Please give the enclosed letter to Agatha.3
I beseech you, please reassure me and put my mind at ease; do let me know that you swear you will never again come on foot.
[Letter enclosed]
To Madame Le Faure,
I was much reassured to learn, Mademoiselle, that you were in my wife’s service, and I flattered myself that since you had long been attached to her there was no danger she would do anything stupid or imprudent so long as you were there. But what I have learned revolts me, and I hope and trust you are thoroughly aware that I shall never forgive you for having allowed her to go [through Paris] on foot. Whenever she has need to go out, and her mother is so vile and so loathsome as to not provide her forthwith with her best horse-drawn carriage available, I ask that you order La Jeunesse to go out and fetch for her the best and the handiest he can find on such short notice, even though she might need it for only an hour; and starting today, June 8, the date of this request, if I learn that you have failed to comply with this request, I give you my word of honor that as soon as I am able to, my first concern will be to put my wife into the hands of someone who knows better how to take of her than you obviously do.
I send you my greetings.
1. Madame de Sade had paid her husband a visit at the Bastille the day before, June 7.
2. Probably a code name. Aldonze, or Aldonse, is an old Provençal name that the Count de Sade had wanted as the second name for his son. However, the parish priest at Saint-Sulpice in Paris, unfamiliar with the Provençal name, wrote Alphonse on the birth certificate.
3. Madame Le Faure for many years had been in Madame de Sade’s service.
96. To Madame de Sade
THE SUBLIME REASONING OF MADAME
CORDIER, WIFE OF THE PRESIDING JUDGE
OF THE SAME NAME
September 4, 1784
’Tis a good six months now that they have been driving my son-in-law to distraction with mere trifles: they’ve blinded him in one eye, they’ve lied to him, they’ve only rarely let him out for walks in the fresh air. All of that is nothing; I’m reaping no enjoyment from it, my belly is bloated, I have trouble digesting my food, I toss and turn all night. Enough, O ye torturer! Draw nigh, and do a better job of tormenting my son-in-law, I beg of you.
THE TORTURER
OR THE FORMER BODYGUARD DE LOSME
But Madame, he is behaving like an angel. What the devil do you want us to do to him?
MADAME CORDIER
You rascal, you! What do you think I’m paying you for, to sing his praises? What do I care whether he’s behaving properly or improperly? If you cannot focus on his faults or shortcomings, then punish him for his virtues. Are you completely ignorant of the art of making scenes, of settings traps? Isn’t that what I’m paying you for? My son-in-law’s sentiments are tainted with a streak of nobility? then treat him impudently, and he’ll respond to the bait by telling you to go f-off: when he does, they’ll confine him to his room; consequently, no more walks. And then, think of him as having a noble streak in him, with me who is nothing but noble! —My son-in-law is extremely well organized; he doesn’t like to throw money out of the window. Make him pay 28 livres, seventeen sous for an object that is really worth six livres. I shall split the profit with you. He’ll protest, he’ll claim that he’s being made to pay far more for what he buys than what the article is worth: at which point, inform him that his right to buy has been suspended, to teach him not to be so profligate. Thus, you can see, you imbecile, since you can’t seem to focus on his faults, now he’ll be punished for his virtues! And I shall sleep more peacefully, shit better, etc.
And yet that is the way your atrocious mother so basely reasons! And that is the way for the past twelve years that abominable creature has been leading me down the garden path and sticking her nose in every aspect of my life! And you truly believe that I shall not take my revenge? And you fancy for a moment that the word free will make me forget everything that’s been done to me? If that were ever to happen, you may judge me the most cowardly and most unworthy of men.
At this season of the year the two foods I need for survival are fresh air and fruit: I see very little difference between slitting my throat or being deprived of those two necessities. The food here is horrible. So long as I had the means to supplement the normal prison fare, I said nothing. But when it reaches a point where I can no longer survive, ’tis time to lodge a complaint. Although asking you about my needs or talking to a stone is more or less the same thing, I nonetheless beg you to make a case for the fact that I cannot live without these two things, and let them shift their harassments to something else if that is possible, because they ought not to focus on a person’s basic needs, and for me those two really are. If only you could see the stinking and absolutely abominable so-called meat they serve here, you would easily understand that someone who is used to refined food needs to supplement it out of his own money. They can no longer use the pretense that my complaints are based upon the fact that I steadfastly maintain they are stealing from me, for I have given a sworn statement to the contrary. Thus if they refuse to let me purchase supplementary food ’tis only because of their own anger and ill temper, especially when you are as prompt to pay as I trust you are. Meanwhile, please be so kind as to take care of the following list:
The list of errands, which if one wishes may be detached from the enclosed letter, that I kindly request my wife to send me without delay.
