Clervil fell silent. He glanced at Franval and saw that he was petrified with sorrow. His eyes were fixed and from them tears were flowing, but no expression managed to cross his lips. Clervil asked him why he had found him in this half-naked state. In two words, Franval related to him what had happened.
“Ah, Monsieur,” cried the generous Clervil, “how happy I am, even in the midst of all the horrors which surround me, to be able at least to ease your situation. I was on my way to Basel in search of you, I was going to acquaint you with all that had happened, I was going to offer you the little I possess. . . . Take it, I beg you to. As you know, I am not rich, but here are a hundred louis, my life’s savings, they are all I own. I demand that you . . .”
“Oh noble and generous man,” Franval cried, embracing the knees of that rare and honorable friend, “why me? Do I need anything, after the losses I have suffered? And from you, you whom I have treated so miserably, ’tis you who fly to my help.”
“Must we remember past wrongs when misfortune overwhelms him who has done them to us? When this happens, the only revenge we owe is to alleviate his suffering. And what point is there in adding to his grief when his heart is burdened with his own reproaches? . . . Monsieur, that is the voice of Nature. You can see that the sacred cult of a Supreme Being does not run counter to it as you had supposed, since the counsel offered by the one is naught but the holy writ of the other.”
“No,” said Franval, getting to his feet, “no, Monsieur, I no longer have need for anything at all. Since Heaven has left me this one last possession,” he went on, displaying his sword, “teach me what use I must put it to. . . .” (Looking at the sword :) “This, my dear, my only friend, this is the same sword that my saintly wife seized one day to plunge into her breast when I was overwhelming her with horrors and calumnies. . . . ’Tis the very same. . . . Perhaps I may even discover traces of her sacred blood on it . . . blood which my own must efface. . . . Come, let us walk awhile, until we come to some cottages wherein I may inform you of my last wishes . . . and then we shall take leave of each other forever. . . .”
They began walking, keeping a look out for a road that would lead them to some habitation. . . . Night still enveloped the forest in its darkest veils. Suddenly the sound of mournful hymns was heard, and the men saw several torches rending the dark shadows and lending the scene a tinge of horror that only sensitive souls will understand. The pealing of bells grew louder, and to these mournful accents, which were still only scarcely audible, were joined flashes of lightning, which had hitherto been absent from the sky, and the ensuing thunder which mingled with the funereal sounds they had previously heard. The lightning which flashed across the skies, occasionally eclipsing the sinister flames of the torches, seemed to be vying with the inhabitants of the earth for the right to conduct to her grave this woman whom the procession was accompanying. Everything gave rise to horror, everything betokened desolation, and it seemed that Nature herself had donned the garb of eternal mourning.
“What is this?” said Franval, who was deeply moved.
“Nothing, nothing,” Clervil said, taking his friend’s hand and leading him in another direction.
“Nothing? No, you’re misleading me. I want to see what it is. . . .”
He dashed forward . . . and saw a coffin.
“Merciful Heaven,” he cried. “There she is; it is she, it is she. God has given me one last occasion to see her. . . .”
At the bidding of Clervil, who saw that it was impossible to calm the poor man down, the priests departed in silence. . . . Completely distraught, Franval threw himself on the coffin, and from it he seized the sad remains of the woman whom he had so gravely offended. He took the body in his arms and laid it at the foot of a tree, and in a state of delirium threw himself upon it, crying in utter despair:
“Oh you whose life has been snuffed out by my barbarous cruelty, oh touching creature whom I still adore, see at your feet your husband beseeching your pardon and your forgiveness. Do not imagine that I ask this in order to outlive you. No, no, ’tis in order that the Almighty, touched by your virtues, might deign to forgive me as you have done, if such be possible. . . . You must have blood, my sweet wife, you must have blood to be avenged . . . and avenged you shall be. . . . Ah! first see my tears and witness my repentance; I intend to follow you, beloved shade . . . but who will receive my tortured soul if you do not intercede for it? Rejected alike from the arms of God and from your heart, do you wish to see it condemned to the hideous tortures of Hell when it is so sincerely repentant of its crimes? Forgive, dear soul, forgive these crimes, and see how I avenge them.”
