Adelaide of Brunswick

Front matter

Donatien Alphonse François, comte de Sade

Translated by

Professor Hobart Ryland, University of Kentucky

Introduction

INTRODUCTION

The Marquis de Sade, that extraordinary writer of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, was born in Paris in 1740. He came of good stock and his male ancestors were nearly always outstanding soldiers or priests. With but a short education in the hands of a religious uncle and a priest, at the age of fourteen he entered the army. Soon, the Seven Years' War was raging and the young marquis took an active part in many of the battles.

In 1763, the handsome young soldier was released from the army, and losing no time rushed to Paris to have a good time. A small house was rented in the outskirts of Paris, and became the scene of some of the wildest parties that can be imagined. The marquis' father began to worry about the large sums being spent and decided that marriage was the only thing to make his son settle down. An engagement was arranged for him to marry Renée de Montreuil, a very rich girl, and while the details of the wedding were being arranged, the young marquis was sent to the south of France to see the family estates and, incidentally, to get him away from the temptations of Paris. While there, he fell in love with another girl, but was forced to marry Renée de Montreuil.

Shortly after his marriage, the parties in his suburban hideaway were resumed. He was interested in all types of unusual activities, and it was probably at this time that he first gave expression to the streak of cruelty which was to have so much influence in his life. Five months after his marriage he was arrested and sent to the Chateau of Vincennes. There is no record of his crime, but it seems certain that some of the young women who had been entertained in his forest retreat complained to the police about the cruel treatment they had received.

As a result of this escapade, the marquis was banned from Paris. He and his bride went to live with her mother in Normandy. This was at a chateau far from any town and the marquis' mother-in-law, Madame de Montreuil, had dismissed all the young woman servants and replaced them with old and unattractive women. The indifferent husband was forced to be attentive to his wife.

The only incidents of interest to the marquis were occasional plays which were given at the chateau and invitations to attend festivals given in nearby estates.

After a year in Normandy, the marquis was able to convince the king that he was a changed man and was allowed to return to Paris. He became much more discreet about his activities, and, instead of having wild parties, he limited himself to entertaining young actresses and dancers from the Opera.

At Easter time, in 1768, de Sade met a woman named Rose Keller who was begging in the street. He took her to his little house in the suburbs and after forcing her to undress, beat her with a whip. The woman escaped from his house and went to complain to the police. She made up a fantastic story in which she claimed that Sade had beat her, cut her, and threatened several times to kill her and bury her in the garden, and had poured hot sealing wax on her bruises and cuts. Her story was believed, but Madame de Montreuil paid the woman, and she withdrew her charges.

The marquis was obliged to leave Paris again. He spent most of the next three years in Normandy and then took his family, which now consisted of his wife and three children, to his chateau of La Coste in southern France. Soon his sister-in-law came to live with them, and it seems fairly certain that the amorous advances of the marquis were successful.

In June 1772, another great scandal occurred in the life of the marquis. He and his valet went to Marseilles, some miles to the south of his chateau, and a party was arranged in which he gave several women some drugged candy. He also beat the women and had them beat him. Other perversions made the party even more lively.

The marquis and his valet were condemned to death and had to flee to Italy. The marquis persuaded his sister-in-law to go along with them.

After a few months, Sade brought her back to France and went to Savoy. Madame de Montreuil was furious at the way the marquis had treated her two daughters, and she used her influence to have him imprisoned in Savoy. After about five months, a daring escape was planned and executed by Madame de Sade, and the two of them fled to Italy.

In spite of the sentence hanging over his head, the marquis soon returned to his chateau where he was to lead a hunted existence for several years. On several occasions armed posses penetrated into the confines of the chateau at night to try to arrest him, but he was either out of town, or had been warned of their coming.

In the year 1774-1775, Sade, tiring of this continual state of worry, decided to have a little entertainment at the chateau. Madame de Sade was in Paris and the marquis engaged young women to be his servants. In the resulting orgies, several of the girls were badly injured by his sadistic attacks and had to be sent off to relatives and hospitals for treatment. This time, Madame de Montreuil was able to keep the matter quiet by the use of large sums of money.

Madame de Montreuil, by now, had become convinced that her son-in-law must be put behind bars for his own good. Finally, in 1777, she was successful and at the same time arranged for a retrial of the Marseilles scandal. This took place in the summer of 1778, and the marquis was declared innocent. However, instead of being freed, he was sent back to prison. It was decided that it was better to keep him out of circulation.

