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 the prisoner he visited in Vincennes; and while you are about it, go see your protector Le Noir and tell him to arrange to let me have 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 full 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.
1. Monsieur de Montreuil. The full family name was Cordier de Montreuil.
2. One of Madame de Montreuil’s henchmen.
3. The reference is to the Montreuil country residence, the chateau d’Echaf-four.
4. From Luis Molina, a sixteenth-century Jesuit, much disliked by the Jansenists because of his doctrine of grace, which they staunchly opposed.
77. To Madame de Sade
[July 1783]
My amiable queen, there is truly nothing more entertaining than the insolence of your lackeys. Were one less than certain that your numbers are riddles (squaring nicely, by the way, with my manner of thinking), 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! What a farce! ’Tis for you, charming princess, ’tis for you who are on your way to sup in intimate elegance with Madame Turnkey (at the hospital today), I say ’tis 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,1 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’s Confessions, now there’s an excellent thing, especially after having sent me Lucretius and the dialogues of Voltaire; that demonstrates great judgment, profound discernment on the part of 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 lies 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 like yourselves, 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! For me, good is a state both uncomfortable and disagreeable, 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 evil in order to destroy 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.
Had I been given Monsieur le Six2 to cure, I’d have proceeded very differently, for instead of locking him up amongst cannibals, I would have cloistered him for a while with some whores, I would have supplied him whores in such numbers that damn me if after these seven years there’d be a drop of fuel now left in his lamp! When you have a steed too fiery to bridle, you gallop him over rough terrain, you don’t shut him up in the stable. Thereby might you have guided Monsieur le Six into the right path, into what they call the path of honor. You’d have brought to an end these philosophical subterfuges, these devious practices Nature disavows (as though Nature had anything to do with all this), these dangerous flights of an all too ardent imagination which, ever in hot pursuit of happiness and never able to find it anywhere, finishes by substituting illusions for reality and indecent detours for lawful pleasure . . . Yes, in the middle of a harem Monsieur le Six would have become the friend of women; he would have discovered and felt that there is nothing so beautiful, nothing so great as her sex, and that outside of her sex there is no salvation. Occupied solely in serving ladies and in satisfying their delicate desires, Monsieur le Six would have sacrificed all of his. Indulging in none but seemly practices, decency would have become a habit with him, and that habit would have accustomed his mind to quelling penchants that had hitherto prevented him from pleasing. The whole treatment would have ended with our sufferer appeased and at peace; and lo! see how out of the depths of vice I would have enticed him back to virtue. For, once again, to a very vicious heart, virtue is but a lesser vice. Think not that ’tis child’s play to retrieve a man from the abyss; your mere proposal to rescue him will cause him to cling tight to where he is. Content yourself with having him conceive a liking for things milder in their form but in substance the same as those in which he is wont to delight. Little by little you will lift him up out of the cloaca. But if you hurry him along, jostle him, if you attempt to snatch everything away from him all at once, you will only irritate him further. Only by slow degrees is a stomach accustomed to a diet; you destroy it if you suddenly deprive it of food. True, there are certain spirits (and of these I have known only one or two) so heavily mired in evil, and who unfortunately find therein such charm, that however slight it were, any reform would be painful for them; ‘twould seem they are at home in evil, that they have their abode there, that for them evil is like a natural state whence no effort to extricate them might avail: for that some kind of divine intervention would be required and, unhappily, heaven, to whom good or evil in men is a matter of great indifference, never performs miracles on their behalf. And, strangest of all, profoundly wicked spirits are not sorry for their plight; all the inquietudes, all the nuisances, all the cares vice brings in its train, these, far from becoming torments to them, are rather delights, similar, so to speak, to the rigors of a mistress one loves dearly, and for whose sake one would be aggrieved not to have to suffer upon occasion. Yes, my fairest of the fair, by God’s own truth, well do I know a few spirits of this kind. Oh! and how dangerous they are! May the Eternal spare us, thou and me, ever from resembling them, and to obtain His mercy let us both before we lay ourselves in our beds kneel down and recite a Paternoster and an Ave Maria with an Oremus or two in honor of Mr. Saint [real name excised in letter3]. (’Tis a signal.)
With a great kiss for each of your buttocks.
