Letters From Prison

  That is what is so foul, that is what is so odious, and that is what has been the cause of all the grief and all the misery of my situation. Would it not have been infinitely more humane to leave me to my illusion, since it was not such a pipe dream, instead of destroying it every day, thereby leading me to form a hope that was bred in me, fomented in me, simply for the sake of reveling in the unhappiness I perforce experienced at seeing it destroyed? I repeat, these methods are odious; they are also devoid of both humanity and common sense, and do but wear the emblem of an idiotic ferocity like that of tigers and lions. And when, more confirmed than ever in this very real idea that I still have one more year to endure, I say so in my letters—always harking back to the same old song, you people have the audacity, the infamy, to write to me, upon the subject of twelve jars of jam I requested back in the month of December: Twelve jars of jam! Good heavens! what in the world are you going to do with all that? Are you going to give a dancing party? In any case, ’tis no great problem if some is left over. In two words, such has been and still is the work of my torturers, for what other name can I give to those from whom I have received the most violent dagger-thrusts? Once you told me three years, once I had adjusted to the idea accordingly, what made you destroy my illusion? Why give me a glimpse of my impending release when it was not true? And why, finally, take it into your head to dangle hope in front of me only to snatch it away the next instant? ’Tis this infamous game I decry; and those who, in playing it, serve as an instrument for the revenge of others, are playing a most mean and most despicable role, I might add a most barbaric role, for what have I done to these people? To one, nothing: I had never set eyes on him before in my life; to the other, naught but acts of courtesy and fair dealing . . . Well, I’ve heard enough for the nonce; they can sharpen their arrows for next year, if perchance my illusion is too optimistic; for as concerns this year, I declare to them that were they to talk and write to the devil, accustomed as I am to their abominable lying, I shall not believe I am to get out one minute before the 22nd of February, 1780.

  Let’s drop the subject.

  There is however one sentence in your letter that could make me foresee a fate even more ghastly. Here it is: Nothing proves that the release dates I indicated to you on the basis of my conjectures are false. But the only date you have indicated is February 22, 1780. I vow and declare that I have neither seen nor been able to figure out any other indication from your letters. Yet in the sentence that comes immediately after you say: To that you are going to reply: but why, when I was at La Coste, did you convey such and such a piece of information to me? The answer is that I was misled. But what you conveyed to me at La Coste was that you had been told that I was to have three years once I had been judged, or one year plus exile. Now you say you are sorry you ever told me that. ’Tis therefore actually worse, since one is not sorry for having been overly pessimistic at first: you then have an agreeable surprise for him; you owe him no apology for having misled him in that way. . . And yet you apologize to me. The truth therefore is worse; and if ’tis worse, then I am still far off the mark in believing I’ll be released on February 22, 1780! I would be infinitely grateful if you could explain that sentence to me, as it continues to worry and afflict me cruelly.

  Tell me, I beseech you, do you sometimes ask the infamous scoundrels, the abominable beggars who take such pleasure keeping me dancing on live coals by refusing to let me know the date of my release, do you sometimes ask them what they hope to gain by so doing? I have already said and written a thousand times that instead of gaining thereby one only stands to lose; that instead of doing me good, they are doing me the greatest ill; that my character is not of a kind to be controlled like that; that in so doing they deprive me of both the capacity and the will to think things over and consequently to derive any benefit from the situation. I add and certify today, at the end of two years in this horrible situation, that I feel a thousand times worse than when I arrived here, that my mood has soured, I am more bitter, my blood is a thousand times more boiling, my brain a thousand times worse; and that, in a word, the day I get out of here I shall have to go live in the wilderness, so impossible will it be for me to live among human beings! —And what, in God’s name, would it cost me to say that this is doing me good, if indeed such were the case? Alas, messieurs apothecaries,4 now that your drugs are paid for and two-thirds taken, why should I not acknowledge their effectiveness if they have had any? But, believe me, their sole effect has been to drive me mad, and you are poisoners and not physicians, or rather scoundrels who should be broken on the wheel, to make you pay for keeping an innocent man in jail simply to satisfy your vengeance, your cupidity, and your nasty little personal interests. And am I supposed to put up with all this in silence? May I be struck dead a thousand times over if ever I do! —Others have been their dupes, you say to me, and have said not a word about it. . . They are animals, they are idiots; if they had spoken out, if they had revealed all the horrors, all the infamies of which they were the victims, the monarch would have been enlightened; he is just, and he would not have tolerated it; and ’tis precisely from their silence that these beggars’ impunity derives. But I shall tell the truth, I shall open peoples’ eyes, even if I have to cast myself at the king’s feet to ask due reparation for everything I have been made to suffer unjustly.

