Letters From Prison (47 page)

As far as Monsieur de Rougemont is concerned, I have once again misjudged him badly. And I must confess that solely on the basis of his having served in the military, I would have thought him more candid, more honest, and above all incapable of avenging himself as he does by a long string of calumnies and an endless number of petty domestic tyrannies which, when they come to light, will surely reflect far more poorly on him than on me. One must not judge my conduct in here either by my deeds or my words. People do everything in their power to bait me, to vex me, they visit all sorts of abomination upon me, week after week they torture me beyond belief, and then they do not want me to take whatever revenge I can! They must then think I’m made of wood, and though they do their level best to render me insensate, and consequently to destroy in me the germ of all virtues, I am still not sufficiently deadened to the point of being incapable of warding off all the slings and arrows they send my way. If I had been the object of a normal judicial sentence, one could have judged both my character and my conduct, but what has been done to me has never been done to anyone else. The judgments and sentences handed down upon those guilty of the most heinous crimes committed throughout this century pale when compared to mine. Therefore, at the very least I should be allowed to lodge my complaints and take my revenge whenever and wherever I can. They give me medicines that upset my stomach, to the point where the only food I can bear is milk, and even that I have difficulty digesting, and then they are shocked when I administer a sound thrashing to the poor beggar who has chosen to exercise the vile profession of turnkey! They are sorely mistaken. So long as my blood flows in my veins I shall tolerate neither infamy nor injustice, and this latest behavior is simply atrocious. Never in my life have I put anything harmful in anyone’s food, and I swear upon what I hold most sacred in the world that there was not the slightest harmful ingredient in the aniseed the girls in Marseilles ate, and the best proof is that I ate those same sweets in their presence and at the same time they did. They admitted that at the Aix hearing, as they admitted it to me personally. Thus, by that admission, that fact is proved beyond all shadow of doubt as far as I’m concerned. Whatever else I may be accused of beyond that is pure calumny, which I shall absolutely refute whenever I am given the opportunity. ’Tis therefore also proved that Monsieur de Rougemont is taking his revenge, and doing so by spreading all sorts of lies about me, doubtless because of those he claims I told about him.

I swear and solemnly declare that I have never slandered Monsieur de Rougemont. Anyone said to be a slanderer is a man who makes up lies and then spreads them to one and all in order to confuse or harm the person concerned, as he has done for example when he reports to the judge that I have made threats against you. ’Tis such a person one calls a slanderer and a knave. In my case, all I said was what I learned and what I heard other people report as gospel truth. Thus, while I have indeed spoken ill of people, ‘twas not on the basis of anything I made up.

I used to have four or five friends who were also acquaintances of Monsieur de Rougemont. He is aware of that, in fact we have spoken about it together on more than one occasion. I therefore have had a chance to learn a great deal about the man from them. In earlier days, there was a period of seven or eight years when I was wont to dine twice a week at two houses on the rue Férou, one the house of Madame de-
²
and the other belonging to Chevalier de Chaponais, both of which were contiguous to that of Monsieur de Rougemont’s mother. I thus had an opportunity to learn all sorts of things about him, and I committed them well to heart.

In Florence I met a man who is one of the best connected people on the face of the earth, who knows all the ins and outs of the court and the ministers, a man who proved it by revealing the truth in print, which forced him to flee his country. In any case, that gentleman spent six months with the Count du Barry, a close friend of Monsieur de Rougemont, and he told me the following: I
should greatly prefer to be sentenced to the wheel than to the Vincennes dungeon, and ’tis the fear of that dungeon that has prevented me from returning to my homeland.
To which I asked:
Just what do you mean by that?
And the man said to me:
Because the Count du Barry has just informed me that the warden of this dungeon is one of his former students, a man who has learned how to line his pockets by pimping for his prisoners.

