Imprisoned in Vincennes, de Sade became very dependent on his wife emotionally. He clearly had periods of intense depression and despair. By the end of February he was writing to her of not knowing himself, feeling the desire to do himself some injury, and of being driven to beat his head against the wall if he was not released soon. He was anxious that some of his papers left in his wife’s apartment might now fall into the hands of Mme de Montreuil, especially as his mother-in-law was obviously trying to gain complete control over all his affairs. She even had a document drafted granting her such power, which she wanted him to sign, but he steadfastly refused. His anxiety was increased by the fact that he had no way of knowing whether his wife was receiving his letters or not.
By the beginning of June 1778 his wife had finally found out exactly where he was, but she was still not allowed to visit him, and their letters were being censored. During the summer he also became physically ill, suffering painfully from piles, but the greatest cause of distress was the fact that he was kept in complete ignorance about the likely duration of his sentence. Thus matters dragged on for the rest of the year, on the very last day of which, it must be recorded, de Sade’s uncle the abbé died at the age of seventy-two. De Sade’s wife had his uncle’s estate locked up to prevent any of his property being seized to settle debts. He left a Spanish mistress and her daughter, to whom he had just sold his house.
Mme de Montreuil claimed that a plea of insanity would help resolve the matter of annulling the sentence passed at Aix, concerning the offences of sodomy and other abuses involving the girls in Marseilles. Latour had in the meantime disappeared abroad. Mme de Montreuil insisted that if de Sade did not agree to a plea of insanity he would have to appear in person at the court in Aix. There seemed to be no alternative: he would have to travel to Aix. As this would have to be under police escort, de Sade, for whatever reasons, insisted that it be Inspector Marais and his servant, together with his own servant, La Jeunesse. The group arrived in Aix on the evening of 20th June and spent the night at an inn. The next afternoon de Sade was taken to the prison in Aix. While in this prison, he attempted as usual to obtain the best possible living conditions and cuisine for himself, and also managed to conduct a romantic liaison with a young female prisoner, to whom he sent letters via his lawyer.
The legal proceedings began on 22nd June 1778. On 30th June Marais took de Sade to the meeting of the Parlement. After long discussion a pronouncement was finally made: they countermanded the judgment at Marseilles on the grounds that there was no evidence that the crime of poisoning had taken place. There would be a new trial concerning the separate charges of pederasty and debauchery. It was suggested by the judges to Gaufridy that he should go to Marseilles and persuade the prostitutes in question to deny anything in their statements relating to sodomy. With expenses paid by Mme de Montreuil, he duly followed this advice. On 14th July, after a thorough interrogation of the marquis, the final verdict was announced: he was given a stern warning that he should behave better in the future, forbidden from visiting Marseilles for three years, and ordered to pay a fine of fifty livres to defray prison and court expenses. He was also free to leave prison the next day.
De Sade’s exultation was to be short-lived, however: at three o’clock in the morning Inspector Marais appeared in his cell and informed him that he was to be taken back to Vincennes. The Inspector held a reconfirmation of the lettre de cachet originally issued on 13th February, 1777. De Sade was in a state of disbelief. Although he had been cleared of the charges against him he was still legally bound by the lettre de cachet as a prisoner of his majesty.
If anything, this turn of events seems to have hardened de Sade’s determination to escape. He already had a plan when he set off in Marais’ custody in the early hours of 15th July. On the journey, which Marais had organised so that they did not pass through any of de Sade’s land, they travelled via Tarascon, south of Avignon on the east bank of the Rhône, and Valliguières, now in the department of Gard, where they stayed the night, arriving on the evening of 16th July at an inn near Valence, on the east bank of the Rhône south of Lyons. While Marais and their other companions were dining, de Sade asked to be allowed to use the toilet. Marais’ brother Antoine-Thomas waited outside the door while de Sade used the facility. When he came out de Sade pretended to fall down, escaped from his guard and managed to run out of the inn. Fortunately for de Sade, in the confusion, Marais and his men acted on the assumption that their prisoner was still in the building or its outhouses. By the time they realised their error it was too late: the marquis had got clean away. At dawn the next day the search was extended to the whole area surrounding Valence.
