Letters From Prison (53 page)

If you let me know what my children’s reaction to my letter was, what they said to you about it, I would be most pleased, but no reply. The New Year’s visit will be soon enough.

[P.S.] Try to find a copy of [Buffon’s]
Natural History;
I have asked for it before and I most urgently renew that request.

When you fail to pander to my more respectable tastes, all the more reason to indulge in the others. And ’tis thus as always that the accursed base spirit wherewith you completely surround yourself serves me so admirably well without your being aware of it, and for want of happiness to point out the routes of goodness I fall deeper into the excesses of evil.

1
. In the course of this year, Sade’s fervid mind was elaborating a wild, ambitious architectural project: a monumental “House of the Arts,” a circular building some 260 feet in diameter, surrounded by a dozen footpaths each leading to a building housing a different art. That project may well have been Sade’s response to the king’s architect, who that year had been commissioned to build a new theater for the Comédie Italienne. As Sade notes, doubtless in response to his wife’s pooh-poohing the project, he had seriously studied architecture, especially during his Italian sojourn, and took pride in his project, knowing full well it was too ambitious and costly ever to see the light of day.

2
. One might be astonished at the apparent freedom to read in Vincennes—or any other prison—in pre-revolutionary France. In fact, Malesherbes, who became minister of the royal household only two years before Sade’s imprisonment, did much to improve conditions in his majesty’s prisons. In 1775 he issued the following to the warden of Vincennes: “No prisoner is to be denied material to read and write.” Under Louis XVI, further liberalizations continued, including allowing prisoners to have their own personal libraries. Sade, always acutely aware of his rights and privileges, took full advantage of this Malesherban order throughout his prison stay.

3
. Sade is referring to Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s
Julie, ou la nouvelle H é loïse,
published in 1761.

4
. That is, the presumed signals in her letters.

5
. Sade is doubtless thinking of the obvious pleasure he has been deriving from his writing: that year—1782—he had not only completed his
Dialogue
Between a Priest and a Dying Man
but had also been delighting in his scandalous work of revenge:
The 120 Days of Sodom.

65. To Madame de Sade

February 4, 1783

M
y infirmity prevents me from taking care of myself.
I beg you to send me a manservant,
¹
and try to get it into your head that when I had the honor of marrying you ‘twas not in order to diminish either my material wealth nor my situation; but on the contrary to increase them. If ever you were so unfortunate as to be in my place, I would see to it that you were not obliged to serve yourself.

I beg you to send me an oculist, and the
best one in Paris,
please.
²

I further ask that you have them grant me permission to leave my door open when the room is full of smoke (except at night). ’Tis absolutely necessary that I take a little exercise, and since I can neither read nor write any longer, at least I should be able to take walks, unless you prefer that I become completely giddy before the week is out.

I also request that you obtain permission for me to take my walks in the garden. I should truly like to know what kind of positive results you might fancy could possible result from the doltish cruelty of allowing me to take three or four walks every day, then forbidding me from taking any for years on end? Is it the inmates of the insane asylum you take on to implement your plans? Air is as essential to me as life itself, I’ve repeated that to you twenty thousand times over, and I can no more do without it than I can do without dinner.

And because you see me so gentle and polite when I see you, you then go off and have the gall to redouble your tortures ever more ferociously. And after that you say:
he’s a good little animal, you can make him do whatever you want.
I warn you: beware. As far as my being a perfect gentleman during your visits, you’ll see in the future how I behave, for by acting thus all I’m doing is leaving myself open to being considered weak.

Adieu, and do remember that ’tis exceedingly dangerous to make yourself detested by those with whom you will later have to deal in person, as you should remember that there are some things that are completely unforgivable; and remember, too, that you should always beware of a former enemy.

Yes, do bear all that in mind, ’tis the last heartfelt thought I intend to pass on to you.

For six weeks now I have been out of candles, beef marrow, and preserves. Please be good enough to send me some without delay.

1
. Often, imprisoned aristocrats were allowed to have their own valets serving them, a privilege de Rougemont denied Sade.

2
. The doctors sent, the Grandjean brothers, were Louis XVI’s own oculists.

66. To Madame de Sade

[Sometime after February 4, 1783]

M
y last short letter was dated the 4th, and since then I have completely lost the use of my eye and suffered the pangs of hell. I renew the requests I made in that letter and especially ask that you make arrangements to send me an oculist. If I do fall ill, and there’s no doubt I shall, I most urgently request that I not be guarded by a soldier. I am not made for that, and I shall not suffer the man to come near me.

I have near me at present a man who, seeing me suffer like the poorest of wretches, and in such a state that I am unable to bestir myself, tells me over and over that ’tis nothing, that I’ve never been better, all of which is intended to make sure I do not dispense with his charming services. Send me a manservant, I cannot do without one. I prefer to die than to go on as I am. I cannot read your letters or anything else. I embrace you and suffer greatly.