With these words Franval, eluding Clervil’s gaze, plunged the sword he was holding twice through his body. His impure blood flowed onto his victim and seemed to sully her much more than avenge her.
“Oh my friend,” he said to Clervil, “I am dying, but I am dying in the bosom of remorse. . . . Apprise those who remain behind both of my deplorable end and of my crimes, tell them that is the way that a man who is a miserable slave of his passions must die, a man vile enough to have stifled in his heart the cry of duty and of Nature. Do not deny me half of my wretched wife’s coffin; without my remorse I would not have been worthy of sharing it, but now my remorse renders me full worthy of that favor, and I demand it. Adieu.”
Clervil granted poor Franval’s dying wish, and the procession continued on its way. An eternal refuge soon swallowed up a husband and wife born to love each other, a couple fashioned for happiness and who would have savored it in its purest form if crime and its frightful disorders had not, beneath the guilty hand of one of the two, intervened to change their life from a garden of delight into a viper’s nest.
The worthy ecclesiastic soon carried back to Paris the frightful details of these different calamities. No one was distressed by the death of Franval; only his life had been a cause of grief. But his wife was mourned, bitterly mourned. And indeed what creature is more precious, more appealing in the eyes of men than the person who has cherished, respected, and cultivated the virtues of the earth and, at each step of the way, has found naught but misfortune and grief?
Justine, or Good Conduct Well Chastised (1791)
The most famous of all Sade’s works is the novel Justine. It is also probably the one he cared most about—Sade dedicated it to the faithful companion of the last twenty-five years of his existence, Marie-Constance Quesnet. It was also the book which caused him the most difficulty with the authorities during his lifetime.
Sade finished the first draft of this “philosophical novel” while he was a prisoner in the Bastille. Working uninterruptedly over the two-week period from June 23 to July 8, 1787, in his cell in the “Second Liberty,” Sade completed the hundred-and-thirty-eight-page manuscript, which he entitled Les Infortunes de la Vertu. Originally intended to become a part of the volume he was then preparing, Contes et fabliaux du XVIIIe siècle, this “first Justine” underwent considerable revision in the course of the following year, and Sade soon determined to strike it from his list of tales and make it a work unto itself.
Writing to his lawyer-friend Reinaud on June 12, 1791, a little more than a year after the Revolutionary government had rendered him his liberty, Sade noted: “At the moment a novel of mine is being printed, but it is a work too immoral to be sent to so pious and so decent a man as yourself. I needed money, my publisher said that he wanted it well spiced, and I gave it to him fit to plague the devil himself. It is called Justine, or Good Conduct Well Chastised. Burn it and do not read it, if perchance it falls into your hands. I am disclaiming the authorship. . . .”
In fact, the original edition of Justine—the author’s first work published during his lifetime—did not bear his name. Printed in Paris, chez Girouard1 on the rue du Bout-du-Monde, Justine first appeared in two octavo volumes, with a frontispiece depicting Virtue between Licentiousness and Irreligion, and at the place on the title page generally reserved for the publisher’s imprint there appear
ed the vague description: In Holland, At Associated Booksellers.
What of the admission by the author that he wrote the novel to order? This, as Lely points out, seems hardly likely. First, the general outline and somber pessimism of the 1791 Justine were already evident in the 1787 version. Second, the novel does figure in the Catalogue raisonné which Sade himself drew up roughly three years before its publication. And finally—perhaps the most convincing argument of all—Sade dedicated the novel, as we have noted, to his dear friend Marie-Constance Quesnet, an indication that he himself valued the work highly, well understood its importance, and would never have dared compromise the merit of the work by spicing it to suit the publisher’s taste.
“Will it not be felt,” writes Sade in his dedication, “that Virtue, however beautiful, becomes the worst of all possible attitudes when it is found too feeble to contend with Vice and that, in an entirely corrupted age, the safest course is to follow the others?” If this be the impression, says Sade, it is wrong: this work is intended to combat such “dangerous sophistries,” such “false philosophy,” and show how Virtue afflicted may turn a thoroughly depraved and corrupt spirit wherein there yet remain a few good principles, back toward the path of righteousness.