  Oh, you need not advise me against trying to make the numbers make sense and comparing your letters! I give you my word of honor that I no longer do that. I did it, unfortunately for me, for I thought I would go mad therefrom; but I would sooner be drawn and quartered than do it again. You turn a deaf ear to the number 22 . . . The question I asked you was simple enough, but you were unable to give me a satisfactory answer; let us speak of it no more. So remember, though, that I shall never forget your relentlessness . . . Ah! if you had a good memory you would recall whether all this worry about my character had ever succeeded in the past. The difference between what I was at La Coste following the wonderfully witty and noisy scenes that went on there,5 and what I had been before when I was left alone. . . That should give you some idea whether all this is good for me. I don’t want to mention anything except what you yourself used to say to me on the subject. If Mademoiselle Rousset is unable to say what she does not know, then let her say nothing: there’s all I have to say; she will understand. If she’s going to sulk, so much the worse for her; she is showing me as plainly as can be what age-old friends are, etc.

  May one be told who married Mademoiselle d’évry?6 Mademoiselle de Launay,7 you say, is not married, and I shall not go to her wedding. She is therefore about to be married, since you are getting ready not to go to her wedding? Consequently Marais did not lie to me as much as you claim. But to cite but one instance, he did lie to me when he told me I was to be here for only six months. And in doing that I find him an abominable rogue, for he knew full well ‘twas not true and because ’tis outrageous to lead someone down the garden path in such a way; ’tis to prepare a man for the moment of deepest despair that comes when he sees his hope go up in smoke. —I have nothing to say about the power of attorney. ’Tis a signal. It has fulfilled its purpose; enough said. Haven’t you received the money from Provence? Have it sent if you need it; but I shall sign nothing.

  My one consolation here is Petrarch. I read him with a pleasure, an excitement without compare. But I read him like Madame de Sévigné read her daughter’s letters: I read slowly, for fear of having read him to the end. How well written the work is! . . . I am infatuated with Laura;8 with her I am like a child; I read about her all day long, at night I dream of her. Listen to a dream I had about her last night while all the world was out dining and dancing.

  It was about midnight. I had just fallen asleep, her memoir next to me. All of a sudden she appeared to me . . . I saw her! The horrors of the grave had in no wise impaired the brilliance of her beauty, and all the fire of which Petrarch sang was still in her eyes. She was completely swathed in black mourning crepe, over which sp
illed her lovely blond hair. It seemed as if love, in order to make her more beautiful, wanted to soften the lugubrious garb in which she offered herself to my eyes. “Why dost thou groan on earth?” she asked me. “Come join me. No more sufferings, no more wars, no more sorrow, no more trouble in the vast space wherein I dwell. Have the courage to follow me there.” Hearing which, I threw myself at her feet, I said to her: “Oh, my Mother! . . .” And sobs stifled my voice. She held out a hand to me, I covered it with my tears; she wept, too. “I was wont to look toward the future,” she said, “when I lived in this world you loathe. I made out the generations that would emanate from me, until I came to you, and I did not see you so unhappy.” And then, completely absorbed by despair and tenderness, I threw my arms around her neck, either to hold her there or to follow her, and to water her with my tears; but the ghost vanished. Only my grief remained.

  O voie che travagliate, ecco il cammino

  Venite a me se’l passo altri no serra.

  Petr., Son. LIX

  Good night, dear friend, I love you and I kiss you with all my heart. Do show me a bit more compassion, I beg of you, for I assure you that I am more miserable than you think. Judge all I am suffering, and the state of my soul is as black as my imagination. I embrace even the people who will have nothing to do with me, because all that I hate in them is their faults.

  This 17th day of February, at the close of two years of dreadful bondage.

