Letters From Prison

by Marquis de Sade

  Let us assume for a moment that heaven had spared both my father and mother, as it has spared both your parents, that they had not suffered any serious setback or inconstancies to the fortune they had begun to amass, and let us further assume that the variations of that same fortune kept it from being frittered away; that both of them were still alive and in the social position that should rightfully have been theirs; and now let us suppose that ‘twas you the orphan, and that you had behaved in a manner that we shall call equivocal; tell me, my dear friend, tell me, knowing the strength of character they both possessed, do you believe they would ever have treated you the way your family treats me, and can you imagine that, in the unlikely event they did, I would put up with it for one second? What is the result of that sad little dream? That I am the victim of fate and of revenge and that I have in the depths of my heart the consolation of being able to say to myself: O my parents, never would we have allowed her to be so miserable, even were she just as guilty!

  I should never have wished such a fate for you, but if God had visited it upon you, how pleased, how delighted I would have been to rush to your defense, rally people to your cause, do everything in my power to defend you. You may be sure, my dear friend, that ‘twould have been in vain that they came in search of me the day after we arrived back in Paris, my arms and my rooms would have been an asylum that no fury could ever have profaned. And I would have made them run me through with their swords a thousand times over before they were able to lay a hand on you. I would have said, with joy in my heart: she has lost everything, she has only me in the universe; I am her sole resource and her consolation. But she has sins on her conscience? So much the better. If she did not, how could she be indebted to me for coming to her defense?

  The story you told me about your son is delightful.2 Vouchsafe to take it as a lesson. It applies to you especially: he did not want them to hit his brother, and yet you allowed them to put your husband in irons.

  When you come to see me, then, kindly spare me all those base little lies: I didn’t know; somehow it just happened; I immediately sent someone to fetch a carriage, etc., when it comes to a project, to a scheme both vapid and stupid, a project that for a good ten years has been prearranged and planned and from which—were lightning to strike and destroy half the universe—those behind it would not deviate one iota. You know full well that I refuse to get involved in all that, that if I do nothing while you go on with your wearisome little drivel, ’tis because I want nothing to diminish or interfere with the pleasure I have in seeing you, nor do I want to give them any excuse whatsoever for suppressing your visits, but that does not mean I am any less convinced that you are lying, just as it pains me no end to see you resorting to this common defect that you see in the food markets, at the cashier’s desk, or in the anterooms. Forsake all such affectations, I beg of you. You have no idea to what degree they end up corrupting and debasing one’s soul. Duplicity leads directly to the loss of virtue. What’s the point of hesitating to adopt it when one can arrive at the same end with one’s mask?

  Yes, I repeat to you what I said on the same score the other day: if all these foul deeds, all these petty torments of letters that are no more than warmed-over repetitions of an abomination conceived of in days of yore to be used against you, by the same hands who use it today against me, if this imprisonment, which is unduly long and infinitely too cruel, led to something beneficial to your family, efficacious for making me mend my ways, advantageous for my children, I would willingly sacrifice myself to it immediately without saying a word. But what is the result of this imprisonment, and what is the only possible result? Is your mother so blind that she completely fails to see it? Is she so deaf that she does not even suspect what people are saying? I’m quite willing to believe that people pointedly refrain from passing them on to her, but does that mean they don’t exist? And you’ll see when it comes time to setting up our children in life, ’tis then she will rue all her past blunders and realize that the pleasure of forever doing her sums is to buy most dearly all the self-loathing she will experience at that time, assuming of course that hell has spared her till then.

  To have prolonged my prison term above and beyond that called for by the sentence of Aix-en-Provence is an infamy without example, and ‘twas because she reveled in being the source of my undoing, and that of my children, for the sole pleasure of doing evil. What a monster! How I loathe her!

  No matter what all the sycophants around her may say, or all those who profit from all that, she should know beyond all shadow of doubt that whenever her name comes up in public, whenever she appears at any reception, people who think either of her children or of mine are immediately reminded of my misfortunes. She ought to ponder that and see what she’s gaining by prolonging my agony!

  Well now! you said therefore that there was no 173 in your last visit, nothing especially sacred about this number—I refer to your letter of May 17, 1777. Oh! ‘twas never absent from any of your visits, and that last one was the seventeenth time I saw the commandant. I couldn’t care less, ’tis the only time when I have shut my eyes to numbers. You promised to follow me, you promised me as you kissed me good-bye, you swore you would, I believed you; and had there been a thousand 17’s, I know the language of your heart like I know my own, and ‘twas your heart speaking when you made your promise. If you do not keep your word, you will expose me to a thousand follies when I get out of here, for I solemnly swear to you on all I hold most dear in the world that nothing will stand in my way, nothing will keep me from coming to tear you from the bowels of the earth, if ’tis there that they try to hide you to keep you out of my reach. May all of heaven’s thunderbolts rain down upon me, may they swallow up my fortune with me, my children, everything I have in this world, may I not take a single step in the universe without encountering daggers or unfathomable depths if I spend eight days, once my fetters are gone, without you.

