Letters From Prison

by Marquis de Sade

  These explanation and proofs will, I trust, suffice to convince you that while I did make pointed remarks I certainly never made anything up out of whole cloth nor did I say anything that I had not heard directly from the horse’s mouth. And I should add that I should never have made these remarks in the first place had I not been pushed to the brink, and if Monsieur de Rougemont is offended by them, he is a military man and knows the means whereby a man of the military deals with insults and injuries.3 I know he is old and suffers from all sorts of infirmities, but to that I reply that he can name whomever he wishes to act on his behalf. There are plenty of stand-ins who would equalize the affair and make up for our difference in age, and whether by a pair of pistols or simple fisticuffs, I am at his orders. But let him not take his revenge by foul deeds. I shall not be in here forever, and the first thing I shall do upon regaining my freedom—and this I swear to him upon my word of honor—will be to invite him to lunch. Till then, let him treat me with the respect deserving a man who is of a mind to proffer such an invitation, and let him cease and desist from any further foul deeds or atrocities, because if he persists he will prove thereby that he is only worthy of being thrown to the dogs and of being treated in the same manner I treated his turnkey.

  This Saturday morning

  They are refusing to shave me or clean my room: both are nonetheless essential to the maintenance of one’s health and cleanliness, and nowhere else in the world are these basic needs denied any prisoner. I shall not even mention those incarcerated in insane asylums, for there is no prison where the insane are not infinitely better treated than those here who are in full possession of their faculties. I shall mention the animals in the zoo: every week they and their cages are thoroughly cleaned. I hereby request that I not be treated any worse than they are: a bit of charm is all it takes, I suspect, and therefore I beg you to hie yourself to see Monsieur Le Noir, so that he can issue the order to have me given a proper shave and have my room swept. I hasten to have this letter sent on to you so that you can act upon it as soon as possible, for my beard is bothering me no end and my room is beginning to look like a stable. ’Tis absolutely impossible that those orders came from the king, and we all know whence they did come.4

  As for the man whom I thrashed,5 he need worry no more. I give my word that I shall not touch him again, and you can answer for me on that score. I embrace you with all my heart and beg you most urgently to have revised orders issued regarding all that, as well as regarding the repair of my stove.

  1. Sade is still suffering—or feigning to suffer—as the jealous husband.

  2. Why Sade names one and conceals the other is unclear. One can conjecture that, his letter being scrutinized by the censor, the unnamed lady might still be subject to de Rougemont’s revenge.

  3. Sade is (half seriously) proposing a duel with the warden, one of his more unlikely fantasies.

  4. Madame de Montreuil, of course.

  5. Sade’s reputation left him vulnerable to snide remarks and insults on the part of the Vincennes turnkeys, to which Sade responded with like remarks and, on more than one occasion, attempted violence. Since he knew such ripostes inevitably resulted in repression of his walks or, worse, cancellation of his wife’s visits, he tried as best as his hot temper allowed to control himself.

  51. To Monsieur de Rougemont

  [November, 1781]

  I have the honor of bidding good day to Monsieur de Rougemont and asking that he be so kind as to remit to Monsieur Le Noir the enclosed Memoir I would also greatly appreciate if Monsieur de Rougemont would duly inform me of the results of that request. As you will see, ’tis something I sincerely need, and yet if the request is not granted I shall not commit suicide over it, in consequence whereof a yes or no answer can be communicated to me without danger. ’Tis extremely essential however that I know which it is, so that I do not lay myself open to an indiscretion such as the one I was so tactless as to have made yesterday in daring ask who it was who presided at the baptism of the precious child upon whom the gaze of the entire nation is presently focused,1 and concerning whom some beast of a prisoner had the effrontery to be interested, as if a prisoner was a human being or that a prisoner needs must remind himself that he is a citizen of France, My excuses, Sir, I apologize for my indiscretion, and assure you it will never happen again.

