Sade then reminds his lawyer that he’s impatiently waiting for the quarterly 3300 livres he is entitled to, adding, “…we are approaching that time and you know how much I am bothered by delays.”
Sade encloses (not present) a power-of-attorney for the sale of a house in Arles, adding that he needs the sale to be completed right away as he needs the money: “…I urge you to hurry up with this business. I have told you the house is to be sold without fail on the 20th, and very soon thereafter I will need the money.”
Sade then informs his lawyer that he has been trying to contact his aunt, Madame de Villeneuve, as she has received an inheritance from a cousin, Mme. de Raousset. De Sade is upset as he would have liked to inherit something from Mme. de Raousset, but he has a plan: “…the best way of all to profit from the inheritance of Mme. de Raousset passed to Mme. de Villeneuve… is to borrow a lot of money from her, to properly invest this money, pay her interest with the sale of the said money, and, upon her death, funds and interest, all return to me...”
Then he mentions the boxes Mme. de Sade sends him. The last shipment had not been prepared properly and the boxed preserves had spilled over: “…and it’s all the more unfortunate that these preserves were excellent.”
If Sade has read correctly, Gaufridy mentioned a man he knows, Rivette de Bonnie. This man was much too close to Mme. de Raousset, and Sade comments: “… the man might have avoided eating my cousin’s money, going to bed with, yes, but tricking, no.”
The Marquis is planning to travel to the South of France to discuss these topics with his lawyer, however he is worried about leaving his Paris home and wondering to whom he could entrust it: “All I am worried about is to know in whose hands I will leave my Paris house.”
After mentioning that his sons have not been in contact with him for a while and commenting on the French king, Sade again writes about his wish for an inheritance. He believes he should inherit the silverware left behind by a deceased M. Labe (possibly the Marquis’s uncle, l’abbé de Sade, who died in 1777), as Mme. de Villeneuve had seized it. Sade asks Gaufridy to persuade Mme. de Villeneuve to give him “...her silverware now coming from her, from Mr. Labé, and from Mrs. de Raousset, try, I beg you, not to let this slip, no one I believe has more assured rights on this object.”
Sade then complains about having been sent only a part of the linen that was in his castle in la Coste. He feels greatly affected by the linen’s disappearance and after accusing his lawyer, Sade blames his childhood friend, Mme. de Raousset: “Certainly, I knew the Raousset was at the castle but I never believed her to be a despot. I always believed her under your orders and always believed her to be honest; I am very surprised that she was not.”
Finally, Sade briefly tells his lawyer about Mme. de Sade who is divorcing him: “I hope in my first letter to inform you of the end of my business with Mme. de Sade; remember that I am only saying I hope.”
He ends his letter by begging his lawyer: “…do not get so angry over linen, and towels.”
Marquis de Sade
By the time he married Renée-Pélagie Cordier de Launay de Montreuil (1741-?) in 1763, the Marquis de Sade had already secured a reputation for licentious and perverse behavior. Discreet at the beginning, he was soon arrested for engaging in acts for which he quickly became infamous. In 1768, his conduct created a public scandal and de Sade was briefly imprisoned for sexually assaulting and brutalizing a prostitute. This did not stop him, however, from an unrelenting pursuit of sadistic (a term later coined to describe his behavior) pleasures and many similar incidents followed until legal action in 1775 forced him to flee France and remain abroad for two years. De Sade was arrested upon his return to Paris and taken to the dungeon of Vincennes in 1777. In July 1778 he was brought to Aix to stand trial on previous charges, but managed to escape and elude the authorities for six weeks. Madame de Sade remained supportive of her husband through many years of imprisonment, arranging for his legal defense and even conceiving during a prison visit one of their three children. She entered a convent in 1779 but remained married to her incarcerated and infamous husband for an additional ten years before seeking a divorce in September 1790.
In 1789, de Sade was transferred to the Bastille in Paris where, in July, he caused a near riot by yelling out to the street below that the prisoners were being murdered. Before he was subdued, he egged on the gathering crowd to invade the prison. That night de Sade was dragged from his cell and transferred to Charenton, a mental institution known for its unorthodox treatments and accepting prisoners like the marquis. The fall of the Bastille on July 14, 1789, just 12 days after de Sade’s outburst and removal, signaled the beginning of the French Revolution. De Sade was imprisoned at Charenton from July 3, 1789 until April 2, 1790 and then again in 1803. In 1804 he was judged insane and spent the remainder of his life in an asylum where he continued to write and produce books and plays.
Sade wrote this letter after his 1790 prison release and discusses his financial machinations including planned real estate transactions, inheritance schemes and his divorce. Sade also mentions Bourbon King Louis XVI (1754-1793) who became known as “King of the French” with the ratification of the new constitution on October 1, 1791, until the monarchy was abolished a year later. Sade was distantly related to the Bourbon king through his mother, a member of a junior branch of the House of Bourbon-Condé.
The mention of Mme. de Villeneuve is interesting in that Sade’s manuscript for One Hundred and Twenty Days of Sodom, left behind in the Bastille, was eventually given to the family of the Marquis de Villeneuve-Trans. At the time of his death, Sade thought his most infamous work, penned secretly by candlelight on a scroll over the course of 37 days in 1785, had been lost forever. The family sold the original manuscript to a German collector around 1900, and it was published in 1904 by a German psychiatrist and sexologist. It remained banned in France until the 1960s and has been a central work in the debate about censorship. In 2017, the French government took possession of it and placed it in the Musée de la Bibliothèque Nationale de France.
Written in de Sade’s minute script on all four pages of a folded sheet. Folded with scattered foxing and wear and in very fine condition.
