Letters From Prison (54 page)

Some chocolate.

And a little dog, preferably a pup, so that I may have the pleasure of raising it, either a spaniel or a setter; I want only one of those two, no other breed will do.
²
If they tell you that animals are not allowed in here, your answer should be to laugh in their face. In this enlightened century, people are too smart to still believe in a prejudice of such overwhelming stupidity. And if they persist, and if they say to you:
No, Madame, ’tis strictly forbidden for Monsieur de Sade to see any animals, then your response should be: in that case, Sir, then set him free.

I am most pleased at the great progress the young gentlemen your sons have made; to be talented is a great gift, and ‘twill surely serve them both in good stead!
³

I kindly ask that you acknowledge at your earliest convenience receipt of my manuscript. Although I have already noticed a goodly number of errors since I packed it off to you, such as words and rhymes that are too oft repeated, and having promised that I would refrain from saddling you with pages of corrections, I shall keep to my word, and La Jeunesse can do the job of inserting them. That will keep him occupied and he’s as competent as anyone to make the insertions. Nonetheless, since this is a necessary distraction, I am repairing it so that the title page to which it clearly applies does not have to be scribbled in. Since I was working on the final draft of two works simultaneously, I made a mistake with the
epigraph,
using the epigraph intended for the novel on the play, and the one meant for the play on the novel. That is an error that will be misconstrued if not corrected. Here is the proper epigraph for the comedy I sent you:

They were charged with overseeing public mores and they corrupted them; they were thought to be the guardians of virtue and they became the devotees and models of vice.

M. PC, pages 231 and 232
⁴

Do be good enough to make this slight change.

The oculists have sent a wonder-working powder that will, they say, produce miraculous results. You have to blow the powder into the eye, which presumably results in what is commonly known as
dust in your eyes;
in other words, claptrap.

Most assuredly, you do me great honor. If you keep on this way, you’re going to give me a very swelled head. I had never thought myself either sufficiently attractive or seductive to throw dust into anyone’s eyes, in other words, blind anyone to the facts. Apparently I was mistaken; clearly a lack of self respect!

Forthwith, I picked up my
mirror
and I made up a
riddle
and said: Oh! how right they are:
I am one good-looking fellow, and smart as a whip to boot!
I’m no longer surprised that I have blown powder in peoples’ eyes. Oh! the poor eyes! Oh! how heavy the eyes of those I have blinded!

I send you fond greetings, Marie.
⁵

In the “Country Library” there is a volume—I cannot tell you which—that ends with a very short story whose title, I believe, is “An Extraordinary Adventure” or “A Very Peculiar Adventure,” something of the sort. I desperately need that volume; ask La Jeunesse to try and find it, and when he does kindly send it on to me immediately. All he need do is leaf through the various volumes until he finds the one that ends this way. I cannot tell you how impatient I am to have it. Which probably means that it will be a good while coming, no? The book entitled -is on its way to you and I’m also sending the others.

1
. A prison guard, not a personal manservant.

2
. Sade was a dog lover. At La Coste, he had two setters that accompanied him everywhere on his walks.

3
. Exactly how Sade felt about his sons remains unclear. In one of his letters he refers to them as “terrible brats”; also, he did allow rather too easily the hated présidente to take charge of their upbringing and education. Still, there is considerable evidence of paternal affection in his letters. At the end of his fourth year in prison, he asked Renée-Pélagie for their portraits as a New Year’s present; several times he asked for samples of their handwriting. In his requests for a prison transfer, he asks to spend time alone with his wife and children. And in a 1779 letter to his wife, he confesses to dreaming about them every night.

4
. One suspects the “M” refers to either Molière or Montaigne, two writers Sade greatly admired. But the exact attribution remains elusive.

5
.
Je vous salue, Marie
in the French, which could also be translated:
Hail, Mary,
linking Mme de Sade to the Virgin.

71. To Madame de Sade

[March 26, 1783]

S
till one more worry, my dear friend, still one more persecution,
one more manuscript.
¹
But bear in mind that I am not insisting that you read it; all I ask is that you place it cheek by jowl with the other works of mine that you have already been kind enough to store away in a safe place. If however you had in mind to reread this tragedy to recover a bit from the boredom of a second reading, I did add a short play
²
at the end that you may make you laugh now and then—not too often, however, for if you laugh too much I’ll find it no laughing matter at all.

I believe you will find the tragedy somewhat improved. I corrected all the errors I could find in it, the chief of which was the unpardonable inconsistency of the assault launched by Charles upon a city into which he had sent a negotiator without ever knowing whether or not the negotiations had succeeded. In the new version he sets a deadline: he announces that if at the end of that deadline his officers have not reported back, then he will launch his attack. The appointed time arrives without there being any possibility of his learning what has happened with the negotiations, and one sees why. The attack begins; nothing is more simple, whereas in the earlier version it was not.

What’s more, I reiterate that I had no intention of putting either anything allusory
[sic]
or allegorical in these plays, and that I have no problem changing anything that might shock or displease. Each play contains a hundred more verses than the rules call for; thus you can see that there’s plenty of room to trim and pare as much as you like.

