Donatien-Alphonse-François, marquis de SADE. L.A., [donjon de Vincennes March 22, 1779, to Marie-Dorothée de Rousset]; 4pages in-4 filled with small, tight handwriting. Very beautiful and long letter from prison to her friend, protesting against the deprivation of liberty. [Born in 1744, Mademoiselle de Rousset was a childhood friend of Sade. When the Marquis was re-incarcerated in 1778, she came to Paris to support the Marquise in her efforts to have her husband released]. "Well, my dear Sainte, it's New Year's Day and you haven't come to see me. I waited in vain for you all day, I had made myself pretty, I had put on powder, ointment, I was clean-shaven, I didn't have fur-lined boots, but a nice pair of green silk stockings, red breeches, a yellow jacket and a black suit with a beautiful silver embroidered hat. Finally, I was a very elegant lord, the jam jars were in battle; I'd also prepared a little concert: three drums, four timpani, eighteen trumpets and forty-two hunting horns, all of which were to perform a pretty little romance I'd made for you. Your ears, eyes and heart would have been truly delighted by the little feast I was preparing for you, and I wasn't at all satisfied with my display. It'll be for next year, but another time, don't make my mouth water like that, and then leave me there, because it'll ruin me in expenses"... He taunts her for her "columnar" letters, for she must feel "that when they talk to me about business here, it's pure bullshit, like Sancho Pança on his island, who is led to believe that everyone is waiting for his orders. It's a little persiflage to which (without the slightest rancor) you lend yourself, as in the rest you have found the tone to lie to me and persifler me established, you have been persuaded that you must submit to it too, that there was nothing so pretty, and especially nothing that should work for my radical restoration like this. [...] Oui Sainte Rousset vous l'aves fait et quand nous serons tous deux tete a tete je vous faire reconnaître que vous m'aves ecrit des choses tres deplacées pour ma situation". He doesn't ask to be flattered, but to be "told the truth"; and if he can't be told, "you mustn't at least try to make me understand that it must be long, because then, to make it understood without the designer, is to make my head go much further, perhaps than it should, and to despair"... It's better not to say anything. You must also (Mme de Sade eventually gave up this madness) stop "trying to make me believe that you work, that you write, that you solicit, that you don't answer that uncles, aunts, the devil... Eh! non Sainte et tres Sainte Rousset pas un mot de cela, chant sur un autre air je vous en prie si vous voulez que je vous ecoute. All this is good for ordinary prisoners, it's what we call amusing them. But I am not amused, my time is fixed [...] I ask to know what it is, that is my only desire"... After quoting a few verses by Voltaire, he declares that the language of reason "is not for women, this charming sex that makes her lose must not know how to hear or speak it. And what reason would you expect from a man who is treated as if he had none at all? The flycatchers sent to him by his wife were blunted, "lest I kill myself with them. You can see that I'm a long way from the end of my misfortunes, and that I'm likely to have many more occasions for despair, since so much care is being taken to keep away from me anything that might make the effects fatal"... This procedure was used for Damiens and other illustrious scoundrels... He rages against the narrow-minded men who deprive him of his freedom, and he believes himself to be "in the middle of the republic of donkeys", and exclaims: "O man, how small and vain you are! You have scarcely time to see the sun, you have barely scratched the surface of the universe, and all you care about is the cruel care of your fellow men [......] Unhappy earthworm who only has a few hours to crawl like me, enjoy yourself and don't trouble me, lower your pride which only comes from your foolishness and if chance has placed you realistically or accidentally above me, that is to say, if you burn the grass in a slightly rough corner, only take advantage of it to make me happy. Sainte Rousset, if in all the races of animals we know on earth, there was one that made prisons for itself, and then condemned each other to this pretty little torment, wouldn't we destroy it as a species too cruel to leave?