D.A.F., Marquis de SADE (1740-1814). L.A., [Vincennes around 28 March 1781], to his wife 3 pages in-4, address. On the preaching of Father Jean-Baptiste Massillon, and the persecution of which he is the victim. "Mondieu ma chere amie que j'aime les sermons du pere Masillon! They uplift me, they enchant me, they delight me. It is not a bigot who speaks to you and who, scaffolding truths everywhere that the impious deny, only knows how to fight him with blunt weapons, it is not a pedant wearied with sophisms who seeks to convince only by frightening the mind; it is to the heart that he directs his maxims, it is the heart that he seeks to seduce and it is the heart that he captivates, ceaselessly; [....] what purity! what morality! and what a happy blend of strength and simplicity! at times his rapid eloquence is like a torrent which sweeps away all the defilements of the soul, the next moment his tender compassion, as if frightened by the upheaval it has just produced, no longer flows over the wound but a calm and gentle beauty which subdues both heart and mind. How is it possible, great God, that Louis the Fourteenth had so many million of his subjects slaughtered in the Cevennes while Masillon was telling him Sire, kings are given to us by the Eternal to be the salvation of their people. Soulages le vous en seres le pere, et vous en seres doublement le maitre"... Sade then lashed out at the "executioner of his life", his mother-in-law Madame de Montreuil, who dared to take communion while she dishonoured herself every day in her revenge against him: "Horrible scourge of nature, dare you carry blasphemy so far? Dare you see in the divinity nothing but a tyrant? And will you blind yourself to the point of believing that you are imitating its justice when you are only following the infernal impressions of the enemy being that it requires to punish those who resemble you? Fremis! God tires of mortal crimes in the end, and the thunderbolt is already upon your head". He then lists the "satellittes" that the President of Montreuil has bribed against him and the disastrous fate that has befallen them. They include Chancellor Maupeou, "dishonoured in the eyes of the world, and very happy to have saved his head"; the Duc de La Vrillière; the Langeac; M. de Mende, prosecutor in Marseilles "today without fire or place"; the commander of the castle of Savoy "chased out of his place"; the teller "hung"; "the one who took me dead or chased out of his place": "the man who did my business in Provence and whom she paid to have me taken: disgraced in the province, regarded as a frippon"... Etc. Correspondence (Lély), CXXI.