Justine (de Sade novel) was an early work by the Marquis de Sade, written in two weeks in 1787 while imprisoned in the Bastille. It is a novella (187 pages) with relatively little of the obscenity that characterized his later writing, as it was written in the classical style (which was fashionable at the time), with much verbose and metaphorical description. A much extended and more graphic version, entitled "Justine ou Les Malheurs de la vertu" (1791) (English title: "Justine, or The Misfortunes of the Virtue" or simply "Justine"), was the first of de Sade's books published. A further extended version, "La Nouvelle Justine
Paris in the 18th century family were imprisoned within the tower of the Temple. The Luxembourg Palace and the former convents of Les Carmes (70 rue Vaugirard) and Port-Royal (121-125 boulevard Port-Royal) were turned into prisons. The Conciergerie within the Palace of Justice was used to hold accused criminals during their trial; Marie-Antoinette was held there until her sentence and execution. In the first half of the 18th century, under the Old Regime, criminals could be executed either by hanging, decapitation, burning alive, boiling alive, being broken on a wheel, or by drawing and quartering. The domestic servant Robert-François Damiens, who tried to kill King