Letters From Prison (71 page)

Authors: Marquis de Sade

BOOK: Letters From Prison

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There were some triumphs, however, notably the publication of his novel,
Justine, or The Misfortunes of Virtue,
²¹which appeared in the summer of 1791 through the auspices of the daring, entrepreneurial publisher Girouard. Taking advantage of the new freedom of the press that, as so often happens, flowers in the immediate wake of a revolution then dies aborning,
²²Girouard rightly sensed there was a ready public for such a revolutionary work and not only agreed to publish it but asked the author “to spice it up,” which Sade was only too happy to do .
²³

One of the strangest ironies of Sade’s post-prison life occurred two years later. Despite his lukewarm feelings for the revolution in general, and his profound disgust for its excesses, Sade was above all a pragmatist, painfully aware of how precarious his situation was. Registered as a “man of letters,” Sade offered his services to his local revolutionary office, the Section des Piques (formerly Vend
ô
me), which welcomed his talents, literacy not being one of the peoples’ strong points. His pamphlets were read and applauded publicly, not only in his own section, but often throughout Paris. In April 1793, he was appointed by his section to a special jury investigating the alleged counterfeiting of paper money, an assignment he gleefully reported to Gaufridy:

You’ll never guess in a hundred years!. . . I’m a
judge! . . . a prosecuting judge!
Who would ever have predicted that, lawyer, who fifteen years ago would ever have predicted that? As you can see, my head is maturing, and I’m becoming wise in my old age. . . So congratulations are in order, and above all make sure to send
the judge
some money, failing which I’ll have you
sentenced to death!
Spread the good word about in your part of the world, so that people at long last recognize me as a good patriot, for that, I swear to you, is what I am, heart and soul
²⁴

In that same letter Sade imparted to his lawyer an even more startling piece of news. Who had come to see him in his Piques office but the president de Montreuil, begging for help, for the Committees of Surveillance were on the prowl to ferret out recalcitrant aristocrats and dispatch them to the Revolutionary Tribunal. The two men had not seen each other in fifteen years, and one can only imagine the temptation for the ex-prisoner to vent his wrath at his inlaws, especially knowing that the doddering old gentleman before him—Montreuil was then seventy-seven—had been sent by his wife, she doubtless deciding that any help her son-in-law might grant would be more likely if she remained out of sight.

Surprisingly—or was it?—Sade received the president kindly and sat with him for a full hour, chatting and presumably assessing the Montreuils’ increasingly precarious position. A word from Sade and the Montreuils, whom Sade characterized to Gaufridy later that year as “my greatest enemies . . . known scoundrels, criminals . . .” would have been arrested and, doubtless, executed. What did this man of so many contradictions do? “I take pity on them,” he wrote Gaufridy. “I repay them, for all the harm they have done me, with contempt and indifference.” On August 2, Sade placed both their names on a “purification list,” thus saving their lives. “That,” he informed Gaufridy, “is how I avenge myself.”

Later that year Sade, trying constantly to sail with the oft-changing wind, made a major political blunder. The anticlerical wind was blowing strong in the fall of 1793, and Citizen Sade was called again by the Section des Piques not only to draft its petition renouncing all religions save that of liberty, but to read it before the Convention, which he did to considerable applause. A week later, however, Robespierre decreed that the anti-Christian campaign should end, saying that while unpatriotic priests should indeed be punished, that did not mean the suppression of priests or the priesthood.

Whether it was that political gaffe, the new law against relatives of emigr
è
rs—which meant Sade, because both his sons fell into that category—or the latest accusation—on December 8, 1793, Sade was arrested, this time the charge being that he had attempted, two years before, to enlist in the Royal Constitutional Guards, on offense punishable by death. Only by bureaucratic chance did he escape the guillotine. After almost a year under prison conditions far worse than those he had suffered at the hands of the monarchy, he was once again set free in October of the following year.

