Jacques Molay
6th May 2013
One should not dismiss or underestimate the importance of Sade’s writing. The
little of his work that survives was written in a ten year span centred on the
storming of the Bastille, and contains many descriptions of the personalities of
the day, together with many shrewd observations which, taken together, suggest
a coherent political programme. As far as can be ascertained the descriptions
of the personalities are perfectly accurate.
One must also guard against supposing that Sade advocated the views which
he puts into his characters’ mouths; perhaps a careful reading of footnotes 2
and 3 provide a sufficient prophylactic. The same footnotes should also help
explain why Sade spent three quarters of his life in gaol. Had he been no more
than a pornographer there would have been no reason for both Napoleon and
the English Prime Minister to take an interest in him.
Nor should one be put off by his obsessive exploration of the sexual vagaries
of the human mind. Today we have too much sex instead of too little. The
monsters who rule us use sex as a tool to corrupt our children and manipulate
us, so it is natural to be repulsed by Sade’s catalogues of depravity. But it
may be observed that one is repulsed precisely because the catalogues contain
accurate representations of depravity. In the following excerpt I have removed
as many of the sexual descriptions as possible.
At the time I was in Sweden, the capital, and the whole kingdom as
well, was being shaken by the rivalry of two powerful parties: one,
discontented with the Court, was straining for the day when it would
seize power; the other, that of Gustavus III, seemed determined to
stop at nothing in order to keep despotism enthroned; the Court
and everything connected therewith made up this second faction.
The first was composed of the Senate and of certain portions of
the military. A new monarch had just begun his reign, and the
malcontents felt this the propitious moment to swing into action:
a dawning authority is more easily confronted than an entrenched
one; the senators were aware of it and were planning to go to any
lengths to secure the rights they had been striving for years to usurp;
1
they exercised their constitutional prerogatives to the limit and even
beyond, daring to open letters to the King in their public assemblies,
and to answer or interpret them as they chose; little by little, the
power of these magistrates had grown to the point where Gustavus
could scarcely appoint men to office in his own realm.
This is a very fair description of the state of affairs at the beginning of Gustav’s
reign.
Such was the state of affairs in the country when I paid a call upon
Senator Steno, the guiding spirit of the senatorial party. The young
magistrate and his wife received me with demonstrations of the most
agreeable politeness and, I dare add, of the liveliest interest. I was
scolded for not having brought my wife the very first day; and ’twas
only by accepting an invitation to dinner for the following day, at
which both of us would be expected, that I succeeded in quieting
young Steno’s reproaches.
Emma, who passed for my spouse and who combined all the features
in which good society delights, was received with extreme cordiality;
and the warmest friendship sprang up at once between that charming
creature and the Senator’s engaging wife.1
If the young Swede, twenty-seven years of age, could be rightly taken
for one of the most winning, wealthiest, wittiest persons of his generation,
one might without exaggeration declare that Ernestine, his
lady, was very surely the prettiest creature to be found in all Scandinavia.
Nineteen years, thecreature to be found in all Scandinavia.
Nineteen years, the loveliest blonde hair, the most majestic figure . . .
the prettiest brown eyes, the sweetest and most delicately formed
features, such were the endearing qualities wherewith Nature had
embellished this angelic woman who, in addition to all these physical
favors, possessed a fully adorned mind, the firmest character,
and the soundest philosophy.
At our fourth meeting Steno asked me to whom were addressed the
other letters of recommendation I had been given. I brought them
all forth, and when upon the superscriptions he read the names of
several courtiers, a frown darkened his face.
“Amiable Frenchman and distinguished guest,” said he, handing me
back my sheaf of papers, “we must forego the pleasure of seeing anyone
who comes bearing such credentials. Powerful interests divide
my house from these where you are to go. The sworn enemies of
the Court’s despotism, my colleagues, my friends, my relatives are
1The reader is herewith notified that the names of the participants in this celebrated
conjuration have all been disguised.
2
not on speaking terms with those who serve or benefit from this
despotism.”
