Donatien-Alphonse-François, marquis de SADE. L.A.S., [Vincen - Lot 144

Donatien-Alphonse-François, marquis de SADE. L.A.S., [Vincennes dungeon February 1783], to his wife; 3pages in-8, addressed to "Madame de Sade in Paris". Vigorous letter of reproach from the prisoner to his wife. "You will allow me to tell you madame, that if you were to do, not what friendship dictates (we're not there) but what your conscience and your duty oblige you to do, you would give yourself a little more movement than you do for the cure of my eye. Neither magistrates nor the law prevent a woman from repaying her husband what she owes him, an insolent begueule of a mother can demand infamy, but at forty, it's to her husband and not to her mother that a girl obeys, when she's not an imbecile". The condition of her eye worsens, and oculists' remedies only aggravate the ailment. "I therefore demand that you, Madame, on pain of incurring my indignation, hatred and vengeance forever, go and see these charlatans on my behalf, and beg them not to take your husband for a subject with experience, to give me something to cure me"... He also needs to get some fresh air in the garden... And he apostrophizes his persecutors: "Ah! miserable rascals and scelerates that you are, what will you obtain? what can you flatter yourselves to have obtained by all your horrors? if not to have taken away many years of my life - vile scoundrel! you murder me halfway, and between Cartouche, roué, and you, ridiculously honored by fools, all the difference consists, however, only in a few gradations more, or less, in the same kind of crime"...