I would remind you that you have sent me beef marrow in the past when the weather was just as warm as it is at present, and that I have none left; I beseech you to send me some without fail by the 15th of the month. Also, two night-ribbons, so as not to have to wait when one needs replacing: the widest and darkest you are able to find.
Herewith the exact measurements for a case I would be obliged if you would have made for me, generally similar to the other you sent me but with these dimensions, to be observed to the sixteenth of an inch and
with a top that screws on three inches from the end. No loops, no ivory clasps like the last time, because they don’t hold. This case (since your confessors must have an explanation for everything) is to store rolled-up plans, prints, and several little landscapes I’ve done in red ink. And I believe indeed [one or two words obliterated] were it for a nun, ought to put [several words obliterated]. Kindly attend to this errand as soon as possible; my plans and drawings are floating loose everywhere about, I don’t know where to put them.
Those who tell you I have enough linen are wrong. I am down to four wearable shirts and am completely without handkerchiefs and towels. So send me what I have requested, will you please, and put a stop to your silly joking upon this subject. Send me linen, plenty of linen . . . Bah! never fear, I’ve plenty of time ahead of me to wear it out.
1. A police sheriff.
2. That is, himself. Having been incarcerated in cell number 6 in Vincennes, he took to referring to himself as Monsieur le Six, the gentleman in 6.
3. Not by Sade. Some sensitive soul, perhaps Renée-Pélagie, carefully cut the name out of the letter.
78. A Certificate
August 31, 1783
I the undersigned do hereby acknowledge that the farce of August 31, 1783—save on the point of it being a trifle monotonous, for there have been some eighteen others that resemble this latest to a tee—but save on that one point, I say, I certify that the said farce was performed to utter perfection. The said guard was most insolent, he said, and I quote accurately, that he could no longer lend any more of his money, that he had a wife and children to feed; that when one wanted to incur an expense one ought to have the means to pay for it, and that one should not be expected to be treated any differently than the others when one was not in a position to ask any favors; that he no longer desired to provide any further monetary advances, all the gentleman needed to do was have his money sent sooner, etc., all of which was performed with zeal, vigor, and character. He flushed crimson. His leprosy (for ’tis worth your knowing that they choose to have me waited upon here by a leper and that, however much I protest, ’tis a complete waste of breath on this score; one day I shall inquire whether ’tis the intention of the king to have the prisoners served by lepers), his leprosy, I say, turned bright purple; and I further certify that Lekain1 in his mightiest rages had never been more handsome in his life.
In witness whereof I have delivered over to him the present certificate, so that his full gratuities may be paid him punctually and rigorously.
de Sade
1. Henri Louis Cain (a.k.a. Lekain) (1729-1778), a famous French actor of the era, most famous for his roles in Voltaire’s works.
79. To Madame de Montreuil
September 2, 1783
I importune you but very rarely, Madame, and you must perforce believe that when I do ’tis solely because I have a most urgent and pressing need to do so. Of all the many blows you have visited upon me since I have been here, none has affected me more deeply than the one wherewith you have torn my heart asunder. You are involved in a concerted effort to make me believe that my wife is bringing dishonor upon her name. Is it possible, great God, is there a mother anywhere who either tolerates these infamies or does her best to try to persuade her son-in-law that they are true! Your scheme is ghastly, but what lies behind it is easily brought to light, Madame. You would like to see me separate from my wife, and once I am out of here, make sure I would make no effort to take up with her again. How badly you have misjudged how I feel about her if you could even have thought that anything in the world might have produced such an effect. Were you to depict her to me holding a dagger in her hand, trying to thrust it into my heart, I would throw myself at her feet and say to her: Strike, I have well deserved it. No, Madame, nothing, nothing in the universe will ever be capable of distancing me from her, and I shall continue to worship her no matter what revenge she may seek to take. I have too much to atone for, great God, I have too many misdeeds to rectify! Do not allow me to die in a hopeless state without being able to make her forget the errors of my ways. Love, esteem, tenderness, gratitude, respect, all the feelings a soul can muster, are united in me for her, and ’tis in the name of all these, I must confess, Madame, rather than any cry of conscience, that I beseech you to give her back to me as soon as I am out of here. Do you think for a moment that having been imprisoned as long as I have has not provided me with a great deal of food for thought? Do you truly believe that my detention has not caused me to be smitten