As far as the little play is concerned, I have but one word to say to whoever finds fault with it:

First: ’tis in no wise necessary that in the end vice be punished and virtue rewarded. ’Tis a timeworn mistake, that, and I can prove it by harking back to Aristotle, to Horace, to Boileau, and by quoting some twenty comedies of Molière, who is the model for all of us.

Second: that the depraved person is a woman, and that most assuredly if I had punished that woman, my play would be detestable. But though she goes unpunished, who would like to emulate her? That is what art is all about. In comedy it does not consist of punishing vice but of portraying it in such a way that no one would dream of emulating it; and that being so, one has no need to punish it. The condemnation of vice takes place
sotto voce
in the souls of all the spectators.

If they take me to task
on the matter of morals,
I shall cite in my defense some fifteen of Molirère’s comedies,
Georges Dandin
first and foremost; among the moderns,
Happily
and
Figaro,
plays in which manners and morals are not respected as they are in my play.

In the second couplet of Sevigné, there is a criticism of
the societies of sensible women
that you will be so kind as to view—you and those around you—as no more than idle banter, signifying nothing. Read this couplet over a second time and see whether it contains anything more than
words
and
lovely rhymes.

But what it does is cast a tinge of ridicule and self-conceit on this role, and that’s all I was looking for; ’tis foppish jargon, nothing more.

Besides, I’ve no word that you even received the manuscript; such amenities are doubtless no longer in vogue. I fear dull and equally stupid knock-about scenes are all people require today.

Please don’t forget the various requests I made and the legal actions I asked you to take on my behalf concerning the theft of my manuscript of
The Unfaithful.
³
You would greatly oblige me if you would not let that matter lie.

To change the subject, tell me now, if you don’t mind, whether you don’t think I ought to be as surprised as I am bitter and deeply affected both to see that even the outside dates you had presumably set for my release had come and gone, and to see that, in order to console me for the despair into which that perforce dost plunge me, that you choose these moments of pain both to deprive me of your visits and to prevent me from having a bit of fresh air, and to have me, in a word, at all times and in all places, treated in the most harsh and shameful manner imaginable. Do you really believe that any other like example of tyranny and boorish imbecility exists anywhere in the annals of the entire world? Personally, I doubt it. And what is the purpose of all that? And what could the purpose possibly be? That is the question I cannot help asking over and over again. And that is what, in France, they call justice! A gentleman is shamefully sacrificed to that so-called justice, a gentleman who has served his country honorably and who, I dare say, is possessed of a fair number of virtues, is offered up as a sacrifice—to whom?—to whores! The blood boils, the pen falls from my hand when I dwell upon such infamies. I confess that such foul deeds are beyond my grasp and that my mind is not strong enough even to understand them. But these refinements of barbarism, these deprivations of everything at the very moment when my pain and sorrow are at their worst, when I am most in need of comfort and solace, and when what would serve me most would be to alleviate my situation, this conspiracy, this formal desire to harden my heart, to vex me and destroy in me all virtue! Yes! I say it openly and without fear, whoever is the prime mover behind this punishment can only be an arrant scoundrel, a brainless scoundrel, and the greatest enemy I can ever have on the face of the earth! . . .

I wish you good evening, beg you to write me, to come and see me, and above all to arrange for me to be able to breathe some fresh air. You know that ’tis a season when that becomes even more essential to me than life itself. ’Tis impossible to describe for you how great my suffering is.

I embrace you with all my heart.

You can if you like receive my manuscript at present: ’tis completely aright, and I feel no need to fiddle with it any further. Please be so kind as to let me send it on.

1
. The tragedy
Jeanne Laisn
é
.

2
. Together with the full-length play, Sade sent a curtain raiser,
A Foolish Test,
or
The Credulous Husband.

3
. A manuscript Sade sent, as he sent all his works for safekeeping, to his wife, which apparently was lost—or more likely confiscated.

72. To Madame de Sade

[April 20, 1783]

W
hat you have reported to me in your last letter is false, and Monsieur de Rougemont sent me word this morning that there was no question of my walks being restored anytime in the near future. The unworthy education of tub-thumping double-dealers wherewith you were inculcated must have been so deeply rooted within you that you are completely incapable of rectifying your odious lies. It seems that this bare and vile defect of backstairs gossip is so deeply ingrained in you that ’tis easier to render your soul than to forge the art of lying so foully and so basely. And what do you think you will gain from all that? What do you think will result from what you are doing? Ah! You shall see! I warn you in advance and swear to you most solemnly that when we are all together again not a word of truth will issue forth from my lips, and I shall so refine the art of lying that ‘twill be precisely at the moment when you think it in my best interest to tell the truth that I shall tell the most blatant lie.

How your lies and duplicity—and I refer not only to you but to your tro________op of a mother—are so clearly visible in everything you do and say! The latest
stupidity
consists of two points:
the door to my room remaining closed, and the deprivation of fresh air.

After four and a half months to be exact, they give me back one-half of what they have taken away. Which leads me to believe that ‘twill be four and a half months hence that the rest will be restored to me: not a word. All that was naught but a tissue of lies, an effort to pull the wool over my eyes, an emulation of the lackeys and fraudulent ancestors who adorned your family tree, since you are doing precisely what they did.