  1. The birth of Louis XVI’s son, the new dauphin.

  52. To Mademoiselle de Rousset

  [November, 1781]

  [The beginning of this letter is missing]

  If Gothon left either any precise instructions in her will or if she has any surviving children, my intention is that the former be followed to the letter and that the children be taken care of.1 If she has left any debts, I want them paid and, moreover, I want you to instruct Gaufridy on my behalf to give you one louis, the purpose of which is for a mass to be read for her at the local parish. I am going to instruct Gaufridy simply to give you that louis without providing him with any further details. ’Tis the least I can do for the memory of that poor girl and I fully intend to discharge that obligation.

  Moreover, it would be prudent to ascertain whether or not she either gave, or allowed to be removed by that crowd of sycophants around her, any possessions that belong to the chateau, and if indeed that did happen, then every effort should be made to see to it that those possessions be recovered and returned to the chateau.

  1. Gothon died on October 27 of puerperal fever. A week earlier she had given birth to a boy. Sade only learned of her death the following month. His generous response is not atypical.

  53. To Madame de Sade

  [November-December, 1781]

  Good deeds being engraved in my heart at least as profoundly as un-worthy practices, I have doubtless been sensitive to the fact of how accommodating they were at the time of the accident to my eye1 by allowing the man who was taking care of me to remain with me for a moment while I was taking my meals, as was allowed during my early days here. But in granting me that, they forgot one essential thing: prescribing to me the full extent of what I am permitted to talk about and the things that I perforce must refrain from discussing. Since the mediocrity of my genius does not allow me to perceive those limits, it was essential that I receive a code relative to this subject. Wrack my brain as I may to search out the most trivial and banal subjects of conversation, I still have the misfortune of drawing down upon myself rebukes that, as you well know, are wont to be paid for a trifle dearly, even bearing in mind that I swore on my word of honor to allow others to seek revenge on my behalf. But at least let them take that revenge. I thought I would be eaten alive on two previous occasions, one for having asked the names of the new dauphins godparents, and again when I inquired of the surgeon if he was expecting a large crowd for the dinner being given for the holiday. As you can see, after that ’tis necessary for you to send me a short catalog of the things I can say, so that in the future I do not expose myself to allowing such weighty questions to slip past my lips!

  Here is the crux of the matter. First of all, they gave me, and I have always said it, a most insolent man; the thick and bitter blood of that boor turns even more sour and becomes even more inflamed, over two matters: first, the obligation to remain with me, that is, to do something that is both humane and decent, two cruel conditions for a man of that ilk; the second—the cause of his despair—emanates precisely from the simplicity and sangfroid—or perhaps from the banality—of my conversation. I furnish him nothing for the official reports; I take not the slightest interest in who has informed upon whom; with me there is nothing juicy he can glean,2 in consequence whereof he is absolutely furious, and since he is unable to be rude about serious questions, he recriminates by whining and complaining, all of which does not make life easy for me. Moreover, please explain to me what this man means by his never-ending question: Are you trying to worm something out of me} I simply do not understand that, first because that is the furthest thing from my mind, and secondly because it strikes
me that the man is both clumsy and thick-headed to be asking: Are you trying to worm something out of me? He must therefore be infested with them—I refer to the worms—since he’s so afraid they may be removed from his person. And thus he suddenly is admitting, by the stupidity of his remarks, two things I had always suspected, namely on the one hand that he is party to whatever game is being played here, and on the other that there is an answer to the riddle. So you can see how subtle they are, these people in your employ!3 Yet there they are, chapter and verse. By having made such an effort to debase both of us, your mother and me, she by confining me to a jailer and me by being made the butt of a jailer’s buffoons, she should at least, if there was even the slightest semblance of feeling left in her slimy soul, have had strict instructions issued to those aforesaid buffoons, by decent people who, in passing them on, would have been able to enjoin them to be courteous, decent, and honest in their dealings, both for your mother’s sake and mine, to protect us from such ignominious behavior. But the responsibility for the total lack of civility on the part of this man, already exceedingly uncouth to start, lies with a rogue4 who is even more boorish and uncouth, and these two knaves conspire together, with great outbursts of laughter, as is doubtless called for, since ’tis a kind of amusement for them, you can judge for yourself how that goes down, as you can judge what kind of a hateful and wretched creature it takes to have put someone so close to her into such a situation! I bring up these mundane matters but rarely, and even when I speak of them I do so reluctantly, but since no one is present when that man acts as he does, and since he is in a position to tell you whatever he pleases, ’tis important that I tell you from time to time my side of the story, so that you can at least judge whether things are going as planned.