In August 1795, again in the relatively liberal climate following the execution of Robespierre on July 28, 1794, Sade’s
Aline and Valcour
appeared, and two years later, in late 1797 and early 1798, Sade’s huge
The New Justine, or the Misfortunes of Virtue,
followed by the
Story of Juliette, Her Sister,
was also published. But any pleasure he may have felt at seeing this major segment of his prison writings in print was short lived.
²⁵On March 6, 1801 (5th Vant
ô
se year IX) while Sade was at his new printer, a man named Nicolas Masse, the police arrived and whisked both men off to the local police precinct. Napoleon was now enthroned, and had brought high morality back into power with him. These scandalous works of Sade were, to his mind (he whose campaigns had left hundreds of thousands dead), “outrageous.”

Massé, either to save his own skin or because he had been involved in the police raid to start, denounced the author and was released twenty-four hours later. Ironically, the prison to which Sade was remanded was named Sainte-P
é
lagie, originally a convent but converted to a prison during the revolution. The following year, on March 14, he was transferred to the Bic
ê
tre Prison. We have a first-hand description of the now almost sixty-two-year-old prisoner by Charles Nodier, who saw him early the morning of his transfer. Commenting on his “enormous obesity, which hindered him from walking,” he also noted in the man “vestiges of grace and charm in his manner and language. His tired eyes nonetheless still retained a measure of brilliance and delicacy that glowed from time to time like the last spark of a dying ember. “
²⁶

Roughly a month later, Sade’s family convinced the prefect of police to have Sade transferred from the frightful Bic
ê
tre to Charenton, where he would be much more comfortable. The Brothers of Charity no longer administered the asylum, which had become empty in 1795. In 1797 the Directory had ordered it reopened and put Monsieur de Coulmier in charge. The new director, a man of taste and intelligence, was assured in a letter from his new patient that, once there, he would be “deserving of the directors approval. . . and would do his best to convince him that all the low opinions he may have heard about him were groundless.”

Shortly, Marie-Constance sought and received permission to join Sade at Charenton. She, as well as Sade himself, petitioned the authorities a dozen times over the next few years, asking that he be set free, to no avail.

Sade found some solace in his last years, convincing Monsieur de Coulmier of the therapeutic value of drama for the inmates. Thus he became a kind of Charenton theater director, rehearsing and putting on plays, including (proudly) some of his own, giving elocution and acting lessons, and sometimes performing. Hearing of which, the authorities once again tried to suppress this curious liberal therapy, but Monsieur de Coulmier argued on its behalf, and prevailed.

As for his nemesis, the woman he had most loathed and detested, on whom he had promised in dozens of his prison letters to take revenge the minute he was free, he not only never did but, as noted, saved her life and that of her husband under the Terror—at great risk to his own, one might add. There is no record that Sade and la présidente ever met after 1790. Monsieur de Montreuil died on January 15, 1795, two years after his visit to his son-in-law at the Section des Piques. The présidente survived him by six years. If Sade took note of her passing, there is no record of it.

Renée-Pélagie, blind for several years and like her husband exceedingly obese, died on July 7, 1810, at the age of 69, and was buried in the village cemetery at the family home, the Chateau d’Echaffour in Normandy, without ever having laid eyes on her husband again. A year earlier, Lieutenant Louis-Marie de Sade, who had distinguished himself in the emperor’s army, was killed in Italy. Sade’s younger son, Claude-Armand, a mirthless, timorous man who, like his maternal grandmother, was deathly afraid of scandal, turned several of his father’s manuscripts over to the authorities, knowing they would be burned. As for Madeleine-Laure, she lived to the age of seventy-three. When she died on January 8, 1844, she was buried next to her mother at the Chateau d’Echaffour. On their gravestone is inscribed: “Both as virtuous as they were benevolent.”

Sade himself remained incarcerated at Charenton until his death on the night of November 11, 1814, attended only by the medical student, L. J. Ramon. Of his seventy-four long and tortured years, this “freest of men” spent more than half his adult life—over thirty years—behind bars.

18
. This letter, begun on May 19, had to have been finished four days later, the Assembly’s decree further eroding the king’s powers having been signed only on May 22.

19
. In his letter of January 15, 1779, from Vincennes to Mlle de Rousset, Sade had admitted that the young lady, then only seven, was downright ugly. Clearly the years had not improved her looks.