Letters From Prison (38 page)

Reproaches include:

Having had me arrested at the Hotel de Danemark.

Having involved yourself in your mother’s twisted plots and infamies.

Having written me thirty letters in invisible ink, simply to tell me nothing but idle gossip.

Having involved and compromised the innocent hands of your children in all those infamies.

Having had me rescued at Aix for the sole and unique pleasure of having me rearrested at La Coste.

Having told me nothing during my stay there, despite the fact you had such a perfect occasion to do so through the intermediary of Chauvin, who had seen you in private for several months in a row and who also saw me tete-a-tete for several days in a row; at the very least you ought to have taken advantage of the opportunity to let me know of the length of my term, which was the one thing you knew I most desired.

Making me desire and wait here for everything I have asked from you, as though I were asking for charity, as though you were not paying for it out of my own pocket, etc.

’Tis time to make your own confession just as precisely as that. Join unto it your repentance, then promise to sin no more, and you will go straight to Paradise.

Let this serve notice that the manuscript
¹
will most assuredly be awaiting you in the office on the evening of the 19th or in the morning of the 20th of this month.

1
. In all probability his play
L’Inconstant—The Fickle Fellow
—a five-act comedy in alexandrines completed in late January 1781 and then reworked for several weeks, producing a clean copy on April 14, three days after this letter was written and roughly a week before he expected to have it in the marquise’s hands.

39. To Monsieur Le Noir

[April 12, 1781]

S
ir:

Although Madame de Sade assures me most tenderly that ’tis the most useless thing in the world to lodge the slightest complaint about the infamies of which her odious mother makes me the victim, I nonetheless venture to offer on this entire matter a few reflections, which I beseech you to read and which I shall try to make as brief as possible.

When children have been as cruelly wronged as mine have been at this time, as a result of the latest dishonor into which I have been plunged yet again, and as they will be in the future because of the hatred I shall necessarily feel toward them because of my absolute conviction that I am being sacrificed through false maneuvers, the fatal consequences of which no one can foresee; when, I say, a whole host of like misfortunes are poised to overwhelm us all, should you not, Sir, use your good influence to set things right?

Would you, good Sir, harbor enough illusions or—bearing in mind that I have never done anything except to honor you as a wise magistrate—would you indeed share to some degree the unjust methods used by the monster who tyrannizes me, not to feel how odious it is to have dragged me for ten years from prison to prison, not to understand that that can have no other purpose than to renew my misfortunes and let them be known to one and all throughout the four corners of France?

Who better than I has a true sense of my situation? And how deeply does it have to penetrate my being, to what degree must I dread the fifth scene
¹
of frightful dishonor to which I am about to be subjected, simply because I, for one brief moment, preferred the hateful sojourn where I am to the cruel snub of this even greater misfortune?

Do have the kindness to dwell on this for a moment, Monsieur. What they are doing is setting a trap for me here. Madame de Montreuil knows full well that I shall not survive the horror of this latest infamy, this new spectacle she desires to make of me; she knows full well that I shall try to escape, which will result in the fulfillment of her most ardent desire, namely to obtain thereby the iniquitous and odious right—a right completely opposed to the laws and constitution of the government, and to which ’tis unworthy that any magistrates make themselves a party—the right, I say, to keep me under the abominable authority of a
lettre de cachet
for the rest of my life.

But she will not long enjoy her little triumph, for I tell you, Sir, that my only purpose in escaping will be to go abroad, there to end my days. Thus it is, by your having yielded to the whims of a wretched woman, who if you knew her as I do you would order to be put in chains rather than protected, thus it is, I say, that you have a man undone, robbed of his children, stripped of his worldly goods, and a family overwhelmed with both dishonor and misfortune.

Do redress all that, Sir, I beg of you, bearing in mind the two clauses in my letter that deal with what shall result therefrom.

Without question I do not have the right to make the laws, and when I say so in writing myself, ’tis useless to repeat that statement over and over again, as happened to me yesterday throughout the day, but the right to air one’s grievances, to lodge a complaint, has not been denied the wretched of the earth, not even those people we dare call savages, because their king is not in the habit of spending a million to ferret out what his subjects may be doing to the country’s women.
²
And this right to lodge a complaint, given the situation in which I find myself, to whom should I address myself if not to the selfsame magistrate whose task it is to make certain all citizens are assured of their equal rights? A fatal case of blind injustice? You would send to the gallows a poor wretch who, in order to feed his father and children, had stolen a crown from a passerby, and you call that maintaining order in Paris, and without the slightest qualm or remorse you would deliver over an innocent man to his torturers, whose only goal is to dishonor him, strip him of his fortune, bring him down, debase him for the rest of his days. Yet which of the two, Sir, in your opinion is more wronged in all this, the man who has stolen a crown or I, who for ten years has been robbed of his
rightful goods and possessions, his wife, children, honor, influence, reputation, responsibilities, happiness, domestic tranquillity, etc.?
And yet what a difference in your tribunal in the fate of these two assailants! One you will send to the gallows, the other you will overwhelm with honors. No, Monsieur, no, ’tis not a misfortune, ’tis not a deprivation to be exiled forever, to lose for the rest of one’s life a country one finds unworthy, a country where justice is meted out to those of its citizens who have served it with honor, those members of the military who have taken up arms in its defense. I do not deserve a torture as long as the one to which I have been subjected. I defy God Himself to prove that I deserve it. I am therefore the sole victim of the frenzied rage of a monster, and you should not put up with her.

Here is my final word on the matter, and they are not laws I am making,
³
they are prayers and opinions I am offering about what will happen if they are refused.

