'Of all the paths that vengeance and cruelty could have chosen, admit, Madame, that you have indeed taken the most ghastly of all. I would like to believe you for a moment that a lettre de cachet [royal arrest warrant] is indispensable for avoiding an even more regrettable performance, but must it be so harsh, so cruel? An order that exiled me from the kingdom, would it not have accomplished the same purpose?

Since I will not proliferate my letters, as much because of the difficulty of writing them as for their ineffectiveness with you, this one will contain my final thoughts, be quite assured of that. My situation is appalling. Never – and you know it – neither in mind nor body, never have I been able to put up with a close confinement. In a much more lax prison [Miolans] – and you know this as well – I had risked my life to escape. Deprived here of such an option as that, there nevertheless remains one available to me that most assuredly no one can keep from me, and I will use it. From the bottom of her tomb, my unfortunate mother is calling me: I seem to see her open her bosom to me one more time and beckon me to enter there once again as into the only refuge left to me.'

(De Sade's letter to Madame de Montreuil, his mother-in-law, February 1777)

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