67. To the Stupid Scoundrels Who Are Tormenting Me
¹

[About February 10, 1783]

B
ase satellites of the
tuna mongers of Aix-en-Provence,
vile and odious valets of my torturers, invent therefore, to torment me, tortures that will at least result in some good. What benefit can derive from the idleness to which your spiritual blindness binds me, except to make me curse and mentally tear to shreds the unworthy procuress who has in such cowardly manner sold me into your hands? Since I am now no longer able either to read or write, here is the hundred-eleventh torture I have dreamed up for her.
²
This morning, in the midst of my suffering, I saw her skinned alive, dragged over thistles, and then tossed into a vat of vinegar. And I said to her:

Execrable creature, this is what you deserve for having sold your son-in-law to unfeeling brutes!

This is what you deserve for having acted as pimp for both your daughters!

This is what you deserve for having dishonored your son-in-law!

This is what you get for having forced him into a position where he hates the children to whom you have sacrificed him!

This is what you deserve for having caused him to lose the best years of his life, when after his sentence he counted upon you to save him!

Here is what you deserve for having preferred your daughter’s vile and detestable little offspring to him!

This is what you deserve for all the evil you have visited upon him for thirteen years in order to make him pay for you own follies!

And as I increased her own torments I insulted her in her pain and forgot my own.

My pen falls from my fingers. ’Tis time for me to suffer. Farewell, my torturers, ’tis time for me to call down every curse upon you.

1
. Whether this letter, presumably meant for Madame de Sade, was ever sent—or, if sent, passed the censor—remains unclear. But Renée-Pélagie was meticulous about preserving her husband’s letters, so either it got through or was among the papers culled from his cell after the storming of the Bastille.

2
. Madame de Montreuil

68. To Madame de Sade

[February 13, 1783]

M
y eye is just as bad as ever, and here all they do is burn it and dry it
and do all in their power to make me lose it completely.
I beg of you to send me an oculist. For over a fortnight now I have been asking you to, and you must have faint kindness in your soul to let me go on asking such a thing all this time. What’s more, I need someone to wait on me. I am absolutely incapable of taking care of myself. Half the time I find myself without things I sorely need. I flounder about, break everything I own, mutilate myself from dawn to dusk. The manservant here does everything he can—I can only compliment him on his efforts—but he cannot do everything. I have need of someone who will be with me from nine in the morning till noon, and again from six till eleven in the evening. Please, I beg of you, see to it that you find such a person. So long as I was well, I never asked you for anything extraordinary. Now ’tis no longer my fault, and I cannot do without what I ask of you. If you have any plans for coming to see me, obtain permission to visit me in my room, for I shall most certainly not come down to the council room. ‘Twould be well beyond my strength to do so.

Send me:

Two lampshades, of the kind that circle the candles completely, and the best rosewater, the most delicate and expensive, which can be found at Cadet’s shop.

It tires me terribly to write this, and I beg you on bended knee not to force me to ask for these same things twenty times over. I embrace you with all my heart.

My suffering is beyond description.

69. To Monsieur Grandjean

February 20, 1783

T
he person that Monsieur Grandjean
¹
came to see at Vincennes has taken the utmost care to wash out his eye daily with the sea-water eyewash that had been prescribed to him, as well as follow assiduously the injections of iris powder. The only problem is, he sees no real change in the status of the eye in question; the opacity remains constantly and absolutely the same, and although the surgeon assures him that he sees an improvement there, the patient perceives none whatsoever. Since this condition greatly fatigues the other eye, and since the patient is beginning to notice a similar weakening of that eye as well ever since it has had to work all by itself, he begs Monsieur Grandjean to prescribe another remedy that will act more rapidly. Moreover, the patient fears that these constant eye washes on so delicate a part of the body may in the long run cut into the eye and give rise to a fistula. He has raised that possibility with the house surgeon, whose response did nothing to reassure him about this fear. The patient would therefore be extremely obliged if Monsieur Grandjean would be kind enough to prescribe a remedy that would effect a cure more efficiently and more promptly, and at the same time cause the patient no discomfort.

1
. The Grandjean brothers were the most famous oculists of the time. The elder, Henri, was, as noted, the king’s oculist. Among the treatments prescribed for Sade’s corneal opacity were: bleeding, the application of leeches, compresses of well-cooked chervil, iris powder, seawater eyewash, and elder blossom eyewash. It was a wonder Sade didn’t go blind.

70. To Madame de Sade

March l8, 1783

T
he milk bowl is fine both in color and type, but I need one that is much larger, the size that will hold a pint and a half.

The man
¹
who serves me has just been forbidden to deliver any more sponge cake to me. Thus when you send any further packets of these, ’tis Monsieur de Rougemont’s servants who should send you a note of thanks, for they will be enjoying them. I do not want any more sent me, in whatever shape or form you might choose to send them, and this I state categorically.

Two dozen meringues and two dozen lemon cakes from the Palais Royal pastry shop.

The architectural plans for the new Italian Opera in Paris, and the name of the play they plan to open with.

Two sponges, the finest available. Six pounds of candles and two large nightlights.

A dark-green jacket, with a silk fringe, with or without silver, the size being the same as the one the tailor sent me a fortnight ago.

What is generally called a pitcher or a jug. It’s a little earthen pot, dark brown in color, which is used to heat or boil milk or coffee. It should be large enough to hold a bit more than a pint; actually, get the one that holds a pint and a half.