Letters From Prison

by Marquis de Sade

  If therefore neither my behavior nor my reputation stand to gain from this latest act of kindness on your part—if, on the contrary, there are nothing but negatives and, what is more, it disturbs my brain— what purpose will it have served, Madame, I ask you? Your vengeance, true? Ah, yes! I know all too well, ’tis always there one must return, and everything I have just written is quite beside the point. But what does all that mean, so long as I play the sacrificial lamb . . . and you are satisfied? On the contrary, you must surely say to yourself, the greater the damage wrought, the more content I shall be. But should you not already have been sufficiently contented, Madame, by the six months of prison I served in Savoy for the same reason? Am I to believe that five years of afflictions and stigmas were not enough? and was this appalling denouement absolutely necessary, especially after the frightful demonstration I gave you of what lengths this sort of mistreatment could drive me to, by risking my life to escape from it! You must admit that, after that experience, ’tis an act of barbarity on your part to have the same thing inflicted upon me again, and with episodes a thousand times crueler than before and which, having the effect they do on my brain, will at the first possible opportunity have me dashing my head against the bars that presently confine me. Do not reduce me to despair, Madame; I cannot endure this horrible solitude, I feel it. Remember that you will never derive any good from making my soul more savage and my heart immune to feeling, the only possible results of the frightful state in which you have had me put. Give me time to make amends for my errors, and do not make yourself responsible for those into which perhaps I shall again be swept by the dreadful disorder I feel aborning in my mind.

  I am respectfully, Madame, your most humble and most obedient servant.

  DE SADE

  P.S.—If the person from Montpellier2 returns there, I hope it will not be without the most urgent recommendation for her not to breathe a word about the scandalous scene to which you, with your usual wit, made her a witness, a blunder that, considering the circumstances of what her father has been up to,3 is assuredly quite inexcusable.

  1. Joseph Jerome Simeon, a lawyer with the high court of Aix-en-Provence, who drafted a petition to be presented to the king and his council in an effort to overturn in absentia the sentence condemning Sade to death.

  2. Sade is doubtless referring to Catherine Treillet, known at La Coste as Justine, who had accompanied Madame de Sade to Paris in February but was now planning to go home. Before she left Paris in April, Madame de Montreuil had a “private talk” with her, admonishing not to reveal the specifics of that mad winter at La Coste—an admonishment surely accompanied by money.

  3. Catherine’s father had tried to kill Sade by firing a pistol at him point-blank at La Coste. After which, he hurried to Aix and lodged a complaint against the marquis with the procureur général—the attorney general—for kidnapping his daughter.

  4. To Madame de Sade

  April 18, 1777

  ’Tis most rightly said, my dear friend, that edifices constructed in a position such as mine are built only on sand, and that all the ideas one forms are naught but illusions, which crumble to dust as soon as they are conceived. Of the six combinations I figured out all by myself, and upon which I based a hope of some enlightenment in the near future, there remains, thanks be to God, not a single one, and your letter of April 14 caused them to disappear the way the sun’s rays dissipate the morning dew. ’Tis true that on the other hand I did find in that same letter the comforting sentence telling me that I could be quite sure that I shall not stay here one minute longer than the time necessary. I know nothing on earth so reassuring as this expression, so that if ’tis necessary for me to remain here six months, six months I shall remain. That is charming, and verily, those in charge of guiding your style must perforce congratulate themselves upon the progress you are making in their profound art of sprinkling salt on the wounds of the wretched. Indeed, they have succeeded masterfully. I warn you, however, that ’twill not be long before my head explodes because of the cruel life I am leading. I can see it coming, and I hereby predict that they shall have every reason to repent for having used an excessive dose of severity with me, which is so ill-suited to my character. ’Tis for my own welfare, they maintain. Divine phrase, wherein one recognizes all too clearly the ordinary language of imbecility triumphant. ’Tis for a man’s own good that you expose him to maddening conditions, for his own good that you wreck his health, for his own good that you feed him on the tears of despair! So far, I must confess, I’ve not had the pleasure of understanding or experiencing that kind of well-being . . .

  You are wrong, the fools gravely declare to you: this gives you the chance to think things over. ’Tis true, it does make one think, but would you like to know the one thought this infamous brutality has engendered in me? The thought, deeply engraved in my soul, of fleeing as soon as I am able from a country where a citizen’s services count as nothing when it comes to compensating for a momentary lapse, where imprudence is punished as if it were a crime, where a woman, because she is cunning and filled with deceit, finds the secret of enslaving innocence to her caprices, or rather to her commanding and personal interest to bury the veritable crux of the matter; and, far from those whose goal is to harass and annoy, and all their accomplices, of setting off in search of a free country where I can faithfully serve the prince who will provide me with asylum there, and thus may merit from him what I could not obtain in my native land . . . justice and to be left in peace.

