| Valentine’s Day is notoriously difficult for single people, but don’t assume it’s easy for couples. Take the Marquis de Sade and his wife, Renée-Pélagie, who endured a particularly rough Valentine’s Day in 1777. The previous night, the Marquis—not yet the author of his most famous works, “120 Days of Sodom” and “Justine”—had been arrested on the orders of Louis XVI, a royal intervention made at the behest of his mother-in-law. Despite Sade’s infamy for acts of sexual abuse and debauchery, his wife’s mother had once been among his ardent defenders. But Madame de Montreuil had turned against him, with a vengeance, after he picked up a Parisian beggarwoman (possibly a prostitute), whom he was accused of brutally whipping on Easter. In 1998, the New Yorker contributor Francine du Plessix Gray wrote about the turbulent but surprisingly happy union between Pélagie and Sade, an arranged marriage that led to three children and a string of semi-illicit conjugal visits while the Marquis was in prison. Through her husband’s shocking scandals, constant infidelity, and a betrayal involving her own sister, Pélagie stuck by Sade—until, eventually, she didn’t. Salacious, delicious, and disturbing, the saga makes for livelier Valentine’s Day reading than a Hallmark card, whatever your relationship status may be. | 
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