The Marquis de Sade was to stay in prison until 1790. During these years he spent most of his time studying and writing, and it is probably due to this imprisonment that he started a career which has provided the literary world with some of the most amazing books ever written.

It was during this period that he wrote a book called 120 Days of Sodom. This book was almost certainly the first complete study of sexual behavior. It was written a hundred years before the Psychopathia Sexualis by Krafft-Ebing, which is considered to be the first serious study of sex. Although Krafft-Ebing did not know the 120 Days of Sodom, he used some of the other books by the marquis in preparing his monumental study.

The Marquis de Sade was very busy writing, but he was also interested in getting out of the Bastille where he had been a prisoner for a long time. He knew all of Paris was in an uproar, and on July 2, 1789, he noticed a group of people in the street near the prison. He grabbed a large pipe and, using it as a megaphone, he shouted to the crowd that the prisoners were being mistreated and were being slain. He begged the people to storm the Bastille and to release the unfortunate wretches who were there. Twelve days later the Bastille was taken, but Sade, who had caused the attack, did not benefit from it since he had already been transferred to another prison where he was to remain until April of the following year.

The marquis lost most of his manuscripts at the fall of the Bastille, but this did not discourage him. Once out of prison, he started writing again, and in 1791 he published his first important novel, which was called Justine or the Misfortunes of Virtue. This book was the story of a young woman who tried to remain pure in spite of all the attacks on her virtue. She also tried to remain a good Christian, but was unsuccessful. At the end of the book she was killed by a bolt of lightning, a circumstance which would seem to show the disapproval of God for her conduct. This book, which went through many editions, was later followed by Juliette or the Benefits of Vice in which the marquis attempted to show that a life of vice was destined to be much happier than a life of virtue. Juliette, who was as immoral and vicious as Justine had been moral and kind, was entirely happy and all the blessings of life came her way.

These two companion novels have done much to establish Sade as an original thinker and an unusual writer. Through most of the nineteenth century many of the great French writ read these books avidly and did not hesitate to use some of the ideas of the Marquis de Sade in their writings.

In the early revolutionary years, the marquis took an active part in the more radical groups. Paris was divided into sections, and Sade soon became the leader of the Section des Piques. It was he who made most of the speeches and he was usually the representative of his section in the general meetings. It was while he was president of his section that his mother-in-law was brought before him and accused of helping the forces of the nobles. Here was the chance the marquis had been waiting for; it was his chance to get even with the woman who had been responsible for keeping him in prison for so many years. He got his revenge by allowing her to go free! If he had said a word against her, she would have been guillotined.

The marquis continued to serve in his section until the Reign of Terror. At that time the members of his group became so sadistic, that Sade was appalled and did his best to try to get them to be more lenient towards the nobles. As a result, he was not only forced to resign as president of the section, but was sent to prison where he expected to be guillotined at any moment.

After nearly a year, the Reign of Terror suddenly ended and the marquis was released. He started writing again and published Aline and Valcour, a long and tedious novel which contained the plots of three novels. It was popular, however, and he was always proud of this literary production.

In 1795 appeared the book which some have called his most significant contribution to eighteenth century thinking. It was called Philosophy in the Boudoir. Here all the fantastic ideas of the marquis were presented in a more condensed form. Just a few of them will suffice to give an idea of this daring book.

"There is no act which is really criminal. Everything depends on where and when we live. What was a crime in a certain place a hundred years ago might be a virtue somewhere else today."

"Children should love their parents only if they act in such a way as to merit love; a child owes nothing to his parents."

"The destiny of a woman is to be like the she-wolf; she should belong to any man who wants her."

"Adultery in marriage is not only right, but natural."

"Theft represents energy, courage, force and skill. Would it not be better to punish the man who was negligent enough to let himself be robbed?"

"Murder is natural and should not be punished by the state. A murderer should have to watch out for the friends and relatives of the victim."

Naturally we cannot accept the absurd ideas expressed above; most of them were written to shock the reader. But in the Philosophy in the Boudoir the Marquis de Sade applied his fertile mind to other problems which he solved in a fashion which gives him a place among the great thinkers of his time. He expressed, before Malthus, the theories on population which still appear to apply. Before Darwin was born he had worked out all the theories of the natural man. Perhaps his most astounding discovery was that there is some element in the body (hormones) which, when disturbed, causes perversion. He recommended that people not be punished for perversion unless physical violence were perpetrated.

