RONALD HAYMAN
193
arranged fo r a
iettre de cachet
to be iss ued , summaril y ordering his
imprisonment without tri a l.
In a letter written in either March or April 1779 he was still
compl aining to hi s wife, Renee-Pelagie de Montreuil , th at he could
have used the time more profita bl y if onl y he knew how lon g his
imprisonment wo uld las t. But by May he was press ing her for reactions
to the dialogue in his scripts. She was
to
keep the manuscripts in her
posseSSlOn .
Tho ugh his playwriting was influenced by pl ays he read, it was
not until the sixth year of hi s impri sonment tha t hi s reading began to
interact fruitfull y with his writin g. Sometimes reading would make
him so excited tha t he would break off to scribbl e on a scrap of paper.
or
Las l line page 143
oUlrages - a
lettre de cachel!
T he mOSl solid proof of slllpidily and
lhe hes t weapon o f tyrann y. A man who could have emi graled has
been made to rol in a cell by the fin esl in venli on of despolism ... 0
lempora,
a
mores!
lhey will never be released. Il is th e characleristic of slupidilY and
absurdilY to use torture in slead o f reason abl e persuasion in lhe
allempl to con vin ce. Perseculion proves nOlhing bUl despolism; a
good cause does nOl torture; il reasons
bOltom of page I 17
end o f nOle
In these interpo la tions he was thinking directl y onto the paper, and
ass uming tha t la tent in the written word was the power
to
make his
persecutors recogni ze themselves for what they were:
Read wilh some care, I beg you, the firsl II lines of page
200,
and
lhen you pack of brules, you indefensibl e bunch of goss ips, look al
yoursel ves in a mirror and say 'There we arc' .
16 J anuary, evening.
Full of ri ghteous indigna ti on , th e notes he wro te for himself a re a
bridge between his letters to Renee- Pelagie and hi s more extended
pieces o f writing. For five yea rs he had funn ell ed tremendous quanti–
ti es of energy into letter-writing. T he one acti vity and the one form of
self- expression he was all owed, writing also provided him with a
means of deepening and di sciplining hi s thinking: he was now findin g
