Les Liaisons Dangereuses

by Pierre Choderlos De Laclos

  36

  The Vicomte de Valmont to Madame de Tourvel (postmarked from Dijon) 23 August 17—

  You are growing stricter every day, Madame, and, dare I say it? you seem less afraid of being unfair than of showing indulgence. After condemning me unheard, you must indeed have concluded that it would be easier to leave my arguments unread than to reply to them. You stubbornly refuse to accept my letters and send them back with contempt. At the very time when my sole aim is to convince you of my good faith, you are forcing me to stoop to deceit. My need to defend myself against you is surely sufficient to excuse my methods. In any case, I am so convinced of the sincerity of my feelings, so convinced that I need only to explain them fully to you in order to justify them in your eyes, that I thought it permissible to employ this slight subterfuge. I’m hopeful that you will forgive me and not be greatly surprised that love is more ingenious in revealing itself than indifference in brushing it aside.

  So allow me, dear Madame de Tourvel, to bare my heart completely. It belongs to you and it is right for you to learn its secrets.

  When I arrived at Madame de Rosemonde’s I had not the remotest idea of the fate awaiting me. I did not know that you were here and may I add, with my usual bluntness, that even had I known, I should not have felt in any way apprehensive; not that I failed to give due credit to your beauty but having fallen into the habit of feeling nothing but desire and only following those desires where I could hope to succeed, I knew nothing of the agony of love.

  You yourself saw how strongly Madame de Rosemonde urged me to stay on for a while. I had already spent one day with you yet I merely gave way, or thought that I was giving way, to the very natural and legitimate pleasure of showing my regard for a relative whom I respect. The style of life here was certainly very different from what I was accustomed to; I found no difficulty in fitting in with it and without trying to probe into the reasons for the change taking place within me, I attributed it solely to my easy-going nature which I believe I have already mentioned to you.

  Unhappily (why has it to be unhappily?), as I got to know you better, I quickly realized that your entrancing face, which was your only feature which had struck me, was the least of your charms; my soul was stirred and bewitched by your heavenly spirituality. From admiring your beauty, I came to worship your virtue. Without any hope of winning you, I made an effort to be worthy of you. By asking you to forgive my past, I was eager to obtain your future approval. I tried to read it into your words, I watched for it in your eyes!—in those eyes which were sending out a poison all the more insidious because it was being unwittingly discharged against an unsuspecting target.

  And so I learned the meaning of love. But no thought of complaining ever remotely crossed my mind! I was resolved to bury it in silence for ever and I had no fears in plunging wholeheartedly into this delightful emotion. Its power over me grew stronger every day; soon the pleasure of seeing you turned into a necessity. If you were away for a second, my heart sank; when I heard you coming back, it pounded with joy. I existed only through you and for you. Yet I call on you yourself to bear witness: during all our games and light-hearted fun or our serious conversations, did I ever let slip a single word to betray my secret love?

  Finally the day came which was to usher in all my misfortunes and by some unbelievable mischance it was an act of generosity which gave rise to them. Yes, it was while I was with those unfortunate folk whom I had helped and you were displaying that admirable tender-heartedness which makes beauty all the lovelier and virtue even more precious that you finally threw my heart, already drunk with love, into a frenzy. Perhaps you may remember how preoccupied I was as we drove back? I was struggling to resist an emotion that I felt threatening to overwhelm me.

  When my strength had become exhausted in this uneven struggle, I found myself, by some unforeseeable chance, alone with you. And then, I admit, I succumbed: my heart was too full to hold back my words and my tears. But is that a crime? And if it is, has it not been punished enough by the agonies I’ve been suffering?

