The History of Sex: Paris and Provence -- The Marquis de Sade and Intensified Farts -- (Chap. VII, Pt. 8)

However, Sade's third outrage earned him a death sentence.

In the summer of 1772, the thirty-two-year-old set off from Lacoste for Marseille with his valet and a crystal box of candies made from Spanish fly.

After finding four willing young women for both him and his servant to enjoy, the Marquis ordered the girls to eat the aphrodisiacs.

Much beating, whipping, wanking, shagging and buggery ensued.

At the high (or low) point of the session, the Marquis sodomized the youngest girl while being simultaneously buggered by his valet and ordering one of the other women to watch.

Long story short, some of the girls got sick from the candies—Spanish fly is toxic in large amounts—and accused the Marquis of poisoning them.

 In his defense, he claimed he simply wanted to intensify their farts.

One of the whores testified that he'd 'stuck his nose between her buttocks so as to inhale her wind.'

As you do.

Even weirder, there are not one but two words for the fetish:
flatuphilia and eproctophilia

Still, Sade's defenders reckon his worst excesses were exaggerated.

'He's been wronged by history,' Finn maintains, wearing the violence-shy expression of a man who wouldn't hurt a fly, let alone make a woman eat one.

Faced with the death penalty, Sade went on the run, fleeing to Venice (Titian was one of his favorite painters) and later Naples and Rome, where he got in touch with a debauched cardinal who was a friend of Casanova's.

Sade's companion for part of the journey was his sister-in-law, a convent girl who he'd also seduced.

A VERY MODERN SEXUAL PREDATOR

Meanwhile, a provincial court in France sentenced him to be executed not once but twice—decapitated for poisoning and burned for sodomy.

Sade was eventually caught but never killed for his crimes, thanks to his pedigree.

Instead, he was locked up for most of the rest of his life, rejected even by veteran debauchees like his father—not so much for what he'd done as how he'd done it, making him a very modern sexual predator.

In our secular age, for instance, it may be hard to fully comprehend the psychological torment that Sade would have inflicted by forcing his victims to blaspheme.

Even for Catholic prostitutes today, selling your body to survive is a forgivable transgression; desecrating the sacrament would seem an unpardonable sin.

Likewise, in Sade's day, it wasn't unusual for well-heeled men to get carried away with their sexual hijinks.

When they did, though, they usually relied on their fellow aristocrats to prevent them from going too far—or help cover up the evidence if it was too late. That's why they partied in groups.

What made the friendless Marquis different was the cold, calculating way in which he carried out his sexual fantasies; even worse, he executed them alone (the whores and servants on hand didn't count).