First clause. I ask to spend a fortnight encloseted with my wife in Paris, to consult with doctors concerning my health, which is passing poor, for not a day goes by that I don’t cough up blood, and to see my children; thence to leave with my wife, and with my word as my bond, without having to incur the expense of any police escort, because ’tis not for families to pay these knaves, all of whom ought to be taken out and hanged: ’tis for the king to support such rogues and rascals in his kingdom; to leave, I say, for my estates, for as long as one wishes, whether in exile or not, I care not. For I have no desire to leave my own estates for a good long while.

In return for that clause, if ’tis granted me, I give you my word of honor, to you and whomsoever else is required to have it, duly signed and sealed with all the most authentic forms it may please you to prescribe, that I shall behave for the rest of my life in a manner that is sober, orderly, and exemplary in every possible manner, so exemplary in fact that not even an angel could behave more seemly. I further swear that I shall devote my time and energy to the happiness of my wife and my children, and to mending, insofar as ’tis in my hands to do so, both my misfortunes and the inroads made into my fortune. What is more, I shall sign whatever legal document you may require endowing Madame de Montreuil with the authority to act on behalf of my children however she sees fit, without the slightest interference from me, in consequence whereof I am ready and willing to turn over to her whatever portion of my goods and possessions she deems appropriate to that end; and I agree to approve her choice of education, profession, place of residence, marriage, etc., and to provide her with everything, even above and beyond what I have already agreed to. I also consent to wipe out the entire past, not a shred of which I shall ever mention again in the future, in short, to supplement anything I may have omitted herein by whatever it may please you add as either necessary or useful to the complete satisfaction of all concerned.

Second clause. If, instead of all the above, one decides to pursue the Montélimar project,
⁴
and if one is bound and determined not to renounce it once and for all, I shall go, I am ready to leave, and I say that in no uncertain terms so that you may be assured that I do not, as my wife mistakenly wrote me yesterday, find Vincennes preferable. But if that is the decision, then mark you well, I shall try to escape as soon as I possibly can, and I shall succeed, no matter what precautions may be taken to prevent me; I shall move to a foreign country; I have a prince ready to take me in, of that you may be sure, Sir, and a monarch who does not lock up his subjects over a matter of prostitutes, as he does not deliver them over into the hands of pimps;
⁵
and from there I shall do my level best to thwart all of Madame de Montreuil’s various and sundry projects, in the cruelest way I know how; I shall publicly dishonor her by my writings, which will contain truths so well known that no one will ever be able to refute them. I shall disclose how and why honors are bestowed in France, and reveal that if I left that country it was because I did not have a hundred thousand francs per annum wherewith to grease the palms of Themis’ henchmen as did those to whom the State has sacrificed me, the same State which in my present misfortune should have acted as a father to me, since I spent my youth serving it faithfully and well, that State which repaid me only with chains and nourished me with naught but my own tears. Nor is that all I shall do. No matter what precautions they may take to prevent me, I still have one certain means to deprive my children of their birthright—at least two of them unquestionably—and I shall use it, you may be sure. I shall leave them with nothing but the breath of life they received from their mother, and the only reason I shall leave them with that is so that they may spend their lives cursing the abominable creature who was responsible for preventing them from ever having a father.

Deign to reflect upon all this, Sir. Why, when you can mold a man to your desires by using proper methods, opt to use improper ones? Is that either fair or reasonable? And is that what fate intended for us both, good Sir, I to serve as fodder for a bankrupt woman dishonored in the eyes of every thinking person, and you to offer me up to her for this purpose? My happiness is in your hands, Sir, I entrust myself to your good offices. Think of the inner satisfaction that a man as virtuous as you will feel knowing that he has dried the tears of a poor wretch of a man, knowing that he has returned that man to his duties and to his family, realizing that that entire family loves you, has you in its prayers, thinks of you as its mentor, that it revels less in the happiness it has found again on earth than in the charm of knowing ’tis owing to you and to you alone. ’Tis the personage of God Himself you will then be playing here below. Just think, Sir, think that if the Almighty has accidentally bestowed upon you some of his bounden duties, ’tis in order to be the image not of his angry thunderbolts but of his infinite goodness.

I have the honor of being, with all the sentiments due you, Sir, your most humble and most obedient servant.

de Sade

1
. Sade is referring to the fact that if he is transferred out of Vincennes to another prison, it will be the fifth such dungeon he will have known.

2
. Here Sade really means “prostitutes.”

3
. Sade keeps harping on this point because whenever he lodges a complaint or makes a request of his jailers, they inevitably remind him: “You, Sir, do not make the laws here.”

4
. Having begged his wife to get him transferred to another prison, and she having made efforts to effect a change, Sade is still terrified at being sent to a pestilential prison in or near Montélimar, as indicated earlier in his letter of March 28.

5
. In the original, Sade does not spell out either term, doubtless not for fear of being censored, since the meaning is obvious, but out of deference to his correspondent, a police inspector.

40. To Gaufridy

[April 12, 1781]

I
am told, Monsieur, that you might be so bold, so insolent, as to come and pay me a visit in Montélimar, a site to which no doubt you were involved in having me sent, the better to cheat me, the better to steal from me, and the better to entice me to subscribe to everything that you may have done against my better interests and to enhance your own. I agree that this place
¹
would be most convenient for that, but I strongly advise to refrain from coming; for if I am unfortunate enough not to have a stout stick within reach—the only arm with which to receive a traitor, a rogue, and a scoundrel of your ilk—I shall excoriate you with such a round of violent invectives, in the presence of everyone within hearing—invectives I might add that are totally deserved—that I have no doubt you will greatly regret you ever had the impertinence to come and will make haste to beat a quick retreat.