Donatien Alphonse François, marquis de SADE (1740-1814). L.A., September 3 [1791], to his steward François Ripert, in Mazan; 4 pages in-4, envelope. Long business letter, in which Sade invokes his role in the storming of the Bastille and the Revolution. "I have perfectly felt, my dear Ripert, all that you have done for me in the cruel circumstances in which you found yourself. Your resistance to pay the contributions demanded by people who have no grounds to demand such a thing is very beautiful, and I have well recognized your friendship for me in this trait". He exhorts him to keep the same conduct. He had been irritated to learn that Ripert was participating in "the reconstruction of the city walls", but his letter reassured him. He prescribes to him, "in the case where the municipality wanted to try to constrain me on that, to yield to force if I could not do otherwise, but to declare, to serve, to publish, to print, to post that it is to my detriment, that it is because one uses violence towards me, and that I reserve my recourse against the aforementioned municipality as soon as the sovereign authorities such as they are will have pronounced on a case, that I myself carry from the moment to their courts. [...] you must support my rights". He formally opposes this reparation. "I beg you in any case to make the municipality pay for the damage done in my castle, it seems to me that 500 men should not have been housed there, this house is not large enough to house so many people. [...] this is what makes my complaints against your municipality even more legitimate. It seems to me in a word that if all these people reflected that it is partly to me that the demolition of the Bastille and the Parisian revolution is due, something that it is very easy for me to prove without any doubt, that if they reflected on it they would treat me with more gentleness". He wants to thank the son Ripert for having defended his interests so well. He pays his taxes in Paris: "consequently I cannot, nor want, nor must pay in the Comtat, that they plunder me, that they steal me, if they want it but it will be always with my body defending"... Finally, he refuses categorically the reduction asked by Ripert on his farm; he enjoys it since 25 years without the least increase. He complains about the bad conduct of his farmer in Saumane: "he is a scelerat"... Etc.