The overgrown spoiled brat, de Sade, had a taste for sex with children and for tying down his employees and whipping them. For such behavior, and his writings, he spent over half of his life behind bars. At the time of this episode he was 60 years old, in prison, and seducing the 13 year old daughter of a prison official. Oddly, after de Sade's death some French philosophers began to idealize him as a free thinker while others still dismissed him as a mere sexual delinquent.