Letters From Prison (24 page)

What, you good-for-nothing monkey, with your face of a scrub brush smeared with brambleberry juice, you pole in Noah’s vineyard, you rib in the belly of Jonah’s whale, you used matchstick, from a bordello’s tinderbox . . . you evil-smelling ha’penny candle, you rotten cinch from my wife’s donkey . . . what, you’ve found me no islands? You dare tell me that, you and your four comrades of the frigate sailing the shores around the Port of Marseilles, you’ve not made the least effort to discover me any islands and you’ve not found me seven of them in the space of a morning? Ah: you old pumpkin pickled in bug juice, you third horn on the devil’s head, you cod face with two oysters for ears, you old worn-out shoe of a bawd, you dirty linen full of Milli Springtime’s
red unmentionables,
ah: if I had my hands on you now, how I’d rub your dirty face in them, that baked apple of yours that looks for all the world like a burning chestnut, to teach you not to tell such lies.

How kind you are to remind me that you’re never seasick. What can I tell you on that score, my boy? I’ve long known you carry your wine and your water better than I. But while you make such a brave show up there on deck, all it would take is a pasteboard sea serpent to send you flying into the water or into hell if it opened up beneath your feet . . . Each of us has his little weaknesses, Quiros my son . . . happy is he who has the fewest. But what’s all this talk about Venice? I’ve never been to Venice; ’tis the only city of Italy I’m not familiar with, but someday I’ll go there, or so I hope. As for skipper Raviol, that’s a whole other matter. I do know him. I had the honor of having him serve under me for a period of three weeks, I remember how we attacked the bridge at Aries together, during which battle we suffered serious losses, and I was obliged to retire with dishonor and without having managed to board. During that same time, you who like me don’t know how to swim and who therefore has no stomach for naval combat, you were slinking along the shore, your saddle on your back like a tortoise, your hands thrust deep into your boots as if they were gloves, trying to get together with some Réstif gentleman, ah: I haven’t forgotten all your wonderful feats and achievements.

I was most gratified to learn my squadron was in the roads. I’ll be joining it soon, with my sloop
Blaster.
All I am waiting for now are sixty or eighty cannons, and there are forty mules’ pizzles I want to fly from my top, to make us look more formidable. And then I’ll unfurl my sails and set forth on a cruise this spring.

So your view, Martin my boy, is that you don’t like the way I write? Hear me out upon this matter, and follow my line of reasoning.

I write only for my wife, who can read my writing very well, however poor it may be. Those who without the slightest authority or right to do so want to stick their noses into this writing, which displeases you, if ’tis not to their liking they can go f—k themselves. If at this point you would like a bit of erudition upon the matter, well then, here it is, my boy: both the male and the female who take on these airs, far from taking offense at being sent where I recommend they go, if they dare be honest with themselves will answer me as the regent replied to a woman who complained to him that Cardinal Dubois had sent her where I am sending them.
Madame, the Cardinal is insolent. But his advice is sometimes good.
Farewell, Quiros. My compliments to Gautruche
²
when you see him; tell him I am altogether delighted by his resurrection;
³
and I particularly commend myself to Milli springtime.

This evening of the 4th upon receiving your 3rd letter, or, as Milli Springtime says, in the nick of time.

1
. Mademoiselle de Rousset.

2
. Sade’s pet name for Gothon.

3
. Sade is turning Gothon into a male, doubtless to confuse the censor.

20. To Madame de Montreuil
¹

[October 29, 1779]

I
have tried, Madame, insofar as possible and despite all I have had to suffer, to avoid importuning you, hoping that when I did so rarely take that liberty you would necessarily be more sensitive to the important reasons that might oblige me to break the silence. Your venomous hatred for me notwithstanding, of which I am the recipient of too many obvious marks for there to be any doubt, I flatter myself that simply as a most miserable human being, and asking naught more of you than the milk of human kindness, which even the lowest of the low could rightly expect from your good soul, I should hope that you might well be touched by all my pain and suffering and moved to alleviate the woes, which by now they must be weary of imposing upon me for so long and so pointlessly.

The air in this place, Madame, and the way of life the commandant has chosen to subject me to, are so prejudicial to my health that my chest is already affected to the point where I am spitting up blood, and I truly fear a serious and perhaps fatal lung disease is likely to follow, from which I may not recover if I have the misfortune to spend the winter in this execrable place. If you ask me the cause of this physical disorder, which they doubtless will keep from you, and of the stage to which it has evolved, all of it traceable to little reasons of ego that you can easily imagine, I shall have the honor, Madame, of setting it forth for you in four words, hoping that your many kindnesses to me in the past will enable you to overlook the banality of these details, render you more sensitive to the increased sufferings as real as these, and will finally incline you to take measures to remedy them.

During my first detention here
²
I was in a healthy and airy room, I ate at three o’clock and could consequently link this meal to the milk which I have been used to drinking every morning for more than ten years. During my meal, someone would be there to keep me company, which helped me eat a bit less bitterly, and to digest more easily. At the time I set out for Aix, Monsieur de Rougemont, a soldier honestly to be commended for his candor, which is to his honor, assured me that if ever I were so unfortunate as to return here—which was by no means certain then—I would be infinitely better treated upon my return and I would have all the comforts and amenities I might desire. And yet, as though this gentleman, who only needed to be candid in what he promised me, had reveled in playing the scoundrel, not only by not keeping to any of these promises but even going so far as to deprive me of the few amenities I had previously enjoyed, he took it upon himself to put me in another room, deprive me of the pleasure of a moment’s distraction during my meal, and make me dine at eleven in the morning; and all that to make life easier for other prisoners and especially for the comfort and convenience of his faithful Cerberi to whose interests everything here is sacrificed.

