The Marquis de Sade protests against being placed on the list of émigrés.

Donatien Alphonse François de Sade (1740-1814). Marquis de Sade.

Autographed letter signed to an official.

Two pages, small quarto. (Paris), this 12th of March 1793, year 2 of the Republic.

"Not a citizen, I am not and never will be an immigrant."

Superb letter from the Protestant Marquis against his inclusion on the list of émigrés.

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“ Citizen, if I may say so, it is rather hasty to publish and post a man’s name on lists of emigrants simply because this man, despite himself, is delaying his residency certificate by a few days. No, citizen, I am not and never will be an emigrant . I have proven this to you by the diligence I have shown in sending you the certificates required by law every three months. This particular submission was delayed by two reasons entirely beyond my control: first, the new forms have only been available for eight days; second, when they were first published, it was declared useless, and new ones were being produced requiring only three witnesses. I myself, despite the emigration in which you are kind enough to understand me, have been appointed by my Section to oversee the processing of these new certificates ; Finally, mine are signed, but both the exhibition and the completion of the Commune's signatures will take a month. Therefore, it will be three weeks before I can send you these certificates. You can count on it by then without fail; if this delay, which is beyond my control, should force you to proceed despite your certainty that I am not an émigré, then I would ask you to inform me so that I may address myself to the Convention itself , requesting that it decide which of us is in the right. And full of confidence in your fairness, I have the honor to call myself, Citizen, with fraternal regards, your fellow citizen Sade.

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Due to an administrative error (perhaps deliberate), the Marquis de Sade was placed on the list of émigrés in the Bouches-du-Rhône department on December 13, 1792, and his property there was seized. This mark of infamy haunted him for a long time, and the so-called émigré was arrested a year later.