Donatien-Alphonse-François, marquis de SADE (1740-1814). L.A - Lot 140

Donatien-Alphonse-François, marquis de SADE (1740-1814). L.A., [Vincennes] February 11, 1778, to his wife; 2pages in-8 filled with very tight handwriting. Beautiful letter to his wife from his prison in the Vincennes dungeon. "Finally, after a year of the hardest and most dreadful captivity in which I have received only persiflages instead of consolations, only harshness instead of softenings, will I be allowed to ask for a grace and this grace will I be able to flatter myself to obtain? You must have no doubt, my dear friend, of the terrible impression this new letter you are preparing for me will make on me, and although all the expressions in your letters are researched with a unique art to give me a glimpse of the most extreme languor, and for a year they have not varied to the point where there is no more hope or consolation in the first than in the last. In spite of all this, I say, the cruel ignorance in which you are pleased to leave me on the only thing that interests me and on the only thing I would like to know for my rest and tranquility, which you are so cruelly disturbing. [...] Everything that destroys hope is so cruel, they are such piercing daggers that pity must urge you to soften the blow when you can. In view of this, my dear friend, I beg you to obtain permission to bring me all the provisions you have requested. I ask this with the strongest insistence, and if you send me all this without coming yourself, you will make me die of grief". This is the greatest service she could do for him, "apart from freeing me completely, which as you well know would be much more pleasant for me, and in truth it would be justice, for I have been made to suffer enough. [...] Just think, I've been suffering for a long time now, and it seems to me that such cruel and prolonged suffering could finally earn me a little commiseration. I have never been more than a year without seeing you, you know that, and I will consider it a bad omen if you don't do everything you saw me do in the same case, so as not to cheat on our vow, because you know that I only came back from Italy for this (and it pleased God that I never came back)". He managed to hold out until the first Sunday of Lent: "That would seem to me a good time to get what you ask for. [...] I have some things of the utmost consequence to tell you, which will perhaps shed some light on the alleged grievances that are imputed to me, and for which I am punished so severely and so out of place, since they don't even want to hear me. In a postscript, he adds: "No gooseberries, I don't like them in any way", and gives the dimensions of the boxes he requires.