What resulted from all this, Madame, is that from spending last winter in a very poor room where fresh plaster would have never dried, in a room completely devoid of air, a room exceedingly damp and in which ’tis quite impossible to light a fire, that to be deprived of the little distraction I enjoyed during my dinner,
³
and more than anything else, from having stubbornly insisted upon changing the hour of that meal, which made it impossible for me to continue my milk and obliged me to give up taking it for over a year, what has resulted, I say, is that my health is totally destroyed and in tatters, and I am spitting up blood. This illness, Madame, which care and a supervised diet would cure anywhere else, is not only not improving here but growing worse by the day, as much from reasons of morale—about which you know more than I, since you nourish the serpents which occasion them—as from a physical defect in this place, something in addition to everything else I have described and which, being present in all the rooms, is a drawback tending to produce this sickness in those who did not yet have it: just think what it must do to those who already do! The defect to which I refer, Madame, is that the floors in these rooms are not tiled, that one cannot take a step without raising a dreadful cloud of dust, plaster, and saltpeter, fatal for the chest and lungs. You can therefore see, Madame, that here, instead of the illness abating, it tends only to become more irritated and worsen in every sense. If this dreadful defect has been here for centuries, ’tis still very real and very dangerous, and if they do not repair it, the reason is obvious: whether one is comfortable here or not, it matters not one whit, the point being that you are
here.
’Tis like those innkeepers who never have their inns repaired for fear guests may stop coming while the masons are there. Therefore, for all these reasons, and calling upon the feelings of your heart, which my sufferings must reawaken even if that heart has been alienated by my faults, I take the liberty, Madame, to point out to you that my suffering has gone on for a very long while, and that ’tis high time, it seems to me, that I at last be allowed to breathe. But since I have every good reason to believe that your pact is set in stone and that nothing can either increase by one day more or decrease by one day less the arrangements you have made, I would therefore request of you, while awaiting a freedom which after eight years of suffering I have every good reason to hope for, that I at least be transferred to another prison. That favor, Madame, is refused to no one when reasons of health authorize it. Now, can there be any more forceful or more legitimate reasons than those the prison doctor will vouch for; since I made him aware of my symptoms, he has seen me and after what he saw prescribed a diet I am following; what better reasons can there be, I say, than the fact of my spitting up blood, as a result of my being unable to stand the way of life and the air of the place where one happens to be? This transfer will not be a burden to anyone, Madame, I shall pay for it out of my own pocket. If they fear for my safekeeping, instead of six men let them assign a dozen to guard me if they like, I shall pay for them. If they care not where I am to be sent, as I imagine must be the case, I ask that preference be given to Lyons, although I am aware that Monsieur de Bory
⁴
is no longer there. The air that such a decent man breathed there for so long must be impregnated with his virtues, some traces of which must still exist. Moreover, Madame, there is a further reason joined to the earlier one: ’tis the air in that town, enriched and thickened by the mists of the Rhone River and the mineral coal vapors, which are especially recommended for people suffering from infections of the lung. Nothing easier than this transfer, Madame; from here to the suburb, where the Lyons coach passes, is not far. I can be marched there surrounded by forty men, if that would please them to do so. I agree to such an arrangement and will defray the costs, firmly believing that I could never pay too much for anything that would get me out of here, even were it to land me in Hell itself. As for the journey from Paris to Lyons, all they have to do is pack the entire coach with people to guard me. If I did not run away when I came here with five,
⁵
’tis unlikely that I would try to escape when going away with eight or ten. As I finish my letter, Madame, which my present suffering prevents me from going into in further detail, and which may already contain more than enough to try your patience, I most earnestly and most insistently renew my request to have me transferred, and I beseech you, if that is to happen, that it be done before the onset of cold weather, since later on I would not be able to endure either the cold air or the journey. Do not wish for the death of the sinner, Madame, he may yet see the light; it strikes me that his conversion will prick the pride or sensibility more than will his destruction. In a word, Madame, I beg you to consider that what I am asking is neither for a reduction of my sentence nor for the recovery of everything that was ridiculously taken from me, but for transfer into a wholesome place and one where, although locked up, I can at least catch sight now and then of human beings, get some fresh air when I want to, and live according to my own rhythm rather than that of others, things which are not denied to anyone after so many trials and tribulations and such a long confinement, that, if worst came to worst, I’d prefer the Montboisier Tower at Pierre-Encize
⁶
to all of the Vincennes dungeon. And, if you refuse me such a slight favor, my frame of mind is such that, were I to have the misfortune of spending another winter in this place, verily I believe ‘twill be the last, in which case, Madame, ’tis very likely this will be the last time in my life I shall have the honor of conveying my most respectful regards, with which I have the honor of being, Madame, your obedient and most humble servant.

I take this opportunity to assure Monsieur de Montreuil of my sincere respects, and to thank him for the books he so kindly lent me this past summer.

This letter has been written the 29th of October, but shall be dispatched only when I know for certain that they intend to make me spend the winter here, which shall be determined when I see which of the latest objects I requested are indeed dispatched.

1
. As noted, Madame de Montreuil had declared she would neither write her son-in-law nor receive his letters. In a letter that January (1779) she wrote to Renée-Pélagie: “The indelible memory of an entire past prevents me from having any direct contact with him.” Still, as he nears the beginning of his third year of prison, increasingly desperate to see if not an end to his imprisonment at least an alleviation of its harsh conditions, he turns to the one person he thinks can, by word or deed, offer a change.