  For example, today I had my mattresses beaten, and in so doing they stole from me a fourth of the wool they contained. Is that a signal? If it is, give the man a tip, for not only did he do it exceedingly well, but he even went on to reassure me that there was no longer any reason for my mattresses to be beaten or, if there was a reason, they should be done in that manner. Eternal and charming manner of reasoning! With these people, I either have to dispense with whatever I have asked for or else I pay for it very dearly, and even then it turns out to be of an extremely poor quality: there is no middle ground. In the old days, what used to be referred to as highwaymen did not hold the poor peasant for ransom with any greater impunity nor did they act in his regard any more coherently. ’Tis fair to say, the comparison is absolutely apt, and this is what they refer to as a house of correction! ’Tis surrounded by the most churlish and basest of vices that a poor wretch is supposed to learn how to cherish virtue! And ’tis for having failed to respect the ass of a whore that a father runs the risk of never knowing his children’s love, because they are separated from him, of being forcibly kept from his wife’s embrace, from the care of his estates and possessions, that he is robbed, ruined, dishonored, done in, that he is prevented both from guiding his children properly into the world and from improving his own lot, that he rather is made the butt and the plaything of jailers, the fodder for three or four other utter scoundrels, that he is compelled to waste his time, his money, see his health deteriorate, and that he be kept incarcerated for seven years like a madman in an iron cage! And all that, why? What causes can bring about such great effects? Has he betrayed his country? Has he plotted against his wife, his children, his sovereign? Not at all; not a single word even suggesting as much. He has the great misfortune of firmly believing that nothing is less respectable than a whore and the way in which one makes use of her should be of no greater consequence than the manner in which one passes one’s stool. Most assuredly, these are misdeeds, misdeeds of such gravity they deserve to have a man brought low.

  If one were to go and say to King Achem, whose harem contains no fewer than seven hundred concubines, to whom he administers three or four hundred lashes a day to any who commit the slightest infraction, and who tries out his army sword on their heads; or to the Emperor of Golconda, who never goes out for a walk except on the backs of a dozen women arranged in the form of an elephant and who immolates a dozen of them with his own hand whenever a prince of royal blood dies; if, I say, one were to go and say to these gentlemen that in Europe there is a small parcel of earth in which one dismal man retains in his employ, day in and day out, some three thousand rogues whose task it is to verify the manner in which the citizens of this little parcel of earth (people who declare themselves to be extremely enlightened) attach the greatest importance to spermatic matters; and that there are dungeons and prisons ready and waiting, gallows constructed, especially for those members of this extremely enlightened people who have not been able to understand that ‘twas a major crime to loosen the floodgates to the right rather than to the left; and that the slightest overheating of the head in a moment such as this, when nature dictates that one lose it completely, but when the dismal man of whom I spoke would have us retain full control of one’s senses, such a person was sentenced to death or sent to prison for twelve to fifteen years; if, I say, if one were to go and report all this to the kings I have just named, you’d have to agree that ‘twould be only normal that they in turn lock up the man who bore such news . . . But that’s because these people are not civilized, they do not have the great good fortune of being enlightened by the flame of Christianity, they are but slaves whereas we, on the contrary, are very Christian, extremely civilized, and most enlightened.