During the decade following its publication, Justine went through six printings (one of which, actually done in Paris, bore as the unlikely place of publication: “Philadelphia”), eloquent testimony to its early popularity. Doubtless prompted by its success, an enterprising Paris publisher, Nicolas Massé, brought out, in 1797, the monumental ten-volume work entitled La Nouvelle Justine . . . suivie de l’Histoire de Juliette, sa soeur, which was freely offered, at least for a year following its publication, in the leading Paris bookstores. Then, in the waning two years of the eighteenth century, searches and seizures began, ending with the arrest, on March 6, 1801, of the man who was purported to be, but adamantly denied he was, the author of both works. On that day, both Sade and Massé were arrested on the latter’s premises. A search of Massé’s offices revealed a number of manuscripts in Sade’s handwriting, as well as printed volumes of Justine and Juliette annotated in his hand. Massé, after being detained for twenty-four hours, was released upon condition that he reveal the whereabouts of his stock of Juliette, and there is evidence to indicate that the publisher, to save himself, had denounced Sade to the police. Be that as it may, Sade was once again incarcerated, first in Sainte-Pélagie and then, two years later, in the Charenton Asylum, where he was to remain a prisoner until the end of his life.
O thou my friend! The prosperity of Crime is like unto the lightning, whose traitorous brilliancies embellish the atmosphere but for an instant, in order to hurl into death’s very depths the luckless one they have dazzled.
TO MY DEAR FRIEND
Yes, Constance, it is to thee I address this work; at once the example and honor of thy sex, with a spirit of profoundest sensibility combining the most judicious and the most enlightened of minds, thou art she to whom I confide my book, which will acquaint thee with the sweetness of the tears Virtue sore beset doth shed and doth cause to flow. Detesting the sophistries of libertinage and of irreligion, in word and deed combatting them unwearingly, I fear not that those necessitated by the order of personages appearing in these Memoires will put thee in any peril; the cynicism remarkable in certain portraits (they were softened as much as ever they could be) is no more apt to frighten thee; for it is only Vice that trembles when Vice is found out, and cries scandal immediately it is attacked. To bigots Tartuffe was indebted for his ordeal; Justine’s will be the achievement of libertines, and little do I dread them: they’ll not betray my intentions, these thou shalt perceive; thy opinion is sufficient to make my whole glory and after having pleased thee I must either please universally or find consolation in a general censure.
The scheme of this novel (yet, ’tis less a novel than one might suppose) is doubtless new; the victory gained by Virtue over Vice, the rewarding of good, the punishment of evil, such is the usual scheme in every other work of this species: ah! the lesson cannot be too often dinned in our ears!
But throughout to present Vice triumphant and Virtue a victim of its sacrifices, to exhibit a wretched creature wandering from one misery to the next; the toy of villainy; the target of every debauch; exposed to the most barbarous, the most monstrous caprices; driven witless by the most brazen, the most specious sophistries; prey to the most cunning seductions, the most irresistible subornations; for defense against so many disappointments, so much bane and pestilence, to repulse such a quantity of corruption having nothing but a sensitive soul, a mind naturally formed, and considerable courage: briefly, to employ the boldest scenes, the most extraordinary situations, the most dreadful maxims, the most energetic brush strokes, with the sole object of obtaining from all this one of the sublimest parables ever penned for human edification; now, such were, ’twill be allowed, to seek to reach one’s destination by a road not much traveled heretofore.
Have I succeeded, Constance? Will a tear in thy eye determine my triumph? After having read Justine, wilt say: “Oh, how these renderings of crime make me proud of my love for Virtue! How sublime does it appear through tears! How ’tis embellished by misfortunes!”
Oh, Constance! may these words but escape thy lips, and my labors shall be crowned.