De Sade, meanwhile, had first hidden in a wooden shed not far from the city, and then, with the aid of two peasants he had persuaded to help him, he set off in the direction of Montélimar, situated between Valence and Avignon, and then changed his mind and went to the Rhône to try, unsuccessfully, to find a boat. Finally, one of the peasants managed to find a boat in the Vivarais area, with which he was able to travel to Avignon. Here he visited briefly the house of a friend before setting off that same night for Lacoste, which he reached by nine o’clock the next morning. Barely had he recovered from his escapade when he found himself captivated by the charms of the new governess, Marie-Dorothée de Rousset. It is possible, though it cannot be confirmed, that de Sade might have known her in Saumane when he was a child. She was the daughter of a lawyer from Apt. It was Renée-Pélagie who had offered her the post. Unusually it was not her physical appearance that attracted de Sade but her intelligence and wit. She was his match in repartee and it seems that she was able to keep him constantly amused and entertained. It was one of the rare relationships in de Sade’s life that provided him with the delights of pure friendship.
His wife was in Paris at this time and completely ignorant of the trip to Aix and the overturning of the judgment. When she found out she was vehemently angry with her mother, who remained unperturbed however, because she had not yet heard of her son-in-law’s escape. When they both heard the news, Renée-Pélagie determined to join her husband in Lacoste, but Mme de Montreuil flew into a rage and threatened to have her locked up to prevent her departure. Under no circumstances would she tolerate having her daughter subject again to that man’s will. De Sade’s wife realised that her mother really would have her locked up, and decided to comply. Her mother agreed to let her communicate with her husband, but insisted that she stay in Paris. Renée-Pélagie sent an anonymous letter via Gaufridy warning her husband to be on his guard.
During the evening of 19th August, while de Sade was walking in his grounds with Mme de Rousset and the local priest, they heard someone moving among the trees, and it turned out to be the watchman, Sambuc, a little the worse for wine, who mumbled on about strange suspicious-looking people in the local tavern. Mme de Rousset went to investigate. When she returned from the village later she reported that there was nothing to worry about, as it was only a group of travelling silk merchants. De Sade, however, was disconcerted by the news and decided to spend the night with another priest of his acquaintance, Canon Vidal, in Oppède. Mme de Rousset was to keep him informed of developments. The situation remained disquieting and he moved again, this time into a derelict farmhouse. Eventually the marquis became tired of running around like a hunted animal, and went back to his chateau.
On Wednesday 26th August, at four o’clock in the morning, Gothon rushed into her master’s bedroom shouting out that he should run for his life. The marquis assumed that they were being attacked by burglars and locked himself in a store-room. There was a lot of shouting on the stairs and finally the door to his hiding-place was broken down, to reveal to him the figure of Inspector Marais, with four assistants and six local gendarmes. De Sade was threatened with a sword and a pistol. Marais vented his anger at being deceived, letting out a torrent of abuse at his cornered quarry. He promised that he would have him put in prison for the rest of his life. De Sade was then bound hand and foot, put in a special police wagon and taken directly off to Paris on a journey that lasted thirteen days. During a rest of two days in Lyons, de Sade took advantage of the time to send a letter off to Gaufridy, in which he gave him instructions concerning the disposal of his uncle’s property. He was particularly concerned not to lose possession of the abbé’s collection of natural history items and his library. Finally, on 7th September 1778, the group arrived at Vincennes, and the marquis was once more in prison.
Unfortunately de Sade had made things more difficult for himself with his escape attempt. He had greatly angered Marais, and his guards at Vincennes were more determined than ever to make his life in prison unpleasant. He was given a more uncomfortable cell with poor ventilation and barely a glimpse of outside light, and not allowed regular exercise. He also complained of being bothered by rats and mice. And he had only three brief periods of contact with other human beings every day. He had to wait for three months, until early December 1778, before he was allowed to go outside his cell to take fresh air twice a week, and it would be many more months before this would be increased to four times a week. Also in December 1778, he was finally allowed to have writing materials. As for food, this was meagre at first, but with the help of his wife and by paying the cook, he managed to obtain reasonably healthy and sustaining meals. His passion for pastries and sweet things in general, though, led to a rapid increase in his weight.