  O maker of this benighted little round ball, you who with a single breath has perhaps brought into being ten billion other little worlds such as ours in the immensity of space, you for whom the loss of these ten billion worlds would cost you not even so much as a sigh of regret, how you must be amused by all these imbecilities on the part of the tiny ants wherewith it has pleased you to sprinkle your globes, how you must laugh at King Achem who whips seven hundred women, at the emperor of Golconda who turns them into post horses, as you must chuckle too at that dismal man who would have us keep our head about us when we are losing our c____! Farewell, my darling wife.

  1. Sade uses the term “accident,” but probably means “eye problems,” from which he has been suffering for some time, a condition known as keratitis.

  2. Then, as now, a habit of the guards was to try to entrap prisoners into saying or revealing something that could be held against them.

  3. Again, Sade is assuming that these baitings are the work of la président

  4. De Rougemont, of course.

  54. To Abbé Amblet

  [January, 1782]

  I am more or less in agreement with Monsieur de Buffon.1 What I like about love, and the only thing about it I deem worthy, is the climax thereof. Trying to apply metaphysics to love is, to my mind, not only extremely stupid but also monstrous, and the only exception I make to that is when I am forced to intersperse a bit of it in my works, in keeping with the demands of dramatic art.

  Accordingly, I desire most urgently, as soon as I am free, that the slightly less restricted display of my talents in that undertaking will have no greater success than that it has just had on the part of those who have set Monsieur Amblet’s tongue a-wagging. And ‘twill be with the utmost delight that, once again giving free rein to my own true nature, I shall forsake the brushes of Molière for those of Aretino.2

  The former, as you can well see, earned me a bit of fame and notoriety in the capital of Guyana; the latter paid me six pleasant little months of minor indulgence in one of the first cities of the kingdom, and forced me to spend two months in Holland without spending a penny of my own money. What a difference!

  1. Count Georges Louis Leclerc (1707-1788), who wrote under the name Buffon, was a French naturalist and the author of Natural History, one of the many scientific works Sade read in Vincennes.

  2. Pietro Aretino (1492-1556), satirical licentious author whose daring clearly inspired Sade. In prison, Sade had devoted much of his overt writing up till now to drama. Here he g
ives his old tutor fair warning that, once free, he intends to bend his talents to more scurrilous forms.

  55 To Abbé Amblet

  [January, 1782]

  The people of this world must be more than a little annoyed to see themselves depicted in such a light. ’Tis not, it seems to me, up to him who belies so forcefully the tableau to portray them in such odious features. The world has therefore changed greatly since I left it. As I remember, in former times solace and consolation were more or less reserved for those who suffered or were wanting, and going on that assumption I thought myself deserving of more than my fair share. Without questioning you on the matter, you nonetheless offer me one considerable consolation, for if people are indeed as you portray them, then one ought to have few regrets at having violated the laws of their society: thus my soul is at peace again, and for that I thank you, for I am indebted to you. With the exception that I have little doubt, if tomorrow I were to be sent to the gallows, you would write a different letter. I thought ‘twas uniquely reserved to those lacking a soul to lend their pen to the furies of revenge, but you convince me that there is a feeling in the heart of even the most decent of men who can at times cause him to turn his back on all the others. Even Madame la présidente de Montreuil, whose sole charm is to make sure I have a falling out with everyone, and who to that purpose—the way whores do to soldiers—bends her every talent and effort, often forgets that her family tree is far more beset with unfortunate slander than mine. Let her simply go back one or two generations, no more, on either her side of the family or her husband’s—I shall not elaborate further—and she will find a poor miserable creature who surely often cried from the depths of her heart: “Be fair, even if you cannot bring yourself to be tolerant, and learn that one ought not to humiliate when one has reason to blush oneself; that fortune can give you the right to commiserate with misfortunes equal to your own but not the right to punish them.”