These explanation and proofs will, I trust, suffice to convince you that while I did make pointed remarks I certainly never made anything up out of whole cloth nor did I say anything that I had not heard directly from the horse’s mouth. And I should add that I should never have made these remarks in the first place had I not been pushed to the brink, and if Monsieur de Rougemont is offended by them, he is a military man and knows the means whereby a man of the military deals with insults and injuries.
³
I know he is old and suffers from all sorts of infirmities, but to that I reply that he can name whomever he wishes to act on his behalf. There are plenty of stand-ins who would equalize the affair and make up for our difference in age, and whether by a pair of pistols or simple fisticuffs, I am at his orders. But let him not take his revenge by foul deeds. I shall not be in here forever, and the first thing I shall do upon regaining my freedom—and this I swear to him upon my word of honor—will be to invite him to lunch. Till then, let him treat me with the respect deserving a man who is of a mind to proffer such an invitation, and let him cease and desist from any further foul deeds or atrocities, because if he persists he will prove thereby that he is only worthy of being thrown to the dogs and of being treated in the same manner I treated his turnkey.

This Saturday morning

They are refusing to shave me or clean my room: both are nonetheless essential to the maintenance of one’s health and cleanliness, and nowhere else in the world are these basic needs denied any prisoner. I shall not even mention those incarcerated in insane asylums, for there is no prison where the insane are not infinitely better treated than those here who are in full possession of their faculties. I shall mention the animals in the zoo: every week they and their cages are thoroughly cleaned. I hereby request that I not be treated any worse than they are: a bit of charm is all it takes, I suspect, and therefore I beg you to hie yourself to see Monsieur Le Noir, so that he can issue the order to have me given a proper shave and have my room swept. I hasten to have this letter sent on to you so that you can act upon it as soon as possible, for my beard is bothering me no end and my room is beginning to look like a stable. ’Tis absolutely impossible that those orders came from the king, and we all know whence they did come.
⁴

As for the man whom I thrashed,
⁵
he need worry no more. I give my word that I shall not touch him again, and you can answer for me on that score. I embrace you with all my heart and beg you most urgently to have revised orders issued regarding all that, as well as regarding the repair of my stove.

1
. Sade is still suffering—or feigning to suffer—as the jealous husband.

2
. Why Sade names one and conceals the other is unclear. One can conjecture that, his letter being scrutinized by the censor, the unnamed lady might still be subject to de Rougemont’s revenge.

3
. Sade is (half seriously) proposing a duel with the warden, one of his more unlikely fantasies.

4
. Madame de Montreuil, of course.

5
. Sade’s reputation left him vulnerable to snide remarks and insults on the part of the Vincennes turnkeys, to which Sade responded with like remarks and, on more than one occasion, attempted violence. Since he knew such ripostes inevitably resulted in repression of his walks or, worse, cancellation of his wife’s visits, he tried as best as his hot temper allowed to control himself.

51. To Monsieur de Rougemont

[November, 1781]

I
have the honor of bidding good day to Monsieur de Rougemont and asking that he be so kind as to remit to Monsieur Le Noir the enclosed
Memoir
I would also greatly appreciate if Monsieur de Rougemont would duly inform me of the results of that request. As you will see, ’tis something I sincerely need, and yet if the request is not granted I shall not commit suicide over it, in consequence whereof a yes or no answer can be communicated to me without danger. ’Tis extremely essential however that I know which it is, so that I do not lay myself open to an indiscretion such as the one I was so tactless as to have made yesterday in daring ask who it was who presided at the baptism of the precious child upon whom the gaze of the entire nation is presently focused,
¹
and concerning whom some beast of a prisoner had the effrontery to be interested, as if a prisoner was a human being or that a prisoner needs must remind himself that he is a citizen of France, My excuses, Sir, I apologize for my indiscretion, and assure you it will never happen again.

1
. The birth of Louis XVI’s son, the new dauphin.

52. To Mademoiselle de Rousset

[November, 1781]

[The beginning of this letter is missing]

I
f Gothon left either any precise instructions in her will or if she has any surviving children, my intention is that the former be followed to the letter and that the children be taken care of.
¹
If she has left any debts, I want them paid and, moreover, I want you to instruct Gaufridy on my behalf to give you one louis, the purpose of which is for a mass to be read for her at the local parish. I am going to instruct Gaufridy simply to give you that louis without providing him with any further details. ’Tis the least I can do for the memory of that poor girl and I fully intend to discharge that obligation.

