July 9—Sade signs the authorization requested by Commissaire Chenot to have his Bastille cell, which was placed under seals on July 4, opened in the presence of his emissary, Madame de Sade.
July 14—Awakened by the quickening pace of events, Madame de Sade, who has not yet carried out her commission relative to Sade’s personal belongings left behind in the Bastille, sends her authorization to Commissaire Chenot and then leaves town for the country. The Bastille is stormed and Sade’s cell sacked, his furniture, his suits and linen, his library and, most important, his manuscripts, are “burned, pillaged, torn up and carried off.”
July 19—Madame de Sade informs Commissaire Chenot that, for personal reasons, she cannot consider herself responsible for the papers and effects of the Marquis de Sade.
October 5—Madame de Sade escapes from Paris, accompanied by her daughter and a maid, to avoid being “dragged out by the women of the lower classes who are forcing all the women in the town houses to march with them through the rain and mud to Versailles to seize the King.” She then relates that the King has been brought from Versailles to Paris, “the heads of his two bodyguards set on pikes before him,” and that “Paris is in a state of intoxication.”
1790. Aet. 50
March 13—The Constituent Assembly adopts a projected decree concerning the lettres de cachet stipulating that all prisoners detained by such Royal Orders will be released save for those condemned to death, indicted or judged insane.
March 18—Sade is visited at Charenton by his two sons, whom he has not seen in fifteen years and who have come to inform him of the decree of the Assembly.
April 2—On this day, Good Friday, Sade recovers his liberty and leaves Charenton, without a penny. He goes directly to see the man who is handling his affairs, M. de Milly, attorney at the Châtelet Court, who provides him with a bed to sleep in and six louis.
April 3—Madame de Sade, a resident of the convent of Sainte-Aure, refuses to see her husband from whom she has decided to separate.
April 28—Madame de Sade formally applies to the Châtelet Court for a separation order. Sade, who claims he has already seen her attitude changing toward him, tends to blame it upon the influence of her Father Confessor.
June 9—The Châtelet Court issues a separation order and instructs the Marquis de Sade to restore to his wife 160,842 livres received as marriage settlement.
July 1—Sade obtains an identity card as “an active citizen” of the Place Vendôme Section, later to be known as the Piques Section.
August 3—The Théâtre Italien accepts his one-act verse play, Le Suborneur.
August 17—Sade gives a reading at the Comédie-Française of his one-act play in free verse, Le Boudoir ou le mari crédule. A week later the play is rejected, but a second reading agreed to, providing the author makes some changes.
August 25—Sade forms a liaison with a young actress, Marie-Constance Renelle, her husband Balthazar Quesnet having deserted her and left her with their one child. This liaison, which Sade will describe many times as “less than platonic,” but founded on mutual love and attachment, will last the rest of his life.21
September 16—Sade’s five-act play, Le Misanthrope par amour ou Sophie et Desfrancs, is “unanimously accepted” by the Comédie-Française.
November 1—Sade moves into a house with garden at No. 20, rue Neuve-des-Mathurins, off the Chaussée d’Antin.
1791. Aet. 51
March 5—Sade writes to Reinaud telling him that he will send the four volumes of his novel, Aline et Valcour, which are to be printed by Easter. He also remarks that he now has five plays accepted by various theaters.
June 12—Sade notes, in a letter to Reinaud, that his novel Justine ou les Malheurs de la Vertu is being printed, adding that it is “too immoral a work for so religious and modest a man as yourself.”
October 22—First performance, at the Théâtre Molière on the rue Saint-Martin, of Sade’s Le Comte Oxtiern ou les effets du libertinage. A second performance is given two weeks later, on November 4, which gives rise to a disturbance and causes Sade to suspend further performances.
November 24—Sade gives a reading to the Comédie-Française of his Jeanne Laisné ou le Siège de Beauvais, which is rejected by an eight-to-five vote.
1792. Aet. 52
March 5—At the Théâtre Italien, a Jacobin cabal, all wearing red bonnets with the point forward, makes so much noise that Le Suborneur cannot be completed and the performance is halted after the fourth scene. The reason given for the demonstration: the author was an aristocrat.
May—Sub-Lieutenant Donatien-Claude-Armand de Sade, aide-de-camp of the Marquis de Toulongeon, deserts.