with remorse? I ask only one favor of you, Madame, and that is to let me prove it. I have no desire whatsoever that you take my word for it. I want to be put to the test. Let us be allowed back together again, under whatever surveillance and in whatever country you may choose. There let us be kept under surveillance from morning till night, for as many years as you like, and at the first sign of any misconduct on my part, however slight, let her be taken from me and may I never be allowed to set eyes upon her again, and let me one last time be deprived of my freedom or, if one prefers, let them take my life; I am ready to agree to anything. Need I say more, Madame? Can I open my heart to you any more fully? Pray have a modicum of pity for my situation, I beseech you! It is atrocious. I know that by so saying I am offering you the chance to gloat, but I care not one whit. I have, unfortunately, too greatly troubled your tranquillity, Madame, to have the slightest regret about giving you the chance to gloat at my expense. If your goal was to see me groveling in mortification, in the depths of humiliation, in a state of despair and wretchedness as profound as any man can suffer, then revel to your heart’s content, Madame, enjoy your triumph, for you have reached your goal; I defy anyone to say that there is any creature in the world whose life is more precious than hers is to me. May heaven be my witness when I say that if I am to keep her ’tis only for the purpose of trying to put my life to rights again, ’tis only in an effort to make amends to the virtuous and sensitive soul of your adorable daughter to whom, in the frightful delirium of my wild aberrations, I caused great pain and anguish. Ah! great God above, how deep is my despair and how I rue having made her suffer! Also, Madame, religion and Nature both keep you from pursuing your revenge unto the grave; they forbid you from turning your back on my repentance, and from spurning my heartfelt desires to make amends. To that ardent prayer I add another, Madame, and that is to beseech you most earnestly not to have me released from prison if you have no intention of seeing me reunited with my wife. Do not, I beg of you, toss me into a new abyss of misfortunes; do not have me released only to have me rearrested the next day. For that is what would happen, I warn you, Madame. I cannot for a moment see myself a free man unless ’tis flying into her arms. Were you to swallow her up somewhere in the entrails of the earth, I should go and seek her out and spirit her away. The minute I am free I shall go see Monsieur Le Noir and ask him again for my wife. If he turns me down, I shall rush to the minister, and if that effort fails, or any other I might undertake, I shall cast myself at the feet of the king and ask him to restore to me what heaven has given me and that no man can put asunder. Were they to place all sorts of obstacles in my way, were they to toss me back into prison, well then, I’d prefer that, I’d prefer that a thousand times more than living free without her. At least in irons my conscience is at peace; it takes comfort in the knowledge that ’tis impossible for me to make amends to her. If and when I am free, my movements will be unrestricted, and ’tis an absolute necessity then that I either make it up to her or lose my life. Do not thrust me back once again into new calamities, I beseech you, Madame, and do not have me released from here unless I am to be reunited with her, and if I am not, then leave me where I am. Have the kindness to let me see her as soon as possible, and I entreat you to make sure we can be alone. I have some very interesting and very special things to tell her, that you would be well advised be kept from third parties, no matter whether or not you believe they are completely trustworthy. Allow me to say, Madame, that as I finish this letter— which I swear will be
the last letter I shall write to whomever, no matter how long my suffering may be—allow me to say that I throw myself at your feet and ask your forgiveness for everything that might have been able to wrench me from the horror of my fate. Do not take this letter as the despair of a man who has lost his mind, but view it rather as reflecting the true feelings of my heart. I hopefully await the results of your commiseration, Madame; I implore it without shame, and with you I blush for naught but my misdeeds.
I am respectfully, Madame, your most humble and most obedient servant.
de Sade
80. To Madame de Sade
[Early September 1783]
I beseech you to write me. I am worried about your health. You have never let as much time go by without my hearing from you. To try to destroy a husband’s interest in his wife is one of the most sublime policies that has ever existed; there’s something truly angelic about it, an act I can only term inspired. By great acts are great men known! I am convinced that the man who described the state of my suffering by saying:
And his wife let eight or ten months go by without writing to him,
oh, yes, I am convinced that the knave who dreamed up a phrase such as that would consider himself greater than Alexander and more profound than Lycurgus. ’Tis very much in the same vein as the homily they din into my head day in and day out. They wrote:
Letters From Prison Page 42