In spite of the success of his books, Sade did not make any money from them. He almost starved at one time, and had to take a job as an usher in a theatre where one of his plays was shown.

In 1800, the marquis heard some stories about Josephine, wife of Napoleon. Without investigating these stories, he wrote a little book, hardly more than a pamphlet, called Zoloé and her Two Acolytes. This book treated Josephine as though she were a character in Juliette, and was so insulting that Napoleon swore to get his revenge if he ever found the author. After a few months, the secret police of Bonaparte arrested Sade. He was declared insane, and, in 1801, was sent to an asylum. In spite of the fact that his mind was extremely good, he was never able to establish his sanity.

During the last thirteen years of his life, spent in three asylums, Sade was very much interested in the production of plays. He had the theory that getting the insane interested in plays might help them to recover. These plays became very popu in Paris, and the highest society was always present when the "crazy people" gave a show.

During this time, the marquis was still writing. He wrote a long novel something like Justine and Juliette, but the manuscript was destroyed by his son. He also wrote two historical novels Isabelle of Bavaria, (published in 1952) and Adelaide of Brunswick, which has remained unpublished even in France until this edition appears.

The Marquis de Sade died in December, 1814, and was buried in the graveyard of the insane asylum.

If Sade had lived in modern times, he might have been as famous as André Gide, the Nobel Prize winner, or Oscar Wilde, the great English writer, who have both been as outspoken on the subject of perversion in our time as the marquis was in the eighteenth century. Or, perhaps he might have been another Krafft-Ebing, Havelock Ellis or Kinsey if his fertile mind had been guided towards the more scientific aspects of the question. Instead, he was a hunted man, a pariah, who had to flee into exile on various occasions and who paid very dearly for his unfortunate tastes by spending twenty-eight years of his life behind bars.

Chapter One

CHAPTER ONE

A little after the middle of the eleventh century, the period of the story we are going to tell, Germany offered to the universe the picture of a stormy sea, the waves of which threatened to engulf the rest of Europe. There was weakness on the throne of the German Empire, and there was rivalry in Rome. Any decree by one of these powers was immediately opposed by the other.

Living was difficult in those times either through the struggle of the people for existence, or through the disorders of the nobles who left in peace neither the travelers, who were attacked with impunity on the highways, nor those who cultivated the land bordering these dangerous highways. There were battles, armed robbery, unfair taxation, revolting customs, unjust laws; commerce, which would have promoted the general welfare, was paralyzed; and public safety, which is necessary for the happiness and advancement of man, was destroyed.

Emperor Henry IV (1050-1106) still in his adolescence, had just enough military strength to keep himself on his tottering throne; but the opposition which armed force subjugated on one side was revived by political parties on the other.

One of the thorns in the side of Henry IV was a people called Brunswickians who were courageous and unconquerable. They had defeated the Roman general Varus some ten centuries before, and at one time their possessions extended from the banks of the Weser and Elbe to Moravia and from the Rhine to the Baltic Sea. They still burned with the audacious zeal with which they had been inspired by Wittekind, under whose leadership they had resisted Charlemagne for decades until they were finally conquered by trickery. During the course of their wanderings, they devastated some of the provinces of England and took their name of Brunswick from this deed. They were idol worshipers by choice, but had become Christians somewhat against their wishes. These people were so independent that the yoke of the new emperor did not sit easily upon their proud shoulders.

It was this proud race which gave to neighboring Saxony the princess whose story we are going to tell.

A fresh and light wind, precursor of a beautiful dawn, stirred softly among the high branches of the old oaks of the thick forest which shadows the castle of Fredericksburg near Dresden. This castle was the favorite abode of the princes who governed Saxony, and it was here that Frederick, the ruler of that beautiful country in Germany, was waiting patiently. The song of the nightingale, mingled with the murmurs of <he waters of a nearby river, and with the sound of the leaves stirred by the wind, composed a majestic symphony in the early hour before sunrise. The delightful perfume of the flowers which bloom at that season added to the enchantment which prepared the soul to enjoy the beautiful spectacle offered by the Eternal.

The watchmen placed on the tops of the towers of the chateau had scarcely called out four o'clock when couriers were heard blowing their horns in the forest, a warning that illustrious persons were approaching the castle.

