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 fountain was still under construction: There was no official census of the Parisians before 1801, but based on parish records and other sources, most historians estimate that the population of Paris was about 500,000 persons at the beginning of the 18th century and grew to between 600,000 and 650,000 shortly before the Revolution of 1789. Following the Reign of Terror, economic hardship and the emigration of the nobility, the 1801 census reported that the population had dropped to 546,856, but it quickly recovered to reach 622,636 in 1811. It was no longer the largest city in Europe; London passed it