The manuscript of Sade's 120 Days of Sodom was smuggled into Switzerland in 1982, sold for 7 million euros in 2014, and bought by France for 4.55 million euros in 2021

Sade wrote The 120 Days of Sodom in 37 days in his Bastille cell, on a parchment scroll about 39 feet long. He was moved to Charenton on 4 July 1789 and left it behind. Arnoux de Saint-Maximin removed it from the prison on 12 July 1789. In 1929 it was bought by the husband of Marie-Laure de Noailles, a Sade descendant. In 1982 publisher Jean Grouet took it to Switzerland without the knowledge of Nathalie de Noailles and sold it to collector Gérard Nordmann for $60,000. Switzerland's top court ruled Nordmann bought in good faith, so it stayed there. In 1990 a French high court ruled for the Noailles family. In 2014 Nordmann's son Serge sold it to Gérard Lhéritier of Aristophil for 7 million euros, with part paid to Carlo Perrone, Nathalie's heir. Aristophil collapsed in 2015; its roughly 130,000 documents were seized, and more than 18,000 investors were reported defrauded. In December 2017 France declared the scroll a national treasure and halted its auction. In July 2021 the state paid 4.55 million euros, all of it funded by banker Emmanuel Boussard. The scroll is at the Arsenal library in Paris, part of the Bibliothèque nationale de France.