LETTER II (1777)
To Madame la Présidente de Montreuil
This the 13th March 1777.1
If in a person capable of having violated at one stroke all of the most sacred sentiments mortals are given in trust: those of humanity in having a son arrested beside the coffin of his dead mother,2 those of hospitality in betraying someone who had just cast himself into your arms, those of Nature in respecting not even the sanctuary taken by him who sought refuge in your daughter’s embrace; if, I say, in one such person there could yet exist some trace of compassion, I would perhaps endeavor to excite it through a description at once authentic and frightful of my horrible plight. But these complaints were useless; independently of that fact, I have yet pride enough, low though I am laid, not to ornament your triumph with my tears, and even in these depths of misfortune I have courage enough to refrain from pleading with my tyrant.
To place before you a few simple considerations will then be the sole purpose of this letter. You will set upon them what value you please; these few remarks, then no more, so that in silence you will be able for some short while at least to savor the pleasure you reap from my woes.
For a long time, Madame, I have been your victim; but do not think to make me your dupe. It is sometimes interesting to be the one, always humiliating to be the other, and I flatter myself upon as much penetration as you can claim deceit. I pray you, Madame, let us at all times maintain the very clearest distinction between two separate things, my case and my imprisonment: for my children’s sake you are seeking the favor of the courts, and imprisonment, which you allege indispensable to that end and which is certainly not at all, is not and cannot be anything but the effect of your vengeance. Of all the opinions heard so far, the gloomiest, the most terrifying, that of M. Siméon3 of Aix, said positively that it was altogether possible to obtain a judgment whereby exile would serve as prison to the accused. Those are Siméon’s own words. A lettre de cachet banishing me out of the realm, would that not have answered the same purpose?—Of course—but it would not so well have satisfied your fury.
Was it then you, all by yourself, who hatched and had enacted the scheme of having me locked away between four walls? And how on earth could the wise magistrates today governing the State have let themselves be hoodwinked to the point of believing they were promoting the interests of a family when the whole matter was patently of slaking a woman’s thirst for revenge? Why, I repeat, am I behind bars? why is an imprudence on my part construed as a crime? why is there opposition to allowing me to prove to my judges the difference between the two? and why does that opposition come from you? So many questions to which, unless I am much mistaken, Madame is not disposed to reply. Ten or a dozen bolts and locks presently answer in your stead; but this tyranny’s argument, to which law is formally opposed, is not eternally triumphant. In this I take comfort.
Fixing our attention upon my case alone, is it to clear my name that you have me punished? and are you so deluded as to believe that this punishment shall go unknown? Do you fancy that they who eventually get wind of it shall fail to see a misdeed somewhere, punishment being so evident? Be it meted out by the King, be it meted out by judges, ’tis punishment nonetheless, and the public—which is neither indulgent nor overly curious to ferret out the truth—, is the public going to make this frivolous distinction? and will it not always see prior crime where punishment has ensued? And how then my enemies shall exult! what splendid opportunities you ready for them in the future! and how tempted they shall be to have at me anew, since the results correspond so nicely to their intentions! All your five years of slandering me have provided the foundation for this attitude and behavior in my regard, and you have at all times been aware of it from the cruel situation you have seen me in during this whole period, constantly the target of fresh calumnies which sordid interest based upon the unhappiness of my situation. How would you have a man thought anything but guilty after the public authorities come three or four times knocking at his door, and when he is finally clapped into jail once he is got hold of? Whom do you hope to convince I have not been in confinement when such a long time has passed since I’ve been seen or heard from? After all the maneuvers employed to seize me, and then after my disappearance—what else do you suppose anyone could think save that I had been arrested? And from this, what advantage shall be gleaned? My reputation lost forever and new troubles arising at every turn. That is what I shall owe to your superior manner of handling my affairs.
