Letters From Prison (22 page)

(Le Méchant)

[A unique pamphlet, an admirable work,

Most scandalous, true as can be: the style matters little,

And provided it teaches, ‘twill always be good!]

(The Spiteful One)

I change nothing except to underline. And, whoever would have told me that, when she and I
²
were playing that together, these very sentences would someday pay her back for the way she behaved.

Well, well, so there you are, lodged with her, and lodged there ever since my return.
³
I offer you my congratulations. Simply bear one thing in mind, and that is that as far as I am concerned you have either the semblance or the substance of a great many wrongs, and though my friendship for you will doubtless efface them the instant I see you,
that one I shall never forget.

I promised you the
Maintenon
⁴
volumes as soon as the books for rereading appeared. You can see that I am a man of my word. Here are 320 pages. ’Tis quite good in my humble opinion. You didn’t expect such a great quantity. Oh! I like to spring surprises on my friends, especially pleasant ones. Read this
Maintenon
if you are not familiar with her. ’Tis a delight and charmingly written. Madame de la Vallière made me weep like a child. How I should like to have been at the Carmelites’ to see her splendid portrait! Remind me to go and see it as soon as I can. Verily, do read this book. I seem to recall that you have (as did I) some mistaken notions about the early stages of the king’s love for Madame Scarron. Think again. I won’t keep you waiting for the volumes. Each week you’ll get two, I promise you. ‘Twould go faster were I not rereading other things from which I am taking a great many passages.

’Tis a fine collection of books I’ve just received. Two or three at the most from my list, the rest doubtless chosen by Monsieur de La Jeunesse. That makes no sense. More books that will stay here forever, since I’ll never bring myself either to send back any that are unread or to read those that are just plain stupid. For God’s sake, have Amblet make up my lists and send only those he chooses.

I believe in Mademoiselle Rousset’s departure the way I do in Balaam’s ass
⁵
and won’t believe it until I’ve received a letter from her postmarked Provence. She promised me she would wait for me. She is a woman of her word and is incapable of failing me. Her with you, I’m totally confused,
which harms me more than it helps me.

If only you had seen me Saturday and Sunday. I was a sight to behold. I was expecting Monsieur Le Noir. Ah! by God, I had decked myself out for the occasion. No, you could not have resisted. If only you had laid eyes on me, I would have chased all the Albarets, all the
Lefebvres,
⁶
from your mind. I must say, I was as handsome as a Greek god. And then he didn’t come. Fie! To treat the poor old likes of me that way! All right, I’ll get back at him, for whether he comes or not, I won’t put on my Sunday best. And, while I’m on the subject, ’tis time you came to pay me a visit, cease all this idle prattle and come to see me. All joking aside, I earnestly declare that I very much want to see you. How we are going to study each other, eye each other contemptuously, after all this time. But, damn it all, the problem is we won’t be able to
measure
each other. And why not? The bailiff? Why, what do we care about the bailiff?
⁷
He will hold the candle; he’s quite adept at that sort of thing. As for me, I am doing some
measuring
ahead of time, I must warn you, like the Huron with the fair Saint-Yves. You know that it turns one into a strapping devil of a fellow to go for such a long while without
measuring.
‘Twould be a whole other matter if, like the bailiff, one could have recourse to
a little darling in the shape of a turnkey
to whom one tells all, in whom one confides everything, even the complaints one has heard about the fraudulent practices of the various Cerberean creatures
⁸
who guard the gates of Hell here, so that he can go ahead and offer insolent rebukes to them who may one day perhaps be in a position to take your sword and slash the face one adores, and that without any respect for the temple, for the idol, or for the worshiper.

I am not impugning the motives that led you to select these very soft towels. They are
charming.
But I’m afraid that the linen might be of inferior quality. I’ve received the rest: ’tis excellent, and I thank you. It seems to me I am missing six more handkerchiefs, to round out the dozen of each item, to wit:

I think my calculations are correct. In which case, I beg of you to send me another six handkerchiefs just like the others, which are very fine; and that will see me in linen at least for half the remaining period of my detention.