The members of the guard were aroused, the drawbridge was lowered, and a party was sent to meet the approaching guests. Pages hastened to the room of the prince to announce to him that the carriage containing Adelaide of Brunswick, daughter of the Duke of that name, and the Marquis Louis of Thuringia were approaching. Louis of Thuringia, having just married this princess by proxy for Frederick, his relative and master, was bringing her to her legitimate husband.

Frederick got up quickly and went to receive at the foot of the great stairway the most beautiful princess in all Germany.

"Milady," said Frederick, embracing the one who was going to share his fate, "the rumors of your beauty have circulated in all of Saxony; but I see that the tales they have dared tell about your beauty are far beneath the reality. However illustrious my throne may be, it was on that of the Universe that you should have taken your place, and if I regret that my throne is not so great as it might be, it is because I find it impossible to place at your feet all the honors due to you."

"Sire," answered the princess, "The Duke of Brunswick, my father, has promised me happiness with you; I see it written in your eyes."

Frederick bowed. He embraced Louis of Thuringia, his ambassador, then answered the reverences of the ladies of honor and the whole group went upstairs to be shown their apartments.

While the gentlemen and ladies were being taken to their apartments by the people of the household, the princess was conducted to hers by her august husband.

As most of the traveling had been done during the night, everybody rested until noon when a luncheon was served in magnificently ornamented rooms. The illustrious newly wed couple, Louis of Thuringia, and a few others were admitted to this honor.

Adelaide had just passed her twenty-third year when she left her father's home to be united to the Prince of Saxony, who, older than she by twelve years, had the disadvantage of being somewhat ugly and at the same time weak and jealous by nature, which did not augur too well for the success of their marriage; but these faults were those of his century. While women usually see jealousy as a fault which they pardon in the ones they love, Adelaide was not the type of person who could be anything but displeased with such an emotion.

Louis of Thuringia, a relative of Frederick, who had just brought to his cousin the wife he would willingly have picked for himself, was twenty-seven years old. He had the most pleasant face imaginable. He had both ease and nobility in his carriage, pleasing qualities in his mind, sweetness in his character, an ardent heart, an extreme penchant for love and all things of the heart.

As soon as the luncheon was over, it was decided to go into the forest which was especially beautiful at this time of the year. The ladies went in carriages and the men went on horseback, galloping along beside them. This first day was only one of exploration and the whole afternoon was spent in the pleasant clearings of the forest where the sweet air and the perfume of the flowers reminded one that this was the season of love.

The next day Frederick, having asked the princess the time which she had selected for the wedding day, the latter replied that she would leave to her august husband the choice of the day, which she said would be the most beautiful in her life. Frederick immediately began to plan the convocation of the court and the tournament which must accompany the ceremony. These exercises, at the same time military and chivalrous, were not yet, in that century, known under the name of tournaments; they were called jousting. Their origin was old and went back to the time of Theodoric (454?-526) who used them in order to be able to select the best men to replace the gladiators who had been banned by him. These games then spread to Verona and Venice and from there to other nations. In 870 the children of Louis I (Le Débonnaire) of France were brought together by these games and in 920, Henri I of Saxony, to celebrate his coronation, gave a festivity in which soldiers fought on horseback. In 1559 King Henri II of France was killed in a tournament. He was wounded in the eye with a blow of a lance, and jousting was abolished in France from that time on. Such was the type of entertainment, so agreeable and rare at that time, which the Prince of Saxony wished to give his bride.

With this in mind, all the knights of Saxony were invited to this event and they all came, not with the brilliance which was displayed in later centuries, but at least with all the pomp which their circumstances and fortunes permitted. There were no escutcheons on which heraldic emblems were emblazoned, since these decorations did not come until after the Crusades. But the jousting took place on horseback and afterwards the fighters came to pay homage to the ladies who were watching the event from stands built around the esplanade of the chateau.

Adelaide, placed on the balcony which overlooked the esplanade, had already seen the Prince, her husband, win twice when an unknown knight advanced and asked for the honor of measuring lances with the Prince. In order to provoke the prince, he said that the lady for whom Frederick fought was far from being the most beautiful in the stands, and that this superiority could only belong to a foreign lady as unknown as he, and whom he pointed out. Frederick responded in a suitable way to such a challenge, and the unknown knight was immediately knocked off his horse, and, submissive to the orders of his vanquisher, went to pay his respects to Adelaide who ordered him to tell his name and take his place beside her.

