Letters From Prison (20 page)

This portrait the Saint has done is quite unparalleled. ’Tis unheard of to have done it without a sketch . . . She does whatever she likes with those five fingers of hers. There was only one thing I wanted to get her to do at La Coste with those same fingers, and she never would . . . Well now, ladies, there it is, isn’t it? You think you are about to hear a little remark, and ’tis the simplest thing in the world. ’Tis so simple and so proper I would say it to the Holy Virgin herself, were she to ask. When you ask me for an explanation, I’ll be happy to provide it. . . Meanwhile, tell her I was even more flattered by her efforts than she supposes, and shall keep this portrait all my life. Tell her, too, that one must not leave when one loves someone to the point of enjoying painting their portrait. In addition to which, tell her that good though it is, I like to think it would have been an even better likeness if she had not worked from the painting, since I am sure there exists in her a little spot where I am more strikingly present than upon Van Loo’s canvas . . . But if she does leave, I shall never see her again. So let her stay and we shall always be together, and live happily ever after. As for you, my little duckling, I kiss you upon the . . . then upon the . . . afterward upon the . . .

This 22nd of March, having eleven more months more to endure.

1
. Knowing his fate is in the hands of M. Le Noir, Sade generally avoids attacking him, but here he loses control.

2
. The parenthesis is Sade’s. Ives was Madame de Montreuil’s envoy to Sade. He was hired to assist in Sade’s appeal at Aix, presumably as a lawyer, but Sade staunchly maintains, in this same letter, that no such name was included in the register of Paris lawyers.

3
. Gothon Duffé, a Swiss chambermaid the Sades engaged to service La Coste. From Sade’s description in letter number 56, she was chosen more for the extraordinary proportions of her buttocks than for her chambermaidenly talents. Her lover at the chateau was Carteron, a.k.a. La Jeunesse (Youth), who was Sade’s trusted valet. (See letter number 19.)

4
. Both Sade and his wife asked Chauvin to ship them local wines.

5
. Meaning: my arrest.

6
. Madame de Montreuil’s mother.

7
. The wife of Claude Piarron de Chamousset, an eighteenth-century French philanthropist.

8
. Madeleine-Laure, his daughter, whose eighth birthday is less than a month away.

14. To Madame de Sade

[March or April, 1779]

I
s it possible that they don’t want to see and [words missing] revolt, Jl and serves only to destroy to the very root all the good resolutions that the conclusion of my affair caused to well up in me . . . No, never shall I pardon their infamy in having me rearrested . . . ’Tis a horror of unparalleled dimensions. To sacrifice a man, his reputation, his honor, his children, to the rage, to the vengeance, and to the greed of those who wanted me to be clapped back in prison—since, knowing what lay in store for me, they hid it from me so that I would I fall all the more easily into the trap—that is an execration whose example cannot be found even amongst the most ferocious of nations. And when I have the misfortune to fall again into this terrible trap, to make sure I was even more unhappy than I was before, to keep me even more confined in my new prison, to increase my persecutions there, to lie to me even more recklessly than before . . . These methods make one shudder, and I dare not look upon them with composure. . . Tell those who think that this is the way to punish their fellow human beings, tell them without mincing words that they are greatly mistaken: all they are doing is making their victims more bitter, nothing more. Persecutors—be you male or female—tyrants, valets of tyrants, odious satellites of their shameful caprices, in short all of you whose only good is revenge or the hope of attaining honors by basely serving the rage of those whose influence is your sole support or whose money nourishes you, do you know what I compare you to? To that band of ne’er-do-wells who go, sticks in hand, to jeer at the lion held captive in an iron cage. ’Tis with a mixture of great fear and glee they tease it, poking their sticks through the bars. If the animal had broken loose, you would have seen them running helter skelter, trampling one another as they all fled, and dying of terror before the lion had caught up with them. There, my friends, in such wise do you behave: judge what I think of you from the comparison, and your infamies from its accuracy.

