Letters From Prison (16 page)

I am distressed and surprised to hear that Milli Rousset is not yet with you. Give her my fondest regards when she comes, and love her well, hers is a most rare and precious heart. It worries me that she is so slow in arriving. That sets my mind to conjuring up further dark conjectures, not about her, God preserve me, but about my unfortunate and sad fate. Oh, how I need some fresh air! I am dying of migraines and vapors. I strongly approve of la Langevin
⁵
accompanying your children, and also of her taking care of the little one.
⁶
I don’t know whether I shall become fond of her, I mean the little one, but she does not touch me like the two others. I have answered everything that concerns Gaufridy and business. I forgot to say that Ripert must be obliged to renew his lease, and that lots of vines must be planted at Piedmarin.

I enclose a kiss.

1
. Sade is grasping at straws. He cannot imagine his wife is capable of making such epistolary lapses as telling him his children are being sent away for two years—from which he deduces he will be at Vincennes at least that long—on her own.

2
. The judges of the appellate court.

3
. Sade is doubtless recalling his own father’s decision to remove him from school at the age of fourteen.

4
. Madame de Montreuil had indicated that she would not reply to any further letters from her son-in-law, and indeed forbade him from writing her.

5
. The Sade children’s governess. Sade had three children, two boys and a girl. The oldest, Louis-Marie, was born on August 27, 1767. His second son, Donatien-Claude-Armand, was born on June 27, 1769. His daughter, Madeleine-Laure, was born on April 17, 1771.

6
. That is, Madeleine-Laure, who was only five when Sade entered Vincennes.

9. To Madame de Sade

[February 8, 1779]

T
here you go again suffering a charming attack of deaf ear to the errands I asked you to do. ’Tis most kind, most clever, most gallant. The only thing is, it is becoming overly monotonous. This delightful signal recurs all too often. Thus it ceases to be natural as you would like it to be. Everything that is affected ceases to be natural, and remember the importance of injecting naturalness into the signal. For if I were so unfortunate as to venture a guess, if by mishap the signal made no sense, and if it no longer had this great look of simplicity so essential to everything we call signals, where would we then be? All would be lost, confusion would reign, lightning would strike, Madame la présidente would shit no more. ’Tis perhaps that I own the thing I most delight in seeing: that awkwardness with which you all—
all, for you are all signal-making animals—do your best to look natural: things are never done on purpose; ’tis always chance that produces them; and one can never fathom how I can perceive artificiality therein. There’s the prisoners’ mind for you: they see everything that way.
And other similar remarks with which they try to conceal the signal as soon as it is made. But once again, my worthy signal-makers, don’t you really know that lies and nature are like oil and water, and that the more one strives to give the latter an appearance of the former, the more clumsy and ridiculous one becomes? But surely you do not know that, and there are doubtless many other things you do not know either.

For a signal-maker must by his very nature be exceedingly illiterate, exceedingly ignorant, dull as can be, very dim-witted, very clumsy, very pedantic, very idiotic, and a complete bore.

Fortunately, I still have the original copy of the errands you have been so kind as to keep putting off for almost six weeks. I shall therefore send it to you, but if I do I shall have no copy for myself. If you fail to have it taken care of this time I shall be unable to remember what they were.

So tell that rascal who scribbles, that ne’er-do-well blockhead, that he damn well better remember that when he was cleaning boots in front of the police station he would get only two half-farthings for a job poorly done. On the same subject, remind him that the présidente, who, they say, has him come every week to have his morning chocolate at the foot of her bed, is not going to pay him, or accord him her
ample favors,
when he performs so poorly. For his duty is to rub out the bad and to pass along the good to you: it follows therefore that no list of errands should ever be kept from getting through to you: for in a list of errands I do not say that Rougemont
¹
is a m-----f-----, that the présidente is a w——, that S[artine]
²
is the son of an
alguazil
³
of the Inquisition in Madrid, that Boucher is a toady, that Albaret
⁴
is a catam——. No, I say none of that in my lists of errands! I only say it in my letters. Therefore, only my letters are to be scribbled, and the lists should be left intact.

Kindly see to it that the attached bill is paid immediately, so that I am not made to ask for charity in order to obtain the things I need; which is always what happens until you pay the bill.

Kindly also send me the plays I already asked for, especially Petrarch’s
L’Inconséquent
and
L’Opera.
I have the honor of giving you my most authentic word that all the plays I have asked you for are very much in print. I should hope that you have nothing so certainly stamped on your rear end as those texts are printed on paper.

1
. The warden of Vincennes. Sade’s elisions are so obvious it is clear he is simply poking fun at his tormentors . . . or at his censors.

2
. The former lieutenant-general of the Paris police, who took his orders directly from the king’s ministers. For the past five years he had been minister of the navy.

3
. Spanish for “policeman”: Sade refers to those who acted as torturers during the Spanish Inquisition.

4
. Albaret is a family retainer of the Montreuils, whom Sade disdains as a lackey of la présidente.

10. To Madame de Sade

[February 17, 1779]

I
answer you with my customary reliability, my dear friend, for nothing is easier for you than to count my letters and see whether any are missing: you have but to count your own.

