Donatien-Alphonse-François, marquis de SADE. L.A.S., [Fort de Miolans late March or early April 1773, to Count Sallier de La Tour, Governor of the Duchy of Savoy]; 4pages small in-4. Beautiful letter during his imprisonment at the fort of Miolans, in Savoy, where the Count was incarcerated and held incommunicado at the request of his in-laws, after his affair and escapade in Italy with his young sister-in-law. [On April 30, the Marquise succeeded in escaping her husband, accompanied by his cellmate, Baron de L'Allée]. Sade begins by complaining about the measures that delay the letters he receives by eight days: "it is precisely this reason that had engaged me to take a servant outside who could do me this kind of service; doing as much as to feed and pay this servant, I would very much like him to serve me; besides the supplies I need daily, I can't find them in St Pierre, I was in the habit of having them brought in the day my letters were brought to me". He proposes a new arrangement for his correspondence: "If Your Excellency accepts this arrangement, it will please me. As for everything else, I submit to it as willingly as I can, not having and not wishing to have in the future any correspondence that the whole world cannot read, and renouncing most sincerely and with all my heart, the one that put me here, which I had the weakness to maintain in the beginning, and all to my great regret". He regrets that his supplication to Turin only had the effect of "being squeezed even more, for after all, the purpose of this supplication was to obtain my freedom"... And he tries to soften the governor's feelings about his fate: "I have been of age for several years [...] I have lost my father to my misfortune, for I would not be here if I still had him, my mother is very old, very infirm and is quietly ending her days in a convent, meddling in absolutely nothing, my uncles and the rest of my family have certified to me in writing that they have had nothing to do with my detention. I have not offended the Court of France, still less that of Sardinia, my wife asks for me back, I depend on no one, so who can hold me back, and who can dare to do so without the greatest vexations, and the greatest injustices. If, however, those who do so allege as their only justification the desire to break off an inappropriate and unpleasant intrigue, they are pushing their resentment too far, for I have very authentically declared that I renounce it [...] I am breaking off all trade. I offer to return all letters. I swear not to approach Paris by a hundred leagues for as long as required, to cease all memoranda, all supplications, all insulting remarks [...] My position is unquestionably the cruellest, but unfortunately I am the only one to feel it"... Etc. Attached is an autograph postscript (1page small in-4) about Bailli, "cantinier du fort", who needs money: "I would have paid this man myself here without burdening Your Excellency if the funds I had this winter had remained with me; but when my wife came, she testified to me that she needed them and I passed them on to her, so that I find myself absolutely penniless".