Moreover, it would be prudent to ascertain whether or not she either gave, or allowed to be removed by that crowd of sycophants around her, any possessions that belong to the chateau, and if indeed that did happen, then every effort should be made to see to it that those possessions be recovered and returned to the chateau.

1
. Gothon died on October 27 of puerperal fever. A week earlier she had given birth to a boy. Sade only learned of her death the following month. His generous response is not atypical.

53. To Madame de Sade

[November-December, 1781]

G
ood deeds being engraved in my heart at least as profoundly as un-worthy practices, I have doubtless been sensitive to the fact of how accommodating they were at the time of the accident to my eye
¹
by allowing the man who was taking care of me to remain with me for a moment while I was taking my meals, as was allowed during my early days here. But in granting me that, they forgot one essential thing:
prescribing to me the full extent of what I am permitted to talk about and the things that I perforce must refrain from discussing.
Since the mediocrity of my genius does not allow me to perceive those limits, it was essential that I receive a
code
relative to this subject. Wrack my brain as I may to search out the most trivial and banal subjects of conversation, I still have the misfortune of drawing down upon myself rebukes that, as you well know, are wont to be paid for a trifle dearly, even bearing in mind that I swore on my word of honor to allow others to seek revenge on my behalf. But at least let them take that revenge. I thought I would be eaten alive on two previous occasions, one for having asked
the names of the new dauphins godparents,
and again when I inquired of the surgeon
if he was expecting a large crowd for the dinner being given for the holiday.
As you can see, after that ’tis necessary for you to send me a short catalog of the things I can say, so that in the future I do not expose myself to allowing such weighty questions to slip past my lips!

Here is the crux of the matter. First of all, they gave me, and I have always said it, a most insolent man; the thick and bitter blood of that boor turns even more sour and becomes even more inflamed, over two matters: first, the obligation to remain with me, that is, to do something that is both humane and decent, two cruel conditions for a man of that ilk; the second—the cause of his despair—emanates precisely from the simplicity and sangfroid—or perhaps from the banality—of my conversation. I furnish him nothing for
the official reports;
I take not the slightest interest in who has informed upon whom; with me there is nothing juicy he can glean,
²
in consequence whereof he is absolutely furious, and since he is unable to be rude about serious questions, he recriminates by whining and complaining, all of which does not make life easy for me. Moreover, please explain to me what this man means by his never-ending question:
Are you trying to worm something out of me}
I simply do not understand that, first because that is the furthest thing from my mind, and secondly because it strikes me that the man is both clumsy and thick-headed to be asking:
Are you trying to worm something out of me?
He must therefore be infested with them—I refer to the worms—since he’s so afraid they may be removed from his person. And thus he suddenly is admitting, by the stupidity of his remarks, two things I had always suspected, namely on the one hand that he is party to whatever game is being played here, and on the other that there is an answer to the riddle. So you can see how subtle they are, these people in your employ!
³
Yet there they are, chapter and verse. By having made such an effort to debase both of us, your mother and me, she by confining me to a jailer and me by being made the butt of a jailer’s buffoons, she should at least, if there was even the slightest semblance of feeling left in her slimy soul, have had strict instructions issued to those aforesaid buffoons, by decent people who, in passing them on, would have been able to enjoin them to be courteous, decent, and honest in their dealings, both for your mother’s sake and mine, to protect us from such ignominious behavior. But the responsibility for the total lack of civility on the part of this man, already exceedingly uncouth to start, lies with a rogue
⁴
who is even more boorish and uncouth, and these two knaves conspire together, with great outbursts of laughter, as is doubtless called for, since ’tis a kind of amusement for them, you can judge for yourself how that goes down, as you can judge what kind of a hateful and wretched creature it takes to have put someone so close to her into such a situation! I bring up these mundane matters but rarely, and even when I speak of them I do so reluctantly, but since no one is present when that man acts as he does, and since he is in a position to tell you whatever he pleases, ’tis important that I tell you from time to time my side of the story, so that you can at least judge whether things are going as planned.