  1. That is, the day after his arrest in Paris.

  2. The date Sade left Vincennes, under the escort of Inspector Marais, for his appellate trial in Aix.

  3. Again, Sade is reading in Renée-Pélagie’s innocent numbers “signals” she never intended.

  4. Not to be confused with the apothecaries of the Marseilles affair. Here Sade is speaking metaphorically; the “apothecaries” are those, such as the Montreuils, the government, and even those members of his own family, including his uncle the abbe and two aunts, who prescribe prison to cure his ills.

  5. The various attempts made at La Coste to harass and arrest him.

  6. Renée-Pélagie’s cousin.

  7. Anne-Prospère, Renée-Pélagie’s sister. And, of course, Sade’s former mistress. Sade deduces that his wife’s passing remark that she will not attend Anne-Prospère’s wedding tells him she is in fact about to be married. What he doesn’t know is that one of the conditions the groom-to-be lays down is that there will be no marriage unless he has assurances that Sade will be imprisoned for life.

  8. Laura de Noves, Petrarch’s great love. The Sade family claimed her as a direct ancestor, since she married Hugues de Sade in 1325. Recently some scholars have questioned whether Laura de Noves and Petrarch’s Laura were really one and the same.

  11. To Monsieur de Rougemont

  [March 14, 1779]

  It is to you, Sir, that I take the liberty of addressing the note included with the enclosed letter, requesting that you have it promptly communicated to my wife via Monsieur Le Noir.1 Were it to turn out that the orders I have given therein relative to my business affairs were not carried out for having been withheld, I should be forced to hold you responsible; and you, Sir, would not want to be held responsible for all the disorder that would ensue from your failure to make sure they are both transmitted and carried out. I dare hope that you will not be displeased by the liberty I have taken in taking you as witness. You must understand, Sir, that I have no one else but you here. If, however, you esteem this unseemly, you may, Sir, return the note to me, and in that case be so good as to send me a notary public so that I may more legally set forth my intentions. What I have done is to try to avoid that complication, hoping that you would be willing to testify in this matter if ever I am obliged to call upon you, which would be as good as, nay better than, any public act.

  I have the honor to be, with all possible sentiments, Sir, your most humble and most obedient servant.

  Would you be so kind as to send me my ordinary little provision of writing paper.

  Declaration attached to the preceding note.2

  I the undersigned hereby declare that I shall neither discuss nor conclude any matter of business as long as I remain under detention; and to that I add my most authentic word of honor to systematically nullify and undo all agreements, leases, contracts, settlements, etc. entered into, done, or made out during the said detention, whether the said business matters have been concluded by my wife or by the lawyer Gaufridy, neither of whom has been authorized by me to conclude anything. I further certify by this note that if any of my business managers or leasers or farmers, etc., have disposed of any monies whatsoever belonging to me since the fourteenth of July seventeen hundred seventy-eight, the date at which I was restored to possession of what is rightfully mine, I shall make them pay twofold. I wish and intend that the present note, a copy of which I am keeping, has as much force as if it were done before a notary, and attesting to which I take as witness Monsieur de Rougemont, Governor of the said Keep, he being the sole person here I see, having every intention to cite him as such should the desires set forth by me in the said note remain unfulfilled. Done at Vincennes this fourteenth of March seventeen hundred seventy-nine.

  de Sade

  1. Jean-Charles Pierre Le Noir, to whom de Rougemont reported, was directly responsible for Sade the prisoner. Both Sade and Renée-Pélagie used him as intermediary when they wanted to ask a favor or for an improved condition, such as better food or more frequent walks.

  2. The heading is Sade’s.

  12. To Mademoiselle de Rousset

  [March 21 1779]

  Well now, my dear Saint, New Year’s Day has come and gone and you have not come to see me. I waited for you in vain the whole day; I’d dressed to the hilt, I’d put on powder and pomade, shaved myself close, I had no fur-lined boots but a fine pair of green silk stockings, red breeches, a yellow waistcoat and a black jacket, with a handsome hat trimmed in silver. In short, I was a very elegant lord. The jars of jam stood in battle formation. I had also made preparations for a little concert: three drums, four kettledrums, eighteen trumpets, and forty-two hunting-horns; all of which was set to play a pretty little romance I’d composed for you. Your ears, your eyes, your heart would have been truly delighted by the little party I prepared for you. But to no avail; I had got all dressed up for naught! ‘Twill be for next year; but don’t do that to me again, making my mouth water and then leaving me standing there, for all these preparations cost me a pretty penny.