August 18—Sade solemnly disavows his sons’ emigration, a necessary step taken to save himself, the Republic having issued a decree making parents responsible for the actions of their children.
September 3—During the massacres,22 Sade is for the first time the secretary of his section.
September 17-21—A crowd of people from La Coste—men, women and children—force their way into the château and ransack it, destroying or carting away most of the furniture. The municipal guard is helpless to cope with the mob, but the municipality does its best to save what remains of Sade’s furniture and effects and has them housed in the vicarage, until they are carted away a week later by two bailiffs from Apt who arrive with a requisition order and abuse their limited authority to load all pieces of value onto four wagons, over the protests of the La Coste municipal council.
October 17—Sade is a soldier in the 8th Company of the Piques Section and commissaire for the organization of the cavalry in that section.
October—Sade in possession of the first copies of his political pamphlet Idées sur le mode de la sanction des Loix, which is published by his own section and sent to the other forty-seven sections of Paris for their study and opinion.
November 4—Sade is called by the Piques Section to do twenty-four hours’ guard duty commencing at 9 :00 A.M.
December 13—Under the name Louis-Alphonse-Donatien Sade, the Marquis’ name is entered—whether by error or willful malice—on the list of émigrés of the Bouches-du-Rhône department.
1793. Aet. 53
January 21—“Louis Capet, thirty-nine, profession: last King of the French” is guillotined on the Place de la Revolution at 10:22 A.M.
February 26—Together with Citizens Carré and Desormeaux, Sade signs the report he has drawn up concerning their inspection of five hospitals which the Hospital Commission had entrusted them with on January 17.
April 13—In a letter to Gaufridy, Sade announces that he has been appointed court assessor. “I have two items of news which will surprise you. Lord Montreuil has been to see me! 23 And guess the other! I would give you a hundred guesses! I am appointed magistrate, yes, magistrate! By the prosecution! Who, my dear lawyer, would have told you that fifteen years back? You see how wise my old head is becoming in its old age. . . .”
June 15—Citizen Sade, secretary of the assembly of the sections of Paris, is appointed one of the four delegates who the following day are to present an address to the Convention calling for an annulment of the decree which established a Parisian army of six thousand men at forty sous a day.
June 26—A new department, the Vaucluse, is created out of the former Bouches-du-Rhône department, but in submitting the list of émigrés to the new department Sade’s name, which has been ordered from the list, still appears there, a fact which is later to have grave consequences for him.
July 23—Sade has been appointed chairman of the Piques Section, and he announces the news with elation to Gaufridy.
August 2—At a stormy session of the Piques Section, Sade gives up the chair to the vice-chairman, refusing to act as chairman for a proposal he deems “horrible . . . utterly inhuman.”
September 29—The General Assembly of the Piques Section, “approving the principles and vigor” of Sade’s pamphlet entitled Discours aux mânes de Marat
et de Le Peletier, decides to print it and send it to the National Assembly.
November 15 (25 Brumaire, Year II)—Sade is the leader of seven other delegates who appear before the bar of the National Convention to read the Petition of the Piques Section to the Representatives of the French People, of which Sade is the author.24
December 8 (18 Frimaire, Year II)—A warrant is issued for Sade’s arrest based on a letter Sade had written two years earlier, and he is arrested at his house on the rue Neuve-des-Mathurins and taken to Madelonnettes prison.25
1794. Aet. 54
January 13 (23 Nivôse, Year II)—The police department of Paris orders the transfer of the prisoner Sade to the Carmelite convent on the rue de Vaugirard.26
January 22 (3 Pluviôse, Year II)—By order of the police department dated 1 Pluviôse, Sade is transferred to the Saint-Lazare prison.27
February 12 (24 Pluviôse, Year II)—Sade’s name is again (by error?) placed on the list of émigrés, under the Christian names of Louis-Alphonse-Donatien, with the mention “Vaucluse, Apt, December 13, 1793.”
March 8 (18 Ventôse, Year II)—Sade submits a report in his defense to the Committee of Public Safety defending his conduct since 1789. In it he maintains he was overjoyed when the King (“the most immoral rascal and the most outrageous tyrant”) was beheaded and draws attention to his many activities and increasing responsibility in the Piques Section.28 He further denies that he or his family before him were ever aristocrats, claiming they were either in business or cultivating the land.
