Letters From Prison (11 page)

As yet they have brought me nothing to sign. There was no need to announce this
petition
to me so far in advance with nothing concrete to show for it. And what is more, the draft you gave me leads me to believe that I am in for all kinds of lengthy delays. I am therefore going to ask permission to appoint someone my power-of-attorney. First this permission must be obtained, then the attorney must be appointed, informed, made to act. . . Just imagine the delays that will ensue, and what an enormous amount of time it will take! Add to all that the meticulous way in which they hasten to have me sign the necessary papers and you will see that the whole thing adds up to an eternity. ’Tis true, however, I have the consolation of knowing
that I shall not stay here one minute longer than the time necessary!

Once again farewell, my dear good friend. Here’s a long letter which may never reach you, since ’tis not written
a la Lilliputienne.
No matter, it will not go unseen, and who knows whether, amongst all those who are obliged to see it, you are the one to whom I most directly address it?

What you tell me of your children pleases me. You surely know how delighted I shall be to embrace them, although I have no illusions about the fact that—despite my affection—’tis upon their account I am suffering at present.

Rereading my letter, I can see all too plainly that they will never pass it on to you, which is proof positive of the injustice and the horror of everything I am being made to suffer, for if there were nothing but justice and simplicity in all I am experiencing, why would they fear your being told or finding it out? In any case, I shall not write to you again until I positively receive a reply to this one, for what is the purpose of writing to you if you do not receive my letters?

1
. Sade is referring to Madame de Montreuil’s earlier effort to have him arrested at La Coste on January 6, 1774. In connivance with lieutenant-general of police Sartine, she ordered a veritable assault—consisting of three brigades of Marseilles’s deputies plus several constables—made on the chateau, wreaking havoc there. But the marquis was nowhere to be found.

5. To Madame de Sade

REFLECTIONS AND NOTES UPON

THE PETITION IN QUESTION
¹

April 21, 1777

T
he beginning of the third page is very weak and very poorly done. At least you should have put after the words
had stomach pains and vomiting:
“but does it follow that creatures who eat all sorts of unwholesome food every day of their lives are justified in ascribing the cause of their indisposition to these candied lozenges?
²
However, influenced by the women to whom they related what had taken place between the petitioner and themselves, they did not fail,” etc.

On page 7, you state that women of this kind would not, or could not, be familiar with
the etymology, the properties, and the effects of cantharides vesicatoria.
³
That is wrong; such women are often well acquainted with this variety of drug, whose properties have the same virtue as their art, and there are very few among them, I firmly believe, who do not know what it is; and ’tis precisely because they do know what it is that they rushed to take it. It would have been better to say that it were strange indeed that they had not immediately noticed the difference between Spanish fly and poison, and, consequently, if indeed they knew full well the effect of the cantharides, that they pounced upon the poison; but that having found neither the one nor the other, they declared something they were familiar with instead of what they saw very well did not exist at all. Perhaps I may not have expressed my idea clearly enough, but they should have no trouble understanding what I mean. However, at least by adopting the one in the petition rather than claim that these women know neither
its etymology, its property, nor its effects,
I would at least have said that there was a good chance that women of this sort would not be so familiar with this drug as to be able to identify its taste, etc.

At the bottom of the same page, a certain fact that is well known should have been added; namely, that all five of those women sat down together to a culinary feast with the money they had earned from the Marquis de Sade. The fact is known and established beyond any doubt. Hence ’tis most likely that the indisposition all five suffered derives therefrom. To prove that those five women were all sick at the same time and fail to mention this salient fact looks highly suspicious, and without certain knowledge of that fact I would be the first to find it most extraordinary that five women seen one after the other by one man, to all of whom he gave something to eat, could all five suffer from a case of indigestion. If in matters as basic as this they consulted the person most directly interested in vindicating himself, and assuming they did not look upon him as some kind of automaton, such essential anecdotes would not be forgotten and everything would certainly proceed more positively.

By invoking that culinary feast at table, which has been well proven, you destroy your supposition at the beginning of page 8, which still seems dubious. By including it, how much force you add to the first seven lines of page 9:
“vomitings may,
” etc.! ‘Twas a grave error not to include this point.

On page 15, at the beginning, I do not like having your assumption that this girl could even have been “sole witness,” because she is not nor could she have been, as is constantly attested by the posture which, according to her own deposition, she maintained throughout the alleged consummation of the crime. In the position she claimed to be in, it is impossible that she could have seen what was going on. Therefore, she could not properly serve as a witness, and her opinion here can be founded only on the fact that at this moment the domestic went up to his master to whisper in his ear, recommending that he not have his way with this girl (believing him on the point of wishing to do so) because, said he,
she is surely not in good health.
That single incident could have led that creature to suppose what she has dared maintain as certain.

Note at the bottom of the same page: I do not believe there is any girl who testified in the course of the proceedings that the crime of sodomy had been actively committed with her. So far as I know, I have not read that anywhere or heard it said. In any case, this allegation is perfectly false; no such proposition was ever even made to any of those creatures.
⁴

The bottom of page 18 and the top of page 19 are very strong, faultlessly done. That in itself ought to destroy their entire thesis, I should think. But I do not like your terminating your petition with an admission of the defendant’s misdeeds; for then, given this admission, the court must perforce find moral delinquency, and the least pronouncement of that sort is, as everybody knows, defamatory. It seems to me it would be preferable to let that be deduced or conjectured, without having the defendant sign this formal admission, which is visibly reprehensible and consequently held against him, and make him loath to sign the said petition.