  I am ravaged by a hopeless love; I am pleading for compassion and you offer me only hatred. Seeing you is my only joy and in spite of myself I constantly look in your direction even though I’m terrified that our eyes may meet. You have reduced me to the frightful plight of spending my days concealing my sorrows and my nights tormented by them, whilst you remain calm and peaceful and know nothing about my miserable state, except that you’re the cause of it; and that gives you great satisfaction. Yet it’s you who are complaining and I who am apologizing…

  So there you have, Madame de Tourvel, the true account of what you describe as my offensive conduct, which might more fairly be called my misfortunes. Love, sincere and pure, unfailing respect, utter obedience: those are the feelings you have inspired in me. I should have felt no qualms in offering them to the Divinity Himself. Ah, dear Madame, you are His finest creation, follow His example of infinite mercy! Do not forget my sufferings and, above all, do not forget that, poised as I am between the pinnacles of happiness and the depths of despair, the first word that you utter will decide my fate for ever.

  37

  Madame de Tourvel to Madame de Volanges 25 August 17—

  I intend to defer to your friendly advice, Madame. I have become so used to accepting your judgement in everything, in the belief that it is always based on good sense. I’ll even admit that this Vicomte de Valmont must indeed be dangerous in the extreme if he can pretend to be what he seems to be here while still remaining the man you have described. But anyway, since you insist, I shall send him away or at least do all that I can to achieve that result: things that should be very simple in theory turn out to be very embarrassing in practice.

  To my mind it still seems impracticable for me to ask his aunt to take any action; it would be invidious both for her and for him. I should also be somewhat reluctant to agree to leave myself because, apart from the reasons I’ve already given with regard to my husband, if my departure were to run counter to Monsieur de Valmont’s ideas, which is not impossible, wouldn’t it be quite easy for him to follow me to Paris? And wouldn’t his return, prompted or apparently prompted by mine, seem stranger than our having met in the country, in the house of someone known to be his relative as well as a friend of mine?

  So there’s no other possibility open but for me to prevail on him to have the kindness to leave himself. I have the feeling that it will not be easy to make that suggestion but as he seems to be keen to prove to me that he’s more honourable than his reputation implies, I have some hope of success. In fact, I shall not be loath to make the attempt; it will give me the chance of seeing if, as he repeatedly claims, really respectable women never have had nor ever will have cause to complain of his behaviour. If he does fall in with my request, it will indeed be out of consideration for me, since I have no doubt that he’s planning to spend a large part of the autumn here. If he refuses and insists on staying on, then it will be time for me to leave myself and I promise you to do so.

  So there we have, I think, everything that, in your friendly concern for my welfare, you wanted me to do. I shall lose no time in doing it and prove to you, dear Madame de Volanges, that the warmth I may have shown in defending Monsieur de Valmont doesn’t in any way hinder me not only from listening to but even from following my good friend’s advice.

  With kindest regards, I am, etc.

  38

  The Marquise de Merteuil to the Vicomte de Valmont 27 August 17—

  Your massive packet has just arrived, my dear Vicomte. If the date on it is correct, I ought to have received it some twenty-four hours ago. Anyway, if I were to spend my time reading it now, I shouldn’t have any left to reply to it, so I prefer merely to acknowledge it and we’ll chat about other things now. It’s not that there’s anything much to tell you about myself; with autumn on its way, there’s hardly any identifiably human male left in Paris so for the last month I’ve been devastatingly good and anyone but my knight would
be thoroughly sick and tired of my constancy. So having nothing to do, I’m whiling away my time with the Volanges girl and I’d like to talk to you about her.

  Do you know, you’ve missed more than you think by not taking on that little girl? She’s absolutely scrumptious! vapid and unprincipled: just imagine what a sweet, easy-going partner she’ll make! I don’t think she’s ever going to be strong on sentiment but she promises to have lots and lots of temperament. Lacks intelligence and subtlety but she has a sort of natural deceitfulness, if you can understand me, which sometimes amazes even me and will make her a great success, particularly as her face is a picture of innocence and candour. She’s got an extremely affectionate nature and now and again I have fun leading her on: her little brain sparks off on the slightest provocation and then she’s all the more comic because she’s got no idea, not the vaguest inkling, of what she’s so anxious to know. She becomes so impatient that she’s really funny: she laughs, gets upset, starts crying and then asks me to tell her all about it with an innocence which is utterly entrancing. To tell you the truth, I’m almost jealous of the man who’s destined to have that pleasure.

