Justine, Philosophy in the Bedroom, and Other Writings

by Marquis de Sade

  March 6 (15 Ventôse, Year IX)—Sade, along with his publisher Nicolas Massé, is arrested in the latter’s office, Sade just happening to be there when the police arrive. They make a search of Massé’s premises and find various manuscripts and printed works either in Sade’s hand or, in the case of the printed works, annotated by him, including Juliette and La Nouvelle Justine. Simultaneously, two other searches are made, one at the house of a friend of Sade’s, which uncovers nothing, and the other at the house in Saint-Ouen where Sade possesses a secret study where there was hung a piece of tapestry depicting “the most obscene subjects, most of which were drawn from the infamous novel Justine.” The tapestry is taken to the Prefecture.

  March 7 (16 Ventôse, Year IX)—Sade and Massé are interrogated. The latter, upon the promise of liberty, reveals where the stock of Juliette is held and turns it over, almost in its entirety, to the police. Sade admits to knowing of the manuscript, but claims he is only the copyist.

  April 2 (12 Germinal, Year IX)—Prefect Dubois, in agreement with the Minister of Police, decides that a “trial would cause too much of a scandal which an exemplary punishment would still not make worthwhile.” It is therefore decided to “place” Sade in Sainte-Pélagie prison33 as “administrative punishment” for being the author of “that infamous novel Justine” and of that “still more terrible work Juliette.”

  April 5 (15 Germinal, Year IX)—Sade is incarcerated in Sainte-Pélagie.

  1802. Aet. 62

  May 20 (30 Floréal, Year X)—From Sainte-Pélagie, where he is still held, Sade writes to the Minister of Justice saying that as a captive in the “most frightful prison in Paris,” he demands to be freed or tried. He swears he is not the author of Justine.

  1803. Aet. 63

  March 14 (23 Ventôse, Year XI)—Sade is transferred to Bicêtre prison.

  April 27 (7 Floréal, Year XI)—At the instigation of Sade’s family, the prisoner is transferred from Bicêtre (“a frightful prison”) to the Charenton Asylum, under the escort of a policeman. His family agrees to pay his board at Charenton, which is set at 3000 francs annually.34

  1804. Aet. 64

  May 1 (11 Floréal, Year XII)—The Prefect orders an examination of Sade’s papers and has the prisoner informed that if he continues to show himself rebellious he will be sent back to Bicêtre.

  June 20 (1 Messidor, Year XII)—Sade sends the newly constituted Senatorial Commission for Individual Liberty a strong protest against his arbitrary detention, noting that he has now spent four years in prison without coming to trial. Six weeks later35 he repeats the plea in a letter to M. Fouché, Minister of Police.

  September 8 (21 Fructidor, Year XII)—The Prefect of Police Dubois submits a statement to the Minister of Police in which he describes Sade as an “incorrigible man” who was in a state of “constant licentious insanity” and of a “character hostile to any form of constraint.” His conclusion is that there is good reason to leave him in Charenton where his family pays his board and where they desire he remain, to safeguard the family honor.

  1805. Aet. 65

  April 14 (24 Germinal, Year XIII)—On this Easter Sunday, Sade takes communion and takes up the collection in the parish church of Charenton-Saint-Maurice.

  May 17 (27 Floréal, Year XIII)—Prefect Dubois, learning of this liberty granted Sade, reprimands the director of Charenton, M. de Coulmier, warning him that Sade is a prisoner who must “under no circumstances be allowed out without express authorization from me” and asking: “Moreover, did it not occur to you that the presence of such an individual [in church] could not fail to inspire a feeling of horror and cause public disturbances?”

  August 24 (6 Fructidor, Year XIII)—Sade draws up and signs a memorandum outlining the final conditions to which he will agree to his family’s proposed purchase of all his property (save Saumane) in return for a life annuity.

  1806. Aet. 66

  January 3036—Sade draws up his last will and testament.37

  March 5—He begins the final draft of his Histoire d’Émilie.

  July 10—He completes the first volume which he entitles Mémoires d’Émilie de Valrose, ou les Egarements du libertinage.

  October 14—Louis-Marie de Sade takes part in the battle of Jena, on the staff of General Beaumont.