“Ah, Monsieur,” said I, “your attitude conforms too closely to mine
for me not, this very minute, to make the slight sacrifice of everything
that would appear likely to bind me to the party of your opponents;
I abhor kings and their tyranny. Is it even presumable that into
such hands as this royal personage’s Nature can have entrusted the
task of governing men? The ease with which a single individual may
be seduced, deceived, does this not suffice to spoil any intelligent
man’s taste for monarchy? Make haste, brave senators, restore to
the Swedish people theliberty Gustavus seeks to wrest away from
them, as his ancestors did before; may the efforts your young prince
is now undertaking to increase his authority come to the same failure
as those lately attempted by Adolphus. But, good my Lord,” I
continued heatedly, “lest in future any doubt remain in your mind
as to the sincerity of the promise I make you to embrace your party
and uphold it for the rest of my sojourn upon Swedish soil, here are
the letters I was to carry to Gustavus’ supporters and clients, here
they are, I say, let us, you and I, throw them into the grate, yes, all
of them, and allow me to leave up to you the choice of friends with
whom I am to consort while in your city.”
Steno clasps my hand, and his young wife, witness to this conversation,
is unable to prevent herself from showing how greatly flattered
she is to have attracted to her party so essential a man as I.
“Borchamps,” Steno said, “after this declaration, which so plainly
comes from the heart, I can have no doubt of your way of thinking.
Are you indeed capable of adopting our interests as your own, of
binding yourself to us by all the ties which identify friends and sinew
a conspiracy?”
“Senator,” I replied with vehemence, “before you now and upon my
life I do hereby swear to stand fast in the fight until the last of the
tyrants shall be wiped off the face of the earth, if the weapon for
their destruction is put into my hand by you.”
And I thereupon recounted my experience with the Princess of Holland,
fit proof to demonstrate my abhorrence of tyranny and of those
who wield it.
“My friend,” the Senator said to me, “is your wife’s attitude in this
the same as yours?”
“To that question the answer is unambiguous: they were for reasons
similar to mine that she left a Sophia who lavished favors upon her.”
“Very well then,” said Steno, “my comrades sup tomorrow night at
my house, join us, both of you, and you will discover certain startling
things.”
3
I related this interview to Emma.
“Before entangling us in this, my friend, consider well where it may
lead; and I would ask you not to forget that when you refused to serve
Sophia’s cause, you were acting a great deal less, as it appears to
me, from partisan spirit than through aversion for political affairs.”
“No,” I rejoined, “you err; I have since given the matter very close
thought, and realized that it was uniquely my lifelong horror of the
despotism’ of a single person which drove me to turn my back upon
the Stadtholder’s wife; had her aims been different, I might perhaps
have agreed to everything. . . . ”
“But see here, Borchamps,” Emma protested, “your principles seem
to me without rhyme or reason: you are a tyrant yourself, and you
detest tyranny; despotism breathes in your tastes, in your heart,
permeates your soul, and you assail its tenets; explain me these
contradictions or cease to count upon me to follow you.”
“Emma,” said I to my companion, “penetration will here suffice;
listen to what I am going to tell you, and remember itsuffice; listen
to what I am going to tell you, and remember it well. If the Senate
is ready to rise in arms against Sweden’s sovereign, it is not from
horror of tyranny but from envy at seeing despotism exercised by
another than itself; once it has got the power into its hands you will
see a sudden transformation wrought in its attitude, and they who
hate despotism today will use it to perfect their happiness tomorrow.
In accepting Steno’s proposal, I play the same role as he and, like
him, I am eager not to shatter the scepter, but to wield it to my
advantage. And I tell you this which you may also remember: I
shall part company with this society the instant I notice it animated
by any other principles or tending in any other direction; and so,
Emma, of contradictions you need accuse me no more, nor those
whom you see combating tyranny by despotism only: the throne is
to everybody’s taste, and ’tis not the throne they detest, but him who
is seated on it. I sense in myself certain dispositions to take a hand
in worldly affairs; to succeed therein one needs neither prejudices nor
virtues; a brazen front, a corrupted soul, an unflinching character,
all these I have; fortune beckons to me, I heed the call. Put on fine
array tomorrow, Emma, be proud, clever, and sluttish, those, I gage,
are the qualities that will be necessary in Steno’s house, they are the
ones which will please my confederates, show them, you have them;
and there is this last: tremble at nothing.”