  1. After reassuring her husband that, largely because of his objections, she would not go to live with Mme de la Villette, she sought further to reassure him of her faithfulness and devotion by taking up lodgings in a nunnery. The one she chose was the convent of Sainte-Aure on the rue Neuve-Sainte-Geneviève. Apparently Sade sees in that choice of saints another “signal” for him to decipher.

  2. We do not know the specifics, but can assume that Louis-Marie, the elder son, came to the defense of his younger brother, Donatien-Claude-Armand.

  3. Sade again is groping for meaningful signals, hoping thereby to learn the real date of his release.

  49. To Madame de Sade

  [October 25, 1781]

  I shall not lose a minute before responding to your letter, my dear friend. It fills me with such frightful anxiety that I cannot restrain myself for another moment. In the name of God, do not assault me with such blows, they affect me too deeply. I make threats against you!1 May Heaven crush me this very instant, may I never see the light of day again if ever I have threatened you even once. Ah! ye gods, threats against the only creature I adore, she whom I hold most dear in the world! Read my last letter to your mother; she knows my heart better than anyone. I say to her, I think it and repeat it over and over again, that were I to see you holding a dagger in your hand I would cast myself at your feet and revel in your vengeance. Ah! may I be made to suffer as long as they wish, I have no quarrel with that, but let them not turn your heart against me through such unworthy reports as these. My soul will be deeply aggrieved until you tell me that you no longer believe a word of what they say. Waste not another moment in telling me so, I beg of you. And do convince Monsieur Le Noir of the same. Whoever dreamed up such dark and dreadful lies are but knaves and scoundrels. Everyone here, if they are willing to tell the truth, will attest to the fact that even when I have been in the most frightful depths of despair, never once have I uttered your name with anything but marks of affection, which I both owe you but also feel most profoundly in my heart. Come, come, visit whatever sins you care to upon me, ‘twill pain
me unto death, ‘twill render my already wretched life even more miserable, but never fear that I would either avenge myself or even mention it to you again if it displeases you. All I ask is that you not harden your heart against me. And know beyond any shadow of doubt that my own life is less dear to me than yours, and that I should not survive for one minute were I to think that I had been the cause of your losing even so much as a single hour’s sleep. My threats, and my so-called ill conduct, were aimed at the man who serves me. What does that have to do with you? In the name of God, come to see me, and meanwhile do your best to arrange for Amblet to see me as well. If you persist in believing that I have made so much as a single threat against you, I shall end my days forthwith.

  1. Many times during his incarceration, Sade, in rage or frustration, lost his temper and swore or insulted his jailers, which inevitably resulted in his losing his walks or, worse, being put into solitary confinement. In this instance, someone reported to Renée-Pélagie that her husband had voiced threats against her.

  50. To Madame de Sade

  October 26, 1781

  The people here, whom I immediately called and questioned after my letter of yesterday evening, assured me unequivocally that they had never reported that I had ever spoken ill of you; and how could they have done so—they themselves answered, since they had never heard me make any such remark? I asked that they enlighten Monsieur de Rougemont on that score, and the preposterous response they brought back to me this morning both clarified the matter and reassured me greatly. That dear fellow is taking his revenge; that should suffice to convince you that everything he may have said is but a tissue of lies, calumnies he is concocting in retaliation for those he doubtless terms my own, and until such time as we have had a chance to see each other and to clear the matter up, I know you to be fair and equitable enough not to believe a word of it. Meanwhile I reiterate, upon my most authentic word of honor, that neither did I make any remarks or any threats, and that I love you and adore you to such a degree, my dear and unique friend, that I should rather rend myself asunder than say anything to you, or about you, that might displease you. Alas! ’tis not when my goal and my sole desire are to atone for so great a multitude of wrongdoings that I would set about trying to add to them. Did I not tell you when you came to see me that I regarded you as my only friend, and that I firmly believed you were all I had left in the world? Have I not written you twenty times over saying the same thing? You replied to my declarations, I have your letters to prove it. What then would be the point, such being my frame of mind and the state of my heart, of trying to irritate or offend you? No, my good friend, you do not believe a word of it. And I am convinced that you still have sufficient kindness in your heart, and pity for me, that you will refrain from condemning me until you have had a chance to hear me out. Till then I shall suffer the pangs of hell, but I am by now all too well acquainted with troubles and woes, and my certainty that you will judge me fairly will help me bear this further injustice, in the full knowledge that in the long run you will know I am right. Ye gods, if only you could prove your own innocence with equal force: ’tis my one and only wish, and I shall not bring it up again.1 All that is no more than the mere annoyances, vexations, unkind cuts, and blathering of a wicked old witch who, having no greater pleasure than making herself obnoxious, expends upon that unique pastime all the talents of a weary heart and a mind that has been completely corrupted. The forces behind it are all too obvious, and all I can say is that with such baseness I should have hoped she might at least have injected a trifle more cunning into her little scheme. I see it, people are absolutely right when they say that there is no nastier beast on the face of the earth than a sanctimonious old woman. If throughout my life something has kept me as far removed as possible from piety and devoutness, ’tis canting sanctimoniousness, which I abhor, and that terrible habit the elderly have of practicing religion on the one hand and indulging in the most loathsome vices on the other.