  1807. Aet. 67

  April 25—After thirteen months and twenty days work, Sade completes the revision of Histoire d’Émilie, which occupies seventy-two notebooks and forms the four final volumes of a large ten-volume work, the general title of which, “definitively decided upon today,” is: Les Journées de Florbelle, ou la Nature dévoilée, suivies des Mémoires de l’abbé de Modose et des Aventures d’Émilie de Volnange.

  June 5—The police seize several manuscripts in Sade’s room at Charenton, presumably Les Journées de Florbelle which Sade is never to see again and which will be burned shortly after his death.

  1808. Aet. 68

  June 14—Louis-Marie de Sade is wounded at Friedland. His valorous conduct earns him mention in the military dispatches.

  June 17—Sade writes to Napoleon, describing himself as the father of a son who has distinguished himself on the battlefield and requesting liberation.

  August 2—The Chief Medical Officer of Charenton, Antoine-Athanase-Royer-Collard, describes to the Minister of Police all the disadvantages that the presence of “the author of that infamous novel Justine” entails. “The man is not mad,” Royer-Collard notes. “His only madness is that of vice. . . . Finally, it is rumored that he is living in the asylum with a woman38 whom he passes off as his daughter.” He recommends the suppression of the theater which Sade has organized at Charenton, maintaining it is dangerous for the patients,39 and requests that Sade be transferred to some prison or fortress.

  September 2—In spite of Coulmier’s intervention on Sade’s behalf,40 the Minister decides to transfer the Marquis to Ham prison.

  September 12—M. de Coulmier pays a personal call upon the Minister to appeal against the decision to transfer Sade out of Charenton, at least until such time as Sade’s family makes up the back payments due for Sade’s board and keep.41

  September—Dr. Deguise, the Charenton surgeon, states that in Sade’s plethoric condition, to transfer him would endanger his life.

  November 11—Sade’s family requests a postponement of his transfer, and the Minister agrees to defer it to April 15, 1809.

  1809. Aet. 69

  April 21—The transfer is postponed indefinitely.

  June 9—Louis-Marie de Sade, Lieutenant in the 2nd Battalion of the Isembourg Regiment, is ambushed near Mercugliano on the road to Otranto, where he is on way to rejoin his regiment, and is killed.

  1810. Aet. 70

  July 7—At about 10:00 A.M., Madame de Sade, who has been blind for some time, dies at Échauffour Castle.

  August 28—Sade sells his Mazan estates to Calixte-Antoine-Alexandre Ripert for the sum of 56,462 francs 50 centimes, which is collected by Sade’s children as their mother’s heirs.

  October 18—The Count de Montalivet, Minister of the Interior, issues a harsh order: “Considering that M. de Sade . . . is suffering from the most dangerous of insanities, contact between him and the other inmates poses incalculable dangers, and for as much as his writings are no less demented than his speech and conduct. . ., I therefore order the following: That Monsieur de Sade be given completely separate lodging so that he be barred from all communication with others . . . and that the greatest care be taken to prevent any use by him of pencils, pens, ink, or paper. The director of the asylum is made personally responsible for the execution of this order.”

  October 24—M. de Coulmier acknowledges receipt of the Minister’s order and, noting that he does not have at his disposal at Charenton an isolated area such as the Minister requests for Sade, asks that Sade be transferred elsewhere. He further points out to Count Montalivet that “he credits himself with being the head of a humanitarian establishment” and would find it humiliating to see
himself become “a jailer” or one given to the persecution of a fellow creature.

  1811. Aet. 71

  February 6—A police report against two booksellers, Clémendot and Barba, who are selling Justine both in the provinces and in Paris, and against the former who is accused of secretly printing and distributing a set of one hundred engravings for Justine that had come into his possession.

  March 31—Sade is interrogated at Charenton.

  July 9—Napoleon, sitting in Privy Council, decides to keep Sade in detention at Charenton.

  November 14—Sade is again questioned at Charenton, this time by Count Corvietto; in contrast to the March interrogation, when he was treated very rudely, Corvietto is “very gentle and decent.”

  1812. Aet. 72

  June 9—The Minister of Police informs M. de Coulmier that he may inform the interested party that the Emperor, in meetings of the Privy Council of April 19 and May 3, has decided to continue Sade’s detention.

  October 6—Some occasional verses, of which Sade is the author, are sung to His Eminence Cardinal Maury, Archbishop of Paris, who is visiting the Charenton Hospice.

  1813. Aet. 73

  March 31—Sade is subjected to a third interrogation, “very severe but very short.”

