Autograph letter from Donatien Alphonse François de Sade, written in a tall, narrow hand on one page, addressed to his wife Renée-Pélagie.
Undated, this letter was written in early July 1779 at the Vincennes prison. It is published in Marquis de Sade. Lettres à sa femme, Marc Buffat, 1997 (p. 112).

Marginal dampstaining, a few creases, and a small marginal loss from the letter's unsealing. Address to Madame de Sade in Paris on the verso.

Following several scandals involving sexual violence against women - the Arcueil affair, the Rose Keller affair, and the Marseille affair, among others - the Marquis de Sade's mother-in-law, Madame de Montreuil, obtained a lettre de cachet against him and lured him to Paris under the pretext of his mother's illness; he was arrested there and taken to the keep at Vincennes, where he was held until his transfer to the Bastille in 1784.

In this letter, Sade complains of the conditions of his imprisonment - "I have neither an extra outing, nor a change of room, nor my servant when I dine" - and reproaches his wife, in an ironic tone, for her indifference to his prison comfort: "that proves to me how much what concerns me matters to you, and the pity you feel for my fate". He then threatens her with a new escape, echoing his flight of 1778, when he managed to escape for forty days during his transfer from the prisons of Aix-en-Provence to the keep at Vincennes: "well, Gentlemen and Ladies, I declare to you that if you do not very promptly grant me these three items that I am requesting, I shall regard it as proof of a very prompt departure".

Imprisoned for two and a half years, the Marquis de Sade still remains unaware of the length of his sentence. The humorous tone of his letters, still evident here, will change drastically over the following years as he begins to grow seriously concerned about his health, and particularly the state of his eye, the use of which he will lose for a time. Losing all hope of ever being freed, Sade will experience mounting fatigue and anger, also reflected in the increasingly violent nature of his letters to Renée-Pélagie, who will nonetheless remain faithful to him throughout his detention.

A sarcastic letter written during the third year of the Marquis de Sade's sentence, while he is still unaware that he will spend nearly three decades in prison.