  I forget if I told you that for the last four or five days she’s been taking me into her confidence. As you can guess, at first I made out to be very strict but as soon as I realized that she thought she’d persuaded me with her bad arguments, I pretended they were good ones and accepted them: she’s fully convinced that she owes her success to her powers of persuasion. I had to be cautious to avoid compromising myself. I allowed her to write and say I love you and that very same day, without her realizing it, I arranged for her to be alone with Danceny. But can you credit it? He’s still so wet behind the ears that he didn’t even manage to obtain a kiss! Yet that young fellow writes very charming poetry! God, aren’t brainy people obtuse! And this one’s quite embarrassingly so! After all, it’s not up to me to guide his steps.

  It’s now that you’d be so useful to me. You know Danceny well enough to gain his confidence and once you’d got that, we could go ahead like a house on fire. So do despatch your judge’s wife double-quick because I really do not want Gercourt to get away with it. And incidentally, I told the little body about him yesterday and painted such a pretty picture of him that she’d have a job to hate him more even after ten years of married life. However, I read her a long lecture on a wife’s duty to be faithful: there’s nobody stricter on that topic than me. Doing this will enable me on the one hand to restore my reputation as a woman of impeccable morality which might be damaged if I appeared too broad-minded; and on the other to make her hate him more, which is precisely the wedding present I wish to give to the groom. And finally, by making her think that she’ll be free to indulge in love only for the short time before her marriage, she’ll be quicker to make up her mind not to waste a second.

  Farewell, my dear Vicomte. I shall now read your weighty tome while getting dressed.

  39

  Cécile Volanges to Sophie Carnay Paris, 27 August 17—

  Sophie darling, I’m worried and miserable. I’ve been crying nearly all night. It’s not that for the moment I’m not very happy but I can’t see it lasting.

  Yesterday I went to the Opéra with Madame de Merteuil. We talked a lot about my marriage and what she told me wasn’t very nice. I’m meant to marry Monsieur le Comte de Gercourt. He’s rich, he’s got a title, and he’s colonel of the—–th regiment. So far so good. But first of all, he’s positively ancient! Just imagine, he’s at least thirty-six!!! And then Madame de Merteuil says he’s glum and stern and she’s afraid I shan’t be very happy with him. In fact, it seemed quite plain to me that she’s sure of it and she just didn’t want to tell me so, so as not to make me miserable. She scarcely talked of anything else the whole evening but a wife’s duty towards her husband; she agrees that Monsieur de Gercourt isn’t a bit agreeable but she still says I’ve got to love him. And didn’t she also say that once I’m married I shall have to stop loving Chevalier Danceny? As if that was possible! Oh, Sophie dear, I swear I’ll always love him. Do you know, I’d sooner not get married at all! Monsieur de Gercourt can do what he likes, I didn’t ask for him! At the moment he’s in Corsica which is a long way from here and I only hope he stays there for ten years. If I wasn’t scared of going back to the convent, I’d jolly well tell Mummy that I don’t want that man as a husband. But that’d be even worse. I hardly know which way to turn. I feel that I’ve never loved Monsieur Danceny so much as I do now and when I consider that I’ve only got one month to stay as I am, I can feel tears coming to my eyes straight away. My only comfort is Madame de Merteuil’s friendliness, she’s so kind-hearted and when I’m miserable she’s as miserable as me and then she’s so nice that when I’m with her, I always forget my troubles. And she’s very helpful to me as well, because I don’t know much and all that I do know comes from her and she’s so kind that I can tell her all my thoughts without feeling bashful at all. When she thinks they’re a bit naughty, she sometimes tells me off but quite nicely and then I give her a big, big hug until she’s stopped being cross with me. At least I can love her as much as I like without it being wrong and I’m very pleased at that. But we’ve agreed that I wouldn’t appear to be so fond of her in public and specially in front of Mummy so that she doesn’t suspect anything about Chevalier Danceny. I promise you that if I could go on living all the time like I am now, I think I’d be very happy. There’s only nasty old Gercourt… But I don’t want to talk about him any more, it’d make me miserable again. Instead I’m going to write to Chevalier Danceny. I’ll only talk to him about my love, not about my troubles, because I don’t want to make him sad.