  May 6—A ministerial order prohibits any further theatrical spectacles at Charenton.

  May 9—Sade begins to put the finishing touches on his Histoire secrète d’Isabelle de Bavière, which he completes four months later.

  . . . .—Publication of the two-volume work La Marquise de Gange, of which Sade is the anonymous author.

  1814. Aet. 74

  April 11—Napoleon abdicates.

  May 3—Solemn entry into Paris of Louis XVIII.

  May 31—M. de Coulmier is replaced as Director of Charenton by M. Roulhac de Maupas.

  September 7—M. Roulhac de Maupas calls the attention of the Minister of the Interior, Abbé de Montesquiou, to the necessity of removing from Charenton the Marquis de Sade who cannot be properly guarded and whose age and state of health do not permit seclusion. He further notes that, in spite of his commitments to pay for his father’s board undertaken at the time of his transfer from Bicêtre to Charenton, M. de Sade fils has refused to pay arrears on the board amounting to 8934 francs, although he has acquired his father’s properties which guaranteed the dowry of his late mother, and denies that he owes his father’s creditors anything, maintaining all these debts antedated his own mortgage.

  October 21—The Minister of the Interior invites Count Beugnot, Director-General of the Police, to make a decision concerning M. de Sade, who cannot remain at Charenton without grave consequences and who should be removed to a State prison.

  December 1—Sade, whose health has been failing for several months, ceases to be able to walk.

  December 2—This day, a Saturday, Sade’s son Donatien-Claude-Armand, comes to visit his father and asks the newly appointed student-doctor, L.-J. Ramon, to spend the night with him. On his way to the appointment, Dr. Ramon meets Abbé Geoffrey on his way out of Sade’s room, Sade having made an appointment with the Abbé for the following morning. Ramon reports Sade’s breathing as “noisy and labored” and he helps him take a few sips of herbal tea to help ease the pulmonary congestion from which Sade is suffering. Shortly before ten, the old man dies without a murmur, either from the above-named pulmonary congestion or from an “adynamic and gangrenous fever,” according to the official report made to the director and to the police.

  In spite of the strict instructions to the contrary in his will, Sade is buried in the Charenton cemetery. The burial costs sixty-five livres, of which twenty for the cross, ten for the coffin, six for the chapel, nine for candles, six for the chaplain, eight for the bearers, and six for the gravedigger.

  Seven Letters (1763–1790)

  LETTER I (1763)

