Letters From Prison (30 page)

This, thank God, makes the third straight day that I have gone without lighting a fire in my charming stove, and God knows how much I’ve been coughing and in what a terrible state my poor chest is. One must be like Cacambo,
³
not a quarter Spanish but a quarter
English
⁴
or German, to even envisage locking up poor wretches in a room with a stove that belches and gives one a headache; and that when for a mere two louis, without damaging the thick walls in any way, one could install a fireplace in this room. I am prepared to pay for it; just say when; better yet, let them give me some bricks and mortar, I’ll do it myself if that’s what they want. Such an inconvenience is but a bagatelle in the outside world, because all you have to do is open your door or switch to another room: but just think how it is for the poor wretches who can neither change to another room nor open their door. You keep telling me over and over again (in guise of a signal) in your own sweet way that they are going to give me a different room and restore my walks, etc. But all that is to the tune of
Go, Johnny, go and see if they are coming,
etc., in consequence wherefore I count it amongst the articles in your letters I simply refuse to read. Still in all, I can’t go on, I simply cannot go on; you have no idea of how this [stove] affects me. This damned odor of hot metal gives me migraines that drive me mad, and the smoke is ruining my eyes beyond repair. I would like to oblige that mongrel bailiff to spend three or four hours here, and make him dance me an
English saraband:
ye gods! what fun that would be! and how he would jump about!

I have received all your parcels; this time they are charming, my love, and I thank you from the bottom of my heart: candles, pheasant worthy to grace the table of
a commander of a castle or keep,
exquisite orange flower, and thoughtfully chosen preserves. All joking aside, ’tis all excellent in every respect; I commend you to do as well in the future.

You did well to have your older son shaved, and ‘twas a great mistake not to have the other shaved as well. I owe my head of hair solely to the fact that I took that same precaution the minute I had chicken pox. As for that elder’s face, have no fear, ‘twill end up just fine;
⁵
I can see him from here, he will be thin, supple, nimble, well built, he will have the devil’s own wit. With those qualities, a man always finds more than enough women to ensure his unhappiness. Further charms only double the dose of misfortune; they are not to be desired. After I had chicken pox I was a great deal more unsightly than he: just ask Amblet; I would have given Satan a good scare; and even so, I think, I can say without boasting that I turned out to be a handsome enough f-.

And so, therefore, send me the rest of the comedies. Not to do so is a misplaced act of mischief: as long as I had a healthy chest and good pair of lungs, those who today have the gall to refuse me those plays know very well that I used both one and the other
⁶
to read aloud to them, to entertain them because—and here again I’m not being boastful—no one in their brilliant society was as talented at reading aloud as I. I can say that now, because I am no longer able to read aloud, thank God. So ’tis like that sixty-year-old woman who had hung above her head the portrait made of her when she was fifteen, and who would say to everyone who came to visit her,
“See how I used to look” 
Therefore send me those comedies; don’t force me to say there is no gratitude in your family, and rest assured that all the works I am asking you for are unquestionably in print. Moreover, if you want to hold on to them for the purpose of using them to compose some sort of signal, don’t bother, ’tis not the end of your errands, and once the present list is attended to another one will soon appear: I’m a man of many resources.

I am most pleased you bought
Le P
è
re de famille.
⁷
I shall make an emendation of the work in due course, and I’ll send them
[sic]
on to you one of these days. ‘Twill not be much: a few words, a situation, no real changes, sorry to say. On that subject, it seems to me, judging from the plays you sent me, that no one stands on ceremony these days, and when they go so far as to lift entire verses from Racine, I do believe one can leave a particular situation in a play even though it may resemble a similar situation in some other play. All the same, I shall change the main element of the plot and send it on to you. Please be good enough to enclose the sheet with the manuscript and verify the changes that Monsieur Joseph Quiros
⁸
makes thereon.

Apropos of this
P
è
re de famille,
you haven’t read the epigraph: ’tis a masterpiece. Do read it; although addressed to a princess, ’tis a code of instructions to all mothers, and ’tis truly sublime. When you have a chance, have it read to your son. You’d think it was Diderot.

Thank you for the medical advice; I intend to act upon it. I’ve had no visit from the doctor. The problem does not keep me from walking, but it hurts a great deal when I’m in bed, and ’tis even worse sitting down;
⁹
and yet it’s been going on for two months. You were quite right to warn me against
eau de boule,
for they were on the point of prescribing it to me here. There is no inflammation, ’tis like a bad bruise.

Let’s see, what’s next in your letter? . . .
“draft made out to my mother
. . .” Ah, yes!
Signals?

Chanson, chanson

Il vous faut, dites-vous, poulette,

Pour vous rendre plus grassouillette,

Un mandat? —Fi!

Ah! bon dieu, comme elle m’en flanque!

Je sais bien que rien ne vous manque,

Même un gros---------.

[Ditty, Ditty

You must have,

Or so you say, my little chickadee,

Unless you do you'll fade away

A draft? For shame!

You must be daft!

I know full well

You’ve all you need

Inclusive of a big

fat p----.]