  Goodbye, dear, dear Sophie. You can see that you oughtn’t to grumble and though I’m occupied,* as you put it, I can still find time to love and write to you.*

  40

  The Vicomte de Valmont to the Marquise de Merteuil 27 August 17—

  Not content with refusing to answer my letters, refusing even to take them, that fiendish woman wants to stop me from seeing her, she’s insisting I go away. What will surprise you even more is that I’m prepared to bow to her harsh decision. You’re going to tell me off. However, I thought that I shouldn’t miss the opportunity of being ordered about by her, as I’m convinced, first, that someone who delivers orders also accepts a commitment, and secondly, that letting a woman apparently exercise fictitious authority over us is one of the pitfalls they find most difficult to avoid. What’s more, her skill in managing not to be left alone with me was placing me in a dangerous predicament which I realized I must escape from at all costs: by being constantly with her yet unable to keep her aware of my love, there was a fear that she might eventually become used to being in my company without feeling uneasy—and I don’t need to tell you that is an attitude very hard to shake off.

  Moreover, as you may guess, I didn’t submit unconditionally. I even made sure that one of my conditions was impossible to accept, thereby retaining the option of either keeping my word or breaking it, as well as entering into a dialogue with my beauty, either orally or in writing, at a time when she seems rather more kindly disposed towards me and needs me to be in similar mood; and let’s not forget that I’d be extremely inept not to be able to find some way of obtaining compensation for waiving my claim, however indefensible.

  After this long preamble explaining my reasons, let me begin the chronicle of these last two days; I include the dear lady’s letter and my reply as documentary evidence. You must agree that there are few more conscientious historians than I.

  You’ll recall the impact of my Dijon letter a couple of mornings ago? The remainder of the day was very stormy. The pretty prude only appeared when dinner was just about to start and reported that she had a bad sick headache: a pretext to cover one of the most violent attacks of feminine foul temper ever; she looked really savage and the gentleness you know so well had been replaced by a defiant look which gave her quite a different style of beauty. I made a mental note to
exploit this discovery on some future occasion and now and again have the defiant mistress as a change from the tender one.

  I anticipated a dreary afternoon and to escape this boring prospect, I took myself off on the plea of having some letters to write. I came down to the drawing-room around six o’clock. Madame de Rosemonde suggested going for a drive and we agreed, but just as we were getting into the carriage, the bogus invalid, with truly diabolical malevolence, perhaps getting her own back for my earlier defection, herself pleaded a worsening headache and ruthlessly abandoned me to the tender mercies of my old aunt. I don’t know if the curses I called down on this she-devil’s head were answered but on returning from the drive we discovered she had gone to bed.

  Next day at breakfast she was a woman transformed. Her natural gentleness had returned and I had grounds for believing that I was forgiven. Hardly was breakfast over than this gentle creature casually stood up and went off into the park. As you may imagine, I quickly followed her. ‘Why this sudden urge for exercise?’ I enquired as I caught up with her. ‘I did a lot of writing this morning,’ she replied, ‘and my head is a trifle tired.’ ‘I suppose I’m not the lucky man who’s to blame for your tiredness?’ I said. ‘I did write to you,’ she replied, ‘but I can’t decide whether to give it to you. It contains a request and till now you haven’t given me much encouragement to hope for any success.’ ‘Oh, I give you my word, if it’s at all possible…’ She cut me short: ‘There’s nothing easier and though you ought really to agree to it out of a sense of justice, I’m willing to accept it as a favour.’ She held out her letter and as I took it, I grasped her hand which she drew away, not angrily or even brusquely but with embarrassment. ‘It’s warmer out than I thought,’ she said. ‘Let’s go in.’ She turned to go back to the château. I tried unsuccessfully to persuade her to continue our walk and if I hadn’t remembered that we could be seen from the house I’d have resorted to other means than persuasion. She went in without another word and I realized that this alleged ‘walk’ was purely a scheme to hand me the letter. When we got back, she went straight up to her room and I went to mine to read the following missive which I recommend you to read too, as well as my reply, before we proceed further.