No doubt as a result of his complete isolation, with no human contact to occupy his mind and no facility for assessing accurately the passing of time, de Sade became obsessed with numbers. He counted everything conceivable and accessible to him, often seeking hidden significance in these numbers. Knowing that his wife’s and friends’ letters were being censored, he convinced himself that they were sending secret messages to him in numerical form, so he counted the number of times specific words were used, the number of lines, etc., seeking clues for the number of days before his release or other significant dates. Yet his wife’s concern was clearly not to impart such esoteric knowledge but, among other things, to maintain her own sense of family. She would write to him extensively of their children, who were now being cared for by the Montreuils. Clearly the most stimulating and uplifting correspondence for de Sade was that he conducted with the governess Mme de Rousset, who managed consistently to maintain some sparkling optimism in the face of his frequent despair.
It is not surprising that in his letters to his wife de Sade should reveal his growing disbelief in the effectiveness of imprisonment as a method of reforming human character and behaviour. His own experience of it, he felt, had only dulled his intelligence and reinforced the tendencies native within him. One undeniable effect had been to ruin his health, worsening his chronic problem with haemorrhoids, and also weakening his eyesight. It had also so conditioned him to a life of isolation that he would never be able to fit into normal society again. At this early stage of his imprisonment, when he had no idea how long it would last, he found it difficult to pursue extensive reading, apart from reading Petrarch and his uncle’s book about Petrarch and Laura.
It was in April 1779 that his letters first revealed a preoccupation with writing plays. He sent manuscripts to his wife for safekeeping and asked her for comments. He also reveals that his dramatic style was greatly influenced by the French dramatist Philippe Destouches, and especially the latter’s play Le Dissipateur (The Squanderer).
By October his health was deteriorating further and he wrote to Mme de Montreuil, clearly in a bid to obtain his release, complaining that he would probably not survive another winter in the cell, as he was coughing violently and bringing up blood. The letter was ineffective.
At the end of July 1780, he wrote to his wife describing the unbearable squalor in which he was now forced to live, surrounded by filth and constantly infested with insects of all kinds, with his hair falling out. He wrote that he no longer feared death, but awaited it dispassionately. He put many of his afflictions-pains in his chest, nosebleeds and dizziness – down to the lack of exercise.
His obsession with numbers clearly held one advantage for him: it enabled him to keep some reasonable track of passing time. He wrote to his wife about his calculations on 14th December: the present letter was his 114th to her, and he had received from her 100 letters together with 68 payments of money in fortnightly instalments. It was also the 1,400th day since they had last seen each other, which could also be defined as the 200th week, and so on.
On 20th February 1781 he wrote his longest extant letter, consisting of over six thousand words, to his wife. In it he attempted to improve the impression of him held by others by listing the good and virtuous deeds he had performed in his life hitherto. He also made a statement that is perhaps his strongest and most convincing protest against his critics, both those contemporary with him and those who were to abuse his name in the future, ‘Yes, I am a libertine, I admit it: I have imagined everything of that kind which can be imagined, but I certainly have not done all that I have imagined, and I certainly never shall. I am a libertine, but I am neither a criminal nor a murderer.’17
At the end of March, de Sade was angered by the decision to transfer him to the fortress at Montélimar, believing that this was some scheme on the part of his devious mother-in-law, but in fact it was the result of his wife’s endeavours to have him moved closer to his estate. Although it was possible for her to visit him from 13th July, they were still not allowed to be alone together. The effect of their meeting was to sow the seeds of jealousy in de Sade: he suspected that she was having an affair with the young man, Lefèvre, who had previously been his secretary, and also having a lesbian relationship with the beautiful wife of a well-known homosexual marquis. He obsessively used his numerological theories to find inferences in Renée-Pélagie’s letters concerning the length and breadth of Lefèvre’s penis and saw a reference to her having to pay nine months’ rent as indication that she was pregnant. It seems likely that he also gained some incidental stimulus from working himself up into such a jealous frenzy.