  To Mademoiselle de L. . .1

  At Avignon, this 6th April 1763.2

  Perjurer! ungrateful wretch! pray tell what has happened to those sentiments of lifelong devotion? who compels you to inconstancy? who obliges you to break the bonds which were to unite us forever? Did you take my departure for flight?3 Did you believe that I could exist and flee from you? ’Tis doubtless from your own that you were judging the sentiments of my heart. I obtain the consent of my parents; my father, with tears in his eyes, asks of me naught but one last favor, and that is to come to Avignon to be married. I leave; I am assured that all efforts will now be bent toward persuading your father to bring you to these parts. I arrive, God knows with what alacrity and eagerness, in this region which is to become the witness of my happiness, a lasting happiness, a happiness that nothing will ever again be able to trouble. . . . But what is to become of me—dear God! can I ever survive this sorrow?—what is to become of me when I learn that, inspired by some noble impulse, you cast yourself at your father’s knees to ask him to give up all further thought of this marriage, saying that you have no wish to be forced into any alliance. Vain and foolish reason, dictated by perfidy, O thou ungrateful, faithless wretch! You were afraid of being united to someone who adored you. These bonds of an everlasting chain were becoming a burden to you, and your heart, which is seduced by fickleness and frivolity alone, was not discerning or sensitive enough to be conscious of all the charms such bonds entailed. ’Twas the thought of leaving Paris that frightened you; my love was not enough for you; I was unable to make it last. Fie, monster, born to make my life miserable, stay there in Paris forever! May it one day become, through the deceitfulness and knavery of the scoundrel who will replace me in your heart, as odious to you as your own double dealing has made it in my eyes! . . . But what am I saying? Oh, my dear, my divine friend! the sole support of my heart, the only love of my life, where, my beloved, is my despair leading me? Forgive the outpourings of a poor wretch who no longer knows himself, for whom death, after the loss of what he loves, is the sole recourse. Alas! I draw near to it, this moment which will deliver me from the day I detest; my only wish now is to see it arrive. What can make me cling to a life whose sole delight was you? I lose you; I lose my existence, my life, I die, and by the cruelest of deaths. . . . My mind wanders, my love, I am no longer myself; let the tears which becloud my eyes, flow. . . . I cannot survive such misfortunes.—What are you doing?. . . what has become of you?. . . What am I in your eyes? An object of horror? of love?. . . Tell me, how do you view me? How can you justify your conduct? Good Heavens, perhaps mine cannot be justified in your eyes! Ah, if you will love me, if you love me as you have always loved me, as I love you, as I adore you, as I shall adore you all my life, pity our misfortunes, pity the crushing blows of fortune, write me, try and justify your actions. . . . Alas! it will not be all that difficult: what most pains and racks my heart is to find you guilty. Oh, how greatly ’tis relieved when it recognizes its error! If you love me, I do not for a moment doubt that you have opted for the convent. The last day I saw you, you remember, the day of all our misfortunes, you told me you would be delighted if they sent you to a convent. If you want us to be able to see each other, you know ’tis the only decision for you to take; for you know full well that it will be impossible for me to see you at your house. My father, when he sent me word of your action, gave me the choice of remaining here as long as I liked or rejoining him immediately. ’Tis your reply which will decide me; let it not languish; I shall count the days. Grant me the means of seeing you upon my arrival. I do not for a moment doubt that I shall find them in your letter. Whatever does not seem positive I shall take as a refusal; any refusal will be clear proof of your inconstancy, and your inconstancy my most certain sentence of death. But I cannot believe you have changed. What reason could bring you to? Perhaps this voyage of mine alarmed you: but, alas, let us be quite clear as to the veritable reasons for it. They blinded me, they made me believe I was rushing into the arms of happiness, whereas all they were trying to do was remove me from it. . . .4 My dear love, do not abandon me, I beseech you; earnestly request the c
onvent. As soon as I receive your letter I shall be off, and at your side. What tender moments we shall relive! . . . Take care of your health; I am working to restore my own. But no matter what the state of yours may be, nothing will keep me from offering you the most tender proof of my love. Throughout this affair, I believe you have had good reason, and will again, to be satisfied with my discretion. But I have merely done my duty; ’tis not that I am giving myself credit. . . . Beware of inconstancy; I do not deserve it. I confess to you that I shall be furious, and there is no horror I shall not commit. The little business of the c. . .5 ought to make you be sparing of me. I confess that I shall not conceal it from my rival, nor will that be the only secret I shall confide to him. There are no lengths—this I swear to you—to which I shall not go, no horrors to which I shall not stoop. . . . But I blush to think of employing these means to keep you. I wish to, and must, talk to you only of your love. Your promises, your oaths, your letters which I read incessantly every day, alone should keep you bound to me; I appeal only to them. I beg of you not to see. . . . . .; he is unworthy to appear before you. In a word, my dear love, let me count upon your constancy! My absence will not be long; I await only your letter to depart. . . . Let it be good and kind, I beg of you, and may I find the means to see you when I arrive. I desire, I think of, I crave only you. . . . No, I am not afraid of being effaced from your heart; I have not deserved it. Love me still, my dear, and trust in time. And perhaps there will come a time, a time not far off, when you will not be so afraid to come into my family. When I am the head of it, my wishes will dictate my choice, and perhaps I shall then find you more determined. I need to be comforted and consoled, to be reassured, to receive proof of your constancy: everything alarms me. Your heroic act has dealt a blow to me. I assure you and give you my word of honor that nothing is more certain than what I am writing you, that I await naught but your reply to set out. My father has sent for me again; do not think that it is for a marriage. My mind is fully made up not to marry, and never have I aspired to do so. I am employing every means necessary, and those I deem the best, to make certain this letter reaches you. Do not fail to give the woman who delivers it to you a receipt, in your own hand, formulated in these terms: I acknowledge receipt of a letter from such-and-such a person. Follow this formula to the letter, for she is not to be paid what is promised her until she delivers the receipt into my hands. If you care to see me, do not delay your reply. I am counting the days. Try to make certain I receive it promptly, and that I find the means to see you when I arrive. Love me always; be faithful to me, if you do not wish to see me expire of sorrow. Adieu, my beloved child, I adore you and love you a thousand times more than life itself. Come, now, say what you will, but I swear that we shall never be aught but one for the other.6