I am most assuredly not incapable of writing you, and the day I am, for fear of worrying you, knowing how you feel about me, I shall manage so well that you won’t even notice it. But please do tell me what you mean when you keep on saying,
“If you are unable to write to me, have a letter written?”
Doubtless, you think I have all sorts of secretaries at my beck and call: alas, I am a far cry from having such a luxury when my most elementary needs are scarce fulfilled! A man, always in a great hurry, appears four times a day in my room, the first time being at dawn, to ask me
whether I had a good night’s sleep
(you see how highly considerate they are); the other times, to bring me food, etc. Seven full minutes in all is the exact length of time he spends with me during these four visits; and then ’tis over:
Die, if you like, of boredom and a broken heart; for that matter, we couldn’t care one whit.
What in the world were you thinking, secretaries at one’s beck and call, when one is reduced to the state I am in! But, you may perhaps object, you didn’t tell me such things in the past. . . Eh! maybe not, but in truth they used to take better care of me then than they presently do; in the past I was allowed more frequent walks; I was never left to eat alone; I was in a good room where I had a fine fire blazing. . . And at present, nobody keeps me company when I eat; many fewer walks; and lodged in the dampest cell in the dungeon (for ’tis from the humidity all my headaches stem). And, as a further pleasure, the impossibility of obtaining any heat: for as it is I have not yet lit a fire all winter, and I can safely say at this point that I’ll light none. So that is how I am, my dear friend. But at present they have no further need of me: my case is closed. If I die, so much the better; good riddance . . . And I am quite convinced that, when all is said and done, they would just as soon be rid of me. And you don’t understand that in such a situation one urgently asks to be set free or be told, at the very least, for how much longer one is to be here? One would have to be one’s own worst enemy not to focus upon that sole idea, to be as much one’s own enemy as mine are, both those who keep me here and those who refuse to grant me the unique consolation I ask for . . . You simply do not know, you are going to tell me! If you do not, how is it you try and indicate it to me? Don’t tell such a lie, in God’s name! Don’t repeat it to me, it makes my blood boil. I shall prove to you beyond a shadow of a doubt that you knew as of February 14, 1777,
¹
that I was going to be summoned before my judges on June 14, 1778.
²
Now, if you were so sure when the first part of my detention was due to end, how do you expect to convince me that you do not know the length of the second? But what am I saying?. . . Alas! you do not refuse to tell me what it is, and in fact you do tell me quite as emphatically and as expressively as you revealed the sixteen months to me with your number 22. Could anything on earth be clearer than the date of
Saturday, February 22, No. 3 finally?
³
After that, to doubt that the date of my release is anything but February 22, 1780, would surely be to labor under a very fatal illusion. But fearing that I not be sufficiently convinced, you had the goodness, very shortly thereafter, to send me three blank documents to sign, assuring me they were to run for
three years.
And today, renewing this charming signal once again, today, on the day when precisely two years have passed and one remains, you again clamor for my signature to another
power of attorney!
and you would have me doubt after such an obvious signal? No, no, no, not for one minute do I doubt that I have still another wretched year to endure here. ’Tis pointless for you to go on about it any further; I understand, pray don’t remind me again of that dreadful memory. What I find outrageous, and what I shall never forgive those who do it, is to try and destroy this idea instead of bolstering it. When, from the very start, you made me understand so clearly those three years, why, whenever I alluded to them, did they reply to me:
What an idea! Three years, ’tis impossible! A few months at the very most. . .

That is what is so foul, that is what is so odious, and that is what has been the cause of all the grief and all the misery of my situation. Would it not have been infinitely more humane to leave me to my illusion, since it was not such a pipe dream, instead of destroying it every day, thereby leading me to form a hope that was bred in me, fomented in me, simply for the sake of reveling in the unhappiness I perforce experienced at seeing it destroyed? I repeat, these methods are odious; they are also devoid of both humanity and common sense, and do but wear the emblem of an idiotic ferocity like that of tigers and lions. And when, more confirmed than ever in this very real idea that I still have one more year to endure, I say so in my letters—always harking back to the same old song, you people have the audacity, the infamy, to write to me, upon the subject of twelve jars of jam I requested back in the month of December:
Twelve jars of jam! Good heavens! what in the world are you going to do with all that? Are you going to give a dancing party? In any case, ’tis no great problem if some is left over.
In two words, such has been and still is the work of my torturers, for what other name can I give to those from whom I have received the most violent dagger-thrusts? Once you told me
three years,
once I had adjusted to the idea accordingly, what made you destroy my illusion? Why give me a glimpse of my impending release when it was not true? And why, finally, take it into your head to dangle hope in front of me only to snatch it away the next instant? ’Tis this infamous game I decry; and those who, in playing it, serve as an instrument for the revenge of others, are playing a most mean and most despicable role, I might add a most barbaric role, for what have I done to these people? To one, nothing: I had never set eyes on him before in my life; to the other, naught but acts of courtesy and fair dealing . . . Well, I’ve heard enough for the nonce; they can sharpen their arrows for next year, if perchance my illusion is too optimistic; for as concerns this year, I declare to them that were they to talk and write to the devil, accustomed as I am to their abominable lying, I shall not believe I am to get out one minute before the 22nd of February, 1780.