I am infinitely gratified by the news of my son’s progress.
¹
You must sense to what degree that makes him even dearer to me . . . Whatever the prior may think, this translation strikes me as most commendable in a schoolboy in his first six months of study. That does not lessen my affection for the
chevalier.
²
You know that till now I was fonder of him than of his older sibling. But I am so delighted by the good things I hear about the elder, rendering him even so dear to me, I shall as you say write to the
chevalier
to encourage him. Please be so kind as to thank your mother for her attentiveness in wanting me to share with her the joy this child’s progress affords us. To inform me of the news by such an agreeable channel is, in a way, to make it twice as welcome. What a pity that this child cannot be given a broader education . . . And how truly sad I shall be if I don’t have the chance to see him when I am released from here. I have no further work for La Jeunesse.
³
What can you expect me to do without books? One must be surrounded by them in order to work, otherwise one can concoct nothing but fairy tales, and I have no talent for that. Therefore answer me about that book I asked your father for, and the little candles which I asked for centuries ago; I have been out of them for over a week.

I embrace you.

1
. Louis-Marie, his older son, who was doing very well in school.

2
. Donatien-Claude-Armand.

3
. Sade’s valet served, among other things, to transcribe Sade’s writings into fair copy.

15. To Mademoiselle de Rousset

[April or May, 1779]

T
here has been a veritable torrent of meaningless words on both our parts for a very simple discussion; it has gradually led us to bitterness, and I do not want our friendship ever to become embittered. Whether or not you reply to this final accusation, I care not; it shall be, if you so desire, the concluding piece of evidence in the case, and once we have got past this I would prefer not to mention it again. First of all, I am going to lay out the wrongs you have done me, and excuse them by invoking the one motive that I consider an attenuating circumstance; after which I shall set forth the wrongs you accuse me of, and justify myself with great ease.

Your wrongs consist of: 1) Having told me that I have no friends. Three months ago I replied to you in great detail upon that point and proved to you that misfortune rarely leaves a man any; I shall not harp again on what I have already said, for nothing bores me as much as repetitions. 2) Having tried to persuade me that my mother-in-law was the cause of my second detention. Whether she was or not, ’tis wrong for you to try to work up my feelings against her. If I believed her innocent, ’tis because my wife, writing to me at La Coste, asserted in no uncertain terms that she was; consequently, your remark tended on the one hand to make me look upon my mother-in-law as 
suspect
and, on the other, my wife as
a liar.
Is it befitting for you to play this role? 3) Having tried to deceive me by giving me false hope for this spring. At La Coste I told you that the worst torture in the world was that of a wretch to whom hope is given then taken away. I maintain that there is no torture in the universe to equal it, and were one to delve into the cause of all suicides, twenty-nine out of thirty would stem from that alone . . . ‘Twas proven long ago, and if I were called upon to do so I could cite a thousand examples. Although you knew very well from me that I considered it a horror, an abomination, you did it. At this point I ask but one thing: if they are of a mind to beat me
. . . is it for you to furnish the rod or the staff?
I have been insistent on this subject, perhaps even violent, insolent, dishonest, harsh, whatever you like, but there was nothing I wouldn’t have done, no matter what the risk or peril, in order to find out whether they were lying to me and in order not to push the error to its extreme; I know what it once cost me in order to do that . . . what I suffered from it . . . what I felt . . . and I do not want to go through that ever again. I have already suffered near fatal traumas from my past misfortunes, and I’m now at the point where it would perhaps take but one more, whether the news be good or bad, to kill me off. Here is one recent example to prove my point. Yesterday night, they came into my room at an ungodly hour, ‘twas for a perfectly simple matter but one I was not expecting. For three-quarters of an hour thereafter I was ill over it. And so ’tis not a figment of my imagination, a mere caprice, a misplaced curiosity that makes me want to find out how long my term is to be, ’tis life, ’tis nothing but life I am asking for. But, to that you will reply to me, twenty-four hours’ notice is quite enough. I agree; strictly speaking, that is all I ask, and if it appeared I was anxious to know further in advance—and I’ve told you so a thousand times—’tis in order to profit from this period of retreat and spend it improving my mind or my attitude, something absolutely impossible for me to do when this constant feeling of uncertainty leaves me troubled and in a state of perpetual agitation. At long last you gave the lie to this springtime fantasy, for which I am grateful. You would have played me a fatal trick had you left me believing it until the last moment. What I do dislike is the ridiculous way—allow me the expression—you chose to destroy it.
“Had you been less cantankerous, had you not written,
” etc. So I am to be punished like a little boy whose hands are beaten when he has not recited his lesson properly? There is yet another very stupid course: I have told you so often enough, ’tis not by using such methods they’ll make me any better. Severity embitters me, period. Do they really think I shall be made to love a government, which in this case is acting unjustly toward me, by keeping me arbitrarily in prison, and respect a tribunal that has no jurisdiction over me? Do they truly believe, I say, that prolonging my detention will result in my improvement? They are mistaken. If they kept me here for life I’d still say the same thing and always talk in the same way. I am both firm and courageous. Blase when it comes to misfortunes, I have little or no fear of whatever new stroke of fate might befall me, and the threat of the scaffold does not turn me into either a rogue or a traitor, nor does it humble me. And despite this unshakable resolution, this solid character of which I pride myself, a mere nothing, a mark of
real
friendship, a proof of confidence would turn me into whatever they wanted me to be; with kindness I could be made to move mountains; severity could make me dash my brains out against a wall. Such is my personality, which has never changed since I was a child—Amblet, who brought me up, can attest to that—and will surely never change. I am too old to make myself over. So let them abandon their project of
maturing my mind:
twenty years from now ‘twill be no more mature than it is today, on that you have my word . . . more unruly perhaps, but certainly not more settled. Only let me out of here, offer me a show of friendship and trust, and you will see an altogether different man emerge. Let them not tell me:
we tried it and it did not succeed.
I shall prove that though they pretended to be trying it, all they were really doing was setting traps for me, to have the pleasure of crushing me once I fell into them . . . At any rate, the die is cast, I am not to be set free this spring . . . Come now, do admit that it was wicked on your part to have tried to persuade me I would be, and ridiculous of you to come and tell me now,
“Oh, you would have been freed if you had been better behaved. . .”
Oh! good God, my dear friend, you must think me both stupid and credulous, simply because I have the misfortune to be behind bars!