  Those, my dear friend, are my sole and unique thoughts, and I aspire to naught but the happy moment when I can put them into effect. We have been misled, you say. Not so . . . I assure you that I was not fooled for one minute, and you ought to remember how, just before your room was filled with a pack of rascals1—who, without producing any order from the king, had come, or so they claimed, to arrest me on the king’s behalf—I told you that I did not trust your mother’s reassuring letter and that since it was full of tenderness, one could be sure that her soul was feeding on a diet of deceit. No, my dear friend, no, I may have been surprised, but as for mistakes I shall admit to none until the day I see that creature turn honest and truthful, which in all likelihood is not just around the corner. In coming here I acted like Caesar, who was wont to say that ‘twere better to expose oneself once in one’s life to the dangers one fears than to live in a constant concern to try to avoid them. That reasoning led him to the Senate, where he knew full well the conspirators were awaiting him. I did the same, and like him I shall always be greater through my innocence and my frankness than my enemies through their baseness and the secret rancors that motivate them. You ask me how I am. But what’s the use of my telling you? If I do, my letter will not reach you. Still, on an off chance, I am going to satisfy you, for I cannot imagine they will be so unfair as to prevent me from replying to something they have allowed you to ask me. I am in a tower locked up behind nineteen iron doors, my only source of light being two little windows each outfitted with a score of bars. For about ten or twelve minutes a day I have the company of a man who brings me food. The rest of the time I spend alone and in weeping. . . There’s my life . . . That is how, in this country, they set a man straight: ’Tis by cutting off all his connections with society, to which on the contrary he needs to be brought closer so that he may be brought back to the path of goodness whence he had the misfortune to stray. Instead of good advice, wise counsel, I have my despair and my tears. Yes, my dear friend, such is my fate. How could anyone fail to cherish virtue when they offer it to you under such divine colors! As for the manner in which I am treated, ’tis in all fairness with civility in all things . . . but so much fussing over trifles, so much childishness that, when I arrived here, I thought I had been transported to the Lilliputians’ isle, where men being only eight inches tall, their behavior must be in keeping with their stature. At first, I found it funny, finding it difficult to get it into my head that people who otherwise appeared to be fairly sensible cou
ld adopt such foolish conduct. Later on I began to lose patience. Finally, I have taken to imagining that I am only twelve years old—’tis more honest than if I were to pretend the others were that age—and this idea of having reverted to childhood somewhat tempers the regret a reasonable person would otherwise feel at seeing himself treated in this manner. But one completely amusing detail I almost forgot is their promptness to spy on you, down to your least facial expression, and to report it on the spot to whomever is in charge. At first I was fooled by this, and my frame of mind, always affected by and attuned to your letters, indiscreetly revealed itself one day when I was especially enjoying a note from you. How quickly your following letters made me realize how foolish I was! From then on I resolved to be as hypocritical as the others, and these days I control myself, so that not even the shrewdest of them can figure out my feelings from my face. Well then, my pet, there’s one virtue I’ve nonetheless acquired! I dare you now to come here and tell me that one gains nothing in prison! As for the walks and the exercise you advised me to take, verily you speak as if I were in some country house where I might do as I please . . . When they let the dog out of his kennel he trots off to spend one hour in a kind of cemetery about forty feet square, surrounded by walls more than fifty feet high, and this charming favor is not yet granted him as often as he would like. You can well imagine—or at least you ought to—how many disadvantages would result from leaving a man the same freedom one allows animals; his health might pick up all of a sudden, and then where the devil would their projects be, they whose only goal is to see him dead? During the sixty-five days I have been here, I have consequently breathed fresh air for five hours all told, on five different occasions. Compare that with the exercise you know I am used to taking, which is absolutely essential for me, and then judge for yourself what state I am in! The result is terrible headaches, which refuse to go away and totally exhaust me, dreadful nervous pains, vapors, and a complete inability to sleep, all of which cannot fail to lead to serious illness sooner or later. But what does that matter so long as the présidente is pleased and so long as her dull-witted husband can say: “That’s all to the good, all to the good, ‘twill make him mull things over.” Farewell, my heart, be well and love me a little: that idea is the only one capable of easing my sufferings.

  As yet they have brought me nothing to sign. There was no need to announce this petition to me so far in advance with nothing concrete to show for it. And what is more, the draft you gave me leads me to believe that I am in for all kinds of lengthy delays. I am therefore going to ask permission to appoint someone my power-of-attorney. First this permission must be obtained, then the attorney must be appointed, informed, made to act. . . Just imagine the delays that will ensue, and what an enormous amount of time it will take! Add to all that the meticulous way in which they hasten to have me sign the necessary papers and you will see that the whole thing adds up to an eternity. ’Tis true, however, I have the consolation of knowing that I shall not stay here one minute longer than the time necessary!