We are there at the appointed hour and having been admitted at the
gate overhear a lackey say to the porter: “These are the last who’ll
be coming; let nobody else in.”
Beside this vast palace was a garden, and the society was gathered
in a pavilion located at its farther end; tall trees shrouded this spot
4
which one might have taken for a temple raised to the god of silence.
A servant points the way without escorting us thither; we follow the
path, enter the pavilion.
The assembly, apart from ourselves, numbered eight persons. Steno
and his wife, with whom I have already acquainted you, rose to greet
us and present us to the others I shall now describe. They were three
senators and their three wives. The eldest of the men must have
been fifty, his name was Ericsson: he had an air of stateliness and
majesty, but there was something hard in his glance and cutting in
his speech. His wife was named Fredegunda, she was thirty-five, had
more beauty than graciousness, features bordering on the masculine,
but proud; what, in a word, they call a handsome woman. The
second senator was forty years of age and called Volf: here were
prodigious vivacity, very considerable wit, but a wickedness apparent
in every line and detail. Amelia, his wife, was scarce twenty-three;
’twas there the most piquant face, the most agreeable figure, the
sweetest mouth, the most roguish eye, the fairest skin in all the
world; one cannot be all this and at the same time have a mind more
lively and an imagination more ardent; nor be more libertine, nor
more delicious. I was struck by Amelia, I do not pretend otherwise.
The third senator was named Brahe, he was surely less than thirty
years old, slender, spare, crafty of eye, alert, quick, unsettled of
gesture, and looked to be all his confreres’ better in rigor, cynicism,
and ferocity. Ulrika, his wife,was one of the most beautiful women in
Stockholm, but simultaneously the most mischievous and the most
vicious, the most attached to the Senatorial Party, and the most
capable of leading it to victory; she was two years younger than her
husband.
“Friends,” said Steno once the doors were bolted and the shutters
drawn, “had I not thought this French gentleman and his lady worthy
of us they would not be present in our midst; I therefore urgently
request you to admit them into our Society.”
“Sir,” said Brahe, addressing himself to me in a tone at once forceful
and dignified, “what Steno tells us about you is encouraging and inspires
confidence; this confidence however will be better established
by the answers you give in public to the various questions that are
now going to be put to you.”
He then asked: “What are your motives for hating the despotism of
kings?”
To this I replied: “Envy, jealousy, ambition, pride, rage at being
dominated, my own desire to tyrannize others.”2
He: “Does the welfare and happiness of nations enter as a consideration
into your views?”
2Say, O genius of the Stockholm revolution, were you perhaps schooled in Paris?
5
I: “I am concerned solely for mine own.”
He: “And what role do the passions play in your manner of regarding
all things political?”
I: “The leading and most vital one; according to my belief, every one
of those individuals known as statesmen pursues now, and has always
pursued, no other veritable objective, is now and has always been
moved by no other veritable intention than to satisfy his voluptuous
inclinations to the full; his plans, the alliances he forms, his schemes,
his taxes, everything, his laws included, everything is bent toward
his personal felicity, for the public’s well-being there can be no room
in his meditations, and what the dizzard people see him do is never
done save to render him mightier or richer.”
He: “So that if you were mighty or rich you would turn these two
advantages nowhere but to those of your pleasures or your follies?”
I: “They are the only gods I recognize, the only delights of my soul.”
He: “And religion, how do you visualize it in regard to all this?”
I: “As the mainstay of tyranny, that mechanism which the despot
must always set in motion when he wishes to strengthen his throne.
The flame of superstition was ever the aurora of despotism, and it
is always by means of consecrated irons that the tyrant breaks the
people to his will.”
He: “And so you exhort us to the use of religion?”
I: “Certainly, if you are of a mind to reign, let a God speak in your
behalf and men will obey you. When, God’s wrath in your hire or
your hands, you have brought them to their knees, their money and
their lives are as good as yours. Persuade them that all the woes
they have suffered under the regime you wish them to repudiate have
come from nought but their irreligion. Cause them to tumble at the
feet of the hobgoblin you brandish beforethem; prostrate, they will
serve as steppingstones to your ambition, your pride, your lust.”
