Each of the two were given twenty-four hours to leave the convent, and were left to provide for themselves, each with her hundred crowns, wherever and however they might choose. Juliette, enchanted at being her own mistress, wished for a moment to dry Justine’s tears; but realising that she would not succeed, set to scolding instead of consoling her, exclaiming that such behaviour was foolish, and that girls of their age, blessed with faces like theirs, had never starved to death. She cited, as an example, the daughter of one of their neighbours who, abandoning her paternal home, was now being kept in luxury by a rich landowner, and drove her own carriage around Paris. Justine expressed horror at such a pernicious example, and she said she would rather die than emulate it. Moreover she flatly refused to share a lodging with her sister, since it was obvious that this young woman had decided to follow the abominable way of life which she had so recently praised.
Thus the two sisters separated from each other without promise of any reunion, since their intentions were found to be so different. Could Juliette, who had pretensions to becoming a great lady, ever consent to see again a little girl whose low and virtuous inclinations would disgrace her? And, on her side, is it likely that Justine would wish to risk her morals in the company of a perverse creature who was about to become the victim of vile lubricity and general debauchery? Each, therefore, relying on her own resources, left the convent on the following day as had been agreed.
Justine, who as a child had been fawned over by her mother’s dressmaker, imagined that this woman would feel a natural sympathy for her position. She therefore sought her out, told her of her unfortunate position and, asking for work, was immediately thrown on to the street.
‘Oh heaven!’ cried the poor little creature, ‘must it be that the first step I take in the world leads me only to further miseries…This woman loved me once! Why, then, does she cast me away today?…Alas, it must be because I am orphaned and poor…Because I have no resources in the world, and because people are esteemed only by reason of the help or the pleasure which others hope to receive from them.’
Reflecting thus, Justine called on her parish priest and asked his advice. But the charitable ecclesiastic equivocally replied that it was impossible for him to give her any alms, as the parish was already overburdened, but that if she wished to serve him he would willingly provide her with board and lodging. In saying this, however, he passed his hand under her chin, and kissed her in a fashion much too worldly for a man of the Church. Justine, who understood his intentions all too well, quickly drew back, expressing herself as follows: ‘Sir, I am asking of you neither alms nor yet the position of a servant. I am not so far reduced from my recent position in society as to beg two such favours; all I ask of you is the advice of which my youth and my present misfortune stand so much in need. Yet you would have me buy it with a crime…’ The priest, insulted by this expression, opened the door and pushed her brutally on to the street. Thus Justine, twice repulsed on the first day of her isolation, walked into a house displaying a notice and rented a small furnished room, paying in advance. Here, at least, she was able to abandon herself in comfort to the grief caused not only by her situation but by the cruelty of the few individuals with whom her unlucky star had constrained her to have dealings.
With the reader’s permission we shall abandon our heroine for a while, leaving her in her obscure retreat. This will allow us to return to Juliette, whose career we will sum up as briefly as possible – indicating the means whereby, from her humble state as an orphan, she became within fifteen years a titled woman possessing an income of more than thirty thousand livres, the most magnificent jewels, two or three houses in the country as well as her residence in Paris, and – for the moment – the heart, the wealth, and the confidence of M. de Corville, a gentleman of the greatest influence, and a Counsellor of State who was about to enter the Ministry itself…
That her path had been thorny cannot be doubted, for it is only by the most severe and shameful of apprenticeships that such young women attain their success; and she who lies today in the bed of a prince, may still carry on her body the humiliating marks of the brutality of depraved libertines into whose hands she had once been thrown by her youth and her inexperience.
On leaving the convent, Juliette quickly went to find the woman she had once heard named by a corrupt friend from her neighbourhood, and whose address she had carefully kept. She arrived with abrupt unconcern, her bundle under her arm, her little dress in disorder, with the prettiest face in the world and the undeniable air of a schoolgirl. She told the woman her story, and begged her to protect her, just as, several years previously, she had protected her friend.
‘How old are you, my child?’ asked Madame du Buisson.
‘In a few days’ time I shall be fifteen, Madame.’
‘And nobody has ever…?’
‘Oh, no, Madame, I swear it to you!’
‘Nevertheless it is not unknown for convents to harbour a chaplain, a nun, or even a schoolfriend who…So I must be supplied with certain proofs!’
‘All that you need do is look for them, Madame…’
And du Buisson, fixing herself up with a pair of spectacles, and having verified the exact state of things, said to Juliette: ‘Well, my child, all you need do is stay here. But you must strictly observe my advice, show the utmost-compliance with my customs, be clean and neat, economical and candid so far as I am concerned, courteous towards your companions, and as dishonest and unscrupulous as you like with men. Then, a few years from now, you will be in a position to retire to a nicely furnished place of your own, with a servant, and such proficiency in the art you will have acquired in my establishment that you will have the means quickly to satisfy each and every desire you may wish.’
With these words la du Buisson seized Juliette’s little bundle, enquiring, at the same time, if she were absolutely without money. And Juliette having too frankly admitted that she had a hundred crowns, her new-found mama quickly took possession of them, assuring her young pupil that she would invest this small sum to her profit, and that it was unnecessary for a girl to have money, especially as it could be a means towards the indulgence of wickedness. Moreover, in such a corrupt century, any wise and highly-born young lady must carefully avoid anything which might cause her to fall into a trap. This sermon completed, the newcomer was introduced to her companions, taken to her room in the house, and from the following day her first-fruits were on sale. Within four months’ time the same merchandise had successively been sold to eighty different people, all of whom paid for it as new; and it was not until the end of this thorny novitiate that Juliette took out her patents as a lay-sister. From that moment, however, she was readily accepted as a daughter of the house, and entered the new novitiate of partaking in all its libidinous fatigues…If, excepting a few slight deviations, she had served nature during her early days in this place, she now forgot all natural laws and began to indulge in criminal researches, shameful pleasures, dark and crapulous orgies, scandalous and bizarre tastes and humiliating caprices – all of which arose, on the one hand, from a desire for pleasure without risk to health – and, on the other, from a pernicious satiety which so wearied her imagination that she could delight only in excess and revive herself only by way of lubricity…
Her morals were totally corrupted in this second school; and the triumphs of vice which she witnessed completed the degradation of her soul. She began to feel that she was born only for crime, and that she might as well cultivate only wealthy and important people rather than languish in a subordinate state wherein, though she committed the same faults and debased herself just as much, she could not hope to gain anything like the same profit. She was fortunate in pleasing an old and very much debauched nobleman, whose original intention had merely been the passing of a pleasantly salacious fifteen minutes. But she was clever enough to persuade him to keep her in magnificent style, and finally showed herself at the theatre or walking in company