Letters From Prison (35 page)

The second paper was the result of an argument I had with the little doctor in Rome.
¹⁶
He maintained that the ancients poisoned iron by the means he told me and I jotted this down; and I claimed the contrary, assuring him that I thought I had read somewhere of a very different method. All that stemmed from the subject of the poisoned antique weapons we had seen together in the arsenal of San Angelo Castle. Since I wanted to include a word or two about that in my description of Rome, I wrote down his opinion, promising to send him mine as soon as I could lay my hands on it, and then, in my dissertation, to decide which of the two was more likely. In fact, I did find the opinion contradicting his, in one of the books you sent me, the fourth volume of the
History of the Celts.
‘Twas from an herb called
linveum
and, according to Pliny and Aulus Gellius,
hellebore,
which the ancients rubbed on the blades they wanted to poison. I therefore opted in favor of this opinion, contesting the one I had been given. And there is the subject of what was found in this connection. Is that still another venial sin?

But now we come to the most important point:
an entire legal opinion concerning matters very similar to those of which you stand accused.
¹⁷
Yes, a damning piece of evidence, but it reminds me of the old story of the magpie’s mess; you know that story, do you not? Well, from that story, from the one about Calas and his son, and from a good many others like them, you learn, you who imprison at the drop of a hat, that one should never judge by appearances and punish people without hearing them out, especially in a country that, through its laws and its government, thinks that it is free of all inquisitional vexations; that, in a word, there is not a single citizen whom you have the right to clap into prison without a fair trial, or who at least will not have the right, after he is out, to avenge himself in whatever manner he may choose, providing he punish you for your injustice. Yes, whoever you may be, let this idea sink clearly into your head and listen to what I have to say on this vitally important point. This document is the confession of a poor wretch who, like myself, was seeking asylum in Italy. The idea of returning home was the furthest thing from his mind; and seeing me inclined to cross back over the Alps, he handed me his legal opinion, asking me to show it to a lawyer in France and to send him the lawyer’s reaction. I promised him I would. Two days later he came to me and begged me to give him the paper back, saying that, since ‘twas written in his own hand, it could serve as evidence against him; he wanted to have it transcribed but had found no one in the area who wrote French. I copied out the entire document myself, with no other thought in mind but to oblige him, and not giving a thought to the document’s implications. There is another fact for which I
vouch upon my word of honor
and which I stand ready to prove beyond all shadow of doubt when the time comes.

There are all my so-called faults, together with what I have to say about them and in reply to them and what I shall prove, I
swear it,
by various proofs and other means so irrefutable that ‘twill be absolutely impossible to deny the truth thereof. I am therefore guilty only of libertinage pure and simple such as it is practiced by all men, to a greater or lesser degree, depending upon the temperament or penchant that Nature happened to have bestowed upon them. Everybody has his failings; let us make no comparisons: my torturers might suffer from such a comparison.

Yes, I am a libertine, that I admit. I have conceived everything that can be conceived in that area, but I have certainly not practiced everything I have conceived and certainly never shall. I am a libertine, but I am neither a
criminal
nor a
murderer,
and since I am obliged to place my apology next to my justification, I shall therefore say that ’tis quite possible that they who condemn me so unfairly are in no position to offset their infamies by good deeds as patent as those I can raise to compare to my misdeeds. I am a libertine, but three families living in your section of the city lived for five years from my charity, and I rescued them from the depths of poverty. I am a libertine, but I saved a deserter from the military, a man abandoned by his entire regiment and by his colonel, from certain death. I am a libertine, but at Evry, with your entire family looking on, I saved at the risk of my own life a child who was about to be crushed beneath the wheels of a cart drawn by runaway horses, and I did so by throwing myself beneath that cart. I am a libertine, but I have never compromised the health of my wife. I have never indulged in any of the other branches of libertinage so often fatal to the fortune of one’s children: have I squandered mine through gambling or other expenditures that in any way deprived them, or threatened to cut into their inheritance? have I mismanaged my goods and possessions, insofar as they have been under my control? have I, in a word, given any indication as a youth that I preferred a heart capable of the heinous acts wherewith I am accused today? have I not always loved everything that was deserving of my love, and everything I ought to hold dear? did I not love my father? (alas, I still weep for him every day of my life) did I ever behave badly with my mother? and was it not when I went to be with her as she drew her last breath, and to show her the ultimate mark of my devotion, that your mother had me dragged off to this horrible prison, where she has left me to languish for the past four years? In a word, look at my life since my earliest childhood. You have in your entourage two people who followed me in that period,
Amblet
and
Madame de Saint-Germain.
From there move on to my youth, which was observed by the Marquis de Poyanne,
¹⁸
who personally watched me evolve, thence move forward until the age when I married, and look around, consult whomsoever you will, enquire whether I ever gave any signs of the ferocity I am supposed to possess and whether I ever committed any misdeeds that could have been seen as the harbinger of the crimes ascribed to me: there must be something there, for as you know, crime does not spring out of nothing. How is one to suppose, therefore, that out of such an innocent childhood and youth, I all of a sudden attained the very depths of meditated horror? No, you don’t believe that. And you, who today tyrannize me so cruelly, you don’t believe it either: your vengeance has clouded your mind, you have acted without thinking, but your heart understands mine, judges it better, and knows full well that it is innocent. Someday I shall have the pleasure of seeing you admit as much, but that avowal will not compensate for my torments, and I shall not have suffered any less for it . . . In a word, I want to be cleared, I shall be as soon as they let me out of here, whenever that may be. If I am a murderer, I did not commit enough murders, and if I am not, I shall have been punished far too severely and I have every right to demand redress.

