Les Liaisons Dangereuses

by Pierre Choderlos De Laclos

  Goodbye, fair lady. Be brave and give Belleroche his marching orders as soon as you can. Leave Danceny to his own devices and get ready to enjoy once more the pleasures of our first association—and to let me enjoy them again as well.

  I wish you good luck for the imminent success of your lawsuit and I shall be delighted for this happy outcome to take place under my regime.

  116

  The Chevalier Danceny to Cécile Volanges

  Paris, 17 October 17—

  Madame de Merteuil left this morning for the country, so depriving me, now that my dear, charming Cécile is no longer here herself, of my only remaining pleasure, which is the chance of talking to someone who’s your friend as well as mine. For some time now she’s been letting me consider her as such and I was all the keener to take advantage of this as it seemed a sort of way to be nearer to you. My goodness, what an agreeable woman she is! And what a charming and gracious friend! With her, friendship, such a gentle feeling, seems all the finer and stronger because she excludes any thought of love. If you knew how fond she is of you, how much she enjoys hearing me talk about you! … This must be what makes me so attached to her. How happy it makes me to live only for you both, to switch all the time from the delights of love to the gentler joys of friendship, to devote every moment of my life to them, to be in a sense the link between your mutual affection, to have the constant feeling that when concerning myself with the happiness of one of you, I’m contributing equally to the happiness of the other! Cécile, charming, charming Cécile, you must grow to love this adorable woman and love her very much. You must strengthen my fondness for her by sharing it. Ever since I realized the charms of friendship, I have wanted you to experience them too. It seems impossible for me to enjoy anything properly if you aren’t sharing it. Yes, my darling, I should like to surround your heart with all the most delightful feelings, so that every emotion is pure joy—and even then I should feel that I was giving back only part of the happiness I owe you.

  Why must all these wonderful plans be merely a figment of my imagination and reality offer me only pain and frustration everywhere I look? I can see that I shall have to give up any hope of seeing you in the country, as you had led me to think. My only comfort is to convince myself that it really is impossible. Yet you’ve never mentioned it to me yourself, you’ve never commiserated with me. And I’ve written to you twice about it and you’ve never said anything about your own regrets… Ah Cécile, I feel sure you love me, heart and soul, but you don’t feel the same burning passion as I do! Why is it always I who’s required to remove the obstacles? Why can’t I give some consideration to my own interests instead of yours? I’d soon prove to you that for love there’s no such word as impossible …

  And you haven’t let me know either when our cruel separation can come to an end; if you were in Paris, I could be seeing you now and again. Your charming eyes would revive my dejected spirits; their tender look would reassure my heart, which sometimes needs to be reassured. Oh, I’m sorry, dear, dear Cécile, don’t imagine that my misgivings mean I’m suspicious, I do believe in your love, you’re not inconstant. Ah, if I doubted that I’d be too utterly miserable! But there are so many obstacles! And they never seem to come to an end! Dear, dear, dear Cécile, I’m sad at heart, so sad. Madame de Merteuil’s departure seems to have revived all my feelings of unhappiness …

  Goodbye, Cécile, goodbye, my dear love. Never forget that your lover is utterly miserable and that you’re the only one able to make him happy again.*

  117

  Cécile Volanges to the Chevalier Danceny (dictated by Valmont) From the Château de —–, 18 October 17—

  Do you think, dear love, that, knowing how miserable you are, I need you to tell me off in order to make me sad? And do you have any doubt that when you’re suffering, I feel it just as much as you do? I even feel it as much when I’m the deliberate cause of your suffering; and it’s even worse for me because I can see you’re being unfair. Oh, that’s really not nice of you. I can certainly see what’s annoying you, it’s because the last twice you’ve asked to come and see me here, I didn’t reply. But is it all that easy to reply? Do you think I don’t know that what you want to do is very wrong? Yet if I find it so hard to refuse you at a distance, what would it be like if you were here? And then, because I’d wanted to offer you a moment’s consolation, I’d be miserable for the rest of my life!

  Look, here are my reasons, I’ve nothing to hide: judge for yourself. I might perhaps have done what you want except for what I told you: this Monsieur de Gercourt who’s the cause of all our troubles won’t be coming back for some time yet and as Mama has recently been much friendlier and I for my part am being as nice as possible to her, who can tell what I’ll perhaps be able to get her to do? And if we can be happy without me having done anything wrong, wouldn’t that be much better? If I’m to believe what people often say, men don’t even love their wives as much when they’ve shown their husbands too much love before they got married. Well, that’s what I’m afraid of and it’s that more than anything else which is holding me back. Dear love, aren’t you sure of my heart and won’t there always be plenty of time later on?

  But I must say goodnight, dear love, I started writing to you very late and have spent part of the night on it. Now I shall get into bed and make up for lost time. Here’s a kiss from me but please don’t go on telling me off.