But let us consider matters from another viewpoint. Is this a personal chastening I’m getting? and as if I were a naughty little boy, the idea is to spank me into good behavior? Wasted efforts, Madame. If the wretchedness and ignominy to which I have been reduced by the Marseilles judges’ absurd proceedings, who punished the most commonplace of indiscretions as though it were a crime, have failed to make me mend my ways, your iron bars and your iron doors and your locks will not be more successful. You ought by now to know me well enough to realize that the mere suspicion of dishonor is capable of withering me to the heart, and you are clever enough to understand that a fault whose origin is in hot-bloodedness is not corrected by bringing that blood to a boil, by firing the brain through deprivation and inflaming the imagination through solitude. What I advance here will be supported by every reasonable being who has some acquaintance of me and who is not infatuated with the idiotic notion, that to correct or punish a man you must encage him like a wild beast; and I challenge any sane spirit not to conclude that from such usage the only possible result for me is the most certain organic disturbance.
If then neither my conduct nor my reputation stand to gain from this latest piece of kindness in my regard—if, on the contrary, everything loses thereby, and it crazes my brain—what purpose shall it have served, Madame? It shall have served your vengeance, no? Yes, ’tis all too obvious, everything leads back to that starting point; and all I’ve just written is quite beside the point, all that matters not in the slightest, only one thing does: that I be sacrificed . . . and you satisfied. Indeed, you very surely say to yourself, the greater the damage wrought, the more content I’ll be. But ought you not have been amply contented, Madame, by the six months I had of prison in Savoy for the same cause? Were five years of afflictions and stigmas insufficient? and was this appalling denouement absolutely necessary?—especially after I gave you the demonstration of what lengths this sort of maltreatment could drive me to, by risking my life to escape from it! Own that, knowing what you know, ’tis evidence of no little barbarity on your part to have the same thing inflicted upon me again, and with episodes a thousand times crueler than before and which, sickening me into total revolt, will at any moment have me dashing my head against the bars confining me. Do not reduce me to despair, Madame; I cannot endure this horrible solitude unscathed, I sense the worst coming. Remember: never shall any good come to you from bestializing my soul and rendering my heart immune to feeling, the only possible results of the frightful state you have had me put in. Give me time to repair my errors, do not make yourself responsible for those into which perhaps I shall again be swept by the dreadful disorder I feel brewing in my mind.
I am respectfully, Madame, your very humble and very obedient servant.
DE SADE
P. S.—If the person from Montpellier4 returns, I hope it will not be without the most urgent recommendation not to breathe a word about the scandalous scene to which you shrewdly made him a witness, a blunder which, considering the circumstances of his father’s affairs, is assuredly quite inexcusable.
LETTER III (1783)
To Madame de Sade1
Be so good as to tell me which of the two it is, Goodie Cordier2 or Gaffer Fouloiseau,3 who is against my having any shirts. You can deny clean linen to the inmates of a hospital; but I do not intend to go without it. How your meanness, that of your origin and that of your parents, shines forth in your every act! My dove, the day I so far forgot what I was that I could be willing to sell you what I am,
it may have been to get you under the covers—but it wasn’t to go uncovered. You and your crew, keep what I say there well in mind until I have the chance to bring it out in print.
If I go through as much linen as I do, blame it on the laundress who every day either loses or tears to shreds everything of mine she can get her hands on, and rather than remonstrate with me, enjoin his lordship the Warden to issue orders remedying this state of affairs. Not a month passes but all this costs me eight or ten francs. Should such things be allowed?
At any rate, I declare to you that if inside the next two weeks the linen I request is not forthcoming, I shall interpret this as proof positive that I am on the eve of deliverance, and shall pack my baggage; only my imminent release can possibly justify your stupid refusal to send me something to put on my back. Let them but remove the madmen from this establishment and one will be less loath to use what the house provides, one could then forgo asking to have things sent all the time from home. This place was not intended for the insane; Charenton is where they are to be put, not here, and the disgraceful greed that led to keeping them locked away there seems now to have been set aside by the police, the result being that those who are not mad risk becoming so by contagion. But the police are tolerant, tolerant of everything except discourtesy toward whores. You may render yourself guilty of every possible abuse and infamy so long as you respect the backsides of whores:4 that’s essential, and the explanation is not far to seek: whores pay, whereas we do not. Once I am out of here I too must contrive to put myself a little under the protection of the police: like a whore I too have an ass and I’d be well pleased to have it shown respect. I will have M. Fouloiseau take a look at it—even kiss it if he’d like to, and I am very sure that moved by such a prospect, he will straightway record my name in the book of protégés.
