5 ^th day of August 1784

My dear Monsieur Gandt,

As one who finds herself inconvenienced and possibly imperiled by the fever that has come to this fair island and whose close proximity with others who also are subject to the quarantine of the Magistrate, I have been made privy to matters normally unobserved and unrecorded. Specifically, I have had occasion to observe your actions and your demeanor these past days and am writing to address matters of grave importance based on what I have observed.

There is no time for either pretty words or gentle remonstrance. Sir, you are behaving very much like a man who would evade his responsibilities to the unborn consequence of past indiscretions. You are soon to have a child. I have no doubt of its paternity as I, too, witnessed your meeting with the childs mother. She is no conniving strumpet. She is undone. Her sole purpose in humbling herself at your feet, subjecting her soul to your scorn, is the love of a mother for the child she carries and her fear for that childs future.

The fever will claim the mother; of this I have no doubt. Will you also see your child die? Perhaps not of the fever, but what future will such a child face? To be grudgingly allowed sustenance and space in an orphanage run by Sisters for whom Charity is most often lacking? To be a bastard, forever denied a place in decent society?

Sir, I know whereof I speak. I am the natural child of two members of the French nobility. But my parents were not allowed to wed. My mother died giving me life. My father was told I had perished as well, and the grief perhaps contributed to a life of infamy that now keeps him a prisoner in the Bastille under the seal of a letter de cachet.

A bastard orphan I was given to the nuns. Save for the intervention of the Jesuit priest who attended my birth and has watched over me as god-father and protector, I would have suffered a fate that you, sir, cannot even imagine at the hands of women whose piety does not see God in the face of every child, no matter the circumstances surrounding its birth.

Is this the fate you wish for your child? A bold and impertinent question from a mere woman, but I will press you in this matter and make you an offer you would do well to consider.

If you acknowledge the child as your own and give it your name, I am prepared to accept all financial responsibility for the child until it is fully-grown and successfully launched in whatever capacity the child chooses according to his or her natural inclinations and talents. I have sufficient wealth and connections with men of position in France to ensure good beginnings for a child of either sex. For your part in this arrangement, you will have the responsibility to provide a home and the security of parental affection and guidance for the child, knowing that I have agents who will report to me should you fail in any aspect of your duty.

Consider my offer proposal carefully, Sir. I am patient, but I will not stand by and see yet another child left at the door of strangers.

I await your decision,

Lorsagne de Sade