of persons whom it was wished to put out of the way, and, notwithstanding De Sade’s organically abnormal temperament, there is no reason to regard him as actually insane.  Royer-Collard, an eminent alienist of that period, then at the head of Charenton, declared De Sade to be sane, and his detailed report is still extant.  Other specialists were of the same opinion.  Bloch, who quotes these opinions (Neue Forschungen, etc., p. 370), says that the only possible conclusion is that De Sade was sane, but neurasthenic, and Eulenburg also concludes that he cannot be regarded as insane, although he was highly degenerate.  In the asylum he amused himself by organizing a theater.  Lacroix, many years later, questioning old people who had known him, was surprised to find that even in the memory of most virtuous and respectable persons he lived merely as an “aimable mauvais sujet.”  It is noteworthy that De Sade aroused, in a singular degree, the love and devotion of women,—­whether or not we may regard this as evidence of the fascination exerted on women by cruelty.  Janin remarks that he had seen many pretty little letters written by young and charming women of the great world, begging for the release of the “pauvre marquis.”

Sardou, the dramatist, has stated that in 1855 he visited the Bicetre and met an old gardener who had known De Sade during his reclusion there.  He told that one of the marquis’s amusements was to procure baskets of the most beautiful and expensive roses; he would then sit on a footstool by a dirty streamlet which ran through the courtyard, and would take the roses, one by one, gaze at them, smell them with a voluptuous expression, soak them in the muddy water, and fling them away, laughing as he did so.  He died on the 2d of December, 1814, at the age of 74.  He was almost blind, and had long been a martyr to gout, asthma, and an affection of the stomach.  It was his wish that acorns should be planted over his grave and his memory effaced.  At a later period his skull was examined by a phrenologist, who found it small and well formed; “one would take it at first for a woman’s head.”  The skull belonged to Dr. Londe, but about the middle of the century it was stolen by a doctor who conveyed it to England, where it may possibly yet be found. [The foregoing account is mainly founded on Paul Lacroix, Revue de Paris, 1837, and Curiosites de l’Histoire de France, second series, Proces Celebres, p. 225; Janin, Revue de Paris, 1834; Eugen Duehren (Iwan Bloch), Der Marquis de Sade und Seine Zeit, third edition, 1901; id., Neue Forschungen ueber den Marquis de Sade und Seine Zeit, 1904; Lacassagne, Vacher l’Eventreur et les Crimes Sadiques, 1899; Paul Ginisty, La Marquise de Sade, 1901.]

The attempt to define sadism strictly and penetrate to its roots in De Sade’s personal temperament reveals a certain weakness in the current conception