December 2: On this day in 1814 the Marquess de Sade died at the age of seventy-four. The final years of de Sade's twenty-seven days of labour were spent pretty much routinely, writing protest notes and contriving assignations with his latest and final inamorata, a seventeen-year-old laundress at the Charenton asylum. This diary entry wonders at the girl's "coldness," this one hopes that her vow to be entirely his is sincere, this one fears that she and her father are only afterwards the 3 francs per visit.
