On this day in 1814 the Marquis de Sade died at the age of seventy-four. The last days of his twenty-seven years of confinement were spent pretty much routinely: he continued to be a public target and an object of private fascination for the authorities; he continued to write, composing not the notorious books and plays now but protest or social notes, or directives to his estate manager, or journal entries; and he continued to be in love, or thereabouts, with his latest and final inamorata, a seventeen-year-old laundress at the Charenton asylum. Not least amazing about the Marquis is that even at this late hour he could still worry over such relationships, and give them a romantic gloss: this journal entry wonders at the girl's "coldness," this one hopes that her vow to be only his is sincere, this one fears that she and her mother are just after the 3 francs per visit ... FULL STORY »
