"Sade, Marquis De - The 120 Days Of Sodom 1" - читать интересную книгу автора (Marquis de Sade)

someday befall her; nor was that improbable. The President, in her regard,
had not paid the same attention to the problem of religion Durcet had in
the interests of Constance, no, he had allowed all that nonsense to be
born, to be fomented, supposing that his writings and his discourses would
easily destroy it. He was mistaken: religion is the nourishment upon which
a soul such as Adelaide's feeds. In vain the President had preached, in
vain he had made her read books, the young lady had remained a believer,
and all these extravagances, which she did not share, which she hated, of
which she was the victim, fell far short of disabusing her about illusions
which continued to make for her life's happiness. She would go and hide
herself to pray to God, she'd perform Christian duties on the sly, and was
unfailingly and very severely punished, either by her father or her
husband, when surprised in the act by the one or the other.
Adelaide patiently endured it all, fully convinced Heaven would
someday reward her. Her character was as gentle as her spirit, and her
benevolence, one of the virtues for which her father most detested her,
went to the point of extreme. Curval, whom that vile class of the poverty-
stricken irritated, sought only to humiliate it, to further depress it, or
to wring victims from it; his generous daughter, on the other hand, would
have foregone her own necessities to procure them for the poor, and she had
often been espied stealing off to take to the needy sums which were
intended for her pleasures. Durcet and the President finally succeeded in
scolding and pounding good manners into her, and in ridding her of this
corrupt practice by withholding absolutely all means whereby she could
resume it. Adelaide, having nothing left but her tears to bestow upon the
poor, went none the less to sprinkle them upon their woes, and her
powerless howbeit staunchly sensitive spirit was incapable of ceasing to be
virtuous. One day she learned that some poor woman was to come to
prostitute her daughter to the President because extreme need bade her do
so; the enchanted old rake was already preparing himself for the kind of
pleasure-taking he liked best. Adelaide had one of her dresses sold and
immediately got the money put it in the mother's hands; by means of this
small assistance and some sort of a sermon, she diverted the woman from the
she was about to commit. Hearing of what she had done, the President
proceeded to such violences with her - his daughter was not yet married at
the time - that she was a fortnight abed; but all that was to no avail:
nothing could put a stop to this gentle soul's tender impulses.
Julie, the President's wife, the Duc's elder daughter, would have
eclipsed the two preceding women were it not for something which many
behold as a capital defect, but which had perhaps in itself aroused
Curval's passion for her, so true it is that the effects of passion are
unpredictable, nay, inconceivable, and that their disorder, the outcome of
disgust and satiety, can only be matched by their irregular flights. Julie
was tall, well made although quite fat and fleshy, had the most lovely
brown eyes in the world, a charming nose, striking and gracious features,
the most beautiful chestnut brown hair, a fair body of the most appetizing
fullness, an ass which might easily have served as model to the one
Praxiteles sculpted, her cunt was hot, strait, and yielded as agreeable a
sensation as such a locale ever may; her legs were handsome, her feet
charming, but she had the worst-decked mouth, the foulest teeth, and was by