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

Justifying his turpitude with equal amounts of cleverness and effrontery,
he loudly proclaimed that his poltroonery being nothing other than the
desire to preserve himself, it were perfectly impossible for anyone in his
right senses to condemn it for a fault.
Keep in mind the identical moral traits; next, adapt them to an entity
from the physical point of view infinitely inferior to the one we just
described; there you have the portrait of the Bishop of X***, the Duc de
Blangis' brother. The same black soul, the same penchant for crime, the
same contempt for religion, the same atheism, the same deception and
cunning, a yet more supple and adroit mind, however, and more art in
guiding his victims to their doom, but a slender figure, not heavy, no, a
little thin body, wavering health, very delicate nerves, a greater
fastidiousness in the pursuit of pleasure, mediocre prowess, a most
ordinary member, even small, but deft, profoundly skilled in management,
each time yielding so little that his incessantly inflamed imagination
would render him capable of tasting delight quite as frequently as his
brother; his sensations were of a remarkable acuteness, he would experience
an irritation so prodigious he would often fall into a deep swoon upon
discharging, and he almost always temporarily lost consciousness when doing
so.
He was forty-five, had delicate features, rather attractive eyes but a
foul mouth and ugly teeth, a hairless pallid body, a small but well-shaped
ass, and a prick five inches around and six in length. An idolater of
active and passive sodomy, but eminently of the latter, he spent his life
having himself buggered, and this pleasure, which never requires much
expense of energy, was best suited to the modesty of his means. We will
speak of his other tastes in good time. With what regards those of the
table, he carried them nearly as far as the Duc, but went about the matter
with somewhat more sensuality. Monseigneur, no less a criminal than his
elder brother, possessed characteristics which had doubtless permitted him
to match the celebrated feats of the hero we painted a moment ago; we will
content ourselves with citing one of them, 'twill be enough to make the
reader see of what such a man may be capable, and what he was prepared and
disposed to do, having done the following:
One of his friends, a man powerful and rich, had formerly had an
intrigue with a young noblewoman who had borne him two children, a girl and
a boy. He had, however, never been able to wed her, and the maiden had
become another's wife. The unlucky girl's lover died while still young, but
the owner howbeit of a tremendous fortune; having no kin to provide for, it
occurred to him to bequeath all he had to the two ill-fated children his
affair had produced.
On his deathbed, he made the Bishop privy to his intentions and
entrusted him with these two immense endowments: he divided the sum, put
them in two purses, and gave them to the Bishop, confiding the two orphans'
education to this man of God and enlisting him to pass on to each what was
to be his when they attained their majority. At the same time he enjoyed
the prelate to invest his wards' funds, so that in the meantime they would
double in size. He also affirmed that it was his design to leave his
offsprings' mother in eternal ignorance of what he was doing for them, and
he absolutely insisted that none of this should ever be mentioned to her.