This white jacket you sent me is as wrong as wrong can be, because ’tis without sleeves. You know full well that the similar jackets you sent me earlier had sleeves. Finally, the [. . . ] is very pretty, but everything was to have been the same, both sleeves and back.

So tell me when this farce will end. It has already gone on for two months. That’s a long time, you know, and even so I get the distinct impression that not everything is settled: there will be another unpleasant surprise during the early days of next month; and then I hope you’ll leave me alone, all the more so because I want to pack in an enormous amount of reading this summer. Do let me see that project through. And ’tis far better, if I do say so, than all of yours. At least I have something to show for it, whereas nothing you have undertaken has ever produced, and never will, anything but blather, platitudes, and perhaps a few crowns in the pocket of the bailiff or his colleagues.

That idea that popped into your mind concerning Mérigot
⁹
is neither new nor yours. You must kindly excuse me, but things of value are subject to claim. I had suggested that to you ages ago. In the future, that’s the way it should always be.

Tell me, my fair queen, if instead of spending so much time and effort trying to obtain permission to come to see me, you had worked as hard to solicit permission for me to come and see you, wouldn’t that have been time better spent? Hasn’t all this gone on long enough? And what the devil can they, in honor and in good conscience, be hoping to gain by keeping me so many years inside a room? For quite some time I have both seen and experienced the most frightful drawbacks, but so far I have neither seen nor felt the slightest benefit. Ah, good God! After all the time that people have known the other side of the story relative to those sentenced to prison, since it has been acknowledged that prison has never served any purpose except to make a man worse, and that its sole purpose is to provide nothing other than gratifications, which ministers enjoy distributing at the expense of families, to their pimps or their whores, after all this time, good God, should they not have revised their opinions about prisons? And is it possible there are still some relatives low enough, cowardly enough, stupid enough to sacrifice their kinsmen to such infamies? I look forward to some fine day in the future when somebody comes to take my children away, so that Mme or M. So-and-So might pocket some money therefrom, and only hope that at that moment I were to have a loaded pistol in my pocket, either to blow their brains out or else to dispatch their victims, if such were to be their fate, and no matter how things came out I would have done the State a great service by destroying the former, to humanity by preventing the latter from suffering and turning bad, since nothing is more certain than that prison is bound to turn someone bad.

I am most appreciative of what you say about my manuscripts. I shall surely never ask for them back, since they seem to offer you a modicum of pleasure. But to convince me of that more thoroughly, you must at least explain to me the following sentence, which, as you can see, is meaningless:

“The baroness was a good friend, but her motives are somewhat dubious, sufficiently so as to obscure the ends she clearly implies at the beginning of the 2nd act.”

You do of course see that this sentence is unintelligible. Explain it to me and tell me in plain and forceful language whether her behavior surprises or not, whether or not one foresees what she is going to do. That is what it is absolutely essential for me to know. Have no fear about telling me what you think, for ’tis the simplest and easiest thing in the world to correct. ’Tis a simple matter of either suppressing or reworking the monologue that opens Act 2. I have cast about for a similar character. The only one I found is Julie in Destouches’
Le Dissipateur [The Spendthrift],
who reveals herself in the same way, and for the excellent reasons that Destouches sets forth in his preface, and which have served as rules to me, the circumstance being more or less the same. Do let me have your thoughts thereon, and then I’ll truly believe that my writings afford you some pleasure. If that were so, you would at least have mentioned the speeches or the couplets that most pleased you. But I’ve run on too long upon this subject, and besides, I’ve come to the end of the page, so I close with a kiss.
And come visit me.

1
. Where uncensored works could be printed and then shipped clandestinely into France.

2
. In the early days of her daughter’s marriage, Madame de Montreuil sometimes took parts in the plays her son-in-law staged.

3
. To Vincennes following the Aix appeals trial.