A basket of fruit containing the following:
peaches
12
nectarines
12
pears
12
bunches of grapes
12
half of which should be ripe and ready to eat, the other half less ripe, in a state to last three or four days;
Two jars of jam;
A dozen Palais-Royal biscuits, six of which souffléd with orange flowers, and two pounds of sugar;
Three packages of night candles.
Please do expedite these shipments; and so that my wife not fall back on the pretense that she has no money to pay for them, I enclose a money order herewith.
I ask the Presiding Judge de Montreuil to pay over to Madame de Sade, his daughter, the sum of two hundred livres, said sum to be deducted from the arrears of her dowry, which I shall settle at the time we make a complete and proper accounting as soon as I am in a position to do so. Done at Paris this fourth of September seventeen hundred and eighty-four.
DE SADE
97. To Madame de Sade
[Late 1784]
I know full well that vanille causes overheating and that one should use manille1 in moderation. But what do you expect? When that is all one has—when one is reduced to these two items for one’s source of pleasure! The only thing better I could do would be to deprive myself of everything out of the ordinary. One good hour in the morning for five manilles, artistically graduated from 6 to 9, a good half hour in the evening for three more, these last being smaller—no cause for alarm there, I should think; that seems more than reasonable; besides, when that is what you are used to, no one is any the worse the wear for it—and verily it gets the job done. I challenge someone to come up with anything better—and furthermore, I defy anyone to tell me that I haven’t learned something from being in Vincennes. What’s more, I must say to you that whatever you lose in one area you more than make up for in another, ’tis like the person who is burning down the right side of his house and building it up on the left. For on the side that is not burning—’tis a truly exemplary piece of wisdom, this— sometimes three months in truth, nor is it because the bow is not taut—oh, don’t worry, on that score it is everything you could hope for as far as rigidity goes—but the arrow refuses to leave the bow and that is the most exasperating part2—because one wants it to leave— lacking an object, one goes slightly crazy—and that doesn’t help matters in the least—and ’tis for this reason I tell you that prison is bad, because solitude gives added
strength only to ideas, and the disturbance that results therefrom becomes all the greater and ever more urgent.
But I’ve already made up my mind about the stubborn refusal of this arrow to leave the bow, all the more so because when, ultimately, it does cleave the air—’tis veritably an attack of epilepsy—and no matter what precautions I may take I am quite certain that these convulsions and spasms, not to mention the physical pain, can be heard as far as the Faubourg St. Antoine—you had some inkling of this at La Coste—well, I can tell you ’tis now twice as bad, so you can judge for yourself. In consequence thereof, when you take everything into consideration, there is more ill than good, so I’ll stick with my manille, which is mild and has none of the above painful side effects. —I wanted to analyze the cause of this fainting spell, and believe that ’tis because of the extreme thickness—as if one tried to force cream out of the very narrow neck of a bottle or flask. That thickness inflates the vessels and tears them. That being so, the common wisdom is—the arrow ought to leave the bow more often—to which I agree most wholeheartedly—the only problem being, it simply doesn’t want to—and to try to hold it back when it doesn’t want to leave literally gives me such vapors that I think I’m dying. If I had the means—that is, means other than the manille (for the manille does not send the arrow flying, either), but if I had those other means which I utilize when I am free, the arrow being less recalcitrant and flying more frequently, the crisis of its departure would be neither as violent nor as dangerous—for its danger can be explained by the difficulty of departure. When one wants to enter some place, if the door opens easily you make little effort when you push it; but if the door sticks, the force you must use to open it becomes all the greater, because of the door’s resistance. Here, ’tis the same thing: if the arrow were to fly more frequently, ‘twould be more fluid; and consequently there would be fewer [violent] episodes; and in the reverse situation, terrible episodes, violent efforts if the arrow, filled to overflowing because of its excessive long lack of use, is obliged to tear open its quiver as it departs. —Imagine in your mind a rifle, and in its firing chamber is a bullet, the nature of which is that the longer it remains in the gun the larger it grows; if you fire the rifle within a couple of days, the explosion will be relatively light; but if you leave the bullet there for some time, then it will burst the barrel as it exits.