Copy of Sade’s certificate of baptism, taken from the records of the Paris Church of Saint-Sulpice, Paris, dated 3 June, 1740. (COURTESY MUSÉE CALVET, AVIGNON)
Above: The ruins of La Coste château, as it looks today, with the village grouped below it. Below: A closer view of the château. (PHOTOS BY ALAIN RESNAIS)
Two details of the ruins of La Coste château. (PHOTOS BY ALAIN RESNAIS)
Frontispiece to Volume IV of the original edition of Les Crimes de l’Amour, which contained Eugénie de Franval.
Title page of the original edition of Les Crimes de l’Amour.
Letter of 11 October, 1782, from Madame de Sade to Mademoiselle de Rousset, who is at La Coste, but increasingly wary of remaining in the château, which is in such a state of disrepair that the high winds are threatening to reduce it to ruins. Madame de Sade is worried about the safety of certain papers at La Coste, and her letter expresses her concern. (COLLECTION R. SEAVER)
A letter of 3 Ventôse An VIII (February 22, 1800), from Sade to La Citoyenne demoiselle Archias, Maison du Citoyen Gauffridi, homme de loi à Apt, which begins: “Knowing your pious and sensitive soul, Mademoiselle, I address myself to you with confidence and enjoin you to urge M. Gauffridi to come to my aid. . . . I shall relate the facts to you, hoping they will touch a heart as humane and compassionate as yours. . . .” See the Chronology, entry of February 20, 1800. (COLLECTION R. SEAVER)
Copy of the order issued 18 October, 1810, by the Count de Montalivet, Minister of the Interior, effectively isolating Sade from all contact with other inmates at the Charenton asylum, and also forbidding him all access to writing materials. See the Chronology, entry for October 18, 1810. (COURTESY MUSÉE CALVET, AVIGNON)
March 27 (7 Germinal, Year II)—For reasons of illness, Sade is transferred to Picpus Hospice, a prison hospital only recently opened.29
July 27 (9 Thermidor, Year II)—Sade’s name appears eleventh on a list of twenty-eight prisoners to be brought to trial. For some reason not wholly explained, the court bailiff fails to take Sade and returns with only twenty-three of the twenty-eight. All but two are guillotined the same day on a square only a few hundred yards from the Picpus prison where Sade was held.30
July 28 (10 Thermidor, Year II)—Beginning at 7:30 P.M., Robespierre and twenty-two other terrorists are executed; thunderous cheering from the crowd.
October 13 (22 Vendémiaire, Year III)—The Committee of General Safety signs the order freeing Citizen Sade immediately.
October 15 (24 Vendémiaire, Year III)—After 312 days of detention, Sade is released and authorized, in spite of his being a former nobleman and in view of his patriotic work, to reside in his house on the rue Neuve-des-Mathurins.
1795. Aet. 55
January (Nivôse-Pluviôse, Year III)—Death of the former President de Montreuil about six months after his release from the prison where he and his wife had been kept during the Reign of Terror.
May (Floréal-Prairial, Year III)—Sade’s son, Louis-Marie, is back in Paris. Since neither he nor his brother has ever appeared on any list of émigrés, a story is concocted according to which Louis has been traveling through France studying botany and gravure; as for Donatien-Claude-Armand, he is in Malta where he is on duty with a foreign power allied to France.
1796. Aet. 56
October 13 (22 Vendémiaire, Year V)—Sade sells La Coste, “both buildings and furniture,” to the representatives of M. and Mme. Rovère for 58,400 livres, which sum will never be paid to him in its entirety.
October (Vendémiaire, Year V)—Sade is living in the town of Clichy.
December 1 (11 Frimaire, Year V)—Sade gives as his new address the house of Citizeness Quesnet, 3, Place de la Liberté in Saint-Ouen.
1797. Aet. 57
May-June (Floréal-Prairial, Year V)—Sade, together with Mme. Quesnet, visits Provence, paying calls on Gaufridy in Apt, and going to La Coste, Bonnieux and Mazan.
October (Brumaire, Year VI)—Sade and Mme. Quesnet return to Saint-Ouen.
