The Marquis de Sade’s Cocoa Habit
A while back I published a cute spanking graphic that appeared to link the Marquis de Sade to the consumption of cocoa:
At that time I speculated: “Apparently the Marquis enjoyed a little pick-me-up with his flagellation?”
Apparently, indeed. Thanks are due to an alert reader, who wrote in with this excerpt from Maurice Lever’s biography of the Marquis:
The marquis de Sade’s palate was most keenly excited by pastry and sweets. [. . .] Chocolate inspired an irresistible passion. He loved it in all its forms: in cream, in cakes, in ice cream, in bars: “I asked… for a cake with icing,” he wrote his wife, “but I want it to be chocolate and black inside from chocolate as the devil’s ass is black from smoke. And the icing is to be the same.”
[Lever, Maurice. Sade: A Biography. English translation by
Arthur Goldhammer. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux,
1993.]