This has been an extremely long letter, has it not? But I owed it to myself, and promised myself to write it at the end of my fourth year of suffering. Those four years have now expired; here is the promised letter, written as if in the article of death, so that if death were to overtake me before I had the consolation of holding you once again in my arms, I could, as I breathed my last, refer you to the sentiments I expressed in this letter, as the final thoughts addressed to you by a jealous heart whose desire is to go to his grave knowing you hold him in your esteem. You will forgive the letter’s disorder; it is neither studied nor witty; all you should look for in it are naturalness and truth. I crossed out a few names mentioned earlier on, so that the letter will get through, and I most earnestly beg that it be delivered to you. I do not ask you for a detailed reply, all I ask is that you let me know you have received
my grand letter:
that is how I shall call it; yes, that is how I shall call it. And when I refer you to the sentiments it contains, ’tis then you shall reread it . . . Dost thou understand me, my dear friend? Thou shalt reread it and thou shalt see that he who will love thee unto the grave was moved to sign it in his blood.
¹⁹

de Sade

[Attached note:]

’Tis not often that I write letters of this great length or one as important when it comes to vindicating myself; and ’tis certain ‘twill not happen again. Consequently, I beg those through whose hands this letter must pass to be so kind as to make sure it reaches my wife safely. I trust they will do so, and that they would not like to give me reason to believe that they detain letters of the importance of this one; in a word, letters in which I set forth my position; for were they to seize them and thus prevent them from reaching their intended party, then they would have to agree I would have every right to take legal action one day against such methods and expose them, demonstrating the well-established interest they had in keeping me in prison, since they opposed any means I had at my disposal to vindicate myself and thus shorten my sentence.

1
. To escape the censor’s possible charge of blasphemy, Sade gives us no clue to which deities he refers.

2
. That is, his writings, which he carefully sent on to his wife for safekeeping and often for her opinion, which he frequently derided but inwardly cherished.

3
. The so-called Arcueil affair, which, claims Sade, would never have amounted to anything if the présidente had not been so worried about it sullying the Montreuils’ presumed good name.

4
. Sade means his first Vincennes detention, before he was taken to Aix for the appellate trial.

5
. Procuress. Not only did Nanon provide Sade the young whores he requested, she came with the package and joined the hardy little group of revelers at La Coste during the winter of 1774-1775.

6
. Rose Keller.

7
. Procuring.

8
. A nearby town.

9
. Nanon.

10
. Which of course he did, using pen instead of sword.

11
. A young man named Andre, probably no more than fifteen, whom Sade and his wife hired as “secretary” for the marquis during their trip to Lyons in early October 1774. Andre was one of seven servants the Sades hired that month to come with them to La Coste. At a time when their finances were desperate, the hiring of seven new servants was strange to say the least—not so much for the profligate marquis but certainly for the level-headed, thrifty marquise.

12
. The royal prosecutor in Lyons.

13
. The royal prosecutor in Marseilles, who signed a warrant for Sade’s arrest on July 4, 1772, perhaps a trifle prematurely, because the evidence, especially concerning the poisoning, was not yet in

14
. The unnamed witness he swears on his word of honor to produce is in all probability a figment of his imagination.

15
.
Juniperus sabina,
an evergreen shrub whose shoots yield an oil used medicinally.

16
. Probably Dr. Barthélmy Mesny, whom Sade visited in Florence in 1775. Dr. Mesny, however, was no “little doctor”: physician to the Grand Duke of Tuscany, he was also a well-known naturalist and archaeologist.

17
. Sade is citing the complaint against him; therefore the “you” refers to himself.

18
. A friend of Sade’s father and commander-in-chief of the Carabiniers, one of the most distinguished units of the royal army. He was helpful in getting the marquis a commission in the cavalry where, as we have seen, he served honorably for several years.

19
. In his closing sentences, Sade addresses Renée-Pélagie in the familiar “tu” form. One presumes, too, that, literally, he used his own blood in writing these final lines of his “grand letter” of explanation and justification.

35. To Madame de Sade

[March 4, 1781]

I
don’t know what you mean by the Beaumarchais prospectus. I haven’t heard of it, and surely you must not have sent it, for they are always punctilious in bringing me everything you send. If the purpose of all these little acts of kindness is to give me something more to worry about, doubtless not stopping to think that in my frightful situation I have enough subjects for worry, you are simply wasting your time. For I swear to you that I have never worried about, nor shall I worry about as long as I live, the packages or prescriptions you send. All that’s a lovely machine, the mechanism of which must be left to unwind in due course; in consideration of which I warn you that from now on, whenever I hear all this talk about worries or prescriptions or consignments, of what has become or not become of this thing or that, when, I say, I hear all this claptrap, I shall never respond with the least word. I shall keep asking for an object as long as it has not been sent me, I shall acknowledge its receipt as soon as I have received it. Furthermore, I have nothing to say to you upon this subject except what I have already told you three or four times over:
buy me the book, I shall be happy to have it:
this is the last time I shall mention it.