  Once again farewell, my dear good friend. Here’s a long letter which may never reach you, since ’tis not written a la Lilliputienne. No matter, it will not go unseen, and who knows whether, amongst all those who are obliged to see it, you are the one to whom I most directly address it?

  What you tell me of your children pleases me. You surely know how delighted I shall be to embrace them, although I have no illusions about the fact that—despite my affection—’tis upon their account I am suffering at present.

  Rereading my letter, I can see all too plainly that they will never pass it on to you, which is proof positive of the injustice and the horror of everything I am being made to suffer, for if there were nothing but justice and simplicity in all I am experiencing, why would they fear your being told or finding it out? In any case, I shall not write to you again until I positively receive a reply to this one, for what is the purpose of writing to you if you do not receive my letters?

  1. Sade is referring to Madame de Montreuil’s earlier effort to have him arrested at La Coste on January 6, 1774. In connivance with lieutenant-general of police Sartine, she ordered a veritable assault—consisting of three brigades of Marseilles’s deputies plus several constables—made on the chateau, wreaking havoc there. But the marquis was nowhere to be found.

  5. To Madame de Sade

  REFLECTIONS AND NOTES UPON

  THE PETITION IN QUESTION1

  April 21, 1777

  The beginning of the third page is very weak and very poorly done. At least you should have put after the words had stomach pains and vomiting: “but does it follow that creatures who eat all sorts of unwholesome food every day of their lives are justified in ascribing the cause of their indisposition to these candied lozenges?2 However, influenced by the women to whom they related what had taken place between the petitioner and themselves, they did not fail,” etc.

  On page 7, you state that women of this kind would not, or could not, be familiar with the etymology, the properties, and the effects of cantharides vesicatoria.3 That is wrong; such women are often well acquainted with this variety of drug, whose properties have the same virtue as their art, and there are very few among them, I firmly believe, who do not know what it is; and ’tis precisely because they do know what it is that they rushed to take it. It would have been better to say that it were strange indeed that they had not immediately noticed the difference between Spanish fly and poison, and, consequently, if indeed they knew full well the effect of the cantharides, that they pounced upon the poison; but that having found neither the one nor the other, they declared something they were familiar with instead of what they saw very well did not exist at all. Perhaps I may not have expressed my idea clearly enough, but they should have no trouble understanding what I mean. However, at least by adopting the one in the petition rather than claim that these women know neither its etymology, its property, nor its effects, I would at least have said that there was a good chance that women of this sort would not be so familiar with this drug as to be able to identify its taste, etc.

  At the bottom of the same page, a certain fact that is well known should have been added; namely, that all five of those women sat down together to a culinary feast with the money they had earned from the Marquis de Sade. The fact is known and established beyond any doubt. Hence ’tis most likely that the indisposition all five suffered derives therefrom. To prove that those five women were all sick at the same time and fail to mention this salient fact looks highly suspicious, and without certain knowledge of that fact I would be the first to find it most extraordinary that five women seen one after the other by one man, to all of whom he gave something to eat, could all five suffer from a case of indigestion. If in matters as basic as this they consulted the person most directly interested in vindicating himself, and assuming they did not look upon him as some kind of automaton, such essential anecdotes would not be forgotten and everything would certainly proceed more positively.

  By invoking that culinary feast at table, which has been well proven, you destroy your supposition at the beginning of page 8, which still seems dubious. By including it, how much force you add to the first seven lines of page 9: “vomitings may,” etc.! ‘Twas a grave error not to include this point.

  On page 15, at the beginning, I do not like having your assumption that this girl could even have been “sole witness,” because she is not nor could she have been, as is constantly attested by the posture which, according to her own deposition, she maintained throughout the alleged consummation of the crime. In the position she claimed to be in, it is impossible that she could have seen what was going on. Therefore, she could not properly serve as a witness, and her opinion here can be founded only on the fact that at this moment the domestic went up to his master to whisper in his ear, recommending that he not have his way with this girl (believing him on the point of wishing to do so) because, said he, she is surely not in good health. That single incident could have led t
hat creature to suppose what she has dared maintain as certain.

  Note at the bottom of the same page: I do not believe there is any girl who testified in the course of the proceedings that the crime of sodomy had been actively committed with her. So far as I know, I have not read that anywhere or heard it said. In any case, this allegation is perfectly false; no such proposition was ever even made to any of those creatures.4

  The bottom of page 18 and the top of page 19 are very strong, faultlessly done. That in itself ought to destroy their entire thesis, I should think. But I do not like your terminating your petition with an admission of the defendant’s misdeeds; for then, given this admission, the court must perforce find moral delinquency, and the least pronouncement of that sort is, as everybody knows, defamatory. It seems to me it would be preferable to let that be deduced or conjectured, without having the defendant sign this formal admission, which is visibly reprehensible and consequently held against him, and make him loath to sign the said petition.