Prurient

In order to know true virtue, we must first acquaint ourselves with vice. Indulge your darkest desires with zeal and avarice; permit me to introduce you to vice.

The Marquis de Sade was young, decent and inexperienced—once upon a time.

His fictionalized beginnings are imagined on a childhood fairytale known well to us all. In this story, youth and innocence, resistance and temptation, control and self-discipline, humility and avarice are all the complicated facets of his personality and appetites.

This is the beginning of his long and sordid plunge into the hungry underbelly of debauchery…

Born of humble lineage to a newly departed working miller, the oldest and middle sons of three would combine their patrimony of a mill and a donkey so that they could provide for their families.

The youngest was bequeathed a cat.

Destined to starve to death with nothing but this cat, he thought to eat the cat and fashion the pelt into a muff for the young daughter of a Chinese laborer he fancied with a dark deprivation.

Beyond that, he knew not.

The cat, fiercely attached to his own fur pelt, didn't think favorably upon separating with it. Could the crafty cat contrive successfully to advance the wealth and social standing of his master securing his own feline future? Would the young Master accept his wealth with grace and dignity or indulge the dark desires he secreted with his newly acquired avarice?

The answer was simple:

In order to know true virtue, we must first acquaint ourselves with vice. ~ Marquis de Sade