see the Marquis de Bressac without feeling myself attracted to him by an impulse of tenderness which nothing had been able to quell in me. Whatever reflections I may have made on his lack of interest in women, on the depravity of his tastes, on the moral distances which separated us, nothing, nothing in the world could extinguish this nascent passion. And if the Marquis had asked me for my life, I would have sacrificed it to him a thousand times, feeling that such an action would be as nothing. He was far from suspecting the feelings I entertained for him, as these were carefully locked up in my heart…Ungrateful as he was, he could never discern the cause of those tears which the miserable Sophie shed, day after day, over the shameful disorders which were destroying him. It was, nevertheless, impossible that he could avoid noticing my personal attention to him; for, blinded by my devotion, I went even so far as to serve his errors – at least in so far as decency permitted me – and I always concealed them from his mother.
My conduct had thus earned me something of his confidence, and each small thing he said to me became precious. I allowed myself, in short, to become so dazzled by the little he offered my heart that there were times when I was arrogant enough to believe that I was not indifferent to him. But time after time the excess of his disorders would promptly disabuse me. They were such that not only was the house filled with servants given up to the same execrable tastes as the Marquis, but he even hired outside a crowd of bad characters whom he visited, or who came to see him day by day. And as such tastes, odious as they are, are not the least expensive, the young man disorganised his finances prodigiously. Sometimes I took the liberty of representing to him all the inconveniences of his conduct. He would listen to me without repugnance, but always ended by explaining that it was impossible to correct the kind of vice by which he was dominated and which reproduced itself under a thousand diverse forms. There was a different nuance of this deviation for every age of man, offering continually new sensations every ten years, and thus enabling it to hold its unfortunate devotees in bondage right to the very edge of the grave…But if I attempted to speak to him of his mother and the sorrow he brought her, he would show nothing but vexation, ill-humour, irritation, and impatience. And when he considered for how long she had held a fortune which he felt should already be his, he expressed the most inveterate hatred for this honourable and upright woman, backed by the most unswerving revolt against natural sentiment. Is it then true that when one has so definitely transgressed against the sacred rules of morality and sobriety, the necessary consequence of one’s first crime should be a frightful facility in committing all the others with impunity?
Several times I tried to employ religious argument with him. Nearly always being consoled by my own faith, I attempted to transmit some of its sweetness to the soul of this perverse creature, for I was convinced that I might captivate him by these means if only I could tempt him for a moment to partake of their delights. But the Marquis did not long allow me to employ such methods. The declared enemy of our holy mysteries, a self-opinionated and obstinate railer against the purity of our doctrines, a passionate antagonist against the existence of a Supreme Being, Monsieur de Bressac, instead of being converted by me, sought all the more to corrupt me.
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