The story was told to me that upon arriving in Paris (when you had me arrested) it was thus you went about having yourself certified. Before anything else the question was of determining whether the said ass had or had not been outraged—because my good mother-in-law claimed I was an outrager of asses. Consequently she wanted an examination by an expert. There she was, as I understand it, telling them You see, gentlemen, you see, he’s a little devil, full of vices; he might even . . . perhaps. . . who knows? there’s so much libertinage in that head of his. . . . And, as I understand it, there you were, lifting your petticoats. Magistrate Le Noir adjusts his spectacles, Albaret5 is holding the lamp, Le Noir’s alguazils have got pen and paper. And a report upon the state of the premises was writ out in these terms:
“Item, having betaken ourselves to the said Hôtel de Danemark at the requisition of Dame Montreuil nee Cordier, Marie-Magdeleine, 6 we did uncover the said Pélagie du Chauffour, 7 daughter to the aforementioned, and having with care made proper and thorough examination we proclaim the said du Chauffour well and duly provided with a set of two very fair buttocks, excellently formed and intact within and without. We did ourselves approach and have our assistants as nearly approach the said member. They, at their risk and peril, did pry, spread, sniff, and probe, and having like ourselves observed naught but health in these parts, we have delivered these presents, whereof usage may be made in conformance to the law; and do furthermore, upon the basis of the exhibition described above, grant the said Pélagie du Chauffour access to the Tribunal and in future to our powerful protection.
“Signed: Jean-Baptiste Le Noir, trifler extraordinary in Paris and born protector of the brothels in the capital and surroundings.”
Well? Is that how it went? Come, be a friend, tell me about it. . . . In addition or, if you prefer, in spite of it all, you have not sent me a quarter of the things I need.
To begin with, I need linen, most decidedly I must have linen, otherwise I make ready my departure; then four dozen meringues; two dozen sponge cakes (large); four dozen chocolate pastille candies, vanillaed, and not that infamous rubbish you sent me in the way of sweets last time.
What, will you tell me, are these twelve quarter-quires of paper? I asked for no quires of anything; I asked you for a copybook to replace the one containing the comedy I had conveyed to you. Send me that copybook and don’t prattle so, it’s very tiresome. So acknowledge receipt of my manuscript. It is not at all of the sort I’d like to have go astray. It belongs safely in a drawer for the time being; later, when it goes to the printer, it can be corrected. Until then it need not get lost. With manuscripts you delete, you amend, you tinker, they are meant for that; but they are never meant to be stolen.
For God’s own sake, when will you finally be tired of truckling? Had you ever noticed one of your servilities to meet with success, I’d let it pass; but after close on to seven years of this, where has it brought you? Come, speak up. You aim at my undoing? You would unsettle my brain? If so, you are all going to be wonderfully rewarded for your efforts, for by everything that is most holy to me I swear to pay every one of your farces back and with good measure; I assure you I shall grasp their spirit with an artfulness that will stun you, and shall compel you all to recognize for the rest of your days what colossal imbeciles you have been. I confess I was a long while believing your Le Noir had no hand in these abominations, but since he continues to suffer them, that alone proves he has his part in them and convinces me that he is no less a damned fool than the others.
