SECRET HISTORY OF ISABELLE OF BAVARIA

By the turn of the century Sade had been in principle a free man for six years, even if he had never been free from poverty. In the spring of 1801, the 15th Ventôse, that freedom came to an end, for the First Consul, who had appointed himself in 1799, was trying to restore some degree of decency into the moral chaos of the post-revolutionary period. The police raided Sade's publisher Massé, where he and the author were discussing business. La Nouvelle Justine and the last volume of Juliette were seized, despite Sade's denial of authorship. At the house of Marie-Constance, who now lived in Saint-Ouen, a tapestry was found with obscene designs based on episodes from Justine. The authorities decided to avoid the scandal of a court case and merely incarcerated Sade in the converted convent of Sainte-Pélagie, as an 'administrative punishment'.

He was not ready to accept such a despotic reason for detention. He was ready to stand trial, but was not allowed to do so. He was transferred to the prison of Bicêtre, known by the unenviable title of 'the Bastille for the rabble'. Sade was sixty-one, considered to be old at the time, but at least his family came to his aid, though in a selfish way, for they were not concerned with obtaining his freedom. They asked for him to be sent to Charenton-Saint-Maurice, the hospice for the mad where he had been sent briefly in 1789. They agreed to pay for his keep. Since 1797 Charenton had been placed under the supervision of the Ministère de l'Intérieur, therefore the existence of this particular prisoner-patient would not be forgotten. Marie-Constance, who had naturally pleaded for Sade's release, was eventually allowed to live close to him at Charenton, described, for the sake of les convenances, as his daughter or even as his niece.

What now? Sade's talent was for action and aggression, even if these had been restricted for a long time to his writing. Since he could not be idle, he continued to write and was able to return to his love of the theatre by writing and producing plays for the inmates of Charenton. The writer Charles Nodier, who had seen Sade at Bicêtre, wrote a brief description of the man who no doubt looked the same way during his early years at the hospital: he was enormously fat, which prevented him from displaying the last traces of grace and elegance, still discernible in his manners. 'Yet his tired eyes still preserved something of brilliance and finesse which glowed in them from time to time like a dying spark among extinct embers.'

At Charenton Sade's dramatic activities earned him friends and enemies; the patients were occupied, if not cured, and it became a fashionable pastime for many Parisians to see the plays. One doctor who disliked Sade complained that he was causing too much disturbance and hoped, since he was clearly not mad, that he would be transferred to a secure fortress. The director, and Sade's family, prevented any such move.

He never stopped writing, and Marie-Constance would go out into Paris for him, successfully placing some of his plays with various theatres. He wrote at least part of a vast novel, Les Journées de Florbelle, which was subsequently destroyed. He also wrote three historical novels, one of which was published in 1813, La Marquise de Ganges. This true story seemed ready-made for Sade, for the beautiful young marquise had been killed in 1667 by her two brothers-in-law, one of them an abbé, in a cruel melodrama of love and money which caused a sensation at the time. Sade's last two books were also historical novels, a genre that fascinated him, since he enjoyed the research and liked to point out how past historians had gone wrong. They were also about women: Adelaïde de Brunswick, an early medieval queen, and Isabelle de Bavière, who lived from 1371 to 1435, wife of Charles VI of France, known as the Mad and also as the Good. One of their sons was the Dauphin befriended by Joan of Arc, and their daughter Catherine became the wife of Henry V of England. Although these novels are confused and unimpressive, Isabelle is intriguing because at one level she could even be compared with Juliette. As regent of France, during her husband's phases of madness, she was devious and cruel, aspired to total power and if necessary would have her lovers killed without compunction. Sade obviously enjoyed creating her portrait:

Along with the usual charms and graces of her age Isabelle's features displayed a kind of pride rarely found at the age of sixteen. In her eyes, which were very large and very black, could be seen more pride than the sensitivity so sweet and attractive in the innocent glances of a young person. Her figure indicated loftiness and flexibility, her gestures were firm, her walk was bold, her voice a little harsh, her words few. Much haughtiness in her character, no trace of that tender humanity, the privilege of fine souls which, bringing them nearer to the throne, consoles them for that painful distance at which fate caused them to be born. Dismissive already about morality and the religion which supports it; an insurmountable aversion to everything which opposed her tastes; unyielding in her moods; extreme in her pleasures; a dangerous inclination to vengeance; finding with ease wrongs in those who surrounded her, as quick to suspect as to punish, to produce evil deeds as to contemplate them in cold blood; proving through certain traits that when love inflamed her heart she would yield only to its rages and would see in it only a useful purpose. At the same time avaricious and prodigal, desiring everything, interfering in everything, knowing the value of nothing, cherishing in truth only herself, sacrificing all interests, even those of the State, to her own; gratified by the rank in which fate placed her, not in order to do good, but to find in it the impunity of evil; in fact possessing all the vices unredeemed by a single virtue.

[Isabelle was a version of Juliette, surely, and she had belonged to the world of reality. Sade ended his introduction to the book with an invocation to his last heroine.]

Oh you whom fate called to the support of a throne that was already crumbling, should you then have hastened its fall? But, seduced or rather corrupted by the examples placed before your eyes, do you not have some rights to the indulgence of posterity? Ah, no doubt if you had at least offered us some virtues! But it is in vain that one desires them, it is without success that one seeks them; in you one finds only disorder and it is with frankness that we are going to prove some sad truths which have remained too long unknown, but they must be revealed at last, both for the instruction of all and in order to establish more firmly in our hearts the inviolable devotion and respect that we constantly owe to those of our sovereign queens truly deserving of our praise and our homage. . . .

Sade was claiming that his interest in evil women was due to his search for truth, and his belief that the wickedness of Isabelle (much written about in France, not too well known outside it) would highlight the goodness of others, the Justines as it were of history.