After five years in which most of his creative energy had been poured into letters and fantasies of revenge and numerology, apart from his occasional sallies into playwriting, he finally started to channel more of his resentment of his treatment by individuals and institutions into original creative writing. By 12th July 1782, he had completed his first significant work: the Dialogue entre un prêtre et un moribund (Dialogue Between a Priest and a Dying Man). It is a savage parody of the conventional deathbed scene, in which a priest is usually summoned to hear a final confession and to absolve the dying man of all sins before meeting his Maker. On such occasions the dying man, if an atheist, will often miraculously undergo a conversion, in a last desperate attempt to make amends for a godless existence. In de Sade’s version of events the tables are turned and it is the priest who undergoes a conversion. The dying man argues that it was religion itself that led him into sin, by condemning as unnatural the desires he had felt. He challenges the priest to explain why God had not made Man stronger if He wished him to resist temptation. But the priest is at a loss to find answers to the dying man’s questions. Finally the dying man invites the priest to enjoy the company of six beautiful women in the next room before he dies. The priest’s resistance is easily broken. It has been argued that de Sade’s work owes much formally to Diderot’s Lettre sur les aveugles (Letter on the Blind) of 1749, but many of its ideas are reminiscent of another work that de Sade greatly admired: The System of Nature by the Baron d’Holbach, published in 1770. Holbach, born in Germany, greatly influenced the group of French eighteenth-century Enlightenment intellectuals known as les philosophes. Among other tenets he held, d’Holbach believed that it was unjust to expect a man to be virtuous, if it made him unhappy.
It must be remembered that everything de Sade wrote was inspected by the prison authorities before being handed on to the intended recipients. Within a matter of weeks of his completion of the Dialogue his notebooks were taken away from him. After this, his letters to his wife reveal a growing despair, which led to a violent quarrel with his jailer. Precise details of the incident are not known, but it led to him being confined to his cell. By August 1782 he not only had no access to books but was also not allowed to take any exercise. From this period of extreme depression dates the first evidence of his starting work on Les 120 journées de Sodome (The 120 Days of Sodom), the writing of which seems to have helped him work through his emotional crisis. Despite de Sade’s affirmation of the value of desire as a positive force in life, as in the Dialogue, all the central characters in The 120 Days of Sodom follow a process of decline towards their own deaths. The four main libertines in the novel, together with their companions and chosen victims, proceed from the pursuit of relatively unexceptional desires in the first part of the novel through progressively more abusive and crueller activities in the second and third parts, culminating in extremely violent and brutal acts ending in murder in the fourth. The book was not completed, but, according to de Sade’s plan for the whole, thirty of the forty-six characters would have ended up dead.
The extreme brutality of the sexual fantasies in the book can be at least partially understood as outlets for de Sade’s anger at his own unbearable suffering. During the summer of 1782 he could at least enjoy his wife’s visits, but in September of that year, as punishment for having behaved particularly badly, these visits were suspended. In his depression he convinced himself that the governor of the prison, Charles-Joseph de Rougement, was trying to poison him, and claimed that he was suffering excruciating pains. In December he was finally allowed to take a little exercise again, but only within the confines of a small corridor. By early February 1783 he was complaining of problems seeing with one of his eyes, and his handwriting during this period would seem to confirm such complaints. In the letters of this period he frequently invents tortures for his hated mother-in-law, Mme de Montreuil, which bear close resemblance to those in the novel he was working on.
The only sexual activity in which de Sade could indulge during this time was of course masturbation, which he felt to be a monotonous act with few possible variations. In a similar way the basic act of heterosexual intercourse, if repeated without variations, was extremely boring and uninspiring for him. The limitations to his self-manipulation undoubtedly fired him to imagine ever more varied and extreme activities. The characters in the book were selected for the possibilities of endless permutations in their sexual activities. While the activities were of a progressively degenerative nature, de Sade imposed on the whole fantasy a rigid mathematical structure, a reflection of his reliance on numerology in coping with his isolation and temporal disorientation. The 120 days were divided up very precisely, as were the types of character: four men, four women, eight young men, eight boys, eight girls, etc. Tension is created by the growing conflict between the rules imposed on this community and the deliberate breaking down of civilised values, which increases the pleasure derived. From a modern perspective this can of course be seen in psychoanalytic terms: the presence of a prohibition only heightens the pleasure in disobeying it.