  As far as Monsieur de Rougemont is concerned, I have once again misjudged him badly. And I must confess that solely on the basis of his having served in the military, I would have thought him more candid, more honest, and above all incapable of avenging himself as he does by a long string of calumnies and an endless number of petty domestic tyrannies which, when they come to light, will surely reflect far more poorly on him than on me. One must not judge my conduct in here either by my deeds or my words. People do everything in their power to bait me, to vex me, they visit all sorts of abomination upon me, week after week they torture me beyond belief, and then they do not want me to take whatever revenge I can! They must then think I’m made of wood, and though they do their level best to render me insensate, and consequently to destroy in me the germ of all virtues, I am still not sufficiently deadened to the point of being incapable of warding off all the slings and arrows they send my way. If I had been the object of a normal judicial sentence, one could have judged both my character and my conduct, but what has been done to me has never been done to anyone else. The judgments and sentences handed down upon those guilty of the most heinous crimes committed throughout this century pale when compared to mine. Therefore, at the very least I should be allowed to lodge my complaints and take my revenge whenever and wherever I can. They give me medicines that upset my stomach, to the point where the only food I can bear is milk, and even that I have difficulty digesting, and then they are shocked when I administer a sound thrashing to the poor beggar who has chosen to exercise the vile profession of turnkey! They are sorely mistaken. So long as my blood flows in my veins I shall tolerate neither infamy nor injustice, and this latest behavior is simply atrocious. Never in my life have I put anything harmful in anyone’s food, and I swear upon what I hold most sacred in the world that there was not the slightest harmful ingredient in the aniseed the girls in Marseilles ate, and the best proof is that I ate those same sweets in their presence and at the same time they did. They admitted that at the Aix hearing, as they admitted it to me personally. Thus, by that admission, that fact is proved beyond all shadow of doubt as far as I’m concerned. Whatever else I may be accused of beyond that is pure calumny, which I shall absolutely refute whenever I am given the opportunity. ’Tis therefore also proved that Monsieur de Rougemont is taking his revenge, and doing so by spreading all sorts of lies about me, doubtless because of those he claims I told about him.

  I swear and solemnly declare that I have never slandered Monsieur de Rougemont. Anyone said to be a slanderer is a man who makes up lies and then spreads them to one and all in order to confuse or harm the person concerned, as he has done for example when he reports to the judge that I have made threats against you. ’Tis such a person one calls a slanderer and a knave. In my case, all I said was what I learned and what I heard other people report as gospel truth. Thus, while I have indeed spoken ill of people, ‘twas not on the basis of anything I made up.

  I used to have four or five friends who were also acquaintances of Monsieur de Rougemont. He is aware of that, in fact we have spoken about it together on more than one occasion. I therefore have had a chance to learn a great deal about the man from them. In earlier days, there was a period of seven or eight years when I was wont to dine twice a week at two houses on the rue Férou, one the house of Madame de-2 and the other belonging to Chevalier de Chaponais, both of which were contiguous to that of Monsieur de Rougemont’s mother. I thus had an opportunity to learn all sorts of things about him, and I committed them well to heart.

  In Florence I met a man who is one of the best connected people on the face of the earth, who knows all the ins and outs of the court and the ministers, a man who proved it by revealing the truth in print, which forced him to flee his country. In any case, that gentleman spent six months with the Count du Barry, a close friend of Monsieur de Rougemont, and he told me the following: I should greatly prefer to be sentenced to the wheel than to the Vincennes dungeon, and ’tis the fear of that dungeon that has prevented me from returning to my home
land. To which I asked: Just what do you mean by that? And the man said to me: Because the Count du Barry has just informed me that the warden of this dungeon is one of his former students, a man who has learned how to line his pockets by pimping for his prisoners.