The 120 Days of Sodom - Marquis De Sade [83]
But, Messieurs, I believe you will concur in my judgment when I say that the aforementioned caprice is no more singular than that of another gentleman, an old friend of Guerin, who had been furnishing him for years. She assured us that all his joy consisted in eating expelled ovulations and in lapping up miscarriages; he would be notified whenever a girl found herself in that case, he would rush to the house and swallow the embryo, half swooning with satisfaction.
"I knew that particular man," said Curval. "His existence and his tastes are as authentic as anything else in the world."
"Perhaps," said the Bishop. "And I know something just as certain as your man, and that is I'd not imitate him."
"And why, pray tell?" asked the President. "I am convinced it would produce a lively discharge, and were Constance to grant me her kind permission, for I hear she's gravid now, why, I can promise her I'll fetch Monsieur her son along before he's fully done, and I'll toss him off like a sardine."
"Oh, all the world knows your horror of pregnant women," cried Constance, "and everyone also knows you only got rid of Adelaide's mother because she conceived a second time, and if Julie were to take my advice, she'd be careful."
"Why yes, 'tis perfectly true that I am not fond of progeny," quoth Curval, "and that when the beast is laden it quickens a furious loathing in me, but to imagine I killed my wife on that account is to be gravely mistaken. Bitch that you are, get it into your head that I have no need of reasons in order to kill a woman, above all a bitch that, were she mine, I'd very surely keep from whelping."
Constance and Adelaide fell to weeping, and this brief dialogue revealed something of the secret hatred the President bore for the charming wife of the Duc who, for his part, very far from supporting her in discussion, replied to Curval, saying that he ought perfectly well to know that he, Blangis, was equally illdisposed to offspring, and that although Constance was pregnant, she had not yet given birth. And at this point Constance's tears flowed all the faster; she was on her father's couch, and Durcet, not taxing himself to comfort her, advised her daughter that if she did not cease her blubbering that instant, her state notwithstanding, he was going to boot her ass out of the auditorium. The hapless creature shed inwardly upon her heart the tears wherewith she was reproached, and was content to say: "Alas, Great God! very wretched am I, but 'tis my fate, I must endure it." Adelaide, who had also been weeping away on the Duc's couch and whose distress the Duc had been moving heaven and earth to increase, also managed to dry her tears, and this scene, somewhat tragical although very mirthful to our four libertines' villainous souls, ground to an end, and Duclos resumed her tale:
In Guerin's establishment there was a room most curiously constructed, and it was always used by one man. It had a double floor, and this narrow between-stories area, where there was only space enough to lie down, served to lodge the uncommon breed of libertine in the interests of whose passion I had regular employment. He would take a girl and, descending through a trap door, would lie down and arrange himself in such a manner his head was directly below a hole that had been bored in the floor above; the girl accompanying him had the single chore of frigging him, and I, located above, had simply to do the same thing for a second man. The hole, obscure and seemingly a natural flaw in the planks, remained uncovered as if through negligence, and I, acting at the behest of tidiness, eager to avoid spotting the floor, would while manualizing