  118

  The Chevalier Danceny to the Marquise de Merteuil Paris, 19 October 17—

  If I can trust my calendar you have been away for only two days, adorable lady, but to my heart it seems like two centuries. And as you told me yourself, one must always trust one’s heart… So it is high time for you to come back; all your business must surely have been settled by now. How can you expect me to take an interest in your lawsuit if, win or lose, I have to pay the costs by the tedium caused by your absence? Oh, I’d really like to lodge a complaint against you myself. Isn’t it a shame that with such a good case for being cross with you, I haven’t the right to show it?

  And isn’t it being really faithless, a treachery of the deepest dye, to leave your friend far away after you’ve got him so used to being unable to be without you? You may consult your lawyers as much as you like, they’ll never find a way of providing you with any justification for such unfriendly conduct and in any case such people only deal in arguments and arguments can never be a satisfactory response to feelings.

  As for me, you kept telling me so often that your trip was motivated by reason that you’ve completely turned me against it and even when it’s telling me to forget you, I refuse to listen to it any more. Yet that voice of reason is certainly eminently reasonable and it wouldn’t be as difficult as you might think: all I’d need to do is to break my habit of thinking of you constantly, for I can assure you that nothing here would remind me of you.

  Our prettiest women, the ones said to be the most deserving of being loved, are still so vastly inferior to you that they could never provide more than a very pale image of you. I even think that for a practised eye, the greater the similarity might appear at first glance, the greater the discrepancy afterwards. Try as they may and using every means at their disposal, they are still not you and that’s where the charm positively lies. Alas, when the days seem so long and there is nothing to do, we start to dream, to build castles in the air, the castles begin to take shape, our imagination catches fire, we try to make them more beautiful, bring in everything we find attractive and finally produce our ideal woman; and having done that, we compare our picture with the model and we’re greatly surprised to see that it’s you we had in mind all the time.

  At this moment I’m victim of an almost similar error. Perhaps you think I started writing to you in order to talk about yourself? Not at all: it was to take my mind off you. I have a hundred and one things to say, not concerning you but which, as you know, touch me very closely, and it is those which completely flew out of my head. And since when has the charm
of friendship put the charm of love out of someone’s head? … Ah, if I were to probe deeply into that question, I should feel a trifle guilty! But shush! Let’s put that little weakness aside in case we’re in danger of starting to fall into it again; and my dear friend must overlook it, too.

  So why aren’t you here to answer me, to bring me back to the proper path when I stray from it, to talk to me about my Cécile, to make me even happier, if that were possible, at the thought—and what a charming thought it is!—that the girl I love is your friend? Yes, I must confess that the love she inspires in me has grown even more precious since you were kind enough to let me tell you about it. I take such pleasure in opening my heart to you, in involving yours in my emotions, in pouring them out to you without restraint! And they seem all the more precious now that you have condescended to show an interest in them. And then I can look at you and say to myself: ‘All my happiness is contained in her!’

  I’ve nothing new to tell you concerning my situation with Cécile. Her last letter renewed my hopes and removed my doubts but it still means postponing my happiness. However, her reasons are so honourable, so full of love, that I cannot blame her or complain. It is perhaps quite possible that you do not completely understand what I mean by that: but why aren’t you here? Although we tell our friends everything, we don’t dare to put everything down on paper. Love’s secrets especially are so delicate that we can’t let them out just like that, because they are so sincere. If we sometimes do so, at least we must never let them out of our sight; we have, so to speak, to see them safely into their new home. Oh, adorable friend, do come back, you can see that you positively must. So forget all the thousand and one reasons keeping you down where you are or else let me have one good reason to teach me how to live when you are not with me.

  Most sincerely, etc.

  119

  Madame de Rosemonde to Madame de Tourvel From the Château de —–, 20 October 17—

  Dear child, although I am still in considerable pain I shall none the less make an effort to write to you myself so that I may talk to you of the matter which concerns you. My nephew remains as misanthropic as ever. He enquires after my health regularly every day but he has not once been to call on me himself, although I’ve sent a message asking him to do so. In fact I see as little of him as I should if he were in Paris. However, I did meet him this morning in a place where I didn’t expect to: in my chapel when I went down there for the first time since I have been so drastically incapacitated. I learned today that for the last few days he has been going regularly to Mass. May it be God’s wish for him long to continue in that way.

  When I went in he came up to me and offered me his most affectionate good wishes on the improvement in my health. As Mass was about to begin I cut short our conversation, fully expecting to resume it afterwards, but he disappeared before I could catch him. I won’t conceal the fact that I found him somewhat changed. But you must not make me regret the trust I have placed in your good sense by showing excessive concern. Above all, you may rest assured that I should even prefer causing you pain to misleading you.*

  If my nephew remains adamant, as soon as I’m better, I shall make a point of calling on him myself and try to solve the mystery of his peculiar behaviour which I think must be partly attributable to you. I shall let you know what I discover. But I must leave you now since I can no longer hold my pen properly. Indeed, were Adelaide to know that I had been writing, she’d be cross with me for the rest of the evening. Goodbye, dear, dear friend.