He: “You yourself do not believe in God?”
I: “Is there a single rational being on earth who can credit such
lies? Nature, forever in movement, has she any need of a mover?
Would that the living body of the first charlatan to mouth talk of
this execrable chimera could be abandoned to the shades of all those
poor wretches who have perished on its account.”
He: “How do you consider the actions that are denominated criminal?”
I: “As Nature’s inspirations to which resistance is madness; as the
surest means a statesman can employ to accumulate the substance
of happiness and safeguard it; as essential to the workings of all
governments; as the sole laws of Nature.”
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He: “Have you committed crimes of every sort?”
I: “There is not one wherewith I am not stained, and which I am not
ready to stain myself with again.”
Here Brahe outlined the history of the Templars. After an energetic
commentary upon the death, both unjust and atrocious, to which
Philip the Fair put their last Grand Master, Molay, for the sole
purpose of laying hands upon the Order’s property:
“In us you see,” he said to me, “the leaders of that Northern Lodge
which Molay himself instituted even as he awaited his doom in a cell
of the Bastille. If we accept you into our midst it is only upon the
most express condition that, upon the victim about to be presented
to you, you swear to avenge our great founder, and at the same time
to fulfill the clauses of the oath here setforth. Recite it aloud and
intelligibly.”
“I do hereby swear” said I, reading from the vellum, “to exterminate
all kings till none remain alive on earth; to wage incessant war
against the Catholic religion and the Papacy; to preach liberty for all
the world’s peoples; and to strive to build a universal republic.”
An awful clap of thunder dinned deafeningly; the pavilion rattled
upon its foundations; the victim rose up through a trap in the floor,
in his two hands lay the poniard with which I was to smite him; he
was a fair youth of sixteen years, entirely nude. I take the profferred
weapon, I drive the blade into his heart. Brahe comes up with a
golden chalice, gathers the blood, has me drink first thereof, presents
the goblet to the others one by one, and each drinks, pronouncing
a barbarous phrase whose meaning is this: We shall die rather than
break faith with one another. The platform descends, the cadaver
disappears, and Brahe resumes his interrogation.
“You have just now,” says he, “shown yourself worthy of us; you
have seen that we are of the same intrepid stuff we require in you,
and that our wives are likewise dauntless. Are you so careless of the
crime you have just committed as to be able to employ it even in
your pleasures?”
I: “It augments them, it electrifies them; I have always regarded murder
as the soul of libidinous delights; its effects upon the imagination
are enormous, and lubricity is as nought unless depravity of spirit
fuel its fire.”
He: “Do you admit of restrictions in the taking of physical pleasure?”
I: “I know not what they are.”
He: “All sexes, all ages, all conditions and sorts, all degrees of kinship,
all manners of enjoying these various individuals, all this, I say,
is then a matter of indifference to you?”
7
I: “I make no discriminations.” He: “But you do nonetheless have
preference for certain forms of enjoyment?”
I: “Yes, I am particularly disposed toward the stronger ones, those
which fools dare call antinatural, criminal, ridiculous, scandalous,
the unlawful, the illegal kind, the antisocial and ferocious ones: for
those I have a predilection, and they shall always be the delight of
my life.” “Brother,” said Brahe, “take your place amongst us, you
are received into the Society.” And when I had sat down, “In asking
now,” Brahe went on, “whether your wife’s attitudes and principles
correspond to your own, we refer ourselves only to you.”
“They do. I swear to it in her behalf,” I replied.
“Then heed what I am about to tell you,” the Senator began.
“The Northern Lodge, whose chiefs we are, has a considerable following
in Stockholm; but the rank and file Masons know nothing
of our behavior, our secrets, our customs, they trust our leadership
and obey our instructions. I have therefore to speak to you upon
but two matters, Brother: our morals and our intentions.
