In 1797 a ten-volume novel came out of Paris claiming to be printed "En Hollande". It wasn't. The imprint was a lie for the censor, the author's name was nowhere on it, and whoever cut its hundred copper plates left no name either. The book was La Nouvelle Justine, suivie de l'Histoire de Juliette, and the police knew exactly whose it was.

On 6 March 1801 they walked into his publisher's shop, seized the copies and arrested Donatien Alphonse François, marquis de Sade, on Napoleon's order. No trial. Two years later a prefect wrote him up for "démence libertine" and sent him to the Charenton asylum, where he staged plays with the inmates for an audience of Paris society until he died there in 1814. Under the king, the Revolution and the Emperor, he spent some 32 years locked up.

The books ended up in the Enfer, the shelf the Bibliothèque nationale kept locked. His name became a diagnosis in 1886. France let him be printed in the open only after the Pauvert trial closed in 1958, and in 1990 he entered the Pléiade, next to the classics.

The plates outlived all of it. This is their hand, and the same rooms as a photograph.

Use

• Two hands on this page, each with its own file. Engraving: trigger buril1797 (buril is Portuguese for burin). Tableau Vivant: trigger sade1797. The trigger is the first word of the prompt.
• Strength 1.0.
• The Krea 2 versions run on Krea 2 Turbo at 10 steps, CFG 1; MOSS Image on MOSS SFT, 30 steps, CFG 3. The settings of each live in its version tab.
• Engraving: cross-hatching, stippled skin, sepia ink on cream paper, tall paneled rooms and striped canopy beds. Describe the scene; the trigger carries the engraving. Dressed scenes stay dressed.
• Tableau Vivant: the plates staged with living people, a still from a period film, candle and window light, film grain. Describe the scene; the trigger carries the century and the photograph. Plain Krea 2 dresses a nude prompt; here "nude" means nude.
• Known quirks: the engraving drops colour. Signs and posters: Krea 2 writes the trigger on them (MOSS doesn't), so give the sign its own text ("a café awning reading ...") or ask for blank signs. Modern street scenes can slip back into a photo. In the Tableau Vivant version a bedroom can pick up a modern lamp, so name the light.

Adults only. The plates of willing company went in; the cruel ones stayed in the book.