  120

  The Vicomte de Valmont to Father Anselme (a strict Bernadine in the Convent in the Rue Saint-Honoré) From the Château de —–, 22 October 17—

  Reverend Father, I do not have the honour of being known to you; but I do know the implicit trust that Madame de Tourvel places in you and I know moreover how worthy you are to bear that trust. I believe therefore that I may approach you without risk of being thought indiscreet to ask a favour of vital importance, one truly appropriate to your holy office and in which the interests of Madame de Tourvel and myself are equally concerned.

  I have in my possession important papers concerning her which can be entrusted to no one else and which I must, and intend to, hand over to her in person. I have no way of informing her of this matter since, for reasons of which you may have been apprised by her but which I think I have no warrant to reveal, she has decided to refuse to have any sort of correspondence with me; a decision for which at this time I readily confess that I am unable to blame her since she could not have foreseen certain events which I was myself far from anticipating and which have only come about through a more than human agency whose hand in this matter it is impossible not to recognize.

  I ask you therefore, Reverend Father, to have the great kindness to inform Madame de Tourvel of the new resolves I have made and to request her to grant me a personal interview so that I may offer her my apologies which may in part at least make amends for my transgression; and as a final penance destroy before her own eyes the sole remaining vestiges of an error or fault which I have committed against her.

  Only after this preliminary sacrifice shall I dare to place at your feet my humiliating confession of my lengthy moral aberration and implore your mediation to assist me to make an even more important and unfortunately more difficult act of atonement. May I be allowed to hope, Reverend Father, that you will not refuse your invaluable and indeed indispensable help? And that you will deign to support me in my infirmity and guide my footsteps in this new path I aspire most sincerely to follow but with which I blush to confess I am as yet far from familiar.

  I await your reply with all the impatience of a repentant sinner eager to reform and ask you to believe me, in gratitude and veneration, your very humble, etc.

  PS Should you think fit, I authorize you to communicate this letter in its entirety to Madame de Tourvel whom I consider myself in duty bound to respect for the rest of my days and whom I shall honour for ever as Heaven’s instrument to lead my soul back to the path of virtue by the touching example of her own.*

  121

  The Marquise de Merteuil to the Chevalier Danceny From the Château de —–, 22 October 17—

  My very youthful friend, I have received your letter but before thanking you for it, I must issue a reprimand and warn you that if you don’t mend your ways, you will receive no further letters from me. So take it from me, give up this cajoling tone which, if it’s not an expression of love, is nothing but sheer jargon. Is this how friends should talk? No, my friend: each feeling has its own appropriate language and using any other falsifies the idea you are expressing. I realize, of course, that our smart young women can’t understand a word of what someone’s trying to tell them unless it’s translated into the fashionable idiom but I confess that I thought I deserved rather more discriminating treatment at your hands. I’m truly sorry, perhaps sorrier than I ought to be, that you have taken such a poor view of me.

  So in my letter, you’ll only find what is missing from yours: sincerity and forthrightness; I shall tell you, for instance, that it would indeed give me great pleasure to see you and that I feel frustrated at being surrounded by people who bore me instead of people whom I like; that same statement would, however, be transcribed by you as: teach me how I can live when you are not with me, so I presume that when you’re with your beloved you wouldn’t be able to live unless I were there to make up a threesome! How sad! And those women who still aren’t me, do you perchance consider your Cécile as still not me? Yet that is precisely the kind of statement you’re tricked into making by that misuse of language so prevalent today, which doesn’t even reach the level of fashionable compliment but turns into a mere form of words, just as unconvincing as your most humble obedient servant!

  When writing to me, dear friend, do so in order to tell me what you are thinking and feeling, not to trot out all those things which, without any help from you, I can find expressed, more or less well, in any old novel in vogue. I do hope you won
’t be offended by what I’m saying, even if you may detect that I’m in rather a bad temper, because I don’t deny that I am; but to avoid even the semblance of being guilty of the offence which I’m accusing you of, I shall not tell you that this temper is perhaps made somewhat worse by the distance separating us. All things considered, it seems to me that you are better value than a lawsuit and two lawyers and perhaps even than the assiduous Belleroche as well.

  You can see that instead of deploring my absence, you ought to be pleased, for that is the nicest compliment I’ve ever paid you. I’m afraid your example is catching and I’m trying to flatter you, too; however, it mustn’t be, I prefer to stick to sincerity and it’s for that reason alone that you can be sure of my affectionate friendship and the interest in you which it has inspired. It is most pleasant to have a young friend whose heart is committed elsewhere. That’s not the way all women operate but it’s my way. It seems to me that there’s more pleasure in indulging in an emotion which gives no cause for fear and so perhaps from quite early on I went over to being your confidante. But you pick your girls so young that you made me realize for the first time that I’m starting to get old. So you have only yourself to blame for launching yourself on to a long career as a constant lover and I wish, wholeheartedly, that your feelings are reciprocated.