“These intentions are to overthrow the Swedish throne as well as
every other throne, everywhere, and principally those occupied by
the Bourbons. But our Brothers in various parts of the world will
attend to that; our task is here in our own country. Once upon the
throne of the kings, there shall never have been a tyranny to equal
ours, no despot shall ever have put a thicker blindfold over the eyes
of the people; plunged into essential ignorance, it shall be at our
mercy, blood will flow in rivers, our Masonic Brethren themselves
shall become the mere valets of our cruelties, and in us alone shall
the supreme power be concentrated; all freedom shall go by the
board, that of the press, that of worship, that simply of thought shall
be severely forbidden and ruthlessly repressed; one must beware of
enlightening the people or of lifting away its irons when your aim is
to rule it.
“You, Borchamps, shall not be permitted to share in this authority,
your foreign origins exclude you therefrom; but you shall be
entrusted with the command of the armies and above all the robber
bands which, very early in the day, shall spread murder and rapine
across the length and breadth of Sweden to consolidate our hold
upon the countryside. When the time comes, will you swear faithful
allegiance to us?”
“I swear it in advance.”
“We may then turn to the question of our morals.
“Their depravity, Brother, is appalling; the foremost of the moral
pledges which bind us, after those political ones I have just indicated,
is mutually to prostitute our wives, our sisters, our mothers and our
8
children one to the other; to enjoy all those persons, pell-mell, in the
presence of one another and, preferably, in the manner that God, as
they say, punished at Sodom. Victims of both sexes serve in our
orgies, and ’tis upon them falls the brunt of our desires’ irregularity.
Is your wife of your own mind touching these immoralities, and as
determined as you in their execution?”
“Be certain of it!” said Emma.
“That however is not all,” Brahe continued, “the most frightful disorders
entertain us, there is no excess before which we hesitate. With
us, atrocity is often carried to the point of stealing, of murdering
in the street, of poisoning wells, streams, of perpetrating arson, of
occasioning famines, of blighting livestock, and of sowing epidemics
among men, less perhaps for the sake of our amusement than to
weary the population of the present government and to cause it ardently
to yearn for the revolution we are preparing. Do these actions
revolt you or are you able to participate in the Society’s program
without remorse?”
“The sentiment you refer to there has always been a stranger to my
heart: the entire universe come to bits in my hands would not cost
me a tear. . . . ”
Whereupon I receive the fraternal accolade from the entire assembly.
* * *
“We shall all undress,” said Brahe who presided over the meeting,
“we shall then move on into the adjoining room.”
Ten minutes later we were ungarbed and ready, and we flocked into
a large chamber lined with Turkish couches, the floor strown with
cushions and large ottomans. The statue of Jacques Molay at the
stake adorned the center of the room.
“You see there,” said Brahe, “the effigy of him we must avenge; let
us, while awaiting that happy day, swim in the ocean of delights he
himself was preparing for his Brethren.”
* * *
As we were about to take our leave, Steno, in the name of the Society
expressing his joy at having us in its midst, asked me if I were by
any chance in need of a sum . . . ; I thought it wisest to say no, at
least for the moment. And for a week I heard nothing more from my
new friends. Then, on the morning of the eighth day, Steno came to
see me.
“We are going on a prowl tonight,” said he, “the women will not be
along; do you care to join us?”
9
“What have you in mind?”
“Some random crimes. We mean to do a little stealing, pillaging,
assassinating, burning. In a word, to commit some horrors; are you
with us?”
“Surely.”
“Meet us at eight o’clock at Brahe’s house in the suburbs; we leave
from there.”
A delicious supper was awaiting us, and twenty-five troopers, chosen
for superiority of member, were, in spending themselves in our asses,
to impart to us the energy necessary for the projected expedition.
We were fucked forty times apiece, which was more than I had ever
been before at a single tourney. These preliminaries left us all afire,
in such a state of agitation that we’d have taken a knife to the throat
of Almighty God himself had the bugger-fucker existed.