4
. Françoise d’ Aubigné, the Marquise de Maintenon. She was put in charge of the children of Louis XIV and Madame de Montespan, and after the death of the latter, she secretly married the king, probably in 1697. After the king’s death in 1715, she withdrew to her estate of Saint-Cyr, which was devoted to the education of young women.

5
. See Book of Numbers, verses 22-24.

6
. Lefèvre, whose name Sade pointedly and disdainfully misspells. A Provençal peasant who was once a valet of Sade’s uncle the abbe, who had taught him to read and write, Lefèvre had been brought to Paris by Madame de Sade as a servant. Seizing on an allusion to the man in one of his wife’s letters, Sade jumps to the conclusion that Lefèvre is her lover. “Where in the world does he come up with such ideas?” she writes to Mile de Rousset.

7
. During Madame de Sade’s visits to Vincennes, the warden ordered a guard—usually the Scribbler—to be constantly present. By “measure,” Sade’s meaning is obvious.

8
. In Greek and Roman mythology, Cerberus is the three-headed dog that guards the gates of Hades.

9
. A Paris bookseller.

18. To Mademoiselle de Rousset

[May, 1779]

This Sunday evening, having just received yours.

You are leaving, Mademoiselle . . . the stroke is new, I did not expect it or rather I seem to have been a complete fool not to have counted upon it: can one be so indiscreet as to ask what brings you to such a formal violation of the promise set forth in the following lines:

“You wish me to promise that I shall not leave Paris without you and that you will never be at La Coste without me. . . Very well, I grant you the first,
” etc.: Letter II, dated January 23.

In any case, Mademoiselle, as I do not fancy there is anything I can do to keep you from going (however great my desire for you to stay) I now feel obliged to deal with the two subjects I have promised myself to address, under a circumstance I foresaw only too clearly, the first being to declare to you that if you do leave before I am set free, I
shall not see you again as long as I live.
The second is to prove your failings to you, so that you do not take away with you the notion of an untrustworthy and irresponsible man, a slanderer, a man who is unjust, whose misfortunes have embittered him to such a degree that he has become unsociable; and ’tis with paper laid out in front of me that I shall initiate the discussion, when I am through I shall let you be the sole judge . . . But you will look high and low for excuses, won’t you? Instead of justifications you will come up with jests . . . and you will tell me that ’tis not you, but your double . . . I quite agree; but at least you will have to admit that the false one, the double, has been playing a most despicable role, and that the Jupiter who pulls the double’s strings is a great rogue . . . But our armor remains undented from such qualifications . . . and we enjoy earning them . . . And are we then convinced that this is the way to later put a good face on things?. . . Well now, Mademoiselle, before you leave I beseech you to do me the one last favor of assuring me that it is
not
. . . Otherwise, I swear by everything I hold dearest in this world that when I get out of here it will be with naught but rage in my heart, and with the utmost desire to vent it. But enough of this, let us to our subject, ’tis high time we did. The simplest of all secrets, which I believe is well known to every twelve-year-old schoolboy, is that when one crosses out a line, the deleted line becomes the meaningful one in any passage, that letters that are mixed up make sense when one reads what has been crossed out, and that not so much as a comma is lost when the thing is done carefully; they who cross out lines in my letters are too well educated not to know what they are doing, they want to provide me this one further little pastime . . . I thank them, nothing being worse than idleness. The lines from you that I am about to transcribe and confront, which are here before my very eyes, come from two different letters, both dating from roughly the same period; and without making the slightest alteration to either, I have rendered to each its real meaning. I shall keep them very carefully, and you will be surprised when you see them. Such then is my text, Mademoiselle, and starting from there I shall convince you not only of your atrocious lies, but of your cruelties toward me, and above all your frightful inconsistency which I am not wrong to call
the product of your heart
and not of your mind, because the plot is too carefully woven not to recognize therein a veritable desire to hurt and to harm: a plan as infamous as it is odious, the fruit of an evil heart if it comes from you, most basely and vilely complaisant even if you have only been an accessory to the crime. ’Tis that I prefer to believe.