SADE Donatien Alphonse François Marquis de - Lot 253

SADE Donatien Alphonse François Marquis de LETTRE AUTOGRAPHE À SON ÉPOUSE Renée-Pélagie de Montreuil. Donjon de Vincennes, 1781-1782. 3 pages in-12 in ink ... Madame, you are free to say whatever you please. Your time and your money are yours. For me, who doesn't like to say or answer anything, you'll allow me to write only about things. For the last five years, I've been saying a lot and very reasonably, and as you beat the campaign and turn a deaf ear every time this happens, I thought I should finally write down, in the most authentic form my situation allows me, all the things that are most important to me and from which nothing in the universe can make me withdraw. I address it to you and ask for your attention and no response. ... you must see it in a style quite different from the one sometimes torn from me by the horror of my situation... ... I have burnt all my previous writings, which might have had something to do with it, and which I kept only because of this. You will notice that these are not laws that I dictate, which would be ungracious in my situation... I have as much right to write conditions as others would have to impose them on me. When it pleases you no longer to harp on, nor to fight the campaign, you will send me the arrears I have been waiting three months for, and you will oblige me infinitely. The ink, the white notebook, the chocolate pastilles, the catalog of books to be filled, the Indian jacket and breeches... a pint of cologne better than the last, my stomach pieces, the funnel, the pairs of candles and the two head ribbons are the most essential... God bless this letter, which is so partial, relieves me of a great weight, and until the pleasure of seeing you, I have, thank heaven, only to be as unreasonable as you. I kiss you."