RONALD HAYMAN
and duly equ ipped wilh lWO very while bUllocks, very beauliful and
intacl. We approached lhe said member and had our bailiffs ap–
proach as closely as ourselves. Al lheir risk and peril lhey did half–
open , pan, sniff and sludy lhoroughl y, and having, like ourselves,
observed nOlhing bUl hea llh in lhose pans, we have delivered lh e
present aCl, for use in conform ilYwilh lhe law.
197
Everything he wrote was subj ect
to
inspectio n, and within a few weeks
of his fillin g the exercise book tha t contained the
Dialogue
all the
books he had been reading were taken away. They overheated hi s bra in ,
he was to ld, and induced improprieties. " I am in despair," Renee–
Pelagie wrote, "at seeing you reduced to having nothing
to
do... . I
beg you to res train yourself in your writings. You are doing yourself
infinite harm . Make repara ti ons by thinking in accordance with the
decency which is there a t the bottom of your heart. "
The confi sca tion o f his books upset the precarious equilibrium he
had achieved. In a June letter tha t ended " I have begun my 210th week
of imprisonment," he had come close to apologizing for his suspicions
of infidelity: "Six visits from you were enough to awaken me from my
nightmare, which was an insult to you. I shall never have it again . I
know better how to va lue what I love." But a t the end of Jul y, he had a
violent quarrel with hi s jail er. Whether the man was hit, or onl y
threatened, Sade again forfeited th e right
to
take wa lks, even in the
corridor. In August, with no books and no exercise, h e became
ex tremely depressed, and it was at about thi s time that he began
working on
L es 120 journees de Sodome.
Two years earl ier he had ended a letter to his wife with the phrase
"My brain will n ever ripen in the shade." Wha t he now felt, justifia bly,
was tha t it had ripened. " In 1777," he wrote on 19 August 1782,
I was slill fairl y youn g.... My soul had nOl yel harden ed .
It
was nOl
yel inaccess ibl e, as you h ave carefully made il, lO kindl y sentiments.
Different melhods could have produced considerabl e res ults, bUl you
did nOl want lh em and I am graleful. . .. Il can be sa id lhal you have
been given lhe wrong adv ice bUl, in all conscience, I am very glad
lhings turn ed out the way lhey have.
Wha t was saving him from despair was the mental habits he had
formed. As he said in the same letter to Renee-Pelagie, " H abits are so
prodigiously bound up with a man 's constitution tha t ten thousand
years of prison and five hundred pounds of chains could do nothing
but give them more force. I would grea tl y surpri se you if I told you that
the memory of a ll these things is what I call to my aid when I want to
blunt the pa in of my situa tion ."