The very masterpiece of philosophy would be to develop the means Providence employs to arrive at the ends she designs for man, and from this construction to deduce some rules of conduct acquainting this wretched two-footed individual with the manner wherein he must proceed along life’s thorny way, forewarned of the strange caprices of that fatality they denominate by twenty different titles, and all unavailingly, for it has not yet been scanned nor defined.
If, though full of respect for social conventions and never overstepping the bounds they draw round us, if, nonetheless, it should come to pass that we meet with nothing but brambles and briars, while the wicked tread upon flowers, will it not be reckoned—save by those in whom a fund of incoercible virtues renders deaf to these remarks—, will it not be decided that it is preferable to abandon oneself to the tide rather than to resist it? Will it not be felt that Virtue, however beautiful, becomes the worst of all attitudes when it is found too feeble to contend with Vice, and that, in an entirely corrupted age, the safest course is to follow along after the others? Somewhat better informed, if one wishes, and abusing the knowledge they have acquired, will they not say, as did the angel Jesrad in Zadig, that there is no evil whereof some good is not born? and will they not declare, that this being the case, they can give themselves over to evil since, indeed, it is but one of the fashions of producing good? Will they not add, that it makes no difference to the general plan whether such-and-such a one is by preference good or bad, that if misery persecutes virtue and prosperity accompanies crime, those things being as one in Nature’s view, far better to join company with the wicked who flourish, than to be counted amongst the virtuous who founder? Hence, it is important to anticipate those dangerous sophistries of a false philosophy; it is essential to show that through examples of afflicted virtue presented to a depraved spirit in which, however, there remain a few good principles, it is essential, I say, to show that spirit quite as surely restored to righteousness by these means as by portraying this virtuous career ornate with the most glittering honors and the most flattering rewards. Doubtless it is cruel to have to describe, on the one hand, a host of ills overwhelming a sweet-tempered and sensitive woman who, as best she is able, respects virtue, and, on the other, the affluence of prosperity of those who crush and mortify this same woman. But were there nevertheless some good engendered of the demonstration, would one have to repent of making it? Ought one be sorry for having established a fact whence there resulted, for the wise man who reads to some purpose, so useful a lesson of submission to providential decrees and the fateful warning that it is often to recall us to our duties that Heaven strikes down beside us the person who seems to us best to have f
ulfilled his own?
Such are the sentiments which are going to direct our labors, and it is in consideration of these intentions that we ask the reader’s indulgence for the erroneous doctrines which are to be placed in the mouths of our characters, and for the sometimes rather painful situations which, out of love for truth, we have been obliged to dress before his eyes.
Madame la Comtesse de Lorsange was one of those priestesses of Venus whose fortune is the product of a pretty face and much misconduct, and whose titles, pompous though they are, are not to be found but in the archives of Cythera, forged by the impertinence that seeks, and sustained by the fool’s credulity that bestows, them; brunette, a fine figure, eyes of a singular expression, that modish unbelief which, contributing one further spice to the passions, causes those women in whom it is suspected to be sought after that much more diligently; a trifle wicked, unfurnished with any principle, allowing evil to exist in nothing, lacking however that amount of depravation in the heart to have extinguished its sensibility; haughty, libertine; such was Madame de Lorsange.
Nevertheless, this woman had received the best education; daughter of a very rich Parisian banker, she had been brought up, together with a sister named Justine, by three years younger than she, in one of the capital’s most celebrated abbeys where, until the ages of twelve and fifteen years, the one and the other of the two sisters had been denied no counsels, no masters, no books, and no polite talents.
At this period crucial to the virtue of the two maidens, they were in one day made bereft of everything: a frightful bankruptcy precipitated their father into circumstances so cruel that he perished of grief. One month later, his wife followed him into the grave. Two distant and heartless relatives deliberated what should be done with the young orphans; a hundred crowns apiece was their share of a legacy mostly swallowed up by creditors. No one caring to be burdened with them, the convent’s door was opened, their dowry was put into their hands, and they were left at liberty to become what they wished.
Justine, Philosophy in the Bedroom, and Other Writings Page 48
