The stories range from simple anecdotical tales with plot twists to clever softcore comedy and even some fantastic literature.
Nevertheless, de Sade's trademark disdain for religion, morality and the French government remains, as does his sexually-themed narrative and devotion to nature as an excuse for the ways of the libertine.
Contes et Fabliaux features the more sadistic stories in the vein of de Sade's better known works.
One in particular, Le Président mystifié ("The Mystified Magistrate"), is the longest of the collection and due to its length and structure is sometimes considered a nouvelle of its own.
The tale revolves around the title [gullible] magistrate, his upcoming marriage to a woman who (unbeknownst to him) does not desire him, and the series of practical jokes, hoaxes and elaborate schemes that the woman's brother-in-law (the marquis d'Olincourt) perpetrates against the magistrate in order to stop the wedding.