Furthermore, my dear friend, you must admit that ’tis rather remarkable that they are being so secretive about all this, to the point of not telling me to what high court this case is going to be sent for review. From this petition it looks as though it were to be the one in Paris, that quashing the decision becomes pointless, and that imprisonment, which sets aside contumacy, has served in its stead, and that the question remaining being one of procedure alone, as the petition says, a simple appeal would suffice. That is what comes through from this petition. It remains to be seen whether that is what it boils down to. I have no idea myself, and, thanks be to God, they leave me in complete ignorance, which is without any doubt the most ridiculous thing in the world, for considering where I am to whom could I breathe a word about it? Therefore being secretive is pointless, and it is used here simply to vex me all the more. This I find both exceedingly hard and exceedingly stupid, for I am vexed enough as it is; this further touch was useless. And who has a greater interest than I in all this? I beseech you therefore to keep me fully informed on everything, and without making me wait for three weeks, as you did after the other letter, which keeps me in a truly frightful state of anxiety and, of this you may be sure, succeeds only in embittering me and making my blood boil.

In general, I do not find this petition written with the same force as the memorandum your mother presented to us a year ago. The difference between them strikes me as great, and I doubt whether they come from the same hand. In the memorandum there were much more powerful arguments for nullifying the second charge, which apparently are not raised here and yet of the two ’tis that one which, while equally false, would seem the easier to contend with; for in the first we have the girls vomiting: that, if you like, seems probable enough to justify, at least theoretically, the blindness, or rather the malicious obstination, of the so-called Marseilles judges. But what have we in the second? Nothing, absolutely nothing, not even the slightest probability.

Nothing in this petition hints that the sentence was carried out. Is that yet another one of these things about which you say we have been misled? Please let me know what you think anent that.

Be kind enough to communicate my notes to the lawyer. As for the first note, ’tis a stylistic fault urgently in need of correcting, because it leaves a terrible weakness in that area. As for the rest, I shall submit to his greater knowledge, and he will do as he sees fit; but at least he must make an issue of those creatures’ culinary orgy at table: that, in my view, is essential to accounting for the stomach trouble all five of them suffered.

The passage in the petition that says, page 10, “But the court which shall weigh the complaints, the records of verification and of decomposition, the report upon the state of the two girls,” and so on, suggests major delays, for ’tis clear they are going to start the whole procedure all over again, and in that case, all too clearly set forth by these phrases, I still have ahead of me more furious suffering from a misery that is already beyond my power to endure. For verily, my dear friend, I am truly at the end of my rope, and ’tis all I can do to ward off the impulses of my despair.
⁵

What is most strange is that in all this there is never a word about my five months of prison in Savoy. It would seem that these were for the pure and simple satisfaction of your most gracious mother. How charming.

What I do like about this petition is the clear field it seems to leave me to take to task all the poor beggars who have brought this ridiculous suit against me and for crushing, or so I hope, Martignan’s divine brother-in-law.
⁶
’Tis a joy that will surely console me in great measure for all my sufferings, indeed if I am successful, and, verily, justice demands I be given that privilege, for they are great brutes, these people. That appears to me to explain your phrase that
we shall have the wherewithal to confound our enemies in Provence.
Let me know if that is what you meant. In general, the end of the petition is quite good, and I am most satisfied with it; the only fault I find in it is that it is somewhat less forceful than last year’s memorandum, as I have just pointed out; and then the few observations duly noted in the first two pages of this letter.

All this, as you see, my dear friend, is written helter-skelter and jotted as ideas occur to me after the two consecutive and careful readings of this petition I have just concluded. But you’ll arrange all that, and understand, or so I trust, what I am trying to say despite my incoherent style.

There is however, in the concluding part of this petition, one sentence, I must admit, that I am unable to grasp at all. Here it is, isolated to be sure, but read it in context and you will see that you may understand it no better than I: “ . . . and the veritable judges who, in judging, draw no distinction between contumacy and post-trial hearings, pass no other judgment upon the one than they would upon the other. But, through a contrary principle,” etc. I do not understand a word of that sentence. If they can clarify it for me, I shall be most obliged. In general, what would have been the drawback in allowing me to chat here with my lawyer? None that I can see.

In a word, having read and reread this petition, I come back to the point that if during the past five years everything has been prepared, as I had every reason to suppose, then this may well be over with quickly; but if nothing has been, as is also quite possible, it may yet drag on for a long time and keep me cooped up in here all that while. And another much more unpleasant possibility must be foreseen: if this admission of debauchery that I am going to be made to sign were, without regard for my imprisonment, to bring on yet another unfortunate ruling of a court, where would that leave me? New terrors and new anxieties in which they are pleased to leave me to stew, for I am quite right in saying that since I arrived here I have received neither the slightest legal advice nor the slightest comfort, and ’tis impossible to experience a more terrible plight.

I most earnestly pray you, my dear friend, to obtain permission from M. Le Noir to write two notes a week to me instead of the one I am in the habit of receiving. ’Tis not in order to have news about my affairs more frequently: confine yourself to discussing those matters in the letter you customarily write each Monday, as I see from your dates; and I most earnestly beseech you, let the other contain nothing but a word about your health, without any detail regarding any other subject, which, I tell you, is dearer to me than anything else. Ponder what I am asking you here; and if you refuse, or if you fail to obtain it for me, you will hurt me terribly and cause me great anxiety.