Your fourth and final wrong is to have told me that horrible contradiction about
my children at the feet of the king,
¹
sufficiently discussed in my last letter so as to require no further comment here. There are all your wrongs: mere trifles in the outside world, they become exceedingly serious vis-a-vis a poor wretch who sees nothing, hears nothing, and for whom letters are the only horoscopes wherein he can try and read his fate. The excuse I give for them is this: you have been seduced
by my torturers,
and you have been so stupid as to believe, as they do, that all those little pesterings to which they subject me were to bring about in me the most wonderful effects.
Weakness
and 
credulity,
they are the origin of your wrongs. I forgive them. Let us renew our love for each other, let us resume our correspondence, and let bygones be bygones. But do not use such weapons in the future: you can see how useless they are. If you love me, do not risk the bitterness and inevitable chilliness that must emanate therefrom. I shall be set free when God so chooses. If you care to tell me when that is to happen, it will please me no end; otherwise, tell me nothing; I would prefer knowing nothing than to be deceived; and there’s the origin of my phrase,
let there be silence,
which shocked you so.
Let them speak the truth or let there be silence,
that is what I said, and say again, and so saying I see neither the slightest harshness nor the slightest dishonesty. Moreover, if all you implied in your last letter is true—which I must believe, since you maintain it is—invoking the truth, your candor, etc., then I am most unhappy. I must now anticipate a very lengthy detention, and I can clearly see that I have been made a sacrificial lamb. In that case, I am wrong to have blamed you for having told me what you did; I can only praise your candor; there are certain truths that must be expressed bluntly and without mincing words; that is one of them . . . That you did the right thing . . . But if ’tis true that my fate is as ghastly as you tried to intimate to me, why did you announce to me that my freedom was around the corner? And if indeed it was, why did you offer me the picture of so many swords still suspended above my head? I keep coming back to the same point; be frank as long as you like, but be consistent, for inconsistency is the surest emblem of deceit.