Letters From Prison (46 page)

Oh! ye gods, how you make me suffer! and how studied and heinous your torments! Ah! ’tis thus one makes a soul bitter and filled with despair, but that is hardly the way to bring it back to the straight and narrow! In the name of God, come pay me an hour’s visit or I shall not answer for my life.

1
. Sade is assuming that if indeed Renée-Pélagie has a lover, it is all part of a master plot against him on the part of the présidente.

2
. French for February is
février,
which Sade links to the name of his wife’s presumed lover, the rapscallion Lefèvre.

3
. On August 5, Mme de Sade wrote her husband a letter, which so infuriated Sade he annotated it in obscene terms and spattered it with blood. From the date—5—and other numerical references, Sade in his fury deduces the two numbers refer to the size of Lefèvre’s penis: 7 inches (length) by 5 inches (circumference).

48. To Madame de Sade

[October 1781]

Y
ou can well imagine, my dear friend, that after the moment of respite that you lodged in my soul concerning the frightful anxiety I felt about a detention as long as the one I mentioned to you recently, based on the figures you provided me, and especially after the Sainte-Aure,
¹
which means 58 and which falls at that period precisely in June 1783, you can well imagine, I say, that after that I was in a terrible frame of mind. One very special thing, which I most assuredly am compelled to regard as a frightful bit of subtle cruelty on this score: not a word of consolation, not a single person offering me even the slightest hope that I was mistaken and that I was going too far. After that, you can well understand that the only conclusion I could come to was that my incarceration would be at least that, not counting the two years of exile that were destined to bring this whole affair to a close and carry my suffering to the brink of old age. Thus will your mother have been the cause of making sure my days were spent in constant torment. I shall have spent my entire life the victim of her rage and her unremitting revenge. And this woman is a devout believer, and this woman goes and takes communion . . . All it would take to turn the most pious man in the universe into an atheist is an example such as that. Oh! how I loathe her! Good God, how I detest her! And what a blessed moment ‘twill be for me when I learn that this abominable creature has breathed her last! I most solemnly swear and vow by all that’s most genuine to give two hundred louis to the poor the day I learn of that most blessed event, and another fifty to the servant who brings me the news or to the clerks of whatever postal service announces the event by letter. I agree and consent to whatever tortures it may please God to rain down upon me if ever I fail to comply with the terms of that oath, a written copy of which I have been carrying upon my person for more than the past three years. I confess that I have never desired the death of anyone, with the exception of that woman! Ah! my dear friend, I beg your indulgence regarding a frivolous illusion; but as it assuages for a brief moment my sorrows, allow me to indulge for a while in such flights of fancy.

Let us assume for a moment that heaven had spared both my father and mother, as it has spared both your parents, that they had not suffered any serious setback or inconstancies to the fortune they had begun to amass, and let us further assume that the variations of that same fortune kept it from being frittered away; that both of them were still alive and in the social position that should rightfully have been theirs; and now let us suppose that ‘twas you the orphan, and that you had behaved in a manner that we shall call equivocal; tell me, my dear friend, tell me, knowing the strength of character they both possessed, do you believe they would ever have treated you the way your family treats me, and can you imagine that, in the unlikely event they did, I would put up with it for one second? What is the result of that sad little dream? That I am the victim of fate and of revenge and that I have in the depths of my heart the consolation of being able to say to myself:
O my parents, never would we have allowed her to be so miserable, even were she just as guilty!

I should never have wished such a fate for you, but if God had visited it upon you, how pleased, how delighted I would have been to rush to your defense, rally people to your cause, do everything in my power to defend you. You may be sure, my dear friend, that ‘twould have been in vain that they came in search of me the day after we arrived back in Paris, my arms and my rooms would have been an asylum that no fury could ever have profaned. And I would have made them run me through with their swords a thousand times over before they were able to lay a hand on you. I would have said, with joy in my heart: she has lost everything, she has only me in the universe; I am her sole resource and her consolation. But she has sins on her conscience? So much the better. If she did not, how could she be indebted to me for coming to her defense?

The story you told me about your son is delightful.
²
Vouchsafe to take it as a lesson. It applies to you especially: he did not want them to hit his brother, and yet you allowed them to put your husband in irons.