Escorted by ten of the stoutest champions in the band, there we
are roaming the streets like furies, blindly assaulting everybody in
our path: as one by one our victims were robbed and killed, their
bodies were tossed into the canals. If we stopped anything worth the
bother, we’d rape it first, murder it afterward. We broke our way into
several humble dwellings, which we devastated once we were done
terrorizing, mutilating, and finally butchering their inhabitants; we
permitted ourselves every imaginable and every nameless execration,
and left screams, flames, and blood in our wake. We found the patrol,
we attacked it, put it to flight; and ’twas only when we were glutted
on atrocities that we wended our way homeward as thesun rose to
shine upon the debris left by our scandalous orgies.
Needless to say, we had it printed in the press that such were the
frightful abuses the government was perpetrating, and that so long
as the royal regime prevailed over the Senate and the law, no fortune
would be in safety, no citizen would walk in peace abroad or breathe
in peace at home. The people believed what they read and sighed for
a revolution. Aye, so it is the poor fools are hoodwinked, so it is the
common population is at once made the pretext and the victim of
its leaders’ wickedness: always weak and always stupid, sometimes
it is made to want a king, sometimes a republic, and the prosperity
its agitators offer under the one system or the other is never but the
phantom created by their interests or by their passions.3
However, the hour was approaching, such was the desire for a change
that this was the sole subject of conversations. A more discerning
and an abler politician than my associates, at the very moment they
were convincing themselves that success was at hand, I saw that the
3See in La Fontaine, the ingenious fable The Frogs Who Seek a King. Unhappy inhabitants
of this globe, there’s the story of you, one and all.
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wind lay in the other direction; calmer than they, I sounded out
opinion, and from the immense quantity of people I found firmly
attached to the king and his royalists I drew the conclusion that
the senatorial revolution was destined to be stillborn. It was then
that, faithful to the principles of egoism and villainy to which I have
been devoted all my life, I resolved to change camp on the spot, and
inhumanly to betray the one into which I had been received. Of the
two it was the weaker, that was obvious; it was neither goodness
on the one side nor badness on the other that decided me, force
was the onlybadness on the other that decided me, force was the
only deciding factor, and it was only with force I wished to keep
company. I would have unfailingly stayed with the senators had I
believed their faction not the better (I knew perfectly well that it was
the more vicious), but the more powerful; the evidence convinced me
that it was not: I turned traitor. This, it will perhaps be said, was
infamous; so be it. But infamy meant little to me when my welfare
or safety lay in treason. Man is born to pursue his happiness on
earth, and for no other purpose; all the vain considerations opposed
thereto, all the prejudices which hinder him are better flouted than
heeded, for it is not the esteem of others that will render him happy;
he is happy only if he is so in his own opinion, and it will never be
from laboring toward his prosperity, whatever the road he chooses
for getting there, that he will be able to lose self-respect.
I request private audience with Gustavus; I obtain it; I reveal everything
to him, I name those who have sworn to dethrone him, I
give him my word not to leave Stockholm until he has investigated
the conspiracy I allege, and I ask no more than a million by way
of reward if my warnings prove founded and exact; eternal imprisonment
if false. The monarch’s vigilance, aided by my disclosures,
averts the catastrophe. On the day the insurrection was to break
out, Gustavus was up and in the saddle before dawn: he sent the
people home, isolated the plotters, won over the military, seized the
arsenal, and all that without shedding a drop of blood. This was not
at all what I had been counting upon; gloating in advance over the
terrible consequences I fancied my treachery would have, I too was
up with the sun andfancied my treachery would have, I too was up
with the sun and gone out to see all those heads fall: the imbecile
Gustavus spared them, every one. I was aghast. Oh, said I to myself,
how I regret having broken faith with those who at least would
have drenched this kingdom in blood. I have been deceived; they
accused this prince of being a despot, and look at the clumsy oaf!
he is meek as a lamb when I give him the means and the occasion
to fortify his tyranny! Bah, a plague upon the fellow!
“Ah, mark my words,” said I to all those who cared to listen to
me, and they were not many, “your prince is jeopardizing the future
11
instead of taking this precious opportunity to plant his scepter, as
he ought to do, upon a hill of corpses. Brief will be his reign, believe
me, and unhappy his end.”4
4He was murdered by Ankerström in 1789. [Sade errs here; the correct year is 1792.]
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