November (Brumaire, Year VI)—Having learned that he is listed in Vaucluse as an émigré and thus not only liable to arrest but subject to having his property and possessions confiscated, Sade sets about filing a protest with the police, complete with substantial documentation.
1798. Aet. 58
September 10 (24 Fructidor, Year VI)—Sade and Mme. Quesnet are, for lack of funds, compelled to leave Saint-Ouen: she puts up with friends and he finds refuge in Beauce with one of his farmers.
November (Brumaire, Year VII)—The sellers of the properties at Malmaison and Granvilliers, which Sade has purchased with money realized from the sale of La Coste, having not yet been paid in full, secure an injunction on the transfer of said properties. Sade’s farmer thus refuses to lodge him any longer, and he is obliged to move from place to place, wherever he can find a bed or a meal.
1799. Aet. 59
January 24 (5 Pluviôse, Year VII)—Sade goes to live with Mme. Quesnet’s son for the winter, their residence being an unheated attic.31
February 13 (25 Pluviôse, Year VII)—Sade earns forty sous a day working as an employee in a Versailles theater, with which miserable sum he is supporting not only himself but “feeding and raising” Madame Quesnet’s son.
June 28 (10 Messidor, Year VII)—A decree forbidding the names of ex-nobles to be stricken from the list of émigrés reduces Sade to despair: “Death and misery, this then is the recompense I receive for my everlasting devotion to the Republic.”
August 5 (18 Thermidor, Year VII)—The municipal administration of the canton of Clichy issues Sade a certificate of residence and citizenship, countersigned by Commissioner Cazade, who is in charge of his security.
December 10 (19 Frimaire, Year VIII)—Following the example of the Vaucluse authorities, who had earlier lifted the sequester on Sade’s properties, the Bouches-du-Rhône department does likewise.
December 13 (22 Frimaire, Year VIII)—Revival of Sade’s play Oxtiern ou les malheurs du libertinage on the stage of the Société Dramatique of Versailles, the author playing the role of Fabrice. This is the same play performed eight years earlier at the Théâtre Molière, but Sade slightly revised the title.
1800. Aet. 60
January 26 (6 Pluviôse, Year VIII)—Sade is in the public infirmary of Versailles, “dying of cold and hunger” as he writes Gaufridy in an attempt to elicit some money from him.
February 20 (1 Ventôse, Year VIII)—Commissioner Caz
ade comes to Versailles to inform Madame Quesnet and Sade that two bailiff’s men at twelve francs a day have been placed in their Saint-Ouen house, since they had failed to make their payments. That same day Sade is threatened with debtors’ prison if he fails to pay two outstanding bills before the 9 Ventôse. Fortunately for Sade, Cazade is most helpful and solicitous, and maintains that since Sade is in his care, he cannot be taken to jail unless he, Cazade, takes him.
April 5 (15 Germinal, Year VIII)—Sade is back at Saint-Ouen, and Commissioner Cazade writes to Gaufridy, whose indifferent manner of running Sade’s business affairs and his slowness in replying to letters is characterized as criminal by the Marquis.
May (Floréal-Prairial, Year VIII)—Sade has previously accused Gaufridy of accepting bribes and threatened him with legal action. Gaufridy now resigns his post as Sade’s steward.
June (Prairial-Messidor, Year VIII)—Mme. Quesnet, armed with legal powers to inspect the Sade estates and examine his accounts, goes to Provence to investigate the situation. “It is impossible, after thirty years of stewardship, for things to be in more of a mess.”
July (Messidor, Year VIII)—The publication of Zoloé, a pamphlet, unsigned, attacking Josephine, Mmes. Tallien, and Visconti, Bonaparte, Tallien and Barras. It was long thought that Sade was the author of Zoloé, and this pamphlet has often been cited as the reason for Sade’s arrest in 1801. It has now been clearly established that Sade was not the author.
October 22 (30 Vendémiaire, Year IX)—In the Journal de Paris, an article by the critic Villeterque appears, violently attacking Sade’s Les Crimes de l’Amour, which has just been published. In the article Villeterque refers to Sade as the author of Justine.
1801. Aet. 61
January 16 (26 Nivôse, Year IX)—The Minister of Police issues a certificate of amnesty making it possible to raise the sequester on Sade’s property.32
Justine, Philosophy in the Bedroom, and Other Writings Page 13