Donatien-Alphonse-François, marquis de SADE. L.A., [donjon de Vincennes January 1782], to Abbé Amblet, his tutor; 2pages small in-4, addressed. Against his mother-in-law, the présidente de Montreuil. "Men must know you little gratitude for painting them with such colors. I don't think it was up to the man who painted the picture so well to present them in such odious light. The world has therefore changed a great deal since I left it, and it seems to me that in the past it was in proportion to misfortunes that it granted more or less consolation, and in this supposition I believed myself entitled to great ones. Without doubting it, however, you offer me a very certain one, for if men are as you represent them to me, one must have little regret at having broken the laws of their society, great calm restored, from that moment on, in my soul [...I thought that it belonged only to those who had no soul to lend their pen to the fury of vengeance [...] Md la presidente de Montreuil [his mother-in-law] whose only charm is to put me at odds with everyone, and who puts into this (like those p... of soldiers) as much delicacy as wit, often forgets that she has in her family misfortunes more slanderous than mine [...] this monster, this infernal creature that no expression will ever paint, like the viper that festers everything it touches, wants to vomit its venom even on our old friendship [....] You can announce his victory, by showing him the urgent request I make to you not to write to me any more; I will withdraw into myself, I will think of those happy days when calm and innocence formed with flowers the bonds of a friendship that they want to force me to break today". And Sade quotes a few lines from Dante's Inferno... Correspondence (Lély), CXL.