During this stay in prison de Sade also lost four people who had in their different ways been very close to him. On 13th May 1781 Anne-Prospère died unexpectedly in Paris from smallpox and related complications. Mme de Montreuil was embittered and disconsolate. Renée-Pélagie kept the news from her husband for more than six years. On 27th October 1781 de Sade’s devoted servant Gothon died of fever eight days after giving birth to a son. De Sade insisted on paying the expenses of his baptism. Then on 25th January 1784 Marie-Dorothée de Rousset died at Lacoste. It is not clear exactly what she was suffering from, but she had been very weak and had frequently spat blood for over five years. Finally, on 14th May 1785, de Sade’s servant and assistant in many of his escapades, La Jeunesse, died after being ill for six weeks. While recognising the man’s weaknesses, de Sade had long appreciated his devoted service.
In the beginning of January 1784 de Sade attempted to influence the future of his elder son, Louis-Marie, by insisting that he be enrolled in the Carbine Regiment. He had had very little contact with the boy for the first sixteen years of his life, and in the fates of his other son and daughter he showed little interest at all.
Just over one month later, on the evening of 29th February, an unexpected change in de Sade’s circumstances came about. The governor, accompanied by a police officer, entered his cell and informed him that he was being transferred to the renowned and now infamous prison of the Bastille.
The journey was a mere three miles. He was put into an octagonal cell, much smaller than that in Vincennes, on the second floor of one of the eight round towers of the prison. The brick walls were whitewashed and the one window, accessible by three steps, was barred firmly, as was the opening to a chimney. He was served meals at seven and eleven o’clock in the morning, and at six in the evening. After a week of feeling depressed by his new surroundings he wrote to Renée-Pélagie requesting all manner of things to make his life more bearable, mainly various items of clothing but also candles, jam and cologne. From 16th March she was given permission to visit him twice a month, and found that he was still suffering from problems with one of his eyes. He had to wait until July before he was allowed to have it examined by a specialist. On 24th May his wife provided him with what had become some of his most essential materials: nineteen exercise books and a bottle of ink, among some more luxury items. On her next visit she brought twenty-one exercise books and six large and six small quill pens. She also brought some books and other texts for him.
On 22nd October 1785 de Sade began to make a clearer copy of The 120 Days of Sodom. Because he was anxious that the whole work might be confiscated by the prison authorities, he copied out the text onto small pieces of paper no more than four or five inches wide in minute handwriting. These he stuck end to end in a roll about forty feet long, and written on both sides, which could be rolled up and concealed easily in a small space. The text covered only the first thirty of the 120 days. For whatever reason it seems that he lost motivation or inclination to complete the remaining ninety days of the narrative in the same detail as the first part. This remarkable document would be lost, to de Sade’s own immense dismay, when he was forced to move from the Bastille. It was eventually found in de Sade’s former cell by one Arnoux de Saint-Maximin and it remained in the possession of the Villeneuve-Trans family until it was bought by a collector at the beginning of the twentieth century. It was first published in 1904.
De Sade’s notes for the remaining ninety days include some of his most horrific fantasies: a nobleman having anal sex with a corpse; coming to orgasm while sucking a girl’s blood; a man hanging a prostitute while having her daughter masturbate him; cutting off buttocks, nipples and other appendages; putting a hot iron inside a vagina; and, a rare delicacy, having intercourse with a turkey.
He never finished the work, though it is clear that, after the loss of his secret manuscript roll, he attempted to include parts of it that he could remember in subsequent works. He had in any case put aside the work before it was actually lost and turned his attention to a novel of a completely different kind. Aline et Valcour (Aline and Valcour) contains no explicit sexual acts and very little violence. Compared to the rapidly changing episodic structure of The 120 Days of Sodom this new novel moves very slowly, incorporating much discussion, and creating a dialogue between the arguments for the need for moral conventions and the libertine’s demands for sexual freedom. On a basic level it reflects the dilemma of respecting obligations to society while arguing for the freedom of the individual. Many of the ideas expressed by central characters in the novel, which he was working on in the autumn of 1786, are uncannily prescient of issues that would rock the whole country within a few years.
Early in October 1786 a meeting was held between de Sade and two lawyers in the council chamber of the Bastille, with the aim of persuading him to cede his right to govern his affairs and those of his wife to a member of his family approved by him. This was particularly important to guarantee the good education and upbringing of his children. De Sade saw that this was reasonable, but argued that he was the best person to fulfil all these responsibilities, and that he should therefore be set free forthwith. His protests did not prevent the family going ahead less than a year later, in June 1787, with a legal transfer of responsibility to them.