Do not forget the nightcap, the spectacles, the six cakes of wax, Jean-Jacques’ Confessions and the coat M. de Rougemont claims that you have. I am returning a boring novel and vols. 4 and 6 of Velly. With these I send a hearty kiss for your nether end and am, devil take me, going to give myself a flick of the wrist in its honor! Now don’t run off and tell the Présidente so, for being a good Jansenist, she’s all against the molinizing of wives. She maintains that M. Cordier has never rammed anything but her vessel of propagation and that whoever steers any other course is doomed to sink in hell. And I who had a Jesuit upbringing, I who from Father Sanchez learned that one must avoid plunging in over one’s depth, and look hard lest one leap into emptiness because, according to Descartes, Nature abhors a vacuum, I cannot put myself in accord with Mamma Cordier. But you’re a philosopher, you have a countercharming countersense, much counterplay and narrowness in your countersense and heat in the rectum, whence it is I am able to accord myself very well with you.
I am yours indeed, in truth your own.
Directly this letter reaches you, will you please go in person to the shop of M. Grandjean, oculist, rue Galande by Place Maubert and tell him to send straight to M. de Rougemont the drugs and instruments he promised to furnish to the prisoner he visited in Vincennes; and while you are about it you will go to see your protector Le Noir, and tell him to arrange to have me enjoy a little fresh air. He enjoys plenty of it, does Le Noir, although a wickeder man than I by far: I’ve paddled a few asses, yes, I don’t deny it, and he has brought a million souls to the brink of starvation. The King is just: let His Majesty decide between Le Noir and me and have the guiltier broken on the wheel, I make the proposal with confidence.
In addition to the neglected errands and to those requested above, attend, if you please, to procuring for me one pint of eau de Cologne, a head-ribbon and a half-pint of orange-water.
LETTER IV (1783)
To Madame de Sade1
My queen, my amiable queen, they are forsooth droll fellows and insolent, the lackeys you have in hire. Were it anything less than certain that your numbers are riddles (squaring nicely, by the way, with my manner of thinking)2 your errand boys would be in line for a sound caning one of these days. Ah, would you hear the latest? They are giving me their estimates upon how much longer I am to remain here! Exquisite farce! It’s for you, charming princess, it is for you who are on your way to sup and dicker with Madame Turnkey (at the hospital today), I say it’s for you, my cunning one, to take the temperature of my captors, for you to divine just when it is going to suit them to unkennel me, for you to learn their pleasure of my lordships Martin,3 Albaret, Fouloiseau, and
the other knaves of that breed whom you will deign to permit me, for my part, to consider so many cab horses fit for whipping or to serve the public convenience at whatever hour and in any kind of weather.
To refuse me Jean-Jacques’ Confessions, now there’s an excellent thing, above all after having sent me Lucretius and the dialogues of Voltaire; that demonstrates great judiciousness, profound discernment in your spiritual guides. Alas, they do me much honor in reckoning that the writings of a deist can be dangerous reading for me; would that I were still at that stage. You are not sublime in your methods of doctoring, my worthy healers of the soul! Learn that it is the point to which the disease has advanced that determines whether a specific remedy be good or bad for the patient, not the remedy in itself. They cure Russian peasants of fever with arsenic; to that treatment, however, a pretty woman’s stomach does not well respond. Therein see the proof that everything is relative. Let that be your starting point, gentlemen, and have enough common sense to realize, when you send me the book I ask for, that while Rousseau may represent a threat for dull-witted bigots of your species, he is a salutary author for me. Jean-Jacques is to me what The Imitation of Christ is for you. Rousseau’s ethics and religion are strict and severe to me, I read them when I feel the need to improve myself. If you would not have me become better than I am, why, ’tis high time you told me so. The state one is in when one is good is an uncomfortable and disagreeable state for me, and I ask no more than to be left to wallow in my slough; I like it there. Gentlemen, you imagine your pons asinorum must be used and must succeed with everybody; and you are mistaken, I’ll prove it to you. There are a thousand instances in which one is obliged to tolerate an ill in order to destroy a vice. For example, you fancied you were sure to work wonders, I’ll wager, by reducing me to an atrocious abstinence in the article of carnal sin. Well, you were wrong: you have produced a ferment in my brain, owing to you phantoms have arisen in me which I shall have to render real. That was beginning to happen, you have done naught but reinforce and accelerate developments. When one builds up the fire too high under the pot, you know full well that it must boil over.
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