When you come to see me, then, kindly spare me all those base little lies: I
didn’t know; somehow it just happened; I immediately sent someone to fetch a carriage, etc.,
when it comes to a project, to a scheme both vapid and stupid, a project that for a good ten years has been prearranged and planned and from which—were lightning to strike and destroy half the universe—those behind it would not deviate one iota. You know full well that I refuse to get involved in all that, that if I do nothing while you go on with your wearisome little drivel, ’tis because I want nothing to diminish or interfere with the pleasure I have in seeing you, nor do I want to give them any excuse whatsoever for suppressing your visits, but that does not mean I am any less convinced that you are lying, just as it pains me no end to see you resorting to this common defect that you see in the
food markets,
at the
cashier’s desk,
or in the
anterooms.
Forsake all such affectations, I beg of you. You have no idea to what degree they end up corrupting and debasing one’s soul. Duplicity leads directly to the loss of virtue. What’s the point of hesitating to adopt it when one can arrive at the same end with one’s mask?

Yes, I repeat to you what I said on the same score the other day: if all these foul deeds, all these petty torments of letters that are no more than warmed-over repetitions of an abomination conceived of in days of yore to be used against you, by the same hands who use it today against me, if this imprisonment, which is unduly long and infinitely too cruel, led to something beneficial to your family, efficacious for making me mend my ways, advantageous for my children, I would willingly sacrifice myself to it immediately without saying a word. But what is the result of this imprisonment, and what is the only possible result? Is your mother so blind that she completely fails to see it? Is she so deaf that she does not even suspect what people are saying? I’m quite willing to believe that people pointedly refrain from passing them on to her, but does that mean they don’t exist? And you’ll see when it comes time to setting up our children in life, ’tis then she will rue all her past blunders and realize that the pleasure of forever doing her sums is to buy most dearly all the self-loathing she will experience at that time, assuming of course that hell has spared her till then.

To have prolonged my prison term above and beyond that called for by the sentence of Aix-en-Provence is an infamy without example, and ‘twas because she reveled in being the source of my undoing, and that of my children, for the sole pleasure of doing evil. What a monster! How I loathe her!

No matter what all the sycophants around her may say, or all those who profit from all that, she should know beyond all shadow of doubt that whenever her name comes up in public, whenever she appears at any reception, people who think either of her children or of mine are immediately reminded of my misfortunes. She ought to ponder that and see what she’s gaining by prolonging my agony!

Well now! you said therefore that there was no 17
³
in your last visit, nothing
especially sacred
about this number—I refer to your letter of May 17, 1777. Oh! ‘twas never absent from any of your visits, and that last one was the seventeenth time I saw the commandant. I couldn’t care less, ’tis the only time when I have shut my eyes to numbers. You promised to follow me, you promised me as you kissed me good-bye, you swore you would, I believed you; and had there been a thousand 17’s, I know the language of your heart like I know my own, and ‘twas your heart speaking when you made your promise. If you do not keep your word, you will expose me to a thousand follies when I get out of here, for I solemnly swear to you on all I hold most dear in the world that nothing will stand in my way, nothing will keep me from coming to tear you from the bowels of the earth, if ’tis there that they try to hide you to keep you out of my reach. May all of heaven’s thunderbolts rain down upon me, may they swallow up my fortune with me, my children, everything I have in this world, may I not take a single step in the universe without encountering daggers or unfathomable depths if I spend eight days, once my fetters are gone,
without you.

1
. After reassuring her husband that, largely because of his objections, she would not go to live with Mme de la Villette, she sought further to reassure him of her faithfulness and devotion by taking up lodgings in a nunnery. The one she chose was the convent of Sainte-Aure on the rue Neuve-Sainte-Geneviève. Apparently Sade sees in that choice of saints another “signal” for him to decipher.

2
. We do not know the specifics, but can assume that Louis-Marie, the elder son, came to the defense of his younger brother, Donatien-Claude-Armand.

3
. Sade again is groping for meaningful signals, hoping thereby to learn the
real
date of his release.