In these last few years before the outbreak of revolution de Sade was working feverishly on many literary works. In a short period of only a few weeks in June and July 1787 he wrote the work Les Infortunes de la vertu (The Misfortunes of Virtue), which he intended to include in an extensive project of four volumes of stories, with the general title of Contes et Fabliaux du XVIIIe Siècle par un Troubadour Provençal (Stories and Tales of the Eighteenth Century by a Provençal Troubadour). His plan was to turn the concept of chivalry associated with the troubadours on its head, to replace morality with immorality, and he would organise the book so that each story would highlight the fate of a specific virtue. The Misfortunes of Virtue shows how a woman who tries persistently to be virtuous only brings about her own corruption. The woman in question is Justine, who was to reappear later as the central figure in what was to become one of de Sade’s best-known novels, known commonly by the short title Justine. The woman in the novel who listens to Justine’s account turns out to be her sister, Juliette, to whose life de Sade was later to devote another novel.
In September 1788, after persistent complaints and demands to be allowed to change his cell, de Sade was finally moved up to one on the sixth floor of the same tower, where he had a view over the rue St-Antoine. It is likely that he especially requested this change so that he might observe the political turmoil that would soon be taking place on the streets of Paris. It is beyond the scope of the present book to detail the origins and development of the French Revolution, and only its direct effect on the life of the Marquis de Sade can be considered. The winter of 1788-9 proved to be very severe, and as it came after a poor harvest workers in the countryside became hungry and desperate. Many came to Paris and shared their dissent with unemployed city workers. By the end of April riots were occurring in various parts of the city, and on one occasion a large group of angry workers gathered near the Bastille armed with sticks. Many more joined them until there were several thousand. Houses were destroyed and shops raided for food. When a large group of protestors were trapped in a narrow street soldiers were ordered to fire on them, killing several hundred. Political rallies were taking place every night, and all kinds of pamphlets promoting violent action were being distributed. By the end of June the rioting was becoming more organised, with successful raids being conducted to obtain not only grain but also weapons. Many members of the army also began to defect to the revolutionary cause, and a civilian militia was established.
De Sade was kept informed of the uprisings by his wife, and he was also able to witness many of the events directly from his cell window. It was also clear that the defences of the fortress were being reinforced with an increase in manpower, and cannons prepared for use. On 2nd July 1789 de Sade was informed at around midday that the commandant had cancelled his daily walk. De Sade protested strongly but to no avail. There then occurred the incident that has become a symbol of his relationship to the French Revolution, an outward show of solidarity with the popular cause combined with a desperate need to save his own skin: he took hold of the metal pipe with funnel attached that was used to empty his excretions and other dirty water into the moat below and employed it as a megaphone to shout to people in the streets. He complained that the warders were murdering the prisoners and begged them to come to their aid. It is hardly surprising that the commandant of the fortress decided that it was now high time to remove the unruly marquis from his jurisdiction. That same night, at one o’clock in the morning, de Sade was awoken from his bed by men armed with pistols and, without being allowed to take any clothes or other items with him, he was dragged from his cell, thrown into a coach and taken to the asylum at Charenton five miles away.
De Sade was thereby deprived of his chance of participating in one of the most famous events of the French Revolution: the storming of the Bastille. Only ten days after he had been removed to Charenton, a large crowd appeared, not indeed with the intention of liberating de Sade or any of the other prisoners but to commandeer the store of gunpowder. The subsequent tragedy unfolded through a series of misunderstandings: the commandant, de Launay, agreed to receive several deputations and promised not to fire on the crowds, but when two men climbed the wall and attempted to lower one of the drawbridges, he thought an attack was being mounted and gave the order to fire. De Launay was forced to surrender by the arrival of two detachments of the National Guard sympathetic to the revolutionary cause. He attempted to make a deal to save the lives of his men, but he could not prevent the mob from killing a number of them. Although he himself was guaranteed safe conduct, and indeed taken away from the fortress, someone decapitated him with a knife.
As for de Sade, the loss of his clothes might have been bearable for him when he was dragged off to Charenton, but he also had to leave behind about fifteen manuscripts of his own works.