Well, what say you, I am right, no? Yet I trust I’m not; may the devil take me if ever I were to hear any raillery on that front!

Do not say another word about
my fat serving-girl;
¹⁰
you are forever confusing me. First, you described her as ugly: one can deal with that, and you say to yourself that chances are she’ll console herself by worshiping more fervently at
the altars of virtue.
And now you tell me she’s pretty, and consequently a wh______. No matter, I shall try to come to terms with that, too; but don’t come and confuse me again on that matter; for ’tis a real pain to have to change one’s idea with every new moon.

And I too, dear friend, I assure you that my only moments of happiness are those when I think of our being together again. But what a damnable long time they are making me wait for it. Oh! ’tis too long, far too long, and when one sees that things are growing visibly worse, and when ’tis proven that both physically and mentally naught but a very great ill and a very great danger can result, one should not drag all this out to such a degree. Damn it all! —I’ve already said this to you— we pay these people and let’s be done with it! Money, money, as much as you like! Wounds to one’s purse are not fatal; but not so with anything that contributes to destroying the mind, the temper, the character, and the basic elements whereof a man is constituted. These things are irreparable, and ’tis outrageous they be sacrificed to a woman’s vengeance and to the fattening of a half-bred swine.
¹¹

Good night, I’ve rattled on long enough. I was encouraged by your letter, which is one of those I most cherish; but I must not overdo it and end up giving you vapors. So I stop here; I shall not write again except to acknowledge receipt of the things requested for the first of next month, whereof here is the list.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

[
The remainder of the letter is missing
]

1
. That is, Renée-Pélagie’s parents and family.

2
.
Le Mercure de France,
the leading literary monthly magazine.

3
. The reference remains elusive. From the context, one might assume a connection with Sade’s pet hate, the Inquisition.

4
. De Rougemont was one-quarter English.

5
. Actually, Louis-Marie’s face was disfigured by the disease.

6
. His chest and lungs. As noted, during the early days of his marriage, Sade loved to recite or perform plays, and from all reports was head and shoulders above his peers.

7
. A popular play.

8
. Another name for his favorite valet, Carteron, to whom Sade attaches nicknames at will.

9
. For some time Sade had been suffering from hemorrhoids.

10
. He refers to Renée-Pélagie’s unkind, but not inaccurate, description of their daughter.

11
. Again, de Rougemont, whose bastardy Sade brings up whenever he can.

32. To Madame de Sade

[December 30, 1780]

T
his most surely is the last New Year’s letter I shall write to you at Vincennes, my sweet . . .”

“Oh! I assure you that the year shall not end without my having the pleasure of holding you in my arms . . .”

“One must never give up, the year is not yet over, and I see nothing standing in the way of the hopes I gave you for ’79.”

“This shall surely be the year of grace, the end to our woes . . .” “The Provost and all his crew have just assured me that the year ’79 will be a very happy one for me, and he said it in such a way I quite believed him.” (That one I believe, because your happiness consists of my being behind bars; ’tis a touchy matter!)

There, Madame, is a fair sampling of your abominable lies. And don’t blame them on others who lied to you. Either you should not have said a thing or you should have spoken only when you were sure of your facts. In two words, you are an imbecile who lets herself be led around by her nose; and those who lead you, monsters who deserve to be hanged and kept hanging on the gallows till the crows devour them down to the last morsel.

I sometimes visualize your loathsome mother before the abscess of her stinking black bile burst and began leaking on me drop by drop. She must have been as swollen as the peasant in
Doctor Crispin
who downed three bushels of pills. I’m amazed it didn’t kill her twenty times over, but alas for me heaven was not so inclined. I’ve made a little sketch of that, from which I want to have an engraving made when I get out of here.

In it one sees the présidente
naked,
lying on her back, looking for all the world like one of those sea monsters sometimes left high and dry on the shore . . . Monsieur le N----,
¹
who is taking her pulse, says: “Madame, ’tis a puncture you need or the bile is going to suffocate you.” Whereupon the dandy Albaret is summoned, who gives a puncture to his sweet mistress. Marais, who is holding the candle, and who from time to time tastes the matter to see whether ’tis worthy; and there’s little R---,
²
who is holding the plate and who—well-filled though it be—cries out in a falsetto voice,
“Courage! courage! That amount won’t
even pay for three months’ lodgings in my little house. . .”

That will make a delightful print.

Why have you not sent me the
Theater, Military, and Royal Almanacs,
as well as the
Mercures
I asked you for? If I do not have them without fault by return I protest and declare that I shall refuse to accept any more letters from you. ’Tis cruel never to want to do anything except what is hurtful to me, and never anything that might bring me a bit of comfort. There’s your—of last year, the crowning examples of your falseness and lying: I send with it my best wishes to you, Madame, for the New Year.

May the lot of you, you and your execrable family and all their vile valets, all be put in a sack and thrown into the ocean depths. Then let the news be brought to me with all due haste, and I swear to heaven ‘twill be the happiest moment of my life. There, Madame, I send both my best wishes and my greetings, including those to your wh---- Rousset, from head to toe.