I love Yukio Mishima

SAINT-FOND : Here I am, bursting in on you, without even waiting to be announced. I'm sure you don't mind. It's not as if I flew through the window on a broomstick.

MONTREUIL : Whatever do you mean? (Crosses herself)

SAINT-FOND : Crossing yourself doesn't suit you as well as Madame de Simiane. You seem to be doing it despite yourself, for appearances' sake.

MONTREUIL : Don't mind me. Say anything that will make you happy.

SAINT-FOND : I decided to call on you today because something happened that I must tell you about. Last night I played the part of a Madame de Montespan in the days of the Sun King.

MONTREUIL : You gave your favours to the King? But they say the present King...

SAINT-FOND : No, let me tell you what happened, in the proper sequence. I need a good listener like you, someone of courage and daring, not like that timid mouse of a Simiane. I need someone who will pose to the bitter end as the apostle of virtue.

MONTREUIL : I'm much obliged for the compliment, Madame de Saint-Fond.

SAINT-FOND : I've become utterly bored with the artifices of love and the nasty machinations, with masked entertainments and incognita excursions among the lower classes, and with all the rest. I have even become bored of my own bad reputation. I've tried telling myself that what I was doing was sinful, but what it began with the bedroom and ended with the bedroom, and that's all. I've tried telling myself it was love, but all I tasted was ashes mixed with honey. It occured to me then that if I could somehow add an element of the sacred...

MONTREUIL : I can'r believe you are considering the religious life!

SAINT-FOND: Please be reassured on that score. When you gradually come to demand more and more spice in your pleasures you remember how much as a child you enjoyed being punished, and you even come to feel cheated unless somebody is punishing you. That's what gives people such a thrill when they spit on the invisible Master, provoking him and arousing his wrath. But sanctity is a lazy dog. When he's stretched out in the sun, abandoned to his nap, you may grab its tail or pull his whiskers, but he won't even open his eyes, let alone bark.

MONTREUIL : Are you implying that God is a lazy dog?

SAINT-FOND : Yes, a decrepit one.

MONTREUIL : I'm glad that my daughters are grown women. If you said such things before an adolescent girl...

SAINT-FOND : But, Madame, I haven't even begun the story I'm so anxious for you to hear. I seriously misjudged the Marquis de Sade. I used to wonder if that blond-haired, white-handed chastiser, that man shaking his whip, that executioner, might not be an agent of God. But now I realise how mistaken I was. The marquis is just another member of my crowd, he belongs to my party. Around the lazy dog taking his nap the flagellants and the flagellated, the chastisers and the chastised are no more than pathetic nuisances, exactly the same in character. One man attempts to provoke the dog by whipping somebody, another by being whipped, one by shedding blood, another by allowing his own to be shed.... And still the dog doesn't even deign to open his eyes. The Marquis de Sade and I are accomplices.

MONTREUIL : How did you discover this?

SAINT FOND : I didn't discover it. I felt it.

MONTREUIL : And when was this?

SAINT-FOND : When I was serving as a table.

MONTREUIL : As a table?

The sisters exchange whispers of surprise.

SAINT-FOND : Of course. Anyone can become a table. But let me be more explicit. I was stripped naked, and my body was used as the alter for a mass.

Her listeners gasp.