If you have a doctor you trust completely, explain to him everything I have just told you, for I am quite convinced that there is no one on the face of the earth who experiences a crisis such as I do in this situation; in consequence thereof, as soon as I am free I have every intention of consulting a doctor and explaining the whole problem to him—for ’tis quite certain that I am suffering from a physical or congenital defect that other men do not have, a defect that was less apparent when I was younger but which, as I grow older, is going to manifest itself more and more forcefully, and that idea drives me to despair. As soon as I am able to, I absolutely want to straighten this out, and as a result I shall rigorously follow whatever regime the doctor prescribes. Please don’t contradict me, saying that ’tis not only a physical problem but a moral one as well, for to that I reply that in here I have tried every possible test—forcing myself to be in total self control as long as I possibly can, and yet when the arrow leaves the bow, I not only lose my head completely but it remains in that state for an even greater length of time because the crisis itself is so long and drawn out, and my convulsions are of a violence that are simply beyond description. Not that I get myself all worked up about all this before it happens; on the contrary, the more my mind is in a state of frenzy the less likely it is that the arrow will leave—and that is something you’ve seen and witnessed yourself, and surely remember all too well. And the longer the arrow remains unsheathed, the more worked up one becomes—in consequence thereof all the problems of which you’re aware. If the arrow refuses to fly, and you try to force it, horrible vapors; if you succeed—a frightful crisis—and if you don’t succeed, one’s head is in a hellish state. You be the judge of whether I need to consult a doctor and whether or not I am in dire need of taking baths which, I am quite sure, would help alleviate, if not solve, the problem. —Please reply and let me know if you can tell me what you think about all that, and be assured that you have all my most tender feelings.
1. As noted, Sade and his wife collaborated to thwart the censors with a private code in their letters. The terms vanille, manilles and prestiges have been defined earlier, and if this letter is to be believed, Sade often indulged in manille several times a day, with the help of the cases (étuis) and flasks (flacons) that his faithful, ever-adoring wife provided him.
2. More code words, though easily decipherable: the “arrow” is sperm, the “bow” his penis. Sade is suffering from a sexual dysfunction—and has for many years, according to this letter—where ejaculation is extremely difficult, often resulting in a kind of epileptic fit. It is entirely possible that his wild sexual fantasies are directly related to this dysfunction.
98. To the Author of the News1
July 31, 1785
Sir
The public, overwhelmingly in favor of your latest column concerning an article from the Bastille relative to the adventures of the Count de S., would apparently like you to write more about this famous prisoner, and speaking for myself, since I once had the honor of making the gentleman’s acquaintance, I would be most appreciative if you could furnish me with further anecdotes regarding his detention. I am sending you by the very next post the details you inquired about, and meanwhile I have the honor of being, Sir, etc.
REPLY
In response to your request, Monsieur, I shall try to comply by relating to you a rather amusing anecdote that closely parallels the one I alluded to in my last column.
You have doubtless heard of what is referred to in the Inquisition of Madrid or in our own dungeons of Chatelet as the prison stool pigeon. He’s a kind of well-paid spy, who is locked up in a cell with some poor wretch the authorities are out to get, and from whom they want to elicit some kind of confession or other. This so-called companion of misfortune insinuates himself into his neighbor’s confidence; he sympathizes with him, fills him with some cock and bull story about his own background, offers him a ray of hope, gains his trust, and since the poor wretch wears his heart on his sleeve, the stool pigeon soon entices him to make the confession he was after. After which, the stool pigeon disappears and the poor wretch is hanged.
That Themis, the goddess of law and justice, is so stupid and barbaric as to stoop to such atrocious measures in order to multiply her victims or entice her lackeys into indulging in such dark and dubious pleasures, is a kind of horror that one can only add to all those others wherewith she constantly and continually befouls both herself and her miserable henchmen; but to add one more repulsive tactic to all the others is scarcely enough to raise an eyebrow: blood is drawn, Themis gulps it down, all methods are good and valid providing they do the trick.
But in a royal prison, under the safeguard and protection of the monarch, amongst people who have dedicated their lives to his service, that the snakes of that odious goddess succeed in sending forth their venom as freely as they are wont to do in the filthy nooks and crannies of their own abominable lairs, that is what doubtless strikes one as most surprising, and that indeed is precisely what happened yesterday to the prisoner who was the subject of my most recent article, which I gather you found interesting.
Letters From Prison Page 48