"Milady," said the knight, "I am the Count of Mersburg, and my estates are next to those of your august husband, and I am his vassal. Invited by the Prince, two powerful motives have made me accept the invitation which he was kind enough to give me; that of paying my respects to my sovereign and that of coming to admire in Your Highness the highest perfection that Germany has produced."

"And why did you say, Count, that another woman was more beautiful than I?"

"I see now that all competition was impossible," answered the Count. "If you will look over toward the young woman I had in mind, you will see that she has taken off her veil and that she is young and handsome, but is as far from having the gifts which nature has bestowed on you as the stars of the night are from having the brilliancy of the sun."

"But why did you fight?"

"In order to lose, Milady, and to merit in that way the honor of falling at your feet."

At this moment Louis of Thuringia and Frederick came up to the princess, and the conversation became general.

By nightfall the jousting was over, and dances and festivities of all types followed. For two weeks the amusements continued, and the Count of Mersburg, invited by his sovereign, was present at all the parties which preceded the marriage.

The Count of Mersburg was a handsome man of thirty. He was a learned man at a time when very few people knew how to read. He was intelligent enough, however, to keep his learning a secret in most gatherings because it was not considered a very important attribute. The count was a frequent visitor to the courts of Germany, and he was a past master at intrigue, which was dangerous, but which gave him a kind of intellectual pleasure.

Mersburg soon became the favorite in the court of Frederick. In a short time he was the friend of Louis of Thuringia and the confidant of the princess. It did not take him long to discover that the marriage of Adelaide, formed through politics and self-interest, had not been based on love, and since no person has control over this sentiment, the feelings of our heroine were much more inclined toward Louis of Thuringia than in the direction they were supposed to go legitimately. This observation was sufficient for Mersburg. He decided to fix himself firmly in court so as to be able to calm the uneasy jealousies of Frederick which he had already noticed, and at the same time to promote the love between Adelaide and Louis of Thuringia. Even if there were nothing in this for him except the pleasure of hurting or helping, it was enough to flatter a mind as depraved as his.

"My dear marquis," he said to Thuringia after several months at Fredericksburg, "it is useless to disguise from me the feelings you have for Adelaide. Even if your discretion causes you never to mention this fact, your eyes reveal the true state of your feelings. I have observed such things enough to recognize all the symptoms."

"Suppose your suspicions were true," responded the marquis, "would you blame me very much?"

"Certainly not, my dear Louis. I know no better excuse for the wrongs of which you accuse yourself than the divine charms of the woman you love. The only obstacles to your love are the shackles which bind her to your cousin."

"And that is what causes me to despair. Could I ever overcome difficulties of that type? You know my character well enough to know that I would never do anything which could give me happiness at the expense of the honor of my lord and master. I have been honored by his confidence and by the high position he has given me in his court, and I am devoted to him for life. I could never pay him with ingratitude for all he has done for me. But why did he send me to fulfill for him the formalities of marriage which custom requires among sovereigns? Why did he give me the painful duty of considering for a while as my wife this beautiful woman, and yet be prevented by duty from taking her as my wife? Did he think I was without feeling, that I could help falling in love with so much beauty?"

"Certainly," interrupted the Count von Mersburg, "any misfortune which comes from this imprudence on his part should fall on him alone and you should be excused for any feelings which his acts have brought."

"No matter how much he is to blame, nothing will make me break the law of honor. That law is engraved in the soul of any true Saxon and he would never break it. Our ancestors defied Charlemagne when he wanted us to break that law, and as you know, we preferred his daggers to his promises. Besides, even loving Adelaide, I would never do anything to make her seem untrue in the eyes of her husband. Any weakening of her vows towards her husband would make me esteem her less and as you know, my dear count, esteem is the first element of love. One does not pardon the faults that a woman commits even when she commits them through love. Love which is not based on esteem is no more than a form of delirium of the senses which leads us astray. True happiness cannot come from such delirium."

"There are some sentiments which are worthy of a noble knight, but it would not be hard to show you that these are false. If your Adelaide loves you, is it not clear that by not answering this love you would make her unhappy? And by yielding to the love, you will say that you make the husband unhappy. I ask you, since it is necessary to make one person unhappy, why would you prefer the happiness of the husband rather than that of the wife? One has served you, I know; but the other adores you, perhaps, in silence. It is a question here of sacrificing either the cold feeling of gratitude or the burning sentiment of love. I wonder what heart could even hesitate in choosing?"