49. To Madame de Sade

[October 25, 1781]

I
shall not lose a minute before responding to your letter, my dear friend. It fills me with such frightful anxiety that I cannot restrain myself for another moment. In the name of God, do not assault me with such blows, they affect me too deeply. I make threats against you!
¹
May Heaven crush me this very instant, may I never see the light of day again if ever I have threatened you even once. Ah! ye gods, threats against the only creature I adore, she whom I hold most dear in the world! Read my last letter to your mother; she knows my heart better than anyone. I say to her, I think it and repeat it over and over again, that were I to see you holding a dagger in your hand I would cast myself at your feet and revel in your vengeance. Ah! may I be made to suffer as long as they wish, I have no quarrel with that, but let them not turn your heart against me through such unworthy reports as these. My soul will be deeply aggrieved until you tell me that you no longer believe a word of what they say. Waste not another moment in telling me so, I beg of you. And do convince Monsieur Le Noir of the same. Whoever dreamed up such dark and dreadful lies are but knaves and scoundrels. Everyone here, if they are willing to tell the truth, will attest to the fact that even when I have been in the most frightful depths of despair, never once have I uttered your name with anything but marks of affection, which I both owe you but also feel most profoundly in my heart. Come, come, visit whatever sins you care to upon me, ‘twill pain me unto death, ‘twill render my already wretched life even more miserable, but never fear that I would either avenge myself or even mention it to you again if it displeases you. All I ask is that you not harden your heart against me. And know beyond any shadow of doubt that my own life is less dear to me than yours, and that I should not survive for one minute were I to think that I had been the cause of your losing even so much as a single hour’s sleep. My threats, and my so-called ill conduct, were aimed at the man who serves me. What does that have to do with you? In the name of God, come to see me, and meanwhile do your best to arrange for Amblet to see me as well. If you persist in believing that I have made so much as a single threat against you, I shall end my days forthwith.

1
. Many times during his incarceration, Sade, in rage or frustration, lost his temper and swore or insulted his jailers, which inevitably resulted in his losing his walks or, worse, being put into solitary confinement. In this instance, someone reported to Renée-Pélagie that her husband had voiced threats against her.

50. To Madame de Sade

October 26, 1781

T
he people here, whom I immediately called and questioned after my letter of yesterday evening, assured me unequivocally that they had never reported that I had ever spoken ill of you; and how could they have done so—they themselves answered, since they had never heard me make any such remark? I asked that they enlighten Monsieur de Rougemont on that score, and the preposterous response they brought back to me this morning both clarified the matter and reassured me greatly. That dear fellow is taking his revenge; that should suffice to convince you that everything he may have said is but a tissue of lies, calumnies he is concocting in retaliation for those he doubtless terms my own, and until such time as we have had a chance to see each other and to clear the matter up, I know you to be fair and equitable enough not to believe a word of it. Meanwhile I reiterate, upon my most authentic word of honor, that neither did I make any remarks or any threats, and that I love you and adore you to such a degree, my dear and unique friend, that I should rather rend myself asunder than say anything to you, or about you, that might displease you. Alas! ’tis not when my goal and my sole desire are to atone for so great a multitude of wrongdoings that I would set about trying to add to them. Did I not tell you when you came to see me that I regarded you as my only friend, and that I firmly believed you were all I had left in the world? Have I not written you twenty times over saying the same thing? You replied to my declarations, I have your letters to prove it. What then would be the point, such being my frame of mind and the state of my heart, of trying to irritate or offend you? No, my good friend, you do not believe a word of it. And I am convinced that you still have sufficient kindness in your heart, and pity for me, that you will refrain from condemning me until you have had a chance to hear me out. Till then I shall suffer the pangs of hell, but I am by now all too well acquainted with troubles and woes, and my certainty that you will judge me fairly will help me bear this further injustice, in the full knowledge that in the long run you will know I am right. Ye gods, if only you could prove your own innocence with equal force: ’tis my one and only wish, and I shall not bring it up again.
¹
All that is no more than the mere annoyances, vexations, unkind cuts, and blathering of a wicked old witch who, having no greater pleasure than making herself obnoxious, expends upon that unique pastime all the talents of a weary heart and a mind that has been completely corrupted. The forces behind it are all too obvious, and all I can say is that with such baseness I should have hoped she might at least have injected a trifle more cunning into her little scheme. I see it, people are absolutely right when they say that there is no nastier beast on the face of the earth than a sanctimonious old woman. If throughout my life something has kept me as far removed as possible from piety and devoutness, ’tis canting sanctimoniousness, which I abhor, and that terrible habit the elderly have of practicing religion on the one hand and indulging in the most loathsome vices on the other.